Help me with my ipod

I have been reading over the problem I had with my ipod on the apple discussions board, it seems many other users had the same problem. The problems starts if the ipod is not used for more than 36 hours, and when it is turned on again after that, some file gets corrupted. What is so infuriating about this problem is that it occurs due to a bug in the ipod firmware, and has nothing to do with misusing the ipod (unless you consider not using the ipod for more than 36 hours a misuse of the product), and what is even worste is that following the advice given by the apple support, downloading and running the latest ipod updater, led to completely screwing up my ipod. Anyway after trying every trick suggested by very helpful people on the discussion board without any success, I did a full restore on my ipod loosing all my music.

A month ago this would have made my ipod a completely useless peace of metal, but now with many free podcasts available it is less of a disaster. But if you would like to help my fill up my ipod with some music, that would be greatly appreciated. I have a streamload acount, which you can upload audio files to, either through the website here : http://www.streamload.com/Roots/Upload.asp
or if you want to upload many files, it is much more convenient to get the streamload utility from download.com, and use that, my account name by the way is whendawi.
My favourite cds were Manu Chau, Metalica, The doors, U2, Maná and Juanes, but if you have some new cd or single you think its good and you would like to share it with me , I would be glad to download it and try.

Football in Rio

Football is of course is a big thing here in Brazil, and one of the things on my list to do in Rio was to go to a football match, unfortunetly the Maracaná stadium is closed at the moment for renuvation work. But there are other smaller stadiums in Rio like the Flamengo stadium at the Governors Island, and yesterday there was a match between Flamengo and some other team so I decided to go and watch it.

I decided to leave my camera back for safety reasons, so no picture this time, although now that I think about it , it did not seem so dangerous there with all the security around the stadium. Anyway I made it to the governor island, but I had no idea were the stadium was, then I spotted a father and son in red football shirts, and I decided to follow them, they led me straight to the stadium, the ticket cost me 15 Reals (abouth 5 Euros), it was the cheaper secion, with no cover from the sun, but it had an excellent view of the field. But when I tried to go into the stadium, the security would not allow me, since I had my swis knife with me, I had quite a delima, throw away my swiss knife, or not go in to watch the game, I did not like neither option, but in the end I figured a way out of this situation, I went out and hid my knife in some kind of plant bed, under some dead leafs, and got into the statium, the knife was still there when I came back to pick it up after the game.

The level of football was very good, both teams played attacking football, and the players were quite skilled and full of tricks, as you would expect from Brazilian players, and if given a chance to shoot they score. Every time there was a free kick the local crowd cried the name of Diego, apparently he is their free kick expert, and after two minutes he showed his reputations was well earned, as he scored free kick from 20m, perfectly placing it in the top corner of the goal. Ten minutes later and Flamengo were up up two to nil, with a nice shot from the edge of the box. After that though the local team seemed to lay back and take it easy, the other team took full advantage of that and attacked, and they managed to score too nice goals to level up the score, the local crowd mood went sour, and the curses towards the referee intensified, it ended up at two all.

One interesting thing I did not see somewhere else, is that the referee used some kind of powder to mark the ball and the wall position, in case of a free kick close to the goal, that eliminates the problem of players moving the ball or the wall when the referee is not looking.

My ipod is definitively corrupt

I went to the Apple site to look for help on how to fix my ipod, they suggested downloading the ipod updater and using it to fix the issue. I did that and the updater had two options, update or restore, since resotre destroys all the music on the ipod I decided to use the update, it reported a write error and failed, that seems to completely screw up my ipod, my ipod will not start anymore, I get the corrupt folder picture when I try to start it, thank you Apple.

I did find a topic on the Apple discussion board on the subject, and it seems many other people have this problem, though there is a lot of info to read, I will have to do it later.

blogger, google, ipod and books

Blogger the website I am using for my blog is part of Google, since Google bought the company a while back, anway I decided to try something, I typed the name of my blog in Google search box, but to my disappointement Google failed to find my blog. It seems to me that Google do not include the blogs in their search, even though that blogger is part of Google, maybe if enough people ask for it Google will listen.

I decided to take a break from reading Harry Potter in Spanish, after finishing the second one. I wanted to read books from authors of the countries I am visiting, since I am in Brazil, I figured the Alchemist would be a good one to get, since it is one of the most works of Brazil famous author Paulo Coelho, but I could not manage to find the book, it turns out it is quite difficult to find English books around here. I finally found a library that had 20 English books or so , and I decided to go for the Painted House by John Grisham, I have not read any of his other works, and only saw the movies (The firm, The Pelican Breaf), I figured it would be a good chance to get to know this author.

