Tech Tourist 2.0

Our Colourful New Electricity Supply

In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, electricity is not something one should take for granted, although it is more reliable than India. In recent months, I have installed a massive diesel electric generator for days when we go without power. But even when we had power, we were limited.

Our power supply was not enough for all of our computers and air conditioners and hot water heaters and water pumps. So every time I would have a shower during business hours, the fuse would blow and all our machines would start beeping, indicating they were on their UPS backups with minutes to live. We could not even use some of our rooms because we did not have the capacity to install air conditioning in them. I am sure this is pretty typical in the third world, but nonetheless, it was holding us back.

Red, yellow & blue: 3-phase commercial power

After about a year of effort, I finally got a higher capacity connection to the power mains. I am sure many of my gentle readers are wondering how such a simple thing could take so long. First of all, it took a long time to find someone who was willing to do the work. I also had to let go of my dream of having grounded power -- we still get mild electric shocks when we touch metal appliances without wearing rubber soled shoes. Then we needed approval from the government to use more power.  Ultimately, we cut a few corners by paying a $600 "fee" to bring new higher capacity wiring into the house.

When we finally got power, we seem to have got really good power. As far as I can tell, we have our own personal power line running to our house, not shared by anyone around us, and running directly into a new main fuse and 3-phase 4 wire meter for the house providing 3 x 380/330 volts and 3 x 50/100 amps. And it is beautiful. All the other lines are a boring black. Ours consists of three additional thick lines, each as big as the single one we used to have, and in bright red, yellow, and blue, resulting in a total of four wires feeding us from the city mains.  It looks like we have commercial grade three-phase wiring, which is more or less unheard of for residential purposes. As far as I can tell, everything just works now. All the computers are fine, the motors turn, and we can use as much power as we want and the fuse never blows.

Our diesel electric generator

Golden Rule: Don't Pay in Advance

I'm spending today on Phi Phi

I flew to Phuket and Phi Phi for the weekend, and again and again, and again, I was taught the lesson: never pay in advance. At least this seems a wise move when traveling in unstructured environments in Asia.

I paid in advance $76 for a night at the Phuket Airport Hotel. Paying in advance was not a good move. The hotel itself is actually excellent and one of my continued favourites.

I booked three nights at the Phi Phi Palms Residence hotel on Phi Phi island through hostelworld.com, paying 10% in advance with a $2 fee that allowed rooms to be cancelled without loss. That was not a good move, I learnt later. 

I tried to buy a ticket from Saigon to Phuket on Air Asia. It is a great deal with round trips as low as $100 (I paid $125), and the flight is just one hour. But they wouldn't let me pay in advance because I was trying to book online less than 24 hours in advance. Well, that was annoying. But when I missed my flight, it turned out to be good that I did not pay in advance. Not so fortunate for the stuff paid in advance. I lost $76 on my Phuket Airport Hotel payment.  Also, the fine print on my hostelworld.com deal meant that I could be billed the full $75 for my first night at the Phi Phi hotel if I didn't turn up without enough notice.  Missing my flight didn't really give me enough time to give that notice, so I still don't know if that $75 fee will end up on my bill. Still, I told them by email I wouldn't make it for the second night, but would be there for the third night (I never got a response from them, and hostelworld finally responded to me by the time I was back from my vacation).

Approaching Phi Phi island on ferry

I finally did end up going to Phuket, two days later, and yes, I still bought my ticket online and paid in advance. And yes, I ended up paying another $76 for a room at the airport hotel. In the end, I could have turned up unannounced with $152 to figure out accommodations for the night. And I was rather annoyed that I had to pay $6 for a taxi to the hotel even though I had arranged for them to pick me up at the airport (that was another case of advance planning not being helpful, although it was free, and I got my money's worth). Still, to be fair, the first night and the second attempt at a flight out did not go badly despite being paid in advance. 

