En route to the olympics!
I wrote this post last week, more on my Vancouver experiences soon!
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I'm currently on the plane to Seattle, the first stop on my February/March adventure! After spending about a day in Seattle with friends, I will be heading up to Vancouver to partake in Olympic madness for about ten days.
A friend of a friend was nice enough to sublet me his furnished condo really close to the venue, and many of my friends will be staying in various places around vancouver, going to a bunch of different events. So far, I have tickets to ski cross, a few quarter-final hockey games, curling, and the closing ceremonies. I'm going to try my best to get tickets for the semi-final hockey match but currently they're going for a few thousand dollars a piece on craigslist, so I'm not holding my breath. I think it will be a lot of fun to watch the Gold Medal game in the public broadcast centre; if Canada makes it, I'd be surprised if most of the city isn't out somewhere watching the game! A victory would lead to partying the likes of which man has rarely seen! I'll most certainly post more info and pictures when I get to Vancouver!
The preponderance of WiFi on airplanes, though incredibly useful in abstract, is probably a net negative for me. I used to look at pan-continental flight as one of the few places devoid of the time-wasting temptations of the Internet. If I'm lucky enough to be sitting in a seat with power, I often think of the 5+ distraction-free hours as some of my most productive! I've written a few papers, an entire web application, planned out large changes in my life, and read some pretty interesting books on these long flights.
Luckily, this time, I was able to resist the temptation of WiFi, and instead fixed a bunch of bugs in some code I was writing, start work on an additional module for an application I've been writing for Acumen Fund (more on this later!), write this blog entry, and listen to a few more lectures from this Intro to Philiosphy class I found on iTunes edu.
Looks like we'll be landing in Seattle soon (only 2 hours late, way to go Delta!) so I guess that's it for my blog entry! Stay tuned for more!
Helping Haiti
In an interesting piece (the title is more controversial than the content), Don't Give Money to Haiti, Felix Salmon makes the point that large sums of money thrown at a corrupt government in short order will probably not be beneficial. As an example, he points to Red Cross money collected from the tsunami a few years ago; only 83% of the money has been spent, and since those donations were earmarked for that special purpose, the extra $500 000 000 is essentially stuck and cannot be used for Haiti efforts. Mr. Salmon's thesis is that if one must donate cash, ensure that it is not earmarked. Additionally researching the institution is critical. Wise advice.
For those with technology skills, Crisis Camps have been set up in various parts of the US. Tech folks can go to these events and brainstorm, and perhaps even build stuff to help out. In this case, time may be more valuable than money.
Here's the site for Crisis Camp Haiti in the Bay Area. It's starting really soon, so hurry!
There was a Crisis Camp in Brooklyn, but sadly I didn't hear of it till it had already passed 
Adobe CS4 Updater and Mac with Snow Leopard. (also, instruments.app)
I just reinstalled my computer, and was having issues: After installing Adobe Creative Suite 4, the Updater (which generally updates software _too_ frequently) checked for updates and then kept proclaiming that none were available.
Since my install DVDs were very old, I didn't believe this, and more recent updates were in fact available on the web. This bothered me for a while, so I poked around a bit. Much to my chagrin, Apple seems to have removed ktrace (which itself was a poor replacement for strace) from Snow Leopard, and replaced it by dtrace, which seems to be powerful, but way harder to use. Luckily, they've added Instruments.app, which is a pretty cool graphical tool that can be used to trace any app.
Anyway, I ran a filesystem trace on Adobe Updater. Turns out that the default permissions on "/Library/Application Support/Adobe" are not set correctly. Or maybe they are set correctly, and the Updater expects the incorrect permissions. At any rate you can get Adobe CS4 Updater to work with Snow Leopard as follows. Before any changes are made, you should see the following line if you run this from the command-line. (type the stuff after the $ sign.) Make sure to include the quotes; they're important.
terrance:~ vijayp$ ls -ald "/Library/Application Support/Adobe"
drwxr-xr-x 43 root admin 1462 Dec 1 23:25 Adobe/
The updater seems to require admin write permissions. Fix this as follows (you will have to enter your login password):
terrance:~ vijayp$ sudo chmod g+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe"
Password:
terrance:~ vijayp$ ls -ald "/Library/Application Support/Adobe"
drwxrwxr-x 43 root admin 1462 Dec 2 00:25 Adobe/
(note that the quotes are important)
What are Google’s real motivations behind Chrome OS?
