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Back to Auckland
Well, sometimes you have to face the truth: Even the longest vacation does have to end one day. Today was the day we had to go back to the airport, to catch our plane to the Netherlands. We ended the same way we started: On the bed together. But this time we did not have [...]
Windy Welly
Today I wanted to visit the Wellington Cable Car Museum and the botanical garden. We first walked to the Cable Car and on the way there Julia had found a friend already: A little bronze dog. We bought return tickets for the Cable Car although I was not sure whether we would go back by train or [...]
From Eketahuna to Wellington
After breakfast we first loaded our luggage into the car and then we went to check out and say goodbye to the hotel owner Colin and his wife Lynn. They had added up our bill, which totalled well over 300 New Zealand dollars. That is still quite a lot of money to spend in such [...]
Goodbye Eketahuna
The past few days I had continuously been working on Tallie and Henk’s PC between our outings. It was now connected to the Internet, but it was terribly slow. This was not only caused by the slow connection with a modem, but also by the PC itself: It had too little internal memory: Just a [...]
Middleton Model Railway
Now that we were at Tallie and Henk’s anyway, there was something important I wanted to do for them: They have owned a computer for years and they want to get onto the Internet with it. But it won’t work! They do not have the technical knowledge and nobody seems to be inclined to help them [...]
Fiber Optics
This is the third article in a series about the Elektorlive-event. The second lecture was about fiber optics. More and more people know about this, as more and more homes are connected to the Internet (AND to cable TV AND to the phone) through optical fiber. This technique is called FTTH (Fiber To The Home). [...]
Kutná Hora
Some 40 miles east of Prague is the city of Kutná Hora. With a population of 22,000 it seem unimportant compared to Prague, but it has not always been like that. Kutná Hora has a history of great wealth, which originated deep underground. A lot of silver ore was found near the city. In the [...]
Railroad traffic controller (2)
Today’s subject: Malfunctions. Sometimes the system reports a section of the track is occupied, although there is no train at all. This can be caused by many things: A broken wire, a short-circuit between the rails or sticking relay contacts in the security system.The only way to find out what the real situation is, is [...]
Railroad traffic controller
Suddenly my phone starts to ring. I pick up the receiver and try to sound like this is routine for me: “Boxtel traffic control…““Hi, this is the engine driver in train 5223 on track 504. Why can’t I proceed?““O, I’m sorry. We are just moving a freight train to the side track. It is blocking [...]
The first day
I got up at 6 AM so that I would be able to leave home a 7 o’clock. The A2 freeway was as I had expected it: Traffic jam, traffic jam, traffic jam… Fortunately I managed to reach my new work place just before nine, as agreed.I hadn’t met my new boss yet, not even [...]