However, when I took the 45 minute, $15 bus ride, from the airport hotel to the Phuket Town ferry, I turned down the offer to arrange the return ride the next day. That was wise. I had learnt that any random noise in plans was going to cost me money, far more than any discount could address.

When I went to the pier and bought tickets on the spot for the boat to Phi Phi, I wisely turned down the opportunity to pay in advance for my return trip.  I was starting to appreciate how nice it was to have no up front financial commitments in Thailand. The boat cost $25, which was $3 (each way) more than it had to be, but the peace of mind was worth it. On the way to Phi Phi, when they had engine trouble, I felt good knowing I did not have to take the same boat back.

Pictures don't really convey that this septic tank on Phi Phi wasn't fun to walk past

When I got to Phi Phi, it turns out the Phi Phi Palms Residence hotel did know I had a reservation through hostelworld.com for that night. But they had decided to give my room to another guest who wanted to stay longer. So much for any benefit from paying in advance. I got shuffled off to another hotel, miles up a hill, and overlooking the island's waste disposal operation. To get to and from the hotel I had to walk to the far corner of the inhabited part of the island, beside the septic system, across a ripe stream of sewage. Will I ever learn! I paid for this room in advance at the Phi Phi Palms Residence before they took me to it. The actual room ended up being nice, and had a good view. But I would not have booked it if I knew the details, and would have turned back at the sewage stream. I went along with this because, in the back of my mind I was not too sure what was going to happen to that $75 first night fee and did not want to rock the boat too much, and I had already paid 10% in advance for my room. 

Because I was in a hotel (booked in advance, even if just an hour in advance) that was far from the pier  where the ferry left (up a mountain side, across a sewer stream, etc.), I felt obliged to book my return ferry at the hotel, so they would arrange for someone with a cart to carry my bags. I booked a 1:30 boat to give me a chance to do some shopping in Patong on Phuket island before flying back. 

Start of the stairs up the mountain

Of course, booking in advance still wasn't smart. When I arrived at the pier, I found I was holding an expensive, pre-paid, ticket for a boat at 2:30.  I was at the boat at 1 pm, ready for my 1:30 boat trip. But I could not get on. I could not get a refund. I had paid in advance. Don't do that.  How could the hotel have sold me a ticket to leave at 2:30, on a company that does not even have a 1:30 ferry, and still have had me taken away from the hotel at 12:30 as if I had a 1:30 trip ahead of me as I had asked? It is hard to say if it was fraud or stupidity, but it wouldn't have been a problem if I had refused to pay in advance.  Oh, and of course, I had paid $5 in advance to the ferry company for a bus to Patong because it was supposed to be cheaper and more seamless. Perhaps you can guess by now, but that was not a good move either.

So, I faced with the choice of leaving later using the 2:30 ticket I was holding, giving up on my Patong shopping sidetrip and going straight to the airport (and of course, losing out on that smart pre-paid bus to Patong), or buying a whole new ticket on the spot for $25 and abandoning the $30 I had just spent. Reluctantly, I decided to just go an hour later.

Huddling on the trip back from phi phi

The later boat looked nice. It had cool air conditioning and really comfortable seats. But looks were deceiving. The boat left about half an hour late.  It stopped in the water with engine problems. It crawled along at slow speed for a while. Then it eventually gave up, and we all got piled into another boat that came along. It was much smaller, and both the boat operators and we passengers were concerned that it could capsize. We were late upon late upon late. And none of it would have happened if I had refused to book in advance.

I could have had one last lesson by missing my paid in advance return air ticket. But I did manage to make it with about fifteen minutes to spare. However, I did finally note that I would have had no trouble buying a ticket at the counter without an advance purchase. The price would have been the same, and the airplane was almost empty.

In future, I am going to try doing things paid on the spot a lot more. I will not go crazy and start buying $3000 counter tickets across the Pacific. But I will start winging it a bit more. And when things cost extra, I will remind myself of all the ways that planning in advance and getting discounts can turn around and bite you.

