Or that’s what the brochure said before I took one out for a spin at the dealership. Good for medium runs they say. The parking at Whole Foods with one of these is hell I would imagine. And it’s not practical like a helicopter where you can just leave them hovering and tied to a tree. I am perched in a row of one seat by four rows. And across the aisle is the usual first class configuration of two seats that you’d see in a medium haul jet. It’s staggered so there are five rows over on the right.

If you are ever traveling by yourself try and grab seat A2. I think I am sitting on what is the best seat on the plane. There is a wild amount of legroom in front of me to the point where I can’t get my tootsies on the wall. Unless I stretch. Even a six footer would be happy here which is unusual for any plane config. This seat is also impervious to an assault from forward facing reclining passengers. A potential laptop crusher if ever there was one.

Talking of space, there’s a nifty trick that goes with a ride on an Airbus A319: the second exit row (usually 9 or 10 depending on the carrier) doesn’t have a seat in front of A and F. If you’re a super tall mid level frequent flyer it’s a lovely thing to know. It also works with mid level vertically challenged frequently fliers such as like myself.

The thing I like most about this plane is the tip of the hat towards usability and retaining a sense of style. Consider the hidden drink coaster to the left. It’s delicious and would have been so easy to skip in entirety.

But no, somebody in Brazil sat at a conference table and fought for this. Aluminum or not it must have added to both cost and weight. Bless you, Mr. or Ms. for this is not only good to look at but is eminently functional.

If you’re ever in town let’s call up Jeffrey Bernett and we’ll have a swanky dinner.

Getting a hookup with Verizon was good old fashioned courtship. In that phone company kind of way as I had to wait for about a week after I ordered. Oh, but the anticipation. Nothing like those holla back cable companies who’ll show up the next day or in some magic cases configure things right over the phone. Sluts.

The advantages of dry pair over regular DSL really comes down to the concept of not needing a POTS line. I haven’t had one for quite some time. I crossed the chasm and signed up for VoIP as soon as I learned about the technology and quickly migrated to Skype and Gizmo as they became seriously useful. Bonus.

But then things started to sour between me and my vzw.

A major issue is random disconnects. This flavor of DSL isn’t based on the MAC address or location authentication because it’s good old PPP. The ‘modem’ as they quaintly and incorrectly call it (for there is no analog modulation or demodulation anymore) has to have an user name and password entered in before it works. Just the once as it stores it within the memory of the, um, modem. Once it has that it goes off and fashions a PPP bridge to the Internet.

Like real modems of yore this connection can drop and especially if the connection is not being used. Not at Chez Jules, though. There is internet traffic buzzing over the wire every minute of every day. So I tend to notice things like dropped connections very quickly. Consider this screen grab of the management interface from the, um, modem:

400 disconnects in a month since I last power cycled everything. Egads.

“Ah,” you say, “the Web is bursty! You click, read for a bit, and then click to ask for more data.” And you’d be right thinking that the Web works like that. When you’re not asking for data there is no traffic. The dropped PPP connection does spring back to life in a few seconds and the majority of people who only browse the Web would not notice the problem at all.

My world isn’t like that. I stay connected through weirdo secure shell character-based interfaces that are very picky about dropped connections. That’s a desirable security feature and most certainly not a bug. Moreover, a few seconds of dropped connections also plays merry hell with VoIP and video conferencing. Just as annoying as old AMPS cellular conversations back in the 80’s and 90’s.

Naturally one should just call up Verizon and have them look into this. Theoretically a great idea.

If the Divine Comedy is ever adapted for modern computing there will be a tenth circle of Hell that is a once weekly conversation with level one technical support. Just trying to explain that there is no Start button on a Mac and that no, I literally have no Windows machines in the house might even get its own tier. If time is precious then this is where a relationship with Verizon starts to get expensive.

But then things started to get weird.

I’m a sucker for all things faster than what I have I was tempted by an email from Verizon coaxing me into a 7.1Mb relationship for more or less what I’m paying now. Sweet!

Trying to get somebody who can modify my account (providing they can find it in the first place) is what a modern day Dante might see as a whole new level of Hell.

