India part 2

We woke up feeling refreshed - if a bit sweaty. The time of year we had visited was the awkward change-over between the humid and wet monsoon and the cooler "winter". We were still in the humid period so had to sleep with the window open and, of course, with a festival going on meant that firecrackers were let off until the early hours. The house certainly hadn't changed in the plumbing department, with the bathing options being a weak dribble of water from a shower head, or a bucket bath. Venturing out into Dadar soon revealed that apart from the flyover that had been built over the circle, nothing much had changed at all. The weird store that seemed to sell everything was still there, the grocery stores were still there. The flower sellers were still there and the beggars were still there. Actually - I'll embellish a bit - the flyover now meant you didn't take your life into your hands (as much) every time you crossed the road. The lack of patience combined with the driving attitude means that if you are half way across a road and the lights turn green, the drivers won't wait for you...



Today was the last day of the Ganpati festival where people took their Ganpatis (idols shaped like Ganesh, the elephant-headed god) and cast them into the sea. This lasted all day with various vans and carts heading towards the sea loaded with clay Ganpatis and whole families. This carried on into the night with bright lights, music and many more firecrackers.



The rest of the week involved getting reacquainted with the city - from the area around the house to downtown. The restaurants, the hanging gardens and Marine Drive and the planetarium (complete with the school tour from hell). Then there was The Club. Every day, my aunt and uncle go to the prestigious Willingdon club where my aunt plays cards and my uncles plays snooker. As a child, we used to go to use the open-air swimming pool. Some years my father actually became a temporary member so we could go more often and children were never allowed in the clubhouse itself. Now I could finally see what all the fuss was about. After a visit to the nearby museum, we arrived for a swim as guests. I haven't swum in years, but it all came back instantly. This time, instead of sitting around the pool afterwards, I was thrilled to finally see the inside of the club. The bar was a modern area with plasma tvs and sweet, sweet air conditioning. Meeting other members of the club reinforces the exclusivity. You may think that a members sports club in a country where many people survive on less than $1 a day would be affordable for a young professional such as myself. I think it's safe to say Emma and I were gob-smacked to find membership cost upwards of £10,000 a year!



One of our tasks for the week was to sort out an excursion. Even though I had been to India many times before, I'd still never been out of the state of Maharashtra. This would change as, combined with the power of the internet and the abundance of low-cost airlines we sorted out a few days in Delhi and Agra.

After experiencing Ryanair, I didn't have high hopes for the Indian variety, but Kingfisher actually puts KLM to shame. New planes, seatback tv screens even on internal flights, good quality food (with metal cutlery) and good crew. Upon arriving in Delhi we were met by our host, my father's nephew Indivar who is an academic at a local university. We piled into his small Tata car and set out across Delhi. After leaving the airport, it immediately became clear that while it was obviously still bonkers, Delhi was a lot less intense and mad than Bombay. The university itself is set in - what to westerners - appears to be a massive amount of wild countryside.



Around Indivar's university-provided accommodation was a family of peacocks, several of which made an appearance. Indivar showed us around the sites, including a Sikh temple and an iron pillar that despite being constructed in 1600-odd years ago hadn't rusted. Sadly, the "magic" reason seems to have been unravelled. We enrolled on an official whistle-stop tour of some sights - including the red fort and Ghandi's tomb that were conducted at break-neck speed.



The trip to Agra would be by train. We had booked first class, but I don't think Emma was ready for what that entailed. As we arrived at the station early in the morning it was already a hive of activity. After finding our platform we discovered it was littered with travellers carrying more baggage that could feasibly fit into the train, hawkers selling their wares and the odd rat running around. As we boarded the train, all thoughts of a western-style first class didn't so much fade from our heads as they were crushed with a mallet. It was like economy on a plane, but without padding on the seats, broken recline mechanisms, tray tables that fell down every five minutes, a lack of A/C and the only entertainment consisted of the sellers that would come through the carriage every so often selling dubious-looking food and drink. After a few hours we arrived in Agra and took a taxi to our hotel for the stay, The Taj hotel. As we entered the hotel, it was like walking into an oasis. Clean white marble, gentle A/C and a good shower. The hotel was called the Taj View and as we reached our room we were happy to discover the hotel lived up to its name.