I recently published an article in Venturebeat about Google's Chrome OS. Here is a copy of that article:
What are Google’s real motivations behind Chrome OS?
Posted: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:59:09 +0000
Chrome OS is Google’s latest entry into the consumer space. It is designed to be an operating system that runs on customized hardware and provides the user with only a state-of-the art browser running HTML-5 and some plugins. The tech (and mainstream) media has seen no shortage of opinions about its meaning and future impact on the industry. Unfortunately, I think most people have missed some of the key implications of Chrome OS.
[As a disclaimer, I am a former Google employee, having worked there from 2002 to 2008, but I don't have any inside information on this project. In fact I didn't even know of its existence before I left.]
Google has two main aims with this project:
- To use the Google brand and buzz about its “game-changing OS” to push for new and better web apps using nascent technology. This lets Google reduce its customers’ dependence on local apps it does not control.
- Once a lot of these apps are deployed and become heavily used, the mass market will force owners of closed systems like the iPhone to implement support for HTML-5, the latest version of HTML, and rich web interfaces. Coupled with net neutrality (which Google currently strongly supporting) this will allow Google to circumvent uncooperative devices and network providers, and access consumers currently hidden behind locked system.
Here is a more detailed analysis:
People are switching to netbooks in droves. Ever since the advent of AJAX and Web 2.0, a great number of things that people used to do using local apps are being done by web-based applications. This transformation is by no means complete; it is clear that many interfaces are not refined and much critical functionality is absent, but the trend is undeniable.
Modern operating systems have very rich interfaces that give application developers and users a great deal of power. This is great in some ways — it lets you write awesome local applications, and offers great performance. However, as Spiderman’s Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” A rich interface provides ample opportunities for unforeseen consequences, bugs, viruses and other bad things.
As power and performance becomes less important (computers are getting faster, and word processing isn’t getting any more CPU intensive), it is becoming more difficult to justify all the extra responsibility. Although hardware and user-facing software has changed incredibly over the past three decades, operating systems are remarkably stagnant – virtual memory really hasn’t changed much in 15 years, and from the user’s perspective, file systems haven’t changed much since the days of UNIX, in the 1970s.
Motivations:
People these days mostly use their computers for a few key things: Internet browsing, dealing with email, writing documents, writing spreadsheets, playing music, watching video, and editing photos. As increasing numbers of people join the online world (especially in developing countries), users need to stay as happy with their Internet-related experiences. More happy users lead to more searches and more advertising revenue.
Google needs to ensure that the web and everything people use to access the web stays as open as possible. If closed ecosystems dominated by unfriendly companies, such as Apple (and its iPhone), and Microsoft (with Windows desktop and mobile) gain power, Google won’t have unfettered access to the end-user. To do challenge them, Google needs to reduce switching costs and make users indifferent about which computing devices they use by commodifying them. The Chrome OS plan is to entice users to move as much data as possible into the “cloud”, making the data and apps transparently follow the user onto whatever device he or she happens to be using.
Goals:
Google realizes that if this momentum towards cloud-based computing stalls, it will be in a difficult position — it will depend on others for its access to customers. So success of Chrome OS is not really about whether a lot of people use Chrome OS!
Instead, success (or failure) will be measured by the creation of new and better web apps using HTML-5 and HTML-5-related technology. This will allow Google to reduce dependence on local apps it does not and cannot control. (By the way, HTML-5 is the latest version of HTML, and will allow web sites to add offline storage — the ability to store data in your browser for use when disconnected from the internet — better video playback and graphics support, along with interaction between different documents.)
Let me repeat this: Success is not about whether a lot of people use Chrome OS, but whether a lot of people end up using Web applications. This is a simple conclusion, really, but very profound. Even if everyone ends up using some other OS, as long as all the apps they use are web-based, Google wins, because its products can compete on a level playing field. Instead of building special applications that run on your OS and store files through proprietary methods, a web application will run on any device, making them the same from the consumer’s perspective. Critically, enhancements proposed in HTML-5 will allow them to run offline as well as online. (In fact, Chrome OS, being open source, will probably be forked into a less proprietary system distributed by any number of parties. Even if this hurts the user base of Google Chrome, Google wins.)
