www.nobay.co.uk

Links to India

2011-05-31T01:02:00.004+05:30

I'm now the proud owner of a Royal Enfield Silver Bullet 350 (a motorbike). Unfortunately, it is in India, so no chance of riding it too soon. India seems to be cropping up a lot at the moment. I'm doing a project with TCS (Tata - who are much bigger than I suspected) and a friend of mine recently contacted me asking for advice on Indian IT training companies. Then, today, Steve Crunkhorn emailed me telling me he was looking for Indian sponsorship for his motorsports company and would like to put a link on my blog - so here it is... http://www.stephencrunkhornhistoricracing.co.uk/

Building a clay oven in India

2010-11-05T19:17:00.003+05:30

I'm in goa visiting dad. His latest project is a clay oven for cooking pizza in the garden. I think he wants to open a restaurant.

The oven is still being built yet but somehow it already looks old. Anyway, here's a video of him explaining the process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwJXVJYL4iA

Tennis lessons

2010-09-17T16:50:00.004+05:30

Just had my first tennis lesson with Ali in Kennington Park. Brilliant. We covered loads of things that were not at all obvious to me naturally but made a big difference when I tried them. I think I might be able to beat Finn now.

Forehand

Pivot, twist with shoulder

Index finger on third bevel of handle

PAS - path, angle, speed. Path - low to high, angle - vertical (ball is going to go where the racket is pointing), speed - medium

Backhand

Pivot, step across, pull racket back, release, finish in 'Statue of Liberty' position.

Index finger on second bevel. Release with left hand at the point that the forward swing starts.

Push through as well as up.

Serve

Index finger on 2nd bevel for pronation - more power. Elbow point to back of court.

General - get in position when the ball comes over the net, start back swing when ball bounces. Back swing until base of handle is pointing down the court.

Stuff I need to take to Norway

2009-10-19T15:03:00.002+05:30

The following are useful but difficult or expensive to get in Norway compared to the UK.

Rubble sacks
Primark clothing, esp long sleeve tops
Flip flops
4.5 volt battery
C type batteries
Big torch
Mach 3 blades
Plasters
Wellington boots
Scrabble
Baby wet ones
Tea
Subaru Impreza
2 Mountain bikes

Brasov and the Southern Carpathians in Romania

2009-08-12T04:36:00.005+05:30

Romania still has a lot to offer to tourists willing to do a bit of independent travel, however, it is not like the Borat film I had imagined. Romania is as advanced as anywhere else in Europe in many respects. There is no problem at all finding people who speak English, getting mobile reception, cash from local cash machines and so on. About half of the taxi drivers do their best to rip you off, but not much more so than in the Baltics. Also, transport is seriously limited. No motorways and trains are often cancelled or run at a snails pace.
I spent most of my time in Brasov which is a pretty good place to base yourself for hiking in the Carpathians. Brasov itself is a nice enough Medieval city with lots of restaurants, accommodation and bars. There is an absurd proportion of pizza restaurants. Two other things that struck me were the sheer number of taxis and pensiunnes (guest houses) and that Romanian is reasonably easy to understand when it is written down.

Walking from Brasov

This is what I recommend you do if you want to go hiking in the Sourthern Carpathians with Brasov as a base.
Day 1: Walk to Poiana Brasov. There are two routes that link up. You can either walk straight out of Brasov, up through the Shei district and into the forest or get the cable car to the Hollywood sign and walk from there. I doubt there's much difference, but I've only done the former. In Poiana Brasov you can stay at the mountain refuge ('Cabana') Postavaru, which is massive with loads of facilities, a nice bar a good food.
Day 2: Walk to Timisu de Sus. I didn't do this but the surrounding area looked excellent. I don't know anywhere specific to stay there but there are definitely several hotels down there. A few km up the road is Dimbu Morii, where unfortunately the main refuge is now derelict but there's loads of other options and places to camp.
Day 3: Walk to Piatra Mare Cabana. This is very small but in a stunning location. There's a variety of scenes along the way from canyons to medows, pastures and a small waterfall (Cascade Tamina). They only have one dormitry at the cabana and when I was there the only food they could offer was 'some soup from beans' but they're nice people. Anna Maria ('Mary') speaks English.
Day 4: Walk down to Dimbu Morii. This features the 7 steps water fall, which is good fun. From hear you can walk about 3km back into Brasov and get the 17 bus back into town.
If you've got more time you could head off further into the Carpathians from Piatra Mare, but I don't know anything about this. It looked excellent from the cabana, and in theory you could walk to Poland with little interuption.
If you need a taxi driver in the Brasov area or need a Brasov to Bucharest transfer I recommend Gabi Rosu. He speaks very good English and will not rip you off. His number in Romania is 0721 123360.

