I was in South East Asia recently. In a few days I visited Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. I was traveling on an Australian passport, and I needed visas for Vietnam and Indonesia.
In the case of Indonesia, I was able to get a visa at the border, which is basically just a shakedown exercise in which I had to pay $25 to enter the country. Indonesia recently had a scandal in which officials were apparently hiding the existence of a $10 visa for up to seven days, charging people the full $25 charge that applies for up to 30 days, issuing the seven day visa and pocketing the $15 difference. The government solved this corruption problem by abolishing the $10 seven day visa, thus making things better for nobody except the government. Thus I had to pay $25 for just a day's visit, although I didn't realise this until I got there.
In the case of Vietnam, I was able to get a visa at the airport on arrival. This had to be approved in advance. This approval can only be obtained through local travel agents in Vietnam. What one does is send one's passport details to a travel agent in Hanoi over the internet (and pays them a fee - I paid $20). The travel agent then sends the details on to the government, which issues a letter to the travel agent saying that the visa on arrival has been approved. The travel agent then e-mails you a scan of the letter, and you bring this with you to the airport. Once you arrive in Vietnam you pay another $25 fee to the government at the airport, and they issue your visa.
This all seems entirely pointless (and the necessity of the travel agent as a middle man strikes me as dubious), but these sorts of shakedown exercises are actually a big improvement on some of the queuing at consulates and other weird practices at peculiar hours that I have been put through to get visas in the past.
In addition, whenever I entered a country I had to fill out one of those silly forms giving my name, address, name of hotel and other kinds of information that nobody is ever going to read. These forms are big on asking where you are staying for some reason. Often enough I haven't finalized this when I arrive, or I am planning on spending three hours in the airport before heading somewhere else, or such, and so I have mastered the art of simply writing down something that sounds plausibly like the name of a hotel in that city. (In cities I visit regularly, I sometimes use the names of real hotels I am not staying at).
Sometimes you have to keep one part of the form in your passport between arrival and exit, with unknown consequences if you lose it. (In the world's shittier countries, the consequences are "pay a bribe", but in truth I wasn't in the world's shittier countries). I entered Singapore a total of five times and had to fill out the form each time. On one occasion crossing from Malaysia to Singapore, I had no pen on me, but somebody else had left one with purple ink on the desk, which I used to fill out the form. When I got to the immigration desk I was told that it had to be blue or black. The immigration officer was sympathetic and actually made a phone call to see if he could accept the purple, but in the end I was sent back to fill it in again. I shouldn't be hard on Singapore specifically, here. By the standards of the region their procedures are smooth, and they provide free sweets. I do wonder what they do with all the forms though. The principal border crossing between Malaysia and Singapore is crossed by something like a hundred thousand people a day. I cannot imagine that anyone reads any of the forms, let alone all of them, particularly given that most of the same information can be read electronically from people's passports.
The other hassle of traveling in this part of the world is all the different currencies. Specifically, every country has one. One has all the hassle of obtaining local currency, not withdrawing too much, spending all or most of it before leaving the country, and not running it with one last thing to pay before they will let you leave the country. (What is it with "You have to pay the airport tax, and no, we don't take credit cards. In fact, we only take Altarian dollars", anyway).
When I first came to Europe, it was like this too. Different currencies in each country. Lots of border formalities. Even sometimes the need for visas. (Australians needed visas for France and Spain as little as a decade ago). Silly forms. Most of this is gone, now. The Euro and the Schengen agreement have made my life a lot easier. The only people with separate currencies and silly forms are largely now the British, and people like the Russians and Ukrainians. They don't bother me as much now that I am a British national and I live here, but they bureaucratic instinct has become strong in this regard. The EU single market does make Europe a much easier place to travel around. In this regard, I wish ASEAN would follow.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
The following is a sidebar to this post I have written for Samizdata
Portugal has existed as a state since Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, achieved independence from the Kingdom of Leon (one of the four kingdoms generally considered the predecessors of modern Spain) and declared himself King Alfonso I of Portugal in 1139. At that point Portugal only consisted of the North of the modern country, but Alfonso pursued a series of conquests that expelled the Moors from much of the south of the modern country. Olivenca fell to Alfonso in 1170, but was retaken by the Muslims in 1189. In 1230, Olivenza was taken from the Moors by the Knights Templar in 1139, ultimately being absorbed into the Kindom of Castille, predecessor to modern Spain. It was reclaimed by Portugal in 1297, during the succession crisis following the death of King Sancho IV of Castille, Leon, and Galicia. Olivenca then remained Portuguese for more than 500 years, although Portugal was in Personal Union with Spain (ie the same king ruled two multiple kingdoms that were theoretically separate) from 1580 to 1640.
In 1373, Portugal signed a treaty of perpetual friendship with England, that remains in force to this day. In 1510, the Ajuda bridge was built across the Guardiana river to the nearby Portuguese town of Elvas. In the war of Spanish succession (that took place between 1701 and 1714), Portugal sided with the British and Prussians against the Spanish and French, in accordance with the treaty of 1373. Olivenca was held by Portugal, but there was fighting in the area and the Ajuda bridge was damaged and made impassable in 1709.
Portugal has existed as a state since Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, achieved independence from the Kingdom of Leon (one of the four kingdoms generally considered the predecessors of modern Spain) and declared himself King Alfonso I of Portugal in 1139. At that point Portugal only consisted of the North of the modern country, but Alfonso pursued a series of conquests that expelled the Moors from much of the south of the modern country. Olivenca fell to Alfonso in 1170, but was retaken by the Muslims in 1189. In 1230, Olivenza was taken from the Moors by the Knights Templar in 1139, ultimately being absorbed into the Kindom of Castille, predecessor to modern Spain. It was reclaimed by Portugal in 1297, during the succession crisis following the death of King Sancho IV of Castille, Leon, and Galicia. Olivenca then remained Portuguese for more than 500 years, although Portugal was in Personal Union with Spain (ie the same king ruled two multiple kingdoms that were theoretically separate) from 1580 to 1640.
In 1373, Portugal signed a treaty of perpetual friendship with England, that remains in force to this day. In 1510, the Ajuda bridge was built across the Guardiana river to the nearby Portuguese town of Elvas. In the war of Spanish succession (that took place between 1701 and 1714), Portugal sided with the British and Prussians against the Spanish and French, in accordance with the treaty of 1373. Olivenca was held by Portugal, but there was fighting in the area and the Ajuda bridge was damaged and made impassable in 1709.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Some endings take time
In December, I blogged happily about the prospect of receiving new (if unneeded) hardware for free. Alas, though, it did not work out, and I had to send a letter to customer service
In mid-December, I received a (paper) letter stating that Three's network had been recently upgraded in my area and that if I wished, Three would provide me with a new modem at not charge, to take advantage of the faster network. I called the phone number given in the letter and arranged to be sent the new modem. Several weeks later, the new modem had not arrived. Therefore, on January 13, I called Three Mobile again to enquire where it was. The person I spoke to told me that the address that showed up on his computer for my account was my old address (postcode SW18 1DB) that I left in June last year. This was odd, as all correspondence from Three (including the letter that started this) has been sent to my new address (SE1 5HH) for at least six months. He stated that the modem might have been sent to my old address also, and that he would escalate the matter and investigate, and would call me back within two days. This was satisfactory to me. However, he did not call me back within two days, and did not in fact call me back until January 19th. This was not satisfactory to me, and if I had known he would take this long to get back to me, I would have told him not to bother. On January 19, I was in Australia, and when he called me it was 3am local time, and paying considerable roaming charges to receive calls. After a conversation of several minutes that cost me several pounds to have, he eventually told me that it would not be possible to deliver the modem when I was not present, and that I should therefore arrange again to have it delivered when I was back in the UK. I am now back in the UK. I am still using my old modem, which works perfectly but presumably at slower speeds than would a new modem. I am still perfectly happy with the service I am receiving. If Three had done nothing whatsoever, I would have no complaints. However, Three somehow managed to waste my and your time, and to cost me money to achieve nothing whatsoever. That said, if you are able to give me a new modem to increase my broadband speed, I would still find this useful. In fact, if you are able to provide me with one of your MiFi modem/routers instead of a standard modem, I would find that even more useful. I am actually very close to the end of my contract, and would agree to renew the contract for another 18 or 24 months if this is necessary to do so, although I do not wish to lose the particularly low monthly rate I am presently paying (£5 a month for 1Gb).
Thank you
I wonder if I can manage to get fancier hardware out of them than they originally offered? Or am I just leading myself further down the rabbithole?
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, January 08, 2010
London
My fancy, expensive Italian espresso machine has broken down. It is still under warranty and everything should be fine soon, but this leads me to the problem of where to go to get my needed doses of espresso. I am living in Bermondsey in South East London at the moment, which is ethnically rich, but has only a few patches of what might be called "globalised London": those areas that are filled with national and particularly international chains of stores, trendy Italianate cafes patronised by yuppies, and that kind of thing. One area that does qualify is Borough, which has its fair share of Starbucks and Caffe Nero outlets, plus other places with Wifi and espresso that are adjunct to fashion museums. It's a nice area, actually. I might consider moving there when I have a bit more income.
One place that almost qualifies is Greenwich, which is today a mixture of traditional working class, people who work at the financial office complex at Canary Wharf, people associated with the various museums and historic sites there, and has also had enough brownfield sites and regeneration that a certain kind of boutique business can operate there. (For instance, the Meantime Brewing Company, which makes specialty beers - quite an ambitious company that you would describe as "independent" but is now a bit too big to count as "boutique"). Anyway, this was one place to go for coffee, so on one day between Christmas and New Year, I went there for coffee. Many businesses were closed but there were lots of tourists around, so the obvious coffee venues with sort of okay coffee (Starbucks and Costa) were packed with people and I went looking for somewhere else as I wanted to avoid the crowds. As it happens, Greenwich is yuppified enough to have Starbucks and Costa, but not so yuppified as to have decent independent coffee shops.
I ended up wandering to a cinema. The Greenwich PictureHouse is one of those cinemas that looks like an arthouse but mostly plays mainstream Hollywood films, and is ideal for those sorts of customers who wouldn't deign to walk into a multiplex but none the less want to see Avatar. I don't tend to go there to watch movies - if I want mainstream Hollywood there are cheaper places with different ambiance but equally good technical presentation in South East London. There is a decent chance of finding an acceptable cafe in such a cinema, though, so I went in hoping to find one. As it happened, there is a Spanish tapas bar in the same building, with a door going directly from the tapas bar into the lobby of the cinema. I went in and asked if I could simply sit down and have a coffee. The waiter's response was "of course" and I sat down and had an excellent Spanish style cafe cortado.
The funny thing about this is that I asked if I could sit down and just have coffee. In a tapas bar in Spain, I wouldn't dream of asking such a thing, as it would be assumed and in fact the bar would be full of people doing just this, or just having a small glass of wine or beer. In Spain there would be a bar as well as table seating, and I would probably sit at the bar. At this place in London, no bar.
Tapas restaurants in London are a little odd. People tend to order tapas style dishes from a printed menu in the way they would at some other restaurant, and to make a full meal of them in one place. They might order a few dishes to share, or they might order these same dishes to consume individually. The Spanish custom of having one small dish with each drink doesn't seem to apply.
