I am surely not the only one to complain about the ridiculous liquids restrictions for airplane travel. Since these new regulation are in place, I’ve challenged them, found holes, and compiled tips for those trying to blow up planes.

I wouldn’t write another story if it weren’t for an idea I’ve had at Zurich airport on my last trip to London: let’s swamp the airports with trash so that they’ll be forced to deal with Brussels and IATA to return to normal.

After checking in for my flight, I stopped by the supermarket to buy two containers of yoghurt that would make someone happy. The containers each said 150g (that’s weight, not volume) on them, and I put them into a clear, resealable one-litre bag, placed them into a tray to be x-ray-scanned separately, only to have them confiscated.

After discovering (not much to my surprise) that the security staff didn’t know the difference between weight and volume, nor understood the concept of density, I got a chance to speak to the head security officer (surrounded by five police whose attention I’d gotten), and learnt that Zurich airport has one ton of trash to discard every day, Frankfurt supposedly has to deal with four.

As I was walking onto my plane, I tried to think of non-recyclable containers that we could fill with liquids to bring along to increase that amount. My theory was that once the trash problem became too massive, the airports would have to deal with the authorities to resolve this liquid restriction, because it seems quite clear that normal people have no way to influence choices made that affect our “safety”.

Unfortunately, I see two problems:

First, we’d be dealing with trash and hence face all the environmental concerns. The airports do not recycle the millions of PET bottles they confiscate every day, so we shouldn’t make that worse. Unfortunately, I cannot think of another liquid container that wouldn’t come with similar concerns.

Second, the airports might have the burden, but they won’t carry the cost of all the trash. In fact, thanks to the security theatre related to liquids, we already pay higher airport taxes and charges. Surely it can’t be in our interest to push that further up the scale.

So in the end, swamping airports with trash doesn’t seem like a viable way forward, unfortunately.

I wish I knew what to do. I wish that the decision makers at IATA would finally admit that they overreacted and revert to normal, with sensible security measures, which focus on fending off the real threats, not fake ones. Unfortunately, nobody likes to admit that they were wrong, especially not when the decision is heavily backed up by the lobby of vending machine companies and restaurant owners, who benefit greatly from these ridiculous liquid safety measures.

NP: Pulp: We Love Life

If you’re trying to blow up an airplane, and you’re hip and plan to use liquids to take down the silver bird, the following tips may be useful to you:

• Should your liquid containers not all fit into the one-litre resealable bag, just use two. Leave one of them in your bag and put the other into the plastic box through the x-ray machine. It seems like security checkers don’t notice or care.

• Alternatively, if you need a few more millilitres of liquid or gel, put it in a tube or bottle and write on it Novartis, Roche, Bayer, or any other known manufacturer of pharmaceuticals; make up fancy names or use existing ones. Be creative, although you don’t have to. Even though the EU regulations dictate that only prescription medicine is exempt from the volume restrictions, noone has yet confiscated my tube of Voltaren, nor questioned it, and I’ve had it with me on every trip for three years, at least. If desiging your own tube is too much, empty out an existing tube and refill it.

  Baby food containers work too, but then you ought to bring a baby along for credibility.

• If your detonation strategy involves more than one litre of liquid, don’t give up. Writing “100ml” on a 200 millilitre container should fool most of the security checkers. I’ve tried it, taking the label off a 75ml deodorant spraycan and putting it on a 150ml shaving cream can, and at least in Düsseldorf, they seemed pleased.

• If your explosive substance’s amount is indicated in weight rather than volume (like yoghurt), be prepared to lie. Should the substance put 150g on the scale, make the label read 100g; the concept of density is beyond the brain capacity of your average checker, and I found it pointless to explain to them that one gramme is very rarely the same amount as one millilitre.

• Consider flying out of a non-German airport, where they won’t let you take just a deodorant spray can and nothing else without a bag; you’ll also have to buy a bag for one Euro in these places, while at Zurich or Dublin airports, you get those bags for free at least. (Remind me why we pay extraordinary amounts of airport taxes again?)

Of course, if you’re serious about blowing up an aircraft, you’re probably not going to need any of the above, as you’ll already have a more convenient way to get your substances on the plane. At the checkpoint, you’ll behave like the perfect citizen abiding by all rules; you wouldn’t want to arouse suspicion, now would you?

PS: this post purposely avoids the use of the word “terrorist”.

PPS: of all the great experiences in airports this week, I especially loved how passengers, who checked in at the counters (and had to present their passports there), were again checked after border control in Düsseldorf, while passengers like myself, who used the quick check-in terminals, were just waved through.

