Try before you buy

Squeezer 0.6 released

2011-12-20T23:10:00.000+01:00

I've just released a new version of Squeezer -- an Android application for controlling Logitech Squeezebox servers and their attached players.

Originally developed by ~~Brian~~ Brad Fitzpatrick up to version 0.5, this release features a wealth of new features, many of which are due to significant contributions by Kurt Aaholst. These include:

Browse your music library by album, artist, song, genre, and year.
Search across the library.
Internet radio support (browse staff picks, search)
Scrobble tracks if Last.fm is installed on your Android device.
A revamped UI.

You can install Squeezer from the Android Market. It's free, and open source. If you'd like to contribute the main project pages are on Google Code Hosting at http://code.google.com/p/android-squeezer/, and the code is on GitHub, https://github.com/nikclayton/android-squeezer.

Moving in Switzerland? A plug for Kaylan Umzug

2011-02-27T23:09:00.000+01:00

I recently moved apartment in Zurich, and wanted to take a moment to plug the service offered by the removal company that I used, Kaylan Umzug.

The provided a full service move; packing, furniture disassembly, hand-over cleaning with guarantee, rubbish diposal, and furniture re-assembly at the new apartment. And they were fast -- my 6 room apartment (approx 50m³ of material) was cleared in 4h30m (8a-12.30p), and it took the same amount of time to unload and reassemble at the new place (1p-5.30p). Despite having to get furniture up to the second floor in an elevator only large enough for four people.

Other things that I liked about the service:

They provided a fixed price quote. Other companies that I spoke to quoted per hour. This always worries me, in that it gives them an incentive to proceed a little slower.
There were no hidden charges in Kaylan's quote -- VAT and insurance were included. Other companies broke them out as separate items, or left them as small print (i.e., VAT was not included, the customer was encouraged to get their own insurance). Also, unlike other companies their quote included all the necessary packing material.
Every other company quoted the move as taking two days. Kaylan did it in one (and were faster than their original time estimate.

Finally, they were towards the cheaper end of the quotes that I received. The quote broke down in to three components.

The move itself. CHF 4,560 (as already mentioned, inc. VAT, insurance, packing material, etc).
The cleaning. CHF 1,500. This was marginally more expensive than the quote from my regular cleaning co., but I was happy to pay the extra to only deal with one company, as well as not have two companies getting in each other's way during the move.
Rubbish disposal. CHF 600. I had approximately 8m³ of assorted junk that I no longer wanted and had failed to sell (or was too crappy to sell) that needed disposing.

Overall, probably the least stressful move that I've ever done. The worst part was hanging around while they efficiently moved everything, feeling rather like a spare wheel.

Mostly travel, a bit of culture

2010-07-28T22:03:00.010+02:00

The last few days have been mostly travel, with a little bit of culture on the side.

On Monday I allowed myself a bit of a late start, and spent some time meandering around Manuel Antonio making sure that I hadn't missed anything. My Interbus pickup arrived a few minutes before the scheduled 1.15pm, and after a brief stop to pick up another family going to San Jose we hit the road.

The journey passed uneventfully, and I was checking back in to the Best Western Irazu a little bit before 5pm. Handily, this was right around Happy Hour at the local bar, which included a free drink.

Scott from Package Costa Rica caught up with me, and we spent a bit of time over a drink talking what had and hadn't worked on the vacation, and he gave me the promised refund for the abseiling that wasn't. I'd cheerfully recommend them to anyone else who's considering a Costa Rica vacation and wants local experts to handle the itinerary.

I retired back to the room, and discovered a small problem -- the walls were exceedingly thin. It seemed to be a double room (with connecting door) that had been converted in to two singles. To make up for it the WiFi was marginally less intermittent in this room than last time, so after catching up on a bit of e-mail it was time for bed.

Tuesday was overcast, with rain threatening but never actually appearing. My flight was at 6, so I had some time free in San Jose. Reading through guide books had recommended the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum to me, so after a quick breakfast in the Denny's attached to the hotel (!) I jumped in a taxi and paid 5,000 colones to get there.

It turns out that the same building also houses the National Coin Museum, so I started there.

As well as (obviously) having a large number of samples of Costa Rican currency over the years the museum also has displays on the history of currency around the world, exhibitions that showcase the various categories of designs that have appeared on Costa Rican coins and notes over the years (animals, national symbols, plants), and background information about the types of scrip that coffee plantation owners used to use to pay their employees.

Considered to be one of the most beautiful bills in the world

I moved in to the gold musuem section, and quickly realised there was more to this than just gold.

Arranged over three floors the museum covers the history of the people of the area, how they moved from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more setteld agricultural one, and where gold first started to figure in to their culture.

There are thousands of examples of gold work on display; human representations, animals, jewelry. Detailed displays also show how these were made using the lost-wax casting technique.

It's not all gold though. As part of putting this in the wider context of cultural evolution there are videos and dioramas reproducing what's believed to be the lifestyles of the population at the time.

And even a few artworks that aren't made of gold.

Just when I thought I'd exhausted everything the museum had to offer I discovered a section set aside for an art exhibition, and ended up being captivated by a video display showing musical animations from musanim.com. Rather than describe it, just watch this video.

I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours poking through the museum, and can heartily recommend it to other visitors to San Jose.

With some time still spare I wandered out on to the streets of San Jose in search of lunch. I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention to exactly where I ended up, eventually choosing a restaurant based on the facts that first, it didn't seem to be part of a chain, and second, there was a healthy number of locals eating there.

With that I jumped back in a cab to the hotel and then to the airport. To leave Costa Rica you have to pay a US $26 departure fee before checking in. This was straightforward to pay at the airport, but on trying to check in I bumped in to a problem. ESTA.

More specifically, the fact that although I'd filled out the ESTA forms a couple of years ago I didn't have a copy of the form with me, or my reference number. I'd never needed it before. This seemed to cause the Costa Rican authorities some consternation that I might not be admitted in to the US.

Eventually a combination of pointing out the numerous US entrance stamps in my passport (the most recent being less than four weeks old) and filling out a green visa waiver form placated them.

The flight itself was uneventful, arriving at LAX 10 minutes or so ahead of schedule. I could have done without the one hour queues at immigration on arrival though.

After queuing for the shuttle bus to La Quinta LAX I finally arrived at about 12.30am local time, and set about crashing out. The hotel was a perfectly serviceable place to stay. Mid-size room, decent breakfast, 10 minutes or so by bus to LAX, and not too much noise despite the proximity of the airport.

Wednesday was another early start to fly to SFO, and then drive up to Tahoe for the last few days of vacation. Fog at SFO meant that we took off an hour later than planned (the only flight delay so far, not bad given there have been six so far on this trip). I picked up my car from Hertz, and headed out to Tahoe.

This is a pretty boring drive, right up to the point where you enter Eldorado national forest about an hour out of Tahoe, at which point the view becomes much more scenic. It's a very different kind of beauty to the forests of Costa Rica (or the mountains of Switzerland for that matter), the range of plants and trees on offer is much reduced, and there's more bare earth to be seen than Costa Rica.

I checked in at the Seven Seas Inn, which is a lovely little place just by the California/Nevada state line, a couple of blocks from the beach and the main strip through the town. After drinks at McP's and a browse around the casinos over in Nevada I'm back at the Inn surrounded by leaflets for local attractions trying to figure out what to do tomorrow...

More time in the Pacific

2010-07-26T06:50:00.004+02:00

Hangover, what hangover? Any lingering cobwebs from the night before were going to be shaken loose by a few hours on a jet ski.

I've done this a couple of times before (San Diego and Denia) so knew what to expect, but I'd forgotten just how much fun this was.

As with the previous day, I was collected from the hotel reception, and we embarked from the same marina as yesterday's sailing trip. Six jet skis set out, our guide on one, me on another, and a couple of families riding two-at-a-time on the others. We moved out perhaps a kilometre or so from the shoreline and opened up.

My ride

These things are fast. They don't really become maneuverable until 20mph, and will cheerfully hit 40+ at full throttle.

I spent quite a lot of time at full throttle.

We followed a similar route to the catamaran sailing, at one point pulling past Tomcat on their tour. Even when the sea was calm 40 mph is pretty bumpy, and as waves started to build up the ride became more and more exhilarating. I discovered the best approach seemed to be lean forward as much as practical, and give and take with your arms, a technique not too dissimilar to being on a galloping horse.

The jet skis ride very low in the water, so you get an excellent sense of the rise and fall of the ocean as you crest each wave, something that's not nearly so readily apparent when sailing.

We passed the mooring point from the previous day, and pressed on for another 20 minutes or so, rounding in to a secluded bay. Pulling up almost to the beach we cut the engines, and dived in to the water to cool off and give our arms a rest from the incessant beating they took during the ride.

No snorkeling though this time.

After reapplying sunblock (essential all over in this heat, and forget about trying to keep a hat on at the speed the jet skis were going) we started to head back. We took a slightly different route this time, keeping a little closer to the shoreline

Events took a turn for the entertaining when a passenger on one of the tandem jet skis got it in to their head to pitch over the side. No harm done though, nothing damaged except their pride.

After far too short a time (but in reality about two and a half hours) we were back at the marina and mooring up before catching the bus back to the hotel.

After a quick shower to wash the Pacific out of my hair I've spent the afternoon up in El Avion downloading and futzing with photographs.

Tomorrow it's back to San Jose for one night, and then fly back to Los Angeles, before heading on to Tahoe for a few days.

A dip in the Pacific

2010-07-25T05:43:00.005+02:00

On Saturday morning I was up bright and early for an 8.20 pickup to go sailing and, with a bit of luck, catch sight of dolphins and whales.

When the bus hadn't arrived by 8.30 I called the tour company, Planet Dolphin, and discovered that because of unplanned road works the pick up time was now 9.20.

Ah well. I took the opportunity to explore a little more of the hotel grounds, and waited for the bus.

Slow for monkeys, sloths, dogs, and Darth Vader

After picking up a few people this deposited us about 20 minutes at Marina Pez Vela in Quepos, 15 minutes drive up the road.

Our vessel was "Tomcat", a 60-something foot catamaran.

Once all 42 people were onboard we motored out of the marina and towards our lunch time appointment, snorkeling in the Pacific.

Departing the marina

The crew explained the safety features of the boat in English and Spanish, and also covered the very important information that although beer was $1 a can, drinks with spirits were free. As a lifelong non-beer drinker I resolved to take advantage of this opportunity, and quickly had a very good rum punch in my hands.

Standing watch

I've messed around on boats a bit, but this was my first time on board a catamaran, and I was surprised at how stable it was. I spent a lot of time stood on the bow (the pointy bit at the front) feeling the rock and fall of the boat under my feet.

A few of the guests had decided to sunbathe on the netting slung between the two hulls toward the front. This turned out not to be the smartest move, as they discovered when the first wave crashed over them. Cue sudden gasps.

There was a brief moment of excitement when we slowed to go past a very large sea turtle that was slowly swimming out to the deep ocean, and just visible below the water. But no other signs of large marine life.

After about an hours motoring we stopped for 10 minutes and everyone had their first opportunity for a bit of a swim. Just to get our feet wet, so to speak. Once everybody was back on board we continued on for what felt like 20 minutes or so to our final destination, a small not far from a small rock formation breaking through the waves.

Duly adorned with fins, mask, and snorkel the crew suggested we swim close to the rock. It soon became apparent why.

I was snorkeling along enjoying what was, to be honest, not much of a view underwater. Although the water was clear it was very deep, so tailed off to a green haze, with no clear idea how far away anything was.

And then all of a sudden I was surrounded by fish. Sergeant Major fish to be precise, hundreds of them. The rock and the things that grow on it provide food for them, so they cluster around it. I was quite happy to float upright in the water, head under, watching these blue and gold fish dart this way and that, quite oblivious to the people that had invaded their environment.

After about 20 minutes of this it was back to the boat for a simple lunch; fish kabobs and pasta.

And then we set sail back to the marina. Literally this time, the wind having picked up enough that they could at least unfurl the jenny for a bit of sailing.

The hoped for dolphins and whales continued to prove elusive, and there were no sightings on the journey back.

View Planet Dolphin in a larger map

The afternoon followed a familiar pattern. By which I mean it rained, heavily. After a few drinks in El Avion I resolved to wander down the coast road to find somewhere suitable for dinner. Outside the main entrance to the Costa Verde complex I bumped in to four people on a package vacation from California. After helping them take the requisite group photo we fell in together in search of food and drink.

After stopping off at La Cantina, another of the Costa Verde hotel restaurants, we made our way slowly down to the beach. By this point the thunderstorm and rolled out to sea, and the frequent lightning flashes were lighting up the sky, silhouetting the islands that dot the bay against the grey of the night sky.

After that it gets a little hazy, although I have some recollections of a bar in town, and getting a taxi back at some late hour...

Manuel Antonio National Park

2010-07-24T00:00:00.001+02:00

Friday dawned fresh and clear. I needn't have bothered setting an alarm, the sun streaming through the thin curtains and the sounds of jungle wildlife a few feet from my door were enough to gently wake me. The bus down to the national park was prompt, and we got there after about 10 minutes driving.