I confess I find this general rigidity between "restaurant", "cafe", and "bar" in the UK (and my native Australia, too) rather annoying. I find the Spanish drinking culture far more pleasant than the English drinking culture. You drink over a longer period of time, and you drink small glasses of wine or beer. You also constantly eat little items of food with your drinks, so that "Consume huge quantities of alcohol on an empty stomach" thing that exists in England doesn't apply. (As the place where you would go to consume coffee is the same place you would go to have a beer, it is much easier to (say) drink coffee when you are in the company of people drinking alcohol and you wish to refrain from doing that, too). Tapas works best when you have a large number of bars in a relatively small area of town, and you hop from bar to bar having one drink and one small item of food in each. In some parts of Spain (Madrid, parts of Andalucia, Leon, and the Asturias) the tapas is free: you order a drink and an item of food comes with it. This of course leads to waiters sending complex messages to you about whether they like you are not by what they give you, but it is none the less a nice tradition.
Relatively little of this translates well to London, particularly when you only visit one venue. Which leads to my doing things such as ask whether it is okay to sit in a tapas bar and ask whether I can just have coffee. Many of the people just down the road might have liked to do this, too, but for mostly cultural reasons they didn't.
The other place I have found myself drinking espresso is an Algerian cafe in Old Kent Road. This place sells excellent coffee for half the cost of Starbucks, and people at the other tables are either eating French style pastries or African style chicken dishes with rice. There is a television at the back of the room which is usually showing France 24 (which is full of programs about the minute details of whatever is going on in the EU) and occasionally showing African football matches. (Algeria are playing in the African Nations Cup tomorrow, which might make it a fun afternoon to go there, although it is greatly sad that terrorist scum have ruined that tournament). The background volume in the cafe is a mixture of French and Arabic. It's a no hold bars ethnic place: people of an Anglo background are barely an afterthought. However, as is normally the case, it's completely friendly if I walk in. I am just someone who wants a coffee and my money is as good as the next person's.
Fun.
One place that almost qualifies is Greenwich, which is today a mixture of traditional working class, people who work at the financial office complex at Canary Wharf, people associated with the various museums and historic sites there, and has also had enough brownfield sites and regeneration that a certain kind of boutique business can operate there. (For instance, the Meantime Brewing Company, which makes specialty beers - quite an ambitious company that you would describe as "independent" but is now a bit too big to count as "boutique"). Anyway, this was one place to go for coffee, so on one day between Christmas and New Year, I went there for coffee. Many businesses were closed but there were lots of tourists around, so the obvious coffee venues with sort of okay coffee (Starbucks and Costa) were packed with people and I went looking for somewhere else as I wanted to avoid the crowds. As it happens, Greenwich is yuppified enough to have Starbucks and Costa, but not so yuppified as to have decent independent coffee shops.
I ended up wandering to a cinema. The Greenwich PictureHouse is one of those cinemas that looks like an arthouse but mostly plays mainstream Hollywood films, and is ideal for those sorts of customers who wouldn't deign to walk into a multiplex but none the less want to see Avatar. I don't tend to go there to watch movies - if I want mainstream Hollywood there are cheaper places with different ambiance but equally good technical presentation in South East London. There is a decent chance of finding an acceptable cafe in such a cinema, though, so I went in hoping to find one. As it happened, there is a Spanish tapas bar in the same building, with a door going directly from the tapas bar into the lobby of the cinema. I went in and asked if I could simply sit down and have a coffee. The waiter's response was "of course" and I sat down and had an excellent Spanish style cafe cortado.
The funny thing about this is that I asked if I could sit down and just have coffee. In a tapas bar in Spain, I wouldn't dream of asking such a thing, as it would be assumed and in fact the bar would be full of people doing just this, or just having a small glass of wine or beer. In Spain there would be a bar as well as table seating, and I would probably sit at the bar. At this place in London, no bar.
Tapas restaurants in London are a little odd. People tend to order tapas style dishes from a printed menu in the way they would at some other restaurant, and to make a full meal of them in one place. They might order a few dishes to share, or they might order these same dishes to consume individually. The Spanish custom of having one small dish with each drink doesn't seem to apply.
I confess I find this general rigidity between "restaurant", "cafe", and "bar" in the UK (and my native Australia, too) rather annoying. I find the Spanish drinking culture far more pleasant than the English drinking culture. You drink over a longer period of time, and you drink small glasses of wine or beer. You also constantly eat little items of food with your drinks, so that "Consume huge quantities of alcohol on an empty stomach" thing that exists in England doesn't apply. (As the place where you would go to consume coffee is the same place you would go to have a beer, it is much easier to (say) drink coffee when you are in the company of people drinking alcohol and you wish to refrain from doing that, too). Tapas works best when you have a large number of bars in a relatively small area of town, and you hop from bar to bar having one drink and one small item of food in each. In some parts of Spain (Madrid, parts of Andalucia, Leon, and the Asturias) the tapas is free: you order a drink and an item of food comes with it. This of course leads to waiters sending complex messages to you about whether they like you are not by what they give you, but it is none the less a nice tradition.
Relatively little of this translates well to London, particularly when you only visit one venue. Which leads to my doing things such as ask whether it is okay to sit in a tapas bar and ask whether I can just have coffee. Many of the people just down the road might have liked to do this, too, but for mostly cultural reasons they didn't.
The other place I have found myself drinking espresso is an Algerian cafe in Old Kent Road. This place sells excellent coffee for half the cost of Starbucks, and people at the other tables are either eating French style pastries or African style chicken dishes with rice. There is a television at the back of the room which is usually showing France 24 (which is full of programs about the minute details of whatever is going on in the EU) and occasionally showing African football matches. (Algeria are playing in the African Nations Cup tomorrow, which might make it a fun afternoon to go there, although it is greatly sad that terrorist scum have ruined that tournament). The background volume in the cafe is a mixture of French and Arabic. It's a no hold bars ethnic place: people of an Anglo background are barely an afterthought. However, as is normally the case, it's completely friendly if I walk in. I am just someone who wants a coffee and my money is as good as the next person's.
Fun.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
How I am not cool
The scene: Sydney, Australia. The year 2000. Michael is talking to a girl
Girl: Have you been to Soho?
Michael: Soho in London, SoHo in New York, or Soho in Hong Kong? Yes in all three cases.
Girl: No, the club in Darling Harbour.
Michael: Oh.
(Girl loses interest and wanders off)
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Arbitrary Rules
I recently posted to Samizdata my annual photoessay summarising my movements for the year (Previous years' efforts are here, here and here). I have a fairly strict set of rules as to how many photographs I allow myself to include in these posts. Basically, it is one photograph for each country I visit on each trip outside England. However, it is more complex than this. The actual rules are as follows:
One or two of these rules have been made up to increase the number of photographs I get in these photoessays, but I have not allowed myself to do this without a vaguely convincing reason. The big weakness of these rules is that they do not do long trips to large countries justice. If I wander around Europe or South East Asia for three weeks, I may get half a dozen photographs or more. If I wander around an equally large area of the USA or India or Australia for the same period, I may only get one. However, extending the rules in such instances seems to be going a little too far.
- The question of what is a country is hard to answer around the edges, but I choose a lenient definition. I generally include colonies, special zones with unusual history, and similar as separate countries for this purpose. If a place competes separately from its parent country in international sporting events or even the Miss World pageant, that is usually enough. Similarly, if a region has separate immigration controls from its parent country, that is generally enough. In the UK, I count Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales as separate countries. Having a separate ISO 3166-1 code and internet top level domain is a good sign, too, although not an absolute one. Hong and Macau have enough of these things that they get separate photographs, even though China is sovereign. Norfolk Island would get enough of these things to get a separate photograph, although Australia is sovereign. Puerto Rico has enough of these things that I would count it, although the US is sovereign.
- Strange forbidden zones in which people may not normally enter and where one is required to give a passport to people in fatigues before entering get separate photographs, even if there is no sense that they are fully sovereign in any way. The two examples of these I have provided photographs for are the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, and the Zone of Alienation around Chernobyl. It happens that in both cases these zones lie on the borders between countries and the zones extend into each country, but in neither case is there any serious doubt as to where the border is. However, the zones have an otherness about them that makes them separate from their countries, so I give them an extra photograph. Any such zones that I enter in future that do not overlap borders will still get extra photographs
- Disputed territory gets an extra photograph, assuming there is some substance to the dispute. In this latest post, I provided a photograph of Olivença/Olivenza, which has been controlled by Spain since the Napoleonic Wars, but which is claimed by Portugal in accordance with the Treaty of Vienna which ended those wars. In that set, I put in photographs of Spain, Portugal, and Olivença/Olivenza, which is three photographs. Nobody claims that there are three countries there, but I still put in three photographs.
- In order to get two photographs of the same country, with one exception that I shall get to in the next point, I must return to England in the intervening period. If I am in Poland, and I fly back to England for a day, and then return to Poland (as I did this year) I get two photographs of Poland. However, if I move backwards and forwards six times between Poland and Germany without an intervening trip to England, I get one photograph of Poland, one of Germany, and no more.
- If I am out of England for the New Year, I may include that trip on the list for both years, but in order to include a country for that year, I must still have visited it in that year. For instance, if I visit Korea in 2006 on the way to Australia, spend the new year in Australia, and then visit Korea again on the way back in 2007, I can include both Australia and Korea for both years. If on the other hand I visit Korea in 2006 on the way to Australia, spend the new year in Australia, and then fly straight back to England with no stop in Korea, I may include photographs of both Australia and Korea for 2006, but only Australia for 2007
- In order to count myself as having visited a country, I must have left the transport vehicles and transport infrastructure by which I was traveling. Changing planes in a country without leaving the airport does not count. Going through a country by train and not leaving the train does not count. If I change trains the country does not count if I do not leave the railway station. Driving through a country and not getting out of the car does not count. Driving through a country and getting out of the car but only in service stations does not count.
- While the existence of immigration controls is a strong indicator that a country should count, the absence of such proves nothing, as there are many national borders in which there are no controls. The question of whether I have personally gone through immigration controls is of little relevance, however. It is quite common to arrive in an airport, go through immigration controls, and fly straight out again, and this does not count. On the other hand, if there are controls, but they are not manned when I visit, then the country still counts. Similarly, if I enter a country illegally and avoid the controls, the country still counts if it otherwise qualifies
One or two of these rules have been made up to increase the number of photographs I get in these photoessays, but I have not allowed myself to do this without a vaguely convincing reason. The big weakness of these rules is that they do not do long trips to large countries justice. If I wander around Europe or South East Asia for three weeks, I may get half a dozen photographs or more. If I wander around an equally large area of the USA or India or Australia for the same period, I may only get one. However, extending the rules in such instances seems to be going a little too far.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Hardware
Three Mobile have just upgraded their network near my home from HSDPA Category 6 to HSDPA Category 8. In practice, this means that the maximum download speed I can achieve is 7.2Mbps rather than 3.6Mbps as before. In practice, one never gets close to this speed, but "double the speed" is probably true in the sense that I will get twice what I had before.
The real reason for the upgrade is that as well as doubling the speed, it doubles the capacity of the network. Superior mathematics and code, and superior computational power allows more sophisticated modulation schemes to be used and the bitrate that can be achieved using a given amount of radio spectrum to be greater. When 3G networks first came along, they for some years had significant unused data capacity, but in the last couple of years demand for this has risen dramatically, driven by adoption of mobile broadband and adoption of smartphones such as the iPhone. (Three doesn't offer the iPhone yet in the UK, although most people seem to believe it will soon. The upgrade could partly be preparation for this). Therefore, networks are now being upgraded to newer, higher capacity technologies because they are becoming congested. Three have also recently introduced usage management software, basically meaning that if there is a heavy user in a cell, his usage is restricted sufficiently to allow other users to operate normally.
