I'm a big fan of Baudelaire's poetry. I am particularly fond of his interest in conveying beauty through typically repulsive imagery - e.g. Une Charogne which features vivid description of a decomposing human body. While I enjoy reading the original French, I've recently discovered a fantastic online resource - http://fleursdumal.org/. This site not only includes the original French, but also numerous English translations. Not being a French native speaker, I find it illuminating to compare the various styles of translations - poetic and literal - with my own understanding of the French material. Certainly one for the bookmarks, to be enjoyed on a rainy November night in San Francisco.
Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.
