Cricalix.Net

It’s been a pleasant two week vacation.  Caught a train and a bus down to Heathrow on the 22nd, and crossed the Atlantic courtesy of British Airways after staring at an Asus EEE 700 series in Dixons (though I’ll wait for the 900 series with the bigger screen and 20 GB SSD).  Did my usual trick of pushing how late I stayed up, with the intent of resetting my body clock and avoiding jet-lag (which worked).  Spent the next few days imaging all of the LAN PCs for UberCon, and catching up on a bit of sleep.  UberCon ran from the 25th to the 27th, where I had the pleasure of being an attendee for once, instead of a staff member - though I still did staff-like stuff since I knew the answers.  Note to self, never go behind the desks at registration or help-desk unless I want to work.

Didn’t shoot too many photos, but got something like 30 of Mr. T. Zahn, so I’ll be checking those in Lightroom when I get home.  Hopefully there’s at least one good one we can use on the UberCon site.  I also need to get his contact details to see if he minds if I use them in my personal (online) portfolio.  Missed the tear-down of the convention by being a lazy sod and sitting in my room reading.  However, I helped pack the truck for the trip to the con, so I think I’m excused. (more…)

I’m currently sitting in a Premier Inn room in Crawley, West Sussex - a few miles from Gatwick Airport. “Why?”, I hear you ask (or maybe not [and my English is failing me, is that comma right?]). Just to pick up a friend tomorrow - it was easier to do the 122 miles today in daylight, when the traffic is light, rather than in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow, when the M25 is bound to be gridlocked.

Internet access is via a non-encrypted wireless connection. I really need to sort out a VPN, either on this hosting, or on my DSL connection - I suppose I could VPN to work and set my default route through the VPN there. All the stuff that matters though (that I control) is protected by SSL, so there’s a modicum of privacy and security for some of my web browsing. There’s always a MITM attack, and I really need to work on testing that one day, just to work out how to attack a SSL connection without the browser noticing.

Brought Tzar with me, and some music CDs, but forgot that this laptop uses an external CD drive, so no Tzar for me tonight. Music has been sorted by a Last.FM installation though - the net access doesn’t block it (and appears to be a 1 Mbit connection).

No shuttle to the airport unfortunately, so I’ll have to scrounge up some change while I’m at the airport to pay for the parking.

Guess I’ll sit back, listen to the rock station on Last.FM and read Cryptonomicon.

My journey to the Netherlands on Saturday the 8th did not begin fortuitously - for a start, I mixed up my tickets for the train journey from Stoke-on-Trent, and thought I had to catch a noon train, not a 2 PM train. This however, had a bright side, for as I was standing on the platform, pondering the trains, I realised that I had left the Archos jukebox back in my house on the bed. Quick time, across the station, hail a taxi and make a very quick round-trip to pick it up from home. I then found out that my ticket allowed me to catch any train that was going in the approximate direction that I was going. This makes me wonder if I can travel to Manchester via London on a standard saver :) If I can, it’ll be a very cheap way to get around on the rail network.

The check-in for Jet2 was painless, if a bit tedious. They’ll only start checking-in for a flight 2 hours before the flight, and no earlier, even if the desk is open. So I had a pleasant stay in the line, waiting for them to close the Alicante flight and open the Amsterdam flight. Painless check-in though - present the booking ID and my passport, tag my carry-on and wander off to find lunch - which is how checking in should be.

If you ever travel out of Manchester Airport, and don’t mind spending a few quid over and above for lunch, find a seat at the Lancaster Brasserie in Terminal 1. The food is fantastic (especially for airport fare), the garlic bread was divine and the view is pretty darn good (right out onto the tarmac). The food quality was something I’d expect landside at a good restaurant in town, so 4 stars to the Brasserie.

Well, I’m back from the Netherlands in one piece. I didn’t manage to shoot 18 GB of photos, but I think I managed about 10 GB. I’ll know when I dump the cards from the camera and the Archos. I think I shot 3 or 4 GB when visiting Keukenhof - way too many tulips, narcissus and hyacinths. I’ve also got a veritable ream of notes from my journey, where I wrote down anything that crossed my mind as I walked along, sat on trams, trains and planes, and sat at various other places.

I’ve got two days of vacation before work, so I’ll be looking at doing a writeup on my stay in the Netherlands, and processing all of my photos. Then I’ve got to process Slimbridge!