NP: Disturbed: The Sickness

Readers of my blog may recall that I don’t take it well when someone takes my breakfast from me, especially something as good as Bircher Müesli.

Today, on my way to Limerick for some intensive Ph.D. work, I decided to try again and put a container with 300g of this beloved food into my hand luggage.

Noone noticed. And now I am happily fed and enjoying the increased sense of security on this airplane.

NP: Pulp: We Love Life

When I got in to my hotel room last night, it was brightly illuminated and the TV was on with music and a message to greet me. The first thing I did was turn it off, along with most of the lights.

Later, I asked at the reception when they turn on the lights. I was expecting them to have a central switch for each room that the receptionist could flip when the guest finished checking in and has started to make way towards the room.

Not so. The guy behind the desk told me that housekeeping sets it all up.

So my lights have been on and the TV blasting for the entire afternoon and evening. That did not make me feel at home. It made me cross.

NP: The Pineapple Thief: 8 Days Later

On my way home from New Zealand, I spent a (Friday) night in Melbourne. Peter, Donna, Andrew, and Mark, all of whom I knew from LCA 2008, came out and helped me get away from the after-work-craze that filled centre city. Thanks to them, I found (and refound) a couple of places worth noting:

• The staff of Joe Taylor, a cute bar at the corner of Victoria and Errol Streets, prepare a delicious cocktail they call “Don Quixote”: vodka, lime, basil, sugar, and ginger beer. They also have Mountain Goat on tap; their hightail beer instantly became my new Aussie favourite.

• The Hot Poppy right next door has all-day breakfast, including a fantastic housemade Bircher Müesli. Both Joel, who joined me for brunch, and I enjoyed it, so you don’t have to rely on just my judgement.

• The outdoor bar my brother and I found on our previous visit to Melbourne, fenced off from a small lane with crates and boxes to sit on, is called Section Eight Container Bar. It’s on Tattersals Lane, which is off Lt. Bourke Street between Swanston and Russell. It took me three tries to find it again, but it was worth it. They also serve Mountain Goat beers! Issue 5 of the Melbourne Pixel magazine has a review of it in the right pane.

• The Somerset Gordon Place hotel at 19 Lt. Bourke Street is a splendid location within walking distance from the centre. It’s a four star hotel, but you can get sweet last minute deals there via booking.com, it seems.

• Federation Square and Wharf next to Flinders Station are always worth a visit.

NP: The Phoenix Foundation: Happy Ending

Update: Joel points out that the “Australia on Collins” shopping centre on 260 Collins street has free wireless…

Following the first phase, the second and final phase of the Penny and Martin adventure ended last Friday at Wellington airport.

I am now 11’500 metres high on my way from Bangkok to Zurich, looking back at seven days on the New Zealand South Island, another in Wellington, and a night in Melbourne. Here’s the summary of the 2200km we travelled, with selected photos inline. Penny has more pictures in her Flickr album.

• Thursday: ferry from Wellington to Picton and on to Amberley, where we stayed with Penny’s sister Janey.

• Friday: via Christchurch to Lake Tekapo for a lovely swim in turquoise water, before we set up the tent at Lake Pukaki with Mount Cook in the distance.

  

  Camping with a car isn’t all bad.

• Saturday: via Wanaka en route to Haast Pass with a stopover at the Gates of Haast for some rock hopping and full body immersion in the icy water (yes, Penny went in all the way, too).

  

  From Haast, we took the beautiful road to Jackson Bay and back, before heading into Cascade Valley for another night of camping, this time with millions of sandflies forcing us to dress appropriately.

  

  NB: please, no new offers for fashion modeling contracts, I am already fully booked. Penny might appreciate them though, especially if she gets to wear white socks.

• Sunday: fled the valley as if running for life (think final scene of Hitchcock’s Birds) to prevent further sandfly attacks and headed north to the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers, where we got soaked in heavy rain.

  Reached Greymouth in time for the tour of the local Monteith brewery and spent the night recovering from the camping in the Charles Court Motel. Monteith’s “Munich-style” Golden lager beer is actually quite reminiscent of Munich-style lager!

  I also got to take three girls to the men’s toilet to see the world’s coolest urinal.

  

• Monday: the bad weather followed us up the west coast to Punakaiki but didn’t deter us from taking a short hike to the pancake rocks, nor from visiting the seal colony at Cape Foulwind later in the day. I found out how much Penny loves Nikau trees.

  

  From there, headed west for Lewis Pass and passed up on camping due to the heavy rainfall. Instead, we booked into the Maruia Springs Resort Hotel and indulged in hot springs recreation and camping-stove-cooked pasta in the room.

