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London – City of the Glass

No, it’s not the title of the next Doctor Who Christmas special.

But, hot on the tails of the Gherkin, City Hall and the still forthcoming Bankside 123 architecture foundation and London Bridge Shard, is the newly proposed glass skyscraper at 11-19 Monument St.

It’s another of those multi-use buildings which stops the realists from screaming out in disbelief over more offices being built in Central London that we just don’t need. So you’ll be almost as happy as I am to learn about the roof gardens, the visitor centre for Monument and eye-blindingly-bright light-up front. “Flexible accommodation” also sounds like an extremely interesting concept to me, and if your apartment doesn’t shrink when you exit the front-door, allowing extra space for those inhabitants still occupying the building – frankly, they’ve missed a trick. You wait. It will happen.

An impressive looking plan, all the same – and I look forward to gazing into the ripple-effect facade that starts this Fairground ride for giants. And if that doesn’t work, maybe the reflections from the glass will set fire to Monument. How we’d laugh.

Technology scares me – Microsoft Popfly

I’ve somehow managed to get myself onto the Microsoft Popfly Alpha list. So, what is it?

Microsoftรƒโ€šร‚ยฎ Popflyรƒยขรขโ‚ฌลพร‚ยข is a web site and tool to help people create and share web sites, mashups, and other kinds of experiences.

It’s definitely web 2.0 then. It has social networking, it has mash-ups, things move, spin, dance and roll around while you’re creating things like you’re Doc Brown on acid. It even makes impressive use of MS Silverlight that makes you go “ooooh”. Within 5 minutes of signing in, I had an application that retrieves all my photos from facebook, and shows them in a list. I can use this on a web page, the Vista sidebar, my popfly homepage, or on my Live Space page. Five minutes. I didn’t have to write a single line of code. Very soon, I may be out of a job.

Okay, it’s a terrible example I know – there’s no mashing going on, but it does demonstrate how incredibly easy it’s become to interact with these services, and Facebook is a only a small speck on the landscape of choices. The usual suspects; Flickr, Twitter and Digg are all there as well as BBC Travel, Warcraft, Virtual Earth, even Google Checkout jump out at me in the possible mash-up list. What you get to do with Warcraft, I don’t know…yet.

Dan commented briefly this morning, that Facebook may be taking over the world, but I’m convinced this kind of service interaction is unnatural and quite possibly a part of those ONE campaigns Bono is always going on about – that we’ve all been promised is one of the early steps on the road to The Apocalypse.

Myth TV on Fedora 7

IMG_0037Well, I’ve decided this blog was getting far too technology-based over the last few entries. I’m in desperate need of another hobby, writing about my travels is all very well – but I only have 27 days holiday each year to spare for that sort of thing. Code is falling in from the ceiling and spilling out onto the posts. In my deepest moments of insanity I’ve starting writing about branding. Being able to claim the moral high ground in the past, I’ve now found myself getting into debates over logos, design and the public perception.

Well it has to change. Right now.. So this evening is all about the introduction to my Myth TV posts, which will serve as some sort of inadequate guide to getting an open-source media center up and running with digital tv recording, playback, tv guides as well as all the networkable, internet-ready, upgradeable, linux hardware hell you’d expect from such a project. Much more fun than going down the shop and buying a complete system. You can’t imagine.

Wait. Shit.

Okay, there will be code. There will certainly be text-only configuration files. Hopefully, I can get a llama in there somewhere… Hopefully.

Loris

In Sri Lanka it was 28ยฐC today, according to weather.com. London managed to boast a rather more unhealthy 19ยฐC. However, inside the office at my desk, we managed a more impressive 33.5ยฐC – so a partial win for London. In temperatures such as these most people can be found staring idly at their monitors, mouth open and eyes wide. It was in a similar catatonic state that I came to learn about the wonderful creature called the Loris.

The obscenely cute animal to your right is a Slender Loris, a nocturnal creature found in the rainforests of Sri Lanka. Whilst I don’t recommend writing to your local councilman this instant, to complain about these animals being under threat from logging, urban expansion, and all the rest of the usual culprits for rainforest depletion… I would highly recommend you stare at the picture a little longer, and exasperate an “awwww, but it’s so cu-uuute”.

