Greg N Baker

Bellinzona, Ticino

After my stay in Geneva and my great visit to the Montreux Jazz Festival, it was time to move on. I took a beatiful train journey through Switzerland to Zurich, where I changed trains for the the Cisalpino high speed line through the Swiss Alps to a small town called Bellinzona in the Swiss-Italian canton of Ticino.
This area has to be one of the most beautiful regions in the world and appears in many films where the scenery often looks like it has been inserted with CGI…there´s no way it could be real…
Bellinzona is a small town close to the larger towns/cities of Lugano and Locarno, both on beautiful lakes. The town is nestled in a valley with three large castles strung across the narowest part. It´s quite a climb to reach the highest one, especially in 30 deg heat but well worth it for the views.
I´ll update this post when I´m back in London (as well as the others) so I can insert the relevant photos.
To be continued…

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Geneva and Montreux

My three days in Geneva have come to an end and it was a great place to start my trip. I know the city back to front so while I did take the time to wander round the lake front and through the Old Town, my stay was more about meeting up with old friends.
I spent a very chilled evening on Geneve Plage and yesterday managed to drop in to the Montreux Jazz Festival. I’ve been before and if anything it has improved. For starters, you can’t get a much better location; palm tree lined shores of Lac Leman, mountains towering round on all sides and the entire lakefront transformed into foor stalls, boutiques and music stages.
The beauty of the Festival is that the majority of the acts are free to watch and only bigger names require tickets. Should you wish, you can see this year everyone from 30 Seconds to Mars and The Ting Tings to Lenny Kravitz and Sheryl Crow!
Anyway, I took along a group of fellow backpackers and we spent the day watching the likes of the Oxford Uni Big Band.
Needless to say, pictures and videos will be up on Flickr when I get the chance!
Right, next train to catch, this time to the stunning Bellinzona in the Swiss-Italian canton of Ticino.

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London-Paris-Geneva

The first leg of my trip is almost over. I was on the 09:26 Eurostar from shiny St Pancras to Gare du Nord and happily arrived early…to be greeted by muggy wet conditions. Ah well, I had not planned on spending any time in Paris this time as I’m saving it for a weekend break in the Autumn. Anyway, I made my way to Gare de Lyon and sat around reading and people watching all afternoon…trying to get rid of my poorly-timed man flu!
I’m writing this from a rather busy TGV train to Geneva and according to my GPS we’re travelling at around 160mph…not sure about its accuracy but we certainly seem to be moving fast.
Right, back to playing Scrabble in French with some random fellow passengers!

Update: The TGV broke down last night. Something about lightning hitting the points, which I thought was a purely English excuse. Anyway, arrived into Geneva Cornavin about 23.15 and checked in to the Youth Hostel at 23.30.

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Blogging from the Blackberry Curve

In anticipation of my European travels, I’ve installed the WPhone plugin which creates a mobile-friendly interface for Wordpress.
I’ll still always prefer an internet cafe to the BB, but this is a good solution for quick posts.

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The Grand Tour

I decided a long time ago that when I finally finished studying, I’d take a trip around Europe to make the most of the free time I have before I start working.
I start my training contract at the law firm on 6th August and so have around a month to travel. Too little time to have a decent holiday in Asia or the USA, long enough for Europe…so I designed my own ‘Grand Tour’.
I will be Interrailing around Europe from Wednesday 2nd July for 27 days and this is my route plus a fairly random collection of thoughts:

Geneva, CH
Bellinzona, CH
Venice, IT
Vienna, AT
Bratislava, SK,
Prague, CZ
Berlin, DE
Amsterdam, NL

The only non-train journey will be my flight home to London from Amsterdam with Easyjet.
I’ll use Eurostar to Paris and then the TGV onwards to Geneva.
I have booked a sleeper train between Venice and Vienna.
I will be seeing friends in Geneva, Venice, Vienna and Bratislava, but otherwise travelling on my own.

Accommodation is entirely in youth hostels, which are cheap and easy to book online.

I’m taking one large Berghaus rucksack with a smaller Deuter daysack stowed inside. Clothing has been easy and I’ve made numerous purchases from the Craghoppers range, as they are light, easy to wash, quick drying and many have inbuilt SPF ratings!

My final issue is a technological one. I will be taking my Blackberry Curve/8300 with me and have paid for a European unlimited data plan for the month (~£23.00). I’ll carry around a small 8mp Olympus digital camera and have 2 2Gb xD cards for it. I’m hoping to drop into internet cafes and/or friends houses to upload my photos directly to Flickr, but am also taking a sturdy OCZ Rally 8Gb USB memory stick for simple offline transfers if I fill up my xD cards.

I’ve tried numerous mapping sites, many “Web 2.0″ style travel planning tools and none have been entirely satisfactory. Unfortunately my Blackberry does NOT have GPS built in (unlike the latest models) so my desire to geotag my photos has hit a stumbling block. I’m debating splashing out £25 on a GPS receiver so I can make notes of locations in the Google Maps for Blackberry application but this is a less than ideal solution. Any suggestions are most welcome!

Another problem with international travel, especially backpacking, is financial arrangements. UK banks, and especially the major high street banks (excluding Nationwide) are terrible at adding on extra/inflated charges to overseas transactions. Therefore, I have opened an offshore Euro-denominated account with debit card, so the majority of my transactions will now attract no charge at all….much preferable to carrying around large amounts of cash or traveller cheques.

