[Edit] Rrrrrrright! A few observations are in order here. Apparently — with Wordpress for iPhone — photos can only be added at the end of a post, so I won’t be able to include captions per photo or surround photos with relevant text. Since iPhone does not know what cut-and-paste is, I also won’t be able to edit my posts by going directly to the administrative interface of my weblog on the iPhone. Moreover, there seems to be a problem with the theme that I use, or with one of the plugins, such that the formatting of all the tidbits that follow a post are totally messed up if a photo is the last element in the post. I will manually edit all these post to look a bit better when we get back from vacation, but for the time being I can only be sorry to leave you with this mess.
[Edit some more] I fixed the formatting problem with the stuff trailing the last photo. At least that looks better now.

When Tom sent me Henry Miller’s “The Colossus of Maroussi” as a gift, I devoured it from cover to cover in one night. It is set in the year before the outbreak of World War II. I haven’t read any other book that gives such a vivid account of the country and the people, especially the people. Since that first time, I have read The Colossus of Maroussi many times over and slowly a plan started to ripen in my head: I wanted to follow part of Miller’s path as he travels over Greece. To see if I could see what Miller saw, to feel if I could feel what Miller felt, now almost 70 years ago. Don’t ever expect me to write what Miller wrote.

Anyway, while I was re-reading the book once again, this time to distill from it a travel itinerary that would follow his footsteps as close as possible, I came upon this passage, which I absolutely have to share with someone. That someone’s you.

The Turks, in their fervid desire to desolate Greece, converted the land into a desert and a graveyard; since their emancipation the Greeks have been struggling to reforest the land. The goat has now become the national ennemy. He will be dislodged as the Turk was dislodged, in time. He is the symbol of poverty and helplessness. Trees, more trees, that’s the cry. The tree brings water, fodder, cattle, produce; the tree brings shade, leisure, song, brings poets, painters, legislators, visionaries. Greece is now, bare and lean as a wolf though she be, the only Paradise in Europe. What a place it will be when restored to its pristine verdure exceeds the imagination of man today. Anything may happen when this focal spot blazes forth with new life. A revivified Greece can very conceivably alter the whole destiny of Europe. Greece does not need archaeologists — she needs arboriculturists. A verdant Greece may give hope to a world now eaten away by white-heart rot.

What happened to that dream?

Arriving at home with my new toy, I immediately connected it to my iMac over the USB interface. I thought I would be have to charge the battery, but that turned out to be unnecessary. iTunes started up automatically and invited me first to register. I was under the assumption that this was the famous activation process, but it turned out to be just a simple registration of the serial number. Or maybe that is the activation, I don’t know, the word “activation” never showed up. That done iTunes invited me to downloaded the latest release, version 2.0.2. It also — and at the same time — started synchronizing with MobileMe (previously dotMac): bookmarks, contacts, calendars, e-mail settings, the works. The OS upgrade is a big file and downloading over my 4Mb ADSL connection took more than 15 minutes. After a restart I proceeded to synchronize my locally stored iTunes and iPhoto libraries. Everything was bliss.

At first I didn’t have any 3G connection at all. I didn’t know if I needed to do something to activate that (and which they forgot to tell me at the Vodafone shop) or if this was a problem of me not living in an area that is covered by Vodafone’s 3G network. To be honest, I hadn’t had a chance to do a lot of diagnosing as we left early on Saturday morning for Lendas. I was planning on going back to the Vodafone shop on Monday and was sure it would be sorted out then. Yannis, the young man I met at the Vodafone shop (which ceded his place to let me be “the first iPhone user in Iraklio”), called me in Lendas on Saturday evening. He confirmed that he did have a 3G connection. In Lendas of course you hardly have any connection, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything. I also noticed that the iPhone apparently kept searching for networks. This morning, on my way to the bus station, I powered off the iPhone. I don’t know why, it seemed like a good idea. When I got off the bus in the center of Iraklio I powered it back on and — lo and behold — there was my 3G connection! Jumped right back onto the bus. The connection has been stable since then, with at least 3 bars showing for the signal strength, and with up to the maximum of 5 bars on the whole stretch of Knossou Road. It is also fast enough to comfortably load my own weblog, which is rather heavy in graphic elements. I’ll try a small post from the iPhone, possibly with a picture, at a later stage. At home my wi-fi connection takes over, which I think is a nice touch. Now I only need to find a decent VOIP client.

Greek characters are no problem in e-mail messages and in my address book entries. There is no input capability in Greek however. I can live with that for a while, but I sure hope that Apple will include a Greek keyboard in an upcoming software release.