However, hardware capable of the higher speeds needs to be operating at both ends of the connection. If the user has an old modem not capable of the higher speeds then communication will continue to be at the old speed. So if everybody is using old modems, the network upgrade doesn't improve congestion. Thus Three sent me a letter offering me a new modem "to give you the full benefit of the upgraded network". No charge to me. No extension of contract required. Free as in free.
Of course, I said yes. However, there is a little secret. Upgrading modems to higher HSDPA speeds isn't generally about hardware. It is about software. Older modems are capable of handling the higher speeds just fine, but to do so they need upgraded firmware. Flashing the firmware is not that hard, and I had already upgraded my old modem myself. So Three are not actually getting any benefit out of sending me a new modem. They are simply giving me a spare. However, new hardware is new hardware. Yum.
Mobile phone networks in recent times have been trying to extend contract lengths, as the subsidies they have been paying on new phones have been high and they don't want to pay them as often. However, we here have a reversal. Three are trying to force upgrades on customers early, presumably because (a) network congestion is becoming a real problem and (b) 3G dongles are cheap. That said, I am not expecting them to give out free iPhones mid contract anytime soon.
Also, this particular contract only has about three months to run. I wonder if Three will still offer me a new dongle at the end of the contract, which is the normal practice if I renew.
Update: Thinking about it some more, there is another reason why no network is going to give out free iPhones mid contract, which is that Apple has no trouble getting iPhone users to update their software (including their firmware) whenever it wants them to. iPhone users plug their phones into their computers and sync them with iTunes regularly, and one of the things they do when they do this is upgrade them to the latest software. By providing a smooth software platform through which to do this and by providing lots of new functionality on a regular basis, Apple has given itself the ability to do upgrades that networks want as well as to fix bugs and the like.
This contrasts severely with other phone makers like Sony Ericsson and Nokia. Whilst it is theoretically possible to upgrade firmware on most of their phones, it is not something that customers heave learned to do. For one thing, there is lots of operator customised firmware that needs to be updated too, and operators generally prefer their customers to be using an old version of operator customised firmware than newer versions of unbranded firmware. Secondly, finding new firmware can be fiddly and often involves connecting the phone to a computer, which is usually not done for other reasons. Firmware upgrades over the air involve lots of messing around with network settings and operator policies and data charges and all kinds of stuff. Plus, firmware upgrades tend not to offer new functionality (as the business model here is that you will upgrade your phone when you want new functionality) so customers don't always see the point. If a phone doesn't work properly, the tendency is to take it back to whoever you bought it from, not to mess around with firmware upgrades.
That said, handling firmware updates is probably easier for 3G dongles. When I use the dongle I run a Three branded application on my laptop to manage the connection. This is not strictly necessary - as long as an appropriate driver is installed, both Windows and OS-X can actually manage the connection themselves - but this is the simple way of doing so. Once in a while this application updates itself over the internet, and there is no real reason why it couldn't handle firmware upgrades as well. I suspect though that keeping up with all the different models of dongle and firmware versions and the like is too much hassle for Three. Dongles are cheap enough that it is easier to simply send out new ones when this is called for.
It was of course once the case that PC software was more or less fixed in the state you bought it in with all the original bugs. It was only when being constantly connected to the internet became standard that this business of operating systems and other software constantly updating itself became the norm. This may not have been entirely good - once upon a time software had to work properly when it was released, rather than the now all too common practice of getting something out the door now and fixing it later - but it does at least mean that serious bugs and security issues can be fixed at any time.
This is going to have to become standard in phones as well, and I am sure it will. For the moment, though, this is a real achilles heel for the traditional manufacturers. Over the last couple of years Nokia and Sony-Ericsson have got into real trouble by releasing many high end phones with extremely buggy software. Rates of return for some models have been horrible. (20% or more in some instances). Some of these might have been fixable with firmware updates, but the overall impact has been a tremendous loss of reputation.
The real reason for the upgrade is that as well as doubling the speed, it doubles the capacity of the network. Superior mathematics and code, and superior computational power allows more sophisticated modulation schemes to be used and the bitrate that can be achieved using a given amount of radio spectrum to be greater. When 3G networks first came along, they for some years had significant unused data capacity, but in the last couple of years demand for this has risen dramatically, driven by adoption of mobile broadband and adoption of smartphones such as the iPhone. (Three doesn't offer the iPhone yet in the UK, although most people seem to believe it will soon. The upgrade could partly be preparation for this). Therefore, networks are now being upgraded to newer, higher capacity technologies because they are becoming congested. Three have also recently introduced usage management software, basically meaning that if there is a heavy user in a cell, his usage is restricted sufficiently to allow other users to operate normally.
However, hardware capable of the higher speeds needs to be operating at both ends of the connection. If the user has an old modem not capable of the higher speeds then communication will continue to be at the old speed. So if everybody is using old modems, the network upgrade doesn't improve congestion. Thus Three sent me a letter offering me a new modem "to give you the full benefit of the upgraded network". No charge to me. No extension of contract required. Free as in free.
Of course, I said yes. However, there is a little secret. Upgrading modems to higher HSDPA speeds isn't generally about hardware. It is about software. Older modems are capable of handling the higher speeds just fine, but to do so they need upgraded firmware. Flashing the firmware is not that hard, and I had already upgraded my old modem myself. So Three are not actually getting any benefit out of sending me a new modem. They are simply giving me a spare. However, new hardware is new hardware. Yum.
Mobile phone networks in recent times have been trying to extend contract lengths, as the subsidies they have been paying on new phones have been high and they don't want to pay them as often. However, we here have a reversal. Three are trying to force upgrades on customers early, presumably because (a) network congestion is becoming a real problem and (b) 3G dongles are cheap. That said, I am not expecting them to give out free iPhones mid contract anytime soon.
Also, this particular contract only has about three months to run. I wonder if Three will still offer me a new dongle at the end of the contract, which is the normal practice if I renew.
Update: Thinking about it some more, there is another reason why no network is going to give out free iPhones mid contract, which is that Apple has no trouble getting iPhone users to update their software (including their firmware) whenever it wants them to. iPhone users plug their phones into their computers and sync them with iTunes regularly, and one of the things they do when they do this is upgrade them to the latest software. By providing a smooth software platform through which to do this and by providing lots of new functionality on a regular basis, Apple has given itself the ability to do upgrades that networks want as well as to fix bugs and the like.
This contrasts severely with other phone makers like Sony Ericsson and Nokia. Whilst it is theoretically possible to upgrade firmware on most of their phones, it is not something that customers heave learned to do. For one thing, there is lots of operator customised firmware that needs to be updated too, and operators generally prefer their customers to be using an old version of operator customised firmware than newer versions of unbranded firmware. Secondly, finding new firmware can be fiddly and often involves connecting the phone to a computer, which is usually not done for other reasons. Firmware upgrades over the air involve lots of messing around with network settings and operator policies and data charges and all kinds of stuff. Plus, firmware upgrades tend not to offer new functionality (as the business model here is that you will upgrade your phone when you want new functionality) so customers don't always see the point. If a phone doesn't work properly, the tendency is to take it back to whoever you bought it from, not to mess around with firmware upgrades.
That said, handling firmware updates is probably easier for 3G dongles. When I use the dongle I run a Three branded application on my laptop to manage the connection. This is not strictly necessary - as long as an appropriate driver is installed, both Windows and OS-X can actually manage the connection themselves - but this is the simple way of doing so. Once in a while this application updates itself over the internet, and there is no real reason why it couldn't handle firmware upgrades as well. I suspect though that keeping up with all the different models of dongle and firmware versions and the like is too much hassle for Three. Dongles are cheap enough that it is easier to simply send out new ones when this is called for.
It was of course once the case that PC software was more or less fixed in the state you bought it in with all the original bugs. It was only when being constantly connected to the internet became standard that this business of operating systems and other software constantly updating itself became the norm. This may not have been entirely good - once upon a time software had to work properly when it was released, rather than the now all too common practice of getting something out the door now and fixing it later - but it does at least mean that serious bugs and security issues can be fixed at any time.
This is going to have to become standard in phones as well, and I am sure it will. For the moment, though, this is a real achilles heel for the traditional manufacturers. Over the last couple of years Nokia and Sony-Ericsson have got into real trouble by releasing many high end phones with extremely buggy software. Rates of return for some models have been horrible. (20% or more in some instances). Some of these might have been fixable with firmware updates, but the overall impact has been a tremendous loss of reputation.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Evolutionary cycles
I yesterday went shopping for an LCD television for a friend of mine. I went to Richer sounds (a splendid and rather uncharacteristic British retailer known for selling high quality electronic merchandise at low prices from relatively unfashionable locations where the rent is low, providing fine customer service and treating employees well), and I ended up buying a Sharp TV. Interesting company, Sharp. People sometimes think the name is a little odd. For what it is worth, the company originally made mechanical pencils for engineering purposes, and they wanted to make it clear that they were very sharp. (True story).
Japanese companies seem to divide into two kinds. There were pre-WWII monoliths - the so called zaibatsus. American policy after the war was that these were far too powerful and that they were to be broken up into smaller companies. This American policy failed. They zaibatsus were theoretically broken up into smaller units, but they retained a complex arrangement of holding companies and cross shareholdings in which management control largely remained in place even though the companies had theoretically been split up. They evolved into post war industrial groupings known as keiretsus. These companies remained politically well connected, and when Japan attempted to grow its exports through government directed industrial policy, these were the benificiaries of it. These keiretsus included Mitsui/Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Matsushita (Panasonic), and others.
As I said, these well connected companies were recipients of government largesse, and those who would wish to praise government industrial policy would tend to construct a story that this led to Japan's industrial success in the 1970s and the 1980s.
But of course, the story is more complex than this, There is a really good book about this, We Were Burning : Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age by my compatriot Bob Johnstone. The interesting part of the story is that although the keiretsus did benefit from the growth of the Japanese electronic industry, they were not where its innovation came from. The companies that were the heroes in this regard were small, non-existent or unfashionable in 1945, or were disgarded or disdained pieces of broken zaibatsus, In particular, we are talking companies like Seiko-Epson, Canon, Yamaha, or even Sanyo or Honda or Suzuki. (The Japanese government tried to micromanage the car industry, but the motorcycle industry was seen as less interesting, and so that is where the interesting companies ended up coming from).
In electronics, in the 1970s, Sharp's research was led by Sasaki Tadashi, whose enthusiasm earned him the truly glorious nickame of "Dr Rocket" - personally I would almost kill for such. In that era Sharp pretty much invented the electronic calculator and the LCD display. Sharp remains a leader in LCD display technology to this day.
To the extent, that in this day of LCD television, Sharp is the only Japanese company worth mentioning in this market. Sony - a company that rode a totally unique route between the keiretsu and the post war upstart, but which in the end did a better job of selling itself as a brand than an innovator - was the undoubted leader in the era of CRT televisions, but (perhaps as a consequence) totally missed the transition to flat screens. A lot of fancy televisions are sold today under the Sony brandname, but these were generally actually made by Samsung, or (in certain high end cases) by Sharp. The only Japanese company that actually makes televisions today is Sharp. The company that always was the great innovator: the company that Sony pretended to be.
Which is why I was happy to buy such a set for my friend.
Japanese companies seem to divide into two kinds. There were pre-WWII monoliths - the so called zaibatsus. American policy after the war was that these were far too powerful and that they were to be broken up into smaller companies. This American policy failed. They zaibatsus were theoretically broken up into smaller units, but they retained a complex arrangement of holding companies and cross shareholdings in which management control largely remained in place even though the companies had theoretically been split up. They evolved into post war industrial groupings known as keiretsus. These companies remained politically well connected, and when Japan attempted to grow its exports through government directed industrial policy, these were the benificiaries of it. These keiretsus included Mitsui/Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Matsushita (Panasonic), and others.
