The washing machine was fixed and also something unexpected happened. Weather changed and there were several really warm and sunny days. It was such a luxury to have lunch outdoor in the park. Too bad the lunch here is usually just a sandwich or similar which is pretty much nonsense compared to proper two course lunches I got used to in Budapest.

Nice weather also took us to Portobello beach to check activities there. For our surprise there were some people swimming in the sea. We decided to stay dry and just walk along the beach.

Just couple weeks ago I had a leaking radiator valve which was fixed. Today I was checking the washing machine while it was working and I noticed it leaked water out on the floor. The washing machine is part of the kitchen furnishing and it has covering panels so I cannot see where the leak is or how big it is - just some water coming through while the machine was running. Luckily the leak was not flooding the whole floor but any leak near wooden floor is bad.

So I had to call my landlady again and now she is trying to organize repairs for it...

Actually I do not understand why washing machine is in the kitchen so often in this country. In Finland and Hungary the machine was placed in the bathroom where water leaks from the washing machine are not that dramatical. I guess it has something to do with peculiar electricity standards here in the UK.

I was running Ubuntu 7.10 inside VMware player and Ubunu's updater offered update to 8.04. I checked Ubuntu website and everything seemed to be fine so I proceeded with update. But after update I noticed that shared folders were not visible for the guest OS anymore and also other features were not working properly.

Reinstalling VMware Tools did not help because installation failed. After some searching I found a good blog entry by Peter Cooper. Despite the topic the described steps work very well also on VMware Player.

During my almost three years in Budapest I did not do any cycling. The traffic was too hectic and there were no bike lanes near me. But I decided to do some biking later on.

Today I went to the bike station which is Edinburgh's bicycle recycling and cycling promotion charity. It opened at 10:30 AM but I was there a bit later and I had to queue to get in the shop. After checking options I spotted one bike with decent part sets (mix of Deore, LX and XT where it matters). I took it out for a test ride and it felt ok so I bought it and pedaled away.

My problem is now to regain my bicycling muscles and learn how to ride on the left side. Bicycling on the pavement among pedestrians is forbidden here so cyclists should stay on the street. There are good amount of bike lane paintings on the streets but those are often shared with busses. Left hand side traffic is also a bit tricky for me still, while turning left I managed to end up on the wrong side of the divider and finding myself on the wrong side of the road. I was happy that there was no heavy traffic around me. Roundabouts and turning right over many lanes are such maneuvers which are pretty much mystery for me at the moment.

In early January I was sitting in the office in Budapest in front of my workstation. I was scratching my head with some tricky business logic and thinking how to transfer my knowledge to other team members. Luckily there were some bright minds to take over my tasks on the team so it was not that big change for the project schedule (I hope!) when I packed and left.

After handing over my keys in Budapest many things have changed. Edinburgh is much smaller than Budapest and many central locations are within walking distance. But traffic is still pretty insane during rush hours and ongoing tram line construction is causing delays. It will be interesting to see whether Budapest Metro 4 is completed before Edinburgh tram line.

Population in Edinburgh is much more diverse than in Budapest. So, in addition to various Scottish dialects I hear Polish and many other languages while traveling to work. While sitting I usually check local free newspaper and I learn about violence, celebrities and football. Maybe the news are the reason why I consider Scotland a bit unsafe. In 2005 Scotland had second highest murder rate in Europe. The first position on that list went to Finland but for some strange reason I would not consider streets in Finnish cities unsafe.

Back to the office. In Budapest I was working in a new office premise with high spec workstation and proper coffee while following well defined procedures. In my new job surroundings are a bit different as the office building is most likely over 100 years old. Also the way of working is something that got a moment to get used to. My new colleagues have very different backgrounds compared to my colleagues in my previous job where almost everyone was a Java developer. Oh, and I do not have access to Csocsó table anymore which makes me a bit sad. That one would go to hygiene part in Herzberg's two factor theory.