Weekend skiing in St Moritz 4th - 9th Feb 09

2009-02-13T22:38:00.002+05:30

Last weekend I visisted my Italian friend, ex-room-mate and all round carving maestra Valentina in St Moritz. I wasn't there long enough to really say I know the resort but some of my preconceptions of the place turned out to be definitely wrong so I thought I'd report a few of the more surprising facts here:

1. It takes quite a long time to get there. Unless you have a private jet, you're probably going to fly to Zurich, as I did, and get a train. The trains are excellent but the journey time is about 4 hours.

2. The main ski area isn't that big. St Moritz actually consists of several ski areas, Corviglia being the one that can be accessed directly from St Moritz town. Corviglia isn't small but it's certainly not massive. The 400 kms of pistes that St Moritz claims on paper is a reference to the combined area of 4 mountains, but it's not a truly linked up area. You can technically ski from Corvatch to Corviglia on some days but that's about it. Otherwise you have to take buses in between. It was pretty similar to skiing in the Jungfrau region in this respect.

3. It's not outstandingly expensive for Switzerland. Having skiid in Jungfrau at xmas, I was conditioned to Swiss prices. To me, St Moritz felt about the same as Jungfrau for food, drink and ski pass. I stayed at Valentina's appartment so I can't comment on hotels, however, I would say that there's not really any need to stay in St Moritz . Celerina and Samedan which are just up the road also have pretty quick access to the slopes. You could even head further afield and take the regular as clockwork Swiss mountain trains in.

4. It can be really cold. Obviously you can get cold skiing, but I was surprised by this. It was -15 during the day, and can reportedly get down to -30 which is way colder than anywhere else I've skiid, but I pretty tame if you're Canadian.

I would definitely go back if I had the chance but I wouldn't recommend it ahead of the other Swiss resorts I've been to. I was pretty lucky because there was so much snow when I arrived that most of the Swiss weekenders couldn't drive in, giving the impression that St Moritz was a skier's paradise, but I expect you could equally go when there's less snow and masses of crowds.

Skiing in the Jungfrau region, 19th Dec 2008 - 4th Jan 2009

2009-01-11T03:53:00.002+05:30

The Jungfrau region is, as far as skiing is concerned, a series of loosely connected resorts in Switzerland, the resort towns being Grindlewald, Wengen and Murren. Also very conveniently located is Lauterbrunnen, and less conveniently, Interlaken, which is where we found ourselves this xmas.

Pistes
On piste skiing is excellent on all mountains for skiers, but not so good for snow boarders. There's a couple of huge runs (1500-1600m verical drop) that you can do uniteruppted, but they all involve a bit of a cat track at some point, usually at the bottom. Two outstanding runs are from the top of Schilt down to Grindlewald and from Kleine Scheidegg or the top of Mannlichen down to Grund.

Across the three resorts you could easily spend a week just skiing on piste without much repetition, if that's what you're into. If you want to learn or indulge in carving there's a couple of ideal intermediate slopes that are long and wide. Uberjoch and Mannlichen are particularly good for this. There's quite a few black runs, the best being in First (Grindlewald). Black runs are tricky in ice and lots of fun in powder.