• Tuesday: the weather in Kaikoura, which we reached around noon the next day, wasn’t any better, which foiled our diving plans, so we continued on to Picton and decided to cut our road trip short by one day to give us more time tying up loose ends in Wellington.

• Wednesday: got up early to rent diving equipment for two dives at Karaka point, where we inspected (and swam through) an old ship’s wreck. We also collected around 20 scallops, which we brought to Penny’s parents and enjoyed them cooked in ginger and garlic for a late lunch.

  The ferry took us back to Wellington that night, where I got to see Eagle vs. Shark, a Kiwi movie starring Jemaine Clement from the Flight of the Conchords and music composed by local bands, foremost of which The Phoenix Foundation. I have to side with Penny: it’s an enjoyable flick but probably not worth watching multiple times.

• Thursday: following breakfast at the Olive cafe, we went on shopping sprees (I found a store selling Icebreaker gear at 50%…), chilled in the afternoon, fetched excellent Sushi at the Wasabi Sushi Train, and finally saw The Phoenix Foundation play a free concert at Frank Kitts Park.

  

My New Zealand beer top-ten, in reverse order: Monteith’s Original, Monteith’s Black, Mac’s Great White, Monteith’s Golden, Monteith’s Celtic, Monteith’s Pilsener, Emerson’s Pilsener, Mac’s Hop Rocker, Emerson’s 1812 India Pale Ale, and… (drum-roll): Mac’s Sassy Red. Yum! The Emerson beers get no links because the brewery website uses Flash.

Thanks, Penny, for a fabulous two weeks!

NP: The Flower Kings: Back in the World of Adventures

At Melbourne Tullamarine airport today, I was asked to present the credit card used to book my flights as a security measure to be able to fly Bangkok-Zurich. I did not need the card for the Melbourne-Bangkok leg. Unfortunately, I left the card at home for various reasons. In the end, they just issued both boarding passes anyway.

I was not allowed to take the throw-away wooden chopsticks that came with my Pad Thai lunch through the security checkpoint.

For dinner on the airplane to Bangkok, we were given plastic knives and metal forks. For dinner on the second trip, we got metal knives.

At Bangkok airport, I had to pass a security checkpoint changing planes. They confiscated the plastic water bottle which was given to me on the flight from Melbourne (the bottle said “Thai airlines” on the label).

The lady in front of me was using one of those telescopic walking sticks, she apparently had a bad leg. They didn’t even bother asking about the stick, which she ran through the x-ray. Terrorists don’t have bad legs, nor know how to pretend.

How long are we going to put up with this bullshit?

NP: The Flower Kings: Stardust We Are

I would like to suggest to my readers to ask airplane crews for explanations of their rules. If we can get a larger number of people to inquire about the reasons behind the do’s and dont’s on airplanes, maybe the airline companies will adopt the practice.

In the context of a previous post on the lack of explanation of the motivations behind airline rules, I was utterly impressed when the steward on the Air New Zealand flight from Melbourne to Wellington asked me to turn off my music player so that I would hear when they asked us to evacuate the plane or similar.

While I doubt that I would continue to listen to The Flower Kings in an exceptional event, his explanation actually got me to turn off the player, which I had previously never done (rebel me!). I know it’s a bit ridiculous, but I was previously so set on the idea of small devices like a music player interfering with the airplane instruments that I failed to see this obvious bit of logic. The steward thus gets my “best steward” award.

When you fly, ask the crew about the reasons for the rules they impose on you, the passengers!

NP: The Flower Kings: Unfold the Future

I am 10’000 metres above sea level, on my way from Melbourne to Wellington. I am looking back at a very enjoyable week of conferencing, with LCA 2008 ending yesterday, followed by today’s Open Day. The purpose of this final day is to invite the general public to learn about open-source. Individual projects present their work at booths and field questions by bypassers.

Jacinta Richardson and the other organisers and helpers of the Open Day have done an amazing job. The place was buzzing and the selection of projects broad and interesting, even to me. Two talks and a series of lightning talks, as well as catered food for everyone rounded it off. I will try to have this event in mind as we organise a similar event in Buenos Aires after the forthcoming DebConf8 in Argentina.

I had a splendid time at the conference and probably can’t thank Donna Benjamin and her army of mignons (update: that should have read be minions) enough for organising it. Compared to the other open-source conferences I previously attended, this one was the most professional. Good job, everyone!!!

