ianblakk

[ianblakk]

Essendon Sat 21 Jun

After engaging Tumblr tech support I received an email saying

“HTTPS has been activated for ianblack.au! You should now be able to visit your site at https://ianblack.au.”

So ianblack.au now works. Ianblakk.tumblr.com still works too.

I received an email from Qatar Airways saying my departure from Doha is now 30m earlier, arrival in Nice as scheduled. Looks as if they have, after all, changed the route to avoid ballistic missiles

[ianblakk]

Essendon Thu 19 Jun

My home SIM is now an ESIM, so it’s coming with me. I’ll pay Boost $100 or so to roam for 5 weeks. Not in Austria though. Inexplicably, Boost does not work in Austria.

I bought 2 Airtags so I can track my luggage, and Anne can track me (if my phone goes off the air). I went to Highpoint West shopping centre on a busy Monday afternoon. What was I doing here without a mask, amongst all these thousands of people without masks? A week before my scheduled departure is not a good time to catch Covid for the first time. I passed more thousands of people, increasing my risk, while searching for a pharmacy to buy an N95. In the hour I was there I saw just one other person wearing a mask. Then to the Apple store for the Airtags. In there, I felt I needed to apologise for wearing a mask.

I secreted one Airtag in my suitcase and swallowed the other one, before learning that Anne’s iPhone 8 does not know about Airtags.

Anne mentioned that Qatar Airways has just been voted best airline in the world. That’s encouraging, on Sunday I’ll be flying in their Boeing 777-300ER to Doha, quite close to where missiles are whizzing overhead between Tel Aviv and Teheran. No flight delays so far though.

Two nights ago, quite suddenly, one of my teeth was hurting while I ate. Temperature sensitive too. I have had this before, due to a crack in a tooth. Exactly what I need, just before a 5 week overseas trip. Off to the dentist, who showed me photos of a crack across my lower left 7 molar, below the removed filling. It will need a crown, probably after a root canal filling. For now, a new filling, see how it goes. Time to resume extras cover? If it goes bad in Italy I’ll get it extracted.

“In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: 'dentistry.' “ … P J O’Rourke

[ianblakk]

Essendon Thu 12 Jun

Logging in to all the all the apps I might need to use on my backup ipad, I realised that to get 2 factor authorisation in Europe to log into or reinstall apps, I would need to receive texts sent to my Australian number. Seemingly simple. If my Australian SIM stays in the phone I can receive SMS messages only by paying Boost Mobile $3 per day to turn on roaming, according to their expert via chat (human, I think, she passed the Turing test). I don’t need roaming for calls or data, I’ll have the Orange ESIM for those.

This article https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/reviews-and-advice/how-to-deal-with-two-factor-authentication-when-you-re-overseas-20231023-p5eeb2.html

says you can turn on roaming in your phone, cellular data off (for your home SIM), and receive texts. The person in the shop where I picked up the spare Three UK SIM confirmed that this works for them in Europe with Telstra. Of course, no sending texts, or calls, or data. It may work with Boost too, since Boost is part of Telstra, or it may work with all telcos.

Then I found this https://support.apple.com/en-us/102545

I can forward and receive texts between any devices logged into my icloud account. Another reason I'll never leave Apple. I tried it with texts to/from my wifi-only ipad to Anne's phone (with Imsg disabled). My phone was sending/receiving the texts on the cellular network and forwarding them to the Ipad 1 metre away over the internet via icloud. It worked for both Imsg and SMS. So it should work with my phone (and SIM) in Australia and the ipad on cellular or wifi in 13000km away in Europe. It means buying Anne's new iphone before my trip and leaving my SIM in her old phone at home, locked, muted, connected to a charger. It does the relay between the Boost Mobile phone network and the icloud. This way I can send and receive texts and Imsg to Australia on my own number, without concern for how roaming works with Boost.

So, 3 solutions to receive texts on my own number:

1. Pay Boost to roam (cheap really, at $3 per day). I can turn on roaming in the Boost app if I need it.

2. Turn on roaming in my phone to receive texts, on my home SIM.

3. Use Apple text forwarding to send and receive texts.

1 and 2 involve taking my home SIM to Europe, 3 means leaving it in Australia, so I need to decide before I leave.