As I said, these well connected companies were recipients of government largesse, and those who would wish to praise government industrial policy would tend to construct a story that this led to Japan's industrial success in the 1970s and the 1980s.
But of course, the story is more complex than this, There is a really good book about this, We Were Burning : Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age by my compatriot Bob Johnstone. The interesting part of the story is that although the keiretsus did benefit from the growth of the Japanese electronic industry, they were not where its innovation came from. The companies that were the heroes in this regard were small, non-existent or unfashionable in 1945, or were disgarded or disdained pieces of broken zaibatsus, In particular, we are talking companies like Seiko-Epson, Canon, Yamaha, or even Sanyo or Honda or Suzuki. (The Japanese government tried to micromanage the car industry, but the motorcycle industry was seen as less interesting, and so that is where the interesting companies ended up coming from).
In electronics, in the 1970s, Sharp's research was led by Sasaki Tadashi, whose enthusiasm earned him the truly glorious nickame of "Dr Rocket" - personally I would almost kill for such. In that era Sharp pretty much invented the electronic calculator and the LCD display. Sharp remains a leader in LCD display technology to this day.
To the extent, that in this day of LCD television, Sharp is the only Japanese company worth mentioning in this market. Sony - a company that rode a totally unique route between the keiretsu and the post war upstart, but which in the end did a better job of selling itself as a brand than an innovator - was the undoubted leader in the era of CRT televisions, but (perhaps as a consequence) totally missed the transition to flat screens. A lot of fancy televisions are sold today under the Sony brandname, but these were generally actually made by Samsung, or (in certain high end cases) by Sharp. The only Japanese company that actually makes televisions today is Sharp. The company that always was the great innovator: the company that Sony pretended to be.
Which is why I was happy to buy such a set for my friend.
Friday, December 11, 2009
I love discount airlines
And I love the fact that I can write a sentence like "I’ve been trying to get hold of James Waterton myself, mainly because I am going to be in Asia next month and I would like to buy him a few beers and have a chat". As in, I will be on the same continent, so we must catch up, with the understanding that the difficulty and expense of doing so will not be very great.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Grands Slam
In the sport of Rugby Union, there is a regular yearly competition between the strong countries of Europe. These days this includes Italy and is now the Six Nations Championship, but when I was a child it was the five nations: the five nations in question being England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and France. One of the peculiarities of this tournament is that winning the tournament is a less big deal than how you do it. Winning every game is a so called "Grand Slam", and this gets much more kudos than simply winning the tournament. The winners of the Six Nations also seems to win the Grand Slam about every second or third year.
As it happened, Ireland won the Grand Slam in the Six Nations Championship at the start of this year. This was a big deal for them: it was only the second time they had won it, and the first time in 61 years.
However, as it happens, achieving a Grand Slam in Rugby wasn't just a five nations thing. Back in the days when international travel was hard, the teams from the Rugby Union playing nations of the southern hemisphere would only tour the British Isles every few years. When they did so, they would play one test against each of Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. Winning all four games was the same achievement that would be required of France to win the Grand Slam in the then Five Nations, and also became known as winning the Grand Slam, or at least it did in the southern hemisphere rugby nations.
Winning a Grand Slam this way was never easy, and prior to 1984, it was only ever done five times: by South Africa in 1912, 1931, 1951, and 1960, and by New Zealand in 1978. In 1984, it was achieved by Australia for the first time. I can remember this, and it was a huge occasion in Australian rugby. A lot of rugby fans in Australia would still describe it as the biggest moment the sport has ever had in Australia, and Australia have won the World Cup - twice - since then. This was the first time Australia had ever put a world beating rugby team on the field. Prior to that Rugby Union had always been a (very) poor relation to Rugby League in Australia and the Rugby Union team had almost always lost badly to New Zealand, South Africa, and the stronger British and French teams. Since then, Australia has been one of the leading powers in the game.
However, even before the 1984 tour was played, the various governing bodies had decided that it would be much easier for their schedules if touring sides were not playing all four home nations in the same season. It was decided that in this age of easier travel, the southern hemisphere sides would come twice as often and only play two of the four nations on each tour. This decision was unpopular with the boards in the Southern Hemisphere countries, because a tour in which a Grand Slam is a possibility is a bigger deal than one where it isn't. The boards in the British isles on the other hand either didn't realise this or didn't care.
However, the southern hemisphere boards discovered that they could negotiate with individual nations, and try to get additional tests added to these two test tours. I remember in 1996 Australia managed to get Wales to agree to add a game to a tour that already had Ireland and Scotland, and Australia tried very hard to get England to agree to a game too. When England refused to substitute a test match for a charity game at Twickenham between Australia and the Barbarians, I recall Australian officials getting very abusive, too. And it was a shame, because Australia had a pretty good side that year and won the three tests against Scotland, Ireland, and Wales quite convincingly. A final game at Twickenham for the Grand Slam would have been great.
Since then, Southern Hemisphere tours of Europe have become more common, and any regular structure is gone. Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand tour Europe most years, and fit in various combinations of tests with the four Home Nations, France, and Italy. They play all these teams fairly frequently, but there is still a lot of prestige attached to a Grand Slam tour of the British Isles for historical reasons, and winning a Grand Slam is a big deal, because it has been done so infrequently. South Africa managed to schedule Grand Slam tours in 1998 and 2004, but could not win the Grand Slam on either occasion. New Zealand scheduled Grand Slam tours in 2005 and 2008, and won the Grand Slam on both occasions, which probably made their inability to win World Cups even more annoying for them.
However, this year, Australia finally managed to schedule a Grand Slam series, for the first time since the famous 1984 tour. They are not seen has having a very strong side this year, having lost most of their southern hemisphere matches to New Zealand and South Africa, and were only given odds of 7/1 before the tour. Last weekend, they played England, and played well enough to win reasonably confortably , despite some problems in the line outs. They were ecstatic at the end of the game, mainly because the Grand Slam possibility made it a much bigger occasion that it would have been otherwise. Today against Ireland, the line outs were again a problem, but Australia none the less led for almost the entire match. Their defence was good, and they spent the last ten minutes defending a 20-13 lead. It looked like the Grand Slam was still on.
Except, Ireland got through in the last couple of minutes, and scored a converted try to draw the match 20-20. The Grand Slam is not happening this year. There is no disgrace in drawing with or even losing to Ireland at the moment - after all they won a Grand Slam themselves at the start of the year. However, if Australia beat Scotland and Wales, which they may not, they will really see this as a chance for glory that got away. There is a sense perhaps that a chance for a great occasion may have been lost. Australia should beat Scotland next weekend. A final game in front of a huge crowd in Cardiff against Wales for the Grand Slam could have been fun.
Oh well, though. If these things were easy, they would not be such a big deal when they do occur. Hopefully we will not have to wait for another 25 years before Australia get another chance to do this.
What is interesting, though, is that my Northern Hemisphere rugby friends largely missed why the southerners were taking this so seriously. This type of Grand Slam is not something thought of much by northern fans, possibly because it is something their own teams cannot win. but it's quite a big deal for us.
As it happened, Ireland won the Grand Slam in the Six Nations Championship at the start of this year. This was a big deal for them: it was only the second time they had won it, and the first time in 61 years.
However, as it happens, achieving a Grand Slam in Rugby wasn't just a five nations thing. Back in the days when international travel was hard, the teams from the Rugby Union playing nations of the southern hemisphere would only tour the British Isles every few years. When they did so, they would play one test against each of Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. Winning all four games was the same achievement that would be required of France to win the Grand Slam in the then Five Nations, and also became known as winning the Grand Slam, or at least it did in the southern hemisphere rugby nations.
Winning a Grand Slam this way was never easy, and prior to 1984, it was only ever done five times: by South Africa in 1912, 1931, 1951, and 1960, and by New Zealand in 1978. In 1984, it was achieved by Australia for the first time. I can remember this, and it was a huge occasion in Australian rugby. A lot of rugby fans in Australia would still describe it as the biggest moment the sport has ever had in Australia, and Australia have won the World Cup - twice - since then. This was the first time Australia had ever put a world beating rugby team on the field. Prior to that Rugby Union had always been a (very) poor relation to Rugby League in Australia and the Rugby Union team had almost always lost badly to New Zealand, South Africa, and the stronger British and French teams. Since then, Australia has been one of the leading powers in the game.
However, even before the 1984 tour was played, the various governing bodies had decided that it would be much easier for their schedules if touring sides were not playing all four home nations in the same season. It was decided that in this age of easier travel, the southern hemisphere sides would come twice as often and only play two of the four nations on each tour. This decision was unpopular with the boards in the Southern Hemisphere countries, because a tour in which a Grand Slam is a possibility is a bigger deal than one where it isn't. The boards in the British isles on the other hand either didn't realise this or didn't care.
However, the southern hemisphere boards discovered that they could negotiate with individual nations, and try to get additional tests added to these two test tours. I remember in 1996 Australia managed to get Wales to agree to add a game to a tour that already had Ireland and Scotland, and Australia tried very hard to get England to agree to a game too. When England refused to substitute a test match for a charity game at Twickenham between Australia and the Barbarians, I recall Australian officials getting very abusive, too. And it was a shame, because Australia had a pretty good side that year and won the three tests against Scotland, Ireland, and Wales quite convincingly. A final game at Twickenham for the Grand Slam would have been great.
Since then, Southern Hemisphere tours of Europe have become more common, and any regular structure is gone. Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand tour Europe most years, and fit in various combinations of tests with the four Home Nations, France, and Italy. They play all these teams fairly frequently, but there is still a lot of prestige attached to a Grand Slam tour of the British Isles for historical reasons, and winning a Grand Slam is a big deal, because it has been done so infrequently. South Africa managed to schedule Grand Slam tours in 1998 and 2004, but could not win the Grand Slam on either occasion. New Zealand scheduled Grand Slam tours in 2005 and 2008, and won the Grand Slam on both occasions, which probably made their inability to win World Cups even more annoying for them.
However, this year, Australia finally managed to schedule a Grand Slam series, for the first time since the famous 1984 tour. They are not seen has having a very strong side this year, having lost most of their southern hemisphere matches to New Zealand and South Africa, and were only given odds of 7/1 before the tour. Last weekend, they played England, and played well enough to win reasonably confortably , despite some problems in the line outs. They were ecstatic at the end of the game, mainly because the Grand Slam possibility made it a much bigger occasion that it would have been otherwise. Today against Ireland, the line outs were again a problem, but Australia none the less led for almost the entire match. Their defence was good, and they spent the last ten minutes defending a 20-13 lead. It looked like the Grand Slam was still on.
Except, Ireland got through in the last couple of minutes, and scored a converted try to draw the match 20-20. The Grand Slam is not happening this year. There is no disgrace in drawing with or even losing to Ireland at the moment - after all they won a Grand Slam themselves at the start of the year. However, if Australia beat Scotland and Wales, which they may not, they will really see this as a chance for glory that got away. There is a sense perhaps that a chance for a great occasion may have been lost. Australia should beat Scotland next weekend. A final game in front of a huge crowd in Cardiff against Wales for the Grand Slam could have been fun.
Oh well, though. If these things were easy, they would not be such a big deal when they do occur. Hopefully we will not have to wait for another 25 years before Australia get another chance to do this.
