Planet Nonado

I took this pic last summer at my parents' house. My brother had had a party the night before, and clearly decided to be responsible about the recycling. Or else there's a better story. Any ideas?

I used to have a rule about never owning anything I couldn’t carry. Ostensibly this was to do with my immense portability, love of freedom, ability to pick up and move on short notice as the whim takes me, etc. In reality it was a little more to do with the fact that not only do I want to be able to do these things, I want to be able to do them by myself. However moving to NY necessitated the purchase of furniture, which I justify by assuming if I really needed to I could just take it apart and lift it myself, because you know, flatpacks can be carried. Hah.

Which goes part of the way to explaining why I ended up stuck at the bottom of the approximately 7 steps up to my apartment, completely incapable of transporting the large flat-packed bookcase I had in my possession as far as the apartment door. You could get the rest of the way toward said explanation by taking into account the fact that I have quite probably never in my life looked at anything that fits indoors and thought “nah, I can’t lift that”.

Now, I know I am not Batman, but I have always been able to figure out a way of moving heavy things. Whether by shuffling them along the ground, dragging them,  rolling them, lifting them a few inches at a time, or whatever else presents itself as a potential solution. I have flown with 3 suitcases and a bag despite having only 2 hands, I have re-arranged large items of furniture like beds and wardrobes many times. So I assumed, despite barely being able to maneuver this thing onto the trolley at IKEA, that I would figure it out somehow.

Em, no.

First off, the damn thing was 7’ long and fucking heavy. I tried lifting and dragging, no dice. So I managed to get it upright, and then laid it horizontally on the stairs, where the top came about one and a half  steps short of the highest point. So with a mighty effort and looking ridiculous, I crouched down and pushed from the bottom and it gradually crawled upwards. Theoretically, this would have been a perfectly rational if rather foolish looking method of getting it up the stairs. Except that just as I thought I had it, everything stuck. There was a lip on the top of the stairs over which it would not go. Letting go to run up and pull it that fateful inch over was unthinkable because it would slide back down, pushing it from below was impossible. I collapsed in a mildly amused but desperately frustrated heap, and wondered what the fuck I was going to do if I could not get the damn thing out of the hall.

I would like at this point to say that desperation is the mother of invention, and that I devised an ingenious and McGuyver-worthy way of getting the damn thing into my flat. But that would be a giant lie, because what actually happened was that I realized my neighbor was at home, and feeling rather silly I enlisted his assistance in the moving of said heavy thing.

I may have set back the feminist movement by 20 years.

Back in early 2008 myself and Eoghan O’Brien ran RagRadio. The setup consisted of a PC for playing music, two CD decks, 3 stage mics and a mixing desk. We took the mixer output and ran it into a laptop which encoded it, shipped it off to Icecast and broadcast our little radio station to the Internet. It was during Rag week and we interviewed a few bands who were floating around; Fred, The Saw Doctor’s and Messiah J.

We peaked at about 24 concurrent listeners and averaged 6 if memory serves.

I fell in love, ian – The Internet Audio Network was founded. That summer I went to the US on a J1. Armed with my iRiver and a borrowed SM-57 I took off on an interview hunt. With the ian domain registered and a stack of business cards I attended HOPE and DEFCON, as a member of the press. Through sheer brass neck I landed a few interviews, including the only press interview at DEFCON that year with the team captain of the winning capture the flag team.

When I came back to Limerick I bought a Zoom H4 for ian. I traveled to 25c3 and FOSDEM ‘09 on a determined content hunt. The game was on.

Last summer the semblance of a website came together and a podcast started: ITFreely. It was recorded over Skype with Gareth, Joe and Patrick. We had no idea what we were doing but had one rule: keep it under half an hour. The first two shows were an amazing shambles, they’re not going public (maybe for a year anniversary or Christmas Special bonus show).

While all this tech oriented content chasing was going on a second itch presented itself to me – the music business. I set out to find musicians to interview.

My interest here was in the future of the music industry, how piracy is really affecting music, and what an upcoming artist should brace themselves for. I got into the VIP area of Oxegen, was at the debut single launch of an Irish pop band, traveled to London to interview an Israeli outfit in the Ministry of Sound, and had a smattering of back-stage chat’s. Neck and business cards.

As I was coming to NUIG in September I contacted the local campus radio station – FlirtFM. I secured two half hour FM shows, off the back of the content I had put online. ITFreely ported from a collection of bedroom’s to a modern studio broadcast over the FM (at 12:30pm on Wednesdays, just so you know). Joe took a work related sabbatical and Gareth started a night course in Law, so myself and Patrick were joined by Shane Tuohy, Niall Campbell and Andy Regan.

Niall joins me on the second show to talk about rights, lawsuits and piracy from a Music point of view, we call the show Talk Like A Pirate. Unfortunately as we include copy-righted music in the show we can’t freely distribute it online, or Podcast it, but you can tune into the web-stream live (Tuesdays at 12:30pm).

In the last few week’s we’ve really started to settle into a groove with ITFreely. We’ve tried to concentrate less on opinion and comment, and more on original research. We’ve had Lecturers on the show, representatives from companies and organisation’s, started to do live streaming of the pre-record sessions, set up IRC channels for live feedback during the show, got onto iTunes, and set up a Facebook group and Twitter feed to keep in contact with you. We even got some intro music.

We’re learning production values the hard way, through trial and error. We’re getting there, but we’re a long way off before ITFreely become’s the show it could be. We want to bring you a though provoking and interesting weekly show about some aspect of Irish or Global Tech.

This is where we need your help. We need you to let us know when the show is dull and what just isn’t working. We’ll post a laptop sticker to anyone who give us some feedback, leaves us a comment or sends us a mail (any good economist will tell you that humans are incentive driven).

So check out our back catalogue, sign up to the mailing list, and most importantly, let us know what you think.

We’re out of our public Alpha. We’re entering our public Beta. Hop on board.

The Apache HTTP Server team recently released 1.3.42, the final release of the hugely-popular 1.3 codebase. I wrote a bit about our reasoning, and where we’re going next, in response to some questions from El Reg. A lot of people have been asking about the decision to stop support for 1.3, so I thought I’d republish what I wrote.

Overview

In June 1999, the Apache Software Foundation was incorporated in Delaware.

A year previously, Apache HTTP Server 1.3.0 had been released, and it was rapidly becoming the most popular web server on the planet.

Not known for resting on their laurels, it was barely nine months later that the Apache HTTP Server team released the first alpha of Version 2.0. This was a significant rewrite of much of the original code, focused on improving modularization and portability. It made general release in April 2002, and remained best-of-breed until Version 2.2.0 came out in December 2005.

More than ten years and forty revisions later, Apache HTTP Server 1.3 has reached end-of-life status. Version 2.2 has been available for more than four years, and is widely deployed across the internet. Although critical security fixes may be released as patches for Version 1.3, there will be no further releases or support from the Apache HTTP Server team. We encourage all users of Version 1.3 to upgrade to Version 2.2 as soon as possible.

