Luang Prabang, Laos - fastest internet

After a long journey to get here to Laos I had to do some more work. I found fast wifi connection at Dao coffee just up the street crossing the walking street, across from Dara market on Kitsalat Road. Good coffee for decent price.

Also for cheap accommodation - check "Mixay guesthouse" take a right after the above coffee shop (going away from the center - walking street) and continue stright. Just before Jaliya guesthouse (which turned out to be more expensive). I was able to get a room (with two beds) for 30k KIP (about $3.75USD)

Crossing from Chiang Rai to Huay Xai and Luang Prabang in Laos

I was finishing my time in Pai, mainly because of visa expiring. And I know I don't want to go over, mainly to avoid complications when getting further visas in the future.

So I headed to Chiang Mai for a few days. Had a great time, rode around with automatic moped/scooter/motor bike. Ran a few errands; took money using bitcoin to avoid ATM fees and reap the benefits of the profit I made. Changed for some USD for entry visa into Laos. And sold North face backpack my brother had left me a month before at a hotel. I didn't like the size and weight of it and am already happy with the ones I have. 

All in all a good time before going to Chiang Rai for only 120bath greenbus (+50 for tuktuk to bus station). Spent one night in Chiang Rai (completely forgot that I met a traveler in Morocco that was in town volunteering! sorry). I liked the night market and vibe of Chiang Rai and got decent priced private room - even though I normally prefer dorm, but the price was the same. So I got good sleep instead of crowding in a dorm.

Walked around and also went to see the white temple, which was very worth a visit, a must see if you are in the region. Very unique artist work and unlike any other. Make sure to also visit the gallery. All of that is free, only costs 20bath from the central bus station in Chiang Rai (each way). Enjoyed a papaya salad lunch just outside the "mall" type area before the temple entrance.

And then I went to the station headed to Laos - cost 65bath and they go every half hour. Red bus with all the windows open - not so good when feeling a little weak. I believe the cold I caught was from that. The bus drops you off near the bridge. From there the only way to get to the exit point of Thailand is using tuktuk that costs 50bath (or walk) but at my condition and with the bags I had - I couldn't imagine walking.

Once you get there, the exit is very simple. but then comes the annoying part. the bridge has dedicated bus service that costs 20bath (25 on weekends - which of course it was for me) once you go about 4 minutes over the bridge, you have the fun time to enter Laos. First fill out a form and give your passport + picture. Now you wait. They call your name and you pay the price (30-40 USD depending where you are from) being Canadian I paid ~$43, extra dollar after 22:00, which it was. 

Finally you get through and now you are on your own (unless you paid for complete journey somewhere) there's tuktuks that will take you into town which is around 12km away (why? this is a foreshadow into how the bus stations of Laos cities are very far from the actual city - poor organization) cost me 100bath

I had the tuktuk stop at the bus station so I can buy the ticket to Luang Prabang. This is where I got confused since I had no local currency yet, I paid 1,000bath and received 75,000 KIP. Scheduled for 6pm the next day, means I got to spend some time and relax in town of Huay Xai. 

Didn't expect to have so many travelers in the town, but it makes sense being so close to the border of Thailand, a common stop off. With many guesthouses, Gibbon excursions, restaurants and even a nice temple overlooking the Mekong river. Tomorrow comes the terrible overnight ride to Luang Prabang.

Why I might become a fruitarian

First, let me start by saying that I have never been vegetarian. Most vegetarians I ask why they don't eat meat told me it is because of the bad conditions or the bad of killing animals. I simply never agree with this. I do know about the terrible conditions farmed animals are kept in sometimes but the killing of animals is not a problem because it happens in nature.

So why would I agree with being frutarian? Because of the logic behind eating fruit, being the best and most nutritious food for human consumption. We as humans are meant to eat it, everything in our body is designed for it. From our hands that fit fruit perfectly, to our eyes that can see when fruit is perfectly ripe and our stomachs that observe it perfectly. As opposed to green leaf vegetables, root vegitables and meat or animal products which our stomachs and teeth are not designed to eat raw.

This to me is a much better explained reason that comes with many benefits to the environment as well as ourselves if we consume only (or at least mostly) fruit.

Am I going to only eat fruit for the rest of my life? probably not, but I will focus my majority of the diet on fresh raw fruit unaltered by humans - not shakes or smoothes, not dry or salads type.

I still don't think I will even be vegetarian though, the last time I ate animal products was yesterday, seafood 3 days ago and meat about 1 or 2 weeks ago. I don't see the need to buy any animal products nor vegetables but if it's offered I will not turn it down (generally).