My social life outside work is still developing but it seems to be quite easy to get to know new people simply by joining some Mac or Java user group meetings. It is also possible to learn something new while drinking beer with fellow geeks. For example the last Mac meeting covered potential downsides of HD video with adult content.

I think I have had quite good time here so far. But it will take some several months to get bigger and better picture about life quality here.

Couple weeks ago I visited art supplies shop with Dóra. I bought a sketch book and some pencils with different hardness. After the shopping I have been filling my new sketch book with various drawings.

I used to draw quite a lot during high school but after that I only filled my lecture notes with some nonsense. But now I had intention to do some serious drawing again. I also knew that Internet is full of tutorials for all kind of pencil techniques. After couple tries my confidence grew and I decided to do something more challenging.

I took a photo of a 73 Corvette from Internet and I divided it to squares in order to get proportions correctly. But that Corvette has plenty of curves which turned out to be pretty difficult to get right despite the grid. Also the photo has nasty shadows and highlights - at least for my skills. This exercise dropped me back to earth. But I try again - maybe something boxy from 80s...

My current internet connection is Vodafone's mobile broadband and it seems to work better than Three's. Unfortunately it is also more expensive. However, there are some technical issues.

I noticed many forums missing photos from their posting. It turned out that Vodafone uses content control which blocks access to the websites. For example flickr.com and imageshack.us are blocked. It is possible to remove this block but the web interface for this tries to send SMS containing password to the client settings. And Mac mobile connect software does not support SMS. So, switch SIM card from the dongle to mobile and back, visit Vodafone store or call their customer service.

Another problem is with those images which are actually visible. Vodafone uses a transparent proxy to downsize image files. The result is rather ugly as the compression is set to maximum. But this case is easier to solve. The latest Windows software has a feature for this so some smart Mac programmers observed what is happening with the network traffic and created a small application to disable compression. It is available at http://aitne.com/, it is donation ware and it works fine.

I have been following GBP-EUR exchange rate for a while and things do not look good for a person who receives his income in GBP. Just half a year ago the rate was 0.7 but now it is only 0.8. And it seems it keeps closing euro because economical downturn is just starting.

But because I am not about to buy brand new Mercedes this affects me only in two ways. One is my visits to Finland as prices are higher there for me. Another is grocery shopping in Edinburgh because price of imported cheese will go up as well among other articles.

After my previous experiments with the forex trade I am a bit reluctant to try that again. Maybe I should get a remote work from euro area as an extra...

Article in Telegraph:Sterling weakens further creating both winners and losers in UK

This flat is a bit closer to work and I am sharing it only with Dóra. So things are good but naturally there are minor problems. For some reason leaks seem to follow me and now I found leaking radiator. Because the leak is not catastrophic the repair is scheduled on Thursday. It will be interesting to see if Scottish repairmen are any more punctual than Hungarian.

Edit: For my surprise the repairman came within agreed time and fixed everything in one visit.

Finnish Sampo bank switched over to Danske Bank's information systems. This merge took over 14 months with over 3100 persons. And results was rather embarrassing.

Their online customer pages have numerous XSS vulnerabilities. In practice this means that malicious content can be injected on the web page while user sees the original domain on the URL field. There are many example floating around internet. Here is a screenshot.

The online banking is implemented with Java applet and some native code. The purpose of this native code is unknown but curious minds have already analyzed applet. Here is one wikipage.

Because there are also other problems with their banking systems the online banking has been working badly and customers have experienced bizarre issues. Balance is not matching reality, some functionality is not available and also normal ATM withdraw transactions have failed with some Sampo customer. The latest and also pretty severe problem happened to a poor customer whose mortgage payment was taken twice.

No wonder Sampo-Danske bank customers are angry and changing bank. As soon as their system is back online.

Recently I got a task to setup up Tomcat running on a Windows 2000 server vmware image and configure some web applications to run on it. It had already SQL Server (version 8 or so) running on it. Yea, not really the most modern software and definitely not my favorites...