Obstacles facing Chrome OS:
One of the largest looming issues for Chrome OS is the planned lack of local file system support. For various reasons (some copyright-related) most people store their music and movies locally on their hard drives. Removing local filesystems will reduce the difficulty of using the system but will pose huge problems for movies, photos, and music. Unless a decent web-based solution for this problem is invented soon, Chrome OS’ usefulness might be limited. The dearth of good photo editing solutions online is really no different than the poor quality of web applications — they will need to improve.
Moving down this path implies the users’ data will almost completely be stored primarily in the cloud. Having all their data concentrated in one location might give users pause: What if the service is unavailable when the data are needed? What if the service goes out of business or is hacked? These perceptions will need to be handled effectively.
What about Android?
Android, Google’s operating system for mobile phones, is going to be BIG. Google desperately needs to prevent the iPhone from building increasing global market dominance in its current form. Android already provides a better hardware abstraction layer, better testing, limited interfaces, better security and includes a full-fledged browser. It satisfies pretty much all of the requirements set out by the public docs of Chrome OS, and already includes support for local applications. In two years, there will be an even larger group of Android apps available. Looking at why Google wants to create a new OS and not simply co-opt (or even fork) Android provides the most convincing evidence of my hypothesis yet — that Google is more concerned about the proliferation of web apps than the wide adoption of Chrome OS.
Here are motivations people have raised for separating Chrome OS and Android:
- Too many uses of Android will slow development on the OS internally. This may have a little bit of truth, but I think it’s not a good reason. Linux survives multiple changes to the source code from all kinds of people doing all kinds of different things with it, and it doesn’t slow down development that much. This is certainly true now that Linux is stable, but is probably true of its earlier, less solid stages too.
- People use touch-screen devices differently than keyboard-and-mouse-only devices. This may be true, but what evidence is there that touch-screens won’t be on most netbooks within two years? If one wants to build a browser-based device, one should keep in mind that a touch screen is far more useful than a mouse.
- Android isn’t ready for use on desktops. It’s too hard to get to work on different processors. This is a weaker argument — a lot of people have already ported Android to Atom processors, and there doesn’t seem to be much trouble getting it to run.
- Adding a very different hardware platform will make UI and app design too hard. This is a pretty good argument. Supporting widely disparate hardware is not going to be trivial for app developers — the wide distribution in Android version and hardware configurations is already causing some angst. There’s no need to insist that all applications run on an Android notebook.
- Android is for things with small screens you can make calls on. Chrome OS is for other things. Also a decent argument. In the next few years, Google Voice, Skype, and pervasive Internet will mean that phone and video calls will certainly be made from notebooks. Besides, any optimization you would make to Chrome OS to speed up browsing could easily be made to the Android codebase. Most of Android’s codebase is not designed to deal with calls, but with enhanced security, easy application development, and maximization of battery life — all things that Chrome OS will need.
Conclusions:
While Google would really love to have a large user base, even a Chrome OS with few users will not be a failure. The number of installs is secondary to the number of web-based applications that it fosters. Google will do everything in its power to make this happen. This includes building better web apps and cloud-based storage tools itself, and using its brand to scare other companies into building apps (for fear of missing out when Chrome OS gets big).
If Google promoted Android instead of Chrome OS, this strategy would not work; developers would simply focus on building Android apps. Android apps would help Google’s phones and make Android netbooks work nicely, but would not help Google penetrate other established and closed ecosystems. Getting the same apps to work across platforms is the key to success because it allows hardware commodification and easy migration paths between the systems.
And this is why Google is building Chrome OS.
Vijay Pandurangan worked for Google for six years, designing and implementing some of the core systems infrastructure for the company as well as parts of the ads system. He now runs a consulting firm called Olima Ventures and is an angel investor. You can read his blog here and follow him on Twitter here.
Migratory tales (blogger to wordpress)
(Before I get too involved with the story, those of you who followed my old blog in an RSS reader might have noticed that my old posts looked new again. That's a one-time artefact of this transition and won't happen again!)
Alas, this blog entry does not detail an inspirational 30-week long migration of some 10g bird, but the 2-hour-long migration of my old blog to its new home. Don't worry though, if you're at all geeky, you might find this a little interesting too. This entry has two major parts: why I moved, and hints on moving from blogger to wordpress.
Why I moved
My old blog was run on Blogger, and was hosted on a custom domain (blog.witwiv.ca). It was supposed to be a travel blog (hence the url).
As a former Googler (with some good friends who've worked directly on it), I really wanted to like Blogger. However, the more I used it, the more frustrating it got.