If you’ve been reading closely, you might be wondering what happened to 2.1, and what the developers were doing between April 2002 and December 2005? Since the advent of Version 2.0, the Apache HTTP Server team have reserved even-numbered minor versions for stable versions of the software. The odd-numbered minor versions are made public as alpha and beta releases, allowing developers to try out the bleeding edge of new features, and giving module authors a chance to prepare their software for the next release.

For anyone working on code that integrates with the Apache HTTP Server, these odd-numbered revisions are your best opportunity to request changes in the API, before it is released as stable!

The current best-of-breed stable version of Apache HTTP Server is Version 2.2.14, released in September 2009. But if you’re already itching to take Version 2.4 for a test drive, you can get a headstart by installing the alpha Version 2.3.5, released just last month. This version includes significant improvements to caching and proxying behaviour, and will eventually be released as Version 2.4.

Why will the 1.3 code no longer be supported or updated?

As I previously mentioned, Apache HTTP Server 1.3.0 was originally released in June 1998. To put that in perspective, it would be another three weeks before Microsoft Windows 98 became available, a product which, despite significant commercial support, reached end-of-life four years ago. The first production 1GHz processors didn’t ship for another two years; today, if you want to buy a 1GHz processor, you’re probably in the market for a new phone!

Version 2 is a significant improvement over 1.3. The API has been rewritten to prevent many of the problems with module ordering and priority. Better support exists for non-Unix platforms, and smart filtering is now available. Version 2.0 includes support for IPv6 and multiple protocols, while Version 2.2 adds LFS, enabling you to serve files over 2GB in size. The core modules for authentication and authorisation have been greatly improved, as well as subsystems from caching to proxying.

In short, technology and the Internet have come a long way in the last twelve years, and Version 1.3 is simply no longer the best-of-breed solution it once was.

What has happened to 2.0? What should 1.3/2.0 users do now?

Version 2.0 continues to enjoy bugfix releases, but does not see active development.

We encourage all users to upgrade to Apache HTTP Server 2.2.14.

What’s the planned features roadmap and release schedule for the next version?

The Apache HTTP Server team release software when it’s ready – we prefer to ensure that our releases represent the best software available, rather than worrying about shipping deadlines. Features currently under development include further updates to auth modules, as well as state-of-the-art cache and proxy modules. If you’re impatient to try these things, you can check out Version 2.3.5 (alpha). Or, if you’d prefer a more academic look at the subject, you might enjoy Roy Fielding’s presentation, “Apache 3.0 (A Tall Tale)”.

Key facts

• Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3 has now reached end-of-life status.
• The current best-of-breed stable version of the Apache HTTP Server is Version 2.2.14 – we encourage all users to upgrade to this version as soon as possible.
• For those who prefer to try out new features as soon as they become available, Version 2.3.5 provides an alpha preview of what will become stable Version 2.4.
• The latest version of the Apache HTTP Server is always available from our download page.

I upgraded my Blackberry 9500 (Storm 1) to OS5 this week from OS4.7. There are a few new features this brings that I like, and a drawback or two.

Pro’s:

• Major speed improvements. The OS is no longer sluggish, without removing any applications or data.
• gTalk, BBM and AIM status updates are shown when viewing a contact.
• Ability to Flag E-Mail’s for follow up.
• Bedside mode can be restricted to only activate within certain hours.
• Threaded bubble SMS interface, akin to the iPhone.
• Saner Keyboard layout in Landscape mode.
• New Font BBAlpha Sans Condensed allowing more characters on screen while keeping readability, a major UI boost.
• Macro shooting mode for camera.
• Radio is no longer disabled when battery is low. This was a real pain.

Con’s:

• Links between gTalk and the Contacts application break frequently, I haven’t been able to pin-point a cause.
• Still no useful E-Mail folders or filters. I can flag a mail for follow up, but I can’t see a list of just the mail’s i need to follow up, or a list of drafts.
• gTalk requires two lines per user. Before you could view 15odd users at a time, now it’s more like 6.

The kitchen appliances in the new house were very much at the end of their life and causing us high electricity bills.

As usual I shopped around went to DID near Liffey Valley,very small shop not too much choice,went to expert electricial in Naas,their staff are friendly but it is expensive there and the discount they were offering was pretty low.I had a look at powercity.ie then rang them and emailed them my list asking for a best price.
I had seen the fridge and the freezer that I intended to order from here before and tbh once m washing maching and drier could take at least 6/7 kilos and were good and good good reviews I didn't care what they looked like!!
I managed to get about 11% discount,excellent service and free delivery.
I can't compare exact appliances only ones that did the exact same so not exactly comparing like with like but there was about 600 euro between the cheapest and most expensive quotes.

Recently I tried to purchase a dvd boxset from both thehut.co.uk and zavvi.The order went through fine but the next day I got this email -

Hello Rachael Holt,

Thanks for placing your order with zavvi, order number : 10764419

Please do not reply to us at this e-mail address as we will not receive your message. This is an automated response.

A customer service advisor has sent you the following message:

Thank you for placing your order with us.

Unfortunately we are unable to ship The Wire - Complete [24-Disc Boxset] [DVD] outside of the UK. We apologise for any inconvenience caused, no money has been taken from your card.

Should you have any further questions please contact us through your online account message centre or on 0844 264 0702 and we will be able to help you further.

Kind Regards,

zavvi Team

The email from both is the same so I reckon they are probably the same company now.They had charged for postage and I had paid the charge.

I have bought items from both before christmas no problem!!

Someone described me like that today and I found it physically impossible to go a whole day without repeating it somehow, because its brilliant.

The theme of today’s post is essentially “bugger this for a game of soldiers”. Today I found out how long a green card takes to get. No wait, sorry, I should clarify that. Today I found how long a green card takes to get if you are not married to an american, related to an american or winning the green card lottery. In other words today I found out how long it takes to get permission to work long-term in america based solely on what you would actually be working at in america. Just so you know, it takes considerably longer this way than any of the above, which appears to me to fly in the face of all logic and good sense.

I asked for this from my employer about 8 months ago. I wanted them to start the green card process, because I wanted to have some sort of fallback should the arse fall out of the job market again and I find myself not only without employment but without a right to reside at my address anymore. It is one thing to abruptly lose your job and another to abruptly lose residence of a country 3000 miles from your native one. It would be not only disgustingly inconvenient but frightfully expensive to rectify. So the request seemed like a sensible one.