What is interesting, though, is that my Northern Hemisphere rugby friends largely missed why the southerners were taking this so seriously. This type of Grand Slam is not something thought of much by northern fans, possibly because it is something their own teams cannot win. but it's quite a big deal for us.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Languages
In my post on Samizdata about visiting Chernobyl, I use the Latinised form of Russian rather than Ukrainian spellings of place names - for instance Chernobyl and Kiev rather than Chornobyl and Kyiv - as these were the forms in use at the time of the disaster and these remain the names most commonly used outside the Ukraine and are hence likely to be the forms most familiar to my readers. Since the Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine has become an independent nation and has adopted Ukrainian rather than Russian as its official language, and this change has included encouragement of foreigners to use Latin transliterations of Ukrainian rather than Russian spellings of local place names. When a Latin script is used locally, one now sees Chornobyl and Kyiv. However, the world outside still tends to use the Russian forms.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Apple play a devious game.
The desktop PC that I built five years ago has this year died, had various pieces replaced with parts bought on ebay, and been rebuilt. At the end of this it was still unreliable, slow, and sufficiently frustrating to use that I was not using it any more, and was instead using my laptop most of the time. This was not ideal, as I have two very nice screens on the desk in my study. I could have plugged the laptop into one of these and used it at my desk, but this seemed wrong, somehow. In any event, constandly connecting and disconnecting the laptop from the screen and/or other peripherals in my study was just a nuisance.
So, I decided I needed a new desktop machine. Over the last couple of years I have returned to Apple. The first computer I ever used was an Apple II back in 1981, and I used these and (later) Macintoshes until about 1998. From 1988 or so, I used Unix machines in university and scientific environments as well. I actually almost never used a DOS or Windows machine until 1998, but I moved to Windows then for a mixture of work related reasons and because Apple as a company had lost its way and appeared to be dying.
However, Apple did of course not die, and Microsoft lost its way over the last decade. By developing OS-X on a Unix foundation, it managed to swallow up a lot of the Unix community as well. (Like everyone else, Unix geeks have been moving to laptops, and Mac laptops are the best Unix laptops by far). I rather delayed coming back, but a couple of years ago I bought myself a Macbook Pro, which has turned out to be the nicest laptop I have ever owned, by far. The Snow Leopard upgrade a couple of months back has improved its performance. It still feels like a brand new laptop and has none of the sluggishness that Windows machines seem to get after a couple of years.
So, having decided to buy a Mac desktop, I this week bought a Mac mini. Since being upgraded earlier this year, the mini has had quite a nice spec, including decent nvidia 9400 graphics with dual monitor support. Apple gave the mini a minor speed bump a couple of weeks ago, which gave me a great chance to get the just superseded early 2009 model cheap. As it happened, I bought it "refurbished" from the Apple store for £339. The computer may have been a return, or might have been and end of model sale. But it was cheap, and looks and feels as good as new. This was theoretically the low end model with a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1Gb of RAM and a 120Gb hard drive. My intention was to upgrade the hard drive (probably to a 320Gb or 500Gb 7200rpm unit) and RAM at some point. I probably still will, but the machine that was shipped to me actually has 2Gb of RAM, meaning that the RAM upgrade isn't particularly urgent.
The Mac mini comes in a very small box which does not include a screen, mouse, or keyboard. Apple have always sold it as being a relatively inexpensive machine allowing people who have these things already to switch to Apple. People who want a fully new machine from the ground up should buy an iMac. And this suited me fine. The Mac mini is plugged into my (lovely) 24 inch Dell screen that has a few years of life left in it, and the (also nice, but older) 19 inch Sony screen I have sitting next to it will be plugged in also once the mini Display port to DVI adaptor that I have ordered on ebay arrives and I gain the ability to plug it in. And the (Compaq branded) USB keyboard and (Sony branded) USB mouse that I have plugged into the mini do indeed work perfectly.
However, they look wrong somehow. These are dark coloured and clunky bits of PC hardware. They look way too utilitarian to go with the Mac. And the keyboard has a Windows key instead of an Apple key. I can almost feel the urge to go and buy a Mac keyboard and Mac mouse for purely aesthetic reasons. Apple were not lying when they stated that "Most users will have compatible hardware already", but I fear they also understand that people - think "this is wrong" - and go and buy an Apple mouse and keyboard, and that this way Apple get much higher margins on them than they would have had they just put them in the box with the computer.
Except, of course, they do not fit in the box. If a keyboard had been included, Apple couldn't sell the Mac mini in such a cool, small box. And knowing Apple, this is quite possibly a fair bit of the reason.
So, I decided I needed a new desktop machine. Over the last couple of years I have returned to Apple. The first computer I ever used was an Apple II back in 1981, and I used these and (later) Macintoshes until about 1998. From 1988 or so, I used Unix machines in university and scientific environments as well. I actually almost never used a DOS or Windows machine until 1998, but I moved to Windows then for a mixture of work related reasons and because Apple as a company had lost its way and appeared to be dying.
However, Apple did of course not die, and Microsoft lost its way over the last decade. By developing OS-X on a Unix foundation, it managed to swallow up a lot of the Unix community as well. (Like everyone else, Unix geeks have been moving to laptops, and Mac laptops are the best Unix laptops by far). I rather delayed coming back, but a couple of years ago I bought myself a Macbook Pro, which has turned out to be the nicest laptop I have ever owned, by far. The Snow Leopard upgrade a couple of months back has improved its performance. It still feels like a brand new laptop and has none of the sluggishness that Windows machines seem to get after a couple of years.
So, having decided to buy a Mac desktop, I this week bought a Mac mini. Since being upgraded earlier this year, the mini has had quite a nice spec, including decent nvidia 9400 graphics with dual monitor support. Apple gave the mini a minor speed bump a couple of weeks ago, which gave me a great chance to get the just superseded early 2009 model cheap. As it happened, I bought it "refurbished" from the Apple store for £339. The computer may have been a return, or might have been and end of model sale. But it was cheap, and looks and feels as good as new. This was theoretically the low end model with a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1Gb of RAM and a 120Gb hard drive. My intention was to upgrade the hard drive (probably to a 320Gb or 500Gb 7200rpm unit) and RAM at some point. I probably still will, but the machine that was shipped to me actually has 2Gb of RAM, meaning that the RAM upgrade isn't particularly urgent.
The Mac mini comes in a very small box which does not include a screen, mouse, or keyboard. Apple have always sold it as being a relatively inexpensive machine allowing people who have these things already to switch to Apple. People who want a fully new machine from the ground up should buy an iMac. And this suited me fine. The Mac mini is plugged into my (lovely) 24 inch Dell screen that has a few years of life left in it, and the (also nice, but older) 19 inch Sony screen I have sitting next to it will be plugged in also once the mini Display port to DVI adaptor that I have ordered on ebay arrives and I gain the ability to plug it in. And the (Compaq branded) USB keyboard and (Sony branded) USB mouse that I have plugged into the mini do indeed work perfectly.
However, they look wrong somehow. These are dark coloured and clunky bits of PC hardware. They look way too utilitarian to go with the Mac. And the keyboard has a Windows key instead of an Apple key. I can almost feel the urge to go and buy a Mac keyboard and Mac mouse for purely aesthetic reasons. Apple were not lying when they stated that "Most users will have compatible hardware already", but I fear they also understand that people - think "this is wrong" - and go and buy an Apple mouse and keyboard, and that this way Apple get much higher margins on them than they would have had they just put them in the box with the computer.
Except, of course, they do not fit in the box. If a keyboard had been included, Apple couldn't sell the Mac mini in such a cool, small box. And knowing Apple, this is quite possibly a fair bit of the reason.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Nonsense
On Wednesday evening, I was boarding a plane at Bremen airport in Germany. Earlier in the day, I had purchased a plastic bottle of Diet Coke, had consumed half of it, and then closed it and put the bottle in my rucksack. Of course, I then forgot about it. When I put the same rucksack through the X-Ray machine at the airport, it showed up and I was asked to remove it from my bag. I asked if I could simply drink the contents rather than have it confiscated. I was told that, yes, I could, but in order to do so I would have to take it back outside the secure area, drink it, and then go through security again.
I am almost tempted to offer a prize for the most creative reason that anyone can imagine for such a rule. Do they think I am going to explode if I drink non-approved Diet Coke on the wrong side of the metal detector? Even if they do, in what way would my exploding outside the secure area make things better?
I am almost tempted to offer a prize for the most creative reason that anyone can imagine for such a rule. Do they think I am going to explode if I drink non-approved Diet Coke on the wrong side of the metal detector? Even if they do, in what way would my exploding outside the secure area make things better?
Thursday, October 29, 2009
A tale of woe, and a small plea
I have been taking digital photographs for about six years now. A year ago, these were mostly stored on the hard disk of my principal desktop computer at the time. I had backups on hard drives on a couple of laptops and also on some CDs and DVDs. Backups of recent files were in order, but older backups were not very well organised.
In March this year, I decided to fix this and simultaneously better organise everything by importing all my photos into iPhoto on my Mac laptop and then backing this up with Time Machine. Impatient about the idea of importing everything over my home network, I removed the (PATA) hard drive from my desktop, and put it in an external hard drive enclosure I had around. This worked fine, and I backed up some of my photos. I then discovered that I needed the hard drive back in the original desktop, and so I removed it from the external hard drive enclosure and plugged it back into the PATA connection of the desktop.
At this point , disaster. The hard drive would no longer work. Foolishly, I had left the motherboard plugged into the power when I plugged the hard drive back in. The CPU was not spinning and I believed the hard drive power cable was not live when I plugged the drive in, but perhaps the power was in fact live. Or perhaps some sort of static discharge occurred. In any event, the hard drive that had the only complete copy of my photo collection had failed. My belief was (and is) that the electronics on the hard drive was fried.
I then looked for my older backups. I found that one of the DVDs that had contained backups was physically broken, which presumably happened when I moved house. Another was unreadable. Still, however, I was able to retrieve about 80% of my photo collection from backups. However, I have lost some photographs from 2005 and 2006: specifically the some (but not all) of those of two trips to the US from 2005, and one trip to China and one to Korea from 2006, as well as a small number of European photos from those years.
I decided that the lost photographs were of sufficient value to me that I was willing to pay for data recovery if possible, so I sent the hard drive to a data recovery company. I chose it from advertising and online recommendations: I have no idea if I chose well. From certain aspects of their customer service that I will not go into, it is more likely that I chose badly than not.
My belief was that the drive simply had electrical problems, but the data recovery company claimed that
It is entirely possible that they were exaggerating the damage in order to increase the price. After a little negotiation, I agreed to pay £450 on a no data no fee basis.
After several months in which I didn't hear from them, the data recovery company finally told me that they had been unable to get the hard drive to respond to a replaced PCB, and they returned the hard drive (and the spare PCB - they presumably sent this to me to show they had tried).
So, I was back where I started. I get the feeling it may be worth having one further try with another data recovery company, assuming that someone is willing to try. The model is a Hitachi hds722516vlat80
However I need to find the best experts I can find - preferably Hitachi specialists. Any thoughts as to who I might ask?
In March this year, I decided to fix this and simultaneously better organise everything by importing all my photos into iPhoto on my Mac laptop and then backing this up with Time Machine. Impatient about the idea of importing everything over my home network, I removed the (PATA) hard drive from my desktop, and put it in an external hard drive enclosure I had around. This worked fine, and I backed up some of my photos. I then discovered that I needed the hard drive back in the original desktop, and so I removed it from the external hard drive enclosure and plugged it back into the PATA connection of the desktop.