- I could never get photos to align properly.
- The editor was very difficult to work with, and the beta editor -- supposedly the next best thing since sliced bread --was even worse.
- I didn't much care for Blogger's mobile solutions.
- GAIA(Google's account system) logins across domains are not designed correctly. You cannot be logged into two Google services with different IDs. The blog was owned by a google account on my dot-ca domain, but i use my gmail-dot-com domain for most google things. This meant that I had to log out of gmail in order to post to my blog, or use two different browsers. Ugh. This seems trivial, but is very very annoying. So if there are Googlers out there reading this, please fix the multiple concurrent login problem. There's absolutely no technical reason that this shouldn't be able to work, ESPECIALLY across domains (blogger.com/google.com).
- I didn't really like the templates much.
- I wanted tighter integration with static content.
Hints on moving from blogger (to wordpress)
- First decide on your new platform. I did a little bit of research -- nothing too hardcore -- and decided to run WordPress on a hosting site. I looked at posterous and tumblr, both of which seem nice and snazzy, but I liked the flexibility of WordPress. Also, it's way easier to integrate with static content, which was one of my goals.
- Set up the new domain. I was moving blog locations, so I could set up the new domain while the old one was still in existence. I used NearlyFreeSpeech, a nifty web hosting site that charges in tiny increments, and only according to how much you use. (This site nicely describes running WordPress on NearlyFreeSpeech).
- Import existing posts. This part isn't so hard; under the admin console, go to Tools/Import, and import the posts (and comments!) directly from blogger
- Figure out a transition plan. It was important for me to be able to move my blog with the fewest number of interruptions possible. My transition was as follows:
- I had never used feedburner initially (big mistake!) so the first thing I did was to set up a new FeedBurner account and link the new blog to it.
- Next, I needed to ensure that when I switched over to the new domain, people who had subscribed to my old feed automatically got new updates. (same for permanent links). To do this, I first created a new, empty, 'site' on my hosting company. Then, I generated a mapping from old to new locations for the RSS feed and for each link that was known(google [site:OLD_SITE.COM]). I used this mapping to generate a htaccess file that would give 301s for these requests. My file looks as follows. (note that the order is important!):
RedirectPermanent /feeds/posts/default http://feeds.feedburner.com/vijayp
RedirectPermanent /2009/02/madoff-scnadal.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?p=4
RedirectPermanent /2009/03/first-travel-post-seoul.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?p=5
RedirectPermanent /2009/03/kindlefeeds-rss-reader-andrew-and-i.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?p=6
RedirectPermanent /2009/03/how-to-game-amtraks-pricing-scheme.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?p=7...RedirectPermanent /2009/11/new-website-etc.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?p=16
RedirectPermanent /2009/11/good-random-password-generation.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?p=17
RedirectPermanent /2009_1_01_archive.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?m=200901
RedirectPermanent /2009_2_01_archive.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?m=200902
RedirectPermanent /2009_3_01_archive.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?m=200903...RedirectPermanent /2009_10_01_archive.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?m=200910
RedirectPermanent /2009_11_01_archive.html http://www.vijayp.ca/blog/?m=200911
RedirectPermanent / http://www.vijayp.ca/blog
- Next, I switched the DNS from my old blog's name from ghs.google.com to the new site I created in step (2) above.
- Remove some boilerplate garbage (stuff under meta) and change the RSS feed URL to feedburner. (I can expound on this later if people want)
- Done! The only issue I've seen so far is that Google Reader seemed to think all my old posts were new once the transition happened. I'm not sure there's any way to fix this, though.
All in all, my new platform should help me get my act together in terms of posting more regularly, and communicating what I'm up to. And if I'd not been down with the flu, I doubt this would have gotten done anytime soon. So maybe there is a bright side to being too tired to go out on a Saturday night!
Good random password generation
I'm in the process of moving this blog, and in doing so, needed to generate a good random password for a MySQL account. This is the command I used on my Mac (using the terminal). Replace the '10' with the length you want!
dd if=/dev/random count=1 bs=2k 2>/dev/null | uuencode -m - | sed -ne 2p | cut -b-10
And here's what it looks like when you run it:
terrance:~ vijayp$ dd if=/dev/random count=1 bs=2k 2> /dev/null | uuencode -m - | sed -ne 2p | cut -b-10
11B7GTfk7b
And no, I didn't use that password!
