Euro Trip: Part Five – Paris

November 10, 2013 by Brad

After two fantastic weeks in Germany, it was time for the next part of the Europe adventure.

After staying the night in Frankfurt, I caught a train to Paris. Having been all over Germany on IC, EC, and DB Regio trains – all of which leave NZ/AU trains looking very old and slow – the ICE train was another level of speed (and comfort). The trip from Frankfurt to the French border went through small town after small town, in very thick heavy fog. We then went into a deep valley between mountains and came out in France. Once into the French countryside we blasted along the tracks at 300kmh+.

Euro Trip: Part Four – Munich and Bavaria

November 9, 2013 by Brad

The final portion of my travels in Germany was visiting friends in Munich.

By pure coincidence I arrived in Munich for the start of Oktoberfest. The biggest fair in the world begins with a massive street parade where each brewery brings its beer into the city. This was a rather interesting parade to watch, where marching bands that I would normally expect to see at a Santa Parade played between each brewery’s float.

Euro Trip: Part Three – Koblenz and Cologne

November 2, 2013 by Brad

After a great weekend in Heidelberg, I caught the train to Koblenz. The first part of the journey involved in a “simple” trip from Heidelberg to Mannheim on the S-Bahn where I would have ten minutes to wait for the connecting EC train to Koblenz. However, despite the S-Bahn train arriving in Heidelberg on time, it then sat on the platform for 8 minutes waiting for another train to pass. Once we finally got moving, it was obvious the train running on a parallel track to us was my connecting train! After arriving on the wrong platform in Mannheim, I had to do a mad dash to get across to the connecting train with only seconds to spare.

Once I arrived into Koblenz, I checked into my hotel and then went for a walk around the city. This city was very different to the cities I had been in over the past few days and felt like what my poor knowledge of European history would have suggested that Eastern Germany/Europe would have looked like – lots of bland concrete buildings. After having a sausage from a market stall, I found a street concert, and finished the day off by watching the America’s Cup on an Austrian TV channel.

Euro Trip: Part Two – Heidelberg and Mannheim

October 26, 2013 by Brad

I spent my first weekend in Germany in the area around Heidelberg and Mannheim.

After spending the day walking around Frankfurt with random friends, I caught the train from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. After checking into my hotel, I went for a walk around the city while waiting for my friends to arrive from Munich.

The town of Heidelberg is incredibly pedestrian friendly. The core area is one long narrow street that runs from the centre of town through to the base of the ruins of the Heidelberg Castle. Once my friends arrived, we had dinner at a local pub.

Euro Trip: Part One – 24 hours in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main

October 25, 2013 by Brad

In September I went to Europe primarily to present some of my doctoral research at a conference in Germany. The next few blog posts are compiled from notes I wrote while away and will feature highlights of the trip.

Photos: Bathurst 1000

October 16, 2013 by Brad

On Sunday, I went to the V8 Supercars Bathurst 1000 at Mt Panorama. Despite living in Sydney for nearly four years and being a crazy V8 Supercars nut, until this year, I had yet to make my way to the mountain for the great race. To just go for the Sunday race, a special train leaves Sydney just after 5am and returns just before 11pm, making for a very long day.

The race itself was an awesome event to attend. I found the atmosphere different to the previous V8 events that I have been to in both Sydney and Auckland, the fans were more passionate but also more friendly. Also despite the 100,000 odd people on the mountain there are so many places around the circuit to watch the race from. Additionally, the view from the top of the mountain is good on TV, but even better in real life.

Sydney International Fleet Review Photos

October 5, 2013 by Brad

I’ve been out all day walking around Sydney Harbour taking checking out the Sydney International Fleet Review. The morning wasn’t as exciting as expected, but the afternoon air displays and then fireworks were incredibly impressive. Below are some of the shots from the day.

3G USB Modems under Crouton

September 2, 2013 by Brad

A few weeks back I blogged on how to get Ubuntu installed through Crouton on a Chromebook. One of the biggest challenges I faced in setup was getting a USB 3G Modem to work. Below are my notes on how I managed to succeed.

Adventures in Bouddi National Park

September 1, 2013 by Brad

Yesterday I went with a mate up to Bouddi National Park on the Central Coast. We did two short hikes, Box Point and Gerrin Point Circuit. The road out to Box Point is unsealed, however, we weren’t expecting a full 4wd track, and proceeded to take a small 2wd car down it – fun! The track out to Box Point itself, despite being short, was quite rugged and combined with lots of smoke from the nearby hazard reduction burns was an interesting walk. The Gerrin Point Circuit on the other-hand was much easier than expected, with the exception of the final climb up from Putty Beach to The Scenic Road which took us up an unmarked track.

Hacking Ubuntu on a Chromebook

August 17, 2013 by Brad 4 Comments

In a few weeks time I’m going to be doing a bit of traveling for work and then a small holiday. As I will be hoping on and off planes and trains, I’m not really keen on taking my primary laptop as it is bulky and not really designed for travel.

After tossing up the pros and cons of tablets, netbooks, and ultrabooks I have bought a Acer C7 Google Chromebook and have managed to get Ubuntu 12.04 running inside a chroot environment. The whole process of getting Ubuntu installed has been much simpler than I was expecting.

For under $300 I now have basically a full lightweight system for travel on which I can watch videos, play music, edit documents, edit photos, and browse the web. While the basic Chrome OS operating system claims all these features, the reality is, it is extremely limited in what it is actually able to do.
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