I hold the following truths to be self evident:

• I pay residential rates and but technically this is a business account.
• If I talk to business they can’t help me as I have to talk to residential department.
• Residential will then take the number I’ve been assigned as my circuit ID and swear it belongs to a business that closed it out two years last May.
• If I can coax residential to find the account by name and address the circuit ID is magically now valid and they have no other circuit ID’s they can share. Sometimes this is interspersed with periods of holding and comments that are usually along the lines of “I’ve never seen this before…”
• Rep fishing does not help. Ever.
• There are no supervisors who work at Verizon who can help with this. I’ve never been able to speak with one anyway which makes me believe there are no supervisors at all at Verizon.
• Residential occasionally deems that I have to talk to the local business office.
• There may or may not be a secret number for the local business office and I cannot have it. The published number they give me goes to the same voice tree as the 800 number for general enquiries. Which means I will never be able to speak to a human being who can help me.
• We always have a good laugh during that bit at the end when they ask is there anything else they can help with (tee hee) and hope that they’ve provided me with excellent service. Poor things. You know they have to say this and sometimes you can smell the embarrassment in the air.

Bless. They have tried, though. They’re at the whim of crappy information tools, scripts, and training that is put there to help the 98% of people they talk to on any given day. They’re always such lovely people to boot and the last thing I’d do is be a toolbag and start yelling at some poor person who’s just doing his or her gig.

My calls usually take 30 minutes to an hour and a half each time I call in. This is even more time than I spend with level one technical support and my spare time is my most achingly scarce, precious commodity. I’m guessing I’ve invested a good 40 hours on this over the past year. A whole working week. That’s wickedly expensive.

Just for a laugh I thought I’d try and cancel today.

“The department you are calling is closed >click<.”

It’s even impossible to cancel. I see chargebacks in Verizon’s future and they can sort it out with the credit card company. Thankfully they’re fabulous.

There is a free version of PocketMac’s SyncManager and it’s rather basic. It lacks features that the Windows version has such as being able to upgrade the BlackBerry’s OS and so forth. I find myself being really annoyed when I delete contacts on either the Mac or the BlackBerry and then have to battle through a host of clicking “yes, I really do want to delete this” buttons on the next sync. iSync is rather elegant in its handling of this situation and only asks for confirmation should you go over a 5% of mass contact whacking. Conflict resolution is equally groovy. No, there is no iSync plugin for the BlackBerry. Please don’t get me going on the lack of Bluetooth-based syncing.

Your other choice is Mark/Space’s Missing Sync. It does a bit more than SyncManager and for that privilege you’ll have to shell out $40. My favorite part of the whole thing is SyncMinder which reminds you that you need to sync. A friend just lost about three months of contacts and calendar dates after a hard drive crash (oh noes!).

Google quietly updated Google Sync this week and the sexiest new feature is automatically syncing with Gmail’s address book should you enable the feature. It happens over the air, no wires needed and works very well with Google hosted. So there is simply no need to remember to plug in and sync — huzzah! Calendar syncing has worked well for me for some time and I’ve been eagerly awaiting the addition of syncing contacts. Others appear to be less impressed.

Now there’s really no need to plug the beastie into your computer anymore. Over the air syncing is automatic and effortless.

• Click at the start of where you want to copy. You won’t get a visual indicator that the cursor is in there but it is.
• Now navigate to the end.
• Then hold down shift and click at the end of your desired text selection.
• The entire block of text is now selected.

That’s it. It works in every Mac browser I’ve tried. And it should work in X and Windows as well.

Bonus points for not using the clipboard to copy it. One of the grooviest Mac ninja moves is to drag and drop the text to an application that’s hidden behind your current window. Your Mac is perfectly happy to respond to key presses while the mouse button is down.

• Click and hold on the text for about a second. If you click too quickly you’ll lose what you’ve highlighted.
• Keep the mouse button depressed. Then hold down the ⌘ key (’command’ or ‘apple key’ depending on your keyboard) and peck at the tab key to the target application. Let go of ⌘-tab and the target app will pop forward.
• Now you can drop your text into the right place.

