Brasil I

Couple of days in Brazil and the world looks different already. Although the Brazilian passengers on the TAM flight from Paris to Guarulhos seemed to be Europeanised to a worrying level, the arrival was the better. After much complaining because we also had a kid on the plane, the welcome in Sao Paulo was as ever. People smiling at you, enjoying when your kid is trawling along on a suitcase cow. And the fact that they have a restaurant called estação Eisenbahn is just great.

Airport staff are also efficient to a certain extent. They do phone round and try to get everything right, unlike their lazy counterparts in most of Europe. When we arrived in BH, we were 2 suitcases short due to a cockup by TAM, but again, the staff were great and very helpful. Immigration was not as much of a pain as it used to be. But it maybe down to a more relaxed atmosphere at Confins. And the fact that it was Xmas day.

The weather was very Scottish. Rainy, low clouds and some fog. But just a couple of degrees warmer. It was not too hot, so no shock in store. And off to the Hotel we went. Taxi driver as chatty as ever, crashed on the roads did not decrease from last time, kids running across dual carriageways in huge numbers still the norm, the holes in the roads have not diminished and the normal liquid hickups of our wonderful boy did not disappear, it just gurgled the other way on the other side of the equator.

We arrived, the family well and numerous as ever, was great to see them all. The beer started flowing pretty soon. And the facilities of the Hotel had to be explored. A swimming pool where cameras were the norm, playgrounds without all the HSE crap, kids jumping into the pools from all sides without some scared shits member of staff whistling hysterically like in Waterworld Leith. No matter how old the kid, they had access to all parts of the pools. In the UK half the visitors of the pool would be in jail by now for breaking numerous ridiculous laws. It was really good to see that people can actually be a bit more relaxed. I even don't get arrested here by talking other kids.

Also loads of animals to play with. Not much of a supervision except for the parents. Again no HSE staff hiding behind the trees or filming from all sides (I wonder how many of those CCTV films end up on dubious networks by those nice coppers who are supposed to protect you).

Sometimes I really wonder why the hell I spend much more time in Scotland. Where I work my arse off without getting anywhere. Where the weather is normally shite and the people have been made total neurotics by the state and the media who constantly tell them how bad everyone is. Off to the fridge to get the next can of beer. Sharif don't like it... Career opportunites, straight to hell.

Goes down well. Even found time to go to the gym and have a long swim. And I love the buffet. Can't get enough of the couve and meat. And the fact that Daniel is not shy to drink vast amounts of beer is very welcome. It is a good life after all. The graft drifts us apart, the grub and the relaxation does the opposite. Where do we find the best balance?

I love the view from the hotel. The views. Hills whereever we see. Some round, some triangular, all with a fair amount of forest. And flooded in rain every now and then. Rain that comes down from the sky. It really chucks it down. And it is still warm. It is like looking at these old perspectives where cut out mountains were stacked on top of each other to create a 3D view.

Good. let's see what happens next. Guess attacking the cachaça I got from Daniel. Maybe build a little submarine. They built one with Russian bubble technology now that does some 180km/h under water. Maybe I find an equivalent in the glass.

Integrating PHP in Apache in Plain English

I love the idea of open source (OS) software. And I am a keen promoter of it. But since my time is very restricted due to workload, I find it often very frustrating to install OS software. Sometimes I think the programmers and providers of the software tick along the motto: It was hard for us to program, so we make it hard for you to install and use.

However, some providers have come up with the idea of bundling loads of software together and install it either in one go or they use stack builders to add or update software (such as Postgres or osgeo with osgeo4w). While I find this idea commendable, I found that I ended up with several instances of Apache servers on my test machine. Which I find a bit over the top. So I had to start building the blocks by myself. Which was not always easy. As maybe other people do not either.

So I want to ease the pain of some other lay OS products users by giving some simple step by step guidance of how to integrate PHP 5.3.0 with Apache. 

Note: I assume that Apache is installed and running. Installing Apache is straight forward, use this link to download it. Make sure you get the latest stable version.

The environment I installed this combination of Apache and PHP 5.3.0 is Windows XP SP3 and Microsoft Server 2003 SE SP2.