After an hour or so to enjoy our first decent shower in ten days, we headed back out into the madness and heat to take a rickshaw to the Taj. Rickshaws are awesome fun - it's basically a small moped with a 3-(small) person seat at the back. This means they have the turning circle of a unicycle and combined with the driving discipline meant the we were frequently in danger of falling out as the driver pulled off another ridiculous cornering move.

As we arrived at the drop-off I was amazed that India's best-known tourist attraction and one of the wonders of the modern world can only be accessed by small back streets. We had a few hundred yards to walk through a bazaar full of merchants all of whom didn't seem to want to take no for an answer. As we approached the entrance a new nuisance became evident in the "local tour guides" offering to give us a narrated tour. If you've seen Slumdog Millionaire, this isn't too far from the truth. After paying about 20 times more to enter the grounds than Indians (surely I should have had half off?) we were suddenly in a different world. Yes, there were lots of tourists and their guides, but the oppressiveness of the small streets had given way to a large court yard and as we walked towards the archway the famous view of the gleaming marble shrine came into view. Somehow marble manages to change colour in different lights in a way few other materials can manage. The monument itself seemed to gleam.





Emma and I left my parents to their guide (you have to give in to them else they will follow you round the whole thing - it's easier just to give them 50p and take their narration). After slowly walking around and through the Taj Mahal the sun had shifted and the monument took on a golden appearance as we headed out. The incredible thing about the Taj Mahal is that it is situated in the middle of an industrial city. In fact, from the Taj View, the Taj appears nestled among towers, chimneys and factories, but when you in the boundaries of the Taj you simply can't see any of that - it's as if the Taj Mahal grounds are surrounded by trees. The view across the river is to the proposed site of the black Taj Mahal that was planned as the mausoleum of Shah Jahan - the man who built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum to his wife. Unfortunately he was deposed and imprisoned in the nearby Agra Fort by his son. Our trip took us on to the Fort and then back to the hotel for an awesome world-cuisine buffet.

India part 1

Right, let's try and get this blog back on track. The first big update from just over a year ago(!) was the trip Emma and I took with my family to India. I used to go for 3 or 4 weeks every year until I was 14. This means it had been 14 years since the last visit. My parents had been a couple of times in recent times and I had been reliably informed that everything had changed in Bombay (sorry - I don't call it Mumbai, much like it's residents) and it had become much more Westernised. Thus I approached it with an open mind whilst recollecting the madness I remembered and Emma had no idea what was coming. My parents flew out a week before us (and it rained every day that week), so our trip began at 5am on a Saturday morning when our taxi arrived to take us to Birmingham airport. The "Eurohub" looks a bit sorry for itself these days and BA have fully abandoned Birmingham. We were soon on the KLM flight to Amrsterdam which was even quicker than from Newcastle, although Emma was developing a reaction to her new contact lenses rendering her partially blind for the day. This did facilitate hiding the madness later on. Our flight on to Bombay was with KLM's partner NWA (which always makes me laugh) and before we were allowed on the plane, everyone was taken to a table with their party and asked further security questions - talk about paranoia - the plane wasn't even going anywhere near the US. The flight passed fairly quickly (~9 hours) and we were soon descending over the sea towards Bombay. If the city had modernised, then they still hadn't cleared the slums from the airport perimeter. It still seems very surprising that we were really scrutinised before being allowed anywhere near a plane, yet there is a shanty town that could house anyone and anything is right up to the airport perimeter fence. As predicted, despite pleas to remain seated until the plane had come to a standstill at the terminal, most of the Indian contingent of the flight was up out of their seats trying to unload their baggage from the overhead bins almost as soon as the plane was off the runway. As we left the plane that nostalgically familiar heat wave hit me straight in the face. As we got to the terminal, nothing much seemed to have changed - they still seemed to be rebuilding the terminal and there was the familiar feeling that absolute chaos was only seconds away. Baggage collection led to at least a couple of people learning why you shouldn't stand close to the luggage belt unless you're retrieving bags as one traveller strugled to remove a case just large enough to hold a full-grown elephant, the momentum of the belt took it straight into a couple of unsuspecting punters standing nearby - the first of which got it straight in the crotch. Whilst I tried to keep a straight face, I saw out bags and we were away. My parents had arrived with a driver to take us back to the house in Dadar and even though it was just about midnight, there was a hot and heavy atmosphere (and a LOT of people milling around). We were led to the large car that would take us back and as we piled in, the rain began. We had inadvertently arrived at the end of the Ganpati festival and the roads were strewn with fairy lights and people on the streets. Emma was still suffering from a lack of long distance vision, so she was eased into the bonkers visuals. The main problem in Bombay is that there are far too many people. This is evidenced by the scores of people milling into the roads as there is no room on the pavements. Within minutes the first "change" revealed itself - the roads which were washed away in the recent floods had been "temporarily" rebuilt with bricks rather than tarmac. I suspect they're going to be in place until they too are washed away. The first beneficial change I noticed was the construction of flyovers on the highway which negated the need for traffic lights every few hundred metres.