The tour itself took several hours, but we were only on the move for about 30 minutes. The rest of the time was spent in different spots with the guide explaining various bits of information about the flora and fauna that we were looking at. Equipped with a spotting scope he made sure that we all got the chance to see the various creatures in the park as close as was practical.

The route through the park is very straightforward, consisting of wide gravel tracks, with towering trees on either side.

The first animals we saw were three-toed sloths, getting ready to slow down for the day. The first one was quite distant, and after looking through the scope I was idly glancing this way and that while the other members of the group took their turn. Looking up I was a bit startled to see another sloth slowly moving along a branch not 20 feet away. We took turns peering at it through the scope, and it peered right back at us.

We carried on along the path towards the beach, along the way seeing bats, spiders, Halloween crabs, raccoons, more sloths, and hearing howler monkeys off in the distance.

Spider in the middle of the web

Halloween crabs

There's a lizard sunning himself in the middle of this photo

This raccoon was no stranger to people

The beach was to be our first encounter with white-faced Capuchin monkeys, who are very comfortable around humans. Unfortunately, people have shown themselves incapable of following the "Do not feed the animals" signs around the park, and this meant that the monkeys have learned to fish trash out of the bins for any scraps that have been thrown away, and to distract owners from their backpacks before making off with them and unzipping the various compartments looking for food.

Yes, that's a discarded crisp packet. But they fetched it out of the trash themselves

The beaches themselves were straight out of a brochure; golden sand, blue skies, palm trees, little islands off in the bay, and we spent a bit of time on the beach (with bags safely secured) before continuing the last quarter of the tour.

Non-indigenous fauna

Up in the trees was another sloth, but this time of the two-toed variety. The guide's description of him as "Costa Rica's Chewbacca" was very apt.

Our guide proved to have sharp eyes; as we were walking carefully along a path by the lagoon he spotted a caiman lurking in the undergrowth. Members of the crocodile family, they're distinguished from crocodiles by the shape of the snout and position of the eyes. They also tend to be a fair bit smaller than crocs.

There's a caiman hiding in this photo

Not 30 feet further down the path we discovered two small boas curled up in the branches of trees overhanging the path.

Because it was high tide the tour finished with a 30 second boat ride across a small lagoon, before heading back to the tour bus for very welcome fruit and water.

View Manuel Antonio Hike in a larger map

I spent the rest of the day enjoying a lengthy siesta, the heat having brought on a bit of a headache. I felt it best to self-medicate with a couple of drinks by the verandah and let the day go by.

Arriving in Manuel Antonio

2010-07-23T00:00:00.008+02:00

On Thursday I traveled from La Fortuna to the Hotel Costa Verde in Manuel Antonio. There's not much to report about this; the bus journey took five hours or so, arriving at the hotel at about 1.30. There's no free WiFi at the hotel (really, in this day and age), and as general rule I never trust my passwords to public internet terminals (and refuse to pay on principle), so these next few posts have been written offline over a few days.

The hotel itself is spread out over a number of different locations. My room is one of two overlooking the ocean beneath the El Avian restaurant. This restaurant's claim to fame is that there is a reconstructed C-123 cargo plane in the bar.

Actually, it's a bar in its own right.

Normally, to find a plane with a bar I have to go Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic

To quote from the details on the back of the drinks menu:

Our Fairchild C-123 was a part of one of the biggest scandals in the mid 1980s. During this time the Reagan administration had set up a bizarre network of arms sales to Iran designed to win release of US hostages being held in Lebanon and raise money to find the Nicaraguan, counter-revolutionary guerilla fighters, commonly referred to as the "Contras".

...

With the CIA's help, they purchased several items, including two C-123 cargo planes (one of which is our plane), two C-7 planes, a Maule aircraft, spare parts, and munitions. They also built a secret airstrip on an American-owned 30,000 acre ranch in northwest Costa Rica.

On October 5th 1986 a US cargo plane (the twin sister of El Avion's own Fairchild C-123) was shot down over southern Nicaragua.

...

As a result of this successful Sandanista strike on our Fairchild's sister plane the cargo operation was suspended and one of the C-123s was abandoned at the International Airport in San Jose.

In August 2000 we purchased the abandoned Fairchild for $3,000. We then disassembled and shipped the pieces of the Iran-Contra relic to Quepos. From San Jose the fuselage was shipped via ocean ferry (from Caldera to Quepos) because it was 10 inches too wide for the antiquated Chiquita Banana railroad bridges! After hauling all seven aircraft sections of the Manuel Antonio hill, the C-123 finally found its current cliff-side resting place.

The room was large and clean, and equipped with its own local wildlife - I spotted at least two very small lizards scampering along the walls. They proved to be quite camera-shy, skittering away if I got too close.

Friday and Sunday were supposed to be free days with nothing planned, but I'm not really a "lie on the beach and soak up the sun" sort of person, so I took a look through the excursions that the hotel could arrange, and settled on joining a guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park (highly recommended in the guides I'd seen) on Friday, and some time on a jet-ski tour on Sunday.

Booking these was marginally more difficult than it needed to be. You book them via the hotel, so I phoned up reception and was told that they could book them, but needed a deposit. In cash. Delivered then and there. By this point the afternoon thunderstorms had arrived, so I made the rather lengthy trek to the nearest ATM to withdraw some cash, and then the even lengthier trek to reception, ~ 10 minutes from my room. Why they couldn't just bill it to my account I don't know.

Riding, sliding, and hiking

2010-07-22T06:36:00.000+02:00

It's been a busy day.

It started early, with a 6.45 alarm call for 7.40 pick up. When I opened the curtains in my room I was confronted with bright blue skies, with nary a cloud in them. The one cloud that was marring the view had decided to provide a halo around the local volcano.

A quick breakfast, and I was met by representatives of Athica, who drove me about 15 minutes out of Fortuna to their base of operations. Today was going to start with some horse riding.

I'd been anticipating this for weeks. I used to ride a lot when I was younger, going as far as competing in a few local show jumping events and doing passably well, but I haven't been on the back of a horse for at least 16 years, maybe more. I hoped that it would all come flooding back.

It did. Within seconds of being back in the saddle it felt as though I'd never left. It was a bit odd that it was Western style, which is much more relaxed, and not the English that I'm used to. I mean, what on earth are you supposed to do with a pommel on a ride like this?

Due, no doubt, to the earliness of the hour it was me and the guide on the ride. We started by riding up to one of the local look out points for the Arenal volcano. The weather continued to be perfect, and the volcano made an imposing backdrop.

That's me there on Mareno, just in case it wasn't obvious. I gathered that "Mareno" is the Spanish for "maroon" (or similar) due to some pointing and gesturing towards the colour of the saddle and other bits of tack.

I couldn't resist taking my own photo of the view.

From there we went off the beaten path, and on to slopes used for grazing cattle by local farmers. The horses proved sure-footed, and given that the terrain was rougher than that I'd negotiated the day before I couldn't help but think that these were the original all-terrain vehicles.

The half way point on the ride was the Green Lake, so called because of the algae that grows on the surface. We paused for a few more photos, before starting to head back.

Algae on the Green Lake

On the way the guide and I swapped riding stories. It turns out the dictum "You're not a real rider until you've fallen at least seven times" is known outside the UK, and he entertainingly described a recent fall where he'd been trying to rodeo some cows only to discover that he was heading towards a fence at high speed. His horse stopped, and the laws of physics intervened to send him flying overhead, landing in the mud. Laughing, he explained that the only thing he hurt was his pride.

We rode back to Athica's base, and stabled the horses. All told we'd been gone about an hour. It was time for part two of the activity.

Zip wire.

This is something else I've done in the past. About seven or eight years ago a friend organised a trip up to Cumbria in the UK for an adventure weekend, and as part of that we took part in a zip wire event there.

For those not in the know, this is a cable strung between two points. You sit in a harness attached to a pulley on the cable, and slide down at speed, taking the opportunity to admire the scenery as you go whizzing past.

Athica have eight zip wires set up of various lengths; the first is the shortest at about 80 metres, the last is the longest, at about 750 metres. They also have a "Tarzan" swing, of which more later.

Again, I was the only person on this activity at this time of the day. We spent a bit of time getting the harnesses on and tested, and then the staff ran through a demonstration of what to do, and equally importantly, what not to do. Essentially you're clipped to the pulley by two different ropes on four different carabiners (two attach to different parts of the pulley, two to different parts of the harness).

Safety was emphasised multiple times during this, and this safety-consciousness continued throughout the rest of the event, with the staff being very conscientious about ensuring that I (and they) were attached to something solid at all times, by dint of only ever unclipping one carabiner at a time.

In short order I was flying through the air on the first wire, watching bits of green scenery go flying by.

If you were there you'd note that I was rapidly becoming much larger

The wire stations are generally linked -- the end station of one wire is the start point of the next one (with a couple of exceptions where there's a short walk), and it wasn't long before we'd gone around seven of the eight.

By way of an interlude the "Tarzan" swing is between the seventh and eighth. Unlike the zip wire this is a single long rope suspended over the middle of a gorge. There are two platforms, an upper and a lower. You clip to it, and launch yourself in to thin air from the upper platform, swinging back and forth as you go, getting a little lower each time. After maybe a dozen swings you're low enough to land safely on the lower platform.

This was probably the most adrenaline filled part of the event. With the zip wire you can see what it's attached to, sit in the harness and bounce on it, and convince yourself that it's very solid. You can't do that with the Tarzan swing, there's more of a leap of faith required to step off the top platform and go. But once you feel the rope take up the short slack and you're swinging out over some incredible views the fear just disappears.

I know it looks like I'm not moving, but the photo caught me at the top of one swing

And with that we were on to the eighth and final zip wire. I've got video evidence of this but at the moment my Internet connection is not really up to uploading a couple of 200MB videos, so that'll have to wait a day or two at least.

And with that, we were done, and back to the hotel. I spent a bit of time exploring some more of La Fortuna (although not too much, the heat was oppressive at this point).

At 2.45 I was picked up representatives from Sunset Tours for a hike around and through the forests at the base of the Arenal volcano.

This time there were nine of us on the tour, including another honeymooning couple. We started at the same lookout point that I'd ridden to earlier that day. By this point the weather was starting to turn, and clear blue skies were becoming altogether more cloudy.

We spent 20-25 minutes at the lookout point. As well as admiring the view our guide gave us an excellent overview of the history of the volcano, and the devastating effects of its eruption on July 29th 1968. Amazingly, before then no one had realised that this conical mountain was, in fact, a dormant volcano. This was to cost 78 people their lives when Tabacón, a nearby town, was buried.

The volcano is still active, regularly belching a mix of water vapour and sulphur in to the atmosphere, and I realised that much of what I'd thought had been thunder over the last few days was these mini-eruptions.

As if on cue, as soon as the guide had explained this we were treated to puff of smoke from the top of the volcano.

After ooh-ing and ah-ing at that we set off on a gentle hike through the forest. By this time the cloud and fog was closing in, and the first few drops of rain were falling.

True to form this rapidly became a downpour. I'd expected that we'd get some shelter once we were properly in the forest, but it turns out that although the canopy might block out a huge amount of light, much of the rain will just fall straight through and land on me. I was quite glad of the poncho I'd bought the day before, but put my camera away with some regret.

Much of the local wildlife appeared to be in hiding due to the rain, but we were fortunate enough to see a several Eyelash Vipers, and a pair of Toucans (is that a Fourcan?).

The hike was only a mile and a half or so, but what with stops to look at wildlife or shelter under vegetation it took over an hour before we completed the loop and arrived back at the bus.

The next stop was another look out point. This time though we were looking for lava flows from the volcano, which show up best at dusk.

Dusk fell with exceptional beauty.

Our attempts to view the volcano slopes were rather hampered by the fog that by this point was enshrouding the whole mountain. While we waited for it to clear we explored a little, and one member of the party, with exceptionally sharp eyes, noticed a family of Spider Monkeys in far-off trees. We all took turns viewing them with the telescope the guides had brought, periodically checking to see what the state of the weather was.

Well, it was improving. Now, at least, you could see the top of the volcano just breaking above the cloud. But nothing of the slopes.

A thunderstorm was brewing several miles over to the right of us, and the regular lightning flashes kept us amused while the fog continued to dissipate. Another five minutes of waiting and we had this view.

Better, you might agree, but notice the distinct lack of glowing red lava on any of the slopes that we could see.

We hung around for another 15 minutes or so on the off chance that something might happen, but tonight was not destined to be our night, and we climbed back in to the bus, and headed to our respective hotels.

This was probably the best day of the vacation so far. A combination of horse riding memories coming flooding back, the adrenaline of the zip wire, and the plethora of interesting information I picked up in the afternoon meant that I've finished the day very satisfied with how things worked out.

Being better prepared for the rain probably helped too.

Tomorrow I'm off to Costa Verde. Probably six hours on a bus to get there. Hmm...

ATV and Eco Termales

2010-07-21T05:57:00.000+02:00

Today was a later pick-up than normal, 10.50, so I thought I'd treat myself to a bit of lie-in.

This was something of a tactical error, as when I turned up to breakfast at 9.05 feeling a bit peckish I discovered that breakfast stopped at 9.

Ah.

I took the opportunity to stroll around La Fortuna for a little bit while hunting down something to eat. The sky was blue, and dotted with clouds, and the volcano continued to maintain a lofty presence, the summit wreathed in drifting cloud.