Finally, here is the link to a rough route plan in Google Maps: Grand Tour Map

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Family server setup

I’ve had a home-built server sitting in my flat for a while now but have never got round to setting it up as much more than a personal networked storage device.
I was then hit by some very strange memory/mobo problems which cropped up during my exams, so it’s taken me a while to get things up and running again.

Anyway, after a few days (I’m slow and learning) I have a pretty useful family backup server which, touch wood, is running very very well.

My requirements:
4 laptops (1 roaming around Europe, 1 at University and 2 at my parents’)
All with Windows XP but 1 usually behind a corporate firewall and 1 on a University network
Invisible backup to the server from any location
Ability to remotely administer each client or provide tech support (a common occurrence :S )

Here’s how it looks:

The Server
Asus Mobo w/ Athlon 64 3Ghz and 1Gb of RAM
Ubuntu LAMP server w/ various additions & modifications, including Webmin and Torrentflux
2 x WD Caviar IDE 320Gb drives
…and all the other essentials.

The Clients
Hamachi VPN installed on each, all connected to one network with an extremely strong password
SyncBack installed on each, with schedules set up, frequently for critical folders (essays, presentations etc) and less frequently for bulk folders (music, videos, photos)
LogMeIn Free installed on each and linked to my LogMeIn ITReach account

The Software
I have finally managed to set up user-specific SAMBA shares for each user/client, meaning each client only has access to their own backup folder, whilst I have access to all folders.
[As an aside, I found this quite tricky to set up and am happy to share my .conf file with anyone who needs it]
As an additions, I have a drop-box type folder in which anyone can drop any kind of file, which is useful for sharing photos, lists etc when email won’t do.

I picked up a special offer on LogMeIn ITReach just before my exams and found it invaluable for synchronizing my college drive and my LPC files on my home desktop, as well as remotely starting and stopping torrents, backups etc. LogMeIn Free is far more limited in terms of features but is fine for simple tech support purposes. Overall, I’ve been extremely impressed with LogMeIn, especially the security offered. For example, as well as an account login and password, and the remote computer’s credentials, I am sent a one-time 8 digit key to my email (and therefore my Blackberry) each time I log in.

Installing Hamachi on the Ubuntu server was far from zero-config but a careful reading of the forums soon sorted out various problems with upx-ucl-beta and other unexpected steps (it was scary). As above, I am happy to share my solutions should anyone chance upon this post.

The Result
So, as of this evening, each computer backs up to the server on a staggered schedule with SyncBack, via Hamachi, to the server. I have a central repository for all family photos, all my music plus an accessible backup from which to restore files should anything happen.
In addition, I have made use of a handy feature on the dd-wrt firmware to allow me to use it as an SSH tunnel for when I’m stuck behind a restrictive firewall.

Next Steps
Two SATA drives (probably 500Gb) configured in RAID
Gigabit switch to run between my desktop and the server, behind the router
Add to the automated CD backups to MP3 by setting up automated DVD backup

EDIT:
I have now added ushare to serve up my videos to the XBox via UPnP, plus HandBrake CLI so I can backup my (legally bought) DVDs straight to a chosen format on the server.

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It’s been a while

I last wrote in January which is, quite frankly, appalling. My apologies, if anyone is actually reading this.
A quick rundown of what has been happening since then:
February saw me sit the first set of LPC exams, those relating to my compulsory subjects. I had a week in which to sit exams in Criminal Litigation, Civil Litigation, Property and Banking. It’s fair to say they were tough; open book exams are far more difficult that you’d imagine. Anyway, I feel I did pretty well in them and am actually looking forward to getting my results.
I then had a week away in Barcelona with about 50 other LPC students. All I can say his I had a much needed break and it was rather messy…ahem.
Following Barcelona, it’s been rather quiet. I have started my electives and am studying Public Companies & Equity Finance, Acquisitions and Banking & Debt Finance. Following my year in an investment bank, I have a slight headstart on most people but in any case, the electives are enjoyable and see me in college 3 or 4 days a week, which is nice.
I’ve had a couple of trips up to Durham to visit old friends and am off up North again this weekend at the start of my (strangely late) Easter holiday.
All in all, not much to report but just thought I’d check in!

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2007 In Review

Predictable this is very late, but my excuse is an unbelievable workload in the run up to final exams in February. Anyway, here goes:

2007 was a year in which I spent a lot of time out of the country, I returned to study, I became single rather suddenly, I have grown even fonder of London and my future plans all fell nicely into place. I’ll recap with some main events from the year 2007.

Finally, some numbers:
8 gigs
7 weeks out of the country
7 foreign countries
1 job acquired
1 girl leaving
0 girls arriving
1 successful year to be honest!

Here’s to 2008.

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What’s Greg watching these days?

Shamelessly stealing Rob’s post, here’s a rundown of what I’m watching at the moment, apart from the few breaks I take to study

Apart from these regulars, I’m looking forward to checking out Jericho and Criminal Minds. I also am sorely missing Veronica Mars so might check out ‘Chuck’ as Rob suggests.

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London Soundtrack

So, apart from studying, I’ve decided to make full use of the great collection of gigs in London by going slightly crazy on Ticketmaster. Listed below are the gigs I currently have tickets for. If there’s a (*) after the name, then it means I have a spare ticket…so get in touch!

The Fray & Pete Yorn (* but a lot of interest so far!)
Maroon 5 & Dashboard Confessional (taking my youngest sister)
Mika
Seth Lakeman (*)
Plain White T’s (*)

Still to book:

The Thrills
Kate Rusby

I love London.

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