At the time the process was described to me it seemed a tad lengthy but potentially very worthwhile. 6 months of PERM (aka: the can-we-replace-you-with-a-citizen test), a year of waiting for PERM certification, another year to process the application for a green card along with an adjustment of status in order to extend my visa. So at best, this process takes 2-3 years. What escaped me at the time is that this is merely the timescale involved in _applying_. The backlog of people waiting for the aforementioned verdant immigration card is a minimum of FIVE FUCKING YEARS. So that means, as of right now, it will take a good 7 years for me to actually get one of these. If during that time I am let go or change jobs, the whole process crashes and burns and has to start all over again.

My current state of mind can be summarised in 3 words. Fuck. That . Shit.

Or “Turning Twenty-Five in the San Francisco Bay Area”

As the quarter-century creeps steadily up on me, I’ve been having a blast seeing the sights and meeting friends old and new. I can’t help thinking back to all the things I’ve enjoyed (and suffered through!) along the way. I’ve been incredibly lucky, and I hope that the next 25 years are as fun as the past 25 have been!

The following are just a few of the things that have set me off down memory lane

• Winetasting in Napa made me reminisce about collecting Michelin stars with the Ellerays when all we (the kids!) wanted to do was see who could grow the biggest, coolest, oldest Tamagotchi.
• A going-away party for the coolest kernel hacker around reminded me of the weekend I spent with Natasha, trying to create a working Linux boot floppy for a hand-me-down machine that didn’t have a bootable CD drive.
• Hot-tubbing with engineers, dancers, and a girl who “does circus” was fun – but when we jumped in the (relatively) freezing pool, I was brought straight back to Ennareilly and our “punch, punch, punch-punch-punch” strategy for surviving the cold!
• Paddling in the Pacific, well, I’ve done that before – on the other side! Remember Caloundra, and the pelicans?
• Of course, the hour-long commute (in a very well-kitted-out bus) puts me more in mind of the camper van. Remember the ginger beer all over the camper? The flies all over the rest stop? The sugar-cane we begged for and then never got through?
• Wandering around San Francisco, taking the cable-car to Ghirardelli Square, puts me in mind of our wanderings in Zurich, and all the wonderful times you’ve come to see me. I guess this year it’s my turn to come to you!
• On the other hand, getting settled in the corporate apartment, checking out the farmers’ market for lunch, looking for the laundry room, and settling in to a glass of wine and a home-made dinner is more like Munich. That spag bol was great, although I’m glad to have graduated to a slightly bigger kitchen!
• When Steve destroyed my new top in the laundry, how could I help but remember that beautiful white Susst top? And how could I help but be grateful for the thousands of loads of laundry you’ve done for me? Thanks mum!
• Of course, the trip to Liz Claiborne afterwards? Let’s just say there are still things in your wardrobe I wish I could borrow

I haven’t found anything as good as your bread yet, and I miss our long, evening dinners catching up. I hope your year on the island is as fulfilling as all our childhood expeditions were – from the Giant’s Causeway to the Wicklow lighthouse, from Kilmainham to the Cliffs of Moher.

Thank you, mum and dad, for twenty-five wonderful years. (And Eoin & Rosie, for almost 45 between you )

I have a few personal rules about New Years Eve. Some of them are obvious, and based on logistics, like “never go somewhere you can’t get back from on foot unless you are in a country with real public transport”, “never go to a niteclub”, “make sure you have bought enough to drink and give away” and so on and so forth. I find it requires more careful planning than your average night out, mostly due to the fact that everyone is an exuberantly drunk moron. Not that this is necessarily a problem until one throws up on your shoes.

But my most rigidly adhered to rule in recent years is to never make a New Year’s resolution. Firstly, it’s a completely arbitrary day, and so I refuse to conform to such a ludicrous convention, mostly out of sheer contrariness. Secondly, any resolution not important enough to be made as soon as you thought of it is clearly not going to be adhered to and is a damn waste of time and effort by definition.

So I hereby declare some January 19^th resolutions which I have just thought of and decided were important. Ahem.

• I will save some fucking money. I have a habit of spending everything I earn in a great big happy flow of joy and whatever-I-feel-like-ness. This is not a long term plan.
• I will fly less than I did last year. This would be really easy for most people. But I think even I can keep it under  50,000 miles in 12 months

Not exactly lofty aspirations, and admittedly rather vague, but the more specific versions that contain actual numbers are in my head. Of course these are just the new ones, there are perpetually ongoing resolutions like “try to drink a little less”, “go to the gym more” and the ever popular “stop being so chubby”. But essentially, these are the plan.

I will be interested to see how this progresses. Oh, and happy fucking new year everyone. Ain’t life just grand?

Or at least this seems to be the Polynesian view on language. My hotel was called the Waikiki Kaiulani (pronounced as spelled in case you wondered) for fuck sake.

I’m not really partial to sun holidays. I have only been on the classic package holiday once at the age of 16, and that was with my family and therefore by definition of limited adventurousness. Since then I have always taken an approach to holidays that crams in the most places I have never been, things I have never done or seen, or friends I enjoy hanging out with as possible, ideally a combination of all of the above. However I realized that this time around, I was quite likely to need a bit of a post-excitement break, and as it turns out that was a pretty good call.

I spent all of my London time trying to meet everyone I know, all of my HK time trying to simultaneously do cool stuff and refrain from losing in my lunch in one of two unpleasant ways, and all of my Japan time trying to do cool stuff while somehow figuring out how to read signs entirely written in Hiragana. Basically what I am trying to say here is that I was pretty damn busy. So when the last leg of the holiday arrived I was eminently relieved and delighted that I had chosen to spend it in Hawaii.

You go through several phases when you get to Hawaii. The first goes something like – “whoa, this is stunning, I want to live a beautiful carefree life of freedom and sunshine here and leave the rest of the world behind forever”. Phase 2 consists of the dreamy daze in which you plan your future life of surfing and hiking and a crappy job you don’t have to care about because all you need is food and a place to sleep.  Phase 2 lasts until about a day before you leave, at which point you move to Phase 3, which goes a little like “if this were possible, everyone would do it. Actually I don’t really like being poor. There are no real jobs here, everyone is a damn scuba instructor or a hotel receptionist, and even if I could work remotely this bloody place is in the most inconvenient time zone imaginable. Damn”. This is followed closely (in my case) by the logic that I shall simple have to become rich enough to go to places like Hawaii frequently. It can probably safely be said that everything I want in life boils down to “I’ll be needing some more money for that”. On the plus side, at least my goals are straightforward.

On the whole, I loved the place. It is completely, stunningly, unswervingly beautiful. Ok, the scenery is perforated by the occasional large mall or highway, but fewer than you might expect. Honolulu is fairly populated, but the only other Island I was on (The Big Island – what a great name) has a few small towns and a whole lot of empty space. Though this may be something to do with the active volcano. Which brings me to another salient point – it has fucking volcanoes. Volcanoes! Nothing more need be said on the matter.