It's remarkable how much more things seem complicated as you grow up. When I was younger I used to just sit in the cars and look at the sites. Now I am a qualified driver I sat open mouthed at the standard of driving which I will attempt to describe. There are (or, were) lane markings that are completely ignored - if a car fits into a space, it will. Red traffic lights seem to be considered as optional - which is something I don't remember from before. The cars are an eclectic mix of the old (Fiats and Ambassadors), old-ish (Suzuki Marutis) and modern Tata and East Asian cars. The majority of them don't have wing mirrors. For the older cars, this was a design "feature", for newer cars, they likely didn't survive the drive home from the garage. Given the tight packing that drivers seem to favour, there is a matter of centimetres between vehicles. That lack of spacial awareness is compensated for by the horn. If you approach a vehicle from behind - you blow your horn to let the driver know you are there. As you overtake a vehicle, you blow your horn to make sure the driver doesn't pull into you. If the driver is slightly slow at pulling away from a traffic light, you blow your horn. If the day of the week has an "a" in it, you blow your horn. And for added amusement, sounding your horn is illegal. If you very go to India and consider hiring a car, just don't. Someone who actually learned to drive using mirrors wouldn't survive 10 minutes.
Anyway, we arrived in Dadar after about 30 minutes and I met my Aunt and Uncle who I hadn't seen since 1996. The house was built by my Grandfather and is a 3-storey building. My memories of it were that my uncle's parents lived on the bottom floor, my aunt and uncle (and us when we were there) lived on the first floor and my grandparents lived on the top floor. The house was in need of refurbishing back in the 80s and I remember sitting on the stairs peeling paint off the walls (something that was sooooo satisfying to do when you got a big piece off) and it hasn't been touched up since. Due to deaths it's now just my aunt and uncle there now along with the servants. The crazy thing with the servants is how they live. They sleep on the floor in the kitchen (even though they must be in at least their 40s and there are several unoccupied beds), they have an outhouse toilet (even though there are 3 toilets in the house), they hand-scrub the washing (even though there is a washing machine) and they are expected to do the shopping and cook all the food. One of the servants actually left to go and work in a textile mill, but came back because his life was better as a servant.

Anyway, I've typed for a long time and still only described up to the first night. I'll try to be more concise in the next parts.

The AppleTV

It started last summer when I was sitting around talking with some friends about what a pain a large media collection is. With music - a lot of people have migrated over to mp3 and I have to say that with a decent ripper (EAC) and compressing to 192 kbps VBR I struggle to tell the difference between the mp3 and the CD - I can tell there is a difference, but can't tell which is better. This means my CDs can be stored somewhere in a big box. Someday I'd like to go back and re-rip them to FLAC or some other lossless file to have a perfect digital copy for archival purposes. The trouble is DVDs. Initially, having a big collection was something to be proud of, but as I've moved around, transporting all my disks was starting to be a handful. Unfortunately, unlike CDs, a full DVD rip would take up 6-8 GB per disk, and at a collection of some 300 discs, that can add up. We talked about how there should be a way to have your DVDs on a hard disc allowing you to box up the discs in long term storage. I didn't know it then, but such a solution already existed. When Apple launched the AppleTV it flopped. They tried again with updated software and the response was still tepid. Then came tools such as Handbrake, which allowed you to compress films down. DVDs are encoded in MPEG2 which was developed in the early 90s so the technology looks pretty ancient today. The modern Blu-Ray discs tend to be encoded using something called H.264 which is much more efficient and allows you to get the same quality from a smaller file. Thus, using Handbrake it's possible to extract and compress down a 6-7 GB DVD film to a 1-2 GB mp4/m4v file. This file can then be "tagged" with metadata in the same way an mp3 file can using tools such as MetaX (mac/windows). It can retain multiple audio tracks (except DTS for now) so you still got 5.1 sound out and this can then be copied over to the AppleTV or streamed.



