Notes

Featured image for “Visitors to Canada will soon require an electronic travel authorisation”

Visitors to Canada will soon require an electronic travel authorisation

Readers who travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program will no doubt be familiar with the requirement for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization). From March 1, 2016 Canada will be introducing a similar requirement for foreign nationals arriving by air and you’ll need to have an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) before arriving in Canada. As

Featured image for “The new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite”

The new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

On June 17, Amazon announced a new version of the Kindle Paperwhite with a high resolution 300ppi display, a new Kindle font Bookerly and a new typesetting engine. As I was long overdue for a new Kindle (my existing Kindle Touch was purchased in 2012) I decided to place a pre-order and anxiously awaited its arrival. On June 30th I

Featured image for “Qantas flights from Sydney to San Francisco now on sale”

Qantas flights from Sydney to San Francisco now on sale

Qantas customers are now able to book Qantas’ new direct flights to San Francisco for travel from December 2015. Services will initially operate on peak days only, however from late January 2016 will operate six days per week using the refurbished 747-400 aircraft with the same interiors as the A380 including the Skybed MKII. Flights will operate using the QF73

Featured image for “Qantas Q Streaming with your own device”

Qantas Q Streaming with your own device

In late April Qantas announced the availability of a Q Streaming app that lets you use your own Apple device with their onboard Q Streaming service. During the pilot phase this is limited to selected Boeing 717 aircraft. On April 26th I was given the opportunity to trial this service on a flight from Canberra to Sydney. How do I

Featured image for “Pre-Ordering your meal on Qantas with Select on Q-Eat”

Pre-Ordering your meal on Qantas with Select on Q-Eat

Select on Q-Eat is Qantas’ online meal ordering service that allows passengers travelling Business, Premium Economy and Economy on selected routes to select their chosen meal in advance of the flight. This is a fantastic option for those who want to be certain that their selected meal is available to them rather than taking whatever options are available when the

Featured image for “A look at the Qantas Apple Watch app”

A look at the Qantas Apple Watch app

As a launch day customer of the Apple Watch, I was looking forward to trying out the Qantas Apple Watch app with a flight just two days after launch. Here’s what I found. Before Departure – Glances One of the features of the Apple watch is a “glances” screen which allows you to see a small amount of content from

Featured image for “Apple Calendar not syncing with Exchange”

Apple Calendar not syncing with Exchange

I’ve been pulling my hair out recently trying to figure out why Calendar on my Mac won’t synchronise my calendar with one of my Exchange (Office 365) accounts. Mail and Contacts is working perfectly, and other accounts were synchronising just fine – with the exception of one account that was displaying an error “Calendar needs a valid email address to connect

Featured image for “Traildash: AWS CloudTrail Dashboard”

Traildash: AWS CloudTrail Dashboard

Update: Traildash has been retired as AWS offer this functionality natively now. I’ve recently discovered Traildash, a powerful dashboard to import and analyse CloudTrail events with ElasticSearch and Kibana. I need to take a more in-depth look but it at initial glance it’s very interesting and something that can be quite valuable. You can read more at https://github.com/AppliedTrust/traildash

Featured image for “How Opal saves me money”

How Opal saves me money

Sydney is currently rolling out a new contactless smartcard ticketing system across its public transport network. The trial launched in December 2012 on ferry services and started rolling out to trains and buses in 2013. A lot of the criticism of Opal hasn’t been about the technology but has rather been around its fare structure and lack of multi-modal fares.

Featured image for “Reserving your Entrée before you fly on American Airlines”

Reserving your Entrée before you fly on American Airlines

American Airlines now allow all First and Business class passengers to pre-order their meals before their flight between 30 days and 24 hours prior to their scheduled departure. I have a few American Airlines flights in First coming up and decided to take a look at how this service works. How to do it Step 1 – Access your reservation

Notes