Carmen

Wednesday was a somewhat intense day for me with work related matters, but we had a hard cut-off in the evening in order to take a visit to a nearby town. I say nearby, but it was actually around an hour and a half away. Verona - which is a very old town and has a spectacular collusseum in the centre. We'd managed to get some tickets to visit this special place and to see the opera Carmen, performed in the open, in the collusseum.

On the way, I'd briefly read a few notes about the cast, and it sounded as if there were about five or six main players in the opera. Not so, on the stage in Verona, I estimate there were 130 people on stage for some parts, plus a 40 piece orchestra. The Italians know how to throw an opera.

The main show started at around 21:00 and at midnight we were on Act Three. Then there was another 20 minute interval, during which I briefly left the collusseum to get some lemon sorbet. Then back for the final act.

A well staged and well performed show; we walked back to our transport at around one thirty in the morning, happy - if sleepy, before our long drive back to the hotel.

Bella Italia

The flight to Milan was only delayed within acceptable norms and the transit to the waiting car was pretty fast, considering that I'd had checked baggage. I've not really got any idea where I travelled to except it was along an Autostrada and then through some twisty lanes to a rather spectacular spa hotel.

The main business was due to start the next day and as I checked in I received a discreet invitation for aperitifs on the balcony bar at 20:00. Oops, it was already 20:05, so I realised I'd better get moving. I seem to find that when I'm away like this there is never really any time.

Anyway, the hotel room was rather good with its own balcony, jaccuzzi and so on and by the time I found the others, they were already tucking into the local Italian equivalent of champagne. No idea what it was called, but it sure tasted good.

The view from our vantage point was right across the valley and to some decent looking hills opposite. Truly spectacular. When I can get the right connector for my phone I'll post a picture or two, but for now, you'll have to make do a snap of part of my room.

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