Four countries… seven people…. one hour, and $4, and all the family is in one phone call.
My parents are currently in Ürümqi, China, while I am in Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey. So, they sent me a text message with their room number and I immediately called via skype. After talking for some minutes they wondered what my younger brother in Israel is up to. So, I suggested adding him to the call. A few clicks later, and he was on line. During the call I saw that one of my older brothers (also in Israel) is online on skype so I added him to the call as well. Then I also added the oldest brother who currently lives in Saarbrücken, Germany by calling his number again via skypeOut. So now, there were 6 people online (my parents, myself, and all my brothers).
My parents repeated their story about their trip to China and asked everyone to tell how they were doing. During the call, they wondered about my grandmother, so after all the brothers were off the phone I connected her cell phone. So, in total seven people were online in this one conference call made possible by skype. The most amazing thing, that even though the entire conference lasted more than an hour, the total cost was less than $4.
August 11th, 2007 at 18:01
Posted by
epsalon |
Turkey, Tech stuff, Travel |
one comment
Today I flew on a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 to Istanbul in order to attend the 2007 European Debating Championship. On the way there, there was a very nice on-board entertainment system with personal screens, and the route display system ran on Linux. I know that because a Linux boot screen was visible on all personal screens for several minutes. Regrettably, I did not bring my digital camera over, so all I have for you here is the caricature above.
If you are reading these lines and wondering to yourself “what is this Linux he’s talking about?”, I’ll have to first point you here and then explain that I am a Linux and Free Software enthusiast for many years now and use Linux exclusively for at least 8 years.
Anyway, after we landed at the airport, it took a long time to pass passport control, and then a much longer time to wait for all the Israelis to pass. Especially as one of our group needed to buy a visa while another lost her passport (she found it eventually).
After finally everyone was set, we were taken to the university and got our room. The four Technion males were allocated to one dorm room. I’m now very hungry so we’re soon going to grab some food. My plan for the weekend: check projects and get some work done. The tournament will start on Sunday. Expect another update then.
August 3rd, 2007 at 17:54
Posted by
epsalon |
Turkey, Tech stuff, Travel |
no comments
As many of you know, I host my own server with domain name 8LN.org. What many of you do not know, is that this server is hosted in my dorm room at the Technion. As part of the process of leaving the Technion and moving to Stanford I need to move this server as well, and this is not an easy task.
Dedicated server hosting, which is comparable to what I have now costs an arm and a leg. The cheapest hosting I could find is in the order of $30/month. Therefore, I decided to go with a web hosting service. After doing a brief survey, I signed up with bluehost.com. For less than $100/year, I get all the bandwidth and disk space I need, plus a free domain name.
I registered the domain epsalon.org and have already moved this blog there (please tell me if there are any problems). I’ll soon start copying all the contents of my website to the new server, one service at a time.
I expect to leave the dorms around late July - early August. By then, most of the primary services should already be hosted on the new server. There should be no change in the URLs.
June 29th, 2007 at 04:30
Posted by
epsalon |
Tech stuff, USA |
one comment