So I have covered the scenery, which is most definitely worth looking at for hours on end. The weather is perfect, and varies very little from season to season. The food is your standard American tourist fare, tastes good, doesn’t cost much, and comes piled so high it might fall off the plate if you look at it too hard. You have some obvious additions like fresh seafood, and the local beer is also pretty decent.

The entertainment varies from snorkeling, to parasailing, to watching the smoke pour from a live volcano to firing automatic weapons, and those are just the healthy activities. Personally I spent a lot of my time just enjoying being somewhere beautiful where I could swim and lie in the sun (by which I mean lying in the shade but being warm anyway – my skin is so pale it practically glows in the dark). I did manage to fit some activity into my relaxation though, parasailing, snorkeling and volcano-gazing being the highlights. I would go back in a second for an indefinite period if I had the chance, which hopefully I will again some time. This place goes firmly on the list titled “reasons to live in the US”

Hawaii appears to have changed my thinking forever about holidays that involve a beach, and I am grateful to it for opening my mind. And for having really nice trees.

Those of you who know me may have noticed that I don’t often respond to solicitations for charitable donations. Whether it’s a sponsored walk or a collection for malaria, I’m just not into “impulse buying”.

Those of you who know me better might know why this is. It’s not because I’m mean, honest I’ve maxed out corporate Gift Matching programs with the employers who’ve had them (even when I was just an intern), and I hope to continue to do so. But I prefer to give in a “concentrated” fashion – rather than sprinkling my charitable donations across the vast spectrum of worthy causes, I choose a few each year that I really believe in, and do my best not to feel guilty that I can’t do everything!

When I lived in Ireland, particularly while I was still in college, I tried to “give global, act local”. I volunteered with various groups, from a local literacy program to the St John Ambulance. I even indulged in retail therapy for the St Vincent de Paul, both groceries and Christmas presents

Living in Switzerland, however, I’ve found that the attitude towards volunteer work is very different. Add my frequent travels (particularly in 2010) into the mix, and it’s just not a model that’s working for me any more. But my employment situation and the local tax regime mean that I have room to expand my financial giving – yay!

But I’m not sure where to put my money. We’re not talking millions, but I still think it’s worth spending time making sure it goes to something I believe in. That way, when I do have millions, I’ve already done the tough part And this is where you come in.

Where do you think I should put my charity bucks?

To give you some background, I think if my giving had a “theme”, it would be this: Knowledge is Power.

I’m interested in improving access to knowledge, information, education. So one of my favourite charities is Literacy Bridge, which began with the idea “that the most effective approach towards ending global poverty requires empowering people with better access to knowledge”.

I’m also interested in preserving knowledge for future generations. Last year, for example, I sponsored the restoration and preservation of a collection of James Lind manuscripts, in celebration of dad’s birthday.

In general, I’m interested in charities serving those with the greatest need (not necessarily those who are easiest to reach), and I’m not looking for advocacy groups for one particular idea or cause.

What am I looking for?

• Charities that understand the importance of inspiration. If I lived anywhere on the West Coast of the US, I’d already be a Friend of the California Academy of Sciences (and heck, I’m still considering it!). They understand that an interesting, engaging story is key to getting people to care. And whether the knowledge you want to impart is in science, the arts, or just basic literacy and numeracy, if you can’t get people to care about it, you’ll have a hard time achieving anything lasting.
• Charities that engage in a personal connection. I prefer to share my donations among a smaller group of charities, which means each gets a larger share of the pot. In return, I’d like to hear what each charity is doing, and connect with more than just bank slips.
• Charities that promote access to information over one particular message. Learning about family planning may be key to helping women in the developing world steer their fate, but if all you do is hand out contraceptives, they’re not going to learn how to run a small business that could give them a real degree of independence. Building people up, giving them the tools they need, is vital to sustainability.

Do you know a charity that fits the bill? Leave me a comment, or drop me an e-mail. Thanks!

Yoga last night, and a walk on the beach today (along with a slight improvement in the sleeping) have helped. And I haven't ticked much off the list, but I have done some of it :) We're all alright.

And now, it's time to shoot some zombies.

With the wealth of information available on the internet, I find I'm using it more and more to learn about new things, to remind me about things I have failed to retain or indeed to discover those new subject areas that I should gain some understanding of.

Unfortunately (for me), more and more material is being presented in video format, particularly with the increasing ease with which one may create and upload something to YouTube and similar sites. This is good - with both visual and auditory stimulation information tends to be better retained. However, I am currently limited to 3G bandwidth (as in HSDPA from a mobile provider, not 3Gbit/s - which would be lovely ;-) ) and I'm finding that this pretty much precludes me from using video. It's no longer reasonable to have to wait 8 times the length of a video clip to download it.

Interestingly, given the Irish governments recent underwriting of 'broadband expansion' within the country through the medium of HSDPA coverage, their own website defines broadband as (from broadband.gov.ie):

"Broadband is an always-on Internet connection that gives you high-speed access and downloads for a flat rate monthly charge.
Everything works faster, from downloading emails and files (such as pictures & mp3's) or streaming movies and radio."

I'm not sure where they've run tests from, but in real world testing where I'm situated more than a few metres from the transmission mast / basestation, and there is more than just me as a subscriber in the area, video just does not work. Neither does VoIP / Skype or a number of other things that depend on reasonable, consistent latency - particularly on the uplink. I was amused to notice, in fairness, that the Broadband Technologies page on the same site does not list HSDPA/HSUPA as a broadband technology (rightly, in my personal opinion.)

I await the delivery of actual broadband to my house, so I may enjoy the occasional video from the internet once more...

You know those montages in silly Hollywood movies where one character lets themselves go completely and sits around watching daytime tv and eating cereal and wearing pyjamas/tracksuits all day with messy hair and an ever-expanding waistline? That's me. For the past four and a half months, since my contract wasn't renewed at the place were I worked and loved it, I've been a Hollywood stereotype. And yes, I'm listening to Rachmaninov's second piano concerto at the moment too. And looking off into space while I try to figure out why I haven't done a single thing on my to-do list for the day.

I write in English and Irish reasonably frequently, with an occasional sojourn into German and French too. Of course, there is also a requirement that I be able to correctly punctuate and accent the names of colleagues with non-Anglicised names too - so that leaves me with some fairly extensive requirements for keyboard layouts. My operating system of choice is Ubuntu Linux and I consider myself fortunate that the international flavour of the developers appears to have rubbed off on its multi-lingual configuration.

If you want one language and layout, simply choose System | Preferences | Keyboard and choose the Layouts tab. There you can add or remove layouts at will - I prefer the Ireland UnicodeExpert layout as it allows me to type English, Irish, German and French (and probably other languages too) without changing layout at all. Note that if you want to add this layout 'by language' it's under English, rather than Irish or Gaeilge/Gaelic.

