Lima, a day with zë Germans

October 9th, 2011 • no one likes this

That wonderful feeling of someone rummaging within the room when you’re trying to sleep is further enhanced by small whispers in a foreign language. None other than the smoothest to the ear, like a broken chainsaw – German.

• Happy Germans | Nora + Christoph


As my eyes were pried open, I uttered a somewhat able ‘hola’ to the newly found adjacent bunk-bed companions. To which one of them nicely reciprocated – “You look damaged”. Now that’s how you say “hello”!
Read more »

Meat me at the Torres refugio on a horse

September 21st, 2011 • 2 responded. You?

According to the local coffee shops raggy edition of the Lonely Planet’s “Chile”, Torres Del Paine has approximately 100,000 flower tramplers per year. An astounding number of wide-eyed gringos for any destination.

• 3 amigos discussing Patagonia over some Calafate Sours


Especially if you consider that the main walk[s] consist of half a dozen variations to a set track, the paths themselves in most places are no more than 1m in width. Pushing through a hundred smelly backpackers as you traverse the peaks of this beautiful terrain would be a horrible horrible thing … that’s why the best time to visit is Read more »

Sh-t I took

September 14th, 2011 • 8 responded. You?

"basics" I took

The journey around Torres Del Paine, and adjoining parks is to take nearly two weeks. The vast majority of them will be on foot, thus consideration must be given to the weight of the total pack(s), as there are (unfortunately) going to be no sherpas.

Weather report for this time of year, idled within 2-3ºC below 0 for the night, and a few degrees higher for daytime. Which necessitated the number of thermals throughout the trip, coupled with the self-imposed weight restriction as well as possible lack of showers; more thermals = less smelly experience.

There are many lists online of what people have managed to bring with them along for their trek. To add to the noise, I wanted to provide an OCD technologists view.

Main pack is the Genesis 70, which comes with a very Read more »

Big slab of ice

September 14th, 2011 • no one likes this

Growing up in Ukraine, I’ve seen my fair share of snow, blizzards, and every temperature from -40ºC through to 40ºC, although upon arriving in El Calafate, which is a small town in the Patagonian region of Argentina (that should be oft-described as a tourist trap… – on that later) – the first stop was to be the famous Perito Moreno Glacier which is a magnificent spectacle that is difficult to explain and take in.

• Perito Moreno Glacier


Interestingly enough, the best view is far away from the the glacier itself, and on one of the Los Glaciares National Park’s viewing platforms.

• from atop the Perito Glacier


By far the most enjoyable part of the journey to the glacier was donning some crampons and spending just under two hours walking around and having the history, growth spurts and inevitable ‘shock’-stories being told by our guide Diego.

• tad chilly


After the completion of the walk, we were surprised to be greeted by a table full of glasses, some local chocolate, and a bottle of whiskey. To top it off, the ice for the tumbler, was chipped from the glacier itself.

• best ice for your drink


Bugger – QF17, Mechanical Fault, Diverted

September 4th, 2011 • no one likes this

What a way to start my holiday ..

At approximately 14:02 AEST Sep. 3, an announcement (interrupting my watching of Bridesmaids, which isn’t actually that bad) over the PA system of the Qantas QF 17, Sydney to Buenos Aires came which detailed a possible issue with the airconditioning system. Which resulted in noises coming into the cabin at the front of the aircraft. Upon speaking with the Sydney engineering team, and being unable to resolve said problem, we were told that the plane is taking a pitstop in Auckland.

QF17 - Dumping Fuel


An immediate dumping of fuel has then commenced. Some even started taking photos + video with their iPads.

I have no problem with New Zealand, it’s a beautiful country, although this is the third time in the last month that I’ve been here; plus I didn’t think New Zealand was famous for their mechanical skills. Fingers crossed.

Prognosis is that we will be on the ground for at least an hour, for engineering, and then to get some more tucker for the plane, as there’s another ~10 hours of flying to be made.

Qantas’ outsourcing is doing wonders for the safety of their patrons. Although this isn’t as bad as the guy that choked to death yesterday.

UPDATE:

We ended up having to spend the night in Auckland, and are now en route to a fixed or a new plane. Qantas put us up in the Holiday Inn, which thankfully had a superb buffet of food waiting for us. That’s one way to keep the passangers happy – keep them fed.

Out of Office

September 3rd, 2011 • no one likes this

I love to travel.

Am fortunate enough that in my role am able to do two awesome things: talk about technology and see new places. Yet exploration goes beyond taxis, hotel rooms and new office blocks; and has not been towards Argentina in detail.

napkin planning

Every now and then, the need to re-charge, or in this case Read more »

Presentation Blues

June 24th, 2011 • no one likes this

All began a couple of months ago, with EMC Inform on the horizon, I had two sessions in front of me, one a pure technology play – ‘EMC/VMware Integration’, and second being significantly business oriented – ‘Hybrid Cloud & Workload Federation’.

Personally prefer to be sitting in the front row of any presentation, I seek validation of a technology, process or an idea, and for someone on stage to be able to explain it, and more importantly demonstrate it; as a colleague likes to say, the “proof is in the pudding”.

I put this out to the twitter follow-ship:

Working on a presentation for next week. As a PARTICIPANT, do you prefer live or recorded demos? Leaning towards the former.
– @romant – 24th May, 2011

… which after all the responses, was kind enough to offer absolutely no definitive answer.

Really wanted to show instead of just tell; after-all, if you are in the audience, as both Eric and Damian point out – how do you really know something works, and there isn’t some recorded-voodoo going on? Given Adam‘s feedback though, anything that takes considerable processing or wait time, would record, everything else – live.

The hardware off which I was to show off my touch-typing skills resided in Sydney. The conference spanned 3 cities, connectivity was provided in only a single location – Wellington. Un-surprisingly, it worked, even across the pond. Two remaining cities, had to be covered off with a bluetooth-tethered iPhone. In Melbourne’s convention centre, the connectivity was flawless, and the demo portion of the talk didn’t skip a single beat.. over 260 happy souls.. confidence for the largest venue, Sydney, was at an all-time high. What I didn’t realise, is that Sydney’s Exhibition Centre is built like a quasi-’Faraday Cage’; which really helps if you’re after reaching the world through 3G.

Unfortunately, after 20 minutes of pure slides, a realisation dawned, that the mobile provider wasn’t up to scratch to make everything look as seamless as was planned. I had to revert to some miming and a description of pixels that would be drawn on screen had things progressed as planned.

The inability to attain more than 2 bars of reception love on the iPhone, rendered the experience simply unbearable.. back to the slides.

some of the the team, after it all finished | click for largeness

Regardless, all up, it was a great event. was able to get through most of the message in Sydney, and for the rest had some canned videos ‘just in case’, which covered the necessary points.

After the presentation, I was asked whether a live demo would ever be attempted again, the answer is simple – yes. Obviously the problem will be differently approached next time, with significant pre-checks in all locations, specifically around connectivity, and having an alternate telephony provider if necessary.

Of the sessions I was able to attend, my favourite presentations were by far, David Lloyds on ‘UIM and what it can do around the managements of standardized infrastructure’ – namely Vblock, there was standing-only room left., and the Q&A from Michael Bookey‘s session on ‘VMware + Mission Critical Apps’. Not only was he able to bring some personality and zest to a typically mundane topic, but every question thrown to him, he answered with incredible depth.

At the end of it, enjoyable, and glad to have participated.