What do you think? do you agree or disagree?

Let me know

Pai, Mae Hong Son, Thailand

North Thailand for a month. I've done yoga and got massage.

Staying at a place called funhouse in exchange for help with computers, tablets and technology like website, Google maps , WordPress, airbnb and hostelworld.

I got injured in my way back from Mae Hong Son immigration office to extend my visa for 30 more days, this cost me 1,900 bhat plus 5 for photocopy if passport. Also I got passport pictures done earlier in town at rate of about 140 for 4. Only one is required but it's good to have more for other visas that I may want to get when I continue my travel.

While injured I did a lot of work at the house. My own and for him.

Now waiting for the stitches to be removed at the hospital costs 200. But to get the stitches cost me 1000 plus the bike damage was around 3000.

Was at shakina community lunch today, they are fantastic people always happy and very open to share anything.

To be continued

How to travel and work at the same time

This is the first post of what I hope to become a series on travel, work and work while travel at the same time (as the title suggests) follow it on this link.

Some people think travel costs a lot of money, this is actually the opposite for me. It costs me more to live in my home town that I was based out of for the past 15 years than it does to travel to the parts of the world I went.

If you are from most North American cities, or western countries you will find that if you are willing to sacrifice a little privacy - travel, which includes accommodation, food, transport and luxurious extras will cost less than it does to simply live in that city or town.

At least this is true for me. This is how I did it:

Allow yourself to step out of your comfort zone - There are many aspects of life which are very comfortable in a home town or city, by stepping out of there you will find a much more rewarding life.

If you can live with fewer things you will find life less stressful, you can move about a city and between cities much easier and faster.

I am currently sitting in a hostel lobby (nice music) with all my things next to my side; two backpacks. Many people may think this isn't enough. But I have already lived for 2 months like this and never missed anything.

If you know what to take (which comes with a little thinking and experience) you will not need anything else. And remember that even if you do, most of the places you will visit in the world will have them for sale for either the same or less than what it costs in your home town.

Of the larger possessions that most North American cultures have are rent costs for apartment or home and vehicles. I gave up those two and noticed that my bank account started to grow.

This money will be important for your travels, because hostels normally cost under what rent daily cost amount you will see that you start spending less and actually saving.

Now that you gave up most of your stuff (this includes rent costs and vehicles) you can go to many places much faster and cheaper because you don't need to check any luggage. This is also important because there are many discount airlines that offer flights from $20 to $60 as long as you don't have luggage those prices remain cheap and worthwhile.

Be flexible - If you are flexible about where and when you can live a new lifestyle of travel. I choose my flights and accommodation based on lower price, this means that if I can get a $50 flight on a Tuesday instead of $100+ on any other day, I will book it and get to my destination twice as fast for a similar price as bus would cost.

I normally found that odd days like Tuesday or Thursday are cheaper than usual days, but this is simply a guide not a rule. If I can find a cheap flight or bus on any day that I am flexible enough I will get it. I also change hostels based on daily price changes and move to a new one if it costs several Euros less.

In the next posts I will discuss how to find a balance of work and travel, while staying fit and healthy at the same time.

Lisbon Portugal

I visited in October 2015 and here are some things to do:
Pastel de Belem
Sintra

12 History of Cryptocurrencies [Bonus lecture]

Lecture 12 in the series.

1. Traditional Financial Arrangements
2. Credit based systems
3.

[Source]

windows 10 rants problems, and improvements

First I should start with what I like about windows 10:

• Upgrade was easy and painless (and free!)
• Most of the controls, options, settings are the same, or easy enough to figure out
• Runs fast enough, if not faster than previous version
• Windows edge is good improvement from internet explorer
• Finally back to a normal start menu

Now the problems I've been having, and hearing about:

• Display drivers having problems, I've had witnessed my screen flashing numerous times. I had issues with screen freezing when I plug in my laptop power cord but when I unplug it is as if everything is still happening (i.e. whatever I clicked while it was plugged in and frozen did actually happen). I also heard of AMD display drivers having many issues with windows edge but I did not experience this.
• Recently noticed that when the screen saver comes on my CPU usage goes up - figured this out from the heatsink fans spinning very loudly and by looking at the task manager.

All in all a decent operating system. Fast and stable. That is all we really want, is that too much to ask (looking at you ubuntu)

Nexus 5 reboot loop fix

The power button gets dusty over time so the solution to fix the nexus 5 reboot loop is to user air dust blaster for computer parts, see example here:

11 The future of Bitcoin?

Lecture 11 in the series.