Once you have selected this keyboard layout you can, of course, type in English as normal. Note that it's a 'UK' keyboard layout rather than American (i.e. the quotation marks are above the number 2 and the @-sign is above the single quote character. Also, the hash is next to the Enter key and the monetary pound sign is above the 3.) To get letters with fadas on them, as required for Irish, simply use (usually) AltGr + vowel. AltGr + o produces ó for example. This makes typing as Gaeilge go han-shimplí ar fad. Níl a lán rudaí níos éasca ar chor ar bith.

As well as this feature - the ability to get fadas (or French acute accents) with a single key-combo, things like umlauts are not too difficult: a simple AltGr + : (colon) followed by a vowel will give an umlaut over the letter. AltGr + : followed by 'e' gives ë - easy-peasy. Note that AltGr + ; (semi-colon) will do - it 'implies' the Shift key, saving you from having to be a concert pianist or an emacs user to key the keystrokes right. AltGr + ^ (the 6 key) and an appropriate letter puts a hat over the letter. AltGr + ~ (tilde) puts a tilde over letters like 'n' for Spanish (I think...) There are lots more characters and languages supported without changing keyboard layout.

A short while ago, someone popped into the PEAR irc channel on efnet and asked about installing Statusnet – which is a “open source micro messaging platform that helps you share and connect in real-time within your own domain.” It’s what powers identi.ca and similar micro-blogging services.

Specifically, this person wanted advice on installing the six or so PEAR packages on which this software depends; eight if you include the optional ones.

Foreseeing a number of people wanting similar help, I thought it would be best to create a metapackage to bundle these PEAR packages together – at the least it would mean only one “pear install” command would be required and it would reduce the number of potential mistakes that could be made.

Following my own instructions in the “Dependency Tracking (Meta Packages) with PEAR” section in the PEAR documentation, I quickly came up with Statusnet_Statusnet-0.1.1.tgz.

Install it via “$pear install http://short.ie/statusnettgz” for the moment – as the location of where it’s being hosted may change during the week.

I own a Blackberry Storm (9500) and my dad has a Curve (8900). Both phones allow you to turn off data when roaming (Manage Connections -> Mobile Network Options -> Data Services), so that you don’t rack up expensive data charges (useful, I’m told, in places like Switzerland). However, this means you don’t get your e-mail.

The Curve has 802.11 b/g (Wi-Fi), but we were having trouble connecting to AP’s. It turns out that by turning off data for the Cell part of the phone, you turn off data for the whole device, meaning that the phone will never get an IP address, even with DHCP off (and manually assigning a valid static IP).

So, to get your Email (and other data apps that support Wi-Fi) working abroad follow these steps:

1. Turn OFF data, go to another country
2. When you want to check your mail, turn OFF the Mobile network
3. Turn ON Wifi
4. Turn ON Data
5. Scan for a Wi-Fi network and associate with it
6. Get your mail
7. Turn OFF Data
8. Turn OFF Wi-Fi
9. Turn ON Mobile network

The “Data Services” option should only turn off data transmissions over the Mobile network, not disable the IP stack (which I think it may be doing). Hopefully this bug is fixed in OS 5, I’ve not tried it yet.

As a follow up to using freely available existing climate datasets, here's one that might be of interest to those surfers and sailors out there. It is similar approach to that used for the temperature forecasting so go read that post first, it will help.

The free information from the U.S. NOAA/National Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, in particular its Environmental Modeling Center and its WaveWatch dataset. It is stored as a GRIB2 files and this needs to be pre-processed using wgrib2 (available on MacPorts) to the netcdf format. This stage is similar to the previous post.

There were a few little glitches with this dataset that are immediately visible and the fact there is a big white patch in the Atlantic is due to the maximum height being stored as 9.999e+20. This normally won't be a problem but unfortunately the data also stores dry land with this value. A workaround would be to know or compute longitudes and latitude such that we could tell if a given position was over land or over sea prior to processing it. Unfortunately as this is a bit of a quick and dirty hack, I didn't have the time so here is the basic approach warts and all.

# See http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/products/wave/nww3.t00z.grib.grib2.shtml
# Data was from ftp ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov dir: /pub/data/nccf/com/wave/prod/wave.20091227
# wgrib2 was installed using macports
# /opt/local/bin/wgrib2 -s nww3.t00z.grib.grib2 | grep "HTSGW:surface:an" | /opt/local/bin/wgrib2 -i nww3.t00z.grib.grib2 -netcdf WAVE.nc

library(ncdf)
waveFrac - open.ncdf("WAVE.nc")
wave - get.var.ncdf(waveFrac, "HTSGW_surface")
# Dirty hack to fix input model, look for another better solution
wave[wave>9.99999]- -1
x - get.var.ncdf(waveFrac, "longitude")
y - get.var.ncdf(waveFrac, "latitude")
library(fields)
rgb.palette - colorRampPalette(c("snow1","snow2","snow3","seagreen","orange","firebrick"), space = "rgb")
image.plot(x,y,wave,col=rgb.palette(255),axes=F,main=as.expression(paste("Significant Height of Combined Wind Waves and Swell in Meters 2009-12-27", sep="")),legend.lab="Meters")
# Add a rough outline for islands, countries, and continents
contour(x,y,wave,add=TRUE,lwd=0.25,levels=0.2,drawlabels=FALSE,col="grey30")
# Add the source of the file and ftp location
text(130,-75,"Data source ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov pub/data/nccf/com/wave/prod/wave.20091227")

Joe has a great post on using R for exploiting existing climate datasets to create some really nice weather maps. Using the free information from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Forecast System (GFS), he shows how R can be used to interpret GRIB2 files after they are pre-processed using wgrib2 (available on MacPorts) to the netcdf format.

I've slightly modified the code from Joe but its pretty much as he wrote it.

# ftp.ncep.noaa.gov pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/prod/gfs.2009121700
# See http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/products/gfs/gfs.t00z.sfluxgrbf00.grib2.shtml
# eoin-brazils-macbook-pro:~ eoinbrazil$ cp gfs.t00z.sfluxgrbf03.grib2 temp2.grb
# wgrib2 was installed using macports
# /opt/local/bin/wgrib2 -s temp2.grb | grep ":LAND:" | /opt/local/bin/wgrib2 -i temp2.grb -netcdf LAND2.nc
# /opt/local/bin/wgrib2 -s temp2.grb | grep ":TMP:2" | /opt/local/bin/wgrib2 -i temp2.grb -netcdf TEMP2.nc

library(ncdf)
landFrac2 - open.ncdf("LAND2.nc")
land2 - get.var.ncdf(landFrac2, "LAND_surface")
x - get.var.ncdf(landFrac2, "longitude")
y - get.var.ncdf(landFrac2, "latitude")
library(fields)
rgb.palette - colorRampPalette(c("snow1","snow2","snow3","seagreen","orange","firebrick"), space = "rgb")
tempFrac2 - open.ncdf("TEMP2.nc")
temp2 - get.var.ncdf(tempFrac2, "TMP_2maboveground")
newtemp2 - temp2-273.15 # Convert the kelvin records to celsius
image.plot(x,y,newtemp2,col=rgb.palette(200),axes=F,main=as.expression(paste("GFS 24hr Average 2M Temperature 2009-12-21 00 UTC",sep="")),legend.lab="o C")
contour(x,y,land2,add=TRUE,lwd=1,levels=0.99,drawlabels=FALSE,col="grey30") #add land outline
text(120,-85,"Data source ftp.ncep.noaa.gov pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/prod/gfs.2009121700")

The image continues to show cold conditions in Europe, and the continuing heatwave in Australia.

