Guillaume Dargaud's website

Guillaume & Jennifer Dargaud's website

Welcome on our Site — English

My ugly face, good to scare tourists off, 1993

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Most of my pages are W3C certified and should work in any browser; if it crashes... well, that's life... or I mistyped something.

952330 1262904 32814043 visits in the last 16 years and counting.

My 'bestselling' pages are: the penguin page, the dead pixels test, the 4 wallpaper photo pages, the other antarctic animals, the selection of quotes for geeks and normal people, the Archive photo CDs, etc...

Most recently updated pages: Contact, WinterDC8, QuotesScience, QuotesPolitics, QuotesProgramming, priv_stats2, usage_201204, Linux, VTT

"Opinions expressed here are mine. And if you don't agree with them, you are racist, sexist, elitist, imperialist, baptist and possibly even right."

Please do not hesitate to email us to tell us what you think of our site.

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January 2004: Colorado is now done with us and we are back to Europe. The long promised updates are here finally: the best pictures as 36 new wallpapers, and no less than 9 other new pages from our climbing road trip in the american south-west: Idaho, California, Tuolumne, Yosemite (subdivided in Salathé wall, the Steck-Salathé and Half Dome), Zion and more desert towers... And that doesn't even count the large additions to: Wyoming (Wind River Range), Red Rocks and Arizona... That should keep you busy for a while, there's no going back to what you were doing now.
January 2004: I've also brought the counters back to life.
February 2004: Added a page with Black & White images and also a vertical gallery.
March 2004: I got back most of the images that were previously placed in a photo agency. So the missing wallpapers are back, and I just published no less than 4 other CDs of images for sale.
June 2004: Moved to Briançon in the heart of the Alps where I'm starting a software and consulting business: Briansoft
July 2004: The Euro being too expensive with respect to the US$, blah, blah, blah, I just jacked up the price of the Photo Archive CDs. Sorry. But fear not, you can still purchase them at the same old cheap price if you get the bran new DVD compilation.
Aug 2004: Updating the inner workings of my site to PHP. If you notice some bugs, incompatibilities or missing pages/links, please let me know.
November 2004: Added some images of Base Jumping in the Verdon.; As part of the return-to-Antarctica trip (below), I scanned old slides of Dome C in 1977, sent to me by Thierry Cappelle.
November 30th, 2004: I'm back in Antarctica for the fifth time, but this is a First: the first winter-over at the new franco-italian research station of Concordia, on the High Antarctic Plateau. Forecast is: 4 months of total darkness, winter temperature down to -84°C and total isolation for 10 months. Should be fun. I started a blog of the expedition.
February 10th, 2005: The winter-over itself started with the departure of the last airplane, we are now on our own till november.; Jenny added some images of ice climbing near Briançon next to the page about the Ecrins National Park. I step on ice while she climbs it.
July 20th: We passed the halfway-point of the winterover (still 4 months to go!) and with the darkness I still spend 16 hours a day coding. I've updated several of my freewares and added a prog to rotate, stack and merge astronomy images.; And since I have plenty of time to read (and write), I've added a few reviews of interesting books.; I'm also in the process of adding lots of PHP to the inner workings of my site; let me know if I screw up somewhere.
August 12th: I'm in the flattest part of Antarctica, but I'd love to go to some of the steepest parts...; Contrary to habits, here's a link to an external website by Eric Wunrow, a photographer with a love for the desert.
September 1st: Record cold today: -78.6°C (-110°F).
October 15th: I took some time to assemble 360° panorama for a full visit of the station.
November 5th: Today at 22:00 the first airplane landed, putting an end to 269 days of isolation. The winterover is now... over.
December 3rd: On the 1st I leave Dome C for a coastal station where I hitch a ride on a C-130, destination New-Zealand for a well deserved vacation after residing for exactly one year in Antarctica. On the 4th, at 4am, after 369 days in Antarctica I'm back in a world where white is no longer the dominant color. It may be a while before my next update !
February 27th 2006: Back home, finally after 15 months... to a flooded apartment ! I'll do some updates (epilogue to the winterover, NZ, OZ...) after we settle down and I go through 150 boxes of slides...
March 5th: The movie March of the Penguins took away the Best Documentary at the 78th Academy Awards. Go penguins !
March 14th: Counting the 10 millionth hit today; and in 2 weeks my site will be just 10 years old. Also an evil friend managed to convince me to add something I usually hate: commercial advertisement. But fear not, it's only in text mode and without popups or flashing graphics. So if you want to help out my site, don't hesitate to click on relevant ads.
March 21st: A page with the december New Zealand 'return to climbing' (including a 54-hour non-stop epic on the north ridge of Sefton) and the ensuing month of hot climbing in Australia. There are some other minor new pages and site reorganization (what, a 200Kb page of text is too slow ?!?).
