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Archive for August, 2015

Was I dreaming?

My recent high tech trip to MIT in pool at galeraBoston, USA seems like a distant dream, mind you given the hassle I had with useless-as-shit Iberia Airlines it’s probably just as well. On 2nd of August I travelled from Alicante to Boston via Madrid. At the intermediate stop, Iberia Airlines managed to misplace my one and only bag. I put a claim in for the fact that I had to buy clothes thanks to them losing my gear.

Meanwhile all is well here in Spain – the weather is still hot as you like. We’ve had storms but they always seem to be somewhere else with one exception, Maureen and I went off to a bar in nearby Castillejar and the heavens opened up, flooding the streets for at least half an hour – mind you – it was still 22c at the WORST point and soon warmed up again. None of yer English freezing cold rain storms.

This week we’re likely to take a trip to Granada, some of our friends are off home to the UK (sadly) so it’ll be a little quieter from now on – still – that’s fine – there’s no shortage of things to do around here and I suspect more than one package from China will turn up this week to keep me occupied.

Back to my jobs. Today I’m putting new screens on windows – and a spot of cementing.

Update November 2015: In August I had immediately started a discussion with Iberia Airlines who gave me someone else’s lost baggage number just to make matters worse. Despite many conversations and a written acknowledgement that they had lost my baggage and would compensate me accordingly (I had to buy clothes) – mid-November I still have had nothing from the airline and have had to report them to the CAA. Why is it always this way with big companies…

Galera Celebrations

All in all not a bad week – several days in Boston, Google have finally put Bedrock on the map and now I’m back in Spain and we’re currently enjoying Galera night celebrations. Another night of activity in the town – I managed to stop up until midnight when the fireworks went off – and very nice, too. Tomorrow we’re off to the market. Better updates on the Bedrock blog.

Galera Fireworks

Finding bugs

That was funny… We are currently deep within MIT in Boston preparing a talk and workshop on a microprocessor called the ESP8266 and what should turn up but a bug. No, a REAL one and what a monster.

image

We’re still working on the jokes…

Uber

UberA lot is said about UBER and what an evil monster it is. London taxi drivers like nothing more than to gripe about them (and I’m sure they do elsewhere, I just happen to have taken quite few London taxi rides in recent times – probably no more). And so it was that this Monday as I spent my first day in Boston, desperate for a ride, the taxi drivers spent (at least the morning) parading around the MIT buildings and no doubt everywhere else with anti-Uber stickers plastered over their taxis.

The problem is… they are taxis… And what do we do with taxis? Hail them, except we could not as they were too damned busy protesting.

So last night faced with a large purple bump under my foot due to walking miles with shoes not meant for walking (as my other shoes are in the bag which Iberia airlines misplaced) my colleague Swee An ordered an Uber taxi on his mobile. We got to watch a little map with his taxi superimposed as the driver firstly went the wrong way then as he tried to stop near us was harassed by an MIT police patrol which took him a block away before he managed to return for us. All good fun but I have to say everything worked smoothly and the real time monitoring feature of the app is great.

Instead of inconveniencing everyone with strikes maybe the traditional taxi companies should consider a move into the 21st century. If you can’t beat them…

Cost for me is not SO much of an issue but in a foreign country, convenience wins every time.

mapAnd so on my final day in Boston, I grabbed the app, signed up and gave them a shot. Despite the foot I’d decided I needed to get into Boston itself to take some pictures and I just walked and walked and.. by lunchtime I was fairly well beaten and after some attempts to get back to the riverside, standing in the middle of a street with no name, I gave up and opened up the app.

The app knew where I was, where the nearest car was and offered me a reasonably priced ride after requesting my destination. 2 minutes later, a nice looking car driven by an imposing black lady arrived and we headed off back – having a nice chat along the way. I packed my gear and got ready to go to the airport. Once again I contacted Uber.

Again all I had to enter was the destination and up came an approximate price. This time I had a benchmark as it had cost me $35 to get here in the first place. It cost me $31 to get back, in comfort with a very friendly driver who told me all about his experience with Uber. He’s been doing this for a while now and Uber take 20% cut of his fairs..

My web account has receipts, maps of my journeys and more – this at least on the surface is just SO much better than taking a traditional cab, I can see why the cab drivers are up in arms – maybe instead of getting together to protest they should be getting together to modernise.

Sadly it would appear they are currently banned from Spain where alternatives such as Mytaxi,  Hailo aand Cabify prevail. It seemed the Spanish government caved in to pressure from the taxi lobby. and of course you may know that in Spain you can’t just fit solar panels to your house – something to do with pressure from the electricity company… hmm.