Just a few minutes ago I read Jamie Nay’s A Better Postal/Zip Code Validation Method for CakePHP 1.2 blog post.

Jamie says that “The Validation::postal() method that comes with CakePHP 1.2 is good in that it can handle a number of different country formats, but the problem is you can only validate your data against one country. What if you want to accept, say, either Canadian or US postal/zip code formats? I ran into this problem earlier today, and decided to write my own postal() function that can take either a string as the country, just like Validation::postal(), or an array of countries.”

I’m probably going to have to wait for Jamie to wake up before my comment on that blog-post is approved, but the crux of it is “Don’t”. Don’t write your own code to validate user input, unless of course the input data is specific to a problem domain that others haven’t catered for yet.

I drew attention to two things. The first is that there are Validation packages in PEAR, including the main Validate class and all the Validate_xx subclasses such as Validate_US, Validate_CA and some 22 others).

The second item I drew Jamie’s attention to is that his validation code counts a zip code of “00000″ as valid, when the USPS zip code look up tool correctly (and they should know!) identifies that code as invalid.

Why spend time writing and debugging regular expressions, compiling lists of valid data and so on when other people have already done this work? Especially when it comes down to such things as validating data input which is crucial when you need to guard against cross site scripting vulnerabilities.

Focus on what you need to do rather than reimplementing what others have already done.

Honestly, this probably should be subtitled – “Stop the NIH craziness, please” – though to be fair Jamie might not have known of the solutions already out there.

Before I start this review proper, I need to disclose one nugget of information first: The author, Kae Verens, and I are both currently serving as members of the Irish PHP Users Group Committee and have known each other for quite a few years. If you believe I can remain impartial and objective (as I hope you do – because I am), read on:

This is the first book sent to me from Packt where I wasn’t left dizzy from trying to understand just what it is the author was trying to get across. It looks like their proof-reader was awake for this one – totally awesome.

jQuery, as the vast majority of us already know, is a JavaScript library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. In other words it does all the heavy lifting and takes care of cross-browser compatibility issues so you don’t have to and thus allows you to focus on the work that you need to do without all those distractions.

“jQuery 1.3 with PHP” is aimed “for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery’s capabilities and responsiveness”. Over the course of ten chapters Verens starts the off with an introduction, then a series of ‘Quick Tricks’ that almost immediately help you add some measure of “Web 2.0″ functionality to what I’d term a “web 0.2 application” rather sharply.
The book ends with a chapter on Optimization – some of which you are bound to already know and some which are complete gems.

In the middle are chapters with mini-projects on tabs and accordians, forms and form validation, file management, calendars (and how to make your own google-calendar-like application), image manipulation, drag and drop and data tables.
In each case, projects are analysed and the required steps for each are outlined in the simplest terms – no extraneous buzzwords are used or are the projects over-analysed for the sake of pedantry.

I was a little surprised in some places where, for example, the json encoded output was not created via json_encode; but then thought not everyone is going to have PHP 5.2 or greater installed. Thumb forward a few pages and this is mentioned. So all’s o k.

It was good to see Kae suggesting use of the PEAR Validate package (or similar) in the Forms and Forms Validation chapter (chapter 4). I had to wonder if there was a PEAR package for creating and shunting down jQuery validation rules to the client – and found that there isn’t. That’s something to consider for later on, I guess.

The rest of the book is similarly both easy to read and easy to understand – my first port of call for learning how to do something that I’d almost term exotic with jQuery and with PHP in the background is usually Google but that is going to change (actually it already has).

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this books working title was “JQuery and PHP: The HowTo” – it is that good.
Now, this book is not for learning jQuery – that is not within its remit, but I would heartily recomend “jQuery 1.3 with PHP” by Kae Verens to anyone wanting to utilise jQuery from a PHP background.

Wobble has been successfully upgraded from etch to lenny. Horrah.

Gwibber is a handy microblogging client, but it would be nice if it:

• Could be made smaller
• Allowed hiding of things like the tabs and menus and other useless bits
• Retried gets without constantly moaning about things failing. It's the internet - get over it. I don't need an orange triangle to warn me that the twitter API or the internet dropped a packet or two.
• Retried posts more than once - maybe even until they work - instead of logging a meaningless error and losing my post. Something more than an orange triangle would be good to say a POST failed.
• Could track whether I've read tweets or not - and maybe highlight the ones I've not read?
• Could get more than about 20 tweets on startup - maybe make it configurable, or even continue getting historical tweets as long as they are unread by me (up to a configurable max)

Note: See, I've been good - I've not even asked for a filter to remove all the crud that people put on twitter, particularly me ;-)

It's almost an old album now - at least Rachael's battered copy that I found is. Wonderful to rediscover an artist / band after a break from listening. Unfortunately, every time I listen to the flute solo in Gethsemane I cannot help but pictre Bill Bailey astride the conductor's podium demonstrating the ficticious and enchantingly aloof qualities of the transverse orchestral flute, conjuring up visions of titanic grandeur. "Iceberg! Dead ahead!"

To repeat what’s in the subject, nonado will be down for maintenance
this sunday (2009-12-13). If you don’t care about technical details,
you can stop reading now.

Wobble.nonado.net, the nonado host machine, is running debian etch.
Etch was released in 2007-04. It has since been superceeded by lenny,
released 2009-02. Support for etch will cease in 2010-02. As such,
wobble needs to be upgraded soon. However, as it is the host machine,
this cannot be realistically tested/simulated. As such, unexpected
issues may well pop up and need to be fixed/worked around on the day.
For this reason, i’m designating nonado as being offline for the
entire day. I’m hoping the actual downtime will only be a couple of
hours, but we’ll see.

As I type I am riding the bus to Narita airport, which our hotel diplomatically calls the “Friendly Limousine” I find it hard to begrudge them this exaggeration for two reasons, firstly that I am literally the only person on said bus, and secondly because the hotel itself is stunningly gorgeous and exceedingly swish. I am also rather amused by the scrolling information sign “For Narita airport. Please inform the driver when you see a suspicious thing and a suspicious person”. Japanese English is just brilliant.

