2018 Travel Year in Review

I thought that 2017 had been a big year but 2018 has surpassed it in almost every way. Visiting the USA twice, spending time in England, Wales, Germany, and the Netherlands along with visiting Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand.
This is what it looked like on a map:



I managed to tick a few things off my wish list on the way.
  • First time flying Business on: Singapore, Qatar, Cathay Pacific, and Emirates
  • First flights on the shiny new A350-900
  • Visiting Snowdonia NP, Wales and walking the Llanberis path (in the snow)
  • Returning to Zion NP, Utah and ticking off Angels Landing and Observation Point - amazing hikes, both
  • Visiting Bryce Canyon, Utah for the first time - and experiencing it covered in snow
  • Trying out Virgin Australia's Premium Economy SYD-LAX
  • Ticking off all the art galleries and museums I'd most wanted to visit on the US East Coast
  • Visiting some parts of Australia I'd missed out on over the years - most notably the wonderful state of Tasmania
  • Hiking up to the summit of Ben Lomond near Queenstown, NZ - an incredibly beautiful place
Bryce Canyon National Park, red rock covered in snow



Statistics


  • Flights:  55
  • Distance:  93,994 miles
  • Duration:  8 days, 2 hours, 32 minutes


Top 10


Routes 

MEL↔SYD    6
ADL↔SYD    2
SYD↔TMW    2
SYD↔LAX    2
BOS↔JFK    2
DOH↔SGN    2
PER↔SYD    2
SIN↔SYD    2
LST↔SYD    2
PPP↔SYD    2

Airports

Sydney, NSW (SYD) 30
Melbourne, VIC (MEL) 8
Singapore (SIN) 4
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (SGN) 4
Doha, Qatar (DOH) 4
Salt Lake City, UT (SLC) 4
New York JFK, NY (JFK) 4
Los Angeles, CA (LAX) 3
Queenstown, New Zealand (ZQN) 2
Adelaide, SA (ADL) 2


Airlines

Virgin Australia 18
Delta Air Lines 9
Qantas 7
Singapore Airlines 4
Qatar Airways 4
Flybe 3
Tigerair Australia 3
Cathay Pacific 2
Emirates Airline 1
Thai Aiways 1


Planes

Boeing 737-800 16
Boeing 777-300ER 6
Airbus A330-300 3
Airbus A350-900 3
Airbus A330-200 3
Airbus A319 2
Boeing 717-200 2
ATR72-600 2
Embraer E195 2
Airbus A320 2

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Change the ComputerName value in Unattend.xml using PowerShell

A quick and dirty PowerShell script to update the value of ComputerName in Unattend.xml before imaging. This particular value is located at: <unattend>  <settings pass="generalize">   <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">     <computername> Which is a bit of a mouthful, but we can be lazy and just pull the value from the nth component node (in my case it's 3, or the 4th component node). PowerShell uses dots to describe the hierarchical path, which looks a lot neater than the above: $xml.unattend.settings.component[3].computername To repeat, the value of .component[n] will change depending on the structure of the file. The value of the
Read more

Testing out Link Aggregation

Image
I picked up a TP-Link managed switch last week as something of a compromise between affordability and features - as it turns out though, it does just about everything I could ask for, just without the extra expense from buying something that has HP or Cisco written on the side. I grabbed the TL-SG3216, a fanless L2 managed switch with 16x1Gigabit ports as it ticked all the boxes: Silent (fanless) Managed Link Aggregation/802.3ad (LACP) 802.1Q (VLAN) STP As a bonus, the CLI interface (via console cable or ssh) is very similar to Cisco's IOS, so I don't have to learn an entirely new syntax to configure it. Before I replace my existing switch, I spent a bit of time testing out its features. First up, I setup a spare Raspberry Pi with a second ethernet interface (via a USB dongle) to test out link aggregation. First up, the configuration on the Pi (Raspbian): Install ifenslave to allow for the creation of bonded network interfaces # apt-get install ifenslav
Read more

Xbox 360 Exclusive JRPGs on Xbox One

Image
Given it wasn't a big player in Japan (or Asia in general), JRPGs that were only available on the Xbox 360 are quite a rare breed indeed. Even rarer, then, are those that are included in the list of backwards compatible titles for Xbox One. Exclusives The only 3 titles that I know tick both boxes (360 exclusive AND backwards compatible on the Xbox One) are: Blue Dragon Infinite Undiscovery Lost Odyssey Infinite Undiscovery Infinite Undiscovery Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon enjoy reasonably high profiles, but I have a soft spot for Infinite Undiscovery . It seemed to mainly exist as a test game for the new Star Ocean engine but is an enjoyable fantasy JRPG with a solid cast and good battle system. It also features a New Game+ mode, which bumps up the difficulty. Multi-platform Titles Then there are a few more which are backwards compatible but are available on other platforms: Star Ocean: The Last Hope As an example, Star Ocean: The Last Hope (TLH)
Read more