1. The block chain as a vehicle for decentralization
2. Routes to decentralization
3. What can we decentralize?
4. When is decentralization a good idea?

[Source]
[Download here]

10 Altcoins and the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

Lecture 10 in the series.

1. Short History of Altcoins
2. Interaction between Bitcoin and Altcoins
3. Lifecycle of an Altcoin
4. Bitcoin-Backed Altcoins, “Side Chains”

[Source]
[Download here]

9 Bitcoin as a Platform

Lecture 9 in the series.

1. Bitcoin as an append-only log
2. Bitcoins as “smart property”
3. Secure multi-party lotteries in Bitcoin
4. Bitcoin as randomness source
5. Prediction markets & real-world data feeds

[Source]
[Download here]

8 Alternative Bitcoin Mining Puzzles

Lecture 8 in the series.

1. Essential Puzzle Requirements
2. ASIC Resistant Puzzles
3. Proof-of-useful-work
4. Nonoutsourceable Puzzles
5. Proof-of-Stake

[Source]
[Download here]

7 Community, Politics, and Regulation in Bitcoin

Lecture 7 in the series.

1. Consensus in Bitcoin
2. Bitcoin Core Software
3. Stakeholders : Who’s in Charge?
4. Roots of Bitcoin
5. Governments Notice Bitcoin
6. Anti Money-Laundering Regulation
7. Regulation
8. New York’s BitLicense Proposal

[Source]
[Download here]

Ubuntu issues and problems

So after about a year of using my Acer Aspire laptop I decided to get myself a new solid sate drive to replace the hybrid drive. And with this I thought why not try installing Ubuntu instead of the ol' windows setups. Here's my experience so far.

My major issues that made the laptop unusable or simple irritate me:

• Mouse freezing! to fix: ctrl+alt+f[1-5] and then again with ctrl+alt+f7 to get back to gui
• Memorizing/Save the screen brightness upon selecting when adjusted [source]
• Better use of gpu, install best (even if proprietary driver) to use it better come back from standby mode when opening screen

Lack of things that I wish it had:

File manager:

• easier manipulation of saved favorites in connect to server -- modify this file ~/.cache/nautilus/servers [source]
• percentage of disk space used (on left side when clicking computer) -- see filesystems of system monitor

Update Aug 2015: I have upgraded to windows 10

does hubs.ly work after cancling or without hubspot subscription

So we use hubspot for couple things, and they use the hubs.ly URL shortner in social media posts.

I was wondering if those links would still work after cancelling our subscription, so far the information I got was Yes it will work. But no analytics on the links of course - since you cannot access the dashboard, naturally.

We will see if this is true, only time will tell. Updates coming in the next month (after migration to wordpress)

Let me know in the comments if you had experience with hubs.ly and hubspot migration blog to wordpress.

Thanks for visiting

6 Bitcoin and Anonymity

Lecture 6 in the series.

1. Anonymity basics
2. Overview of Bitcoin deanonymization
3. Mixing
4. Decentralized mixing
5. Zerocoin and Zerocash
6. Tor and the Silk Road

[Source]
[Download here]

Latest phishing email - Re; Proposal Penny Lee markweb06@outlook.com

As the title, this is the latest phishing email I got with the subject: Re; Proposal
from the email: Penny Lee markweb06@outlook.com
With attachment: DOC.pdf - https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/3308b7b049d73b589b40dbe8d8c6254280749395d8bcfb58524b7e95f6df015f/analysis/1426696615/

XMP toolkit 2.9.1-13, framework 1.6
This PDF document has 1 page, please note that most malicious PDFs have only one page.
 This PDF document has 10 object start declarations and 10 object end declarations.
 This PDF document has 2 stream object start declarations and 2 stream object end declarations.
 This PDF document has a cross reference table (xref).
 This PDF document has a pointer to the cross reference table (startxref).
 This PDF document has a trailer dictionary containing entries allowing the cross reference table, and thus the file objects, to be read.

Raw/original message: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=aLAKCxU8

Let me know what you think.

5 Bitcoin Mining

Lecture 5 in the series

1. The task of Bitcoin miners
2. Mining hardware
3. Energy consumption & ecology
4. Mining pools
5. Mining incentives and strategies

[Source]
[Download here]

4 How to Store and Use Bitcoins

Lecture 4 in the series

1. Simple storage (Availability, Security, Convenience)
2. Hot and cold storage
3. Splitting and sharing keys
4. Online wallets and exchanges
5. Payment services
6. Transaction fees
7. Currency exchange markets

[Source]
[Download here]