New website, etc.
I've finally made a website for myself:
This is the first step in a list of things I've been meaning to do for a while, including moving this blog to a better platform, so stay tuned for changes!.
Incidentally, I've posted two of the papers I wrote about Bangalore and electronic governance in India for a class I took at Columbia. A few of you have asked to read them, so here they are. Please don't steal my work; if you find it useful, let me know, and cite it somehow!
They're linked from this page: Vijay's developing world stuff.
In case you're lazy, I've even included a summary of the papers, and a couple of direct links. Let me know what you think.
Information Technology (IT) has had a large transformative effect on many aspects of society -- it excels at reducing overhead, increasing efficiency, replacing ad hoc human processes with structured electronic versions, and providing greater transparency. All of these problems plague government services in the developing world. India, as a leader in the IT service industry, has also been a pioneer in applying IT to governance. In this paper, we describe Electronic Governance (EGov), examine and evaluate some of India's EGov systems and, using lessons learned, present some recommendations for future work.
This paper presents an overview of various aspects of Bangalore that have helped to shape its development, including its history, politics, governance, economics, as well as urban planning issues, highlighting areas with pressing policy questions requiring attention.
Skype + iPhone = saving $20/mo.
If you have an iPhone with AT&T and you're not on the lowest rate plan, you could be throwing money away!
Skype has a new app for the iPhone, that works pretty well, and (as you'd expect) lets you make calls using Skype! Skype also offers an unlimited calling plan to Canada and the USA for $3/mo (or even less than this if you prepay).
AT&T's phone plans provide a lot of night& weekend minutes (5000 or unlimited), but are really stingy on the daytime minutes. I seem to make most of my calls during the day, but I'm also usually in an area with WiFi. So I just downloaded the skype app, switched to the cheapest calling plan ($20 cheaper!). Now, I make my calls during the day on Skype. The sound quality is good -- often times better than AT&T! Be sure to set skype up so that your callerid is displayed correctly.
Unfortunately Apple/AT&T have strong-armed Skype into not making calls over 3G. You can, of course, circumvent this restriction via jailbreaking and installing this app. But for me, this is more than enough.
The Skype app has a few significant drawbacks: it doesn't seem to detect when you move your phone to your head, so for the first few seconds you should be sure your cheek doesn't hang up the call. Also, I couldn't get bluetooth to work properly. Otherwise, everything works just fine.
Greece: Part II of II
As we saw before, I'd been wandering around Athens for a while, checking out cool and interesting things.
Next up: a strange series of Greek dances at a theatre a little ways away from the Acropolis. There was a little band and some people in various costumes performing dances purported to be from around Greece. I didn't think the music was particularly good (the flute guy was off-pitch and the violin guy was off beat), and I couldn't really tell the dances apart. All in all it was kind of interesting mostly for the venue, but a bit of a waste of time. I'll have to edit some of the video I took and post it eventually, but here are a couple of photos:
After a couple of pit stops, Cape Sounio was at hand! Cape Sounio -- punctuated by a bluff -- is the Southern-most point of mainland Greece. Pericles (legendary politician of the Athenian city-state) persuaded the city to build a huge monument to Poseidon, the God of the Sea, to serve as beacon for weary seafarers and a statement of the power and strength of Athens. Much of it was ruined by various attacks, but parts of it still stand. The sunset there is absolutely amazing, as evidenced by these photos and the billion or so tourists all trying to capture the scene.
There were some beaches around there, like this one, where I read a book:
Driving around Greece, one cannot help but notice the plethora of unfinished buildings that dot the landscape. At first I thought they were parking garages, or perhaps some kind of weird modern art, but it turns out that they're tax reduction scheme!! In Greece, partially constructed buildings somehow allow for a tax deduction and depreciation over time. This tax break goes away when the building is actually completed! Sounds like the kind of insane incentive structure that would exist in the USA, dreamed up by Geihtner and Bernake and co.. But my economic commentary belongs in a different post!
That's about it for my Greek trip. Up next: Finland; then Estonia!
Greece: Part I of II
Note, my photos from my trip to Greece are here: Vijay's photos of Greece.
