First of all I’m writing this from 30,000 feet, somewhere between San Francisco and New York.  That’s pretty future right there!

Anyway, so I travel a lot for work, mostly inside the US but occasionally further afield. So I go though a lot of airport security, both metal detectors and the new x ray machines.  There’s been a lot of fuss about the new security requirements so I thought I’d chip in with my two cents.

Today at San Francisco airport I went though the following security procedures:

• Taking shoes off and liquids out for the x-ray manchine.  No problem with that at all, my toiletries are kept in a little bag anyway to keep them all together and stop them leaking over my clothes and taking my shoes off is easy enough, plus having undone the laces I keep them like that for the flight so I can stretch my toes a bit.

• X-Ray machine.  Not really bothered with this either.  I get to do jazz hands in the machine and they seemed to have really sped up the review process, to well under 10 seconds.  If anything it’s quicker than the old metal detector system.  As for the people can see you naked argument, it’s like 8bit graphics naked and I’m a massive exhibitionist anyway.

• Going through the X-Ray machine I forgot to take off my necklace with USB and Secure ID keys and I also had a can ringpull in my back pocket.  The system picked up both and so I got a pat down on the back pocket.  Again I don’t have a massive problem with people touching me it’s not like I’ve never had a pat down before.

• I also had my hands swabbed for explosive residue which is a new one.  I’ve had my bag done before but never my hands.  I imagine this is great fun for people working in the chemical or mining industry.

All of the above took about 45 seconds, the people doing it were polite and chatty (not always the case).  Does it make me feel safer?  Not at all, as far as I’m aware all the post 9/11 attempts to screw up flights were prevented with pre 9/11 security.  But neither do I have a big chip on my shoulder about this sort of security.

I love how this bumper sticking covers both sides of the argument. It’s like the owner is saying “I feel strongly about my ambivalence”

This is a pretty nifty idea for a step by step guide for a mobile phone.  By turning the pages you reveal each of the components as you assemble the phone and get it ready for use.  Not only does it guide you though the process but the book itself acts as easily recyclable packaging.  All you’d need to do is shrink wrap it using a very small amount of plastic.

When I used to watch Blue Peter hibernation involved putting the tortoise in a cardboard box full of newspaper and putting that in the garage for 3 months. Looking at the program records a number of tortoises died in hibernation and knowing what we know now, that’s not surprising. There’s a lot more too it than putting the animal in a box and hoping for the best.

To successfully hibernate the tortoise needs an exact temperature range as well as regular checks. Higher than 10c at the tortoise will wake up and must promptly be removed (or starve). Below freezing will kill the tortoise. So with the weather being what it is a more precise method is needed than the box/garage.

A popular solution at the moment is to use a fridge set to the ideal temperature of 5c. Fridges, however are large and expensive and using the food fridge is not recommend for hygiene reasons. So I’ve decided to build a custom tortoise hibernation box using the Ar
duino microcontroller. Not only will this be able to control the temperature but with a network shield I’ll be able to have the system email me when the temp moves outside thresholds.

Tippy isn’t being hibernated this year, it’s best to own the animal for a year so you know it’s 100% healthy. So I have plenty of time to build and test the unit. My plan is to use a thermal couple to monitor the temperature with a Peltier/heat sink & Fan arrangement to cool the box to 5c.  A standard Ethernet shield will provide the email capability.

First task is to buy the hardware and search the internet community for existing projects that I can adapt to my needs.  I also have Jame, a professional physical computing nerd to help me out with the code.

This should be a fun little project with a real world application.

So, back on Thursday I booked a cargo van online with Budget Truck Rental.  After booking the Budget Truck Rental van for Sunday at a local location I gave my credit car details to reserve the Budget Truck Rental van.

Shortly afterwards I received my confirmation mail from Budget Truck Rental with the words Your truck is reserved!  Great, I thought, now on to planning the rest of the day and how I will use my Budget Truck Rental van.

Sunday morning was here and off I went to the local Budget Truck Rental location to pick up my van.  Only to be told by the man behind the desk, who wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about customer service, that the van wasn’t available.  He’d ‘tried to call me’, he said, ‘but the line was busy’.   Once again I’d fallen foul of my selective phone that stops voicemail working only when there’s bad news to be delivered!