May 6th: After a work conference in Rome I'm taking time reorganizing my picture collection. Fished out old pics of Apennines in central Italy. And added new pics of backcountry skiing around Briançon where we currently live.
Another movie...: The movie An Inconvenient Truth about the current climate changes is in parts based on work that was performed at Dome C on the Epica project. Disclaimer: I have a small contribution in the movie.; And while on the topic of contributions, the incoming book 'Sun' by Hill and Carlowicz features several of my images. With its pocket size it makes a great and intelligent gift.
June 18th: I've been asked to produce some posters for a local shop, mostly B&W and panoramic. I'm not selling them online, only in a store in Briançon, but you are certainly welcome to take a look at them.
August 13th: Busy days. Many internal changes (division of large pages) and more than a few new Antarctic pages: new aurora pictures, my most difficult picture ever, a page about icebergs, surface glaciology and deep drilling, some B&W portraits, a brief passage at the McMurdo airstrip while flying around Antarctica, a detailed explanation of how land traverses are organized, a selection of variously transformed fisheye and bird's eye images (I made that last one up) and a whole bunch of new wallpapers. Enough to keep you cool during the globally warmed summer months.; Doing all this work on many sources of digital and film images, I had to rationalize my workflows, so I put my notes online. While I was at it I detailed various image combination processes, with examples. Also wrote a quick hack to produce 360° bird's eye images after an idea for a photography contest.; J'ai aussi traduit en français la page sur les manchots ainsi que leur FAQ.
August 17th: After last week's mayhem, I translated 4 pages from a prophetic comic strip of the '60s about airports in the 2000s.
September 1st: A few days in the only (?) crack climbing area of Europe, the Val d'Orco, in Italy.
September 28th: Two new CDs of royalty-free images are out, featuring pictures of the Concordia winterover as well as the latest climbing in Australia, New Zealand and the Alps.; Also added a slide show of the best wallpapers and finally found a workaround to a jpg transparency bug that'd stumped me for years.
November: Weather getting colder at home but no sign of snow yet, so we are off to a few days of climbing in warmer Corsica, in between trips to find a new place.
January 2007
Pour le 1er Janvier 2007: Between finding a new place, moving, fixing it up, starting a new job and exploring new playgrounds, things have been hectic this month. To say nothing of technical glitches that have kept my site offline for a good week and the counters broken for 3 months. Sorry about that. It's back online now but I still need to do some modifications... while not even having an internet connection at home... C:-(
May: I sold my film equipment and got a new camera which I'm currently evaluating from the smallest macrophotography (that my old lens will allow), to the widest astrophotography (that my 'scope will permit), while enjoying the thunderstorms from the apartment window. That is, when we don't get them while climbing, but in that case I'm not taking pictures !
June: Finally a rainy weekend so I could stay at home and sort pictures and write this ! Here are some images of backcountry skiing and climbing in the various mountain ranges around our new home of Grenoble, in Chartreuse, Vercors, Diois, Belledonne, Devoluy, Grandes Rousses, Taillefer...; I modernised the display of the tables of content on each page. It may still be buggy but it will be a bit more relevant now.
July: Frustrated while trying to get the most out of my new camera, I tested some RAW file processing software with less than glowing reviews.; Some images inside a cave, fortunately with some light.
September: Some pictures of climbing in Vanoise and Maurienne.; I spent 2 weeks working in Croatia and took the usual tourist shots of Dubrovnik, a very nice city. Then a few days later we had the company of a friendly fox while camping in the Val d'Orco, Italy.; Bravo to Agostino and his friends for their incredible Jaccuzzi on the summit of Mt Blanc ! (external link); If you are looking for the images of the 40 years of the LPSC or CSC 2007 ! (external link); I would like to pay homage to René Desmaison, french alpinist and a great inspiration when I started climbing. He died yesterday at 77. Over ten years ago while climbing in Peru, after a failed ascent on Chacraraju due to the difficulty, I learnt that in the meanwhile he had just opened a new (and even harder) route on the other and more remote side of the mountain. At 65 vs 25, that was humbling.
October: Spent a WE at home, sorting through images and compiled a shortlist with my favorite images.
November: I've modified this lens more than a decade ago, but it usually gathers dust instead of doing 3D pictures or even portraits.; A too short week of vacation in Spain, climbing the impressive Mallos de Riglos.; But unfortunately my telescope fried while viewing the great spanish night sky.; Also a few picture of a visit of the Ganil where unknown matter is created out of the specs of the current universe.; Upon request, the design specs of my custom Camping Kangoo. Cheap and convenient.; I currently have 2 ongoing exhibits of Antarctic pictures: one in Genoa (Italy) Museo Nazionale dell'Antartide, since October 25th. The other at the famed Institut Oceanographique de Monaco, starting february 19th 2008.