There are a few problems.

Firstly, this normally just preserves the film. There are no menus or extras (unless you rip the extras too). In theory I don't mind cos I normally only watch the extras once. Also, some discs with seamless branching have to have each version of the film encoded separately

Secondly, some of the tools (for example Subler to insert subtitles) are still Mac-only

Thirdly, Apple still only sells the aTV with a maximum drive of 160 GB. They also use old-styl drives so the maximum you can upgrade it to is 320 GB, so big collections still won't fit, and Apple still insists you can only stream stuff via iTunes which needs a PC on running iTunes. There are ways around this, such as using hacks to install things like XBMC which can stream from network hard drives.

Right now I've got all my music and most of my TV show DVDs stored on my aTV with my non-DTS films available to stream when my PC is on. I can see why Apple don't put large hard drives in the aTV - so you can copy music to it and use a bit of storage for rentals/buffering and rely on streaming from a large hard drive somewhere for videos - but I don't understand why they won't move away from requiring a PC to be on with iTunes running to do it. I'm hoping the next year will bring some solutions allowing me to rip my DTS films which will reduces the physical size of my collection. We are slowly creeping towards a total digital solution with books, papers, photos and films stored on "cheap" storage and kept in small boxes that can be connected to the internet allowing us access to our data anywhere in the world we can get a connection to the internet. I say, bring it on!

Foreign Conferences

In 2008 I got to go to two international conferences. the first, in July, was the Fpi8 conference in Graz, Austria. The FPi series alternates between Europe, the US and Japan and Fpi8 marked my attendance of the complete set - Ithaca 2004, Osaka 2006 and now Graz. I was going with Martin, Mustafa and Pete from Chemistry and Torsten from CDT. While the others opted to fly down to Stansted and then out to graz, I thought of my FlyingBlue miles and flew to Austria via Amsterdam and then got the train to Graz. Both options turned out to work well and by the end of the Sunday we were all sitting down to a large Austrian meal under a large canvas roof. Soon, the rain developed into a full blown storm which made sitting outside interesting.




The difference between this and other conferences I had been to was that this time I was making an oral presentation rather than just defending a poster. Before that though I sat through 4 days of talks on functionalised pi-systems. Since Ithaca, academic interest has shifted from OLED materials to transistors (OTFT) and solar cells (OPV). Infact, most OELD talks were towards the end of the conference. The talk went well, even though I was introduced as "mister" grrr. The first one is supposed to be the hardest, so that boded well for the next conference. Instead of going on the organised excursions, Pete and I wandered around graz - which is a fairly small city - taking in all the sites from the weird "alien" buildings of the culture centre and the river-slug to the Schlossberg and clocktower that overlooks the city (taking the hillside train was a much better option than walking).




The second conference was at the start of September in Dresden. This time I was the only chemist in our visiting party made up of Andy, Olivier, Ben and mot of Andy's Ph.D. students. A flight via Dusseldorf left us in the tiny Dresden airport trying to figure out the ticket machine. It ended up stumping us. Our hotel was next to the train station and, apart from registering at the conference site, out first day and a half was free so we made good use of it wandering around the reconstructed Dresden.
Unlike blitzed cities in the UK, Dresden took a long time to be rebuilt and the extra care that's gone into it is evident - the buildings have been rebuilt to maintain a traditional feel rather than just throw up concrete buildings like we did. The end result is a much more pleasant cities than somewhere like Coventry.