If you pick the wrong app just ⌘-tab again until you get the right one. And if you change your mind drag the text up into the menu bar and let go of the mouse. There’s nothing up there that’ll have any harm done to it should a large block of text fall like a cartoon piano from the sky.

You can also send the target application keystrokes so if you forgot to create a new document something like ⌘N will work just fine.

The funny thing is you see 12″ PowerBooks in the most and least likely places. I recently flew back from Germany and there was chap two seats over from me writing code on one; they’re a conference-goer staple; they’re alive and well lurking underground in DC and NYC’s subway systems; and they show up in coffee shops in Phoenix, Tampa, San Francisco, Albuquerque, and Charlotte. But why?

Clearly it’s the form factor.

By contemporary standards that old 12″ PowerBook is woefully underpowered. An 800-ish Mhz G4 and a slow video card sucks when editing video, compiling something processor intensive like gpg, or do much more than editing Web applications, browsing the Web, or processing words. Worse still is the Ultra ATA 100 disk which is downright neanderthal. Might as well get yourself a Netbook along the lines of the Lenovo S Series.

Though a Netbook doesn’t exude cool does it? Maybe the 12″ PowerBook is like an E Type Jaguar or a Eldorado Convertible. Classical looks but a pain to drive every day.

Alas, the S series and other Netbooks do not (legally and without superhuman powers) run Mac OS X. Without OS X and Cocoa you’re driving around in just another Unix clone. No OmniGraffle, no iPhoto, and most importantly no QuickSilver.

I’ve owned almost every PowerBook, MacBook and every Air since the PowerBook 170. Before that it was the Outbound Notebook. This unibody MacBook is where the action’s at and the best to date. No more crappy plastic feel of previous MacBooks, there’s oodles of disk space to be had, a backlit keyboard on the higher end model, and 2Gb of RAM out of the box with the option to go to 4Gb. It’s compact enough to slip in an average briefcase and resist squishing on an airline tray table when the person 4 inches in front of you reclines at the first chance they get.

Raw metrics aside, it’s a well crafted piece of equipment. It feels solid much like the Cube (well, mine anyway). I was truly impressed with the build quality of the first generation Air and the MacBook goes above and beyond. It’s tight. Solid. It’ll get thrown around in bags, stuffed into overhead compartments, and while it’s not ruggedized like specialist Windows laptops I have faith in its ability to last.

I’ve been living with a MacBook Air on a daily basis since release and the 4,200 RPM drive speed is a killing me. The MacBook is downright snappy in comparison and much more so than any portable before it. The latency between asking for something and getting it is noticeable enough to warrant the switch.

Previous MacBooks were a doddle to upgrade and this machine continues the trend. The 5,400 rpm hard drive will eventually succumb to my impatience or digital kleptomania and be replaced by something in the 7,200 rpm or above range. The same goes for the RAM. Like previous plastic MacBooks it screams “upgrade me” and with a flip of the lever on its belly you’re a few physical clicks away from, well, more. And as humans that’s what we like. More.

It’s been a long time coming. But if you’ve held on to and enjoyed your 12″ PowerBook for all these years it’s time to pass it on to somebody who won’t care or notice the difference.

If push ever comes to shove and we are attacked by a plague of human/keyboard eating microbes I’m calling upon Apple or RIM to save us all. I’ll suggest the human race build large scale version of the teeny balls that are in the Mighty Mouse or the Pearl and roll them around the planet for a while. I’ve never seen something that vacuums up more grease and schmutz than either of of the trackballs in these devices.

For a while I’d just replace the trackball in the Pearl from one of the cheapie online places. A few bucks to be able to scroll seemed like a wise investment. But the Mighty Mouse? A bit more pricey and doesn’t come apart unless you don’t plan on putting it back together. Alcohol cleaners didn’t do the trick plus that’s a waste of good booze.

Then it dawned on me. A zero cost solution. Turn the devices upside down and roll the trackballs on a piece of copier paper. The grot sticks to the paper, there’s no flammable fluids doing damage to expensive hardware, and it takes a couple of seconds.