Off piste
As with all ski resorts, when there's a big dump there's a lot of off piste. In the two weeks we were there we had two pretty substantial snow falls. All three mountains offered excellent off piste on a powder day, but the top of the Schilthorn (Murren) was definitely the best for powder longevity. In my opinion there's enough challenging off piste for anyone of any level, assuming you get the snow.

Towns
Grindlewald - A large resort town with a mountain railway station. Good access to the 'First' ski area (the principle cable car is in the middle of Grindlewald). Good access to Mannlichen (a gondola to the top of Mannlichen starts on the outskirts) and Kleine Sheidegg (25min train ride from Grund station). Grindlewald is probably a great place to stay in low season, but it's main elevation attractions (Mannlichenbahn and Firstbahn) are a nightmare in peak season.

Wengen - A medium size resort town about a third of the way up a mountain. From here you can get straight on the train to Kleine Scheidegg (20 mins or so) or, depending on where in the town you may be able to get on a chairlift and ski some of the lower areas. There's also a big cable car from Wengen direct to Mannlichen. If you can take the train down to Lauterbrunnen (10mins) you can can then get the Murren Cable car.

Murren - a small and posh ski town with quite a few lifts going straight out of the town up the Schilthorn. Very quiet, somewhat isolated. Very expensive.

Lauterbrunnen - A superbly located town but with no actual skiing of it's own. The train station connects you directly with Interlaken, Wengen and Kleine Scheidegg, you can also get straight up to Murren on the cable car. From Lauterbrunnen you could be skiing in Mannlichen or Kleine Scheidegg in about 30mins. The cable car up to Murren is also pretty quick during off peak times.

Interlaken - A summer resort with train and bus links to the ski resorts. The quickest we managed to get on the slopes was 1hr,5mins. There is a theoretically quicker means. The 9am ski bus takes you in 25mins direct to Firstbahn, the main cable car from Grindlewald up to First. This is fine except for in peak season when the queue for Firstbahn is a disaster (we queued for an hour one day).

Ski areas
There are four ski areas, First (also known as 'Grindlewald First') which is good for intermediates, Murren (slightly more advanced), Murren (excellent for beginners) and Wengen (which we referred to as Kleine Scheidegg to distinguish it from Wengen the town) which has a variety of skiing but is probably the busiest area. Wengen and Mannlichen are just different sides of the same mountain so you could consider them the same ski area.

Getting between ski areas
Other than skiing both Mannlichen and Wengen (which are kind of the same place), it's not really worth skiing more than one area on the same day. In theory you could start really early and ski all of them, but there's no point - you'd waste a couple of hours gaining altitude and sitting on trains and busses.

Prices
Switzerland is very expensive, especially for food. Jungfrau is no exception. We saved money by staying in Interlaken but spent a long time getting to the resorts. Lauterbrunnen might be cheaper than the main resorts but probably not by much.

Noteable tourism features
The revolving restaurant at the top of the Schilthorn, which was used in 'On her majesty's secret service' as Blofeld's lair, is definitely the coolest of the attractions. It's no more expensive than other nice restaurants in the area and has one of the best views I've seen anywhere in the world. Go either very early for the 007 breakfast (a 20 quid buffet) or late afternoon and have the daily special (better value). Queueing for cable cars is a bit annoying at other times.

The views from Kleine Scheidegg are spectacular. You can see the North Face of the eiger, and two other larger mountains from pretty much everywhere. You can also ski down the Lauberhorn downhill world cup run and eat at the Bellvue hotel, where Montgommerry once stayed.

Interlaken has some beautiful lake scenery. There's a rip-off train from Kleine Sheidegg to 'the top of Europe' which you could do if you you'd rather do that than go skiing.

Nightlife
Nothing worth mentioning that I saw.

Leaving India - reflections on Koenig Solutions, The Willows Bank Hotel, Shimla, Delhi etc

2008-09-15T19:38:00.007+05:30

Leaving India tomorrow for Krakow and beyond. As I'm unlikely to do anything sober in eastern europe, I thought I would write up my experiences of IT training in India with Koenig Solutions (www.koenig-solutions.com), as this might be interesting to other people thinking of doing the same.

