Nearly time for boarding the first of two flights that should (hopefully) allow me to land back in Manchester at just after 09:00 in the morning so I’m doing what any sane person with a wireless capable device would do and spending my last few minutes internet-whoring. I mentioned it in an old post along time ago, but the free and open wireless services Cairo airport provides is superb. Why more airports don’t adopt such a system is beyond me – all it takes is corporate sponsorship of the setup (read: the odd banner about the place letting you know who makes the service ‘possible’) and your away. Seeing as other airports already have this ‘other company’ tie in in the form of ‘Pay As You Surf’ providers this isn’t such a drastic change, except the role reversal is that everyone has the opportunity to have a greater guest experience within the airport. I know for me, the fact that I can sit and surf increases the likelihood that I’ll go buy a coffee and maybe some snacks, something I simply don’t do if I can’t surf (in those situations I just sit quietly in a corner listening to music and reading – probably more productive, but not as much of an earner for the airport services).
However, it seems to be a huge sticking point in the UK in general, the availability of open wireless points, and it still baffles me as to why. The extra benefits open to places offering free and open wireless connectivity seem to far outweigh any negative issues created by the hassle of setting it up / paying the bills.

But I’ll stop there before this turns into another full and pointless rant. If anyone has reasons why free wireless shouldn’t exist in all airports (and maybe even other transport stations as well) then let me know, because I can’t seem to find any valid ones.

I’m pretty excited about getting home this time, probably more so than on previous visits. Not exactly sure why specifically – got a few things lined up which probably form part of the excitement – but the flip side is that I also felt a little bit ‘bad’ leaving Egypt this time, something I never really got before. And, similarly, I have no idea why.
Don’t misunderstand, it’s not as if it was emotionally difficult (I didn’t quite break down into tears…!) but it just felt like I was really leaving another place I’m attached to, whereas on all previous trips my main thought was along the lines of… w00t! Good beer!
Maybe part of the reason is that, if all goes according to ‘plan’ then this will be the last time I’ll be leaving Egypt to go ‘on holiday’, as next time will be when I’m planning to return back to normality and the grind of ‘real life’… Maybe.

Looking forward to getting home and opening and playing with all the little gadgets I’ve managed to spend most of my wages on already, especially getting the T41 up and running – think I’m going to go all out and leave it untainted by the smell of Windows and just stick a linux distro on it – probably Kubuntu 7.04 as I want to see how it performs on i386 (my experiments with it on PPC were good, but could have been better). Hopefully most of the components will be as the internet reviews suggested and will work out of the box. Main thing I can see needing to get working properly is the Graphics card, at which point I can fairly comfortably give Beryl a try, as well as seeing if I can get Wine to play with Eve Online and maybe even an older copy of Championship Manager… glory days.

Anyway, boarding should have begun for my flight, so I’d best go try and catch it.

Sorry for this falling into the oh-so-stereotypical Blogosphere ‘This Is My Life’ type post, but that’s the kind of blog this is… so deal with it.

LUGRadio Live in a week, Eve-Online tomorrow… oh yes.