The simplest solutions are always the best.

And, damn girl, I just can’t get on board when you’re all distant like that.

My chum Barry Reicherter was kind enough to send along a link to the carefully choreographed iPhone SDK launch event. It’s always, always fun to watch Steve get up, turn on the reality distortion field, and take control of our minds and the stage. Phil was next and, gosh darn it, it’s laudable for the guy to have the chutzpah to get out of his seat and follow one of the greatest presenters of all time.

Now the launch event dust has settled does this put any of us who are still on the fence closer to making the jump to the iPhone?

Consider TechCrunch’s good look at the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines. The article did a good job of outlining a troubling feature:

Thou shalt only run one app at a time.

Gruber succinctly says:

To be fair, I don’t think many of Apple’s first-party apps run in the background, either. The Phone, SMS, Clock, iPod, and Mail apps do. Or at least they have helper app background tasks that do. But the other ones all seem to quit when you go to the home screen — you don’t really notice because they launch fast, quit fast, and save automatically.

This is one of the irritating things that has kept me from using the Helio Ocean as much as I should. The statement is 100% right but of limited use with an always connected device, alas. On any given day I have AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, and Blackberry messenger running in parallel. For IM to be taken seriously on the iPhone this rule must be bent or broken. Especially for adoption with a multitasking generation that believes email is for old people (Exchange push or otherwise). We have to have it both ways, Apple.

I could live with this for a while as it willy surely get fixed. However, the number one show stopper revolves around consuming or producing information.

At 13:07 in the video we have “for those of you who’ve never used typing in an iPhone and wondered how it is it’s awesome” and shortly after there are a few nervous chuckles from the audience. The residual effects of the reality distortion field must have dropped. I’ve tried to type on my iPod Touch when it’s a bit cold and it’s a non starter. In the northern bits of the East Coast it gets pretty nippy and down in the Southern bits it gets really hot and sticky. Having too little or too much moisture on your fingers doesn’t work well with touch screens. Not a problem in Cupertino, apparently.

I’m disappointed that I can’t hook up an external Bluetooth keyboard as I can with the Nokia N95 . In my own defense it’s not a case of ‘confused old man fails to grok new technology’ as I was off to a flying start with SureType from the very start. SureType just sucks a little less than the iPhone’s virtual keyboard.

It’s notable that the micro sized hunt-and-peck method didn’t work for me with the Sony Ericsson P900 either. In the past I found myself flipping up the flap on the front and going back to T9 predictive input when juggling coffee, doors, and texting on the run.

But if you actually watched the video you’ll notice that Phil is doing all this typing with his bloody thumb.

Ok, clearly it’s not you. It’s me.

It’s hard not to want to believe. That gorgeous form factor, the screen, lickable user experience, mobile Safari, it’s all so tempting. Perhaps a fix for us greasy, sweaty finger types would be a slider form factor and the option to dispense with the on screen keyboard completely.

Maybe in the next version. Until then the Blackberry Pearl will make do.

The main beef with USB wireless, printer, and just about any other peripheral driver you can think of is that so many of them are poorly written. While it’s a better state of affairs than it was operating systems still crash enough without wantonly adding third-party generated instability. You know, by doing a crazy thing like printing or connecting to the ‘net when you’re out and about.

Let’s not forget that as operating systems evolve into new versions old drivers might not work and might not be upgraded. That perfectly good printer you’ve got sitting on your desk might be a large paperweight if you are forced to upgrade. Scanners are a little more forgiving, thankfully, due to a standard called TWAIN. However, the proliferation of multifunction printer/scanner/fax combos is proprietary and unforgiving. Keep your computer up to date or send a fax? Tough choices.
If that wasn’t enough punishment there’s the self induced serial laptop swapping sickness from which I suffer. Try as I might I can’t help myself. New laptops arrive with whizzy features that I can’t resist. What will be next? An Air? A ThinkPad X300? Keeping the data on the drives in sync isn’t half the problem you might think. Typing svn up at the end of the day keeps me in sync and not as worried about data loss as I could be.