It was unsettlingly hot, so I decided that staying out of the sun was a good idea, and ducked in to the nearby Rain Forest cafe for a Mono Loco -- as far as I can tell this is a double espresso with some chocolate and a fair amount of banana. Damn tasty too. That washed down a couple of slices of toast, and it was clear the staff could tell I was English, as it was only done on one side.

With that, back to the air conditioned comfort of the hotel to wait for my pickup. Today was going to start with about three hours on an ATV, exploring the area. Again, I was the last one to be collected. There were four others going on the trail, a pair of newlyweds on honeymoon, and a father and son from the UK come to explore.

The activity was put together by Fourtrax Adventures, and started with an introduction to our beasts of burden, a Honda 250cc ATV (or quad-bike if you prefer). This is mine.

They're simplicity themselves to ride, with a simple throttle on the right thumb, motorcycle style brakes on the handlebars, and automatic transmission, so we were soon on our way round the small test field.

With the test over and done with and everything verified as being in working order we headed out on to the main road, and shortly thereafter took a right on to what I can only describe as a dirt track.

I was surprised at how well the ATV handled the pot holes. I'd been expecting to come away a little bone-shaken, but the ride was fairly smooth.

The level-but-potholed terrain started to pitch and roll and the bike continued to chew through it with aplomb. The biggest problem I had was fighting the urge to put my foot down going slowly over particularly rough bits as the bike rolls a bit alarmingly.

Along the way we passed fields growing local fruit of all shapes and sizes, small houses, and crossed over a couple of narrow bridges.

I wasn't keeping too close a check on the time, but after about nine miles we came to our first destination, this broken down bridge.

The guide explained that this was the first bridge that crossed this river, and had significantly helped in connecting La Fortuna to the rest of Costa Rica. It's since been superceded by a more modern bridge futher up-river, and, as you can see, has fallen in to significant disrepair.

We mounted up and headed back the way we'd came. Actually, "mounted up" is an apt phrase, as I found that I was trying to ride the ATV like a horse at various points. Unfortunately, trying to squeeze with your thighs to make the thing go faster doesn't work so well, and just results in you cursing under your breath as you realise you've put your leg too close to the hot engine again.

About half way back the rain started to come -- spotty at first, but becoming significantly harder as we drove on. It wasn't too unpleasant, being very warm, but I'll reiterate my recommendation from the first day, namely, that synthetics dry much faster than cotton, and if I do this again I'm coming out here with a significantly different wardrobe.

Our next destination was La Fortuna waterfall, which is a breathtaking bit of scenery. Unfortunately, the rain was still falling hard, and I elected to keep the camera dry.

From there we rode on to "El Salto", or "jump", a very popular spot for a bit of swimming and Tarzan swinging. By the time we'd got there the rain had stopped, so what better time to get completely soaked?

This, I should hasten to add, is not me. But I could hardly swing and take a photo of myself at the same time.

After spending perhaps 20 minutes at El Salto we dried off and rode on to our lunch destination, Catarata Eco Lodge, for a quick meal of rice, beans, and fish. Once more the clouds opened up on us as we drove there, just as our clothes were beginning to dry off.

And then from the lodge we headed back to base, excursion over.

This was a much more relaxing event than I'd expected, with the terrain never becoming truly difficult to navigate, and plenty of opportunity for short stops as well. I had MyTracks enabled on my phone for the duration, and the route's shown below.

View Quad Biking In Costa Rica in a larger map

From there back to the hotel to shower and change, and figure out what to do until the evening's event. The heavy rain continued, and I shot a few seconds of footage with my phone.

It occurred to me that rain like this could put a severe dampener (if you'll excuse the pun) on the planned horse riding and hiking tomorrow, so, borrowing an umbrella from the hotel I struck out back in to La Fortuna to try and track down somewhere selling plastic ponchos to keep the worse of the rain off.

It turns out that every tourist place in town sells them, but these are the fairly cheap ones that look a little like someone's stuck a hood on a bin bag and poked through two holes for arms. I was looking for something a little more substantial, but it seems they're not to be found, so resigned myself to the "bin bag with a hood" look.

And then it was time for the evening's fun. This was arranged at Eco Termales, a hot springs spa about 10 minutes drive away. With four pools ranging in temperature from 35 to 40 celsius I was looking forward to a luxurious evening.

It didn't disappoint. To avoid overcrowding only 100 people are allowed per four hour session at the spa, so there was an active-but-not-crowded vibe when I arrived. I was also delighted to discover several bars next to the pools. I was a bit concerned about having to keep cash around, but was told that they work on the honour system; simply tell them how many drinks you had when you leave.

Given the effort they'd clearly gone to it seemed rude not to take advantage of the hospitality, so I quickly ordered one of these.

"Walks in the rain", very appropriate given the day's weather.

And followed that up with two others in reasonably short order.

After about an hour and a half of relaxing, moving between the different pools and their different temperatures, and occasional queuing at the bar it was time for dinner. I'd expressed my preference for steak on arrival, and I'm pretty sure that's what I got. Not terrible, but not something to write home about. The side dishes, though, were very tasty.

And then back to the hotel, to haul the day's images off the camera's memory card, and start composing this.

Abseiling that wasn't

2010-07-20T06:04:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I wrote:

Tomorrow I'm off to see a volcano, a wildlife refuge, a waterfall, and spend a bit of time on horseback...

Unfortunately, that's not quite how the day turned out.

Package Costa Rica had arranged the transport to the next hotel, Hotel Fortuna in La Fortuna. An 8.20 pickup gave me a little extra time in the morning, and being the last to be collected meant I got the "shotgun" seat.

The three hour journey was broken up by a 15 minute rest stop, which gave me the opportunity to see a bit of nature in action. The light was quite strange -- bright, some sun, but the presence of thunderclouds off in the distance gave it a slightly forbidding air.

You've probably seen nature documentaries showing ants parading to and from some distant location back to their nest, carrying leaves three or four times they size. It's impressive on TV, it's bizarre to see the real thing. Two almost parallel lines of ants marching with purpose, one towards the nest, one away from it.

The rest of the journey passed fairly uneventfully, as we headed north west to La Fortuna. I'm getting the distinct impression that every square inch of Costa Rica that isn't paved or built on has something green growing on it. And speaking of paving, the potholes in some of the roads here would give the 101 in California a run for its money, our driver today performing the occasional practiced slalom maneuver.

I arrived at the hotel at 11.30, whereupon the first problem become apparent -- guest rooms aren't available for checkin until 2pm. This was a little concerning; my pickup for later in the day was supposed to be at 1.20, and I needed to spend some time changing, and applying considerably more sunscreen than I had the previous day.

The hotel pulled out the stops, and got the room prepared in time. So, +1 for them.

I was, however, a bit surprised to get a knock on the door at 1.05 saying the transport for the afternoon's event was waiting. 15 minutes early. I finished getting ready ASAP, and headed downstairs, where I was intercepted by the chap at the front desk saying there was a phone call from me.

It was from Mike, own of the Package Costa Rica folks, explaining that their supplier had let them down, and they'd rebooked something somewhat equivalent at short notice. Hence the minibus outside earlier than planned.

Fair enough.

We drove for 5 minutes or so, and I chatted to the two other couples taking the same course. We were going to be abseiling, much as had already been planned.

Or so I thought.

We transferred to a 4x4 vehicle for a 10 minute bumpy ride up to base camp. There it became apparent that this was going to be a "wet" abseil, including jumping in to deep pools. This was problematic; I was wearing boots for dry conditions (and for the horse riding I was expecting), and needed these boots to stay dry for the ATV course tomorrow.

Talking to the instructors it sounded like the worst of it would be at the third of four abseiling trails, where ending up in the splash pool at the end is pretty much mandatory. I figured I could just skip that one, and move on to the fourth as the time came, which was by far the longest of the four.

So we drove on up on to the first short abseil. Well, incline descent really, nowhere that was really vertical, but with a large stream and plunge pool at the bottom. Going last, I'd paid attention to where the others had put their feet, and tried to figure out a route down that was going to keep my boots dry enough for the next day, but it soon became clear that although that was just about do-able for this descent (just barely) it wasn't going to be practical for the next two.

So, with some regret I had to call it a day, and walked the 20 minutes or so back to the camp for the journey back to La Fortuna.

I wrote this up for the Package Costa Rica folks, and sent them an e-mail, and demonstrating excellent customer service they've already offered to refund the cost of today, or arrange another excursion to replace it. I need to look over the schedule to see where there's a gap I can fill, but I'm very pleased with how they've responded so far.

Back at the hotel the local volcano was looming majestically over the scene, and as the clouds cleared the smoke emanating from the crater was clearly visible, and quite an awesome sight. The perfect backdrop for a G+T and some time spent writing postcards.

Costa Rica: White water rafting

2010-07-19T05:22:00.001+02:00

Yesterday evening I touched down in Costa Rica at about 6.10pm local time.

After pondering a vacation destination earlier this year several friends suggested Costa Rica, and one was kind enough to recommend the company she'd used, Package Costa Rica.

As well as providing a menu of pre-packaged tours they let you go a la carte, picking the activities you want to do, and a timescale, and they work out the itinerary (and price) for you. So a few months ago we chatted about my requirements and they put together an interesting tour, and I find myself out on the balcony enjoying the cool evening rain.

Yesterday's travel was marginally more complicated than it could have been. I'd been working from San Francisco for the previous two weeks, which has the drawback that there are no direct flights between SFO and San Jose Costa Rica (SJO). So I took a two hour flight to Phoenix, and hustled between gates in the one hour layover between flights to catch the connecting flight.

Both flights were operated by US Airways, who proved competent, although nothing much to write home about (although I could have done without the 5.45 start from San Francisco). The one stand-out moment was realising, two hours in to the five hour flight from Phoenix that a meal wasn't included.

A Package Costa Rica rep. met me at the airport, and dropped me at the first of what will be several hotels over the course of this stay, the Best Western Irazu, 20 minutes or so from the airport. It's clean, comfortable, and has a well stocked bar. The WiFi though, is decidedly odd; the phone (Nexus One) connects with no problems, the Mac laptop refuses.

The welcome pack from Package Costa Rica included a suite of tear off vouchers for the various events that have been arranged, along with pick up times and locations, which has meant that so far I've had to do very little beyond show up at the right time. Another plus point.

Today was white water rafting. Not something I've done before, and it'd be hard to think of a better place to do it. It's described as

Experience the thrill of white water rafting on the world class Pacuare River! The scenery while rafting is just marvelous. The vegetation that will surround you plus the power of the waters will transport you in to a great wild adventure. The equipment will be given, and a specialised guide will instruct you on how to manage yourself in to the strong currents of the river.

The tour bus from Rios Tropicales collected me from the hotel at 6.10 this morning (yes, 6.10, I need to stop these early starts). I was the last but one stop, and the mini-bus was already quite full. Collecting two others from the next hotel we started the ~ 2 hour drive to the Rio Tropicales base of operations.

There breakfast was laid on. This would have been useful information about 3 hours previously, as this wasn't in the notes, and I'd got up at 5am (or, as my body viewed it, 4am given that Costa Rica is an hour ahead of San Francisco). Having already eaten I settled for a second coffee to help get jump started, and took a few photos.

This was also the opportunity for everyone to get changed in to the gear they'd bought for the rafting. This was slightly alarming -- I'd assumed that this would be provided. Visions of wet-suit shorts and suitable footwear had occurred to me before leaving, so I was in waterproof walking boots, shorts, and a t-shirt.

Hmm.

Ah well, nothing ventured and all that, and I figured that the worst that would happen would be that I'd have a slightly soggy journey back in the bus at the end of the day, so pressed on. If this is something you ever plan on doing I recommend learning from my experience though, and pack a change of clothes.

Anyway, another 45 minutes drive and we made it to the embarkation point on the river. This included the safety briefing from the guide, covering topics such as what to do if you fall in (try and float with your feet pointing down the river, don't try and stand up), correct procedure for hauling people back in to the raft, that sort of thing. The last 15 minutes were down a very bumpy broken up road that could give California a run for its money in the "terrible road" stakes. But I digress.

To the boats, where we put on the appropriate gear (helmets and lifejackets being provided, as well as a paddle), divided in to groups of six, and met our guide, Henry. All told ten rafts were to set off that day. I took the opportunity to turn on MyTracks on my phone and slipped, wrapped tightly in two plastic bags in to a zip pocket.

Henry gave us a brief tutorial on the various directions he'd give in the raft, including the everyone-in-the-middle-we're-going-to-crash one, and the everyone-come-over-to-this-side-so-we-don't-tip-over one. But really, how hard could it be?

We set off.

Any expectations I may have had that any part of me would stay remotely dry during the journey were rapidly set right. It's no exaggeration to say that it would have been drier to have been floating in the river -- then at least your head would stay dry. The initial Class 1 and Class 2 rapids were enough to throw water over all of us, but it was actually fairly pleasant, being quite warm. The Class 3 and Class 4 we encountered a little later were drenching.