Here are the highlights:

• I opened the Debian mini-conf with the state of the project address.
• My second presentation on that day was on my packaging workflow (slides), including a live demonstration, which was received well even though I should have prepared it.
• At the keysigning, I (again) used my Transnational Republic identity card and reported on it in another post. I was pleased by the level of attention this got, and how many people approached me during the week to discuss the issue.
• I really enjoyed the talk by Adaora Oniya on communication challenges in Tuesday’s LinuxChix mini-conf. Among other interesting points, she listed traits that are typical to males and females and stated how none is 100% on either side. Glancing over the adjectives, I started to wonder about my feminine nature.
• Later that afternoon, a bunch of us sat down to find similarities in packaging workflows of the Debian and Fedora projects.
• Bruce Schneier’s keynote titled “Reconceptualising Security” didn’t teach me anything new, but that was to be expected since I am a regular reader of his Crypto-gram newsletter. He’s a good speaker, but I think his talk would have benefitted from a few, simple slides to illustrate some of his points.
• A few of us met on Wednesday morning for a few games of the Asian board game Go. Paul Wayper and I played two non-competitive games, in which we talked about each others moves and strategies. I think I learnt quite a bit during that session.
• Jeff Waugh’s mini-conf talk titled “Disintermediating Distributions” as well as Stormy Peters’ keynote “Would you do it again for free?”, as well as a few other sets of slides, taught me that I really need to work on my own presentation style and get rid of bullet points once and for all.
• The Penguin dinner, traditionally a catered event for conference attendees, took place at the Melbourne Night Market this year. Everyone got food tickets and went off to the dozens of stalls to get food and drinks. This was an excellent idea to deal with 600 people.
• I was very glad to have attended Jason White’s presentation on braille and text-to-speech interfaces on Thursday.
• My presentation on netconf was well attended and the audience had plenty of good questions. I was able to answer most of them with reference to the design of the netconf core, which is a good omen. The idea of on-demand dialing went into my notes. I screwed up once when I went off on a tangent while answering a question about firewalling and then forgot the original question, but my listeners showed mercy.
• Luke Kanies’ presentation of Puppet convinced me to allocate more time to this system administration tool. He did a very good job fielding questions and managing time, but he should try to slow down a bit.

Apart from the busy programme, I particularly enjoyed the “hallway track”, which is usually the reason why I attend these events. I really ought to practice remembering names and faces a bit better.

I am not paying enough tribute to this week with this report, but I shall conclude it regardless. Unless something very unexpected comes up, I will attend next year’s LCA in Tasmania.

NP: Porcupine Tree: Futile

The first phase of the Penny and Martin adventure has come to an end: after a few days of Wellington, we are now sitting on the ferry to Picton, beginning our week-long road trip of the South Island.

We spent the first three days getting our PADI Open Water diving certification. After the obligatory pool session, in which we practiced certain basic skills, such as taking off and replacing the mask underwater and breathing from the partner’s (buddy’s) backup regulator, we were ready for the open water. Four dives at Kau Bay later, during which we played with sea horses^W ponies, captured and ate scallops (well, the others captured them…), and were chased by vicious jellyfish, we can now go diving whenever and wherever we want, down to 18 metres — and intend to do so a few times during the coming week.

Later on Tuesday, I accepted the invitation by the folks at the New Zealand Sea Adventures dive shop, Mike and Seamus, and joined them for another dive in the evening, with conditions even worse than the previous four descents. Together with my buddy Jess, a volcano researcher from London, I experienced close to zero visibility at about 12 metres of depth — rain and strong winds made the water really murky. I can easily understand how one might get disoriented and uneasy in the pitch black, but with Jess keeping an excellent bearing, it was all hunky dory for me, tagging on to her side and swimming along.

Later that night, accompanied by two popping ears, Penny and I joined two of her close friends, Lisa and Chris, for an evening of games, and was introduced to the card game “500”, which is rather similar to the Bavarian game “Schafkopf”. It thus didn’t take me long to get a grasp… and win!

Wednesday was Waitangi day, the anniversary of the equinomial treaty, and Wellington celebrated it with the One Love festival. Our plans for the day — eating breakfast in the tree, frolic at the festival, and chill on the beach — started to fall apart when we found aforementioned tree to be trimmed beyond recognition (at least in terms of function). A whining, hung-over Chris in the backseat and a traffic jam then made us skip the festival in favour of breakfast at the “Recovery Room” (great name!), and general absence of summery temperatures caused us to settle in Penny’s back yard for beers and the last rays of sun instead. A Thai dinner later, we slept.

(This post is dedicated to Daren, lover of “and then” reports.)