London

New British T-Mobile number posted under a friend-locked post, for any LJ-less friends following along.

So, I'm in London.

( This got long )

I'm somewhat bothered by the lack of railing. I forsee one of my flashlights turning out to be useful.

'travel2010' is the tag for this adventure.

more London

I'm very tired even before jetlag, but wasn't sure I'd sleep well so early, and felt I should try to get out a bit. Also I needed some stuff. So I just walked up Cambridge Heath, and back down again. Got a few groceries quickly, crossed over the Regent's canal which has bikepaths. Saw that a stretch of road has 3 different night bus routes, one of which runs every 12-15 minutes. At 3am! I'm not sure if there's a consistent meaning to white and yellow road lines here. Police cars look funny. Ambulances look even weirder. Lots of bicycles. Crosswalks often have paint telling you which way to look, including "LOOK BOTH WAYS" where appropriate.

Landlady seems friendly, remotely. Sent a text asking if everything was ok, I said pretty much apart from the dongle, she called back, though not helping me much.

Although. When I came back, I tried putting the dongle in a USB port. Nothing. Leaving it on, I thoughtlessly connected to the phone connection I already have. It worked, and the dongle blinked its blue light at me during the process. But I hadn't plugged the phone into eee via USB -- and Bluetooth was off on the phone and maybe the eee as well. So how were they communicating? Spooky. Clearly the dongle is implicated but I don't get it.

I've already brained myself on the bar above the stairs to my loft. Go me!

There's one big weakness to this place: no microwave. That's common in Europe, IIRC. But not cookware either, despite the gas stove. (Which has an ignition button you have to press while the gas is flowing.) Hmm, unless cookware is in the dishwasher.

London Day 1 #3

Oh my, my 'roommate' is my landlady. Basically trying to get back by renting out her spare room.
There is cookware, it was just hiding in the back. The "dishwasher" of course was no such thing, it was the stove. I'm tired. But now there's noisy music coming from somewhere.

The dongle seems to work after all, masquerading as my phone. This was proven by turning my phone off, at which point it bricked itself again. No X-rays this time AFAIK. Maybe I should just avoid all those 'devel' programs after all. But damnit, some of them are really useful... like less, tar, and zip! Well, less anyway, I guess some of the others are in gnu-coreutils. I should double-check.

I didn't mention that I started reading Keynes' General Theory on the plane, courtesy of my phone. His language can be hard slogging, but it's still neat, in a "Krugman is much clearer but this is original and more detailed" way.