Battery life seems to be as good as with my Nokia E50 (with 3G disabled most of the time since I had no access anyway). When we came back from Lendas on Sunday evening I still had 3/4 full battery after initial power up on Friday, more than 48 hours ago. I didn’t make or receive many calls though, but that corresponds to my regular usage on the Nokia. I didn’t want to ruin my brand new iPhone in the sand of the beach anyway, but leaving it at home seemed like not quite right. I’m doing a full charge right now, after Usage of 6 Hours, 9 Minutes and Standby of 2 Days, 16 Hours, according to the iPhone itself. I’m curious how the battery will fare after that, with 3G enabled.

[Edit on 2008-08-26] Whooaaaaah! After my iPhone went through a full charge, I enabled all those hot options on my iPhone 3G (3G reception, Wi-Fi services, Data Roaming and Location Services all set to “On”) around 19:00. I subsequently used my iPhone to show off in my local kafeneíon using the 3G connection for about 15 minutes, sent and received some SMS messages and made 1 call. I went to bed around midnight and let the iPhone in sleep mode (I did not power it off). This morning at 07:30 the battery was completely empty and I could not wake the iPhone before I had it connected to the power supply. Big letdown for power consumption. Booh!

[Edit on 2008-08-27] After the full battery recharge of yesterday, I again switched off Enable 3G, Data Roaming (in Settings > General > Network) and Location Services (in Settings > General). Wi-Fi (in Settings > General > Network) was still enabled and the iPhone was connected to my local network.  I kept the iPhone in sleep mode overnight, just like the previous night and this morning the battery still had a 90% charge. Tonight I will Enable 3G (but keep Data Roaming and Location Services off) and see where that leads in terms of battery consumption. 

[Edit on 2008-08-29 at 11:27] Yesterday evening, just before midnight, my iPhone decided it was time to recharge the battery. The message prompting me to do so indicated that there was 20% juice left. The Usage figures were: 4 Hours, 31 Minutes and Standby: 2 Days, 13 Hours. The iPhone went through 2 consecutive nights of sleep mode. I had not — contrary to what i said in the previous Edit — switched on 3G reception. I will do that now, after a full recharge cycle and see what the effect of that will be on the battery.

[Edit on 2008-08-30 at 21:16] After the full battery reloading yesterday at 11:30, I switched on 3G reception. It lasted until now, almost 34 hours. I took some pictures, made a few calls, updated my Twitter status and checked Twitter several times, used Google maps and posted a picture on TwitPic. Not too bad for 3G enabled. Data Roaming and Location Services were off all the time. Wi-Fi was on.

The one application that really blew me, was Google Maps: I entered my address here in Iraklio, Crete and let it search directions to go to my fathers place in Belgium, as a test. You don’t need to enter any technical coordinates, not even the addresses, you just pick them from the address book. Within seconds I had a detailed map plotted, taking into account the ferry crossing from Iraklio to Piraeas, accross Greece, into FYROM, through Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and finally Belgium. Nothing Google Maps wouldn’t do on any personal computer, I know. But watching this take place on a small 3.5″ screen is truly awesome. 

Did I say that Twitterrific is fantastific on the iPhone? It is.

A friendly lady confirmed that they had indeed “a number of iPhones” in stock, but she didn’t know about prices. That would be made public on the day of the launch, the next day. Huh? I checked Vodafone’s website regularly from then on, hoping to find more specifics about the program. The last time I checked was at 01:05 in the morning, and nothing had changed yet.

Main Vodafone shop Iraklio, 15 minutes before opening

This morning I took the bus to the center of Iraklio and found myself before a closed Vodafone shop at 08:40. Opening would be at 09:00. Nobody in sight. No queues stretching for miles, or meters, or even centimeters. I was all alone. I took a couple of pictures of the desolate shop and went looking for a frappé. When I came back 5 minutes later a young man was waiting before the shop. We started talking and it turned out that he too had come early to be sure to get his hands on an iPhone 3G. That made two of us. We had some kind of a queue at least.

When the door of the shop opened, Yannis, the young man, insisted that I would enter first so that I would be “the receiver of the first iPhone officially sold in Iraklio”. Courteous and charming. Expecting to be in and out in half an hour since there were no other customers, I was introduced once more to the Greek Way of Doing Things. The lady I spoke to the previous evening was the one trained by Vodafone to handle all the iPhone purchases. She set out to extoll the virtues of the iPhone with an enthousiasm that I had to unfortunately interrupt after a while because I wanted to know the price of the program and the phone and get home as soon as possible. She understood.

