“A little later, as she sat peacefully sewing, Adam came in from the yard. He wore, as a
protection from the rain, a hat which had lost—in who knows what dim hintermath of time—the
usual attributes of shape, colour, and size, and those more subtle race-memory associations which
identify hats as hats, and now resembled some obscure natural growth, some moss or sponge or
fungus, which had attached itself to a host.”
The world of patents is a scary place…
Interesting!
In the Claims: “the agent’s control of the customer’s browser may be relinquished at 216” But it might not be!! Surely the customer should have the final say?! I suspect this will start to be used in the same way that the lady helps me though my self-service checkout procedure at the supermarket. Online shopping is more likely to be completed if the client can be lead and trained through the process. On the other hand, this latest wave of bogus callers would _love_ the opportunity to run away with your browser. “Your computer needs a specialist security audit – you’ve got a virus! Please let me take a free look”. >click< “Yes, it’s completely broken (now). Pay up…” J. On 12/04/11 15:12, George Cook wrote:This is interesting, and frightening, in equal measure…
-- James Valentine 07971 287041 http://jdv.me.uk "There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those who mistake it for binary."
Important changes to Congestion Charging
They should have done this a long time ago, rather than raking in the fine money in the expectation that drivers would pay on more occasions than the cameras would pick them up.
I’m also making this post because I would love to see how Posterous treats attached e-mails. I bet it just dumps them…
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Power on the go- luxury coaches should have it.
During my trip in South America, i’ve been taking advantage of the
very good coach companies, travelling in the highest class I can,
which normally affords extra leg room and a flatter bed, but sometimes
also a meal or two with a glass of bubbly. This post has been written
on a coach with on-board wifi. I even managed a brief Skype call,
before the few internet users on this bus maxed out the upstream
bandwidth – not suprising, as I suppose that a single GSM modem is
serving us all. The access point disappears from time to time, but my
phone reconnects pretty quickly and my web sessions don’t seem to get
lost.
For starters, my laptop is in the hold, but even if I had it here, in
a little over an hour the batter would be flat. Why, when a coach’s
engine must be generating excess power can power sockets be made
available? An ordinary laptop only pulls down 40 amps or so, so you
wouldn’t need a really big inverter. If they provided even only 120V
or something, that would still slowly charge a laptop or mobile and
would encourage me to bring my laptop on board. Yes, there’s a cost to
such a service, but if it were offered, I’d be prepared to pay a
premium on my ticket. I’m normally travelling alone, so medium to long
coach journeys would let me get some work done, even if I had no
internet connection.
And don’t just say ‘buy a netbook’. My efficiency on a small screen
and keyboard would plummet. I certainly won’t tell you how long it
took to type this short post on my mobile!
Trip to Montevideo
Just took the ferry to Colonia in Uruguay. Went First Class which was
more spacious. I was the only backpacker… Now an alright coach to
Montevideo.
More thoughts on international travel
I can see how this travelling can become addictive and “sufferers” can end up on the road for months or even years. I like to break things down. There are four states of being I’ve identified in myself as the “working from abroad travelling test subject”. Booking, planning, sleeping and “being a tourist” come under one state. Working and finding places to work is the second. Socialising, “finding people”, eating, drinking is an important third. The forth is more nebulous. It is the “local/global living” aspect of travelling and requires new skills. Remembering the names of places, filing recommendations for hostels and towns. Keeping in mind where your new friends are and where they will be in two days when you plan to meet up again. Doing all the things manually that you normally do on your mobile at home – mapping, searching, choosing. Having an “ear to the ground”. All this seems to hone my senses, and yes, even my sense of survival, which I had not had reason to discover before. Every day I can feel myself getting better. Better at learning, planning, communicating. Better at assessing restaurants from the outside, the clientèle and the menu, reading timetables.
I’ve been posting far less often. That’s due to more infrequent internet access, but actually being on coaches and in some hotels makes using the net at reasonable cost impossible. Hostels have been my best bet so far. Here’s where my route has taken me: – Rio, then by Costa Verde coach to– Angra dos Reis, then by catamaran to
– Ilha Grande, then by ferry back to Angra and an old, Colitur bus to
– Paraty, then by pretty nice Reunidas coach to
– Sao Paulo, then by great Pluma coach to
– Foz do Iguassu (and the Falls, of course), then leaving Brazil by bus to nearby
– Puerte Iguassu in Argentina, then by very nice, but cold Crucero del Norte coach (with dinner and bubbly) to Buenos Aires That’s a lot of movements. I’m considering not making many more. If I were to catch up with Anna, I would have to fly at considerable cost down to Patagonia. I’m not anxious to tick all the tourist boxes on this trip. One day soon when I’m wealthier and have more time, I will certainly take my travels here further. As it is, I might take a couple of nights away from BA in Montivideo, taking the slow boat, I think. The purpose of this trip was experimentation. The aim was to be online often enough to keep work projects moving, but the other aim was to see if Kohera could stay integrated without me in the middle all the time. And it can. This trip heralds a new development of my business, where I learn to focus on what I am good at, and learn to spot the talent in others for those things I should not be doing.