The latest EVDO card of choice is the Ovation U727 from Sprint. They run a lovely, fast network and Rev A. EVDO is pretty special. And as you might imagine the card comes with a CDROM and the Mac needs a set of drivers to get it up and running. In this case the driver has been stable, OS X isn’t doing funky things when the card is in use. Phew. Dodged another one there.

An Ubuntu Linux-based ThinkPad isn’t half as happy. The instructions to get it working are something that your granny isn’t going to be able to do by herself. The U727 has a built-in Micro SD slot reader which has further complicated my testing of things. Then there’s the dire warning from the Sprint setup guide:

Maximum connection speed is limited by the current generic usbserial driver to approximately less than 500Kbps.

Oh dear.

On Linux there is no signal strength monitoring, no PRL updates, no GUI to help you connect, and no official support. On Linux nobody can hear you scream.

Which got me thinking: Why on earth don’t these devices just plug into the ethernet port?

• No drivers! Not one!
• All modern operating systems have the built-in ability to get an IP address via DHCP which requires no configuration at all;
• There’s a lot that can be powered with a USB port and, clearly, POE isn’t an option on a laptop;
• Unlike PC Card or Express card solutions this would get the antenna away from the computer. That cuts down on RF noise and makes the card more effective; and
• Control could come from a mini Web server built into the device itself.

Can’t you just visualize a bit of nifty ajax or Flash in the Web server? It should be easy to show connection speeds, signal strength, IP address, and all that jazz. If you’ve ever connected from a pay-for-usage Wifi nextwork there’s a nifty trick you can do to force people to an authentication page before they get on the ‘net. That could work nicely here.

A vendor of such a device would never have to inflict another crappy USB driver on its customers again. Support costs would surely go down. Nerds would evangelize like crazy.

They might even buy one for themselves and one for granny.

Clicking the Publish button gets things rolling:

127.0.0.1 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:02 +0000] "GET /wp-admin/post-new.php HTTP/1.1" 200 16513 "http://blog.jules.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=***" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080206 Camino/1.5.5"

Who’s this a fraction of a second later?

67.207.146.36 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:02 +0000] "GET /wp-cron.php?check=*** HTTP/1.0" 200 - "-" "-"

Oh, it’s the local WordPress installation calling wp-cron. Oopsie. wp-cron is a low-rent version of Unix cron.

Fast forward about eight seconds and it looks like the first across the line is Moreover:

72.13.32.7 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:10 +0000] "GET /feed/ HTTP/1.0" 200 3385 "-" "Moreoverbot/5.00 (+http://www.moreover.com)"

It’s a mind bending 46 seconds later and it looks like everybody has the message. Here’s the Googlebot who does the polite thing first and asks for a robots.txt file.

66.249.70.194 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:48 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 301 26 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
66.249.70.194 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:48 +0000] "GET /robots.txt/ HTTP/1.1" 200 50 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
66.249.70.194 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:48 +0000] "GET /feed/atom/ HTTP/1.1" 200 3321 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
66.249.70.194 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:49 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 4650 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

Now here’s Yahoo’s Feed Seeker.

216.39.58.18 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:49 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "YahooFeedSeeker/2.0 (compatible; Mozilla 4.0; MSIE 5.5; http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide)"
216.39.58.18 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:49 +0000] "GET /robots.txt/ HTTP/1.0" 200 24 "http://blog.jules.com/robots.txt" "YahooFeedSeeker/2.0 (compatible; Mozilla 4.0; MSIE 5.5; http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide)"
209.131.41.49 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:32:57 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 14023 "-" "YahooFeedSeeker/2.0 (compatible; Mozilla 4.0; MSIE 5.5; http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide)"

Next is the dubiously useful Snapbot:

38.98.19.67 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:54 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.66 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:54 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.68 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:54 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.67 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:55 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.66 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:55 +0000] "GET /feed/atom/ HTTP/1.0" 200 10134 "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.68 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:58 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.67 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:58 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.68 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:37:59 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.66 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:38:00 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"
38.98.19.66 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:38:01 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 14023 "-" "Snapbot/1.0 (Snap Shots, +http://www.snap.com)"

What the heck is Snapbot doing? Why does it need to ask nine times for the same file and not pay attention to the URL redirect request? Sounds like Snapbot needs an update to 1.0.1.