Also, not actually as scary as I'd imagined. Although there's plenty of time to admire the scenery as you're quietly drifting through the quieter spots on the river, negotiating the rapids themselves is a frenzy of paddling, shifting weight to stay in the raft, keeping an ear open for the commands from the back, and gasping as another wall of water crashes over you. There's very little time to actually focus on what's going on around you.

Those lessons on how to rescue people back in to the raft came in useful a few times over the three and a half hours we spent in the water. Not, I hasten to add, because any of the members of my raft would be so gauche as to accidentally fall in. But we did manage to haul aboard a few members of other rafts that had found themselves suddenly launched in to the water. Amusingly, most of this seemed to happen during the quieter stretches on the river.

After about 18 miles, and 3h30m of this we arrived at our final destination. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so difficult to walk ashore as it was, but it turns out that when you've been sat down for that period of time hanging on and paddling, trying to stand up straight and not fall over is a significant test of balance.

Our landing point was only 10 minutes or so from the same base that we'd had breakfast at. Lunch was laid on, traditional fare of salad, rice, beans, chicken, and very tasty that was too. There were also changing rooms and showers, but as already explained, somewhat superfluous to my requirements...

And then the ~ 2 hour bus journey back to the hotel, and a chance to compare notes on the day with fellow rafters.

So far, Package Costa Rica have done an excellent job. Tomorrow I'm off to see a volcano, a wildlife refuge, a waterfall, and spend a bit of time on horseback...

Oh, and the phone survived, staying dry through the whole adventure. Resulting in this map

View Rafting in a larger map

Some useful tips for white water rafting I learned today.

Bring a change of clothes. You will not stay dry.
Synthetics dry faster than cotton.
Any electronics should be (at least) double wrapped in plastic, and in a secure pocket somewhere.
Don't bring anything you intend to use on the river that's not already waterproof. For example, don't expect to bring a compact digital camera and use it during the slow periods. It's possible to buy waterproof (completely enclosed) disposable film cameras, use those.
No sun lotion on your face, or the backs of your legs. It'll run on your face, and significantly worsen the grip your legs have on the boat.
Make sure your hotel room has a hair drier -- this is invaluable for drying out the hiking boots that you're going to need tomorrow.

Review: Audio Technica ANC1 noise canceling headphones

2010-05-30T16:12:00.003+02:00

For the last few years I've been travelling pretty regularly -- it's not unusual to be on a 'plane once every six weeks or so. And with my new-found interest in podcasts I finally decided to invest in some noise cancelling headphones to counteract the dull roar of the engines.

After some research I settled on a pair of Audio Technica ATH-ANC1 headphones. Two others I considered were the Bose QuietComfort 15s, and the Audio Technica ATH-ANC7b. The Bose looked to be too bulky to comfortably fit in my carry-on, especially given all the other paraphernalia I typically have with me. The ANC7b's looked interesting, but numerous reviews cited concerns about the sound quality and reported that they leak sound (I like to be a considerate neighbour on long flights), so I went for their cheaper, smaller brethren.

Having put the ANC1s through their paces on three flights in the last couple of weeks I'm pleased to report that they do the job, and do it well.

First, they come with a handy carrying pouch with a pocket for the adapters and extension cords that are included, so these will work with devices with a normal 3.5mm headphone jack as well as the two-pronged jacks so beloved of airlines world wide.

What you get: headphones, carry case, extension cord,
two-pronged jack adapter and one AAA battery

They also collapse to a fairly small size, and slip nicely in to my carry-on, or, at a pinch, jacket pocket.

Folded, ready for the pouch

I was initially sceptical about their performance as the earcups are too small to fit around and over the ear, but I was pleasantly surprised. Once the noise-cancellation feature is turned on via a simple on-off control located on the headphone cord they prove to be very effective, significantly reducing (but not completely eliminating) the noise of the engines. Once you get used to the quiet induced by the headphones it's quite jarring to have to turn them off during the final descent and landing.

They're also comfortable to wear for extended periods, which is useful if you want to settle down with the in-flight movie. A simple switch turns the noise-cancelling on and off so you can hear when the cabin crew are proffering you another G+T.

All things considered I can highly recommend these, especially to the frequent traveler. If you're interested in purchasing them please consider the Amazon (UK, and .com) links below, and help me feed my technology habit...

Crashplan: Part Two

2010-04-22T22:01:00.000+02:00

Since my last post about Crashplan there have been some developments.

In a nutshell (and, like before, I'll start with the conclusion for those that want the Cliff Notes version, and then provide the details after that) Code 42 (the developers who produce Crashplan):

Continued to ignore my concerns and questions until after I'd written the blog post, and started linking to it from the comment sections of various online reviews of the software.
Repeatedly claimed that I've got facts wrong, when I'm just reiterating what their support engineer told me.
Changed their story about what the root cause of the problem was.
Denigrated their competitors in their replies dealing with this topic.
Silently deleted comments from their support forum
Continued to refuse to answer questions posed by customers (myself, and others)

To understand what happened you have to follow three distinct lines of communication that opened after I'd written the original post.

In the first, Matthew Dornquast, who identifies himself as "one of the developers/founding partners of Code 42 Software" opened a new Crashplan support ticket with me, and started a discussion there.

In the second, "Brian" starts a thread on Crashplan's support forums, "Silently corrupted data" which links to my blog post. This attracts numerous comments.

And in the third, several people leave comments under my original blog post. I notice these somewhat after the fact, as I didn't have the "Send me e-mail when people comment" option turned on in Blogger. That's now remedied.

What follows is the unedited exchange between myself and Matthew in the new support ticket, along with a description and links to relevant entries in the Crashplan support forum thread.

One thing I want to call out up-front. You'll note that midway through the exchange between myself and Matthew he asks that I keep his comments private, and not repost them. I have chosen not to respect this requst for several reasons.

First, in the support thread there was concern expressed several times that I may have been paraphrasing what Code 42 staff had said. I want there to be no doubt that this a full, unedited copy of the conversation.

Second, I don't believe it's appropriate for someone to say something and then note, after the fact, "Oh, by the way, that was off the record". If you want to have those sorts of conversations then clearly establish that up front, not half way through.

Third, Matthew's comments are clearly intended to represent Code 42 -- he's writing in his professional capacity, not a private one.

Fourth, Matthew's comments in private contradict what another Code 42 employee wrote and that had already been quoted.

So, with that said, Matthew's first message, sent on March 30th, is as follows (misspellings and other grammar oddities retained):

Hi Nik,

I'm one of the developers/founding partners of Code 42 Software, we make CrashPlan. I read your blog post and saw several inaccuracies based on your interaction with one of our support agents. I wanted to track down the source, so I re-read the correspondence between our support staff and yourself. As I suspected, it's a case of miscommunication, we're to blame.

Rather than follow up on your blog post directly, I'd rather write you in hopes you can revise/clean up your initial blog post. I'm not trying to do damage control, you can write what you want. What I'm trying to do is share facts with you in hopes your personal trust in CrashPlan is restored.

If you have any questions about what I've written below, please give me a call! I'd love to chat with you. It's much faster that way- [number redacted -- Nik].
If you can agree with my points below, I'd appreciate you updating your blog entry to properly reflect the situation.. what you saw is real, but the cause is misdirected and frankly, you're kicking dirt on the very feature that makes us better than everyone else! :-)

Here are my points with your blog post.

re:"Previous versions of Crashplan have silently corrupted data that has been backed up."

This is absolutely not true. CrashPlan does not have a bug that silently corrupts data. Previous version of CrashPlan failed to detect all types of corruption that occur "in the wild" – bad disks, corrupt volume info, rebooting a machine instead of cleanly shutting down, etc. Again - CrashPlan did NOT corrupt your data, it just failed to detect the TYPE of corruption that had occurred. If we had corruption in our product, all your archives would have been corrupted. (And frankly, yours wouldn't be the ONLY negative post EVER on the internet.) This misunderstanding isn't your fault - it's ours. (Read my comments on support ticket below) The support engineer on our side was not communicating well.

Not only are we the only company that's so paranoid we're verifying your data at destinations (and trying to heal!) but we're also one of the few that verify every aspect of the restore as well! That part worked - it logged each and every file that didn't work. It's another failsafe we have. Other backup products don't verify the integrity of the restores! We actually detected and communicated to you the issues. Most products just write them out. Imagine if we'd just written out all your data - you would have trusted it worked. Months, maybe never, you would have attributed those few files failure to something else. Verifying everything at the mathematical level we do is expensive and time consuming. It took a lot of engineering to do.

re:"The team at Crashplan are aware of this. More recent versions of the software do not have this problem."

This statement is false because the first one is. The software does not have a backup issue, and does not corrupt data. The team at CrashPlan is aware of the fact we've improved our healing technology to include scenarios we otherwise had not considered.

re:"However, more recent versions of the software do not fix, acknowledge, or in any way indicate that some of the files in the backup are corrupt."

That's actually not true either. Every version of our software fixes, acknowledges, and repairs files that are corrupt. Do they detect, repair and fix every conceivable corruption possible? We can't say that for certain. What we can say for certain is every day we heal hundreds of thousands of issues discovered do to bad disks, reboots, corrupted file systems, etc. No other backup product works as hard as CrashPlan to make the inherently unreliable, reliable.

re:"Crashplan support appear to wholly unconcerned with this in a manner that means I no longer have faith in the product or their support. I leave you to determine the course of action that's right for you."

I agree with this if you limit it to the one agent. It's unfair to say our entire support group isn't concerned. (Hey, I'm writing you!) The reality is, there are a lot of agents here. Some new, some experienced. You got a new agent that did not properly recognize the seriousness of your event. He should have escalated this internally. This misunderstanding could have been avoided. I apologize for that. I would like to point out that we hire really great people, and we haven't outsourced our support overseas like our two main competitors have. Typically, we receive accolades for our support. Your experience (which is absolutely valid) is the exception, not the rule.

Here are my points on your support ticket with us. (Sorry for verbosity, I'm just talking informally.)

1. Mis communication by support engineer.

There was a misunderstanding as to what the source/cause was. CrashPlan is not the cause of the corruption, however it failed to heal around it. Healing around every possible situation is difficult to imagine, every release we have improves this healing. The corruption that occurred was not due to crashplan, it's just because it was a really old version, it had not been healed. The proof in what I'm saying is look at your other archive, it was fine! Your drive, your computer, the cable, something caused data corruption. It was NOT crashplan. Again, we just failed to discover and heal around that particular form of corruption that affected a very small % of the archive. I'm not making light of it, we want to be bulletproof on our healing technology. It's been improved many times since the issue you faced occurred. I strongly suspect you have a corrupt VTOC on that drive, have you run a disk repair utility on it?

2. You would not be able to reproduce the situation unless you reproduced the failure at the exact same moment. (i.e. disconnected drive, corrupted a block of data, etc.) Since the corruption was very small, my guess is it was a perfectly timed reboot as it was writing to drive. There is a good chance if you check integrity of the filesystem on that disk, there are issues.

3. I don't feel our support engineer properly conveyed a sense of urgency around this issue. My guess is he felt it wasn't as big of a deal as you had another destination and you had the data, but that doesn't make it any less serious that if it were your only source. Our agent should have treated this with a greater sense of urgency and spent more time explaining the details of this to you. Your faith in CrashPlan was unnecessarily shaken.

CrashPlan is the only product that automatically verifies destinations and attempts to heal around issues discovered through bad hardware (i.e. disks, disconnected cables, etc.) We've learned a lot over the last 3 years, we're continuously improving the feature. Please don't confuse the failure of a defensive feature with the core backup/restore engine. Our engine is 100% solid. Unfortunately, you had some corruption from an older backup that we did not heal around. You can't reproduce this, as we improved the way we store & verify data several times since then.

In summary - I'm sorry you had to post a blog entry to get the attention this deserves. I always tell support - "support is our marketing. Each person has the power to undo years of hard work." Already, your blog entry was linked to a recommendation, where now the guy might use something else other than us.. which I believe is the wrong call. This person wont get a more reliable product than CrashPlan. Who else supports multiple destinations, multiple levels of integrity checks, and attempts to heal around any and all corruption automatically?

I send the following reply on April 13th:

Matthew,

Sorry it's taken some time to reply to you -- a combination of training courses and vacation have left me away from the computer for an extended period of time.

On 30 March 2010 17:01, CrashPlan Support wrote:

Here are my points with your blog post.

re:"Previous versions of Crashplan have silently corrupted data that has been backed up."

This is absolutely not true. CrashPlan does not have a bug that silently corrupts data. Previous version of CrashPlan failed to detect all types of corruption that occur "in the wild" – bad disks, corrupt volume info, rebooting a machine instead of cleanly shutting down, etc. Again - CrashPlan did NOT corrupt your data, it just failed to detect the TYPE of corruption that had occurred.
This is semantics. It doesn't matter if it's the raw data that's corrupt or the checksum that is corrupt (and/or computed incorrectly).

It's also at complete odds with what your support engineer wrote.

re:"However, more recent versions of the software do not fix, acknowledge, or in any way indicate that some of the files in the backup are corrupt."

That's actually not true either. Every version of our software fixes, acknowledges, and repairs files that are corrupt. Do they detect, repair and fix every conceivable corruption possible? We can't say that for certain. What we can say for certain is every day we heal hundreds of thousands of issues discovered do to bad disks, reboots, corrupted file systems, etc.
You go out of your way to say this for certain on the Crashplan website. To quote this text again:

Once your files are backed up, CrashPlan continuously checks that your files are 100% healthy and ready to restore when you need them. If it finds any problems, CrashPlan fixes them.