[ianblakk]

Essendon Wed 11 Jun

The login wall happens in my Safari, but not always, same on this ipad, but not in Safari in Anne's iphone 8. I compared all the settings in each, could not find the reason. I just discovered that DuckDuckGo on my phone doesn't show it either. Maybe it's not a big problem after all. This banner appears too sometimes. At least it can be closed.

Yesterday I changed the DNS for my ianblack.au domain to point to Tumblr, and paid Tumblr to associate it with this blog, but it doesn't work yet.

[ianblakk]

Essendon Sun 8 Jun

Testing new post, checking if the log wall still shows when I’m logged out. It looks like this, takes up 20% at the bottom of each page, cannot be closed, except by logging in.

Doesn’t show in the Tumblr app because you are logged in. It doesn’t prevent reading the content, but overall it’s unacceptable for a casual reader to have to sign into Tumblr to get rid of the login banner. I wouldn’t. Plenty about this in forums, no solutions. I may need to get Wordpress going after all. A pity, Tumblr is easy to use.

[ianblakk]

Essendon Sat 7 Jun

It's simple, ianblakk.tumblr.com

I just bought domain ianblack.au. Who'd have thought I could still get that? I'll move it to Tumblr to address this blog.

Reading our 2018 trip through the Pyrenees, I found this: Our brand new Citroen C4 Diesel, with 000003km on the clock. Actually, it’s not a lease, it’s a purchase contract which is cancelled when we return the car in Nice. We then forfeit our deposit, which works out to about AUD75 per day, fully insured, all costs included except fuel. Red plates are a giveaway. It’s registered in my name. I had forgotten it was a Citroen C4 in 2018 too, and how the "lease" works. This time it's AUD65 per day, even with the lower 0.57 exchange rate. A bargain.

A couple of Dolomite photos from my 2016 bike trip.

Colle Santa Lucia, Belluno

Val di Zoldo

[ianblakk]

Essendon Fri 6 Jun

On Wednesday last week I was watching, on SBS, one of the latter stages of the Giro d’Italia cycle race in the Italian Dolomites. The scenery was captivating. It occurred to me that, of the places I’ve been, Italy and California are the places I’d most like to revisit. California is out-of-bounds for a few years due to exchange rates and politics. That leaves Italy. I had been planning to escape Melbourne’s winter by riding my motorcycle to northern Queensland, but the idea of July in Italy was compelling. A week later, I have a return air ticket to Nice, a 5 week lease of a new Citroen C4, travel insurance, an ESIM for internet, a Wise travel money card, an international drivers licence, and booked accommodation in Nice and Portofino.

My idea was to drive the Italian stages of this year’s Giro, just completed. Of the 21 stages, 3 were in Albania, leaving 18 stages in Italy. One was a time trial, one was the final procession in Rome. So, 16 stages, covering many of the most interesting parts of Italy, from Bari to Sestriere. I’m allowing 5 weeks to do 5000km, maybe more. In previous driving trips in Europe Anne and I averaged about 1000km per week. A previous 5000km motorcycle trip from Munich to Palermo and back in 2016 (chronicled in blakk.net) was a bit rushed in 3 weeks, so 5 weeks seems about right. It has not escaped my notice that the Tour de France will be happening while I’m over there.

I originally considered renting a motorcycle in Nice, as I did with 2 friends in 2019. We did a 5000km lap of the Adriatic on 3 bikes in 34 days, sharing hotel rooms, and managed not to murder each other. Last week I got a quote in Nice for a Triumph Tiger 900 at €90 per day for the 5 weeks. Perfect bike at a good price (for a motorcycle), but I priced a French govt sponsored lease of a car at €37 per day. Anne and I have done this a few times before. This time the difference of €53 per day ($93) over 36 days is just too big to ignore. A week in the Alps would be different, I’d get the bike. I’ll greatly miss riding a bike, but at least I (or someone else on my behalf) won’t be calling Anne yet again from a hospital saying I’ve fallen off a bike. Unfortunately the car is automatic. Since 2018 Europe has gone the way of the USA and Australia. You can’t buy a manual in anything but the smallest cars. Auto used to greatly increase the cost of car rental, now you can’t get a manual. No lease manuals are available in France until September. This will be the first automatic car I have driven in Europe or UK. It won't be the same driving an auto. If it's petrol it will have only 3 cylinders. No choice of engine anymore.

I’ve spent hours looking at how to write a blog in Tumblr. I just about have it figured out. Next, work out how attach a URL so people can read it.