Phuket (left) and Phi Phi (right)

Optimal Sleep and Long Life

I believe that getting the optimal amount of sleep is more important than getting less, or more, or even at the right time (polyphasic sleep).

Even back at Queen's University in the late 1980s, I noticed that getting too much sleep, or too little could leave a person just as tired. Each person has their own optimal amount of sleep. The optimal may vary with other factors like health or activity. If that optimal is 8 hours, then getting 7.5 hours could leave one exhausted, likewise, getting 8.5 hours could leave one just as exhausted. The key is waking up at the point in a sleep cycle when one is in REM (Rapid Eye Movement sleep) and almost awake anyway. A person dragged out of deep sleep will feel awful, even compared to getting up earlier than normal but from REM.

Research (1) finds that there is an optimal amount of sleep, and getting a sub-optimal amount can lead to between 17% and 26% greater rates of mortality (death). The effect is most pronounced among men. Increased mortality from a lack of sleep was found in other studies as well (2).

This supposition also led me to experiment with Polyphasic sleep, in which one sleeps for short periods spread throughout the day. Throughout every normal night of sleep, people sleep in cycles involving deep sleep, and a period of light (REM) sleep. Each cycle is shallower than the other, involving lighter and lighter sleep, until finally during the last cycle's REM we just wake up. My supposition, and presumably one basis of Polyphasic sleep, is that the first sleep cycle provides the most benefit. I felt that if I made all of my sleep be cycle one sleep (lasting perhaps an hour or two), then I would be able to get by with less total sleep. And similarly, spreading the sleep evenly throughout the day (the main basis of Polyphasic sleep) would also help to alleviate periods of deep tiredness.

Some (3) advocate Polyphasic as a healthy option on the basis of research that found too much sleep was associated with greater mortality rates, but that ignores other research that shows too little is equally harmful, if not more so.

REF (1): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17969458 (Hublin C, Partinen M, Koskenvuo M, Kaprio J., Finland).
REF (2): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19294949 (Ikehara S, Iso H, Date C, Kikuchi S, et. al., Japan).
REF (3): http://knol.google.com/k/polyphasic-sleep# .

Copenhagen Makes the Bleak Future Clear

International greenhouse gas reduction commitments actually got weaker at the Copenhagen Climate Summit (Dec 7-18, 2009). And this failure seems to have been masterminded by China (Ref: Guardian) with the help of India, perhaps as a mast plan to avoid legal limits on the energy engines of their growth.  After the Summit, China and India continued with closer ties linked to the joint position of the two at Copenhagen, arranging an Indian visit to China (Ref: India Express). In my opinion, this leaves us looking for an end to global output restrictions, and a focus on adaptation, or a more combative global climate change abatement regime.

It is fascinating to read Mark Lynas' Gardian article (Ref: above) side-by-side with the Chinese press on the Summit, which describes the Summit as a success made possible by their involvement (Ref: Xinhua).

"...it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel." (Ref: Guardian)

"China refused to set a fixed year for peak emissions, as it would more or less hinder the development of developing countries, which are still faced with the priority tasks of economic development and poverty reduction." (Ref: Xinhua)

"...the Chinese delegate insisted on removing the 1.5C target so beloved of the small island states and low-lying nations who have most to lose from rising seas. President Nasheed of the Maldives, supported by Brown, fought valiantly to save this crucial number. "How can you ask my country to go extinct?" demanded Nasheed. The Chinese delegate feigned great offence – and the number stayed, but surrounded by language which makes it all but meaningless." (Ref: Guardian)

"China, at the conference, also made some concessions to show its sincerity and the spirit of cooperation. For example, China backed off and conceded the target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times be written into the Copenhagen Accord." (Ref: Xinhua)

"China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised."  (Ref: Guardian)

One good sign of Copenhagen is that China, and India, actually seem to feel that global climate commitments do at least provide pressure on them to adopt actions that would impact their economic activity. The alternative would be that they would happily sign anything people asked, with no intention or concern that they might actually be held accountable.  Or  it could be that they are playing it safe, even safer that before, and now feel they should not allow even others to make commitments as that (quite rightly) would lead to a potential for moral suasion.

