Category: English

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An Observation On Online Check-In

When I’m abroad I keep trying online check-in, only to be reminded again and again why I don’t use it: I don’t have a printer. That’s a deal breaker for me, since I prefer to have hard copies of my travel documents.

Yesterday the same thing happened: I started the online check-in procedure, chose a seat that was different than the automatic selection and proceeded until I was reminded that I need to print something. I cancelled the operation and later went to the airport. At the airport I used a self-serve check-in machine instead of going to the counters. To my pleasent surprise, the selected seat was the one that I chose, not the automatically assigned one!

This means that using the online check-in system you can choose a seat even if you don’t complete the entire procedure. I think I’m going to give it another try (if I get the chance) on my next flight. Also, I wonder what would have happened had I gone to the counters. Would they still assign me the same seat?

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Best. Yom Kippur. Ever.

Nothing like spending Yom Kippur at a Prodigy concert, which is what I did yesterday. J, my new friend, joined me to a very good show – the sound was good and the Greek crowd was a happy crowd.

This show, number 9 over the past eighteen months, is my last for the year, as The Prodigy are having their last gig for the year today. They already announced a gig in April, which means I’ll have more chances to see them.

As always, my body still hurts and my ears are still ringing.

Good times.

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Athens – Day 2

Today I continued to walk around and went to Lycabettus Hill, a great place to get a view of the city. On the way up I met J, an extremely smart and lovely girl, and we walked around a bit to the National Garden and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Hopefully she’ll come to The Prodigy show tonight with me.

Even though this is my 9th show over the past 18 months, I’m still very excited. Right now I’m back in my room, preparing mentally and physically by resting :)

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Athens – Day 1 – My Flight Was One Hour Early. The Metro Is Broken. Still Made It

This has never happened to me before – my flight was an hour early. The security person said this was normal since I bought the ticket before Israel switched to daylight savings time. The flight attendant said it was a mistake. Either way, I’m on my way to Athens, blogging from my phone, for the first time ever, out of sheer boredom.

As I arrived it turned out that my plans to take the metro to the station nearest to my hotel are not going to work out since a section of the metro, including said station, is going through the period in its existence some people may call “renovation” but I would call “the stupid fuckers should provide some assistance for uninformed tourists.”

I was saved by a free Wi-Fi network (thanks ONTelecoms, whoever you are), the GPS in my phone and brut maps, which together provided me walking directions to my hotel. Without these things I would have been forced to try and communicate with the natives, something undesirable as I’m sure you’ll agree.

My hotel room wasn’t ready yet so with help from Alex, the very nice guy at the hotel reception, I embarked on my traditional aimless walk of the local streets. This time it turned out well – as you can see from the pictures, I got to very nice places.

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My New Arduino Reminded Me I’m A “High Level” Type

I got myself an Arduino and immediately went on to try the (simplest) “Blink” example. It was very cool to make the LED on the board blink, I admit. But then I went on to find out how to build stuff like a 4x4x4 LED cube or a (relatively) simple universal remote and I realized two things:

  1. Most of the stuff has already been created by others.
  2. They already did it much better than I ever would.

I realized that I’m not really into soldering and connecting wires. I’m more of a “high level” kind of guy – I like taking ready-made parts and creating new things with them, not mess with the low level stuff. It’s also true with software – while I enjoy seeing the possibilities of building useful libraries with a language just like the next guy, I still prefer using them over trying to write them.

So I’m still looking for nice (and hopefully new) things to do with the Arduino that will either be fun or useful for me. I might even try some wiring :)

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Knee Pains Update

OK, so I visited an orthopedic doctor and everything is fine. Apparently this isn’t an orthopedic issue at all – I presumably had a local sub-dermal cellulites infection very close to the knee area. It really hurt a few days ago, but now it seems to be passing.

I should be back to regular workouts in a few days. Yes!