Okay, after a relatively successful upgrade to WordPress 1.5, I’ve decided that this is going to be the new layout for the blog. Later tonight I’ll tweak the design, color and graphics to get it just right. But now it’s time for some dinner..
Testing “asides”. Just ignore this post…
I’m currently in the process of upgrading the site to WordPress 1.5, so please ignore any weirdness you see for the next hour or two.. 
I just got back from my holiday skiing holiday in Poland, yesterday, a day later than I had expected. I was at a resort called Szklarska Poreba. I was supposed to get back on Saturday, but the bad snow storms in Denmark made it impossible to get back to Næstved, so I had to go to Ejby instead until Sunday morning.
The holiday, was frustrating at times, as much of what we expected turned out to be untrue, with a lot of hidden charges that we had expected were incorporated into the cost. I don’t know if this was the fault of the resort or the maybe we interpreted the information we got from the organisers wrong, but either way it was a bummer.
The cues for the piste are ridiculous down there. It was 45 minutes just to get up onto the lift for the small slope, never mind joining another cue then to get to the top of the mountain. Speaking of the top of the mountain, the weather was bad for skiing on the top last week. Visibility was near zero, which made for some very interesting and dangerous moments skiing.
Speaking of dangerous and visibility, I can nearly guarantee, that the slopes would have been closed at other resorts, given the visibility and fog conditions we had some days.
Perhaps the most annoying thing about the trip, was the cues because, it seems that the polish people I met this week have no concept of what a cue is or how it works! When your standing in any cue, especially one that is leading up to a chair-lift that only two people can go on at a time you would expect an orderly cue of two’s all the way to the chair. After all, the cue can only move as fast as the chair lift right?
The Polish people, and I mean the Polish, there were Danes, and Germans there as well (and me), but it was the Polish that were the cause of the problem. They would push right up behind, you, pushing their skis into every spare millimetre, making it impossible for you to move your skis without falling over. Even worse, they stand on your skis, and thats the last thing you want when you got a set of 500 or 600 dollar skis on. I got rental skis this year, instead of bringing my own, and I’m extremely happy I did. The rentals were ruined by the end of the week. Literally! And frigid bitchs were absolutely destroyed. If I owned them I would have chucked them in the bin at the end of the week.
The rental place was another absolute joke.. I mean they were actually giving out bad and defective equipment, and wanting your passport as a deposit. NO THANK YOU!!! I had to return my skis 2 times on the first day before I finally got a set that would stay on…
Still… it wasn’t all bad! There was another hotel just down from where we were staying that I quite enjoyed. The drink there was relatively cheap (about half the cost of Denmark), they had 2 good pool tables, and the staff were very friendly and nice. I had one particularly good night at the bar with a member of staff from the hotel, who had just finished work, who was introducing me to the virtues of various Polish vodkas and other Polish drinks. But, damn those 10pm closing times!!
I must sound a bit bitter right now, but to be honest I’m not. I’m more tired than anything else. Knowing what I know now, I believe I could go back there and actually have a great holiday, but I wouldn’t travel with 30 people and I would stay in the hotel, that I spent most of my time in as opposed to the one we were staying in. It’s just that I had certain expectations before I went, which weren’t met. The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing!
I would NOT recommend first time skiers go to Szklarska Poreba, as you may have the kind of skiing experience that puts you off for life. However as a more experienced skier (which I’m not btw, but I do have a couple of years), there is some good off-piste skiing, and I’ve heard from members of my group that the cross-country skiing is very good. Just don’t use your own skis if you want to go slalom or alpine skiing as the cues will destroy them.
I think I’ll probably end up back in Szklarska Poreba, however it won’t be for a skiing holiday. It will be for a holiday with some skiing, if you know what I mean.
Oh.. before I go.. a tip for anybody that is going there. The cues normally become unbearable form about 12:30 onwards, so go do something else. If you’ve got daily lift cards, you can sell them to the locals, who won’t want to pay full price. Typically you can sell one lift card for around 10 to15 zlotys which will get you 3 beers, or lunch.
Brian, a good mate of mine has started a new blog to chronicle the making of a new Star Wars mini-fan movie called “Fall of a Jedi!“.
I wish Brian, Rob, Kev and Mike all the best with this, and must admit to a little jealousy at not being able to be there to help you guys out. This project has been a long time coming and I look forward to seeing the result…
Gates announced Internet Explorer 7.0, designed to add new levels of security to Windows XP SP2 while maintaining the level of extensibility and compatibility that customers have come to expect. Internet Explorer 7.0 will also provide even stronger defenses against phishing, malicious software and spyware. The beta release is scheduled to be available this summer.
So it looks like all the fud is untrue and we will in-fact get a new version of IE on the Win XP (SP2) platform. Not only that, but Gates announce that all owners of legitimate copies of Windows XP will get the final release of Microsoft Anti-Spyware at no extra cost.
The first beta of IE 7 should appear during the summer, although, outside of security enhancements not much was said about features. Hopefully we’ll at least see improved standards compliance and CSS compatibility.
You can check out the entire press release on BillyG’s keynote speech at the RSA Conference here.
So, Mr. Gates, writes Hakon Lie, you say you believe in interoperability. Then why, pray tell, doesn’t the web page of your interoperability communiquĂ© conform to the HTML4 standard as it claims to? Why does the W3C validator diagnose 126 errors on your page?
You say you believe in interoperability. Then why is your document served in different versions to different browsers? Why does your server sniff out the Opera browser and send it different style sheets from the ones you send to Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer (WinIE)? As a result, Opera renders the page differently.
You say you believe in interoperability. Why does the Hotmail service deny Opera access to the same scripts as Microsoft’s own browser? As a result, Opera users can’t delete junk mail.
Yeah.. exactly, you go boy…
Opera to MS: Get real about interoperability, Mr Gates | The Register
Linux still isn’t ready for grandma, but it might be ready for your stoner friend who’ll experiment with anything or for a curious type willing to put up with some discomfort. This doesn’t get us terribly far past the technology savvy desktop Linux lovers around today, but it pushes up against a point that could be called Freak Mainstream.
The Reg looks at what appears to be the sorry state of the Linux Desktop Summit, in which very few of the real “major players” had stalls. And they also make an important point, no matter how far the Linux Desktop has come on in the past few years (and it has), most Linux developers still can’t see beyond GCC and the command line, and don’t seem to realise that ordinary users do not want to learn how to or ever have to use the command line or edit a script to make a change, or get something done.
Love is the air….
To all those who have, enjoy!
To all those who have not, go out and get some!
What the hell are you doing inside reading my blog on Valentines day…..
Stupid proposed law #203:
Let’s make it legal to copy CD’s and DVD’s for personal use, even if they are copy protected, as long as it’s copied onto the same medium. Disc to Disc. Cool!
Okay, what about mp3 players? Ahem, all those damn kids are annoying me on the bus with that Eminem fella blasting out. They’re damaging their eardrums you know! So lets put an end to that by making it illegal to copy your music to your mp3 players.
Now, lets sit back and watch the money flood out of the country as people purchase music from online stores in other countries for their mp3 players.
Piracy!! What do you mean there’s been an increase in P2P usage???
Yahoo: Norway Proposes New Digital Copyright Law.
(Via.Engadget).
© 2009 Paul O'Flaherty
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