In any event, it is now clear that the major industrial developing countries, led by China, have no intention of agreeing to binding limits on their emissions, or even encouraging others to do so. I believe that leaves just two practical future paths (1) make no substantial efforts beyond no-regrets actions to mitigate climate change, and focus on adaptation, or (2) create an agreement just among committed (mostly developed) countries and attempt  to impose it on other parties.

The first path is the one of least resistence since it involves just spending money and not imposing any restrictions on attempts at growth.

The second path is the one of greatest conflict, but it could also work. Imagine a strong agreement among the major democratic consumer economies that would define meaningful constraints that could be defined for everyone, including developing country industrial economies. The commitment concept would be that everyone is responsible for ensuring that everyone else, as well as themselves, met these constraints. Then imagine all parties agree to take actions to ensure not just that their domestic economic policies are aligned to meet these goals, but also their trade policies.

If, for example, China and India were going to exceed their emission constraints, the western consumer economies would band together and impose, for example, a 45% duty on imports of Chinese manufactured goods and a 53% import on imports from India.. The actual figure would be defined based on environmental-econometric models, and actual measurements of trade response, to ensure it constrains growth enough to meet global environmental needs.  This might not actually be much less effective than a carbon tax, although it would be very distorting because all of the cost would be born by just the export sector and it would hinder global economic co-operation when it was needed most. But it has the merit of being viable, though disruptive.

Websites being blocked in Vietnam

At 3:02 am on October 18, 2009, I found that from Vietnam, I got a "page not found" error when I try to go to certain sites. Friends in the US, over Skype, tell me that they can see the same sites. So far the list of blocked sites includes the following:

www.voanews.com  Voice of America News
anonymizer.com  A proxy service

When I checked again, some time later (on January 5, 2010), I found that I could access Voice of America news. I wondered if the block had been random, or related to specific content at that time. A search for Vietnam on the website came up with one possible cause: an article about an environmental group presenting a petition to the Vietnamese and other regional governments in opposition to plans to dam parts of the lower Mekong River delta. The article was dated October 19, 2009, but time zone differences could result in the two events being contemporaneous.

"The environmental group, Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance, collected more than 20,000 signatures asking governments to abandon plans to build dams along the lower Mekong River."

"An alliance representative, Premrudee Daoroung, says the 11 dams on the lower Mekong threaten fishery stocks.

"Our main concern is that if the Lower Mekong mainstream dams happen the fishery for the whole Mekong region will be blocked and fishery is a very thing - it is out of concern that if that [occurs] it will destroy the livelihood of millions of people in the region," said Premrudee."

REF: http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-10-19-voa14.html

Ice Skating in Vietnam

In a poor developing country like Vietnam, where it is 90F every day, opportunities for ice skating do not exist. But I just noticed a way to make it more feasible using artificial ice (Ice Tec 310). This would make it possible to put an "ice" skating rink in central park in Saigon, just like in Manhattan. That would be cool. 

It looks easy to install.

Instalace polymeru EZ-Glide 350 (synthetic ice installation)

And you can skate on it with regular skates in exactly the same way as normal.

EZ Glide artificial ice only available at Fitness Depot

Have a Cabulous Day

Making an iPhone app is n ot the path to riches it once was. But innovative new apps still keep getting produced. One of the coolest I've seen recently is the upcoming Cabulous app by John Wolpert 's upStart Mobile company. On the one hand, Cabulous sits in the hands of cab (taxi) drivers and on the other hand, anyone looking for a cab opens the app and can see the nearest cabs and hail them. At that point, both sides see where the other is, and can move around without missing each other. It is great if you are looking for a cab in a rather low density or difficult area. The biggest winners are actually the cabbies who lose a lot of potential revenue because they are sitting around idle, or when they do go to someone who has hailed them by phone, they are often not there when they turn up.

