Category Archives: Technology

At home today on a day of after my epic week of sleep deprivation. Long story short, worked an overnighter over the weekend with a release and whilst things were smooth there were a few hiccups. And as I’m on out of hours support this week lucky me has had to wake up at like 4:45am three days in a row…

But it’s not all bad, learnt all about classloaders in the process which is good. Plus I now know the feeling of Jar Hell!

Other than that I really have to get a roll on my travel googling. Otherwise before I know it it will be 11 weeks from now and I’ll be wandering Saigon in a daze… Continue reading →

So I spent some of this weekend helping my aunt book domestic flights in the U.S. for her and my uncles trip in December/January to catch up with my cousin who’s over there at the moment. The travel agent had quoted a particular price, but based on my travel research last year for the big trip I was sure we could do a fair bit better.

So after doing some searches on Priceline.com we began the adventure of booking the tickets. Except since we wanted to pick seating too, we went through the airline and not Priceline.com as Priceline doesn’t let you specify exact seats.

Now I thought it would be pretty straight forward except for the technology issues we came across. Continental Airlines booking was pretty straight forward, but US Airways and United were a somewhat nightmare effort to get the booking completed. Perhaps coincidental, but maybe not seeing they most likely share the same booking system as they have codesharing agreements.

US Airways has a site where Purchase does not work if you have multiple tabs open to their site. Except they don’t tell you before you buy, only after you click and sit there for ages… so not trusting airline sites when their systems fail (had an experience with Singapore Airlines a few years back), it was time for a Skype call to the US. Another failed attempt later, another phone call deciding to do it over the phone for an extra $25 per passenger… Poo to all the US airlines that charge you extra $$$ for everything – bags, baggage etc! Eventually got those tickets sorted… getting names etc right was funny what with American versus Australian accents…

As for the United booking experience… it tanked as well, but at least when I rang they had record of all passengers and payment details etc so it was on hold and all I had to do was verify some info. And since I had like a another 3 sectors to book I did it over the phone, as since they already had the details correct I didn’t have to freak that they might get the spelling wrong. On the up note at least they didn’t charge any reservation fees like US Airways.

Meh and along the way Verified by Visa… argh I can’t stand it. Read Wikipedia article section on criticism. It looks totally fake/phishing style and it’s a pain to have to enter details + remember yet another password.

A cool thing though in the whole process is Skype is awesome. Freecall US numbers are free to call… so convenient! Continue reading →

So thought I’d post an entry on the gadgets I’m lugging with me on my travels this time. I don’t usually take this many gadgets, but since this trip is a little longer than usual and there’s lots of flying, driving and free wireless there are now a number of additions.

1. Asus Eee PC – The first time I’m lugging a computer of sorts with me. I sort of bought this specifically for my trip (those in the know, this is the machine which in theory I made a profit from buying). It’s approx 900 grams is small, light and has pretty much everything a laptop these days has. And it comes in black! It wasn’t too hard of a choice to decide to bring this as this trip is going outside of Asia, and most places out of Asia have free wirless almost everywhere (exception being Australia). It’s also got Skype so if we needed to make any calls we could just use it and comes with all the basic software for word processing, editing images, organsing your music player etc.
2. Apple iPod – Read a couple of articles about how some choose not to bring their MP3 players as they detract from everything else on their travels/experiences/etc. For me though my iPod is the gadget that lets me tune out, usually when I’m waiting at the airport for hours or on some bus/boat ride which turns out to be twice as long as it should be. Also I’ll be using this as my backup hard drive to copy my photos to and what not.
3. Auto Kit for iPod w/ Dock Connector – Got a couple of road trips happening, so need this to transmit from the iPod.
4. Mobile phone – I suppose I don’t really need this, but SMS is useful and as is the alarm clock feature.
5. SanDisk MicroMate Reader – This came with one of my SD cards I bought a couple of years ago. I like it because it’s super small and it reads quite fast.
6. Canon Digital IXUS 60 – One’s got to take photos when they’re on holidays… Decent small/compact camera.

Of course the unfortunate part of lugging all the above is that you have to carry all the cables as well as power plug adaptors. The cables are the worst part though.

Not really related to gadgets, but definitely tech related, is Google Docs. Have used Google Docs for this trip to store what ever interesting info might help along the way. There is now a plugin which enables you to access and read/edit your documents offline and when you’re online it will save/update as required. Continue reading →