Not "99.9x% healthy".

Not "If it finds some problems".

If you can't stand by these statements in private then don't make them in public. And I don't expect to find out that files are unrestorable at the point when I do the restore -- note that the affected files date from 2008 and have not been modified since then, so there's been plenty of time for Crashplan's "continuous" file check to determine that they're not restorable and alert me.

To be clear -- software has bugs, hardware is not error free, I know this. However, if your promotional material tells me that using Crashplan means I don't have to worry about performing test restores then I'm going to be upset as a customer if it turns out that I have to.

Here are my points on your support ticket with us. (Sorry for verbosity, I'm just talking informally.)

1. Mis communication by support engineer.

There was a misunderstanding as to what the source/cause was. CrashPlan is not the cause of the corruption, however it failed to heal around it. Healing around every possible situation is difficult to imagine, every release we have improves this healing. The corruption that occurred was not due to crashplan, it's just because it was a really old version, it had not been healed.

The proof in what I'm saying is look at your other archive, it was fine!
No -- the other archive was never tested, I just copied the original files from the original PC.

Since the other (remote) archive was created by unplugging the USB drive that contained the corrupt archive and physically handing it to the person who hosts the remote archive, whereupon they imported it in to their Crashplan instance I don't see that there's any evidence for making any claims, positive or negative, about the health of the remote archive.

Your drive, your computer, the cable, something caused data corruption. It was NOT crashplan. Again, we just failed to discover and heal around that particular form of corruption that affected a very small % of the archive. I'm not making light of it, we want to be bulletproof on our healing technology. It's been improved many times since the issue you faced occurred. I strongly suspect you have a corrupt VTOC on that drive, have you run a disk repair utility on it?
Yes. No issues found.

2. You would not be able to reproduce the situation unless you reproduced the failure at the exact same moment. (i.e. disconnected drive, corrupted a block of data, etc.) Since the corruption was very small, my guess is it was a perfectly timed reboot as it was writing to drive. There is a good chance if you check integrity of the filesystem on that disk, there are issues.
Again, to be completely clear -- are you saying that the support engineer's statement that:

they were stored with an older version of the CrashPlan Application that has a known issue with incorrectly checksum-ing stored files in a backup archive.
is false, and that older versions of Crashplan did not have a known issue when checksumming stored files?

Matthew replies the same day.

no worries - i figured as much. I'm disappointed in your response - I was hoping you'd see the severity of your accusation and while a lot of your presumptions were based on a single miswritten statement from a support engineer, realize you jumped the gun on a few conclusions.

You're publicly saying "Crashplan corrupts data" and "they know about it" and "aren't communicating it."

That's ridiculous. That's false. You should have confirmed that understanding before writing them publicly as fact. Bloggers should fact check just like journalists if they're going to publish. (This is my opinion, hey, don't agree.. but as soon as you started promoting your blog by hijacking other threads, you crossed that line. IMHO.)

Why did you not try your other backup? It could have confirmed the checksum issue wasn't present in the product and was due to something else. Maybe we'll make progress on the source of the issue rather than assuming the worst?

Taking a junior support guys communication mistakes (he's a new hire, hasn't been here all that long) and blowing it up into "crashplan corrupts data" then hijacking our public positive threads about us is a bit over the top. If you had simply said, "Hey, can I talk to your supervisor? This doesn't make sense. It seems inconsistent with everything I'm reading/have heard including your website" it would have saved us a lot of pain and time.

I wouldn't hang google out to dry on what a single support person said in an email.. at least, not without agreement from their higher ups!

Finally, let's not loose perspective on how great CrashPlan is. Do you know of another backup product (free or otherwise) that backs up to multiple destinations, has multiple levels of checksums and protections, encrypts before transmission, and then ultimately tries to identify and heal around corruption at destinations asynchronously? One that proactively sends backup status reports to prevent silent failure? Do you seriously think spreading FUD about CrashPlan helps the consumer? What else will they use? Mozy? Carbonite? Give me a break.. While yours is the only negative thread I know of like this, literally thousands have failed to restore data with those products. They're not 1,000 times bigger.. or 50.. or even 10.

We're a market leader for a reason. We try really hard, and we care a ton. It's beyond frustrating that you take a junior guys mis-step in communication and blow it out like this. We're engineers that care, we're engineers that work really hard to make a great product, that which (I personally) think is far more reliable and secure than anything else out there. Where we fail, we have a culture of fixing things, of not accepting anything else less than perfect.

I'll post on our forums as much as I can about all the safeties we employ for your data.. hopefully you'll agree it's ridiculous how far we go to do a great job.. certainly farther than anyone else out there.. and ultimately.. what a disservice you're doing with your post.. again.. IMHO.

Sorry for the fragmented thread - jamming fast between meetings.

Also.. if I come across as harsh.. sorry.. I'm mostly frustrated at how this situation even developed.. it could have been avoided with better communication at the start. Had the support guy said, "we can't heal around all types of loss, you hit one, we have a theory on why and think we've improved it".. it would have went a better way.. you might have asked what do we do.. and then been satisfied with it.

And while you're free to post whatever you wont.. please don't? I'm writing you personally.. please respect my privacy.

As always, you're free to call me.. it can save a lot of time.. and confusion around typing.

And my reply -- which is, at the time of writing, the final one on this ticket.

On 13 April 2010 22:29, CrashPlan Support wrote:

no worries - i figured as much. I'm disappointed in your response - I was hoping you'd see the severity of your accusation and while a lot of your presumptions were based on a single miswritten statement from a support engineer, realize you jumped the gun on a few conclusions.
You're publicly saying "Crashplan corrupts data" and "they know about it" and "aren't communicating it."

That's ridiculous. That's false. You should have confirmed that understanding before writing them publicly as fact.
I did confirm it -- with the support engineer. See my message of Mar 24 4:32,

Are you saying that backups that were started with the older version of Crashplan may have this problem, and that simply using the newer version is not sufficient to correct the issue -- the corrupt backups need to be wiped, and the backup started afresh?
Correct. [...]
See also my message of Mar 25 4:01, where I write "Are you saying that the following sequence of events [...] is sufficient to cause this corruption?"

To which your engineer replies "Yes, that is correct".

In two different messages there I said that Crashplan was causing corruption, and your engineer confirmed what I was saying, and did not quibble with my use of "corrupt" and "corruption".

While you may feel that this is one of your junior engineers speaking out of turn (I note that he was the third engineer that replied to the ticket, so from my perspective it's been escalated to more senior engineers twice) I think it is unreasonable of you to expect me to know the ins and outs of your staffing organisation.

Why did you not try your other backup?
Because it's at the other end of a very slow Internet connection, and the original files were sitting on a PC a few feet away from the one I was trying to restore the files to.

Taking a junior support guys communication mistakes (he's a new hire, hasn't been here all that long) and blowing it up into "crashplan corrupts data" then hijacking our public positive threads about us is a bit over the top. If you had simply said, "Hey, can I talk to your supervisor? This doesn't make sense. It seems inconsistent with everything I'm reading/have heard including your website" it would have saved us a lot of pain and time.
As I say:

1. Support agreed with the use of the term "corrupt".

2. This was the third person who'd chimed in on the support ticket -- from my perspective I was already talking to someone senior.

3. The final response to the ticket left several questions that I'd asked open, with a complete refusal to answer them. As far as I was concerned Crashplan was done talking to me.

Finally, let's not loose perspective on how great CrashPlan is. Do you know of another backup product (free or otherwise) that backs up to multiple destinations, has multiple levels of checksums and protections, encrypts before transmission, and then ultimately tries to identify and heal around corruption at destinations asynchronously? One that proactively sends backup status reports to prevent silent failure? Do you seriously think spreading FUD about CrashPlan helps the consumer? What else will they use? Mozy? Carbonite? Give me a break.. While yours is the only negative thread I know of like this, literally thousands have failed to restore data with those products. They're not 1,000 times bigger.. or 50.. or even 10.
With respect, this is irrelevant to the issue at hand. I also find it crass that a significant part of your response to my concerns involves denigrating your competitors.

And you still haven't answered the questions that I've asked. Again, to be completely clear -- are you saying that the support engineer's statement that:

they were stored with an older version of the CrashPlan Application that has a known issue with incorrectly checksum-ing stored files in a backup archive.

is false, and that older versions of Crashplan did not have a known issue when checksumming stored files?

And while you're free to post whatever you wont.. please don't? I'm writing you personally.. please respect my privacy.
I reserve the right to

a) Post copies of this to the existing support thread (https://crashplan.zendesk.com/entries/140286-silently-corrupted-data) and

b) Excerpt some or all of the text for what I'm sure will be a followup post to the blog. One, I hope, that I will be writing after this is resolved satisfactorily.

Having read that it may be instructive to read the Crashplan support forum thread sparked by the initial blog post. I didn't contribute to the thread until page two, because until that point I was unaware of its existence. I post some entries to the thread clarifying that the quote acknowledging that this was caused by a Crashplan bug is a direct quote from a Crashplan employee, and two further messages that are copies of the ongoing correspondance with Crashplan (the messages quoted above).

In response to this, Code 42 silently deleted those two messages (by which I mean -- they are removed from the forum, and there is no indication that they were ever there, no placeholder that says something like "This message removed by a moderator" or similar). Handily, their forum software (optionally) e-mails participants in a thread a copy of new posts, so at least some other contributors there saw them (and quoted them in replies).

Matthew then posts a message headed "SITUATION SUMMARY" in the thread (I can't link to it directly, their forum software does not allow you to link to individual posts, it's about half way down page 2). I'm not going to reproduce it here, partly because it'll make a lengthy post even lengthier, and partly because you can see the responses and questions that other customers asked that forum (assuming they haven't been deleted).

You'll also note that those questions haven't been answered.

So, I'm still looking for alternative backup software. Some cursory searching has turned up Wuala, Spider Oak, Jungle Disk, as well as those two competitors that Matthew was so quick to trash, Mozy and Carbonite.

Does anyone have any positive experiences about them to relate?

Crashplan

2010-03-27T22:48:00.009+01:00

[See Crashplan Part Two for the follow-up]

Three weeks ago I started to write a blog post about Crashplan. This is not how I expected it to turn out.

This is likely to be quite long, so I'll put the conclusions at the front, and then the information I've used to draw those conclusions follows.

If you're a Crashplan user (quite possibly because I've recommended it to you in the past) you need to be aware that.

Previous versions of Crashplan have silently corrupted data that has been backed up.
The team at Crashplan are aware of this. More recent versions of the software do not have this problem.
However, more recent versions of the software do not fix, acknowledge, or in any way indicate that some of the files in the backup are corrupt.
Crashplan support appear to wholly unconcerned with this in a manner that means I no longer have faith in the product or their support. I leave you to determine the course of action that's right for you.

With that out of the way, some background, and the events that lead me to the four points above.

I've been an enthusiastic user of the Crashplan backup software for something like two and a half years. I forget how I found it -- probably some blog post or mailing list -- but it seemed to me to be a great example of software that just works. It was flexible enough to handle my backup needs, and easy enough to use that I recommended it to family. friends, and work colleagues. I'm a paying customer, and have purchased Crashplan licenses to give to other people as gifts to encourage them to back up their important data safely.

So for more than two years my main computer at home has been backed up using Crashplan, initially to a locally attached USB drive, and latterly also to a colleague who I convinced to run Crashplan for his backup needs.

One of Crashplan's more useful features is that the software will auto-update, prompting you when a new version is released. So during this period I've very closely tracked whatever the most recent version of Crashplan is.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a new PC, and the plan was once I'd gone through the somewhat tedious business of reinstalling my software, restoring all my data, and so forth I was going to decommission the old one. To that end, once the new PC was up and running one of the first things I did was install Crashplan on the new PC, make sure the old PC was 100% backed up to the USB drive, and then plug the USB drive in to the new PC.

When you do this, Crashplan can "attach" to the backup. Even though the files in the backup weren't from the new PC I just had to enter the password for the backup so it could decrypt them and restore them to the new PC. I thought this would be the simplest (and probably fastest) way of migrating my data from the old to the new PC.

I let Crashplan chug along doing the restore, which took several hours because of the volume of data. And then, at the end of the process, I saw a warning that 140 files have failed the "integrity check" during the restore, and couldn't be properly restored. All of them were digital photos.

Now this is a bit odd. One of the things that the Crashplan team champion on the website is the following claim:

Once your files are backed up, CrashPlan continuously checks that your files are 100% healthy and ready to restore when you need them. If it finds any problems, CrashPlan fixes them.
Source: http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/features.html

For me, this is a big benefit. One of the things you should do when backing up data is periodically try and restore it, to ensure that the backup is actually working. The fact that Crashplan tries to do this in the background was an important part of choosing the software.

Now I knew the backup was complete -- I'd verified it before I unplugged it from the old PC, so this is one of those things that should just never happen.

I sent an e-mail to the Crashplan support address. This generated ticket #20145 in their queue, and my message went like this:

Hi,

I'm migrating to a replacement PC. I decided to migrate my data across by plugging the external hard drive that the original PC backs up to using Crashplan+, and then restoring from that archive on the new PC, running version 3.8.2010.