The developer of Cabulous,  Elijah Windsor ,  has already appeared or been mentioned on TV three times for his work, with the latest being a news segment on Cabulous in his hometown of Davis, California.

iPhone 3G S: Reaction

Today, I was asked about my thoughts on the new Apple iPhone 3G S.

I'm disappointed to not see an iPod Touch with a camera. Basically, I think the iPod Touch should be an iPhone without the phone option. Obviously this is a deliberate decision. I think a lot of people would decide to keep another phone, and supplement it with an iPod Touch.

Obviously the iPhone 3G S is a must have phone for me. I take pictures with the iPhone all the time, and having a higher resolution camera with auto-focus is a compelling improvement. And video will be great too, especially if I can upload it to flickr, and tweet it, just like I do with pictures using our FlickrTweet service. Video will make the extra memory in the phone important.

Not being able to tether with AT&T remains annoying as hell for the time I'm in the US and very mobile, but with limited Internet connectivity. Without tethering, I am confined to Wifi locations for serious work on my laptop (although thanks to Google, this covers all of Mountain View).

The compass in itself is rather boring (even for me with my navigation compass-using background - I just came back from a week sailing in Thailand, plotting our course all the way), but it will probably add some marginal benefit to navigation accuracy, directions and the intuitive user experience. It, along with voice, is probably designed to help kill the in-car GPS navigation system category.

I'm starting to think I need to have a mobile.me account even though it is priced very unfavourably. The features to find and/or wipe an iPhone seem compelling. Although perhaps not enough in themselves to justify the cost, it does start to tip the balance.

The extra speed should be nice. I find I wait ten or twenty seconds at times for the camera app to open.

Of course, most of this stuff I'll just get to use occasionally when I am in the US. Most of the time I will be confined to an iPhone that I can unlock. I will be most interested in seeing if an unlock for the iPhone 3G S becomes available [Update: an unlock exists in the form of blackra1n]. As an alternative, it might even be worth a visit to Hong Kong to get a premium priced unlocked iPhone 3G S when they become available there. 

Pandemic or Hype?

The Swine Flu has caused a lot of panic. It is now best referred to as H1N1 because panicked and ill-informed people and governments have been avoiding and killing pigs under the false impression that they spread the disease (it is only spread by humans - so it would be more effective to avoid and cull them).

Police, Dec 1918 Influenza Epidemic -- US National Archives

But really is it worth the panic? My initial reaction was that its bark (grunt, oink?) was worse than its bite. After all tens of thousands of people die from influenza each year in Mexico alone compared to a couple hundred or so from H1N1. However, as I read about the history of the really big flu pandemic that followed WWI, I see the justification for fear.

The First World War (WWI) killed about 16 million people. That's horrible. But the flu that followed in 1918 killed between 40 million and 100 million completely innocent people in the span of a few months. It affected people throughout the world. It killed some people within hours. Young people and children were killed (just like the H1N1 flu). It first appeared in a relatively minor form, called "three-day fever", with few deaths around this time of year in 1918. That also has some similarity to H1N1. But in the autumn of that year, it came with a vengence in its truly dangerous virulent form.

So it is a damn good thing that people are taking H1N1 seriously.

REF: The US National Archives has released a great collection of photos from the 1918 pandemic. Looking through them is a very enlightening experience: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/

Oracle to buy MySQL

Monday April 20, 2009 -- Oracle has announced plans to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, a 42% premium on last week's closing price.

This has immense implications for the open source database industry because Sun owns MySQL, which dominates the free open source database market. It could be worthwhile to Oracle to simply shut down MySQL or at least subvert its use in favour of Oracle databases. Even though MySQL is open source, and others can use the code to make derivative open source versions (fork the code), Sun and Oracle's ownership of InnoDB could give it effective control over MySQL since this is the database's primary storage engine.

REF: http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13523522&source=features_box_main