The Relocation (with Pictures!)

It’s scary to think what airlines can get away with today that we have no control over. For example, the FAA recently stopped taxes on flights in America, which would mean a saving of $20-50 dollars per flight, but were these savings passed onto the consumer? No, the airlines just raised the ticket price and pocketed the difference.

Likewise, Aer Lingus managed to screw me out of £468 through ambiguous statements and unclear regulations. I had 59kgs of baggage – I realise that’s a lot but consider that when I was packing, I had read the Aer Lingus baggage rules, which stated that if required an extra bag could be purchased for £24. This would give me 40kg of baggage and (according to their baggage rates) about £120 excess baggage (£6/kg), which as within my expenses range. However on arrival at the airport, the very unhelpful Aer Lingus attendant explained to me that £24 was for an extra bag…not an extra baggage allowance.

Thinking about this mathematically, they are charging an extra £24 for you to take less (a second bag would weigh more and take away from your actual luggage). Not only that but the excess baggage rate was £12/kg on the day apparently which wasn’t mentioned anywhere easily accessible on the website. So I have 39kgs x £12 of excess baggage. They also reminded me that had my onward journey been with a partner company I would of only been charged once and at the best rate.

So I pay the money, get my hand luggage torn apart by security and board the aircraft. I sleep until London where I leave and go and reclaim my baggage. Now, Heathrow is known for being a baggage (and general traveller) nightmare, but I have never been more impressed with this very busy airport. The girl from Brussels Airlines couldn’t believe Aer Lingus as she said that on her screen the baggage was meant to have been booked through. Not only that but they allow up to 30kgs of baggage as I was flying business class. She tripped over herself to apologise but explained that there was nothing she could do now that the bags had been collected. So I rechecked them but Brussels airlines didn’t take the piss like Aer Lingus. They charged me at a discounted rate of £10/kg (£12/kg normally), only charged me for 25kgs and were nice too!

Security at Heathrow was a breeze. My stuff was through security before I’d finished being searched and the staff even made casual conversation! The flight was even better – a welcome glass (a real glass) of orange juice (fresh squeezed by the taste), refreshing towel (material), complimentary egg and hsm pasta salad, with bread and (unfortunately blue) cheese selection, plus drinks. And a copy of the Daily Mail! Business is the way to fly.

So Brussels Airport. After a long walk to the main terminal I had an even longer wait at passport control. I managed to get my bags but no trolley to put them on (no sign of a trolley park etc) and they were a bit beaten up from the trip. One had no wheels anymore so I had to drag it to the taxi stand. The taxi driver was nice though and understood my minimalistic French, bringing me to the hotel very quickly indeed and for only 12.70!

Brussels transport system is…interesting to say the least but Google Maps seems to have a grasp on the situation and thankfully hasn’t got me wrong yet. I took two busses to get to “The W Shopping” and was able to sort out all my finances with the very helpful Rachid from ING.

Today the apartment has been confirmed, I have they keys in my pocket and in an hour or so I shall be on my way to my new place. I was even able to make small talk with my landlord in French. I really do like speaking it and thankfully most people over here like you better when you try!

So £718 in baggage, a few dented cases and thanks to Google Maps I am here and unscathed bar some aches. And, as of this post, officially living in Brussels. Pictures to follow!

Time Machine backup to an NTFS Drive (updated)

With my packing about 95% complete I have been working on backing up my DVD collection and Anime to an external hard drive. I have been using my Intel S4200-E NAS for so long that I really take it for granted – it’s just too big to take with me. However, Seagate have made an excellent job of their GoFlex external hard drives and I picked up the 3TB model from Maplin on Monday for £129.99. Apart from the fact that it is small and lightweight, the GoFlex also supports swappable bases, so I was able to change out the supplied USB 2.0 base with a Firewire 800 base, which came complete with 2 Firewire 800 ports and a USB 2.0 port as well as a spare power supply and a host of international adaptors.

With the release of OSX Lion this week I figured a fresh install (using the recovery partition which is created during the Lion install) might do my iMac good so I set about backing up my drives using Time Machine. My Mac is configured to do this over the network but lo and behold – Lion no longer supports Time Machine backups to non AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) network drives, so my SMB-based NAS (Server Message Block) was absolutely no use to me (not to mention the lost backups…).

