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From the article “Hell Yeah, Hubble!“:

The first thing we did was take a patch of sky that was relatively empty. No bright stars, no large galaxies or clusters, no planetary nebulae, just a little tiny patch of black, empty sky. And then we point Hubble at it.

And what do we do? We sit there. And wait. Collecting tiny, miniscule amounts of light. First, for minutes on end. And then the minutes turn into hours, and the hours turn into days. All the while, Hubble just patiently sits there, pointing at the same patch of empty sky. Over 10 days, Hubble took a photograph of the same exact patch on the sky 342 times. They then added up the light from all 342 of these images. The result?

The summer has finally arrived and, with it, the possibility for a quick weekend getaway to the summer cottage. The promise of spending a lazy afternoon by the grill, watching the sizzling steaks accompanied with a ice cold beer in your hand, is very tempting – but it also means leaving behind most of the gadgets and the high-speed internet access.

That means: no surfing the web, no catching up of the latest TV-series on SurfTheChannel or Hulu, no listening to Pandora, Grooveshark, Finetunes, last.fm or any shoutcast web radio station (in essence, being without your cave).. While an iPhone or a Nokia N800 would give some relief to this issue, it only works as long as one stays within the coverage of a 3G network. In our case, the summer cottage is just far enough from the nearest city that we’re left with a spotty 2G network (not even EDGE!) and a painfully slow data connection. The cottage doesn’t have a telephone wiring either, so ADSL is out of the question.

For this summer, I sweared that I’d find a way to get decent internet connection, and luckily 2009 is the year when Digita is rolling out their Flash-OFDM based network (on the old NMT-450 band) nationwide, giving me the access to a decent 1M/s down, 500KB/s up wireless connection!

I got my subscription and hardware from Airnet, taking advantage of their summer sales. The package comes with a TeleWell router that can handle ADSL, 3G, Flash-OFDM and WLAN connections on top of the normal ethernet and USB connections to a computer. Not suprisingly, Qualcomm’s PCMCIA card was the weapon of choice for the Flash-OFDM connection (F-OFDM was developed by Flarion which is now owned by Qualcomm), and although the card comes with its own tiny antenna, the Airnet package comes with a proper 7db antenna (with a magnetic base for car installations!). The cool thing is that I could set the router to use the 3G connection, and in case I go outside the network coverage, it can automatically switch to a backup connection like F-OFDM (and I guess in theory it would work from ADSL->3G->F-OFDM if needed).

Other things still missing include: a decent TV (for the inevitable House, HIMYM, TBBT, etc. fix, served by Tvix or Popcorn Hour), a sound system for TV and music (probably a NAD all-in-one paired with some decent speakers) and a second hand Playstation 2 / Xbox for those perfect never-ending weekends with good friends.

Having just returned from a one week trip to Tokyo I have to say that Noise To Signal really nailed the fundamental problem that every airport in the world seem to have in common:

I realize that by providing certain services only at the airline lounges they become more attractive and can create customer loyalty. But. There are way too many airlines and multiple airline alliances to ensure that even if you’re a loyal Finnair / One World customer you’ll get access to the local lounges to recharge your PC/phone and relax a bit before the grueling 10+ hour flight to wherever.

Like in my case: I was sold a JAL flight (part of One World Alliance), which is operated and code-shared with Finnair and yet I was persona non grata at Helsinki-Vantaa, Haneda and Narita airports just because I’m a Finnair One World Ruby member instead of Japan Airline one. My savior turned out to be Diners Club that gave me access (for a fee) to the Narita lounge.

As with many things, it seems that throwing money at a problem can sometimes fix it. As a more expensive but reliable solution, I am now seriously considering Priority Pass which still seems a bit overkill when all I want is a seat, working electrical outlet and cheap/free web access.

It’s amazing what you can get for 9000$.