Recent posts in my Travelogue Category
October 5, 2008
H.N. Werkman's "ASCII art" in the Van Gogh Museum
I spent a few days last week in Amsterdam with my wife, enjoying a short break and some sight-seeing after my appearance at the Euro IA Summit. We purchased the 'I Amsterdam' card, which we found to be excellent value for money. On the first day, by the time we had visited the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, started using our 72 hour travelcard and taken a boat trip around the canals, we had already recouped our money. I enjoyed...
October 4, 2008
Live plugin streaming at The Waag
After the EuroIA Summit I took the opportunity to stay in Amsterdam for a few extra days and do some sight-seeing. One of the older buildings in Amsterdam is The Waag, which formed part of the old city walls and defences. The building featured in a ghost walk we did around Amsterdam because of the grisly history it had as a theatre where the public could pay to watch the dissection of the corpses of criminals - and there will...
April 29, 2008
The beautiful people and the badly-dressed Brit: Touring Miami's Art Deco district
I wasn't quite sure what to expect of Miami. My only experience of the city was from watching CSI:Miami, Miami Vice (the 80s version, not the movie remake) and playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. So I kind of thought I might instantly get into some sort of gangland action. Actually, when I got there, I just got into a really, really, really long wait for the not-so-Super Shuttle to take me from airport to hotel. It was the Grand...
April 2, 2008
Postcard from Macau #11: The EA Games centre in Hong Kong
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is the last of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Whilst I was staying in one Chinese 'Special Administrative Region', it made sense to visit the other, Hong Kong. During my...
March 29, 2008
Postcard from Macau #10: The grave of the magnetic telegraph engineer
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. As Macau was a Portuguese colony, the chief denomination of Christianity in the region was Roman Catholicism. That meant that for many...
March 28, 2008
Postcard from Macau #9: Information design on Macau's transport system
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Whilst I was staying in Macau I mostly got around by public transport. There is an excellent network of buses across the...
March 26, 2008
Postcard from Macau #8: David Beckham in Hong Kong
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Whilst I was in Macau last month, it seemed simply churlish not to take the hour ferry ride across the Pearl River...
March 25, 2008
Postcard from Macau #7: Information design in 3 languages
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. The unique appeal of Macau is that it is a former Portuguese colony located in Southern China. In fact, it is less...
March 23, 2008
Postcard from Macau #6: The land of SMS spam
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Macau's telecomms industry seems to have a great deal of competition in the mobile network sector. With leaks from mainland China, at...
March 22, 2008
Postcard from Macau #5: Hong Kong's Edison Chen sex photo scandal rumbles on
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. "As of this evening, the police have made significant advances towards solving this malicious crime. As from the beginning I will continue...
March 20, 2008
Postcard from Macau #4: Hong Kong's missing TV archive
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. In the first of my posts about my recent trip to Macau, I mentioned the Sunday Morning Post. This is an English...
March 18, 2008
Postcard from Macau #3: An idiot's guide to Chinese piracy
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. The south-east Asian region has long been reputed as a hotbed of CD and DVD piracy. I saw many stores selling 'suspect'...
March 17, 2008
Postcard from Macau #2: Measuring customer satisfaction at the Chinese border
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. During my stay in Macau I made a day trip into China proper. Macau is a 'Special Administrative Region' as part of...
March 16, 2008
Postcard from Macau #1: Selling adverts in the Chinese 'free' press
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. One of the English language newspapers available in Macau is the South China Morning Post. The first weekend I was in the...
November 27, 2007
My photographs of Sedlic Ossuary gaining a wider audience
I was contacted a few weeks ago by some people asking if they could use my photographs of Sedlic Ossuary in a 'Sacred Destinations' travel guide for the area, and of course, I was delighted to agree. Sedlic is located in Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic, and was somewhere we visited quite early on in our tour of what is now known as "formerly Eastern Europe". The "attraction" of the church is that it is decorated with bones. "This...
July 11, 2005
Haunted Malta
Our recent trip to Malta and Gozo would not have been complete without a spot of ghost-hunting. Before we went away my wife acquired a second-hand copy of 'The Ghosts Of Malta' by Joseph Attard. It wasn't, to be honest, the easiest of reads, as the prose style was quite difficult to get into. The thrust of the book was a narrative of how a newly independent Malta had shunned the heritage of ghost stories around the island as belonging...