29,742 files restored correctly. 140 failed, listing in the History tab as - Integrity check failed for

First, it would be very useful if I could cut/paste the contents of the History tab. It would make it much easier to figure out which files I'll need to copy over by hand.

Second, and much more importantly, I'm very concerned by this. From http://b1.crashplan.com/consumer/features.html:

Once your files are backed up, CrashPlan continuously checks that your files are 100% healthy and ready to restore when you need them. If it finds any problems, CrashPlan fixes them.

This does not appear to have happened. How do I find out what went wrong in this instance, and how do I fix it?

About 5h30m later (which is, by the way, fine, we're in very different time zones, so that sort of response time is not only perfectly acceptable it's probably above and beyond what I would normally expect) I get a reply from Renee at Crashplan, asking if I can send logs from the destination computer, and instructions on how to do that. I do so, and over the course of a few days (a short vacation intervened) I send logs from the source computer (i.e., the one that's been doing all the backups over the last few years) as well.

A day and a half after I send the necessary logs I get a reply from Bret at Crashplan. He says:

Unfortunately these logs don't point to a clear source of this error. A copy of the restored file was preserved with a modified name; it may be useful for you to review this modified file and let us know if the file that was restored appears to be correct or is non-functional. For example, the following file:

C:/Documents and Settings/Nik Clayton/My Documents/My Pictures/2006/2006 07 14 All Things Gothic/IMG_2301.JPG

was restored to the following location:

C:\Users\nik\Documents\My Documents\My Pictures\2006\2006 07 14 All Things Gothic\restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2301.JPG

Can you attempt to open this file and verify that it is a well-formed JPEG file?

I do some digging, and reply about five hours later, with

It's not a valid file. Windows Photo Viewer refuses to open it.

The restore.failed-checksum.* files have suspicious file sizes:

09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2296.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2297.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2298.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2299.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2301.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2302.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2303.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 917,504 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2305.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 917,504 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2306.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2307.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 917,504 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2308.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2309.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 786,432 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2310.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 655,360 restore.failed-checksum.IMG_2311.JPG

They're all exact multiples of 1,024, and far too small. Compare and contrast with the same files that I restored by direct sync from the source PC to the target PC:

09/09/2008 19:42 2,999,745 IMG_2296.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 3,029,664 IMG_2297.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 3,102,390 IMG_2298.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 2,923,048 IMG_2299.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 2,939,522 IMG_2301.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 3,077,000 IMG_2302.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 2,707,091 IMG_2303.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 3,478,028 IMG_2305.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 3,509,851 IMG_2306.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 2,627,625 IMG_2307.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 3,169,280 IMG_2308.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 2,859,546 IMG_2309.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 2,924,675 IMG_2310.JPG
09/09/2008 19:42 2,518,022 IMG_2311.JPG

It goes quiet for two days, and then Matt Genelin takes over the ticket, saying:

Let me step in here. Thank you for the log files. After checking with several engineers on our staff, our best causation of the 140 files missing / corrupt is as follows:

The 140 files stored on your external hard drive are inaccessible because they were stored with an older version of the CrashPlan Application that has a known issue with incorrectly checksum-ing stored files in a backup archive. We have corrected this issue in the last 12 months, and the current version of the CrashPlan Client Application backs up files with the correct checksum information.

Moving forward here, the best recommendation we can make is:

1. Restore your complete archive from your other backup destination (I believe this is [redacted]).
(verify that your restore is successful.) Then proceed to step 2:

2. Shutdown the CrashPlan Backup engine on [redacted] like this:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/stop_and_start_engine

3. Erase, delete or replace the backup archive that is stored on your external drive named "Folder: External 320G". Simply perform a file copy from [redacted] to your external drive.

Please note that since your external drive was created on 12/12/2008 and your archive on [redacted] was created on 2/7/2009, you will loose any file version information that was made between December 2008 and Feb. 2009.

4. Restart (start) the backup on [redacted], again:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/stop_and_start_engine
If this seems like an unreasonable fix to this issue, please let me know.

"[redacted]" was the name of the remote destination I also back up to -- since it's a colleague's name I've removed it from the above.

I should mention at this point that none of my data has been irretrievably lost. My original PC is still here, and with some faffing around I can retrieve the missing files from it (or download them from the [redacted] offsite backup). But that is purely by luck. If all my backups had the same problem, which is not an unreasonable assumption, this data (140 digital photos) would have been lost forever.

I wasn't sure that I'd quite understood Matt correctly. In particular, with the reference to an older version of Crashplan I thought that perhaps he'd misunderstood, and assumed that the backup I was restoring from was only created with an older version of Crashplan. So we had the following exchange. First, me:

While it is the case that I first started backing up to "External 320G" using an older version of Crashplan, the Crashplan version has been regularly (auto)updated since then. The specific set of steps I carried out to do the restore was:

1. Power up PC #1 (runs XP SP3, Crashplan+, and is the machine that "External 320G" has been plugged in to for the last few years).

2. Verify (through the Crashplan UI) that Crashplan thinks that the backup of PC #1 to "External 320G" is complete. This is using the latest version of Crashplan (3.8.2010) because it auto updated earlier in the month.

3. Power down PC #1, power off the external drive, power up PC #2 (Windows 7), plug the external drive in to PC #2 and power it up. Install the latest version of Crashplan from crashplan.com, import the backup from the external drive, and attempt the restore.

That then generated the checksum errors for 140 files upon restore.

Are you saying that backups that were started with the older version of Crashplan may have this problem, and that simply using the newer version is not sufficient to correct the issue -- the corrupt backups need to be wiped, and the backup started afresh?

I've just reviewed the release notes going back to 12.10.2008, and don't see this mentioned.

Matt's reply:

Correct. The Backups being the backup archive on your External Drive. I am recommending:

1. Verifying the [redacted] Backup.
2. Wiping the External Drive.
3. Coping the [redacted] backup archive over to the External Drive.

Seem reasonable?

At this point I'm still not quite convinced that I have this right. In particular, he's not correcting my assertion that this is a problem they've known about, and fixed with no notice in the release notes, and no mechanism to fix existing-but-broken backups. After all, this is a company that sells backup software (and sells an optional service whereby they'll host external backups for you). They wouldn't be that cavalier about the integrity of their customers' data, would they?

So I replied:

Well, I don't need to do that, because I've moved the data from the old machine by other means -- restoring from the backup was (supposed) to be the simplest way to do this.

However, I want to make sure that I understand you correctly. Are you saying that the following sequence of events:

1. Install Crashplan in 2008.
2. Tell Crashplan to backup to an external drive.
3. Let Crashplan autoupdate throughout 2008, 2009, and 2010, and continue to backup to the external drive throughout this period.

is sufficient to cause this corruption? This was not an external backup that I created once using an old version of Crashplan, and then put away -- the external drive has been attached to this PC almost continuously, and Crashplan (from the earlier 2008 version to the most recent March 2010 version) has been backing up to it on pretty much a daily basis.

I must ask why Crashplan doesn't warn about this -- big red flashing letters saying "Warning: You created this backup with a version of Crashplan that had checksum errors. You must delete this backup and start afresh".

Better still, why don't newer versions of Crashplan detect this and correct it automatically? http://b4.crashplan.com/consumer/features.html is quite explicit:

Once your files are backed up, CrashPlan continuously checks that your files are 100% healthy and ready to restore when you need them. If it finds any problems, CrashPlan fixes them.

This does not appear to have happened here.

I'm very concerned that based on what I've been told so far it seems as though an older version of Crashplan corrupted my backup, you released a fixed version without noting the fix in the release notes, but the fixed version does not correct prior instances of the problem.

Right now I do not have a warm fuzzy feeling about continuing to trust Crashplan with my data.

Matt's reply:

Yes, that is correct. This is what I am stating here.

I am also explaining that an older version of CrashPlan has a known issue -- that has been corrected in our newer versions of the CrashPlan Client. This known issue appears to have passed our nightly archive maint. check:

And only appears when you attempt to restore files.

Normally our website is correct; once you back a file up, there is no need to worry about your files. In your case, it appears from your archive that some of your files were backed up with a version of the CrashPlan Client with a known issue, and the newer versions CrashPlan Client's nightly archive maint. did not detect the problem in your archive. The problem here surfaced when you went to restore your external drive's archive, that is 99.996% fine, but 0.004% corrupted.

I am suggesting a course of action that brings you back to 100% fine, and throws away the archive that is 0.004% corrupted.

I can understand. Your feelings on CrashPlan are a conclusion you will need to come to on your own.

Let's keep in mind the facts here:

* Only one of our multiple-destination archives is having issues here.
* The one archive that has issues restored 29,742 correctly and failed to restore 140 files. That's a failure rate of 0.004%.

I agree -- this is not perfect. Perfection would be 100% data recovery. This is why CrashPlan Allows you to backup to multiple destinations. You should be able to achieve perfection of recovery by using your second archive; on your [redacted] computer.

A couple of points here. Matt's skipped over my "Why doesn't Crashplan warn about this, and/or fix the problem automatically?" question. He also seems to think that you can quantify the effectiveness of a backup solution by taking the number of files, and divide that by the number that failed to restore as some sort of useful metric. That takes no account of the relative importance of the files -- these were photos, and irreplaceable, nor the absolute volume of data lost.

He also assumes that I can restore the files from the [redacted] site. While that may be possible (and I haven't tried, I haven't needed to) that backup was created by taking a copy of my local backup archive and giving it to my colleague, so it's entirely possible that that archive has the same problem as my local one.

And finally, the Crashplan site is quite explicit, "100% healthy and ready to restore". There's no equivocating around some-number-of-9s availability. They claim 100%.

My final message to Matt asked:

1. Will the next release of Crashplan detect this problem and fix it.

If not, when will it be fixed?

2. Why wasn't this problem called out in any of the release notes for versions released after the problem was detected?

3. Will you inform existing customers of this problem, and the need to wipe and restart existing backups if they're older than date ?

All, I think, reasonable questions, which are ducked in Matt's final reply.

It has been a pleasure working with you. It's clear that the technical recommendation I have made for you will correct the issue at hand here, and that the quoting of text back and fourth is leading our conversation in a circle. I want to bring you to a place that moves you forward, and the best way to do this is to end our conversation now.

I believe I have answered your questions repeatedly, and your questions are deviating away from solving your technical problem. By closing this conversation, I am hoping that you will take my recommendation in good faith, and apply it to your unique situation to move your backups with CrashPlan forward.

Looking back through this discussion those three questions are not answered.

There's no commitment that future versions of Crashplan will detect and fix this problem.
There's no answer as to why Crashplan weren't honest about this problem in the release notes of the software once they detected and fixed it.
And there's nothing to suggest that they'll inform existing customers of the problem.

So, if you're using Crashplan you should definitely make sure that your backup is 100% readable by the current client. And if it isn't you'll need to wipe it and start the backup from scratch again.

You might also want to start thinking about trusting your data to a different organisation; and in particular one that values honesty when it notices and fixes a mistake that leads to data loss.

Has anyone got any recommendations?

Useful Android Apps: Listen

2010-03-15T14:52:00.002+01:00

Podcasts are something I only recently started to listen to. I can read information far faster than I can listen to it, so spending time listening to (what I imagined would be) not much more than someone reading their blog entries didn't really appeal. And then some friends started recommending a few podcasts, and I decided it was time to find out more about it.

I'll cheerfully admit that this can be a bit tricky on Android phones, certainly trickier than on an iPhone or iPod. There's only really one way to get audio on to an iPhone (and associated iPods), and that's via iTunes. I use iTunes to manage my own music library, but it doesn't sync to Android, so getting music and podcasts on to the phone involves a bit of drag-and-drop, and trying to remember what you have and haven't already synced. That's more effort than I really want to put in to ephemeral entertainment.

Enter Listen, from Google Labs. It lets you subscribe to, download, and listen to arbitrary podcasts without needing to sync the content from a desktop or laptop.

Once installed you'll see this screen. I can search for new podcasts to subscribe to, review the episodes I can listen to ("My listen items") and see the podcasts I'm subscribed to ("My subscriptions"), as well as see popular searches to find new and hopefully interesting podcasts. At the bottom of the screen you can see I'm part way though listening to an episode of "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me".

Subscribing to new podcasts is easy. I can either search from the main screen, or tap through to "Manage my subscriptions" and enter a feed URL directly, as shown here.

Tapping "My listen items" shows me items I've queued up as well as items that are freshly downloaded. Listen normally plays through the queued items first, before moving on to fresh content, so you can control the order in which episodes are played by adding them to the queue. In this example many of these podcasts are new to me, so I've queued up a number of their back-episodes which I'm slowly working my way through.

Pressing through to any of the existing subscriptions allows you to unsubscribe, or queue entries, or mark them all listened or unlistened as necessary. Tapping on an episode lets you add it to the queue, listen to it immediately, and manage the subscription.

Actually playing an episode shows a screen like this, where as well as playing or otherwise navigating through the episode some of the options to manage the subscription to this podcast are also provided.

Finally, Listen has a number of thoughtful configuration options, which amongst other things can be used to ensure that you don't rack up a large bill downloading content without a WiFi connection, or consume too much power doing so.

