We’re out of water

That’s not really an announcement you want to hear from the pilot of your flight, but that’s what happened on my flight from Athens to Amsterdam recently.

A photo from the window of a KLM flight. The wing is clearly visible and the KLM logo is etched on the end. The plane is flying above the clouds with a clear blue sky above and a hazy horizon.

The pilot came on the intercom and informed his passengers there was no water to flush the toilets or wash hands. He said that’s the first time he’s had to make such an announcement. The flight had been delayed an hour at Athens, and then we spent 25 minutes on the ground while the congested air over Europe cleared. So I’m surprised someone forgot to fill the water tank.

Water bottles were provided, but I think everyone was glad to get to Amsterdam, even if several people missed their connection due to delays. Thankfully, the flight to Cork was late in the evening, and I had time to make it to gate D6. The airport was mostly closed down with only a few shops open, and passport control was backwards which was odd but worked well enough to get us to our destination. The police there were friendly and efficient.

I have to say, one thing I love about KLM is their free WiFi that allows messaging on WhatsApp, Messenger and other apps. It was great to message my family and friends while flying. It’s something that will make me choose KLM for a connection if all other things are equal. The flight to Cork didn’t have it, but the outgoing flight a week earlier did.

I was watching Top Gun: Maverick on my phone, downloaded on the Netflix client, and it looked like my flight would land before the film ended.

Screenshot from Top Gun Maverick showing the text "Hang on. We gotta get low."
Tom Cruise is flying a fighter jet while the world turns around him.

It was a late flight, the lights switched off in the cabin. I was staring at the action on my phone, with headphones hiding the drone of the aircraft. I was glued to the action on my phone, totally absorbed in it. Maverick shouts at his passenger, “Hang on. We gotta get low.” during a dogfight. A moment later, I feel my flight touching down on the runway at Cork Airport, and I look up in mild panic. Talk about immersion. Thanks, KLM! Perfect timing!

I’m a little tired after walking home

A screenshot of Google Fit showing the path from Amsterdam to Cork as the app recorded it.
The text "Morning walk" is below, showing a I did 14 heart points and 5,571 steps during the flight.

It’s good to be back in Cork today, even with Storm Kathleen on the way. I forgot to end my tracked walk when I got to Gate 26 in Schiphol Airport, and Google Fit somehow managed to pick up GPS signals every now and again as we flew home. So, it looks like I walked from Amsterdam to Cork. 🙂

I’ve no idea how I walked 2km off the coast of Ireland, somewhere south of Waterford. There was some bad turbulence on the flight, but we weren’t quite bouncing up and down in our seats!

Photography all at sea

Screen Shot 2016-07-16 at 22.44.35

So, either the GPS was completely wrong, I’m a stronger swimmer than I let on to be, or I was travelling on the car ferry between Rosslare and Fishguard.

Yes, we’re just back from Wales after a marvellous holiday. The weather wasn’t always that great (it’s exactly the same as Irish weather), but the people were friendly, the food was (mostly) great and the scenery was stunning. You might see a photo or two appear on my photoblog in the near future!

Reykjavik Time Lapse

A short time lapse video I shot from the temporary Polldaddy HQ in Reykjavik, Iceland. I shot it with my Android phone over the course of about an hour. My battery hit 9% remaining charge by the end of it! I’ve never seen the weather change so fast or so often as it does here in Reykjavik.

Do not adjust your volume, there is no sound!

Krista posted a timelapse video from the same window!

Spacelog: Apollo 13

From the Apollo 13 Spacelog transcript. Good thing nobody had to get out and push. (via)

Jack Swigert (CMP): Okay, Joe. I’ll tell you, I’m just trying to figure out where we are here.
…..
Joe Kerwin (CAPCOM): Roger, Jack. We see that. Of course, there’s a lot of cloudcover and you see it more clearly than we do, but it does look like the Earth, not the Moon.

Filed under travel because, well, you can’t travel much further than the moon and back. Right?

Thoughts on returning from Killarney

Random thoughts that have occurred to me this Sunday evening after spending the weekend in Killarney, Co. Kerry in the south-west of Ireland.

  • Too much driving to the Black Valley. It’s not recommended that you drive through the Gap of Dunloe, but I’d like to see any heavily pregnant woman walk those hills!
  • Ross Castle is so close to Killarney yet I never knew about it until I saw Brid’s photo at the camera club.
  • The Randles Court Hotel is excellent.
  • I need to dump stuff to DVD to make way for 3GB of RAW files, bracketing shots suck space.
  • It’s great to be away for a few days, but it’s wonderful to get home too.
  • Waterproof nappies for the baby might be useful next year. Do they work?
  • Most Kerry people we met and all the foreign workers and hotel staff were very nice.
  • St. Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney is huge and impressive. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before with bold, bare rocks decorating the columns and walls. I was self-conscious about the click of my camera until I noticed a couple brought their dog into this holy place and stood in front of the alter in admiration, with dog standing behind them.
  • Supervalu hotel breaks are great!
  • And finally, the proverbial honey glazing on a great weekend: Only 100 spam comments moderated. Over 5,000 caught by Akismet.

