Nota Bene

There are hardly active volcanoes in Europe; well, not including those unpronounceable ones in Iceland, that is. Mainland European volcanoes are to be found only in Santorini in Greece and in Italy. And it’s of course Mount Etna that’s the champion in terms of height (but not necessarily on other attributes – Santorini is much more colorful and generally far more impressive to look at).

So, Mount Etna. It’s only a few hours from any point in Europe, so if any Europeans reading this still haven’t been to a real smoking volcano, Mount Etna’s for you for your first volcano visit. It’s always advisable to wait for the next eruption to ensure the experience is a maximally intense Magical Mystery Tour, but here eruptions are real frequent – so you shouldn’t have too long to wait. So off you pop – to Sicily!

The one con: they don’t let you get to the very top! Eh, what’s that all about? What a let-down! The wide area around the peak’s surrounded by a white rope barrier and you’re not allowed to cross it, so taking in the breathtaking fantastical landscapes here is possible only from a cordoned-off tourist viewing area well below the summit.

There’s an attendant pro though: it’s possible to step over or go around the “barrier”, and no one seems to keep watch so you can get away with it! Naughty!

More: volcanic caves and Godfather background …

Ciao all!

Oh how I love long haul flights – you can get through all your work you’ve been putting off for days or weeks, finally get through your latest book, watch a film you’ve had your eye on, study some geography through the window (I prefer to book a window seat), and intermittently in-between all that – simply catch some ZZZs – that is, if the plane isn’t being rocked around by turbulence, no one’s pestering with their phone calls or e-mails, and the stewardesses are only very infrequently offering meals or another Manhattan (for those who read my last post – you’ll notice I like to rotate my classic cocktails:).

I recently completed one such avia-marathon, from Australia to Italy, 35 hours door (of hotel) to door (of hotel), almost 22 hours in the air, and the rest of the time spent on connections and waiting in airports (with the usual war with Wi-Fi) plus road journeys between hotels and airports and vice versa. It all adds up to an absurdly long time spent on a journey – so long it looks like a record: I’ve never had a day and a half traveling before; that is, besides a couple of force majeure instances.

The second leg of the journey was the most interesting: we flew over India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Crimea, and then on to Romania and the rest of southern Eastern Europe to Italy. By the way, this completes my first time round-the-globe this year; my second one’s coming up soon. It’s a pity we only flew at night, since all I could see out of the windows were stars (Let There Be More Light!), then come the morning all that could be seen were the snow-covered Austrian Alps. Still, there was plenty going on in my booth inside the plane to make up for the lack of visible external scenery down below…

More: Something to read, watch and listen!

Hurray!

Like little children getting overly giddy when they see a fair attraction – I’m the same when it comes to entering an Airbus A380!

The world’s largest passenger airliner, a mammoth mass of metal with wings, and two storeys. What’s not to like?

More: Double-decker inside …

G’day!

The Great Ocean Road, Australia. I can now say I’ve been there, traveled that, got the… confirmation: it’s another must-see place in the world. And +1 to my list…

So just what is the Great Ocean Road? Surprisingly, it’s a road. It’s also great, as in both great – super, and great – long; and it mostly hugs the ocean shore. It was built in the early part of the last century along a stretch of the craggy coast of the southeastern Australian state of Victoria. It’s rich in heritage, incredibly curvy, and offers breathtaking views from the road itself and also just off it a little inland – you just need to leave the road a hundred meters or so to get extra special views at the right, marked places.

More: a two-way trip…

More: When Will Apple ‘Get’ Security Religion?. . .

Australia. A huge territory, practically completely covered with desert, with thin inhabited zones along the coast. There are some populated areas inland, but not all that many.

The population of Australia is around 22 million (the 54^th largest in the world); GDP is almost a trillion US$ (18^th in the world – between Iran and Taiwan); and per capita income is US$40K (19^th – between Austria and Kuwait) (source: CIA World Factbook).

More: A fascinating, magical country …

You don’t need to hear it from me that the Internet is a really interesting phenomenon, and mega-useful for all those who use it. But at the same time its openness and uncontrollability mean that a ton of unpleasantness can also await users – not only on dubious porno/warez sites, but also completely legitimate, goody-two-shoes, butter- wouldn’t-melt-in-mouth sites. And for several years already the Internet has been a firm fixture on the list of the main sources of cyber-infections: according to our figures, in 2012 33% of users have at least once been attacked via the web.

If you dig deeper into the structure of net-based unpleasantness, you always come across three principle categories of threats: Trojans, exploits, and malicious tools. According to data from our cloud-based KSN (video, details), the break-down is as follows:

The ten-percenter in the above pie chart as you can see belongs to so-called exploits (their share will actually be greater in reality, since a lot of Trojans have a weakness for exploiting… exploits). Exploits are mostly exotic peculiarities to non-professionals – while a real headache for security specialists. Those of you more in the latter category than the former can go straight here. For the rest of you – a micro-lesson in exploits…

More: A breakthough in fighting exploits …

Yesterday I set myself a personal record – my longest plane journey: 8575 miles, in just under 16 hours. The route we took is the third longest in the world at the moment, but bizarrely enough it doesn’t make the top-ten longest in terms of time taken to fly. It’s probably due to the wind over the Pacific Ocean assisting the plane and saving time (and kerosene). Info on the longest air routes in the world is here.

More: From Paradise Island to Surfers Paradise …

I’ve just added another entry to the list of countries I’ve been to – bringing my total now up to 69, or, if we include Antarctica (as an independent territory) – 70. So it’s a bit of a jubilee!

Hi all from sunny Nassau, the capital of the Bahamian Islands. Specifically, from the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island! Though I’d heard a lot about the Bahamas, and remember it in the James Bond film Thunderball, I’d never actually got round to getting myself there. Until now. Yes, today it’s me who’s in the coconut-palm, white-beach paradise.

More: Atlantis twins and some business stuff…

In Geneva we’d been told all sorts of horror stories about London’s Heathrow Airport recently having been turned into a nightmare of delays, huge lines and other horridness you’d normally expect from some backward banana republic, not the UK. Strange, I thought – just last week I was in England and all was OK at its main airport. Now? There’s just one word to describe it: chaos. Lines for both security and passport control were two hours long, and we hear they can get even longer. It’s so bad it resembles the hellhole that is New York’s JFK, or Moscow’s Sheremetevo about ten years back.

We were lucky – we weren’t heading for the UK. We were just connecting there. Thank goodness. Otherwise we’d have had to have joined in the fun. So here’s a warning to anyone going to the UK soon: be prepared. Make sure you’ve plenty to read, listen to, and/or watch on-the-go! I can’t imagine what’s going to happen here later this year when the Olympics start… I think getting to France first might be the best option – and coming through the Channel Tunnel!

More: It’s always sunny in… Geneva