December: Currently reviewing the Ricoh GX100.
January 2008: Happy New year. Not much news. In bed with the flu during the ice climbing vacation... In case you want to do some late Xmas gifts, here are some new posters out for sale. Grab them while they last, series' limited.
April: One new CD of royalty-free images out for sale, with all the latest images, particularly of backcountry skiing in Belledonne, Taillefer, Ecrins...; On the work side, I finally got Linux running on a Xilinx ML405 target board. My notes are online.
June: I received an advanced release of the last album from german metal band Megalith, titled 'Storming the summit'. It's brutal and quite good. Official release is on June 20th. Some of my images are on their cover art...
July: I accumulate images, but I'm late in putting them up for all to see. Here are some trial infrared images and a few shots of climbing and canoeing in Ardeche.; Here's also a random sample of the most recent images added to the site.; As part of a a global reorganization in trying to put some sense into a mess of webpage (what, I can't believe I've actually written 333 pages totalling over 800 thousand words ?!?), I've put up a classification by category and a full sortable table of content in addition to the previous section lists.
September: Added some videos on various pages, mainly about steep skiing. You'll have to look for them though...; There are some nice pictures of a classic climb on the Gerbier while I split the page featuring Presles. I also split the Maurienne page featuring the last weekend of excellent powder skiing in may.; We recently went briefly back to central Italy and I managed to do some climbing in one of my favorite spots, the Gran Sasso, so I updated both pages with a bunch of new images.
October: I don't normally link to external pages from here, but this is just too insightful and pathetic.; Spent all month climbing in Madagascar on the Nosy Hara islands and the Tsaranoro big wall under the stare of Lemurs, chameleons and other (bitting) critters.
November: I've retooled the long-dead thumbnail page with nothing else than all my images on it (of course there's a trick). And added a few sample super-resolution images, up to and above 100 Mpix...
December: 10 days spent climbing in Kalymnos, Greece, with my longtime climbing partner Vincent while Jenny is still nursing her broken elbow.; A little giftmas present: 6 philospheres for you to (physically) cut and paste. What are philospheres ? Well, go and see...
April 2009: Great ice and snow conditions this year that kept me away from doing timely updates. But here are some new wallpapers (at the end of the page), pictures of ice climbing and backcountry skiing in Belledonne, a giant panorama of the eastern Vercors cliff that suggests tons of potential couloirs, a ski tour around the Rateau near the Meije, the descent of the famous Davin couloir or the more extreme direct north face of the Agneaux, a pleasant tour in Devoluy and please meet the summit sheep of the Grande Sure...
June: Some late skiing and a climbing trip to rock-a-plenty and historical Arco cliff in northern Italy.
August: Pagan rituals in Bacugno and climbing on new slabs up Mt Vettore in central Italy. Also a review of the new SuperTopo Zion guidebook and of the Panasonic DMC-LX3 compact camera.
September: Mariage de Franck & Alice and a few wedding photo tricks.
October: A quick review of the HTC Hero cell phone.; A week of climbing in Sicily and an ascent of Mt Etna.; A long weekend climbing in the Calanques near Marseilles.
November: Wrestling with the infamous Kodak disc and a scanner.; Changing car and bed frame.
December: Changing house yet again (I think it's the 19th time I move in about 20 years). I also decided to toss the junk accumulated over the years and build all my own furniture, which kept me busy for a while...
April 2010: A spring climbing trip in Croatia, in Paklenica canyon and Hvar island, passing too briefly through Slovenia.
May: I gave up trying to get videos to work on all browsers and OS. Instead I just uploaded to YouTube and embedded the videos. Quality is so bad in most cases that I won't even care if they appropriate them in some way...; Added a page about the Sony Reader for eBooks and a script to convert comic books for it.; Finished building all my furniture, yay!; Changed server. Let's see if that solves the recent problems.; Solved (?) the encoding problems with accents and such.; Got a fix of french crack.
September: Antarctic remembrance BBQ and some bouldering on a beach in Britain.; Ascent of the historical Mt Aiguille in Vercors.; Some pics of slab climbing in Beaufortain.; Rat wrestling in a Vercors hut (in french).; Some old leftover pics of Champsaur and some even older pics of Arco that I'd forgotten about.
October: I've updated my long list of wallpaper images to a much higher resolution: 1920x1200. That should be enough for most screens, right ?
November: Short trip to climb in the warmth of Malta.; The colors of Autumn at home.; No less than 95 new Wallpaper images on various pages.; Two shell scripts for image conversions based on pixel count or image ratio.
December: My site is now available securely. Not that there's anything to hide on it, but if you have nothing to hide, why are most states so intent on spying everything you do on the 'net ? So everybody should have this installed in Firefox.