July 1, 2005
Malta and Gozo - Day Six
Earlier this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends. We'd made all sort of provisional plans for the Sunday, our sixth and last full day, but in the end the sunny weather dictated that we head for Golden Bay. This was much more developed than Ramla Bay on Gozo, and a lot less relaxed, with big parties of teenagers with blaring radios, and a hideous shrieking family group...
June 30, 2005
Malta and Gozo - Day Five
Earlier this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends. On the fifth day we were in Gozo, and had quite an exciting Secret Seven style adventure in our hostel, the Maria-Giovanna, to get the day going. There was a door to a small cupboard in the bathroom in our room, but closer inspection of the fire escape map suggested a mystery was afoot. Upon opening the door we...
June 28, 2005
Malta and Gozo - Day Four: 'Il Forno'
Earlier this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends. On the fourth day there we made our way to Gozo, and had a great day out in Victoria (Rabat) and Dwejra. For the evening we headed back to Marsalforn where we were based, in the Maria-Giovanna Hostel, to find somewhere to eat. We at first headed to the Eastern end of the harbour, assessing each place as a...
June 23, 2005
Malta and Gozo - Day Four
Earlier this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends. On day four we started our 'holiday within a holiday', as we headed off to to get the ferry to Gozo. We had booked to stay overnight at the Maria-Giovanna Hostel. The owners there were lovely, and even offered to drive from Marsalforn to Mgarr to meet us from the ferry. In the end we opted to hire a...
June 21, 2005
Malta and Gozo - Day Three
Earlier this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends. The third day was quite overcast, and we headed out by bus to the "picturesque fishing village"TM of Marsaxlokk. Our bus journey there was, shall we say, "interesting". We got the 427 which seemed to be the shorter route, but the bus then appeared to take the longer route of the 627. We also seemingly got lost in the...
June 20, 2005
Malta and Gozo - Day Two
Early this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends. On our second day we travelled into central Malta to visit the walled city of Mdina. The views from the hilltop ramparts are spectacular, and on a fine day you can apparently see as far as Mount Etna in Sicily to the North. The previous day Benedict XVI had been confirmed as the new Pope. We noticed that most...
June 19, 2005
Malta and Gozo - Day One
Earlier this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends. We flew Air Malta, and this was the first airline where any of the staff have specifically said to me that it was forbidden to use my MiniDisc player, and that I had to switch it off. iPod's were OK though, so at least my new purchase will keep me entertained if I use them again. It made me...
January 24, 2005
Moufflon on the menu
I achieved a culinary ambition this weekend, when I discovered that the Slovakian hotel I was staying at in Bratislava had moufflon on the lunch-time menu. Moufflon are a small cross between a deer and a sheep that are indigenous to Cyprus. They were hunted to near extinction early last century, and so they are now protected by the Cypriot government in a reserve within the Troodos mountain range. I have always assumed that there must be a black market...
January 19, 2005
A religious lesson in a taxi
I had a worrying conversation with my taxi driver to Paphos airport yesterday. I had been in the car for five or so minutes when he turned and asked me: "What religion are you?" "Sorry?", I replied "What religion are you?" "None", I answered. "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?", he continued. "Well, my dad is Catholic, and my mum Protestant, but I am neither." "You have no God? Why?" It is actually a question that I have rarely,...
The ignorance of the Great British tourist
Experience has taught me never to under-estimate the ignorance of the British abroad, but this hit new heights on my flight over to Cyprus last week. Whilst we were busy flying over a mountainous chunk of central Europe, the otherwise sane-looking twentysomething bloke behind me turned to his partner and uttered the immortal line: "Is that the Grand Canyon?" *sigh* Still people can only absorb the information available to them. We had squeezed at the last minute onto some spare...
September 26, 2004
Eboracum Ahoy! A visit to York
I managed to grab a brief holiday a couple of weeks back, and travelled with wife and mother-in-law in tow to York. Part of the reason for choosing there had been that it fitted my wife's requirement that we should go somewhere with plenty of hauntings, so of course we went on the obligatory Ghost Walk of York. We chose one of the less sensational ones, The Haunted Walk of York, which was really good and I can recommend...
March 7, 2004
Postcard from Dubai
Very rarely on currybetdotnet do I stray into the kind of "What I had for breakfast" territory that gets blogs such a bad name - but.... I'm posting this from Dubai, where I am enjoying / enduring a four day non-BBC expenses paid pseudo-business trip that has sent my body-clock into spasm. My observations so far: 1: The traffic in Dubai seems markedly worse than the last time I was here two years ago. With all the construction work...