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Skybus Grounded
jake on 2008.04.09 at 12:46 pm
A couple months ago I took a trip to Ohio and used Skybus. Sure the farther away airport only provided poorly stocked vending machines and single user bathrooms, one for each gender. But the plane was nice and roomy. Much more appealing than the tiny planes that don’t allow for standing up straight. And who can complain when it cost $86 round trip?
Now they’ve gone under. Whoops, guess I should have said something earlier.
Skybus struggled to overcome the combination of rising jet fuel costs and a slowing economic environment. These two issues proved to be insurmountable for a new carrier.
Posted in: Travel
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Initial Summary: Trip to AU/NZ Part 2
jake on 2007.01.11 at 08:04 pm
There has been two primary reasons why I have not posted here while on my trip down under. The first is that I’ve only gotten short spurts of internet access at fairly high prices. The second is that these spurts have all involved poorly updated versions of IE6. No wonder there are so many zombies in the wild. No one updates anything except the software they install to restrict functions you’re allowed to do. A couple computers I tied to use wouldn’t even let me open multiple browser windows.
Of course you don’t really want to hear me rant about how hard it is to post. But I will add that I’m currently using an old version of Netscape and IE6 to post this since they both have bugs that won’t allow me to do certain things.
The trip started poorly with my cold fighting me for the whole 20+ hours of flying. Since I’m still alive, I must have kept enough whining to myself.
The Sydney fireworks were pretty darn sweet. The drunken fights breaking out and people stumbling over us was not. Now that I’ve done it once, I’m not sure I have to do it again. Though sitting out on a boat would most likely be fun for the show.
The next couple days were spent exploring and slowly getting more sick.
Once we arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand I stopped fighting on my own. I let Kate go wander around and I sat in a 24-hour clinic waiting room for a few hours. The result, I had a sinus infection and a new prescription. So now I was also not allowed to consume alcohol for the next ten days. Things were looking up. ;)
The Contiki tour started pretty well. And after a few days I started to feel better. Though it was very difficult to reject all the drinks offered to me.
The many sites we visited included; Queenstown, where I bungy jumped, Fox Glacier, which I climbed, and Milford Sound, where I stood up on deck with the captain and saw many picturesque views. I will slowly post more intricate posts on the many things I/we did on this fun trip when I return and have better internet access.
I’m currently in the last leg and pondering ways to not leave. But when I do return home I’ll have lots of pictures for flickr and hopefully a handful of posts detailing some of the more interesting events.
Posted in: Travel
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Upcoming trip to AU/NZ: Part 1
jake on 2006.12.26 at 08:15 pm
In just a few days I’ll finally be making my trip to Australia and New Zealand. I will try and keep updating here as things progress. Especially as things become more solid and organized. Most of today has been spent working out details on doing a video blog of the trip. Kate has done many small video projects in the past and we hope to combine my tech knowledge and her video knowledge into short clips to keep people back home updated.
Naturally a lot of the tech side of things is simply posting the videos after we’ve edited them. So the first thing I’m trying to accomplish is generating a Quicktime video to post to blip.tv and cross-posting it here and on Kate’s site. Her site functions fine but since I created all the scripts here it’s not as simple as her Wordpress blog. We’ll see if I have enough time to figure it out while I’m packing and doing many other preparations…
Update: After a bit of playing, and testing this post in ecto I successfully cross posted to Re¢ently with blip.tv. The code they insert is a little sloppy but I’m just happy that it’s functional. And now maybe Brian can use Marsedit without any issues. ;)
Posted in: Travel
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Searching for low cost flights
jake on 2006.06.23 at 10:51 am
One of my best friends just left for an excursion abroad. One where if I want to see her I’ll have to fly to the other side of the planet. I’m trying to look beyond the lost day from flying and imagine all the things I can see by visiting her.
The worst part I’ve found so far is locating a plane ticket that doesn’t cost more than a trip to Walt Disney World would. First Orbitz failed me with a ticket over two-grand. Travelocity let me seach in huge blocks and I found a ticket to at least Sydney for 2/3 Orbitz’s price.
I’m hoping that FlySpy or FareCast will possibly help with prices. But they’re not released to the pulic yet.
Kottke had a look at FlySpy back in February. It seems to inform you when to book a flight based on a block of available departures. Similar to how I searched Travelocity by selecting an entire month I could hypothetically leave on some random Tuesday that is the cheapest price.
Jason wanted a little more and discovered it in FareCast (Cory talked about it a week earlier). FareCast looks more at collected data and attempts to tell you when you should buy. It shows you the price history of a particular ticket and tells you what the price forecast is…if the price is trending up/down, how much confidence they have in that prediction, and whether you should buy your ticket now or not.
Either way I hope that one of these two new sites will help me save some money to get to Australia. Anybody wanna pass me an invite to FareCast so I can check it out? Puhleeeeez…?
I’m starting to read and sift through Jason and Cory’s sources.
Update 1:
Thanks Heather, FareChase is similar and another thing to check out. On the surface it’s still lacking the “time block” feature. With only a vague window of departure and open duration that will be the clincher for me.
Also FareCast is out of closed beta. There are still only two airports for departure but at least everyone can check out the basic functionality. Currently FareCast is more of a novelty for me. I’m keeping my fingers crossed they’ll add some international destinations in the near future.
Posted in: Web · Travel
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