So here's a step by step guide:

#	Description	Keywords
1	Download the zip Version of PHP on download site above. Note: If you are using PHP with Apache 1 or Apache 2 from apache.org you need to use the VC6 versions of PHP. The direct link to the download is: http://windows.php.net/downloads/releases/php-5.3.0-Win32-VC6-x86.zip	Download
2	Extract the contents of the zip file into a new folder C:\PHP	Install
3	Open the file C:\PHP\php.ini-production and save it as php.ini in the same directory	php.ini
4	In php.ini, find short_open_tag = Off and set it to short_open_tag = On, find magic_quotes_gpc = Off and set it On, find ;session.save_path = /tmp unquote it (remove ;) and set it to session.save_path = "C:\temp,save and exit php.ini	php.ini
5	Open C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.confand add the following line after all the LoadModule statements: LoadModule php5_module "c:/php/php5apache2_2.dll"	httpd.conf
6	Search for "AddType" in the file, and add the following line after the last "AddType" statement. Do this no matter which version of Apache you are using. For Apache 2.2.x, you can find the "AddType" lines in the  section. Add the line just before the closing for that section. AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AddType application/x-httpd-php .phtml	httpd.conf
7	To indicate the location of your PHP ini file. Add the following line to the end of your httpd.conf file.   PHPIniDir "c:/php" This ensures that the correct database drivers are found. This is especially important with Postgres!	httpd.conf
8	As an alternative, the php.ini could be included in the environment variable PATH: „C:\PHP”	PATH
9	To get Postgres working with PHP, verify that the php_pgsql.dll file sits in the extension directory of PHP (in my case C:\PHP\ext). In the php.ini file, uncomment the extensions directory path and add the path where the extensions are located (in my case extension_dir = "C:\PHP\ext") and finally uncomment the extensions in the windows extensions section (extension=php_pgsql.dll)	PG connection

Relevant websites:

Integrating PHP 5.3.0 in Apache: http://www.thesitewizard.com/php/install-php-5-apache-windows.shtml"

Downloading PHP: http://windows.php.net/download/

PT in the UK

I had to travel from Edinburgh to Nottingham for a conference. Got the train tickets and wanted to find out about the train and bus times in Nottingham. Didn't bother about the buses in Edinburgh because my shoes are always on time.

Easy, I thought. Consulted the train timetable under http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/. Entered the data and up came some trains. When I wanted to print out the train times, there was no print option. No option to get the train times mailed either. But a lot of clutter made the site not very nice to use and print. So I took good old pen and paper and copied the times. That was the easy part.

I then wanted to find out how to get from Nottingham City entre to the University campus. I found the rough location where I had to get off the bus. But then the difficult bit started. I found a website of an operator. Trent Barnton (http://www.trentbarton.co.uk/). After fiddling around 5 minutes on the website I gave up. They mean well but I guess they never consulted any users to find out whether they can use any of the information provided.

So I resorted to the great govt website http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/DG_10036717 and entered the data for the leg within Nottingham. Again, no chance to get anywhere near where I wanted to go. But they have this great feature of a map. To look for the bus stop. So off I went. And hooray, I found some bus stops. When I clicked on one, nothing happened. The stop was not automatically inserted in the required field. So I noted (thanks to pen and paper again) the bus stop code down again and entered it in the field. Hooray again, after clicking and selecting options another couple of times, I finally got the destination bus stop and some buses.

Even Nottingham council have their bus times online (http://www.nctx.co.uk/). To their great credit, they have interactive maps that automatically fill in the required fields once a bus stop is clicked. But shame on them that they are not showing all bus services.

Easy. All in 30 minutes. No wonder the Brits are working such long times. The minority who still use PT must be spending incredible amounts of finding their connections if they dare to travel on buses in the UK.

And the politicians always wonder why nobody wants to use PT.

Finally, just to calm down again, I visited http://www.sbb.ch/en/index.htm and entered an address to address search. 20 seconds and I got all connections from bus, tram train and bus/tram again. But I can fully understand that no politician over here can make life of the citizens they represent easier when they are busy claiming taxpayers money back based on some absurd expenses.