Turkmenbashi the great has died

Wow, I just saw on the news that Saparmurat Niyazov, or as he calls himself, Beyik Turkmenbashi died last night of a heart attack. His country, Turkmenistan was ruled by this eccentric man for 24 years and was featured in an article in the Sunday Times Magazine last weekend! I was planning on blogging the article but it is really weird that he died just as I was about to. One could become paranoid.

Turkmenbashi was a strange man, maybe even a little loopy and crazy. He banned make-up because he said Turkmen women were beautiful enough, dogs were banned in the capital city he was building in desert and he even built an ice rink in a desert where the temperture can reach 50C.

He reinvented the calendar and ordered his people to gnaw bones. He is gilding the desert in gold and marble, and the driving test is a questionnaire on his philosophy of life. Waldemar Januszczak infiltrates the world according to the leader of Turkmenistan

In 2002, he decided his country needed a new calendar. So he invented one. January was renamed after himself: Turkmenbashi. April was changed to his mother’s name, Gurbansoltan. And September became Ruhnama, the title of the large pink philosophy book he wrote, the one you have to answer questions on to pass your driving test.

The Ruhnama, or Book of the Spirit, explains the thinking behind all this. The president took 10 years to write the national book, and everyone taking any sort of exam, from schoolkids to prime ministers, is required to answer questions on it. You can’t miss the Ruhnama. It’s lollypop pink and lime green. To my eyes it looks as if it should contain a collection of Telletubby stories rather than the collected thoughts of the world’s most eccentric dictator.

Do the Bungee Jump

Have you ever looked out on a sheer drop and asked yourself, “What would it be like to fall all the way down?” Have you ever stood on the edge, looked forward towards the distant hills and leapt off into space?

I have. In 2002 I jumped although not particularly willingly as it’s a crazy thing to do! Reading over my post from that time I still remember the fear that numbed me, how I looked straight ahead when the crane had raised me up to it’s fullest height of 50m and then the surprise when time stopped still as I dived off the platform.

For a few moments Matt Munday shared that experience as he dived off the Verzasca dam in Switzerland to recreate the jump scene from Golden Eye!

Look over the other side, however, and you’ll find it’s 721ft straight down onto a cold, hard knuckle of jagged rocks — the frightening equivalent of jumping from a 70-storey building.

Doing a bungee jump is the craziest and most stupid thing I’ve ever done but don’t worry Life Assurance people, I have no intention of doing it again!

Would you like to see what my bungee jump at Star Beach in Crete was like? Here’s a movie made by a girl who brought a video camera with her. Look at those distant hills over the resort. That’s the last sight I saw before I jumped! (do not ajust your volume, there is no sound unfortunately)

This BASE jumper does some crazy jumps. Be prepared to suffer vertigo watching this!

Lucky I got home on Tuesday

This morning 24 suspected terrorists were arrested in the UK as part of an investigation into attempts to takes bombs on board planes in hand luggage. The resulting disruption and restrictions almost made more news than the fact that firebombs with many hundreds of souls on-board could have been launched down on top of US cities!

I'm just glad I got home on Tuesday and I missed all this. It makes me wonder how much the authorities knew in advance – just after leaving Matt in SFO I walked up to the xray machine, unbundled the laptop and my bags and was then asked to step into a machine which blew little puffs of air into my clothes and under my shirt. It obviously sampled the chemicals on me. Lucky they didn't do it at the end of a 9 hour flight, 4 hour wait and 1 hour flight home!

On a brighter note, my luggage made it's way through security fine. I left my sandals in the bag, but took all the wires for the various chargers and devices out and carried them with me. Be warned, their machines are so sensitive that sandals with up to year old fertilizer on them and wires could be construed as a bomb!

Chris offers some advice for those travelling with camera kit. You won't be allowed bring it on board, so buy secure cases specifically for your equipment. He quotes Dan Chung:

I'd been thinking for a while about ordering a case that allows me to check my equipment in the hold if I have to. A solution used by many pros is the Pelican case. … One photographic dealer I contacted said he had already received seven orders by 9.30am this morning.

Always a man to get a conversation going, Damien asks if privacy advocates have any case to make if snooping on telephone and Internet traffic averted a major terrorist attack today?