My ipod seem to have got corrupted, I want to try it on a different Internet cafe to be sure, but in this internet cafe, it refuses to add any new stuff to the ipod, the old material on the ipod still work though, and deleting works as well. I tried using ipodUpdater to fix it, but it failed. If it does not work in another internet cafe, the only option might be to use ipodRip to copy the content to itunes, reformat the ipod and copy everything back.

Rio De Janeiro

I am still staying at hotel Marajó in Lapa, I quite like the location, across the street there is a cheap restaurant serving Brazilian food, and at the end of the street there is a neigberhood bar serving cheap ice cold beer, with amature musician doing jam sessions. On the weekend the street outside the hotel transformed into a big fiesta, street bands and performers entrtain the crowds, with food and drink stands along the street, selling Caipirinahs, cold beer and snacks.

Rio´s people are very friendly, open, always willing to help and very diverse, everybody seems to fit around here, no mater what their skin color or sexual preference is, combine that with the location, the beaches, the weather, the architecture and the cultural aspects of the city, and Rio deserves to be considered one of the top cities of the world.

Andrew the Hypograph animator

Andew is one of the coolest people I met so far in my travel. He is an animator and he actually animated the hypograph in the Harray Potter 3 : The prisoner of Azkaban !

Rio De Janeiro

The cable cart at the Sugar Loaf takes you to up to a terrific view point over the city and the bay. Rio has a very irregular layout, with hills and mountains separating the different neighborhoods, this somewhat makes orientation easier, compared to cities with grid style layouts for example.

Rio's people are very friendly and eager to help , but most of the do not speak any English only Portuguese. Portuguese and Spanish are supposed to be close, but that is hardly noticeable in the spoken language, though it is more evident in the written language. But I realized that if I speak Spanish, most of the time they understand me, but it is hard for me understand their replies in Portuguese.

Copacabana beach, Rio has a few lovely beaches, and perfect weather for laying on the beach, at least it was during the two days I spent on the beach, today it is cloudy and raining, I hope that does not last. I spent one day on the Copacabana beach and another on the Ipanema beach. Surprisingly neither beach was overcrowded, maybe in the weekend it is a different story.

I been around the city for 3 days now, the first two days I stayed in Botafogo close to the beaches, yesterday I moved to Lapa close to the center of Rio, which is a nicer area but further away from the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. In Botafogo I stayed in a youth hostel part of the YHI, which was expensive considering I had to share a room with six beds. In Lapa I found a nice hotel, called Marajo for almost half the price, with extremely friendly staff. I found a very good internet cafe not far away, in the metro station of Lapa.

Rio De Janeiro

I arrived to Rio yesterday, after a long 22 hour bus drive from Iguazu, the little sleep and the drinking of the few days before that, hit me in the bus as I slept most of the way, and I collapsed in bed again when I reached a hostel. I visited the Sugar Loaf yesterday to get a Panoramic view of the city, but I still can not find an internet cafe with a proper version of windows , where I connect my memory card and upload my pictures, the Internet cafes are also very expensive. I plan to go to the Copacabana beach today.

Iguazú falls

These rainbows are common occurance around the falls.

The weather was quite warm during my visit, quite nice for taking the boat trip, which takes you quite close to the waterfalls, and the boat drivers get extra pleasure from getting everybody realy wet.

This is some kind of mamal, and there are quite a few of his kind around the park. One time I sat down to have a sandwitch, and when they smilled the food, they came towards me, I had to stand up fast, otherwise one of them would have propably bit my hand trying to snatch some food, I started walking away with a horde of them chasing me.

This girl decided to sit down on the fence and get her picture taken , nex to the sign that says don´t sit on the fence.

A view from the Brazilian side. I actually stayed in the Argentinian town of Puerto Iguazú while visiting the waterfalls, it is smaller and quiter than it´s Brazilian counterpart. I slept in Park Iguazú hostel, a newly openned place, with a pool and a lot of garden space to relax or have a drink, the staff is extremely friendly as well, and once they finish the building work it should be a very nice place.

The largest in the world, these falls are immense and impressive. There are many falls around, and each offers a different natural setting, it is like viewing twenty different falls, just that all of them are grouped into the same area.

Cordoba

I am using Cordoba as a stop on the way to Iguazú, it is still 20 hours by bus from here to Iguazú , from there I am heading to Brazil were it is warmer. I hanged around for a couple of days in Cordoba , to relax and charge my batteries (mine and my devices).