Delhi - CCNA

I did CCNA in Delhi. Koenig's approach to CCNA is in general excellent. I spent a lot of time hands on with the Cisco kit and the majority of the teaching is done on a white board by the teacher. The centre in Delhi is fine, and adequately equipped. I didn't care much for the lunch arrangements, so, like half a dozen other people, and some of the Koenig staff, I usually had lunch next door at 'Haldirams'. If you don't mind vegeterian, and you like Indian food, Haldirams is absolutely superb.

The main problem with Delhi is that when you've finished training for the day, it's impossible to relax. It is incredibly noisy, fiercely hot and very dirty. I enjoyed Delhi the last time I was there as a tourist but I couldn't hack studying there again.

To be fair, some other people really liked Delhi. A couple of the younger guys were on a mission to go out clubbing whenever possible, which was reportedly brilliant. Some people insulated themselves from Delhi by staying at the five star Siddharth hotel, which I've had a look round. It is really nice but REALLY expensive. I've stayed a couple of nights at The Clark Heights hotel. I can't fault Clark Heights really - the staff are great and the rooms are immaculate with wifi and big flat screen TVs and nice bathrooms. Unfortunately the neighborhood is very noisy. Reports of the appartments and cheap hotels were mixed.

Shimla - MCSE

Shimla was an enormous relief after Delhi. The climate is much like the UK. Koenig have two training centres - Centre 1 is in downtown 'San Jauli'. I only went there for exams. The majority of students are at Centre 1. Centre 2 is 1km from centre 1, up a steep hill and into the jungle. The setting is superb. Very quiet, nice views and a good place to concentrate on studying. This is also where some of Koenig's appartments are. Personally I wouldn't recommend the appartments, especially if you're likely to be intimidated by monkeys, which are everywhere.

I stayed at Willow Banks hotel, which was generally fine. I didn't like their food, especially breakfast, and the wifi was constantly on the blink, but the rooms are nice, and very big. They've got a small gym and a 12ft snooker table. Some people moved out of Willow Banks to go to The Combemere. The Combemere is slightly more expensive but has some definite advantages - according to my friend who stayed there for a couple of months the gym was much better equipped, the breakfast was nicer (and included in the price) and the wifi worked consistently. The rooms are smaller than Willow Banks but more modern. The Combemere also own Cafe Sol, which is the best place in Shimla for non-Indian/Chinese food. Koenig's 'new' appartments looked pretty reasonable. Similar to staying at student's shared house in the UK. Large rooms, limited hot water in the morning.

Shimla was pretty dead in terms of night life. The Combemere has a night club but it's usually empty because there's a very steep cover charge unless you're a guest or friend of a guest.

MCSE is a long slog. You have to do at least seven exams. Everyone seems to get through it, even people with no IT experience. The Koenig approach to teaching MCSE is to just go through the Microsoft Learning official courses. There's a problem with this. The Microsoft learning courses are well organised and cover a lot of material, but they're deadly boring. When you have to go through seven courses in a row it starts to feel like you're sitting through the powerpoint presentation from hell. About a month into the course myself and my tutor agreed to abandon this approach so he improvised his own teaching method which was based more on hands-on problem solving. This worked much beter for me. One thing Koenig was very good at was adapting to individual needs, assuming you had booked individual tuition. There was a dutch guy who was unhappy with his CCNP teacher who complained to the administrator, and next day, hey presto - new teacher (and CCIE qualified!). Of course, if you don't ask, you don't get.

If I did long term training in India again I'd be tempted to go to Goa for a better balance of holiday and study. If I was going just to do a short term intensive course I'd consider Dehradun, which is supposed to be very well equipped with zero distractions.