Restoring the database from a file was not that complicated but took some time to figure out how to refresh the view. Setting up tomcat was a bit trickier as I missed one setting in its configuration. But the most frustrating thing was that the setup lacked all the tools I would have used on a unix platform.

Actually the list of my every day command line tools is not too long. Couple consoles with cd, mv/cp, grep, vi and tail are usually enough for setup and config tasks. But now I was doing endless clicking around and the progress was a bit slow. If I have to touch that again I'd better gather my own toolset for Windows or hire my own outsourced setup monkey.

It is sometimes a little bit rainy here and today was not an exception. While waiting my bus and standing in gusty wind and rain I really appreciated my water proof trekking coat. In Budapest I used to wear my leather jacket but somehow in Edinburgh a coat with Goretex seems to be ideal.

After testing for two days I came in to conclusion that this Three mobile broadband is not for me. The connection kept failing frequently, the provided software was lacking features and I could not log in to My3 to see my account information. The last problem was really annoying as you should receive the password in to you Three number. This happens to be the number of the mobile broadband and there is no way for Mac OS X user to get received SMSs from the Huawei e220 modem.

Today I packed everything, took the original receipt with me and went to the store. Three promises that in case of mobile broadband connection you have 3 days to return it back to the same store you bought it from in case you are not happy with it. This is also printed on the leaflet in the box, so the matter should be quite clear...

It turned out that before they can accept product back I should make a phone call to their technical support. I disagreed with this but I ended up using store's phone to call. This took roughly 20 minutes as the technical support was busy. The guy on the phone was ok and I explained the situation. He went through same steps as in the setup guide but he ended up being a bit frustrated as I demanded to cancel the contract.

Well, after the phone call the store manager agreed to progress with cancellation forms. But naturally I was the lowest priority customer so it took another 20 minutes before my Three account was deactivated. Now the exciting part is to see how many bills I will receive afterwards....

It seems that other people have similar problems:
http://aonach.com/chatter/3-data-modem-set-up-issues-not-so-quick-or-easy/

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055115306

After checking some reviews and comparing prices I decided to go for a mobile broadband instead of a fixed connection. Choosing the right operator was more difficult but I ended up choosing Three connection. They offered 3 GB monthly transfer for 15 £ per month with free modem and 12 months contract.

On Friday I went shopping then and I did not find Three's store right away but I ended up visiting one of those shops selling connections from almost all operators. I was already wondering how they can make their profit selling same product as neighboring operator specific shops. Well, this place offered me same Three connection with 3 GB limit with 15 £ per month but with 49 £ for the modem and 18 months contract. In order to get free modem 24 months contract was required. So, shopping around pays well - again.

After saying no thanks I continued along the Princess street and I found Three's own store. There things progressed straightforward as their numbers were matching what I read before. Curious detail was saleswoman's computer screen background image having large text "THREE SLAVE" on it. I resisted temptation to ask whether she is looking for a raise with that.

Setting up new modem was quite easy but for Mac OS X users extra steps are needed. Drivers have to be downloaded and installed. The HUAWEI modem and connection software for OS X is very basic and lacks couple features. Because Three's connection is 3G only it does not support GPRS. This means that in case the connection is weak, it falls back to GPRS which does not work. It actually connects to Orange's network but the connection does not work with Three's settings. To fix this I have to disconnect and manually select right operator again. HUAWEI's Mac OS X software should have possibility to force connection to certain operator or prevent GPRS fallback.

edit: I returned the modem back to store due problems above and failing connections. Read more.

JUGS meeting was worth of a visit. Too bad the social part started a bit late and I had to leave too soon. But there will be more meetings later on.

My flat hunting is progressing and I have found a very nice flat near Leith walk. The landlord is a private person and the rent is reasonable. I haven't signed the contract yet but it should be done soon. So, fingers crossed with this one.

I have been working in my current job something like six weeks now. I had some doubts after my first impression but things are getting better now. There are some interesting tasks waiting and I already promised to create a small presentation about Hibernate.