This week has been amazing. I have had an absolutely fucking kick ass time, and learned many things, including but not limited to the following:

• You really need to speak Japanese to be in Japan. Seriously. I am accustomed to being able to fumble my way round any number of countries by guessing, pointing, speaking English, speaking a fragmented version of some other language, or just plain dumb luck. Not so in Japan. Tokyo is reputed to be one of the more gaijin-friendly places, and even here people rarely have more than a couple of words of English. Even getting a taxi is a problem as place names are only recognizable in Japanese to the majority of people, which to any European is a series of unintelligible squiggles. I consider myself a fairly seasoned traveler, and Tokyo was occasionally entirely beyond me.

• It is not as expensive as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, its fucking expensive. But compared to London it is not in any way out of the ordinary. I’m told it has normalized to the west a little in the last decade or so.

• Japanese people are crazy.

• School uniforms are some sort of fashion. Kids will actually dress in them on weekends to go to places like Harajuku (kind of like Camden but with cutesy anime characters instead of goths)

• Karaoke in those little rooms that you rent is possibly the most ridiculously amusing thing ever. And you can get unlimited drinks for 2 hours there. Clearly not that many irish people have been frequenting them or they would have learned the error of their ways by now

• My friend the german is really fucking awesome. As is his Korean wife, who was delighted to discover that irish people are not, in fact, all that religious.

• Japanese beer is really good.

• When you buy horrendously awful  porn in Japan it comes not just in a brown paper bag, but a brown paper bag with a picture of some cute puppies on the front. And a poem. About puppies. I wish I was joking.

• There is no tipping in Japan. As someone who has lived in the states for a year and a half this is really, really weird.

• The train to Kyoto is $300. This is why we did not go to Kyoto. I found this outrageously expensive until I discovered that the train to Kyoto is an express train that takes 2 hours, whereas the bus takes about 13 because Kyoto is in fact very far away.

• Tuna are really very big

• I am really quite tall

• Japanese women dress even better than New York women. Its really quite impressive. I think I saw maybe 2 chicks looking less than perfect the whole week. And I am pretty sure both of them were doing it on purpose.

• I cannot buy clothes in asia. With the exception of a giant pair of Hello Kitty sweatpants, absolutely nothing fits someone with an ass as eh, western as mine. Sizes run from XXXS to M if you are lucky, and a size M jacket doesn’t fit over my shoulders.

• Cell phones work on all public transport (subway, bus, train etc), but you are asked not to use them as (and I quote) “they annoy the neighbours”.

• Foreign phones do not work in Japan. Not because roaming isn’t turned on, not because they suck, but because japan does not seem to make deals with foreign telecoms companies. So much to my surprise out of the 4 phones I had on me (blackberry, G1, Nokia Irish PAYG phone and Siemens UK PAYG phone) not a single one of them worked.

• It can piss rain for 5 solid days in this bloody country. But its hard to stay mad at Japan

• Mount Fuji is incredibly beautiful

• Hot springs are an absolute must do. They separate women and men, everyone goes naked, and you lie around watching the sun set over the mountains. Stunning.

• I have said I judge a place on its bathroom facilities, Tokyo wins both best and worst in this category. The hotel room had a toilet (whom we affectionately dubbed Timmy the Robo-toilet) that did everything from warming the seat, to making a flush noise so people can’t hear you peeing, to providing three different types of water jet to clean you after you have completed your activities (in case anyone cares, I do not recommend “oscillating spray” but most of the others are ok). The nearby subway station however, had a fucking porcelain hole in the ground.

• The Tokyo Emerging Science Museum has, amongst other awesome things, robots. Robots which you can drive. Robots are cool.

• Tokyo went through a phase sometime in the 80s of building imitations of western landmarks. So this week we saw an imitation Statue of Liberty (smaller than the real thing) and an imitation Eiffel Tower (bigger than the real thing).

• The Japanese are _incredibly_ polite. They thank you profusely for your custom, they bow when they are handing you your change, and they present you with their card using both hands as if it is some sort of award. Presumably all the while thinking you are an ignorant westerner with the cultural awareness of a dung beetle, but they are very nice about it all the same.

• When you get a bus to Narita airport, they do an inspection at the airport entrance to check you have your passport. At least I think this is all they check, they didn’t even look inside it when I waved it at them.

• The Japanese seem to quite like the French. Which seems odd, because as far as I can gather almost no-one else does (Sorry FGs :) Sad but true)

My flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo left at 10.30 in the morning and went via Tai Pei. Unfortunately, I just could. Not. Sleep. I lay awake trying to doze off pretty much all goddamn bloody night, turned the air-con on, turned the air-con off again, had this dull headache-y feeling that just wouldn’t go away, and felt generally like ass. I must have dozed off briefly though, because when I finally opened my eyes to FG2s alarm going off, I realized there was something odd happening, they weren’t opening properly. As it turns out this is because my eyelids were puffed out like ping pong balls and looked utterly ridiculous. I put this down to not sleeping enough, took some painkillers and had tea with the fabulous FG2 before she went to work. I then finished packing, got my shit together, and headed for my flight. Hong Kong has a truly marvelous feature, which is that you can check in your luggage in the main station before you take the train to the airport, something that all major cities should most definitely adopt as it is made of win. Having divested myself of my cumbersome baggage I then made my way to the airport train, feeling slightly odd, but not unwell enough to think anything of it.

As I boarded the plane I noticed that my wrists had a strange looking rash on them which I could have sworn hadn’t been there a few hours previously. This became slightly more alarming in Taipei where I noticed it had morphed into a solid red lump on each arm and become rather itchy, and about half an hour before we landed in Tokyo I woke from a snooze to discover that it now speckled all of my arms, and from the feeling of most of my upper body had made it to my torso. At this point, I was forced to acknowledge that I was having a full-blown allergic reaction, and that it was getting worse. Not only this, but I had it leaving china, source of half the world’s potential pandemics in the last several years. Nothing engenders paranoia like someone leaving china looking like they have early stage leprosy. In fact if this had never happened before I would have been pretty damn freaked out myself. Fortunately, I am familiar with this one.

