Okay, so a lot of turned-on road warriors may have been doing this for a while. I know I've been thinking of doing for about a year but I kept forgetting to take the right cable. What is it? Playing an iPod, or other MP3 player, including a laptop, through the speakers in the hotel room TV.
About a year ago I noticed that a lot of hotels have been upgrading their TVs. Many now have stereo speakers. And quite a few have auxiliary inputs for video and audio. If you're lucky, these inputs are on the front of the box (sometimes they are exposed, other times they are hidden behind a plastic panel). With the right cable you can simply plug in your music player, switch the TV to AUX input, and get a decent room-filling sound.
On this latest trip to Malaysia I finally remember to bring along the right cable. Mini stereo plug on one end, left and right phono plugs on the other. Actually, the cable also has a video plug on each as well, handy for sending movies and photos from my digital camera to the TV screen. Not all hotel TV remotes have an AUX or alternative Video input button so you may have to select this on the front panel of the TV box.
My room at the Prince Hotel in Kuala Lumpur has a very nice Sony Triniton with stereo speakers and I am really enjoying the sound of my playlists on them. It is definitely richer than the sound on the small iPod travel speakers I have tried.
p.s. Hotels in Kuala Lumpur seem to be one of the world's best travel bargains. For $88 per night The Prince Hotel gives you a large, ultra-modern room with loads of tasteful woodwork and a superb view. Okay, you have to pay $12 a day extra if you want high speed Internet. But where else can you get a hotel this good with high speed Internet for $100? The service is first rate. The staff are cheerful and polite, attentive but discreet. Want room service to come back at 4PM because you're busy blogging. No problem and no grumbling. And no clumsy "Do not disturb signs." There's no annoying knocking on doors here--each room has its own electronic bell that guests can control from inside the room. And when you step outside your room you find the hallway is scented with aromatherapy oils.
The Geek's Commode: From the land of the electric loo
Normally I avoid blogging something more than once, but what you see on the right is a worthy exception: a high-tech toilet, a john with juice, a head that's wired, a bog with brains, it is an electric loo.I encountered this in a hotel near Incheon airport in Korea. Maybe it struck me as amazing because I encountered it after being awake for 32 hours (apart from the sort of fake sleep you get in coach class when all the seats are full and even in you get an aisle seat you can't stretch out for fear of food carts crushing your feet).
But amazing it is, and a great example of how technology still has the power to transform a truly (hopefully) everyday aspect of our lives. And I don't just mean because it gives us more buttons to push (although there are twelve on this thing for those who are counting). I mean that this thing is transformational technology because this it does away with the need for toilet paper, which is a huge boon to the environment. Exactly how it does that I will leave to your imagination dear reader. Suffice to say, you don't want to push the buttons unless your butt is in position.
The Amazing Electric Loo: Now that's technology!
Sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words. On the left you see the amazing electric loo that I encountered upon checking into my hotel in Seoul, Korea. The entire room was very high tech with remotes for everything (TV, lighting, DVD, VHS, heating/AC, etc).And then I went to the loo. Wow! Not only is it electric, it has 12 buttons. A geek's commode if ever I saw one.
There was one slight problem (for me, not for Koreans, obviously). I had no idea what the buttons did. I'm not complaining. Just about everything else in the room was labeled in English as well as Korean. But not the commode control pad.
So, like any intrepid explorer (and all geeks and hackers are at heart intrepid explorers) I decided to just push some buttons. I just stood there, leaned down, and picked one at random. At which point a probe extended from inside the loo and sprayed me in the face. I am not making this up (and trying not to fall for cheap shots like "I s**t you not!"). So, I pushed some more buttons until the spray stopped, After I had dried myself off--and this is perhaps what intrepid means--I tried it again, from a sitting position. Much better! In fact, and I'm not sure of the polite say this, this thing washes, rinses and blow dries. No TP required!
24 Hours of Darkness: Flying the dark side of the world
How wrong can one man be? In my previous post--which I had the guts not to amend--I suggested that daylight would catch up with a few hours into my flight to Seoul. Well, far from it my fellow travelers. The very opposite is true. I landed in the dark at JFK on Saturday evening. The Korean Airlines 777-200 took off at 1AM Sunday. It skirted the top of the world in darkness. We landed in the dark and I got to the airport hotel in the dark. I went to sleep at 7AM Monday, with a 14 hour time difference. At which time it still dark in Korea at this time of year. So the picture above is basically the sky for the entire journey. Amazing.On the bright side, service on Korean Airlines was excellent and the 14 hour flight is survivable in coach, even when coach is full. The inflight entertainment system was the best I've seen/heard yet. More details to follow. The folks at Incheon airport were terrific and the airport itself first rate. The hotel I picked for a day room also turned out to be a great find. More details to follow, including the amazing electric loo.
