Things that can stuff plans

Ash clouds

We decided that we would avoid Heathrow Airport as though it had developed mutated, extra-virulent, bubonic plague.  Everyone we have spoken to reckons this is good strategy.  So we are flying in to Manchester (it is also close to North Yorkshire).

Stone the sanguinary corvids!  Today ( 15 April 2010) flights into the UK are basically cancelled left right and centre due to volcanic ash from bloody Iceland.  Just under 50% of flights into Manchester - and a much higher percentage of those earlier in the day - get cancelled  First the cod wars; then their banking crisis and now they shovel ash into the way of tourists flying into the UK!

I hope this is well resolved by mid June!  The latest stuff  (10 May) seems to be that a fair chunk of Western Europe (France Spain Portugal, Ireland ) have shut down their airspace because of a new cloud.   Oh well, 6 weeks to go.  By May 17 Manchester Airport was stuffed (hopefully for a brief while).

Thailand does military rule!
To add to the entertainment the Red Shirts and the military in Thailand seem to be getting rather antsy.  From a selfish point of view one hopes they keep the action away from the airport.  From many other points of view one hopes they actually take a good hard look at themselves and realise that what is going on is crap.  But they're all politicians so that sentence is extremely naive.

Wireless Internet access

We acquired a netbook last year so that I cold record things while we were in Peru.  It did a pretty good job, but of course nowhere in Amazonas had electricity worth speaking of, let alone wireless internet!  A problem appeared to arise that it couldn't connect to our home wireless connection,  giving weird LINUX error messages about 'receiving offers' and 'persistent databases'.

After spending a lot of time in e-contact with a very helpful LINUX guru and phoning an ex-ABS contact I was still a bit in the dark.  Thus I invoked IT Rule 1: flail about at random enough and you will eventually fix the problem.  It emerged that somehow a password had been deleted.  I replaced it and Bingo!  I have now tested it at the National Library and it all looks good!

As at least 2 of our hosts offer wireless access that will be a great outcome.

Navigation
We won't bother with a fancy in-car GPS jobbie.  I reckon it would take us 3 weeks to learn how to program it!  My version of Linux doesn't as yet link to Google Earth but we have printed off some directions from Google Maps to get us between the main accommodation places (and to/from Manchester Airport).