Listen certainly makes it easy to keep up with your podcasts. It's very refreshing to start the morning commute knowing that there's almost certainly something new to listen to that's come in overnight, and the UI does a good job of getting out of your way.

In a stroke of genius, or idiocy, depending on which way you look at it, recent versions of Listen store your podcast feed subscriptions in a folder in Google Reader. This has the distinct advantage that your subscriptions are not tied to the phone, they're tied to your Google account, so they'll follow you as you upgrade your phone, and you can use Reader as another client to manage your subscriptions. You can also use the recommendation feature in Reader to find new podcasts to listen to. The downside to this is that if you're not careful you may inadvertently mark one of these podcasts as 'read' in Reader, at which point Listen will ignore it.

The only thing I still have to get used to is the notion that these aren't automatically available on my home media system. The rest of my audio collection is, and so at the moment I've subscribed to these podcasts twice, once to download so that I can play them when I'm at home, and again for when I'm on the move.

Listen is available for free. Search for it in Android Market, or scan this QR code with your phone to install it. And for more details (including FAQ and discussion groups) see http://listen.googlelabs.com/.

And if you'd like to listen to what I'm listening to, here are the podcasts I'm subscribed to at the moment.

Useful Android Apps: NewsRob

2010-03-13T21:51:00.002+01:00

Do you have an Android phone? I've been using one for about 15 months now -- first it was a G1, and now the Google¹ Nexus 1 -- and in that time I've discovered a number of applications that have proven indispensable, and over the coming entries I'll share my recommendations.

The first of these is NewsRob. It's a Google Reader client, syncing the content of your news feeds from Google Reader to the phone. It can also sync the web page content of the articles so that they are easily accessible when you're out and about -- handy for RSS feeds that don't include the full content of a post in the feed, or where you want to see comments that were left on the post on the original site.

With a slick, simple UI that gets out of the way, and a wealth of battery and wallet friendly syncing options ("only on WiFi", "only when charging", and so on) that can be set on a per-feed basis if necessary it's easy to stay in control of your feeds, and NewsRob can also share and star interesting posts via Google Reader.

On opening NewsRob you're presented with a list of your Google Reader top-level categories that have unread items. Tapping a category (in this case, "tech news") shows you the web site sources in that category that contain unread items. Note the handy "all articles" items at the top of the list, making it easy to just work through all unread articles, or all unread articles in a particular category.

On the left is the default article view, showing the article from the selected source. Notice the lack of UI elements for moving through the articles. Tapping an unused portion of the screen brings up 'floating' arrows that allow you to navigate the feed, without constantly consuming precious screen real estate. Notice, too, the star in the top navigation bar. Tapping that marks this entry with a star in Google Reader.

Tapping the article title takes you to the article as it appears on the originating web site, the right-hand screen shot in this example. This is done within NewsRob, your default web browser is not launched, so you can jump to the original site, read the content in context there while still being able to star the item, or use the floating UI to quickly move to the next article.

NewsRob is available for free (ad-supported), or you can pay for the ad-free version. Search for it in Android Market, or scan this QR code with your phone to install it.

¹ My employer. This and other entries are my opinion, not theirs.

EuroBSDCon 2009

2009-10-03T00:07:00.000+02:00

A couple of weekends ago I attended the 2009 European BSD Conference, in Cambridge.

My trip report has just been posted on the official Google Open Source Blog, and includes a few of my photos from the event.

Productions

2009-09-05T15:54:00.005+02:00

Since the start of this year I've been involved with the Zurich Comedy Club, an English speaking theatre group that's been running in Zurich for 50+ years (back when "Comedy Club" meant "We tend to put on comedies" and not the more modern "Stand up at a mic and deliver a routine for 15 minutes").

Anyway, I've got two updates that may be of interest.

First, our November production is "GamePlan", by Alan Ayckbourn.

Following the dot-com crash a mother and her daughter are abandoned by their husband. With money running out, and determined not to have to move away from her senior school, the daughter, Sorrel, hatches a plan to raise money by advertising as a prostitute on the Internet. Things are going swimmingly, until one of her clients dies of a heart attack mid-coitus. Then things start to unravel.

If you're interested in acting then you should know that auditions for GamePlan are this Monday, 7th September, starting at 7.30pm, at St Andrew's Community Centre, Promenadengasse 9, 8001 Zurich.

View Larger Map

If backstage work is more your thing (and it is mine) you should still come along on the Monday to meet people, find out what needs to be done, and volunteer. Or, drop me a note on here.

The second thing is that we have a production going up sooner than November. "Three Couples and a Goldfish" consists of three one-act plays, being performed from Tuesday 29th September through to Sunday 4th October at the Theatre STOK in Zurich. Performed almost in the round each evening will consist of a performance of "Henna Night", "Abortive", and "The Extraordinary Revelations of Orca the Goldfish¹". All three shows explore the nature of relationships.

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Henna Night: Judith leaves her ex-boyfriend a desperate message on his answerphone, saying that she is not coping with their break-up and that she has brought some razor blades and henna. She adds that she hasn't decided whether to dye her hair or slash her wrists. However it is his new partner, Ros, who hears the message and comes rushing to Judith's bedsit.

Abortive: Three weeks after her abortion, Roz - having been raped by Billy - and Colin find themselves in bed wondering how to carry on. Through the reproaches that are traded and the incidents that come up for discussion, the picture of a disturbing relationship emerges. Bed is no longer a safe island.

The Extraordinary Revelations of Orca the Goldfish: Henry and Alice have been married for 15 years. They are bored and have lost the zest for life and their relationship. Their lives have become a blur between fantasy and reality. Secret passions and desires explode and two seemingly separate fantasy worlds are on a collision course with reality. And it all started with a goldfish they named Orca.

Tickets are available now from Ticketcorner, and are CHF 28.

I'll be running around backstage each night with my Stage Manager hat on, trying to keep order and making sure everything runs smoothly. So don't expect to see me on stage; unless that is, it's a blackout, and we need to move some of the set...

¹ Keep this one in mind the next time you're playing charades...

Worldwide photo walk

2009-08-01T16:17:00.001+02:00

July 18th was the second Worldwide Photo Walk, and I took part in the Zurich walk. It was touch-and-go in the morning; with the walk scheduled to start at 2pm the rain didn't let up until about 1.50.

This was also a good opportunity to catch up with Jessica, Kerrin, and Karl, who were also out and about with their cameras.

Over the course of three hours I took about 150 or shots. Weeding through them afterwards reduced that to 30 that I quite liked, and here are three of them.

There also more photos from other members of the walk on the Zurich photo walk Flickr pool page.

Visiting Zurich: Day Three

2009-07-26T00:32:00.000+02:00

See Day One, Day Two (pt 1), and Day Two (pt 2).

I'd been scratching my head over what to do and where to go with my house guests on Sunday. The Swiss propensity to shut up shop on a Sunday means that opportunities for purchasing memorabilia were limited, and sightseeing in town is all very well, but it loses something of the local colour when everything's closed.

So I hit upon the idea of doing the Planetenweg -- or Planet Walk -- along the Uetliberg.

The Uetli-what? The Uetliberg is Zurich's local mountain, and looms large over the city, although calling it a mountain is perhaps overstating the case somewhat, given that on most days you can see the Alps from Zurich, which certainly fit my idea of what a mountain looks like better than the Uetliberg does.

Anyway, as far as I can make out the Uetliberg has three claims to fame.

The railway line that goes from Zurich Hauptbahnhof to the top is the steepest regular railway line in the world that doesn't make use of a rack-and-pinion system or similar to help the train up the tracks.
Uto Kulm, the hotel and restaurant at the top of the mountain. I've had quite a few very good evening meals up there.
The Planetenweg, of which more later.

By the time we'd woken up, recovered from the excesses of the previous night, dragged ourselves to the train station and arrived at the top Uetliberg station it was around midday. Slightly overcast, with a bit of a threat of rain later. Quite good walking weather then.

First stop -- lunch. We walked the 10 minutes or so up the path towards Uto Kulm, and I was able to show my guests the first point on the Planetenweg; the Sun.

This is probably the point to explain the Planetenweg. It's a scale model of the solar system, at the scale 1:1 billion. So every metre along the path represents 1 million kilometres in actuality. Along the path, sized and spaced appropriately are models of the planets that make up the solar system, along with small plaques giving snippets of interesting information.

Our plan for the day was to start at the Sun, naturally enough, and make it as far as Neptune, taking in all the planets as we went. You may be thinking to yourself "Hang on, that's not right. Neptune's not the last planet in the system, Pluto is. They're not doing it properly if they don't get to Pluto."

Leaving aside, for the moment, the controversy over whether or not Pluto is a planet, rest assured that the Planetenweg's designers had considered this. Pluto has a very erratic orbit, and for a significant period of time it's actually inside the orbit of Neptune. Accordingly, it has three markers along the walk, one at perihelion, one at aphelion, and one at the mid-point between the two.

So, by making it as far as Neptune we were guaranteed of seeing at least one of Pluto's markers.

The rest of the walk from the station to Uto Kulm also takes in Mercury and Venus.

As you can see, the models capture the relative scale of the planets.

Uto Kulm makes a good vantage point for some sightseeing, with a viewing areas with coin-operated binoculars and also benefits from an observation tower offering panaromas over Zurich and the surroundings. So we paused to take in the view.

Somewhat overcast continued to be the order of the day, but that didn't stop us from taking some more photos -- well, attempting to anyway.

We also (well, two out of three, I won't divulge who didn't fancy the height) climbed the observation tower to get a better look.

We'd planned a brief stop for lunch before striking out on the rest of the path. As things panned out this took longer than expected; partly because Uto Kulm proved to be quite busy, with waitresses rushed off their feet, so being served took a while. Also, partway through the meal the rain which had been threatening for most of the day decided to make an appearance. Fortunately this only lasted 10 minutes or so before easing off.

Getting back on the path and finding the Earth was relatively simple. The plaque and model for the Earth also included a scaled miniature for the moon too -- none of the others on the rest of the walk include satellites.

Strolling on, Mars and Ceres fell to our footsteps very shortly afterwards.

Note that Ceres is almost too small make out in this picture. I'm not certain why it was included on the path (especially given that it's not a planet). Anyway...

By this point I was starting to get slightly concerned. I was expecting the walk to take a couple of hours, more or less, and here we were having passed by half the solar system already, and after only perhaps 20 minutes of walking. I was beginning to think that I'd have to quickly come up with something else for us to do to keep us occupied for the rest of the afternoon.

As it turns out I needn't have worried. As Douglas Adams wrote, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." Walking the Planetenweg is an excellent way to get an appreciation of just how large the distances involved are, as we went some distance down leafy tracks (dodging the occasional cyclists who came pounding past).

The route is also littered with various observation points affording views out on to Lake Zurich and the small towns that lie up and down the coast on either side. I did my best to point out sights of interest along the way.

After 15 minutes or so I was beginning to get a little concerned that perhaps we'd passed the marker for Jupiter and not realised it. Then we rounded a corner and there it was.

With the earlier planet models amounting to little more than small ball bearings it was quite a shock to see this representation of just how large Jupiter is compared to the inner planets. Although, as you can see, it is in some danger of being overgrown.

We'd settled in to quite a relaxed walking pace now, with occasional pauses to capture a particular view on camera, and were becoming adept at hearing the noise of furious pedaling before the cyclists rounded the corner, and it was all really rather pleasant.

Twenty minutes gentle stroll brought us to Saturn's marker. I was wondering on the way whether or not they would include Saturn's famous rings, and I was pleased to see that an effort has been made.

Although it does put me in mind of those exercise balance balls that are supposed to be good for improving your posture.

The route continued, going gently up and down, passing by many fields, farm houses, and carefully looked after swathes of green.

As a slight astronomy geek (well, geek with passing interest in astronomy anyway) there were two facts about Uranus that had stuck in my mind. One is that it's blue, as evidenced by this image search. The other is that its axial tilt is the most extreme of all the planets. In effect its poles take turns pointing at the Sun during its orbut, so you can imagine that Uranus almost rolls along it's orbital path.

Anyway, I wasn't expecting of these two nuggets of information to make it on to the marker, so I was quite happy to see that they've made the marker blue -- an attention to detail that I wasn't expecting.

With just Neptune and Pluto to go our walk took on a final definite air of purpose as we strode to the notional finish line. As I explained earlier, Pluto's marker is nearer than Neptune's because of Pluto's erratic orbit. I was slightly miffed that they don't include a scale model for this marker though, just the plaque.

And then, probably not 100 metres further on was Neptune, and as far in the solar system as we were planning to go. At least on this visit.

From the Neptune marker it's possible to look back and see Uto Kulm. In this photo the taller of the two is the Uetliberg TV Tower. For an idea of scale, that tower is 186.7m tall. The observation tower that we'd climbed earlier is the smaller of the two.

Having bagged our final planet it was on to the end of our journey on the route, and to the Luftseilbahn Adliswil-Felsenegg (LAF), perhaps another 15 minutes walk distant.

Running for 55 years, the LAF is a cable car that connects Felsenegg station at the top with the town Adliswil at the bottom. Just over a kilometre long the cable cars make the journey in a little under 3 minutes, and thanks to Zurich's excellent integrated public transport system normal travel passes are accepted on the route.