But what a surprise and contrast from the website Trent Barton are fielding when I got on their bus. A friendly bus driver, even on a Sunday evening at 9. Bus information on the bus! A display with the name of the next bus stop and a friendly voice announcing it twice. Clean and modern interior! I never thought I would experience this on this island in my lifetime, but here we go. A great compliment to Trent Barton to make this effort.

And again shame to the politicians who fail to regulate PT properly in the UK. It can be done. Go visit the continent. There you can do a tour of gadgets in various cities. Try Barcelona, Munich, Dresden, Zürich, etc. Go visit the websites and check how information can be easily made available to the traveller. Without much clutter.

Virgin Media

Finally I quit them. Big saga and never ending phone calls. The troubles started when we moved from a cable to an non cable area. Here is a little chronology what happened:

• We moved house in December 2007. We notified Virgin well in advance that we would move
• After moving, the phone line was up and running ok, however, the internet was not working
• We got a letter stating that we have changed, but no other information was provided
• I started to phone Virgin regarding the internet connection, however finding the right contact number proved almost impossible. Since I had an account with their cable services and they have not yet figured out the joys of serious DB programming, I had to go to great lenghts to explain them who I was and what I wanted.
• On one of the phone calls, the operator literally confirmed to me that we are just stupid customers that they can milk.
• They could not explain to me why the services were not switched from the previous owner to ours. I had to ring BT, who provided the line. A competent technician from BT enlightenend me.
• They finally managed to send me a (useless) router, without any further information
• I had to ring them again regarding my passwords for connecting to the internet
• After about 40 hrs on the phone to them, I finally got connected to the internet
• I was able to check my bills online through ebilling, when suddenly access to the webpage stopped working and some message came up that it was their fault and they are working on it. That message was up for a about 2 months.
• I rang them up again and wanted to change the settings. They said all their servers were down and they could not do it. Apparently never heard of replication at Virgin.
• So I sent them an email where they promised they would get back to me within 48 hours. The mail was sent about 2 months ago. Clearly Virgin measure 48 hrs with a different time scale.
• So I started to look for a new provider and found one in TalkTalk
• I rang Virgin to tell them that I am leaving them. So the operator finally put me through to a technician who then said the Netgear router had a problem with the driver and that is why we got disconnected from the internet a zillion times per day. But they would not notify their customers that this is the case and ringing them up was a nonstarter for me after my 40hrs phone marathon. And he was very good in slagging off TalkTalk that they would not be able to provide the MAC switch for me in such a short time blablabla etc.
• My (hopefully) last call to Virgin was today, requesting a final bill. I rang their standard number and went through all the verification procedure only to find out that she had to connect me to another operator since she could only deal with cable customers. Which of course meant going through the whole verification blabla again. Maybe Virgin should really get some good DB and Webprogrammers to make their customer interaction frontend a bit more useful.
• All I wanted a paper bill but they said they could not provide me with a bill. And since my account was closed, I could not get access to it via ebilling either (which I could not since Feb this year anyway). But she was magnanimous enough to give me the number and the date of the final bill.
• If you want to complain to them, they make it really hard to contact them.
• And now for the funniest bit: I complained to OFCOM and here is the reply I got: Thank you for contacting Ofcom. We have identified an existing contact record in our system that matches the email address you specified in your complaint, but has different personal details. In order to ensure that we have accurate contact information for you, please could you reply by email providing the following information:
  
  • Your full name
  • Any previous name and postal address details that you may have used when contacting Ofcom
  
  *** Please do not reply to this email. This email address is only used for acknowledging receipt of consumer experiences *** ---- Hilarious. Please reply by email and please do not reply to this email. The UK at its best!!!!! Sorry, been to many countries that the UK looks down upon. They definitely run their services better than this.

Now we are with TalkTalk. It is like heaven. They sent us a welcome pack. They sent us a set up CD and a router that is working. I could log into my ebilling services in no time. They spelt my first name wrong and got it corrected within 24hrs of sending an online request to them. We can work from home again. Everything is transparent and easy and despite the Virgin technician warning me that the internet would not work, we could connect on the day TalkTalk promised we would go online.

