Little Reward

Travelling home during #ashtag

2010-04-19T02:28:00.000-07:00

Thinking about trying get home overland?

I just did and thought the world would be a richer place if I shared some thoughts about it :-)

1) Decide if you really need to get home now
This is the critical one. Getting home is going to:
- Cost alot
- Be stressful
- Be frustrating
- Test you physically and emotionally
- If you are in a group - test your friendship. My advice, split up into small, agile sub-groups of one or two if you can. If you can't, seriously consider staying put.

2) If you have decided to strike for home, prepare:
- Get information (e.g. European Rail Timetable, maps)
- Get communication (work out how to use mobile and 3G roaming)
- Charge up your phone (and laptop)
- Buy a couple of books - you _will_ be bored
- Get some cash
- Get food and water
- Make your baggage easy and quick to pick up and run with

3) Work out where the problems are going to be:
- Travel throttle points (e.g. The English Channel; Cologne-Brussels; Copenhagen-Hamburg)
- Accomodation near travel hubs

4) Plan it a step at a time:
- Don't book trains you aren't going to make - it just wastes money
- Pre-book hotels in a few potential destinations and cancel once you know where your going to get to
- Don't overstretch, arriving at a station in an unknown city at 2:00am without booked accomodation is a really bad idea

5) Choose accomodation wisely:
- Make it walking distance to the station (you'll probably do the trip a few times)
- Choose hotels with a good cancellation policy (e.g. 6pm local time)

6) Look at the options:
- Train, coach, hire car, boat, bike, taxi ...
- Do you _need_ to wait in a queue to buy a ticket, will the ticket machine not do the job
- Be flexible, you are probably not going to be able to get your ideal routing

7) Gather local contact numbers:
- The internet is great, but an international call to a domestic call centre will have much better quality information

8) Make decisions:
- Don't mess about. Arm yourself with as much information as possible, make a decision when you need to and stick with it (until you make another)
- Flexibility is the most important factor
- This can be really tricky if you are in a group

9) Talk to people:
- Travellers, Locals, Friends at home, Twitter
- Treat each piece of information as a piece of the puzzle, not everything you hear will be 100% correct

10) And finally ...
- Try to think differently, if one route is the obvious one, work out the possibility of trying another
- Use local trains that don't need a reservation (it might uncomfortable, but you are still getting home)
- Put effort into securing space on the throttle point journeys
- Reduce your stress, pre-book accomodation
- Enjoy it - it's an adventure

I left Stockholm on Friday at lunchtime and arrived in Brighton in time for a beer and a quiz on Sunday. Two and a half days travelling. I got lucky. The ticket to Copenhagen - lucky; from Copenhagen to Cologne - planning; not going to Cologne - judgement; Going via to Amsterdam - good call; Eurostar on Sunday - very lucky. It cost me just over EUR 1,000 all in (almost a third of which was one Eurostar ticket)

Special shout out to DSB (Danish railways) who, as early as Friday morning, decided to suspend reservation requirements and ensure that people got to/from Hamburg - even if they had to stand all the way. Compare and contrast to Eurostar, who didn't manage to even keep their booking system working and didn't allow people withour reservations (which they couldn't make, because the systems were rubbish) to travel, meaning that in the carriage I was in, 15% of the seats were empty.

I wish you all good luck.

Samsung 1630 W

2009-07-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was out shopping with the M-I-L to be the other day and we decided to buy her a printer.

The SAMSUNG ML-1630W looked the business. Cute, black, wireless, quiet and it doesn't look like a printer.

Great, we thought.

Yesterday, I took it round to her house to install it.

Things did not go well.

Firstly, I missed the "Quick setup" instructions, as they looked like a liner rather than anything useful. When I did finally discover them, they had nothing novel on them anyway. (Certainly nothing useful like - "Do you see that thing that looks like an Ethernet cable in the box - just be aware that it's actually a cross-over cable won't you")

Secondly, the supplied Ethernet cable is a Cross-Over cable. Useful. Of course, this took a long time to work out. (Look at page 8 of the booklet, under "Resetting Factory Default Values" - it's there)

Thirdly, there was no General User guide supplied in printed format - although there was a booklet about how to do advanced stuff like wireless network printing in the obligatory 27 languages.

