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By John, on February 11th, 2011
Most of the time, I will be visiting our building site on my own, over the next months. Ruth is still working, earning the money to pay for the house! So I will need to call home to discuss any issues that arise. Last time I was in Spain, we tried out the DCalling Service.
This seems to work. Well. I think we’ll be using it a lot in future.
You register with DCalling, which will get you a small credit on your DCalling account (25 cents, if I remember correctly), to allow you to try out the service. If you like it, you can top up your account in units of 20 Euro, which will be enough to keep you going for over 17 hours if you are making international mobile phone calls to land-lines within Europe.
Continue reading DCalling: cheap international mobile phone calls
By John, on November 15th, 2010
Air travel in Europe or the USA is an ordeal these days. You will probably have to show your ID multiple times during the check-in process for international flights, you will be asked whether you have left your luggage unattended anywhere, who packed it and you and your luggage will go through various scanners. . . . → Read More: Making airport security smarter
By John, on July 22nd, 2010
Back in 2001 the US National Transportation Safety Board published a report on the survival rates in air crashes (PDF, 800 KB). They are much better than you might think: Nearly 96 percent of the occupants involved in a Part 121 aviation accident over the past 18 years survived the accident, and in over . . . → Read More: Maximizing the chance of surviving a plane crash
By John, on April 24th, 2010
Using the waze desktop maps
There is a new social mobile application on the block – waze.com.
You can download the application onto your smartphone (Apple, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian at the moment, Blackberry is coming shortly) and use the free software as an on-board turn-by-turn navigation system.
The maps are . . . → Read More: Help fill in the blanks on waze.com
By John, on April 13th, 2010
If like us, you have the feeling that flying with Ryanair is no longer the bargain it used to be, you could be right.
The Sydney Morning Herald has just published a report showing Ryanair’s charges have increased by 700% since 2006.
You can avoid part of the increases by using a . . . → Read More: Ryanair’s additional charges up by factor of 7 since 2006
By John, on April 30th, 2009
The Boston Globe often has fabulous pictures in its “The Big Picture” section. Their latest series is no exception – just take a look at these!
By John, on April 14th, 2008
Next time we drive past Maastricht, we are going to take a look at Selexyz Dominicanen. There’s an article in the Guardian architecture section about this book shop in a converted church, and it looks spectacular. The architects were Merkx + Girod, and the photo above is from their . . . → Read More: Selexyz Dominicanen
By John, on February 23rd, 2008
When I read this in today’s Guardian, my first reaction was “but it’s not the 1st of April yet”. One the one hand data privacy experts in the EU has been fighting tooth and nail over the last years to prevent the USA getting a pile of personal data each time someone flies to . . . → Read More: 1984 has been delayed, not cancelled
By John, on December 20th, 2007
Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic all join the Schengen Zone tonight.
That is the part of the EU where the member countries trust each other enough to abolish the visa- and border controls (But beware! At airports, the new members won’t benefit from the abolition of . . . → Read More: The fog clears in Europe
By John, on December 18th, 2007
Picture from Arborsmith Studios website (click picture to visit)Axel Erlandson an American arborsculptor opened an exhibition in 1947 featuring trees which he had shaped by pruning, bending and grafting. The original exhibition, called The Tree Circus had a chequered history, only bringing in a little over $300 in a good year (1955). Eventually 12 . . . → Read More: The tree circus
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