After firing up her networked terminal and wading through a gazillion of screens, filling in a few forms with information that Vodafone has had on file about me for years, we established that I would subscribe to the cheapest program, called “iPhone 100 Lite”. It offers 100 minutes of talk time, 150 outgoing SMS messages and 250MB of data transfer per month for the cost of 35€ per month (you don’t pay for incoming SMS messages in Europe). No unlimited data programs for Greece. If one subscribed before the end of the year Vodafone would throw in an extra 250MB per month for the next 12 months. The price for the iPhone 3G 16GB itself would be 459€. But since Yvonne and I had had a shared account with Vodafone for years, we had built up some credit which would be applied to the normal purchase price, bringing it down to 357€. Not a bad deal.

“Okay, wrap it up, I’ll take it”, I went. Ah, not that fast young grasshopper! Now all that information that was so meticulously and aggravatingly slowly entered into their system would have to be re-entered into the the financial transaction part of the “Information System”. Really? What for? It was all in there already! Ah, it might have looked that way, but the logistic part of the system was not linked to the financial part of the system, did I understand that? Duh!? Okay, let’s do it then! Well, that turned out to be a bit of a problem because “Athens had not entered the financial codes for the iPhone yet into the system“. Of course not! In the mean time the clock showed 09:45. If I could wait an hour or two, she was sure that everything would be ready for me to come and take possession of my iPhone. She would call me immediately on my cell phone as soon as the system was ready. I suggested she take my money, give me the phone already and do the administrative work at her own discretion at a later moment when the system “would be ready”. Uhuh! no can do, sir, I’m sorry. With no options left — and after she assured me that she would not fail to call me immediately — I decided to take a walk, sit somewhere under a tree and enjoy another frappé while waiting.

Big mistake!

When two hours later I still hadn’t heard from her I decided to go back to the shop. It was packed full! After I elbowed my way to the terminal where she was all in sweat entering more data that must have been entered at least a dozen times for each customer, she guiltily looked up and said that “the system was ready now”. Yeah, but I was not longer the first in Iraklio to take possession of the iPhone, about a dozen of iPhone boxes were stacked next to her terminal with the accompanying documents in triple, signed and countersigned, that needed to be entered once more in the financial system. Remorseful that she had not completely lived up to the promises that she had made, she delegated me to a colleague to finish the financial part. 

At another terminal her colleague went through the whole procedure again to enter, check and double check my information, printed out the forms in triple and then sent me to yet another counter where they would take my money. I had noticed that the price for the iPhone had come down to 297€ this time. When I pointed this out she assured me that she had entered all the information correctly and that the price was right. Oh well, if she said so…

At the last station of the cross, when it was my turn — it was now close to 13:00 — yet another lady started filling out yet another screen on her terminal. Then she stopped. “This price is not correct” she said, giving me an accusatory look. “That’s what I said to your colleague, but she claims the price is correct” was my reply. She picked up the phone, started a conversation, most of which I didn’t understand, for 5 minutes with the other end, most probably someone in Athens, and finally settled for 317€. My fear that the whole form-filling procedure would have to be repeated turned out unjustified. “I will now cut you an invoice which has a different price than this form; you have to keep them together.” she said in a stern voice. “Cutting an invoice” is an expression which is literally translated from Greek, and I got used to it by now.

Fifteen minutes later I was out on the street, hurrying to catch the bus home. When I have had the time to fiddle with it for a while, I’ll report on my findings in a subsequent post, but it’ll have to wait until after we get back from our regular weekend excursion to the south coast.

Residents and professional organizations on Crete yesterday blamed the slow progress of road construction in the north of the island for dozens of road fatalities in recent years, following the death at the weekend of three people in a head-on collision.

Locals complain that it has taken 20 years and three tranches of European Union funding to build 50 kilometers of a 312-kilometer road network in the island’s north. “The island’s road network is of a Third World standard,” the president of the Technical Chamber of Greece’s western Crete office, Antonis Pitaridakis, told Kathimerini. “Our so-called national road network is narrow, dangerous, poorly lit and badly maintained,” he added.

“Crete is in urgent need of new roads, otherwise lives will continue to be lost,” said Yiannis Lionakis, director of the ELPA road assistance group in Iraklion. He said the number of cars on Cretan roads has increased nearly sixfold to 600,000 over the past 40 years but the roads have not been upgraded to handle the extra traffic.