At this point , disaster. The hard drive would no longer work. Foolishly, I had left the motherboard plugged into the power when I plugged the hard drive back in. The CPU was not spinning and I believed the hard drive power cable was not live when I plugged the drive in, but perhaps the power was in fact live. Or perhaps some sort of static discharge occurred. In any event, the hard drive that had the only complete copy of my photo collection had failed. My belief was (and is) that the electronics on the hard drive was fried.
I then looked for my older backups. I found that one of the DVDs that had contained backups was physically broken, which presumably happened when I moved house. Another was unreadable. Still, however, I was able to retrieve about 80% of my photo collection from backups. However, I have lost some photographs from 2005 and 2006: specifically the some (but not all) of those of two trips to the US from 2005, and one trip to China and one to Korea from 2006, as well as a small number of European photos from those years.
I decided that the lost photographs were of sufficient value to me that I was willing to pay for data recovery if possible, so I sent the hard drive to a data recovery company. I chose it from advertising and online recommendations: I have no idea if I chose well. From certain aspects of their customer service that I will not go into, it is more likely that I chose badly than not.
My belief was that the drive simply had electrical problems, but the data recovery company claimed that
The primary failure is a failure of the read/write heads. The read/write heads have also made contact with the platter surface causing media damage and unreadable sectors. These unreadable sectors span the disk surface causing corruption. There is also a PCB fault.
It is entirely possible that they were exaggerating the damage in order to increase the price. After a little negotiation, I agreed to pay £450 on a no data no fee basis.
After several months in which I didn't hear from them, the data recovery company finally told me that they had been unable to get the hard drive to respond to a replaced PCB, and they returned the hard drive (and the spare PCB - they presumably sent this to me to show they had tried).
So, I was back where I started. I get the feeling it may be worth having one further try with another data recovery company, assuming that someone is willing to try. The model is a Hitachi hds722516vlat80
However I need to find the best experts I can find - preferably Hitachi specialists. Any thoughts as to who I might ask?
Saturday, September 05, 2009
The joys of indoctrination
When I was at primary school in Australia in the 1970s, the curriculum still had a certain colonial quality about it. I recall a spelling book which was full of dictation exercises containing passages talking about how the Queen had been received on her visit to India and discussing how "the Commonwealth makes good sense" and blah blah blah. Mixed in with this, we of course got the requisite stuff about polar exploration, and all the inspiring stuff about the heroic Scott and Shackleton and all that, with the nice fact being mentioned that probably the third most distinguished Antarctic explorer from the British empire (Mawson) was an Australian. Mixed in with all this was the sad acknowledgement that the first man to the South Pole was in fact Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian. What I was taught even included remnants of the standard British disparagement of the man, which was that he simply ran an efficient, straight to the Pole there and back expedition, whereas the heroic Scott was somehow on a morally higher plane for having scientific motives as well as the simple desire to be first to the pole, and that there was something not fair about Amundsen slaughtering some of his dogs and eating the meat, etc etc etc. Even to the young me, it was fairly clear that there were some sour grapes in this, and that Amundsen would likely have been written about as the greatest of heroes if he had done everything exactly the same had he happened to have been British. Plus there was the fact that Scott ate his horses. The only real difference was that Amundsen was smart enough to take the correct animals with him.
Of course, if I had gone to school in Norway, I am sure I would have found Amundsen talked about as the greatest of heroes, so the man certainly doesn't fail to get his due. It is just that he achievement was received with a certain amount of bad grace by the British.
One key point about the fact that Amundsen and Scott got to the South Pole within a few weeks of each other is that there is absolutely no doubt that they both got there. Amundsen left physical evidence behind, and Scott found that physical evidence a few weeks later and confirmed that yes, Amundsen had reached the pole.
Somehow, though, this morning, for the first time in about 30 years I found myself thinking about polar exploration. Wandering around Wikipedia, I found myself reading about Arctic exploration rather than Antarctic. My schooling spent more time discussing the Antarctic, probably mainly because the British were involved. The Arctic had been done by Americans, largely, and this was seemingly mentioned briefly, with a footnote that the reason why Amundsen went to the South Pole was because he had wanted to be the first man to the North Pole, but had changed his direction in 1909 upon discovering that Robert Peary had reached the North Pole. After Peary had reached the North Pole via surface travel, Richard Byrd of the US Army had then become the first man to fly over the North Pole in 1926
However, to my surprise today, I discovered that there is now pretty clear evidence that neither Peary nor Byrd got to the North Pole. Both apparently made sincere attempts to get there, encountered difficulties before getting the whole way, turned around and returned to civilization claiming falsely that they had made it.
Who led the first expedition that can be unequivocally confirmed to have reached the North Pole? Well, that was a Norwegian expedition which travelled there by airship in 1926, a few days after Byrd's claimed flight. The leader of that Norwegian expedition? One Roald Amundsen. Amundsen is justly famous for having led the first expedition that got to the South Pole. However, he almost certainly also led the first expedition that reached the North Pole as well. Amundsen did not land, and the first people to set foot on the Pole were apparently the crew of a Soviet aircraft who landed there in 1948. And the first expedition to reach the pole by surface transport (rather than an aircraft or submarine) apparently did not do so until 1968. A lot of these people did not realise that they were pioneers, because Peary's claims were accepted for a number of decades. Who was "first to the pole" depends on definitions, but giving it to Amundsen seems reasonably fair.
I am slightly disturbed that I did not know this until now. I suspect I probably would have if I were Norwegian.
Of course, if I had gone to school in Norway, I am sure I would have found Amundsen talked about as the greatest of heroes, so the man certainly doesn't fail to get his due. It is just that he achievement was received with a certain amount of bad grace by the British.
One key point about the fact that Amundsen and Scott got to the South Pole within a few weeks of each other is that there is absolutely no doubt that they both got there. Amundsen left physical evidence behind, and Scott found that physical evidence a few weeks later and confirmed that yes, Amundsen had reached the pole.
Somehow, though, this morning, for the first time in about 30 years I found myself thinking about polar exploration. Wandering around Wikipedia, I found myself reading about Arctic exploration rather than Antarctic. My schooling spent more time discussing the Antarctic, probably mainly because the British were involved. The Arctic had been done by Americans, largely, and this was seemingly mentioned briefly, with a footnote that the reason why Amundsen went to the South Pole was because he had wanted to be the first man to the North Pole, but had changed his direction in 1909 upon discovering that Robert Peary had reached the North Pole. After Peary had reached the North Pole via surface travel, Richard Byrd of the US Army had then become the first man to fly over the North Pole in 1926
However, to my surprise today, I discovered that there is now pretty clear evidence that neither Peary nor Byrd got to the North Pole. Both apparently made sincere attempts to get there, encountered difficulties before getting the whole way, turned around and returned to civilization claiming falsely that they had made it.
Who led the first expedition that can be unequivocally confirmed to have reached the North Pole? Well, that was a Norwegian expedition which travelled there by airship in 1926, a few days after Byrd's claimed flight. The leader of that Norwegian expedition? One Roald Amundsen. Amundsen is justly famous for having led the first expedition that got to the South Pole. However, he almost certainly also led the first expedition that reached the North Pole as well. Amundsen did not land, and the first people to set foot on the Pole were apparently the crew of a Soviet aircraft who landed there in 1948. And the first expedition to reach the pole by surface transport (rather than an aircraft or submarine) apparently did not do so until 1968. A lot of these people did not realise that they were pioneers, because Peary's claims were accepted for a number of decades. Who was "first to the pole" depends on definitions, but giving it to Amundsen seems reasonably fair.
I am slightly disturbed that I did not know this until now. I suspect I probably would have if I were Norwegian.
Friday, July 10, 2009
This is obvious, really
With most mobile phone networks in Britain, when you call regular customer service the call is forwarded to someone in India. If the person on the other end of the call solves my problem efficiently, I am fine with this. When things don't work, the problem is ultimately caused by poor systems and poor management at the network, usually. For instance, I had a customer service issue with Vodafone (caused by a screw up at their end) in which it was impossible to be helped by the same person twice, and different people kept failing to understand things that I had already explained to one of their colleagues. Bad service. On the other hand, for a recent issue I had with Three (caused by a screw up by the Royal Mail) the first person who helped me took my number, and said he would escalate the problem and call me back when it was resolved, which he did. Good service.
However, there is one option in the phone menu that will always get you to someone in the UK, and that is selecting "I wish to cancel my phone". When you select this from just about any network, you get someone with a friendly Northern English or Scottish accent from the "customer retention" department, whose job it is to talk you out of leaving. These people will ask you why you are leaving, and have the power to offer you much better deals that people in, say, the network's retail shops. Such people walk a relatively delicate line, because if someone genuinely does wish to cancel they have a legal right to do so and the network must not refuse them, but it is their job to keep you on the line if there is some chance you will renew your contract.
If you genuinely do want to cancel your phone, there is a game to be played to get it over with quickly. Basically, you tell lies that are unanswerable by the person on the other end of the phone. "I am leaving the country" is a good one, but only works if you are doing a straight cancellation. If you are instead asking for a PAC code to port your number to another network, that doesn't hold up. Things like "This phone is in my name, but my ex-girlfriend used it. We have now broken up and she wants to keep her number" will usually work. Or one can just get confrontational and insist, but I don't like to do that.
Sometimes though, you say you want to cancel when you have absolutely no desire to cancel. This comes down to what I said earlier: the customer retentions department has the power to offer you a better deal than any other part of the organisation. Usually, though, they will not make their very best offer unless you seem sincere about leaving, and it turns into an experience akin to haggling in a market. It is very hard to know how low they are able to go, as the level of desperation to keep customers varies depending on how close to their monthly quotas they are, how badly they think the stockmarket will react to news that they have lost fifty thousand customers, and that kind of thing. Therefore, haggling exists here for the same reason it exists in markets - the seller does not want to reveal to the buyer how low he can go unless he absolutely has to, and he does so in the hope that the buyer will agree to pay more. I am reasonably good at this, but I suppose I should note that the cheapest deal I have ever obtained was received when I rang up genuinely intending to leave and they genuinely talked me out of it. (As a consequence of this, I generally carry two mobiles. That said, having a second number that is only known to my close friends has something to be said for it to).
In any event, the cheapest mobile deals to be had in the UK generally come from taking out a contract, letting it come to its end, and then calling the customer retentions department and threatening to leave.
Yesterday, however, I did something different. I have had a mobile broadband contract with Three for the last 12 months, for which I pay £10 a month for 1Gb of data. This isn't a huge allowance, but is generally plenty for those occasions I am away from home and where there is no free WiFi. However, I bought that original contract at a bad time. Three have at various times had 25% off or 50% off deals on this contract. In fact, I obtained a £5 a month deal for one of my friends during one of these offers. (Hi Brian). Therefore, I yesterday simply rang up the customer retentions department, and asked if they could give me the same deal. The response from the nice Scottish woman was "Let me check. Yes, sure, I can offer you that. It's nice to get someone who knows exactly what he wants".
Somehow, this seems deeply wrong, as the game of elaborate lies was missing. I suppose, though, that it was akin to knowing a fair price for something in a market, offering it, saying "take it or leave it", turning around to walk out, and seeing if the stallholder stops you. The woman at the other end of the phone seemed pleased. I suppose there is a fair chance she is paid on commission, and gets commission for a contract renewal, and someone who does a deal immediately without 15 minutes of lying and/or threatening to hang up is quite an efficient use of her time.
However, there is one option in the phone menu that will always get you to someone in the UK, and that is selecting "I wish to cancel my phone". When you select this from just about any network, you get someone with a friendly Northern English or Scottish accent from the "customer retention" department, whose job it is to talk you out of leaving. These people will ask you why you are leaving, and have the power to offer you much better deals that people in, say, the network's retail shops. Such people walk a relatively delicate line, because if someone genuinely does wish to cancel they have a legal right to do so and the network must not refuse them, but it is their job to keep you on the line if there is some chance you will renew your contract.