Finding somewhere private to work – failure number 1
As most of you know, the universe tends to silently rearrange itself in my favour. For example, I walked into a hostel in Paraty today without having booked. I was told it was full, but then the spheres turned and suddenly someone remembered that they’d had a no-show that morning and there was bed for me.
But on rare occasions I’m clearly not completely in sync with the world at large. Picture the scene: Carnaval weekend in Rio. I need to work for a client all day in a quiet environment on the Monday so that I can have a conference call, keeping UK hours (so that’s a 0600 start for a 0900 start in the UK). My rationale was this – the major hotels in Copacabana will have empty business suites, because everyone staying will be there for the Carnaval and will have no interest in working at all. For a couple of hundred Reais I can have the place to myself. It was not to be. Do not underestimate the rigidity of hotel booking and payment systems, the inability of a hotel manager to cut a deal, the absurdity of simple requests being misinterpreted, the maddening inconsistency of hotel staff training. On Sunday evening I walked the length of the Copacabana front. I was reasonably smartly-dressed: cream trousers and a shirt. I was there in part to enjoy the blocos – street parties which usually follow a noisy truck piled with speakers and singers. I still take a delightful, voyeuristic joy in being the only sober person at a party, and blocos are great for people-watching and dancing, neither of which depends on drunkenness (but try telling the locals on the ultimate party weekend of the year). But I had a duality of purpose – I visited every hotel and asked a simple question – could I turn up quite early tomorrow morning and take an office for six hours, and, if so, what would I be charged? The pricing ranged from convoluted to something I’d call gouging. I was offered, variously– A high price for an office, not including wifi charged by the minute.
– A price for everything for the day, which was simply exorbitant, as it included a 10% charge and a 5% charge for various “services” which we all agreed that I wouldn’t need.
– A price per hour which was pretty high (110 Reais/hour) not including a fixed charge for the wifi
– A showing of the room (which I approved) and the promise of a call-back which never came
– Being told that without a room number they could do nothing for me – I had to be a resident of the hotel
– Being told that, when someone left the fully-booked hotel that I could have their room number
– Told that I could use any public area of the hotel, even the restaurant and pay for the wifi by the minute.
– nothing – in the case of the Palace, the meeting rooms were used for the Masquerade ball and were still full of junk. One hotel had even “run out of key cards” so couldn’t give me access to the suite. Another relied on a 3rd party company to run the business suite and they had all gone home. What was clear to me is that all of these office suites and meeting rooms would have been empty over Carnaval, but that there is no flexibility in Brazilian hospitality culture. Why couldn’t they just run my card through, take, say 200, 300 or 400 Reais, give me all-inclusive internet and make a note for the accounts? But I got one offer I couldn’t refuse – The Windsor Plaza understood my needs. At 2200 I struck the deal. As a non-resident, for 25 Centavos per minute I could use the internet, and I could find any quiet place in the whole hotel. They said I could have a table in the restaurant for the day. I was delighted. Considering that I’d been quoted prices in the region of 900 Reais, £50 on wifi seemed like a bargain, and the plus-point of it being so expensive would be that few residents would pay the extra, keeping more precious bandwidth for me. I promised to return in the morning. They promised to welcome me with open arms. So, at 0545 I rose, got online and started the meeting although no one wanted to brief me at that point. At 0800 I had breakfast and left for the short, hot, wet walk to the Plaza. When I got there, a different guy refused me completely. No, I had been given wrong information. The internet was only for the use of residents. No, they didn’t want my money. No, they couldn’t bill such things without having a room number to put it against. So I walked back to my very quiet hostel and used the free wifi there. What I’ve learned: – hotels have no interest in business, unless you’re a resident. The attraction of several hundred Reais is lessened when something out-of-the-ordinary is required.
– Keep your phone on you when trying to track down places to work as it is handy to use to scan for wifi. Wireless access points are often named after the establishment – there’s no point in asking somewhere where no internet is available. Another advantage is that you might stumble across a free connection – the whole of Copacabana’s front is supposed to have wifi, but I saw no evidence of it.