Fourthly, as I did want to do the thing wireless, I tried to follow the instructions in the booklet. First thing to do is, and I quote, "... pressing and holding the Stop/Clear button of your machine as the LED display cycles through until it reaches RNC."

There are no buttons on the device at all. There is an on/off switch and there are a couple of catches to open paper and toner trays, but not a single button. As it turns out, there's a touch sensitive pad at the front right. This is the Stop/Clear button. You can tell this, because there's a circle with a triangle inside it embossed in the plastic. If you load the CD-ROM and navigate down three directories to find the manual as a PDF file, it is actually explained on page 1.4. More fool me.

Now, "as the LED display cycles". If you let the thing settle down (and it doesn't repeatedly reboot itself) then, if you leave your finger on the pad, it cycles through "RSD", "RDP", "RSI", "RER", "RNC" and then stops on a flashing "T". Letting your finger off the pad whilst one of the "R*" options is displayed means that the selected report will be printed (eventually). To confuse you, the display shows "00" when you let go. Maybe a minute later a bit of paper pops out and the display changes to "01".

RSD: Configuration Report
RDP: Marketing gack
RSI: Supplies Information Report
RER: Error Information Report
RNC: Network Configuration Report

So, we print a Network Configuration Report, so that we know the IP address to go to to get to the SyncThru Web page. This is where we can set the wireless settings.

During my abortive attempts to understand what "as the LED display cycles" actually meant, I tried leaving my finger on the Pad as it powered up. That did weird things. I don't recommend it.

So, I had a machine that was repeatedly re-booting itself. Very annoying. It was doing this disconnected, connected via USB and connected via Ethernet. Somehow I coaxed it back into stable life and tried again.

Now I got to the SyncThru page. "Network Settings" - "Wireless". Ooops, no "Wireless". Being thoroughly hacked off with the machine by now, I called Samsung. They made me read out the Model number from about 4 different places and then told me just to take it back as it was obviously broken.

So, A broken machine, that's fair enough, mistakes happen. But discovering this was really hampered by a non-intuitive user interface and an almost total lack of instructions. My guess was that somebody decided not to provide the basic user guide to save some pennies, but this meant that the thing was almost unusable. Why they printed the advanced booklet (which a techie would easily find on the CD anyway) which assumes that you understand the contents of the basic booklet (which isn't printed out) I do not know.

Is it a good printer. I don't know. But it has managed to annoy me enough to resurrect my blog.

Challengers

2007-08-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

As keen followers of my blog (yes, you) will know, I went on a Tall Ship across the Atlantic last year. It was an amazing experience and I wholly recommend it to anybody.

Anyway, it seems that the organisation that runs the ships, the Tall Ships Youth Trust, is making a loss and they are going to sell one of the ships and purchase 4 Global Challenger yachts.

There are a lot of comments about such a move on Facebook and, whilst I like the idea of 2 ships, I prefer the idea of the trust existing a little more.

As it happens, I was walking past Berthon marina in Lymington a couple of weeks ago and noticed the challenger boats laid up there. So, this afternoon, I popped down to have a closer look.

I got talking to a chap who was working on one of the boats (plain livery, used to be 'BP Explorer') who told me that it and 'Spirit of Sark' were due to be ready by the end of September and 'Save the Children' and 'Pindar' by the end of November.

I took some pictures of all four (and the other 5 they had there too)

Let's hope that they are as enjoyable to use as the Tall Ship that the Trust need to sell.

BP Explorer (as was)

Spirit of Sark

Save the Children

Pindar

Short lived

2007-01-22T02:45:00.000-08:00

So, Little Reward has been vetoed. What you need to do is go to Latin Reward

For the technical, the RSS feed is at http://latinreward.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Tara a bit

Bloggin' Virgin

2007-01-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Ohhh I say I've been dragged into this technology thing by the scruff of my neck but at least it's a good way of keeping my fancy London and Brighton friends updated with what's going on.

The count down has started 5 days to go !!