Here's the route we took, from Uetliberg station to the LAF.

View Larger Map

From the bottom it was then a short walk to Adliswil station, where, despite being a Sunday, trains were still running regularly back to Zurich Hauptbahnhof.

Feeling somewhat walked out, we paused for coffee at a cafe, and gave our feet a bit of rest. Suitable recaffeinated and rejuvenated we strolled through the squares and streets on the west side of the Limmat down towards to the lake. By now it was getting on for 6pm, and time to start thinking about an evening meal.

P and J had recently returned from a holiday in Argentina, so I was keen to take them to Churrasco, an Argentinan steakhouse in the centre of Zurich. I've been there several times and had excellent food, and I was interested how well the restaurant held up when compared to their recent experiences in Argentina.

The ambience was perhaps slightly ruined by the associated sauces arriving at the table still in their plastic squeezy bottles, but in all other respects the meal was superb. The fillet steak was fantastic, as only the best fillet can be, and the wine (a Norton Malbec Reserve 2006) was superb. Perhaps a little tight in the bottle, but it loosened up quickly enough.

And then, because we were shattered, home.

Visiting Zurich: Day Two (pt 2)

2009-07-19T20:00:00.001+02:00

This is a continuation from Visiting Zurich: Day Two (pt 1).

After cycling around the city and finishing at about 1pm it was time for lunch. Since some of the party were vegetarian we wandered off in the direction of Hiltl, Europe's oldest vegetarian restaurant -- founded in 1898 it's been going strong for 111 years. We took advantage of the buffet, which is priced by weight. You load up your plate, weigh it, and if I remember correctly hand over CHF 4.50 per 100g.

As J pointed out, this is something of a contrast to the UK, where any sort of buffet option normally limits the number of trips you're allowed to make, requiring a careful form of structural engineering in order to maximise the amount of food you can get away with on your plate.

This was a very important skill during our student years.

Lunch was very tasty, and quite filling, but turned out to be lacking that certain something. Discussion determined that the certain something was ice-cream, and with a Mövenpick stand one street over it seemed rude not to...

Suitably sated we strolled over to the Grossmünster for some more sightseeing. I say strolled, "Hopped on a number 11 tram" would be a more accurate way of putting it.

The church interior is quite plain, in large part because of the Swiss Reformation in the 1500s. Accordingly, there's not much in the way of internal decoration -- what is there being largely limited to reliefs on the stonework (note: it's been a while since I was last in the Grossmünster and it seems that in the intervening time they've banned photography inside the building, so these photos are from when it was allowed¹).

The north-west end of the church also boasts two very impressive stained-glass windows.

I recommend clicking on that to view the image larger, and properly appreciate the colours in the glass.

At the south-west end of the Grossmünster is the crypt, first consecrated by Bishop Gebhard III of Constance in 1107. Pride of place is afforded to a statue of Charlemagne, which dates to around 1450-1475. This statue was originally sat in a niche approximately half way up the Charles Tower of the Grossmünster (the one nearest the river) -- the statue currently in that niche is a copy of this one.

Why Charlemagne? According to legend he built the first church on the site now occupied by the Grossmünster.

The two towers of the Grossmünster dominate the Zurich skyline, and for CHF 2 you can climb most of the way up the inside of one of them for some stunning views. The climb up is somewhat cramped, which poses a bit of a problem for me at 6'6", but the view is definitely worth it.

After pausing to catch our breath at the top of the tower and take in the view we moved on to our next destination -- the Fraumünster, just over the river Limmat.

Approximately 200 years older that the Grossmünster, it was founded by Louis the German, a grandson of Charlemagne, for his daughter. Like the Grossmünster the interior is sparser than you would expect, again that's due to the effect of the Reformation.

Today the Fraumünster's main claim to fame is probably the five stained glass windows that were installed in 1970. Designed by Marc Chagall and 10m high the five windows represent the Prophets, Jacob, Zion, Christ, and the Law. To the right you should see a panaroma of the "Prophets" window (again, taken before photography in the church was banned).

...the red-orange "Prophets" window depicts Elisha watching Elijah's ascension in a fiery chariot. Above that is a blue area in which Jeremiah sits above, head in hands, lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem. At the top is a multicolored God in heaven, sending beams of enlightenment to his prophets. This window is lit artificially, as it's on an interior wall.

sacred-destinations.com

By this point we were starting to get a bit peckish again, and P had already picked out an appropriate venue for afternoon tea -- the Sprüngli restaurant at Paradeplatz. And good choice it proved, as we managed to bag the last of their gluten-free (or, as I discovered "glutenfrei" auf Deutsch) treats as a little restorative.

Next on the agenda (following a 3 hour return home to freshen up and get ready for the evening after the morning's exertions) was dinner, and I'd booked us a spot at King's Kurry at Wiedikon. Since I've come to Switzerland there aren't many home comforts that I miss, but being able to wander in to the centre of more or less any town and get a decent curry is one of them. King's Kurry is one of the very few decent Indian restaurants I've found in Zurich and the surrounding area. The Swiss seem to have an aversion to spicy food.

Anyway, the meal was great, although, note to self: opting for a table outside by the tram tracks is not necessarily conducive to uninterrupted conversation. And then on for cocktails. For what evening would be complete without a cocktail to round it off?

So we jumped in a number 14 tram and probably 20 minutes later were walking in the door of the Safari Bar, where Long Island Ice Teas, Mai Tais, and Apple Mojitos awaited us.

We did, however, drink sensibly, and in moderation, as we had another exercise-filled day ahead of us...

¹ Possibly interesting footnote. I took these the day after I interviewed at Google.

Visiting Zurich: Day Two (pt 1)

2009-07-14T23:46:00.001+02:00

See Day One.

Saturday dawned bright and slightly overcast. Almost perfect cycling weather, which was handy, as that's what we were going to be doing.

When friends have visited in the past I've played tour guide, going on walks through Zurich and pointing out the sites. But there's only so much ground you can cover, and I've only got a fraction of the trivia to hand that a "proper" guide would have. So I was very pleased to discover the tours run by Zurich by Bike. CHF 25 per person for two and a half hours seemed like a reasonable deal, so after popping by the local baker for Mandelgipfel and Butterbrezel ("There goes three months of Benecol" commented P) we headed down to Bürkliplatz.

We arrived perhaps 20 minutes early, so wandered around the fleamarket at Bürkliplatz for a bit. Definitely the place to go if you're in need of some vintage vinyl, old electronic equipment, and, oddly, a stall that seemed to specialise in promotional shoulder bags from a diverse range of different airlines.

10.30am rolled around and our guide arrived. Zurich by Bike use bikes provided as part of the Züri rollt. This is a great scheme -- leave a (refundable) CHF 20 deposit and borrow a bike for some or all of a day from a number of locations around Zurich. The bikes were comfortable and seemed well looked after, which was reassuring.

By then our numbers had swelled somewhat, as I'd invited some other Zurich-based friends to join us, so with guide nine of us set out from Bürkliplatz heading east.

Our tour took us along the Limmat, taking in (amongst other things) the Rathaus, and the Fraumünster.

From there we went via Paradeplatz along Bahnhofstrasse, pausing up by Lindenhof to take in the view and hear stories, like how the Limmat got its name.

The route continued towards the Landesmuseum, up via Langstrasse, around and to Bäckeranlage, before bringing us back along the western-centre edge of Zurich and back down to the lake. Here's a reasonable approximation of the journey...

View Larger Map

... and if you use Google Earth then opening ZurichbyBike.kmz should let you fly along the route too.

The tour was almost exactly two hours and thirty minutes, and I can highly recommend it to anyone who wants to find out a bit more about Zurich while getting a little exercise. The route was very easy, being almost entirely on the flat, and, with a few very short exceptions busy roads are avoided. And even on the main thoroughfares Zurich is still quite quiet, even in the middle of a Saturday.

Visiting Zurich: Day One

2009-07-13T22:01:00.000+02:00

I've had some house guests over the weekend -- friends of mine I've known since my university days -- and having spent a very enjoyable few days around Zurich I thought I'd chronicle some of what we got up to. Partly to prepare other friends who might be considering the same trip, and partly as suggestions to you, dear reader, for things you might want to do when you're in Zurich.

J and P's flight arrived mid-afternoon, and after clearing customs we had perhaps a third of the day left. Zurich Airport is easy to navigate, and I'd already purchased a pair of 72 hour ZurichCARD travel passes for them while I was waiting, which covered all the places we were likely to go, so we didn't need to spend any extra time hanging around the airport.

The trains to the Hauptbahnhof are always a pleasant contrast to the Heathrow experience, where you would spend 40+ minutes on a clanking, bumpy Picadilly line underground train, as compared to the 10 minutes in relative comfort that it takes here. A quick snack stop at Nordsee was in order -- that's the only problem with flying to Zurich over lunch; the flight leaves too early to have a decent lunch at the airport, and the food on the plane is never that great so you arrive feeling decidedly peckish -- then back to my place to freshen up.

Newly invigorated we headed back in to Zurich for a stroll down the Bahnhofstrasse. P was on a mission to track down a copy of the Swiss Constitution (it's best not to ask), and we discovered the next best thing, the Swiss Civil Code, on the top floor at the back of Orell Füssli. Rather surprisingly it was free.

The walk down Bahnhofstrasse also gave us the opportunity to admire the oversized plant pots in evidence as part of Garten City, and to point out my favourite jewellers, CHRIST (so called, I believe, as that's what you mutter under your breath when you see the prices).

Making it down to the end of Bahnhofstrasse we stopped to admire the view over the lake and off to the Alps, before deciding that dinner was a good idea. So from there to the Zeughauskeller for something approaching traditional Swiss food. To wit, sausages, potatoes, and bread. And quite a nice bottle of wine.

I'd been to the ZHK before, but hadn't really paid that much attention to the all the army memorabilia that's dotted around the place (although the signs near the entrance that say "Warning: No smoking, live grenades" are quite eye-catching). As I was to discover the following day the ZHK used to be an army munitions store, which explains the decor.

The evening was still a little young, so we meandered over to the east side of the Limmat and in to Barrique. I'd been in here earlier in the week, selflessly helping celebrate some birthdays, and it's a pleasant enough place to spend a bit of time. And drink a glass or two of wine, which is what we did.

And then home, because tomorrow was going to be a busy day...

Google Photography Prize

2009-06-27T16:32:00.003+02:00

I extended my recent UK visit by a couple of days to attend a private viewing at the Saatchi Gallery, in aid of the Google Photography Prize, a

global competition for students to create themes for iGoogle, run in collaboration with the Saatchi Gallery London. We received over 3500 entries from 82 countries. The public voted to select the 6 finalists from a shortlist of 36 entries, and an expert jury of photographers and art critics has selected the overall winner.

Entries from the shortlisted photographer's were being projected on the walls, as various friends, family members, photography luminaries, and hangers on (I count myself in that last category of course) inspected and admired their work. And imbibed the occasional lychee mojito as necessary.

Of the finalists I was most impressed by Amelia Ortúzar, in particular this shot:

The warmth of the colours do it for me, and I think the break in composition towards the middle of the picture works very well.

The technical excellence displayed by Fahad AlDaajani's macro work was very good, and the overall composition on this photo caught my eye.

Matjaz Tancic demonstrated a very strong use of colour and form in his work, such as in this photo.

The winner, however, was Daniel Halasz, studying at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. Here's a representative shot.

I have to confess, that doesn't do it for me; although perhaps technically well executed the subject matter, composition, and lighting don't excite me. Perhaps just as well I wasn't one of the judges.

To view these, or any of the other shortlisted entries go to http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/photographyprize/vote.html, and if you use iGoogle you can then select one of them to use as your theme.

PAYG SIMs from Three

2009-06-20T16:36:00.010+02:00

I've popped back to the UK for the weekend to catch up with friends and family.

Over the last few months I've become very used to having an HTC Dream phone running Android in my pocket in Switzerland, with an effectively unlimited data plan. Internet access while out and about has proven to be fantastically useful -- being able to look up maps online, get restaurant recommendations, and check travel planning websites are things are now take for granted. To say nothing of being able to pass the time on a bus by keeping up to date with my RSS feeds.

I wasn't looking forward to losing this for the duration of my stay, international data roaming charges being what they are.

So I was quite pleased to discover Three's SIM-only Pay As You Go (PAYG) offer. Hand them GBP 10 and in return receive a SIM for the phone, credit for 300 SMS messages, a 150MB download allowance, and calls to other UK numbers (landline or mobile) at 20p a minute.

Once the SIM was in the phone calling 444 to activate it, waiting 10 minutes, and then calling 444 again to activate the GBP 10 credit was sufficient to allow the phone to send and receive calls. To take advantage of the 3G connectivity I had to follow these instructions to add the Three APNs to the phone. I reproduce them here, mostly so it's easy for me to find them again...

From Settings -> Wireless controls -> Mobile networks -> Access Point names, add a new APN with the following settings:

Name	Three
APN	three.co.uk
MCC	234
MNC	20

Leave the other settings empty. That should be enough for the data connection to start working, and you can keep track of how much of the credit you've used by going to http://mobile.three.co.uk/my3 from the phone.