Without a Traceroute

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I’m off to Spain

August 24th, 2008 · Bikes, Netherlands, Photos, Travel

Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Valencia for La Tomatina,the world’s biggest food fight. This isn’t really related to my project, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I figured this would likely be my best chance for long time. The festival is on Wednesday, but the cheapest Ryanair flight was tomorrow, so I’m going to meet up with my friend Danny and we’re going to couchsurf for a couple nights before the festival. I have to take a train back down to Eindhoven tonight because that’s where Ryanair flies from and the flight is at 9:30 in the morning. I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have in Spain, so if I don’t post for a few days that’s why.

Today I went to a this free outdoor music festival thing. It was pretty cool, the first band we saw was a very generic indie rock band, although they did have an electric violin. Later there was another band that was a little more bluesy. The festival vibe was very relaxed with lots of families and people hanging out on blankets and stuff. They also had a “Pimp your ride” tent where they had painting supplies and people who wanted to could give their bike a wild new paint job. I jazzed up my crappy bike–which I have named “Squeak, rattle ‘n roll”–which I think significantly improved its appearance. Sadly, I just sold it to a French student for €35. He said he liked the paint.

EDIT: Apparently in Germany, MTV aired an actual show called Pimp my Fahrrad which is exactly like Pimp My Ride but with bicycles.

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Arrived in Spain

August 25th, 2008 · Photos, Spain, Technology, Travel

I arrived in Spain with no problems. Well, not quite no problems. Ryanair karma bit me in the ass for the last time I got a free checked bag. When I originally booked the flight, I hadn’t told them I wanted to check a bag. This morning, I went online and modified the reservation to include a checked bag, they said they’d be charging €15 for it. However, when I got to the airport, they said that they had no record of the change in their system and charged me an additional €25. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get double-charged.

Then, the security line was held up because the X-ray machine needed to be rebooted. It was a Windows XP-based system by L-3 Security and Detection Systems. The reason I know who made it is because they actually had the scrolling marquee screensaver announcing it. I have no idea why you would use something as complex and insecure as windows to run an X-ray machine. That’s the kind of place you should be using something like VxWorks or an embedded UNIX-based system.

My friend Danny rented a car, so he was nice enough to pick me up at the airport. We’re staying with a guy from couchsurfing. He was really nice; he showed us around the place and then took us on a driving tour to Playa de Pinedo, one of the beaches near Valencia and then drove us out to Bruño so we’d know how to get there Wednesday. The only slightly weird thing is that he gave us the keys to this apartment, and then took off until tomorrow afternoon. We had assumed that he lived here too, but the evidence suggests otherwise. The kitchen was completely empty, and there’s no clothes in the master bedroom. No idea what the real story with the apartment is (usually rented out, kept for mistress, something else?), but it’s a nice enough place. There’s good wifi, and digital TV (with English sound). Plus, Spain is about 15 degrees warmer and 70% sunnier than the Netherlands, so that’s always good.

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Ciutat de les Arts i de les Ciències

August 27th, 2008 · Photos, Spain, Travel

Today we went to the Ciutat de les Arts i de les Ciències (City of the Arts and of the Sciences in Valencian). It’s a huge museum/cultural complex that includes a performing arts center, a science museum, an IMAX theater, an oceanarium, and a footbridge and agora still under construction. The oceanarium costs a fortune (it’s like €28 for one person), so we only went to the science museum. The whole complex is full of amazing, futuristic architecture by Santiago Calatrava. It basically looks exactly like how you’d expect a spaceport to look.

There are like forty pictures here (and I think some of them are good), so apologies for my photographic overexuberance, but I was really blown away by this architecture.

The performing arts center

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What if your life were a yogurt commercial?

August 27th, 2008 · Photos, Spain, Travel

The science museum was generally pretty good, but a little thin on real science in some places, and a little thick on corporate marketing in others.

The majority of the first floor was given over to a big exhibit on the science of superheros. It was clear they were trying to do something fun that would appeal to children, but the superhero exhibit included a pretty minimal amount of science. It was much heavier on just fun zaniness: screaming at a sentinel like Banshee ( ostensibly to learn about the properties of sound), controlling Doc Oc’s arms with a joystick (to learn about prosthetics!), shining a light on Bruce Banner’s amygdala to turn him into the Hulk (to learn about the role the amygdala plays in regulating emotion).

Download Link Moving Doc Oc’s claws.

My spider sense is tingling!

Ouch! My spider sense is tingling!

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La Tomatina!

August 27th, 2008 · Spain, Travel

La Tomatina was amazing. It was pretty much everything I expected it would be, just hordes of people and insane tomato carnage. The only thing that really surprised me was that the tomatoes were the little plum kind. The only lame part was that there were so many people that you had to kind of fight to get to the center where they were dumping the tomatoes. At points it seemed like the crush of people could have been dangerous.

I did bring a waterproof one-time use camera with me, but it’s a film camera so I’ll need to get it developed before I can post those photos. In the meantime, I did get one shot of me with my digital camera after I got back to the car. I was actually hosed off several times by neighborhood residents on the walk back, so this picture is cleaned-up from what I looked like right after the tomato fight.

Post-Tomatina

Post-Tomatina

I took a 20 minute shower, and I still smell faintly of stale tomatoes. I’ll try to get photos up in the next few days. In the meantime, the Guardian has some great video of the event. Everyone cheered like crazy when the news helicopters flew overhead. The ground footage in that video is mostly from the aftermath.

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