Travel, Identity Management, IT Observations, Life
I’ve launched a new site that reviews airlines that fly to New Zealand. The site is New Zealand Airline Review. The aim of the site is to:
Hopefully you find this a useful website when you’re booking your next trip, and if so, tell your friends about airlinereview.co.nz.
I’ve just received an email stating:
I have different certficates in the simplesamlphp sp and OpenSSO IdP, but both certificates signed by same CA.
If we have metadata signing enabled in the simplesamlsp, and If I try to “Register Remote Identity Provider”, I am getting the erro, “Certificate Not Trusted”
Can’t we use different certificates signed by same CA in simpleamlphp and opensso ?
So we have a:
So if this is the case, why would you be trying to register a remote identity provider in OpenSSO? You should be:
http://kenning.co.nz/identity-management/connecting-opensso-idp-with-simplesamlphp-sp/ tells you a little more about connecting an OpenSSO IDP to a SimpleSAMLPhp SP.
The main international airport in Tokyo is Narita Airport (there is Haneda, but that doesn’t really count for New Zealand). Narita Airport is broken up into two terminals, Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. Both Qantas and Air New Zealand use Terminal 2, a map of Narita Terminal 2 shows how to get around the airport.
From Terminal 2, the next point is heading to Tokyo Station. Wikitravel lists a few methods to go from Narita to Tokyo, the main ones being:
The Airport Limousine bus costs 3,100 yen ($50NZD), but includes a free day ticket on the Tokyo Metro. There is also a ticket with two days on the Tokyo Metro available for 6,000 yen ($98NZD). The Airport Limousine Bus is expensive, but will take you straight to your hotel in Tokyo, though could take longer than an hour or so.
JR Narita Express (N’EX) costs 2,940 yen ($48NZD), and takes exactly 53 minutes. It takes you direct to Tokyo Station. There is a train station for N’EX as part of Terminal 2. For 3,500 yen ($57NZD), you can get a Suica & N’EX package (see the Suica & N’EX English Guide). Suica is a rechargeable card much like a Snapper card in Wellington, and this package comes with 1,500 yen ($24NZD) preloaded on it. This lets you get around Tokyo without having to buy paper tickets. There’s also a Suica English guide available.
Finally, there’s the Keisei Skyliner. No mucking around with this one, this is a straight train between Central Tokyo and Narita for 1,920 yen ($31NZD). They also have a deal with a trip on the Skyliner and 2 days of the Tokyo Metro for 2,480 yen ($40NZD). This Keisei Skyliner & Metro Pass deal appears really good value, as you’re getting two days unlimited travel on the Tokyo Metro for only $9NZD.
For our trip, I’ve ruled out the Airport Limousine Bus as being too expensive, and so it’ll come down to either the N’EX or the Skyliner. The Skyliner is a good deal on the underground, but I want to use a lot of the JR overground services such as the JR Yamanote line, so it’ll be a toss up.
The next part of the trip is finding accommodation. Once you know your flight dates and times, you can figure out how many nights accommodation you need. A great place to look at hostels and hotels is Hostel World. I had a look at the range of hostels and hotels available in Tokyo, and the quality varies. I’ve always found that people who write reviews on websites tend to not always accurately represent the truth. Of course, there is some variation on the experience people have while staying at places, due to their experiences leading up to that point, and the people they’re interacting with. If you’ve had a crap time and its raining and the people in your dorm are idiots, you’re more than likely going to be a harsh reviewer, and vice versa.
So with this in mind, I selected Anne Hostel Asakusa Bashi. Overall the place is rated 87% which is pretty good for a hostel, and comes with a free breakfast, which is always important if you’re trying to save bucks while travelling. The price is 3,200 yen a night per person for a twin private room with a shared bathroom. That works out to be $53 a night per person. And while you could get it down to $40NZD a night, that’s for a 12 bed dorm, so I think the $13 a night per person is worth it to ensure my partner remains sane while we’re over there!
When you book a hostel through Hostel World, you put down a 10% deposit of the total cost, and you pay the remaining 90% to the hostel when you check in. In this case, I paid a 10% deposit of 3,840 yen ($63NZD), and will be paying the remainder 34,560 yen ($572NZD) when we arrive.
All up, we’re paying 38,400 yen ($636NZD) for six nights accommodation in a twin private room with a shared bathroom.
Anne Hostel on Google Maps
As for Anne Hostel, it’s pretty close to Tokyo Station. From Tokyo Station, head on the JR Yamanote line from Tokyo Station to Akihabara Station. Then take the Sōbu Line from Akihabara Station to Asukusabashi Station. Just up the road from Asukusabashi Station is Anne Hostel.