January 2011: Bigger than life: the 40th birthday of Agostino in a Jacuzzi below the summit of Charmant Som.; A short preliminary review of the Panasonic LX5 camera.
June: Yeah, not much lately, just some '+1' Google addition.; Mes descentes VTT préférées pour aller bosser le matin (in french).
July: A quick review of the Samsung S2 phone and its big screen.
August: Finally some updates: a short WE of climbing granite in Ubaye and a long week of runout slabs in Val di Mello followed by the annual pilgrimage to Gran Sasso, a bunch of new wallpapers and more to come.
September: Images of climbing the photogenic Dibona, 25 years after my last time there.; Latest panoramas and vertical panoramas.
November: We were back climbing sandstone cracks during a Wadi Rum trip in Jordan, including adventurous Bedouin routes and cultural side trips to Petra and Jerusalem.
December: Updated my old but still useful BinToAscii and Rot'n'Stack freewares.; Converted the site to UTF-8. Let me know if there are unreadable characters (thanks Gordon!).; Refreshed some ancient javascript code so that my rollovers would work in Chrome.; The audio (penguin sounds mostly) now work in Firefox and Chrome. About time, after over a decade of being broken...
January 2012: Happy new year and merry ice climbing in a warm and wet Val d'Aosta.
February: After a snowy december and a soggy january, the ice climbing in Vercors turned exceptional in february.
April: Finally got around to calibrate my monitor on Ubuntu with a Spyder3.; Number of emperor penguins has been raised thanks to penguin poop.

Guillaume & Jennifer Dargaud's website