A with Austria we enjoyed some excellent food - and took advantage of Andy's knowledge and contacts to get to some restaurants most tourists wouldn't including a Thai restaurant on the edge of the city and a chicken restaurant. The conference ws solely focussed on OLEDs with an emphasis on device physics and engineering, but there was still a bit of chemistry. The session my talk was in lost most of it's participants as the first 2 of 4 speakers hadn't shown up, but some of the audience had returned for my talk - which was a more complete version of the one from Graz. A Special mention has to go to the conference banquet which had some awesome food on offer, including the very moreish veal slices... Hopefully 2009 will bring a few more conferences my way.

Two Weddings

In an effort to get the rest of last year blogged, here are a couple of big events from 2008. The first was the Wedding of college friends Matt and Mel in Melbourne near Derby. A group of us from Durham drove down on the Friday night to the East Midlands' Airport Travelodge (actually built into the service station). Luckily, our room didn't overlook the Burger King. Not only was I a wedding guest, but I had also agreed to act as one of the two photographers for the day. When we rolled up to the church I was handed a d-SLR and some memory cards and had a few minutes to get used to how it worked and figure out the different shooting modes before I was off taking pictures of the area and guests. I won't go on about the ceremony as I'll just post some pictures (more on my Flickr site). I will say that as a photographer I didn't get the chance to relax and chill out until the meal, after which I handed over the camera and became just a guest again. Of the hundreds of shots Caz and I took, a lot turned out really well which I'm happy about.






The second wedding was over the summer in Durham and saw Alan and Lucy get married. This time I was involved as an usher which simply involved shepherding guests around at the church and then the reception. This time it was a pretty miserable day with rain and drizzle throughout the ceremony. As we arrived at St Mary's College for the reception the sun broke out and the afternoon and evening was very sunny and warm so the drinks reception took place outside. Again, more pictures are on Flickr.

A review of last year's tech predictions

There's more 2008 updates on they (and more photos have made their way onto Flickr. In the meantime, here's a review of how I did with my 2008 tech predictions.

Small computers

In many ways this prediction hasn't come to fruition as the new Mac Mini isn't scheduled to be launched until next week and the only other supplier, Acer, hasn't really pushed it's small systems. In fact, it's looking like small computers will arrive in the form of "all-in-ones" such as the iMac and Dell One and, more immediately, laptops which have started selling in larger numbers than desktops. The days of the massive, loud tower case are definitely numbered.
As a side I mentioned the Asus EEE PC - a cheap, small "nettop" laptop that I predicted would take the world by storm and this was a success - you can't move now for 9-10" low powered laptops in the £2-300 range. Their success has certainly annoyed a lot of people. Sony complained that it meant they would lose profits trying to sell a small laptop for over £1000. It also meant that people started to question the need to upgrade their computers when all they wanted to do was surf the net and run a word processor which panicked Microsoft who have had a keep extending the life of Windows XP.

E-Paper

This one is split across the world. In the US, E-paper is very popular thanks to the Amazon Kindle - an ebook that allows you to buy books from Amazon anywhere via a built-in shop. Unfortunately, E-book pricing still doesn't seem to reflect the lack of materials compared to a paper book. Sony released a new Reader that was better than the old 505, which may explain why the Reader was finally launched in the UK. Of course, the model we got was last year's 505 model (no doubt collected up from the rest of the world) and at £200 it's not exactly cheap. Still, it's apparently selling well through Waterstones. Next year will see the release of the Plastic Logic Reader and no doubt the gradual reduction in price to where they might actually be worth it.

Personal GPS

A hit. As expected, the iPhone3G featured built in GPS. Out of the box, you've got Google Maps to use, but thanks to Apple's innovative App Store a large number of "location-based services" have sprung up allowing you to find just about anything where ever you are: ATMs, restaurants, nearby friends, public toilets... This has resulted in every other smartphone from HTC, Nokia, RIM etc coming with GPS and most mid-range Nokia phones. In the next year this will filter down to the low end phones from Nokia, Samsung, Lg and SonyEricsson. But to be honest, the iPhone is the one everyone wants.

Splashpower

This one is a massive failure. After years of failing to get any manufacturers on board, Splashpower went under in April. However, their patents have been bought up, so we may yet see products based on wireless charging.

Smartcards

Another slow-burner. These are being rolled out across transport networks throughout the country. With the credit-crisis, the banks haven't kept up the momentum in rolling out contactless payments outside of the City of London. Nevermind.