Conclusions:

Keep your fingers off Virgin at any costs. If I would charge Virgin for the time I spent on the phone with them I would still be phoning and surfing for free. I have had bad internet services before, but Virgin beat the competition easily. It is like a nightmare over after leaving them. So, do not even think about using Virgin for any services. The experience will undoubtedly be bad.

As for OFCOM. They are probably paid by Virgin...

Day zero

Travelling from Edinburgh to Fort William. Which seems to be quite straight forward, tickets in hand and Lothian buses with a good reputation. But hey, this is not Zürich where they let every passenger in the remotest PT stop know that there is a Marathon on in the City Centre and the buses were not running on time. So, even though we hiked down to the bus stop well before the departure of our train in Haymarket, we were only just able to make it with -1 minutes spare, thanks to other people being delayed and jamming onto the train. Doing that with a blind person was even more remarkable.

So that was us dieseling towards Glasgow. Incomprehensible that the most used line in Scotland is just about to be electrified, but here we go. Close your eyes and the noise makes you think you're travelling at 320 km/h... Guess on this island they will never get there on timetabled trains.

Change in Glasgow Queen Street into an even older train. Again incomprehensible that on one of the most scenic trainjourneys in the world, they jam walkers, hikers, tourists and the odd locals into outdated rolling stock. It's like telling everyone, hey, we got some of the nicest scenery on offer but we make you suffer for it.  But we loved the journey and the beer was still cold from the trolley. At least at the beginning. The vast- and emptiness of the countryside is staggering and my mind already started to slow down and take in all the colours, the odd snow capped mountain and the beautiful sunshine.

Once we arrived in Fort William, a heatwave struck us to the platform floor and we just managed to get a taxi that took us to our B&B (56°48'26.1", 005°07'38.5"). This was run by a lovely and resolute South African woman. We got some dinner at a Chinese restaurant which was sort of OK and saw the rare occurence of the Waverley, which does not stop very often in Fort William as you may find out from the link. So considering that, we were very lucky people. We then strolled back to the B&B, where I discussed various important topics with the landlandy before falling into bed for a good night's sleep, for day one would bring some more physical action than the day that was just about to disappear, but not really since the combination of latitude and season means that the stars are barely visible at night.

The day the Poma collapsed

Up on Pas de Boeuf was a new singing cable, pulling the happy tourists along. Some Vaudoise could only express herself in "oui oui oui"s, which probably meant she had a superb lover. Thankfully, the singing cable was pulling me along and out of sight of these strange creatures. The snow was singing under my board and the Touno was looking fantastic in the bright sunlight. It may have been the last big snow, who knows. But it is not happening anyway and it is getting colder as all the enlightened NZZ commentators write. Stupid me to waste some thoughts that the climate might get warmer. We had all the evidence this winter that it doesn't. Only the tenth warmest year since the recordings began, loads of snow and moaning that it wasn't cleared efficiently enough, all the salt stocks in the UK depleted and widespread moaning how cold it was. Q.E.D. It is not happening. Let the cables sing a bit longer. To the left, some skiers came down the west flank of Bella Tola. Good for them. When I was younger, I did this too. Now I stick to the slopes and after a couple of hours to the cold beer down in Prilet. Much better than wreck my old bones.

Going where I grew up feels strange now. Living where I live feels strange too. Maybe it is because I am constanly tired and try to get some sleep. The cables that might not sing anymore and the collapsing Pomas keep me awake. But I guess they will still be standing there once we are all gone, so I am confident that these pylons will outlive us. And the cable might still be singing. In the next desert storm that hits Val d'Anniviers.  Rattling the lose shutters of the derelict Hotel Bella Tola in St. Luc, blowing dust through the deserted appartment blocks, slowly eroding the roads that brought civilisation and eventually the collapse of the civilisation as we know it.

Somewhere up in Spitzbergen is a project to erect some kind of a ski tow, since every second year there is enough snow to glide down a couple of hills.