I quite liked Cordoba, I just enjoyed just walking around the streets of the city, almost everything was closed on Sunday and yesterday (15 of august holiday), but that just mean the streets were more quite. The people here are some of the nicest I met in my travel, I am staying at el Refuge, a youth hostel run by a very friendly family, every morning the lady would make me a nice cafe con leche. Food is so good around here, that I found hard to resist eating in a restauranat at least once a day, and of course I would order a good bottle of wine to go with the food. I quite liked the Santa Julia wines (Malbec, Syrha , Cabernet Suvion), I bought one bottle of Malbec for the road, only because it would be difficult to carry more.

Heading to Iguazú today , it is going to be a long trip , but I got my ipod and my Harry Potter book to keep me entertained.

Las Leñas ski

Skied a couple of days at the resort, a nice resort with very good pistes. I was a bit rusty in the beginning since I have not skied for two and half years, but by the second day I was doing quite good. The only gripe I have is that they did not open the two highest lifts, so by the end of the second day I have already skied all the open tracks a few times each. The Insbruk cafe had a really great buffet dinner, and the wines were excellent as usual for this area.

Mendoza Argentina

It is very cold around here, I just came to do some skiing, and then I am heading north to Brazil where it is nice and warm. Tomorrow I am going to the Las Leñas ski resort, which is considered the best in Argentina, although with only 60km of ski tracks, it is rather small compared with some of the European resorts I have been to, and I think five days would be enough time to try all the tracks.

The Insurance paid for my glasses, which was the must expensive item stolen, I have just sent them receipts for the replacements of the other items, hopefully they will pay for those as well.

Food around here is great, and not that expensive, and the wines are quite good as well, I tried the a Malbec wine yesterday apparently it is a local type of wine (they don´t have merlot here ), which quite liked.

Terror attack on my town of Shafaamr

Some Jewish settler who was unhappy with his government, decided to take it out on my town people, emptied his automatic weapon in a bus, 4 people were killed (two Moslem women, and two Christian men), and many others injured, all from town. I used to tell people what a quite place my town is in the middle of the whole violence, well I guess no more.

Valle de la Luna

Moon valley, the colors of the mountain change at sunset, a very beautiful seen. But I had high expectations, and having to share this sunset with hunderds of other tourists, greatly detracts from the experience.

Climbing up to see the sunset in the Valle de la Luna (moon valley), according to my guide should be one of the best attraction of Chile.

Some rock formations in the Atacama desert, they are called the three virgins, and the locals assign some spiritual value to them, and I was not supposed to climb up to take a picture next to them

From Bolivia to Chile and other misc matters

It is quite a leap between Bolivia and Chile in organization, modernity and prices, here in Chile expect to pay European prices for eating out, accommodation and transport, but they actually have tourist information offices here, and they will tell you all you need to know.

I liked Bolivia even though I had some of the worst experiences of my trip there, this is because I had some of my best experiences there as well.

My family was in Sharam el Shikh Egypt last week, at the same time when the terrorist attacks took place, luckily none of them got hurt , and they even decided to stay after the attacks, I might have left on the first bus.

Podcasts replaced blogs as the latest thing in media technology, a podcast are audio content (i.e. radio shows) that you can subscribe to, podcasts might have been around for a year or two, but now apple added built in support for podcasts in itunes, so you can browse, search and subscribe to podcasts in one click. It is great way for me to upload new free material to my ipod. There are many different podcasts already available : news, sport, science, technology, music, comedy, film reviews, etc., and more being added all the time, but my favorite podcast by far is EarthCore, a novel written by Scott Sigler, and published FREE as a podcast, a very captivating thriller, and what made it more interesting for me is the timing of it, it is a story about a discovery of a very rich mine, and I found out about it just after visiting the mines of Cerro Rico, one of the richest silver deposits ever to be found.

Salar de Uyuni

Taking a bath in a natural thermal pool, a nice antidote to the -10 c temperature outside, warmed me up and unfrosted my feet and hands.

Geysers , this area has a lot of underground thermal activity, and the early morning the geysers tend to be most active, due to the difference of temperature, that is why we started the last day at 5 am.

The colored lake, this lake changes it´s colors during the day, due to the activity of the algae living in the water.

Arbol de Pierdra (Stone tree), the only reason I am taking a picture next to it, is that I tried ten times to climb it and failed. A few month ago I was fitter and I climbed higher rocks, proper shows and clothes would have helped as well.

Some kind of a local rabbit, too bad we could not eat for dinner (it is a natural reserve), I guess it is going to be unchewable beef again.

Some kind of local fox looking to snatch some left over food from the tourists

A colony of flamingo roaming a shallow salt lake.

Isla del Piscados (fish island), there are no fish there, it is an island of cactuses in the middle of the Salar.

The Salar de Uyuni, One of the most amazing exotic natural landscapes, a vast bed of salt covering a lake of water. The salt is so similar to hard snow in it´s texture and appearance, and in the night it gets as cold as snow.