JFK Terminal One on a Saturday Night
Well, had I've more exciting nights than this, but so far it's not too bad. My trip to Kuala Lumpur started with a cool Delta Airlines feature known as "calling passengers to let them know a flight is delayed." Apparently a lot of airlines offer this, but this is the first time I have actually received a call on my cell phone from an airline in time to stop me leaving the house for the airport. It meant I was able to sit and relax at home for a while and do a few more Saturday chores during the 90 minute delay. And that also meant less time to kill at JFK.If you have ever flown from Terminal One you may know that some of the foreign carriers don't staff their check-in desks all day. So it doesn't matter how early you get to the terminal, you'll still have to stand in line. You either wait on your feet for the desk to open, or you wait for the line to move through. The picture above is from my Treo, showing the line at Korean Air at 9:00PM, half an hour before the desks opened (and that applies to business and first class too). I had the same problem when I flew business class to Moscow from JFK on Aeroflot last year, although that flight had a fairly light load so the actual wait in line was not that long. Unfortunately, tonight's flight to Incheon/Seoul looks to be packed.
I plan to sleep as best I can although we will hit daylight after a few hours. It seems so weird to be boarding a plane on Saturday night and deplaning at 6:00AM on Monday. I have booked a room at the Incheon Hotel so I can sleep on Monday until the flight from Incheon to KL, which doesn't leave until 4:30 in the afternoon. We'll find out if it is worth the $80. And if I can't sleep, then a shower and a bit of blogging should pass the time (call me a wimp but I gave up the idea of taking in the sights in Seoul when I saw the weather forecast--freezing--while KL will be in the nineties).
Heading East, or Maybe West: Going to Malaysia
So this month I need to go to Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia. I will be delivering the keynote at a conference on enterprise [information system] security. I've been there before, about 7 years ago. Back then I was living right next to LAX (right next, like the first flight of the day was my wake-up call). So getting to KL was fairly simple. Fly LA to Singapore or Taiwan and then a short hop on to KL. But getting there from Florida poses an interesting question: Fly East or West?My final decision came down to dollars and sense. The lowest fare from Jacksonville was out via JFK, then Korean Air to Seoul, thence to KL. Return is going to be China Air to Taipei thence to LAX and JAX. All are Delta code-share and so I will rack up some nice SkyMiles. But, and it could be a sore but, the layovers are loooong, particularly on the way out. So stand by for tips on how to kill 8 hours in JFK and Incheon, Seoul.
Also stand by for photos of KL, famous for the Petronas Towers and other impressive urban architecture. Last time I was there I killed a whole afternoon in the galleria-style mall in the base of the towers. Mainly people watching. And there are plenty to watch--24 million in a country not much bigger than New Mexico (according to the CIA).
Ink Jet Printer Cartridge Rip-Off? Brother 3820CN won't print without removing cartridge that still has ink
I was going to write something nice about Brother recently because I continue to find their 3820CN to be an eminently useful machine. It makes good copies and does printing, scanning, and faxing over my home network. It has a very reliable paper feed which is unusual at this price point. Furthermore, Brother recently repaired my 3820CN free of charge even though it was, strictly speaking, out of warranty. However, something happened today that needs to be addressed.
The control panel told me the Cyan cartridge was empty (the printer has cartridges for Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow). I took the Cyan cartridge out and found it was not empty. I put it back in but could not get the machine to accept that there was still ink to be used up. This means I paid for ink that was not used. Furthermore, when any one of the four cartridges is empty the 3820CN will not print. It won't even print in black, as far as I can tell, if a color cartridge is reported to be empty. This means faxing is impaired because the fax confirmation will not print (even though it is a black and white document).
Now, I am not accusing Brother of anything, not yet. I am prepared to think this was an isolated incident, not a devious corporate plot to sell more ink. I have used Brother printers since 1982 (yep, way back in the good ole daisy wheel days). I will hold off any sort of judgment until I get a response to the letter I am sending them. But I am blogging what happened in case anyone else has had the same problem. Please let me know.
Meanwhile I am sending the 'not empty' cartridge to Brother to ask for a refund. And I will update this post with some pictures as soon as I can.
The control panel told me the Cyan cartridge was empty (the printer has cartridges for Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow). I took the Cyan cartridge out and found it was not empty. I put it back in but could not get the machine to accept that there was still ink to be used up. This means I paid for ink that was not used. Furthermore, when any one of the four cartridges is empty the 3820CN will not print. It won't even print in black, as far as I can tell, if a color cartridge is reported to be empty. This means faxing is impaired because the fax confirmation will not print (even though it is a black and white document).
Now, I am not accusing Brother of anything, not yet. I am prepared to think this was an isolated incident, not a devious corporate plot to sell more ink. I have used Brother printers since 1982 (yep, way back in the good ole daisy wheel days). I will hold off any sort of judgment until I get a response to the letter I am sending them. But I am blogging what happened in case anyone else has had the same problem. Please let me know.
Meanwhile I am sending the 'not empty' cartridge to Brother to ask for a refund. And I will update this post with some pictures as soon as I can.
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