The first part of my three-country June/July excursion to Europe began in Athens. I flew from Newark on a nice 10 hour non-stop (not including the standard one-hour airplane traffic jam on the EWR runway). But, since I was in business class (thanks to a free upgrade Northwest gave me), I ate a pretty decent meal, with 2 appetizers, a bunch of decent pasta and unlimited refills. After reading a book ("Fooling some of the people all the time") for a bit, I popped a melatonin -- it totally cures jetlag, by the way -- and passed out. Despite my fears (I was sitting close to two toddlers), I had a great, uninterrupted 6.5 hour sleep. The children were pretty amazingly well-behaved.
After waiting in a taxi line for 20 minutes, I got a cool young cab driver who drove me straight to the hotel. (And while we're on this topic, why is it that pretty much every airport taxi rank in the world is horribly inefficient? There's no reason it should take 15 minutes to load 50 people into taxis, especially when there were about 60 taxis queued up. If I ever run an airport, I'd make the taxi contract include a penalty with for each person-minute wasted .) The cab driver strongly suggested I hit up this place called "Room", which seems to have had a series of names. "They re-name it every year to keep it fresh," he said.
Upon hearing of my trip to Athens, Gabor (and others) told me about this brand new, highly anticipated museum: the new Acropolis museum had just opened the previous weekend. As luck would have it, I arrived on the first day that entry was permitted without prior bookings (which had been sold out for a long time). The museum is pretty striking; designed by some Swiss architect whose name I've forgotten, it looks nothing like the surrounding area: it's totally concrete and glass.
It's built atop an archaeological site -- this required them to use a number of pillars to vault the whole thing over the dig site, and has a many glass floor panels through which one can examine excavations. The interior design is quite open; one can see most of the interesting areas from at least two floors. There are many fascinating statues, carvings, and other historical artefacts. However, most of the marble statues and carvings that adorned the acropolis initially were stolen/borrowed/preserved my the Scottish Lord Elgin, and currently reside in the British Museum in London. There are a few plaster casts that were sent back to Greece in the 1800s which are displayed in this museum.
Walking around the "plaka" (a.k.a. old city) is kind of interesting. Lots of little shops, and a bunch of tourists. It kind of looks like the Montmantre in Paris.
At dinner that night, I ended up sitting at a table next to this guy -- he was very nice, offering advice and even offering to share his drink. After talking to him for a while, it turned out he was from Edmonton, and was the president of the MS association there; just in Greece on a vacation. But that was just the beginning of the coolest random meeting I've had in years! It turns out that he used to play in the NHL!! He played as a backup goalie with the North Stars when Casey was in goal, was the backup in LA with Kelly Hrudey in the early 90s. Which, of course meant that he played with WAYNE GRETZKY!!! I was so speechless. I am now officially 1 degree of separation from The Great One!! Oh, he also played with Andy Moog for some time before injuries sidelined him. But he's dedicated his life to MS since he has a few friends severely afflicted by it. What a guy!!
The first thing on the menu Thursday was a guided walking tour of the Acropolis. I found the tour very elucidating and interesting on the whole. The guide clearly knew her stuff, and though she often stressed the obvious, did add a lot of interesting info. (note to self: ask Erin about the PhD tour guides in some country). First up was a kind of goofy changing of the guard at the parliament buildings. I'll try to find a photo of the guards surrounded by pigeons. After being pursued by some pretty aggressive stray dogs, we went to see the temple of Jupiter, which was erected by a Roman emperor who wanted to make a new Athens, but died before he could see it through.
Oh, about the strays: Athens is overrun with them. It's not as bad as India, but it's quite annoying. It turns out that the city wanted to put down all the strays before the Olympics but the locals were so incensed that they went around and put collars on all the strays in a (successful) effort to stymie the culling.
The expansion of the metro for the Olympics posed a substantial challenge for engineers. The entire area is covered with ancient Greek ruins; one place they wanted to put an air vent turned out to be the site of an ancient bath-house with important historical implications!
The Acropolis is pretty cool; I won't write too much about the history of it. Though we did see the rock on which Paul supposedly gave his famed "sermon on the mount". The whole area surrounding the Acropolis (a fort since prehistoric times) is dotted with all sorts of ruins, but they're not set up in a way that's particularly educational, especially if you don't have a guide and can't read ancient Greek. Here are a couple of photos:
The old Agora (market) and associated temple is pretty striking and the best preserved temple in all of Greece, so it's certainly worth checking out.
There were also a lot of tourists. Here's an example of a couple:
OK enough for now. Stay tuned for part II of Greece! Then Tallinn and Helsinki!