When you ask WordPress for robots.txt you get sent along along to xmlrpc.php:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:39:43 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Pingback: http://blog.jules.com/xmlrpc.php
Location: http://blog.jules.com/robots.txt/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

301 is the HTTP code to permanently redirect old URLs and do the right thing when accessing directories. URLs can change and it’s an elegant way to deal with the problem. When you get this response back from a Web server your side should parse the headers for a Location field. Notice the trailing slash on that line that WordPress provides and more on that in a second.

For example, if you ask Apache for the archives of Feb ‘08 at http://blog.jules.com/2008/02 it’ll do the right thing and add a trailing slash:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:57:52 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Pingback: http://blog.jules.com/xmlrpc.php
Location: http://blog.jules.com/2008/02/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

See the Location field?

Back when all Web sites were served from a filesystem it was important to note what was a directory and what was not. The former would have a slash and latter would not. robots.txt is usually a file and this might be where Snap is coming unstuck.

Ok, blood pressure is going down and here’s Google Feedfetcher (which is different from Googlebot above):

209.85.238.7 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:38:02 +0000] "GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 3385 "-" "Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html)"

Talking of Googlebot, he’s back for the post itself almost six minutes later:

66.249.70.194 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:38:29 +0000] "GET /2008/02/24/the-thing-about-transatlantic-first-class/ HTTP/1.1" 200 4550 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

BlogPulse is next in line:

64.158.138.84 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:38:37 +0000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 301 26 "-" "BlogPulseLive (support@blogpulse.com)"
64.158.138.84 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:38:37 +0000] "GET /robots.txt/ HTTP/1.1" 200 50 "-" "BlogPulseLive (support@blogpulse.com)"
64.158.138.84 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:38:37 +0000] "GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 3385 "-" "BlogPulseLive (support@blogpulse.com)"

BlogPulse does the right thing with the 301 redirect (Oh Snap!).

Googlebot just can’t get enough of this article so here he is again a smidge over two minutes from the last request:

66.249.70.194 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:40:42 +0000] "GET /2008/02/24/the-thing-about-transatlantic-first-class/ HTTP/1.1" 200 4550 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

Technorati joins the party:

208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:41:19 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 4650 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"
208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:41:19 +0000] "GET /feed/ HTTP/1.0" 200 3385 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"
208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:41:20 +0000] "GET /feed/rss/ HTTP/1.0" 200 1235 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"
208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:41:20 +0000] "GET /feed/atom/ HTTP/1.0" 200 3321 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"

Here’s a request from something mysteriously tagged Java/1.6.0_02:

67.202.34.117 - - [24/Feb/2008:15:42:41 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 14023 "-" "Java/1.6.0_02"

Some on-demand application up at Amazon’s EC2 farm is, well, not doing a whole lot. Just a simple HTTP request for the root of the site. Doesn’t touch the feed.

I get a similar request every four-ish hours from a user agent of ONNET-OPENAPI and they all stem from 211.239.119.213. No reverse mapping is assigned but the IP maps back to APNIC. International robot of mystery and all that.

Finally, Technorati is back for more:

208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:16:00:12 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 4650 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"
208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:16:00:13 +0000] "GET /feed/ HTTP/1.0" 200 3385 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"
208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:16:00:13 +0000] "GET /feed/rss/ HTTP/1.0" 200 1235 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"
208.66.64.4 - - [24/Feb/2008:16:00:13 +0000] "GET /feed/atom/ HTTP/1.0" 200 3321 "-" "Technoratibot/0.7"

That’s when the excitement dies down about half a hour after publishing. Googlebot and Yahoo spend a bit more time crawling around for the updated categories and pages and the rest of the visits are from people who have come to read what’s on offer.

Verifying the IPs that came to visit.