Anne Hostel is an average hostel in Japan, and appears to be typical of what you can expect. Size in Tokyo is at a premium, and so you find yourself staying in a place that can often be crowded, noisy, and full of bustle. But you cannot expect perfect peace and quiet in the middle of Tokyo. Even when you look at the prices paid, you must realise that this is the price you pay to exist within Tokyo, not for comfort. Of course there are fantastic hotels within Tokyo that give you amazing views, but these come with higher prices.
If you’re more flexible about your room requirements (i.e. not after a private room and happy with dorms), I also recommend the Tokyo International Hostel. Being on the 18th and 19th floor the view is far more impressive, and the rates of 3,860 yen ($63NZD) a night per person is pretty reasonable.
My partner and I will be heading to Japan from the 31st of October to the 7th of November, and I’ll be documenting the process involved with doing this.
First thing’s first which is booking travel. I had to make sure that the travel period suited both mine and my partner’s needs. In order to get the best travel deals, there needs to be some flexibility.
Good sites to look at travel costs are House of Travel, Flight Centre, and STA Travel. These sites are great to get a feel of the rough prices to travel overseas. But don’t get lulled into thinking that they are the best prices or even the best deals.
For instance, going through House of Travel gets you a specific flight from a specific airline, say Singapore Airlines. But if you head to Singapore Airline’s website, you can drill down and adjust your flights, which would allow you to add in a stop-over, something that those travel-aggregation sites don’t seem to offer.
Also, don’t forget to check out other airline’s websites, such as Air New Zealand, and Qantas. Another feature of an airline’s site could be showing you the prices across a time period, and showing when prices are going to increase.
Of course, the longer you leave the flights, the more expensive they’ll become. I found a flight with Singapore Airlines for two people to Tokyo return for around $2576 including all taxes. However, a couple of days later, that price disappeared, and the next cheapest quoted to me by Flight Centre for the dates was $3200 approximately.
Anyways, heading back to Qantas, I found that if I travelled from the 31st of October to the 8th of November, instead of a week later, I could save …
$1310.40!
By going a week earlier and being part of a sale, I ended up paying $1371.80, instead of $2027. Another good thing about Qantas is that they don’t require a passport number to book, unlike some other websites. Great if you see a good deal but don’t have a passport yet.
The issues
When you put your hand into a hologram, and grab something and move it away, how does the computer know what you’re aiming at?
I guess this is a problem of 3D space, and knowing exactly
- what is being displayed
- where each pixel of light is
- a 3d model of the hand
For example, if someone is touching a cube that is displayed in midair, we need to know all the points of the cube, and where they exist in the 3D space of the real world. So we imagine that the cube is a physical cube. Once we know it exists, we need to model other 3D objects that exist in that 3D world, such as a hand. Once we have a hand modelled and mapped to the 3D world, we can then model these two 3D objects interacting with each other, even though one isn’t real (this doesn’t matter).
So now that the computer knows where two objects are, that doesn’t mean to say a person knows where his hand is in relation to an object. This depends on their perspective, i.e. where their head is in relation to their eyes, in relation to the object they’re interacting with.
The next thing is to make sure we’re interacting with the object we think we’re interacting with. For instance, we could be touching one box, but it’s really in the position of the second box. This is because of the angle that we’re viewing this from. So we need to look at the person that is interacting with an object, and trace a line from their sight of vision to their hand to the object they are touching.
The BBC states that Unemployment in Spain is around 17%. So what does this figure mean?
Well Wikipedia states that Spain has a population of around 47 million. 17% of this number (which of course isn’t the actual number of unemployed people, since babies and retired people don’t work hopefully) is 7,990,000.
8 million unemployed people. That’s twice the population of New Zealand. All unemployed.
The iknow interface @ smart.fm
I’m planning a trip to Japan, so have been brushing up on my Japanese. It’s been nine years since I’ve been to Japan, so I’ve need to brush up on both hirigana, and katakana. I haven’t even started thinking about kanji.
smart.fm (formally iknow.co.jp) uses the concept of spaced repetition. This is a method of reminding you about about something just before you forget it. While this sounds sort of weird, it’s a proven concept in memory.
While you can learn Japanese at smart.fm, it’s actually a learning platform for any sort of lists you’d like to learn. I’m learning the countries that exist in Asia and the Pacific (such as Azerbaijan and British Indian Ocean Territories), a little bit of Norwegian, and body parts of the human body, in Japanese!
In the spirit of body parts, here are some of my hints:
Here’s another screenshot of the iknow interface…
The word for run, with the hirigana and kanji of the word.