The most useful command in IT

2008-08-19T14:39:00.003+05:30

BORINGNESS WARNING! [This entry is of no interest to anyone who is not an IT professional]

I wish I'd known this before. Works on Windows 2003, probably on 2000 server too. Diagnose any network problem!

netsh ras diag show all type=file destination=c:\output compression=disable

Calculating Pi to 8 decimal places using Pythagoras's Theorem

2008-08-15T16:04:00.018+05:30

"BORINGNESS WARNING [The following entry is of no interest to anyone who "can't do maths"]

I'm pretty bored. It's been raining on and off, but mainly on, for the last week in Shimla. There's nothing to do here when it rains except stay in the hotel and read. Other than computer manuals, I've been reading A Passage to India and also The Joy of Numbers, which I found in the second hand bookshop. The maths book is by someone called Shankuntala Devi who was a celebrity mathematician in India during the 80s. According to the book, Archimedes declared Pi to have a value between 3 1/7 and 3 10/7.
Monumentally bored of exam revision, I decided to see if I could calculate Pi myself. Approximating a circle as being composed of 'n' isosceles triangles, I found that:
pi=n*sin(180/n)
which is very accurate for a large values of n. It occurred to me that if Archimedes tried to derive pi on his own, he probably didn't know how to calculate 'sin', so I tried to come up with an expression for 'sin'. I could remember seeing an iterative equation for 'sin' at university, but I couldn't remember what it was and after several hours gave up trying to work it out. I went to sleep that night feeling a little disappointed that I couldn't do ancient mathematics without sinning.
This morning I had another go at it, and decided to forget about 'sin' and use only Pythagoras's. Theorem. After about eight pages of scribbling I solved it:
pi=n*b_n
where b_n is 0.5 * base of an isoceles triangle formed when approximating a circle of radius 1 as n triangles, and
b_n=0.5*sqrt[2-(2*sqrt[1-b_n-1²]]
Using n=4 as a starting point (a square bounded by a circle) and b=sqrt[2] (from simple geometry) I managed to get pi=3.14 after 4 iterations:


1st iteration - n=4, b=sqrt2, pi=2.82
2nd iteration - n=8, b=0.38, pi=3.06
3rd iteration - n=16, b=0.2, pi=3.12
4th iteration - n=32, b=0.1, pi=3.14

Enlarge diagram (in new window)

So, a circle modelled as 32 isoceles triangles gives pi=3.14. This requires quite a lot of paper to work out all the intermediate calulations (especially if you have to calculate all the square roots by hand - I used Windows calculator instead).
I used a spreadsheet to continue the calculations. This gives, for a circle consisting of 32768 triangles, pi= 3.14159265 which is accurate to 8 decimal places.
According to The Joy of Numbers, Ludolph van Ceulen, a german presumably, calculated pi to 35 decimal places in the 16th century without a spreadsheet. He presumably used a more elegant mathematical method, but it would still have taken a ridiculous degree of patience to do accurately. Perhaps he was in Shimla at the time.

Knol

2008-07-31T01:37:00.002+05:30

Today I published my first Knol.

Here it is:

How to find out if your computer has a virus.

I've got quite a bit to say about Knol, but not now. It's nearly 2am and I've got a class on a very boring subject (AD Group Policy) in the morning . :-(

First week in Shimla

2008-07-24T13:48:00.000+05:30

I'm in Shimla, India, staying at the Willows Bank Hotel on The Mall. It's not a bad place - clean and comfy rooms with wireless Internet. Someone pokes a newspaper under my door every morning before I wake up and tidies my room while I'm out. I can't say I care much for the catering but have managed to ensure an acceptable breakfast in the morning by specifying two boiled eggs cooked for 6 minutes.

There's a gym downstairs which I've used twice and is basically okay and should ensure that I don't balloon whilst staying here for the next two months. The most disappointing aspect of my location is that so far I've been unable to find anywhere to play tennis so far and consequently the racket that I brought from England lies dormant in the cupboard.

Started blogging today

2008-06-19T15:19:00.000+05:30

And all I could think of writing was 'lorem ipsum'.

Hello world...