• 72.13.32.7 was Moreover and doesn’t reverse lookup. The netblock belongs to VeriSign Infrastructure & Operations;
• 66.249.70.194, the Googlebot, points back to crawl-66-249-70-194.googlebot.com;
• 216.39.58.18 is Yahoo’s Feed Seeker and resolves to htproxy2.ops.re4.yahoo.net;
• Snap had no reverse lookup on 38.98.19.66 but a whois search shows the netblock is registered to PSI.net;
• 209.85.238.7 doesn’t reverse map but whois shows the IP range is Google’s;
• BlogPulse came from 64.158.138.84 which is floodgate.intelliseek.com and the netblock belongs to Level 3 Communications, Inc;
• 208.66.64.4 is nat-365m.technorati.com and as you can imagine that’s Technorati; and
• The mystery Java-based admirer came from 67.202.34.117 and the lookup on that is ec2-67-202-34-117.compute-1.amazonaws.com.

It’s no great secret that domestic North American air travel is pretty awful. The real perks come when you pucker up and get yourself a passport. Transatlantic coach is much better than domestic first class and, therefore, the levels above must be better still.

Or are they?

The lay flat seat thing in first class is really nifty. It’s exceptionally nifty on a red eye. The seats all the way up front are nicer than business class.

The flight attendants bring you whatever you want almost on demand. The flirtier you are the stronger the drinks are.

First class is almost always full of men with wedding rings on.

The flight attendants get annoyed when you try use a restroom that isn’t in your section of the cabin. “For your safety” of course. And if that stops working expect “for the children” or something like that to be rolled out shortly thereafter. There are no gold plated taps, washroom attendants, or better towels. The toilets are all the same across the plane.

Needless vandalism happens everywhere. What could you possibly hope to achieve by scratching the crap out of a video screen?

Everybody in business and first is working or otherwise taking themselves far too seriously. It’s like being on a subway almost anywhere in the world as it’s very hard to strike up a conversation. And you have to love the cost to irony ratio with that kind of selective self-isolation.

In Fight Club, the unnamed commentator flew all the time but schlepped with the schleppers in coach. Shurely shome mishtake? The more you fly the more you are comp’d on upgrades. On a side note, if you are a fan of the flick this strangely compeling read should have you grinning.

When you board a plane in the EU you don’t have to take your shoes off. Regardless of being in the short line for business and first class.

The flight attendants might not eat what you do. Flight attendants fly more than you and, therefore, they are smarter than you about flying. Especially when it comes to eating on a plane as common sense says don’t do it at all. If they are eating the same thing they’re doing it out of an aluminum container which would save cleaning up one more dirty plate.

The guy in 1b has been reading a book for the entire nine hour flight. Compelling novel consumed by a slow reader?

You can’t hear babies screaming all the way at the front of the plane. Why don’t decent noise canceling headphones don’t have a ‘baby’ setting?

I’m the only one here wearing jeans.

That little kit thing that you don’t get in coach usually contains cheap nylon socks (so your own socks don’t get grubby), ear plugs, a travel toothbrush, and and an eye mask. Sometimes it contains moisturizer and mints. It hasn’t contained any advertising — yet.

The adjustable seats are still nifty. But these buttons didn’t work:

People fart in first class especially if they’re sleeping. It’s just as ghastly as coach. Actually it might be worse if some of the food served had a creme sauce base.

You can spot the Europeans as they go to sleep first. The North Americans go to sleep later. I think the guy in 1b is from Ascension Island which would make this a normal day.

The food isn’t bad. You get a choice of either something with red meat, something with white meat, or something veggie. There’s always one thing on the menu to avoid such as pork (it can become dry). Just ask what the flight attendants are eating.

People have really old MP3 players. Not a single modern Shuffle, Touch or iPhone in sight. Not a single Mac laptop in sight, it’s all Dell and HP.

A Chinese proverb would have you believe the journey is the reward. With air travel it’s not the case. You’re voluntarily subjecting yourself to nine hours in a sealed tube. A good bottle of wine and a well cooked meal at home is always, always better.