But I had a nice shiny new hard drive! The Seagate drive is designed to be used with both Windows and OSX interchangeably and as a result included bundled drivers to allow OSX to mount, read and write to an NTFS partition (for those of you without Seagate drives you might want to check out MacFUSE – Specifically NTFS-3G which allows you to mount NTFS on Mac. Also, it’s free!). The problem is that Time Machine doesn’t like NTFS volumes either, requiring a Mac HFS+ formatted drive. Not a problem though using some ingenious thinking.

Originally, when you wanted to use Time Machine on a network drive you had to create a Time Machine volume (.sparsebundle) and copy it to your networked volume. The same principle apples to NTFS drives.

Start by creating  the appropriate volume for Time Machine. For this we will need both the network name of the Mac and its MAC address. For the name, open a terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type:

uname -a

The output will include something like:

Darwin Stan-Jewhursts-iMac.local 11.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 11.0.0: Sat Jun 18 12:56:35 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1699.22.73~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Your machines network name is the phrase preceding .local. For this example its Stan-Jewhursts-iMac. For the MAC address type:

ifconfig en0 | grep ether

Which will return something along the lines of 12:23:34:f5:4e. This is the MAC address of the ethernet port. Finally, create the HFS volume required for Time Machine. The following creates a 400G volume although you can substitute this for the maximum size you want your backup history to be:

hdiutil create -size 400g -fs HFS+J -volname "Time Machine" NETWORK-NAME_MAC-ADDRESS.sparsebundle

Make sure you remove the colons from your MAC address. For our example this would look like Stan-Jewhursts-iMac_122334f54e.sparsebundle. This will take a few seconds to create. When it has completed, copy the volume to your NTFS drive (make sure its mounted and can be written to):

rsync -aE NETWORK-NAME_MAC-ADDRESS.sparsebundle /Volumes/YOUR-EXTERNAL-DRIVE

Again, this will take several seconds to complete. When it does, remove the Volume you created locally:

rm -rf NETWORK-NAME_MAC-ADDRESS.sparsebundle

Finally, fire up Time Machine and browse to your external hard drive. The backup will start in two minutes or you can manually start it using the Time Machine logo located in the top bar (Back Up Now). Sit back and relax while your files are made safe and secure.

Free The Teeth

So, after one and half years of torment my braces were finally removed yesterday to tumultuous applause (inside my head). It’s a interesting feeling to not have pieces of metal attached to my mouth and it actually makes my teeth feel about three times larger than they actually are, but it is refreshing to be able to smile and not feel like a total mong.

The retainer is an interesting piece of kit. It comes in the form of a piece of plastic moulded to the exact shape of my teeth, designed to hold them in place untill they steady themselves (6 months). Tonight, however I ran out of the house in a hurry and forgot to replace it, having removed it for a cup of tea. I could not believe the difference a few hours wihtout it on made to my teeth. It was atually difficult verging on painful to get it back on, so I think I shall be very careful about future removals.

Apart from that the moving out process begins now. Everything is being packed and lists have been made…all hands on deck.

Location:Listooder Rd,,United Kingdom

Facebook Syndication

Wooo! Now all my posts are updated automagically to my Facebook Fan Page! Make sure you like it so I can get a proper URL!!

The progress so far

So with me trying incredibly hard to make consistent blog posts I managed to go a week without making a single one, constantly procrastinating and putting off what I knew needed to be done. It really goes to show that no matter what software you download to help you write, or how many reminders you put on your phone, at the end of the day it comes down to self discipline; sitting down, clearing your mind and just writing something.

The same holds true for my Hauku challenge, which hasn’t really gone anywhere in the last week. I’d like to blame it on all the paperwork and emails I have had to do in regards to moving to Brussels but it really was due more to my forgetfullness and my lack of self motivation. I always find it odd how i am super motivated at work and can get a huge amount done in a small amount of time when I need to, but when it comes to my personal projects, I’d rather sit and play games, or even (unfortunately) sleep on for an extra hour in the morning.

I’m really hoping this move will bring a little more regularity into my life. Sticking to a full time work schedule should hopefully whip my body back into shape and help keep me motivated on some small projects. And given the amount of work that I am going to have to do, I really have to limit my personal projects. I think the lack of stuff that comes as a result of this move is the kicker because I will have less to worry about, fix or otherwise distract myself with..

Anyway this post and myself are starting to lose focus. My brain is becoming cloudy and I am beginning to ramble so I will end here. Keep and eye out for a Haiku section however, as I hope this will help me focus more on the website (daily Haiku updates) and also on my writing.