Back home and onto customer services where I was told that they don’t gareentee the model of truck I order and in fact the Budget Truck Rental model I did order is being phased out.  Strange then that it’s still avalalble for selection on the website.  I’m not sure how many other businesses would get away with that:

“I’m sorry sir, but New York Mercedes doen’t guarantee which car you’ve just bought and in fact we don’t stock Mercedes models any more, we have a nice Chevy Aevo for you, have a nice day.”

So, goodbye Budget Truck Rental, I’ll take my business elsewhere from now on, to a rental company that actually ensures a truck is reserved when it’s sends me the confirmation email.  A company that understands that, if I’m renting a truck I probably have made plans to use it for that specific day.  Or at least a company that, if a truck isn’t available emails or calls me so that I don’t find out when I go to pick the truck up.

I’m still keeping twitter though because it is genuinely useful for following events, actors and other stuff that might want to serve up short but useful status information “I’m staring in a new Broadway play next month: PatrickStewart” or “Marvel Panel starting in ING Theater: NYCC”

Ironically I can’t easily announce this on Twitter

So Last night Mackenzie and I went to see Punchdrunk début in New York with Sleep no more, an interactive theatre performance based on MacBeth.  It was the same deal as Mask of Red Death that everyone seemed to go to in London.  Absolutely amazing performance set in a film noir 1930 hotel over 4 floors.  Sets included a taxidermy shop, graveyard, bedroom and a bar which wouldn’t have looked out of place in Slimelight.  Anyone in New York NEEDS to go and see this!

There was no acting as such with most of the performances being contemporary dance with actors heavily interacting with the sets with highlights including the angry sex dance around the bedroom set and the orgy set to a drum and bass track.  As a audience you have to wear a mask and cannot talk although you are very much encouraged to touch and play with the set, so it quickly becomes a very personal experience as you explore the show at your own pace.  The actors move around the 4 floors as they dance out various scenes in various locations and they also interact with the audience.  The soundtrack is  dark and loud and closely matches the performance although the actors themselves have no lines.  To be honest I couldn’t follow the plot at all, but that’s not really what it’s about.  It’s an experience that makes you feel part of the film or the dream rat,her than a viewer watching the stage.

When we were finally were guided out of the ‘theatre’ we ended where we began in a 1930s hotel bar complete with entertainment and where invited to stay for drinks.

I’ll say again if you’re in NY you have to go see this!  I’m planning to take Andy when she gets back from holiday and I’m toying with hiring a tux so I can dress up and really get into it.  I could go on and on about this but I don’t want to give away too much.  If you can, go see it.

So one of the things Ryan wants to do with www.shadows-over-greyhawk.com is create an interactive map.  Something which will allow us to track the characters as they move around the world, with information and clickable hotspots to take you to the appropriate page.

The map should include the entire continent of the Flanaess but be detailed enough to show towns and villages.  Currently we have a very high resolution image with hot spot links for each encounter area and scroll bars to move you around.  However this is very limited with the default scroll position being the top left and updates requiring more html code.

,To improve things I have ordered a set of 4 posters which combine to for a 42″x60″ poster.  The detail on this is amazing and it also includes the position of every Greyhawk published module.  We play a mix of home grown and official modules so this is a great bonus feature.

The plan is to slice up and scan in the poster, probably at 300dpi which should give a result as detailed at the original printing process.  I’ll then stitch the images together using photoshop and create a interactive, scalable map using the google maps API.

The end result will be a highly detailed but scalable map of the Flanaess to which we can easily add points of interest and notes and of course, Indiana Jones style travel lines.

For this week’s game I had a guest in the form of Kynon, over on holiday.  He was pre-warned and brought his rugby kit and astroturf boots.  Which was lucky because we had about 2 inches of rain during the game.  The first 10 minutes were unpleasant but after that you weren’t going to get any wetter and the running kept you warm.

It actually turned out to be one of my better games, my passing and tactical awareness are improving, I guess the bad weather focused the mind on the game.  However after an hour and a half we’d had enough and retired to the pub.