As a side, it seems most of my 2007 predictions have come to fruition in 2008. Digital photo frames have hit the mainstream, even if most of them use cheap screens. The next generation using OLEDs are now available (for a price). HSDPA is now built into almost every phone released and personal GPS is taking off and the Wii is running away from the XBox360 and PS3 in terms of sales.

I'm still thinking about my predictions for the year 2009, so until then Happy New Year!

Hong Kong part 3

Our last full day in HK dawned and Emma and I headed back to Hong Kong island to have a look at the escalator to the mid-levels. The mid-levels are up the hill from the Central district and accessed via very windy roads. The escalator is the world's longest outdoor escalator rising a vertical distance of 135 m over a length of 800 m. There's only one lane of escalator which changes direction running downwards until 10 am and the upwards till midnight. There is also the normal option of stairs for when it's running the wrong way for you. We stopped off for breakfast at a small cafe a few hundred metres up the hill. The place soon filled up with rugby 7s fans from around the world dressed up in a variety of wacky costumes. After a fry-up to be proud of we set off back down the escalator to see one of the wet markets - traditional street markets selling food.



There was loads of fresh fruit and vegetables, more live seafood for sale and all sorts of meat - including chickens' feet.

At the end of the market we finally caught one of Hong Kong's old trams through Central to the Bank of China, the iconic "triangle" building. The trams are pretty jerky and very narrow, but they keep going.



The Bank of China has a viewing platform which afforded us fantastic views over Central and Admiralty. Even more surprising was that the bank was open on a Saturday! More importantly though was that the fog had lifted for the first time.





For our final excursion we took a bus to the south of the island to Stanley. As the double-decker bus started climbing up the hills the roads started getting more winding and narrower. As we came down the other side of the hill, the road quality deteriorated and the ride became more akin to a roller-coaster with as we worked our way past the luxury houses to Stanley. Stanley is famous for its market and once again the area turned out to be full of knock-off shops and overly priced restaurants and westernised bars along the China Sea front. We went for a dim-sum restaurant, tucked away behind the market, hoping it might be a hidden gem. We even went for the chicken-feet. We were disappointed on both fronts. Chickens' feet are probably the most pointless food ever - there is more bone and gristle than meat.



The bus back came through a tunnel rather than the hill-top road and was much less hair-raising. We traversed the bay on the Star Ferry again to wait for dusk and the symphony of lights. This time I was able to get some nice photos without fog.





We took the ferry back to the island for our final meal out in an very old restaurant that slowly descended into farce. The waiter seem confused by our order (two different set meals), but seemed to grasp the idea in the end. After a while the first meal's first course (bird's nest soup) arrived. A few minutes later, nothing else had arrived, so we questioned where the other meal was. The waiter got across that he'd thought only one of us was eating, but we convinced him we both wanted food. He came back a few moments later and thrust a spoon at Emma and then went away again. After a few minutes it became clear he wasn't coming back with any more food and had assumed that we were being cheap-wads and sharing one meal between two. After calling over a different waiter we finally got the message across and soon were tucking into roast pigeon. Unfortunately, the main dish was pretty rank. As as final "insult" to the restaurant, their oldest waiter - who looked about 80 - nearly tripped over whilst serving our desert. We gulped down the desert, paid up and ran before we caused any other mishaps.

Hong Kong is like a real culture smash between east and west - the British influences are clearly there and they fall away quickly the further into Kowloon you go. It's a very good starting point for people who want to explore east Asia for the first time. There was so much we didn't have time for - notably the New Territories, but these are more Cantonese than British and off the main tourist trail. Maybe next time.

The next day we got up and took the MTR for the final time to Hong Kong and got the skytrain back to the Airport for the flight back home. This time, Air France had remembered our seat bookings, but of course there had to be a problem and that was that the already mediocre entertainment system refused to play any films leading to a 12 hour flight where we had to entertain ourselves. Still at least we'd get home in one piece.





Or were we? Despite have a 4 hour layover in Paris, which was extended by an hours delay, we arrived in Manchester to find an entire crate of luggage had been left on the tarmac in Paris. Nevermind, Air France had the pleasure of couriering my bag from Manchester to Durham. Take that!