2022 - 07 - 17 - Peru - Lima

The initial idea for our three week Peru trip was to do everything ourselves and plan bus, trian, taxi whatever on a day to day basis like we usually do, but in the end we ended up using http://www.PeruHop.com/ for most of our travel needs and we couldn't have be happier. 

PeruHop has different "hop on hop off" experiences where you pay for the end to end trip and spend as much time as you want in each stop. We went for the Lima - La Paz - Cusco trip and booked a return flight with Viva Airlines from Cusco to Lima.

The first day in Lima was a bit of a shock, even after living in a reasonably "crowded" city like Milan. https://www.airportexpresslima.com/ was recommended by every source we found to go from the airport to the city centre but they shut down in mid July. After seeing the warnings of express kidnappings we ended up booking a taxi in the airport which cost more than negotiating a price with a taxi driver.

One of the first things I do when visiting a new country is go to a local supermarket so see what they sell. I was surprised to see that they sold a typical Italian Christmas sweet "Panettone" in what would be the middle of summer for us:

We soon learned that Peruvians love sweet stuff. Inka Kola is probably the best example. It's extremely sweet, tastes like bubblegum and people have it with food instead of water, beer or wine. 

The tourist info in Miraflores was excellent and we bought a Peru SIM and booked a free walking tour of Lima. In retrospect we didn't need the Peru SIM as Google Fi gave better coverage and speed and worked in Bolivia and Colombia as well. The Motorola G8 Power battery life is also way better than the Alcatel - MW40V 4G router we used with the local SIM.

 

I'm back (sort of)

It's been way too long since I wrote anything here.  I can't really cover what I do at work so I'm pivoting to cover other topics that interest me like travel and photography. 

If all goes as planned I'll publish a post every day or so about my trip Peru this summer. 

Fellow early bird

It was a great morning to get some exercise.

Parco Bresso ~7am

Bye, bye Linate as a motorbike friendly airport

One of the things I really liked about Milan Linate airport was the free motorbike parking next to the checkin area. I have saved a lot of time, and money, over the years by going by motorbike.

That changed last year when they "upgraded" the free area with subpar asphalt which made motorbikes fall over:

It's weird, but it's cheaper to fly London and back than to go to the airport and back by taxi or park your motorbike for a business trip...

Arduino Halloween

Had fun with the kids yesterday preparing for Halloween

Ingredients:
1 pumpkin
1 recycled Happy Meal toy (I think)
1 Arduino Duemilanove
1 distance sensor
3 yellow LEDs
3 red LEDs
2 blue LEDs
1 9V battery
1 300 Ohm resistor

I love hacker friendly toys

My old Nabaztag was the first victim.  This time it's the turn of a Nerf Blaster clone:

After removing some standard Phillips screws, I got exactly what I wanted:

• The orange "launch" module in the bottom left of the picture. It's a standalone piece that's originally powered by 3 AA batteries but should work fine on a Arduino friendly 5V (or higher :-). Even the mounts can be recycled for the project I'm working on.
• The orange "piston" at the top of the picture. I had a simpler design in mind but this one is more compact so it will work even better.

I bought this toy in a local store but I usually go to the flea market in Cormano where I can pick up a R/C car / toy without remote control for a few euros. Way cheaper than buying individual components like wheels, engines, and electrical components piece by pice.

Photos / video of the final project should be available "soon".

How to configure WiFi connection on a HP F4580

Just a note to myself as I wasted more time than I should have fixing this.

I recently changed the WiFi access credentials and my HP F4580, obviously, stopped working. Neither the Mac nor the Windows drivers I had let me edit the WiFi settings but I finally found a way to reset the WiFi configuration:

• Turn on the printer
• Click and hold down the Cancel button
• Click and release the WiFi button
• Release the Cancel button

This creates a ad hoc network called hpsetup that you can connect to via WiFi to configure the router.