If you genuinely do want to cancel your phone, there is a game to be played to get it over with quickly. Basically, you tell lies that are unanswerable by the person on the other end of the phone. "I am leaving the country" is a good one, but only works if you are doing a straight cancellation. If you are instead asking for a PAC code to port your number to another network, that doesn't hold up. Things like "This phone is in my name, but my ex-girlfriend used it. We have now broken up and she wants to keep her number" will usually work. Or one can just get confrontational and insist, but I don't like to do that.
Sometimes though, you say you want to cancel when you have absolutely no desire to cancel. This comes down to what I said earlier: the customer retentions department has the power to offer you a better deal than any other part of the organisation. Usually, though, they will not make their very best offer unless you seem sincere about leaving, and it turns into an experience akin to haggling in a market. It is very hard to know how low they are able to go, as the level of desperation to keep customers varies depending on how close to their monthly quotas they are, how badly they think the stockmarket will react to news that they have lost fifty thousand customers, and that kind of thing. Therefore, haggling exists here for the same reason it exists in markets - the seller does not want to reveal to the buyer how low he can go unless he absolutely has to, and he does so in the hope that the buyer will agree to pay more. I am reasonably good at this, but I suppose I should note that the cheapest deal I have ever obtained was received when I rang up genuinely intending to leave and they genuinely talked me out of it. (As a consequence of this, I generally carry two mobiles. That said, having a second number that is only known to my close friends has something to be said for it to).
In any event, the cheapest mobile deals to be had in the UK generally come from taking out a contract, letting it come to its end, and then calling the customer retentions department and threatening to leave.
Yesterday, however, I did something different. I have had a mobile broadband contract with Three for the last 12 months, for which I pay £10 a month for 1Gb of data. This isn't a huge allowance, but is generally plenty for those occasions I am away from home and where there is no free WiFi. However, I bought that original contract at a bad time. Three have at various times had 25% off or 50% off deals on this contract. In fact, I obtained a £5 a month deal for one of my friends during one of these offers. (Hi Brian). Therefore, I yesterday simply rang up the customer retentions department, and asked if they could give me the same deal. The response from the nice Scottish woman was "Let me check. Yes, sure, I can offer you that. It's nice to get someone who knows exactly what he wants".
Somehow, this seems deeply wrong, as the game of elaborate lies was missing. I suppose, though, that it was akin to knowing a fair price for something in a market, offering it, saying "take it or leave it", turning around to walk out, and seeing if the stallholder stops you. The woman at the other end of the phone seemed pleased. I suppose there is a fair chance she is paid on commission, and gets commission for a contract renewal, and someone who does a deal immediately without 15 minutes of lying and/or threatening to hang up is quite an efficient use of her time.
Friday, May 22, 2009
What does this mean?
This morning, I woke up at about 5am. I had a flight to Santiago de Compostella booked that departed at 8am. This had cost me some money (a few tens of pounds) a few months back. As it happened, I imagined climbing out of bed, the struggle through various means of transport to Stansted airport, security lines, flying through the need for more sleep, a bus into town at the Spanish end, and then finding and checking into a hotel.
At that point I decided to roll over and fall back to sleep. I now quite considerably regret this, as if I had done everything correctly, I would now be sitting in a tapas bar with some jamon iberico and a glass of red wine, or perhaps admiring a cathedral.
On the other hand, what does this mean? Possibilities.
I am finally growing up.
I am depressed.
I am ill.
On the other hand, I do genuinely regret this. I will get up and make the plane next time.
On the other hand, if I meet the love of my life at the party on Saturday night that I wouldn't have been able to go to if I were in Galicia, I guess it will make a good story.
(Sorry RSSers).
At that point I decided to roll over and fall back to sleep. I now quite considerably regret this, as if I had done everything correctly, I would now be sitting in a tapas bar with some jamon iberico and a glass of red wine, or perhaps admiring a cathedral.
On the other hand, what does this mean? Possibilities.
I am finally growing up.
I am depressed.
I am ill.
On the other hand, I do genuinely regret this. I will get up and make the plane next time.
On the other hand, if I meet the love of my life at the party on Saturday night that I wouldn't have been able to go to if I were in Galicia, I guess it will make a good story.
(Sorry RSSers).
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
On that nodescript Buenos Aires photograph
There is a certain art to putting together a post like this. You don't necessarily post your "best" photos, and you certainly don't post images of the sorts of things commenter "Raul" mentions (all of which I did take photographs of) because a post could equally well be compiled by buying 20 picture postcards and scanning them will not be a very interesting post. If I do post a classic "picture postcard" image, then that probably indicates that (for whatever reason) I had relatively few pictures to choose from for that destination. Of course, I did post one of Argentina's classic "picture postcard" images two photos below, but I allocated it to Brazil (which is fair, as I was in Brazil when I took it and the foreground is in Brazil). As it happens, I spent most of three weeks in Argentina, took around 2000 photographs, and I had considerably more photographs to choose from than any other country on the list, and it took me a long time to decide what to post. I toyed with re-using this photograph that I took near Tunayan in Mendoza province (in which amongst other things I like the fact that what initially appears to be clouds in the background is actually the Andes and this becomes clear when you take a second look). Then I thought of posting this photograph of Santiago Calatrava's footbridge in Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires, but it would have been the second structure designed by the same architect in the post, plus I don't think it really captures as much of the spirit of the city as I would have liked. Then I thought of showing the great arched trainshed at Estacion Retiro (with its interesting contradiction that one of the greatest railway stations in the world hosts very few trains) but didn't quite have the right photo, and I had already posted another railway station. Then I thought of perhaps showing some of the beautiful riverside buildings and bridges at Tigre, but that was slightly too close to picture postcard territory, although the very Englishness of some of the buildings would have given it an interesting twist. Then I thought of showing a picture of the memorial to the dead of the 1981 war, but I conluded it was too sombre (and whatever it is, Buenos Aires is not a sombre city). Then I thought about my first morning in Buenos Aires. After a very tiring flight from Madrid the previous evening and a night's sleep, I stumbled from my hotel the next morning, and just about the first thing I saw was an ice cream shop named after the Malvinas. A thought of "okay...." went through my mind, and I took my first photograph of the trip. Definitely, though, the rules I have set myself as to how many photographs I post to posts like this do serve countries like Argentina (and the US, which got very short shrift last year) badly. The rule is essentially "One photograph for each country I visit on each absence from England". Thus a country I visit for three weeks gets one photograph, as does a visit to a border town for an afternoon. In South America I spent two days in Chile, less than one day in each of Brazil and Uruguay, and three weeks in Argentina (where I of course had a wonderful time) and the four countries get one photograph each.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Life milestones
My application for British citizenship has just been approved. I am not a British national yet, as I have to attend a ceremony and swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen first. I already owe allegiance to the same Queen wearing a different hat (or should it be crown), but this does not count. As I have just moved, the ceremony will be one held by Wandsworth council and not Tower Hamlets council. This is kind of a shame, as I suspect the Tower Hamlets ceremony might have been slightly more colourful.
This does not affect my Australian citizenship, although Australian law was only changed to allow Australians who took out foreign citizenship to keep their Australian citizenship in 2002 (*). It does not affect my right to live in the UK, which I had already, and it does not give me any additional voting rights, as I have had full voting rights since the moment I moved here. (Britain gives full voting rights to citizens of all Commonwealth countries resident in the UK. When I was student here, I rather weirdly had the right to vote or indeed to become Prime Minister, without having any right to work or to live here for more than a short finite period).
Where it does help me is that it means that if I want to leave the UK in the future and come back, I will have voting rights while I am away and the unconditional right to return, whereas the type of permanent residency I had ("Indefinite leave to remain") can be lost after two years absence. Also, as an EU citizen I will have treaty rights that I do not have now, including the right to live and work anywhere in the EU (and in Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein under other treaties). If I ever want to (say) retire to Portugal, I now can.
And of course I can get in the short queue at British airports.
The one thing I shall lose is my right to stand for federal Parliament and/or become Prime Minister of Australia, as the Australian constitution forbids anyone who holds foreign citizenship from taking a seat in parliament. I could still theoretically stand for one of the Australian state parliaments, although heaven forbid that I would want to do such a thing ("You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy...").
(*) Curiously, dual Australian/other citizenship was allowed prior to that in all other cases, including allowing foreigners who were naturalised as Australians to keep their foreign citizenship, and in cases where people got combinations of Australian citizenship and some other through birth. Everyone recognised that the situation was anomalous, both political parties were in favour of changing the law, and yet somehow governments failed to get around to changing it. It was to be voted on soon when Labor was voted out in 1996, but the new government (despite theoretically supporting the change) decided to set up a new commission to investigate the matter etc etc which ultimately reached exactly the same conclusions as the previous one, and then finally managed to change the law in 2002. In the mean time, enforcement of the previous law had been changed somewhat. The previous law had allowed anyone who had lost Australian citizenship upon taking out foreign citizenship to apply to resume their citizenship, if they would have suffered "significant hardship or disadvantage" if they had not taken out foreign citizenship. By the time the law was changed, having to spend time in the long non-EU nationals queue at a British airport was considered a "significant hardship".
Actually, having spent a lot of time in such queues (particularly at Stansted on Sunday nights) I do rather see the point.
This does not affect my Australian citizenship, although Australian law was only changed to allow Australians who took out foreign citizenship to keep their Australian citizenship in 2002 (*). It does not affect my right to live in the UK, which I had already, and it does not give me any additional voting rights, as I have had full voting rights since the moment I moved here. (Britain gives full voting rights to citizens of all Commonwealth countries resident in the UK. When I was student here, I rather weirdly had the right to vote or indeed to become Prime Minister, without having any right to work or to live here for more than a short finite period).
Where it does help me is that it means that if I want to leave the UK in the future and come back, I will have voting rights while I am away and the unconditional right to return, whereas the type of permanent residency I had ("Indefinite leave to remain") can be lost after two years absence. Also, as an EU citizen I will have treaty rights that I do not have now, including the right to live and work anywhere in the EU (and in Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein under other treaties). If I ever want to (say) retire to Portugal, I now can.
And of course I can get in the short queue at British airports.
The one thing I shall lose is my right to stand for federal Parliament and/or become Prime Minister of Australia, as the Australian constitution forbids anyone who holds foreign citizenship from taking a seat in parliament. I could still theoretically stand for one of the Australian state parliaments, although heaven forbid that I would want to do such a thing ("You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy...").
(*) Curiously, dual Australian/other citizenship was allowed prior to that in all other cases, including allowing foreigners who were naturalised as Australians to keep their foreign citizenship, and in cases where people got combinations of Australian citizenship and some other through birth. Everyone recognised that the situation was anomalous, both political parties were in favour of changing the law, and yet somehow governments failed to get around to changing it. It was to be voted on soon when Labor was voted out in 1996, but the new government (despite theoretically supporting the change) decided to set up a new commission to investigate the matter etc etc which ultimately reached exactly the same conclusions as the previous one, and then finally managed to change the law in 2002. In the mean time, enforcement of the previous law had been changed somewhat. The previous law had allowed anyone who had lost Australian citizenship upon taking out foreign citizenship to apply to resume their citizenship, if they would have suffered "significant hardship or disadvantage" if they had not taken out foreign citizenship. By the time the law was changed, having to spend time in the long non-EU nationals queue at a British airport was considered a "significant hardship".
