iris

The security at Heathrow had adjusted to the different circumstances. The Terminal 1 drop off area sported a large marquee across the first two car lanes as a pre-departure holding area. People were being called into the terminal three hours before departure time. I wasn't that early, so I was able to go directly to check-in. I'd already got an e-ticket and done online check-in so I just needed to drop off my bag.

I was then given a see-through bag for my car keys, phone and other electronica before my transit through the security scanners. My queue only had about 20 people ahead of me and didn't take very long. I guess it took me less than twenty minutes to get from the outside of the terminal to be fully checked in and airside. Probably faster than a normal day.

Then over two hours to wait airside. I spotted the desk for 'iris' the biometric passport system. Only one person in the line. So I wandered over and within about ten minutes I'd been scanned so that I can now use the high speed immigration lanes which use iris scanning recognition instead of passport control. Great. Now I have a way to bypass another part of the airport process.

air lines

I'm supposed to be flying to Italy on Tuesday for a few days of work. So I've been keeping half an ear to the various reports about London Heathrow's flights. According to Radio 4, around 30% of flights have been cancelled today and about 20 flights cancelled from London Gatwick.

I'm already used to the idea that I'll be taking a very small carry-on bag with just passport and keys and that everything else has to go into the hold (laptop, mobile phone and other electronic paraphernalia). So this time I shall be considering how to travel hyper-light for the visit.

Meanwhile, UK news is spending more time at the weekend explaining the basis of the alleged terrorist plot which was to use binary chemical weapons smuggled in drink containers or similar to disable planes over the Atlantic or US mainland. According to newspapers, a remote detonator could be created using modest technology from, say, a mobile phone, car security key blipper or similar. There seem to be two theories of what such a weapon would comprise: one route says explosive and the other says lethal gas. Spend ten minutes in google and you can form your own opinions.

In the meantime, some television commercials just won't survive this now...

podcast

Something of an experimental post.

I was over at Nat's and noticed the whizzy way to drop a podcast straight into iTunes, so I thought I'd have a go. Here's the Christina Nott tunes we uploaded to last.fm a few days ago, now thoughtfully provided as a podcast which is 'yours to keep'.

Hopefully just clicking here will quietly beam the whole podcast across into iTunes, where it can be played for general amusement. The file is only 10Mb, but contains about 8 tracks of Christina, pretty much the same set as loaded to last.fm.

we are the web

I've been casually tracking some of the commentary about internet commercial interest over the last few months. The web is a great social exchange as well as changing a lot of global economics. Case in point today when a small well-travelled bag of T shirts arrived at my home from threadless in Chicago after an online order a few days ago.

I've mentioned the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) before as a way to consider privacy issues related to the internet and other useful sources are wearetheweb.org as a vector to discussions (as well as to a daft video) and the recent Vint Cerf letter to US congress.

The point is to ensure that now TCP/IP and WWW have become liberating communications vehicles for global reach, that electronic roadblocks and filter lanes are not then imposed by the service providers.

iBox

Those mac vc PC commercials seem to be everywhere and nowadays there seem to be whole websites dedicated to collecting the rip-offs.

see through

I finished in Stockholm early enough to catch the last plane back on Wednesday and we zoomed back landing 20 minutes early at about 22:00. The thing was, we parked at a domestic terminal and although we had a jetway to walk off the plane, we were not allowed to use it because we would have missed immigration.

The buses to take us to the International gates took about 15 minutes to arrive and we had to de-plane from the back stairs.

A few mutters from the passengers, but this was nothing compared with the next day, when just about every flight was cancelled because of the security alert.

I'm not flying again until next week; but it looks as if it will be with no hand luggage except a carry-on see-through bag.

Sweden

A quick trip to Sweden today; and I'm staying in a hotel with a view of a bricked up window. But then I looked up into the sky, and behold, a hot air balloon. Admittedly it says Nokia (Finnish) rather than Ericsson (Swedish) but at least it is showing a Nordic perspective!

And if you look closely, you can see the people out for an aerial ride!

hot

A technical post today. My PC tower has been making a lot of extra noises lately. I use it for some music editing and some video tasks, via some special hardware.

I suspect there is something wrong with the fans which are supposed to keep it cool. As such, it is protesting at the current heat and maybe expecting a new cooling system.

My thoughts are that it doth protest too much.

Now I've seen the new Mac Pro, which has two 64 bit intel Xeon Core 2 processors and 1.33Ghz frontside bus delivering 21Gb/sec and up to 16Gb of memory, then it starts to jeopardise the need to replace the PC with another PC, when a Mac could happily run the remaining PC applications as subtasks.

In the short term, I'll buy some new PC fans for about £12, but medium term, I shall start playing with the autoconfigurator across on apple.com.

Tag: PC, apple, Mac Pro, intel, quad, terabyte

deer bike

As I was out cycling again in the afternoon, I thought it would be amusing to publish another bicycle picture, this time with fat tyres, as used when I was bumping about through the woodland along by the New Forest Ponies and a few more red deer.

OK, here's a picture of one of the deer, complete with mini antlers...


Tag: bicycle, mtb, deer

ride

An early start today, out in the nearby lanes on my bicycle with the thin tyres, before most people are up and about.

The main accompaniment today has been startled birds, rabbits and a few red deer. Another hour and the local world will be awake and most of the wildlife by the sides of the lanes will be back in hiding.

I estimate I covered about 15 miles this morning, which is enough to see some quite varied countryside and still to be back for the rest of the day by about 07:30.

Tag: bike, bicycle, hybrid road bike

montaditos

Back in England, I'd only been home for around 30 minutes when the doorbell rang with a visitor. Not even time to swap clothes from travel.


By this evening I was more or less de-jet lagged and was out for friendly sangria and tapas at nearby La Tasca. Bring on the patatas bravas and the brocheta di pollo!

Next week, Sweden, but not until Tuesday.

childrens' shoes

Saturday, in London, there will be a protest about the current war in the Middle East by leaving childrens' shoes outside Tony Blair's place. I note that Blair is staying around instead of vacationing in order to be involved in ceasefire negotiations.

This war started asymmetrically, after the capture of two soldiers leading to a breathtakingly fast and disproportionate response. The underlying long term pressures on the small nation of Israel surrounded by Arab states become part of a rationale for escalated actions of the Israeli warplanes.

I don’t want to take sides; I have visited (and worked in) both areas and have friends in both areas. This makes it all seem close. But I do want to comment that we now seem to have relatively indiscriminate missiling and bombing of civilian populations in both territories.

The rest of the world is aghast but only responding quite slowly whilst the attrition clicks onward; Rice has made visits and the Bush machine is making “Hezbollah equals Iran” type noises in the background.

I am concerned that we are actually watching the ‘Iran proxy’ war as a precursor to a switch to another conflict. If America’s Defense Intelligence Agency really have an Office of Special Plans and a covert “lets do Iran/Syria” blueprint, then this is the sequencing for when it would be played as part of a long term regime change in Iran and a border defence for Israel.

It’s a reasonable assumption that information has leaked between the various players in each of the main countries involved. The Middle East works a lot on connections and the trade of information would probably be fair game. It’s also a reasonable bet that dissident support is receiving offshore funding in some of the targeted territories.

And for Iran, lets look. Condoleeza is on recent record saying "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”

Bush's ambassador to the United Nations is saying the U.N. “must be made aware that if it (Iran) continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences." Both pre conflict type statements.

So Blair’s vacation change could be significant; stop it; delay it or let the next escalated war play occur. We will know soon enough.