I am allergic to a variety of things. Most of these are stupid and easily avoidable – bubble bath, certain types of fabric softener, aniseed. Some of them are more serious – I am heinously allergic to penicillin for example. Yet more of them are the subject of some uncertainty – certain additives in food colouring which I haven’t narrowed down really, a few types of sweetener. I very rarely come across the latter in the EU because EU law covering food additives is fairly restrictive, and frankly I rarely come across them in the US because I don’t eat the kind of crappy sweets the US generally has to offer. This particular reaction has only happened once before when I was 16, and I had to eat about 15 packets of M&Ms to induce it (yes, 15. I really liked m&ms and I have a tendency to over-do things)

In any case, I was in neither the EU nor the US, I was in China, a country that sells cartons of milk that say “made with real milk” on the side. In fact I am fairly certain the milk in my tea that morning and the previous night was the perpetrator of my blotchiness, but despite the fact that it had been about 12 hours, things continued to worsen. By the time I had gotten through customs (while hiding my arms and trying to look healthy) I could tell it was all over my legs too. By the time I finally found Cheese (the person, not the delicious foodstuff) and went back to the hotel (a tale in its own right) my entire skin was one huge red lump. It was everywhere. My face, my neck, my feet, even the palms of my hands. I felt cold but my skin was on fire, I had a fever, and I was in fucking agony. I had been working myself into a rage at Cheese for ludicrous airport based inefficiency, but I was incredibly glad he was there, because he found a 24 hour pharmacy and got me the antihistamines without which I think I might have thrown myself off our 18^th floor balcony rather than continue to scratch my own skin off.

So kids, the moral of the story is: do not drink the milk in China. Of course, Cheese entirely disagrees with this theory, and claims that it is perfectly obvious that I am merely allergic to communism.  Which I suppose would be kind of cool.

Day 2 (as mentioned in the previous post) began twice really. The first time at 6am when I awoke, reviewed my decision to fall asleep at 11 and found it slightly wanting in view of the fact that I was fucking awake at 6 in the morning, and decided that after FG2 went to work I would try for an extra hours kip. Hah. Day 2 had its second glorious beginning when I dragged, and I mean _dragged_ myself out of bed at about 3.20pm. My day was made of fail, as I was too late to do any of the cool things FG2 had told me to go do in her absence, However the evening managed to be a little less fail-tastic, met an irish mate from working in London back in the good old days, and we drank far too much horrible crap til 4am. FG2 cunningly stopped drinking about 5 drinks before we did, thus securing her a place in the non-imbecile hall of fame, a lofty honour which I fear I may never achieve what with doing so many fucking stupid things. Upon getting home and reading my emails, being multiple time zones and miles away from people and things that concerned me  became a problem, and I ended up on a rooftop on the phone til 6am. Unfortunate to say the least, but necessary in the circumstances

Day 3 – death on a stick. Not the worst hangover I have ever had, but possibly one of the worst with which I have ever had to do anything much. FG2 had chosen that morning to move to her new flat, which I suppose was part of the reason for her eminent sensibleness the previous evening. For a full appreciation of the horror of this you merely need to know that is 27 degrees and humid in HK, and she was moving to a 5^th floor walk-up. And for the Americans in the audience, in proper countries that means 5 flights of stairs – not 4, kids. Truthfully I was very little bloody use at this, though I did make a valiant attempt at helpfulness. It is just a pity my sense of duty doesn’t extend to ensuring I was in a fit state for said.

Anyway, I was ILL. Note the capitalization, it is deliberate. I tried to put contact lenses in at one point and received for my trouble such a violent onslaught of headache I nearly threw up. Throwing up was not a problem for the remainder of the day, but I had some other compelling digestive issues which I can only attribute to “being in China” because as far as I could tell I had not drunk or eaten anything the least bit suspect. This did not stop my stomach from mounting a concerted protest however. I was also completely and totally exhausted. This may have been due to the 4 hours sleep, or possibly the fact that my sleep pattern was at that point 7 shades of buggered. Whatever the reason I felt like throwing myself off a bridge so I suppose it was fortunate we didn’t cross any.

Astonishingly despite my complete lack of functionality a lot was done and seen that day, including some beautiful Chinese gardens (surrounded Hong Kong style by a huge elevated highway), an Indonesian meal with some Chinese friends of FG2s, and a sortie to Mong Kok, the technology bazaar type area of Hong Kong.

Day 4 – Our chilled out day of general niceness, FG2 and I went to the market, bought some silly asian crap, drank tea, walked around the frankly amazing docklands area of Kowloon. Took zillions of terrible pictures of Hong Kong Island at night (which makes New York look like a tasteful and understated lighting display, but nevertheless manages in its own way to be beautiful), had a picture taken of us for some stupid amount of dollars, and found Jackie Chan’s star on the star walk, Hong Kong’s answer to Hollywood’s avenue of the stars.

After our stunningly nice day of ferries and beautiful things and Hello Kitty crap, we finished up with a Thai massage before going home for dinner.  Salad from the local shop, with pink champagne from the airport some days previously.  More things I learned in Hong Kong include:

• The reason for the hot water thing – apparently Chinese medicine decided a thousand years ago that hot water was good for the brain, and Chinese people are not prone to contradicting wisdom that has been around that long apparently

• A thai massage is a fascinating experience, in which the person giving it actually climbs on top of you at various stages. At one point there was a small thai woman balanced on top of me on just the points of her knees and elbows

• Thai massages are good after, but they hurt during

• Technology is not that much cheaper in asia than in the states, and its probably worth it to buy something with a manual not printed entirely in Chinese.

• FG2 is a fantastic hostess, and even provided a pre-dinner cup of tea before our fabulous dinner at home on the last evening, a fact which I mention because it becomes something of a focal point in the next stage of my FHoUA.

 Tune in next post for details on how not to leave a country famed for it’s contagious diseases.

 

…has been a motto of mine for some time. When you fly as much as I do (and I assure you, that’s a lot) succumbing to the rigours or air travel and time zone switching seems an extensive waste of precious time that could otherwise be spent looking at cool things, or drinking.

However this month I am trying something I’ve never even come close to attempting before – I am flying around the world. Due presumably to some sort of odd masochism I chose to do so by going east, thereby losing hours of time each hop until eventually gaining it all back in one large chunk en route from Tokyo to Honolulu when I cross the IDL. I am pretty certain I will spend this entire flight filled with the thrill of time travel as I leave Tokyo Monday night and magically arrive in Hawaii bright and early Monday morning. I simply cannot think of this as anything but incredibly cool.

The upshot of all this however, is that I spent every flight valiantly trying to sleep for 4 or 5 hours to readjust myself to morning once again coming significantly earlier than my body expects. Today – my first day in HK, my body reacted to this by waking me at 6am, falling asleep again at 10am, and fighting me for supremacy as I dragged its ass out of bed around 3pm. Today has, as you might imagine, been a bit of a loss.

Right now I am on a train back from Lantau island, where I spectacularly failed to see anything cool whatsoever due to my extraordinary tardiness in arising. On the plus side, I managed to buy (amongst other things) some cheese. Cheese is important. It is incredibly difficult to buy any sort of street food that does not consist entirely of rice or pastry, yet no-one here appears to be fat. Form this I conclude that Chinese people eat practically nothing, and have excellent metabolisms.

I really like Hong Kong. I tend to judge places by imagining whether I would like living there for a while, and so far this place receives a somewhat fascinated yes vote. I doubt I could ever have a relationship of any kind here, but then that goes for America too, and in this case cultural differences are extreme enough to be interesting instead of merely being annoying most of the time.