I would be the first to say that road improvements are important what with the growing number of cars on our roads every year. But at the same time I can’t help asking myself the drivers on the Cretan roads:

• Might wearing the seat belt for once maybe reduce the number of fatalities caused by road accidents? When I drive from Iraklio to Chania at the west end of the northern stretch of said “National Road”, I can count the number of you wearing a seat belt on one hand (barring the tourists).
• Would it maybe help if you used your direction indicators as they are intended to be used? Nobody (except the tourists once again) seems to be aware of the existence of that little handle at the steering wheel, let alone what to use it for. How did you get your driver’s license? What did you learn at those driving schools?
• Maybe looking in the rear mirrors once in a while might give you a better idea of the co-occupants of the same road? Yes, there are other people using this road. Really, it’s not laid out there just for you. Rear mirrors? I know, you thought those were meant to check how good you look. They are not.
• Do you really have to park on the shoulder to pick some flowers or check your olive trees? I know it is hard to believe that this space has not been constructed to accommodate your personal needs or whims, but really, look it up, it was meant for something else. Believe me, the European Union does not fund your personal parking spots along the highway.
• The white lines on the asphalt? Yes, you are supposed to drive between them, not over them. Trust me, contrary to your own beliefs, your car is not that big, it easily fits between those lines.
• And finally, maybe, just maybe, could you stop continuously blabbering on the damn mobile phone for hours on end while driving? It might help you concentrate on the traffic and avoid those accidents.

To paraphrase the president of the Technical Chamber of Greece’s western Crete office, Antonis Pitaridakis: “The island’s driver’s attitude is of a Third World standard”. Then of course, it’s easier to look for the blame outside. And complaining has always be free. Go ahead complain some more, maybe a strike would be appropriate? A blockade of the roads perhaps, preferably in high season? Whatever you do, avoid at all costs — even if that cost is your own life — to take responsibility for your own actions.

There, I said it.

This is obviously some kind of automated bot. The problem with those visits is that they seriously skew my visitor statistics. I don’t like that. Today I had enough of it and decided to investigate some further. My first Google result was an entry on Penguin Pete’s blog from July 18th this year, which led me to believe that this was a fairly recent phenomenon. I tried to leave a comment there but was unable to get past the CAPTCHA sentinel. One of the commenters there referenced another site though, which offered a way to ban those visits by editing the .htaccess file. You can read there how to do that if you are affected and so inclined.

That site offered yet another reference which described more or less my case on blogboing.com, dated October 10th 2007. That long had this been going on already? What the article described however was not exactly the same thing as I noticed on my blog, but it came close enough. Notably all the suspicious entries in my log files ended with &FORM=QBHP, while the article on blogboing talked about &FORM=LVSP and &FORM=LIVSOP. I have no idea what these parameters stand for, but the two cases looked identical enough. Later I found another article on blogboing which describes my exact same case.

Furthermore, blogboing had yet another reference, this time from webmasterworld.com, dated August 28th 2007. Wow, this gets older and older by the minute! But consider this: halfway down the comments there is a guy called msndude, which I take to be a representative of Microsoft, who offers an explanation: “it’s all part of Microsofts’s quality control system”! Well, you gotta have the nerve! Moreover mister msndude adds insult to injury by saying this at the end: “blocking these IP addresses could prevent your site from being included in the Live Search index”. Hoppa! Threatening web owners is definitely going to help in this case, yessirree!

Now, with most of my search engine referrals coming from Google anyway, ask me if I care about not being listed in the Microsoft Live Search Index. Go on, ask me. No, I don’t. I went into my cPanel, found the IP Deny Manager, and made this entry: 65.52.0.0/14. This will block all visits originating from IP addresses 65.52.0.0 to 65.55.255.255. Problem taken care of. Bye bye, Microsoft, come back when you have learned how to behave in a civil way.

This solution with the IP Deny Manager is a bit easier if you’re daunted by the prospect of manually editing your .htaccess file and if your host has cPanel. It might be applicable to other web hosting control panels, but I have no experience with those.

Seen on a trip in Koraka near Rodakino

So, bring your friends and head to the Cafe Oriste, it’s too hot to sit inside anyway. Unfortunately I’ll be away this weekend, but the doors are wide open, you can help yourself to whatever you want (I nailed the furniture and fixtures just in case, lol).

The stupid part is that we paid full price, 655€ including installation, when on Monday the summer sales started and the same shop now has a perfectly good GE model for half that price. Our device was delivered on Monday morning, before I learnt about the summer sales. I also opened the packaging immediately while I was in the kitchen waiting for the faucet to give some vital life signs, because I’m the type that likes to read manuals. Serves me right. Moreover the 2 units (one internal, one external) were sitting on the kitchen floor and the packaging got soaked from the bottom up. Bummer.

Before we decided to get one of those I studied the matter thoroughly and was lead to understand that a 4200-5200 BTU model would be sufficient for the room it was going to be installed in (41.6 m3/1466 cu.ft). Nobody sells units lower than 9000 BTU. Anyway, this is what we got, this is what we’ll get. It’s going to be installed this Friday (last famous words…)