That fancy London

2007-01-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

After a tearful farewell to Warwick, Leamington and the Smart car. I took a train to that fancy London to meet Trudi and her fancy London friends.

A lovely meal at a tapas bar (with a jar or three of Sangria) and back to Chez Emma (sans Emma) for a little R&R.

So far Sunday has been IT support day. Hopefully the computer will carry on working until after I leave the country :-)

Trudi is "helping" - bless.

Rejuvinated

2007-01-20T02:43:00.000-08:00

So, I'm off on another trip and so

Little Reward

needs to be re-started.

This is my last morning in my old house - this time next week I will be in Belize. At the start of a six month Latin American odyssey (at least, that's the plan).

Busy, busy, busy

Back Home

2005-06-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Well, what fun. Three trips in one.

Anyway, turns out that I wasn't wrong about the Ladybird book with a picture of the Drive-Thru tree. However, the one in the picture in the Ladybird book is the Wawona tree, which has now fallen down.

The Ladybird book was written in 1959. The tree fell down in 1970. There is another drive-thru tree in the Mariposa grove (The California Tree) which you can't drive through any more.

2005-06-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn Bridge

2005-06-01T00:24:00.000-07:00

A road, in the Mojave desert. Hot.

2005-05-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

Mono lake and its wierd limestone Tufas. Eerie.

2005-05-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

It's a ghost town. Called Bodie. Am now looking for Doyle.

2005-05-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

Not only does Tom have a place (see below), but he has a mountain all to himself too.

2005-05-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

Tom has his own place (not in Yosemite). Apparently, he's too lazy to write the letter 'W'. (or, maybe he missed off a leading apostrophe and is trying to point out that it isn't a park)

2005-05-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

Some big trees, in Yosemite.

2005-05-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

A big drop, in Yosemite

2005-05-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

Sunny snow, in Yosemite

2005-05-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Some big rocks and a big waterfall, in Yosemite.

2005-05-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

Another big waterfall, in Yosemite.

2005-05-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

A big rock, in Yosemite.

2005-05-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

A big waterfall, in Yosemite.

2005-05-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

A verandah, suitable for drinking cocktails on, in Yosemite

2005-05-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here lies Cutie

2005-05-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

A Big Bridge, which I walked across

A Travesty

2005-05-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

Dirty, Cheating Southern Wankers.

Normal service will be resumed, after I've had some sleep.

2005-05-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Wild West Hotel - Mendocino CA

2005-05-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

It's a tree. You can drive through it. (I did). It's the Drive-Thru Tree.

2005-05-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

Just gotta dig them Monkeys

2005-05-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

You Knows It

2005-05-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

Oregon Pacific Coastline

2005-05-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

Heceta Head Lighthouse and B&B. through the morning mists

2005-05-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

Pretty, shiny. bright building - in Seattle

2005-05-20T07:36:00.001-07:00

And now, a picture with Hello

2005-05-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

Playing with Hello

Wednesday 18th May - Bandon to Mendocino

2005-05-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

Woke up early, a little worse for wear, to bright sunshine. It didn't last.

Another excellent breakfast (thanks, Shirley). Was introduced to Stumpy and Baby (two pampered Seagulls). Fellow breakfasters were:

A couple on their honeymoon (ahhh)
A couple: him cycling from Arcadia to San Francisco - her driving the Pick-up with his stuff in it.

Saw a mole-type animal scurrying across the road.

Visited and drove through the Drive Thru Tree. I have a recollection of a picture of this tree in one of my Ladybird books. Will need to check when I get home.

CA Route 1 is even more spectacular than the Route 101 I took through Oregon. It's really pretty. Not sure how nice it would be in high-season though. Saw a deer whilst wending up and down the hill at the start.

Picked up a hitch-hiker and took him about 30 miles, as far as Mendocino. Dropped him off on the highway and went to the Mendocino Hotel. It was just like a John Wayne film.

Had some "Scrimshaw" beer (from Fort Bragg - 15 miles back up the coast. "Storybook town" was my passenger's comment as we passed through.)