Actually, having spent a lot of time in such queues (particularly at Stansted on Sunday nights) I do rather see the point.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Stockholm, Sweden. May 24
This photograph was taken at 2.30am. I am far enough north that there is natural light in the sky, even at that time. The fast lens and big sensor makes it look a little brighter than with the naked eye, but it is still something that the more equatorial of us are not used to.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Iguaza Falls, Argentina. May 14.
The fuzziness at the top right of my head is the haze from the waterfall, which is a long distance behind me. It causes an interesting optical effect, doesn't it.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
This is Argentina
Imagine you go on a tour of a winery in Argentina. Imagine that they split the group, and there is one tour guide speaking Spanish and one speaking English. Imagine that you are the only Anglophone on the tour, and therefore the English speaking guide gives you a one on one tour. Imagine also that the English speaking guide looks like this.
Imagine also that you have a longstanding weakness for Latin women with black hair and brown eyes. I assure you, the whole experience is like having a bullet fired through the forehead.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Perceptions can stick
It is certainly true that I have a history of being a cricket obsessive, although I have become disillusioned with the sport a little bit in recent months. This is perhaps why, despite what Alan Little posts, and despite requests from Brian Micklethwait for analysis, I don't think I have even mentioned the Indian Premier League on the web, and I have barely mentioned it in person to anyone. My disillusion is perhaps partly responsible for this lack of excitement. Perhaps also I have just been distracted by my own life.
Simple summary of the state of affairs. Does the rise of the IPL indicate the end of the cricket world as we know it? Very probably yes. Is this a good thing? Very probably yes also, although I would prefer they were playing a longer form of the game rather than the 20 over silliness. Do I have the inclination to research and write about this in detail at the moment? In truth, no.
Simple summary of the state of affairs. Does the rise of the IPL indicate the end of the cricket world as we know it? Very probably yes. Is this a good thing? Very probably yes also, although I would prefer they were playing a longer form of the game rather than the 20 over silliness. Do I have the inclination to research and write about this in detail at the moment? In truth, no.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Munich, Germany. April 14
Update: In case Brian has caused anybody to wonder, the building is the Haus der Kunst, which was built for propaganda purposes by the Nazis between 1934 and 1937 as a museum for what they saw as wholesome, non-decadent (ie bad) German art. It is still used as an art museum, but these days it has a nightclub in the basement.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Well done me, I think
I received a letter from my ISP the other day, telling me that I had breached the "reasonable use policy" on my "unlimited" plan. They did this the right way. It was a polite letter pointing the policy out, stating that according to their terms they could throttle my connection in peak periods or disconnect me, but stating that they would prefer to do neither and asking me to reduce my usage. My response to the letter will be to, indeed, reduce my usage.
Still, there something absurd about a world in which "unlimited" means that there actually is a limit, but that we will not tell you what it is until you breach it.
Still, there something absurd about a world in which "unlimited" means that there actually is a limit, but that we will not tell you what it is until you breach it.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Another good thing about the K850i is the built in accelerometer. It doesn't use it nearly as well on the whole as does the iPhone, but for moblogging it is a godsend. Unlike with the K800i, for which uploaded photographs with the wrong orientation can be a serious problem, this phone remembers how you were holding it when you took a photograph. The photograph is therefore always uploaded to your blog with the correct orientation
Friday, April 04, 2008
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Just out of interest
I upgraded my phone in January, and all the photos posted to this blog this year have been taken with a Sony-Ericsson K850i rather than a K800i. This has a 5 Megapixel rather than a 3.2 Megapixel camera. I think the quality is quite lot better. The new camera handles low light and shots with flash much better than the old one.
Sadly, though, I think the phone may have gone backwards in other ways. Sony-Ericsson fixed the two most annoying things about the K800i: the lens cover that came open in your pocket and the SIM slot under the battery. However, they messed around with the user interface and controls on the main keyboard. This is a shame, given that this was the area in which the K800i was right the first time. This is annoying, and I think it means the K850i is not going to be quite as successful as the K800i (which was a huge hit). Shame
A camera in my phone that is good enough for day to day photography needs for web publishing has been a holy grail of mine for a while. I don't carry a dedicated camera everywhere, but I do take a phone. this desire on my part has led to me upgrading phones a good deal more often than I would have otherwise, which is probably what the phone manufacturers want. I'm still not there, but I might only be a couple of more phones away. 5 Megapixels is plenty - it is all about sensor quality now. (Actually I am aware that it has been all about sensor quality for several phones now, yes). There are one or two phones available now with optical zooms, although I am not sure how important that is. I guess I will see next upgrade.
Sadly, though, I think the phone may have gone backwards in other ways. Sony-Ericsson fixed the two most annoying things about the K800i: the lens cover that came open in your pocket and the SIM slot under the battery. However, they messed around with the user interface and controls on the main keyboard. This is a shame, given that this was the area in which the K800i was right the first time. This is annoying, and I think it means the K850i is not going to be quite as successful as the K800i (which was a huge hit). Shame
A camera in my phone that is good enough for day to day photography needs for web publishing has been a holy grail of mine for a while. I don't carry a dedicated camera everywhere, but I do take a phone. this desire on my part has led to me upgrading phones a good deal more often than I would have otherwise, which is probably what the phone manufacturers want. I'm still not there, but I might only be a couple of more phones away. 5 Megapixels is plenty - it is all about sensor quality now. (Actually I am aware that it has been all about sensor quality for several phones now, yes). There are one or two phones available now with optical zooms, although I am not sure how important that is. I guess I will see next upgrade.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Monday, December 17, 2007
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Quite possibly
Your Inner European is French! |
 Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so. |
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Monday, November 05, 2007
Annoyances
I am drinking a bottle of Douro red that I purchased in Portugal last month. It is quite pleasant: bigger and fruitier than is typical of French (and even Spanish) wines. It almost tastes like a New World wine. This is not uncommon for Portuguese wines. It only cost €4 or something like that in the airside duty free shop at Porto airport and for that price it is good value for money. But it is not very interesting: just a solid, decent quality wine.
What is of course annoying is that I am no longer permitted to take wine through security and then onto aircraft as hand luggage. I either have to put it into my checked luggage or simply buy it in airport shops after security. To put it in checked luggage I would have to pack it very carefully, and it is not worth the effort. And checked luggage is a hassle at the best of times. When traveling in Europe I generally don't bother with it at all. So if I take wine I just grab a couple of bottles in the airside duty free shop.
In Portugal, this is a great shame, because Portuguese wine has not been homogenised the way wine has in some other countries. The country is full of weird and wonderful wines that come from little villages that do things their own way. (Sometimes the resulting wines can be awful, but often they be good in very unique ways). You can buy the wine in the villages themselves, and you can buy it in little shops in the towns and cities. But not at the airport. Airport shops do blander wines.
Which is not to say that I am not enjoying what I am drinking now. I am, of course.
What is of course annoying is that I am no longer permitted to take wine through security and then onto aircraft as hand luggage. I either have to put it into my checked luggage or simply buy it in airport shops after security. To put it in checked luggage I would have to pack it very carefully, and it is not worth the effort. And checked luggage is a hassle at the best of times. When traveling in Europe I generally don't bother with it at all. So if I take wine I just grab a couple of bottles in the airside duty free shop.
In Portugal, this is a great shame, because Portuguese wine has not been homogenised the way wine has in some other countries. The country is full of weird and wonderful wines that come from little villages that do things their own way. (Sometimes the resulting wines can be awful, but often they be good in very unique ways). You can buy the wine in the villages themselves, and you can buy it in little shops in the towns and cities. But not at the airport. Airport shops do blander wines.
Which is not to say that I am not enjoying what I am drinking now. I am, of course.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Redirection
If anyone has an interest in listening to Patrick Crozier, Brian Micklethwait, Antoine Clarke and myself talking about the Rugby Union world cup, a link to a podcast of our doing this can be found here.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Flying south for the sun
I am in Porto, in Portugal. Yes, I come here a fair bit, which is simply because I like the place. It is particularly nice at this time of year. Yesterday there was fog at Stansted airport in London, which delayed my flight a few minutes. After that, we flew over cloud cover all the way south along the Atlantic coast of France, and across the Bay of Biscay. When we got to Galicia, though, we left the cloud behind, and it was beautiful weather. It has been lovely, sunny, blue sky weather in Porto all weekend. I think I might go to the beach.
However, first, an interesting story of globalisation.
When I first went to Hong Kong in 1987, and when I became fond of Dim Sum in Cantonese restaurants in general, I discovered that Dim Sum menus contain custard tarts just like that illustrated above. I found this a little odd: that kind of pastry is not a Chinese or Asian thing, and nor is custard. And although Hong Kong is English, they are not an English thing either. In my experience the Hong Kong chinese absolutely love their custard tarts, however. (There is particularly wonderful bakery in Kowloon City near the old Kai Tak airport that does superb tarts and is a Hong Kong institution, but they are made well throughout the city).
It wasn't of course until I got to Portugal and other Portuguese colonies like Mozambique that I figured out where this culinary delight came from. They are a Portuguese treat, and they are one of many fine things that you can buy in the Portuguese cake shops that exist throughout Portugal and the Portuguese speaking world. They got the Hong Kong from Portugual via Macau. Cool.
It is a shame, though, that the Portuguese did not send their coffee to the world in the same way. Portuguese coffee is superb. Chinese coffee, not so much. One can get Portuguese coffee in Mozambique, but it is not widespread. You can go to a lovely Portuguese style bakery in Mozambique and it will not have an expresso machine, whereas in Portugal such a thing is unthinkable. The reason for this is just that Mozambique is a poor country, of course. Espresso machines are expensive. As Mozambique gets richer, I am sure that things will improve in this regard. And at least they have the right coffee tradition to start with.
Update: It seems my theory is dubious. The egg tart that is so popular in Hong Kong appears to have evolved from English custard tarts directly, without necessarily receiving input from Portugal and Macau. On the other hand, Portuguese style tarts certainly are available in Macau and other parts of the far east.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The world is a remarkable place
I am sitting at an outdoor table on a hotel balcony in Triesenberg in Liechtenstein, looking down on the Rhine river (not much of a river this far into the Alps, but it has still carved quite a decent valley) and drinking excellent Austrian beer. The haze in the photograph is actual haze. It is not caused by the camera. If there is no haze in the photograph, then that presumably means it is caused by the beer. Tomorrow morning at 9am I shall be back at my desk in an office at Canary Wharf in London. It does amaze me that I can spend weekends like this. Weekends away like this can also be astonishingly inexpensive, too, although Switzerland is a little more expensive than Spain or Portugal. I love being at work on a Monday, and in the middle of the afternoon unexpectedly putting a statement like "I was sitting beside the Rhine yesterday, and a strang thing happened....".
When I am in places away from home, from time to time I see temptation and want to succumb. I see a sign showing bus fares to Calcutta or ferries to St Petersberg and think "I could just buy a ticket and see where I go". Of course, I never actually do this. Today, the temptation was simply seeing a sign on a motorway, telling me that "München, D" was a mere 250km away. I have never been to Munich. I could have given Alan a call, and could have been buying him a beer a couple of hours later.
Of course, the minor problem with that plan is that I have to be at Zurich airport by 9.10pm at the very latest. While I probably could have bought Alan a drink in Munich and made it back to Zurich by 9.10pm, it would not have left much time for anything else other than driving. As it is, I think I will briefly visit Feldkirch in Austria (this is a rare chance to visit four countries in one day, and then drive to St Gallen to have dinner and visit the famous cathedral and then drive back to Zurich.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
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