Had a rather frustrating conversation with an Amercian woman who seemed to believe the IRA as freedom-fighters shit they get fed over here. Eventually agreed to disagree, her other half seemed to understand what was going on though. Still too annoyed to think about that conversation just now.

Tuesday 17th May - Heceta Head to Bandon

2005-05-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

At 8:30 propmt, breakfast was started. 7 courses. What can I remember?

Fresh Fruit
Crabcake
Sorbet
Spinach and cheese quiche thing (and sausage)
Almond Cake thing
Apple, cheese and Pancetta

All in all, pretty fantastic. It took 1 1/2 hours and the food, company and conversation were superb.

More spectacular coast-line. Shame that the sun was still hiding.

After a tip-off by breakfast companions - did a slight side-tour in Reedport to see Elk grazing on the wetlands. Which was cool.

Arrived in Bandon, seemed pleasant enough, so booked into another B&B.

Found WiFi in a Coffee Shop (Sunday's entry was posted from the Palm Pilot in the shop - Caffeine O/D)

stopped in a pub for a quiet half. Left 5 hours later after:

Playing Keno (once)
Drinking "Red ~ Beer" (Bud and Tomato Juice) - a local delicacy
Losing at pool
Chatting to some Caddies from the new Golf Course.

Rolled back to the B&B and fell sound asleep. Apparently it was very windy.

Monday 16th May - Seaside to Heceta Head

2005-05-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

Did alot of driving along a pretty spectacular coast.

Arrived at Heceta lighthouse at about 2:30 and was shown to a lovely room with an amazing view over the Pacific ocean.

Went up to the lighthouse, tour was actually quite poor. I knew more about lighthouses than the guide. But, I guess I have been to the National lighthouse museum in Cornwall, and I've been on a yacht, plying a night passage past the Needles.

A pleasant chat in the Evening and, to bed.

Sunday 15th May 2005- Seattle to Seaside

2005-05-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

Picked up the hire car in Seattle. It's a V6 monster. Headed south towards Oregon but got side-tracked into a Fry's.
Did the scenic Mt Ranier and Mt St Helens bit. Clouds are not all that picturesque.
Headed over the Columbia river near Astoria and hit the 101 down the coast. Stopped in a regulation Motel in "Seaside".

Saturday 14th May - Seattle - Evening

2005-05-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

More wine tasting. Stayed off the Red this time.

Wander towards the ball-park (another game on tonight) visiting empty, cavernous pubs which were all about to be filled to the gunnels with Baseball fans, apparently.

Retired early - again.

PSP - first impressions

2005-05-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

Just got a PSP (they're tricky to track down). Bought one game with it - Lumines. First impressions:

It looks much much nicer than the DS
It has _lots_ of buttons, knobs and lights.
The screen is lovely
The analogue controller looks a bit fiddly to me
Why the white iPod-esque ear buds. Is white the international colour for "Mug me please?"
Lumines is bizarre - not sure I'll be getting on too well with that one.
Aaargh - more f****ing media. Memory Stick (spit) Duo (spit spit).

All in all, looks prettier that the DS, but the games will need to make me want to play it. WarioWare, Feel the Magic and BomberMan will be hard to beat. And by sticking to the bloody Memory Stick, they ensure it's highly unlikely I'll be using it as an MP3 or MPEG player. Ho Hum

Saturday 14th May - Seattle - Morning

2005-05-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

Up early again. Wandered around a bit to see if I could find the Hertz Office. Seattle is hilly.

Appalling breakfast near the Hertz office, then a stroll down to the Pier to get a ferry across the Mersey^W Puget sound.

The sun came out for Bainbridge island and another good stroll was had. Arriving back at the ferry terminal, completely by accident, just as the ferry was leaving.

Bought another book. So far I've read

Iain Banks - Dead Air (not one of his best IMHO)
Ian Rankin - Rebus #15 (These are getting worse, which is a shame)

So, I bought "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell - let's see how I get on with that.

Back to the hotel via Chinatown (or, The International Quarter, as is appears to be dubbed now) to try and find a PSP shop. Duly Found. Back to the hotel (the hilly way - again) clutching the new purchase in my sticky mitts.

Friday 13th (oops) May - Seattle - Planning

2005-05-14T04:50:00.001-07:00

I've booked a room here for Monday night. It looks really cool. I want to know what a seven course Gourmet Breakfast is.

Time will tell.

Friday 13th (oops) May - Seattle - Afternoon/Evening

2005-05-14T04:34:00.001-07:00

Back to the hotel for a siesta.

One of the books I bought earlier was a Dictionary of Symbols, which is fascinating, if a little biased to certain types of symbols.

In this hotel, they organise wine tasting for an hour each day from 5 to 6. I turned up in the, rather compact, lobby to find a couple of well dressed folks handing out small glasses of wine. I tried one white and four reds. I don't drink red wine as a rule and found it quite hard telling the difference between them. Ensconsed in a corner, however, it was a perfect spot for some serious people-watching.

A visit to the front desk to enquire where it was safe to wander around in town told me that Pioneer Square was not so good, as it was full of 'Young People' who like to party, and some homeless folks. As that's right next to the stadium, where the local team were playing the Red Sox (baseball), I duly went anyway.

Busy bars, lots of folks walking with a single purpose towards the stadium. Some down-n-outs in the square itself. All pretty standard stuff.

Eschewing the many sports bars, I went back to the hotel for dinner and an early night. I know I promised; but the Sweet Potato Gnocchi was really worth a mention.

Friday 13th (oops) May - Seattle - Morning

2005-05-14T04:34:00.000-07:00

Grrr, bugger. Post lost by Blogger UI.

Summary:

Bookshop
Walk
Space Needle
Ride the Duck
EMP
Monorail
Microbrewery

Friday 13th (oops) May - Seattle - Breakfast

2005-05-13T19:40:00.000-07:00

Woke at 5:30am. Which is really 1:30pm, which is late - even for me. Went downstairs for tea (which I was promised at check-in: "Free tea and coffee in the lobby from 5:30").

Now, usually I've got my head around the fact that I'm never going to get a good cup of tea once I've got on a plane, until I'm back at home again (actually, that's not true: there's a great place for tea in Boston (Chez Tim) - but you get the picture). So, why oh why did I think to myself as I got in the lift (I've given up looking for the stairs in American hotels) "Ooh goody - I could really do with a nice cup of tea".

A flask of Hot (whatever use that might be) water.
Assorted novelty tea bags (most of which weren't even tea. The bloody S.Africans seem to be doing a pretty good job of trying to export that Roibos (?sp) muck to anywhere without taste buds.)
Cream - no milk.

I was crushed.

Went around the corner for a "Full Breakfast" with orange juice.

(I promise this will not turn into a John-style "What I ate across America" blog - probably)

Thursday 12th May (ick) - Travelling Day

2005-05-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

Taxi was a bit late, but that's no problem, I'd left plenty of time for it to be so. Pleasant enough trip to BHX. No near chunders and no long stories of speeding fines from the taxi driver.

He did feel the need to try to engage me in conversation. The highlight of which was his joke. I repeat it here solely for historical record:


2 dyslexics having a conversation:
1st dyslexic: "Can you smell gas?"
2nd dyslexic: "I can't even smell my own name"

Oh, how I chortled.

Birmingham to Newark was uneventful, if a bit bumpy towards the end. It's always nice to have three seats on a long trip.

In Newark Airport I was chatting to a chap from Hasbro who had something to do with Magic: The Gathering. No freebies though - sorry Gary.

The flight from Newark to Seattle was rammed full. Not the most comfortable place in the world - never mind. Taxi to Seattle centre and straight to bed at the hotel

Important things first

2005-05-13T19:18:00.000-07:00

First thing to do on Wednesday evening was to finish Paper Mario 2.

Then I started to pack. I am not capable of travelling light. When your minimum requirements include a Bose Sounddock for the iPod, you can see where this is headed.

Anyway, due to the need to pack a Dinner Jacket (the Hotel we are going to in Yosemite serves cocktails on the verandah) I have two bags. Packing is easier with more space. Carrying them isn't.

Finally got to bed at 4am (also had a need to get as up to date as possible on TiVO shows I might come across in the US).