I’ve never heard of these little primates before. So it was with a renewed sense of glee and excitement that I started clicking around randomly to find more about them. Apparently the Sinhalese have a proverb “unahapuluwa ge daruwa oota menika lu”. To you and me, that’s “the loris – young one is a gem to her”. Or more plainly, “see that baby loris? Only a mother could love that thing”. Well, yes, they might look like gremlins and maybe they act like them too. But look at those eyes!

That’s Sri Lanka firmly on my “places to visit” list then ๐Ÿ™‚ Tell a friend about the Loris today.

London 2012 and the importance of branding

The big news of the day is the unveiling of the London 2012 logo. There’s no denying the 12,149 signatures on the “Change The London 2012 Logo” petition. The logo had quite clearly made its mark on the population. And why not? We’ll be seeing this logo and branding that it implies for the next 5 years at least.

I don’t like to tackle the contentious minefield that is design and branding. It’s better left to people who give a damn in my opinion, which perhaps isn’t the most healthy stance for a web-site developer. But… I can make random analogies for anything, and they easily spiral out of control…

A brand is a lot like an iceberg, see. You can only give it a gentle shove in the general direction you want to go in. Standing on the shore you can shout encouragement or wave it off – but you’re still on the shore. It’s out there and sometimes there’s not a lot you can do except for frantic splashing in the waves. The best brands will evolve, picking up more icebergs along the way until one of two things happens.

1. It’s a huge success, travels for thousands of miles, but they eventually reach warmer climates, melt, and disappear. In which case you’re going to need another block of ice.
2. Your brand gets in the way of another body at sea. It causes unimaginable damage to everything around it as well as itself. It’s time to walk back down the beach and pretend you were nowhere near it when it drifted free.

So to get back to the point. Which of these is the London 2012 logo? Well it’s different, which some might call brave, or stupid. It’s brightly coloured and stands out, which is meant to appeal to the young people of now and 2012. Actually, let’s not circle this point any longer. It’s ridiculously stupid, is what it is. It lacks the finesse of London 2012 candidate city logo and absolutely deserves the ‘Lisa Simpson giving head’ description circulating all around the country at the moment.

And therein lies the genius. No publicity is bad publicity and everyone is talking about it. I don’t feel it represents the England of today, or tomorrow for that matter. But it is simple and already stands out as London 2012 Olympics. Wherever the London 2012 committee want to take this branding or whatever it was supposed to mean at conception – it’s released and it’s out at sea. Maybe we can all help it along in the right direction.

Upgrading to Fedora 7

Continuing the theme of geeking out this weekend, I’ve taken the plunge and upgraded my server to Fedora 7.

The usual suspects caused problems with the upgrade, namely.

Yum getting confused
Make sure you delete all your repos from yum, before you start with the post-install update. You might want to add back in the new atrpms, and livna repos.

atprms – /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
[atrpms]
name=Fedora 7 - i386 - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/f7-i386/atrpms/stable

livna
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/7/i386/livna-release-7-2.noarch.rpm

Madwifi-based network card

Grab the latest drivers from the atrpms repos
rpm -Uvh http://dl.atrpms.net/all/madwifi-kmdl-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7-0.9.4-36_r2321.fc7.i686.rpm http://dl.atrpms.net/all/madwifi-hal-kmdl-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7-0.9.4-36_r2321.fc7.i686.rpm http://dl.atrpms.net/all/madwifi-0.9.4-36_r2321.fc7.i386.rpm

And before you try and restart you network, don’t forget to reload the driver once they’re installed.
modprobe -va ath_pci
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart

cyrus-imapd fails to load via init.d scripts

Database exports fail (see errors in /var/lib/imap/rpm/db_export.log). This problem is still open, but cyrus-imapd can still be loaded directly through

/usr/lib/cyrus-imapd/cyrus-master &

eth1394 is not ported yet

Also, still open for the time being. eth1394 hasn’t been ported to the new FireWire stack yet. To be updated when I have a solution. If you’ve got one yourself, please do add a comment ๐Ÿ™‚

Hacking the Facebook Developer API

It’s been a while since I’ve written very much code just for myself, rather than everyone else. So this weekend I’ve decided to jump onto the Facebook API and learn a little bit more about the Gallery2 API in the process.

Why?

I have thousands of photos on Blakepics, and Facebook comes along and wants me to upload them all over again. Well, sure, I can do that – or, it makes a lot more sense to combine the power of the two systems.

What?

Wanting to keep this initial trial run extremely simple – I’ve gone for just adding a link below my profile picture. That way I can keep very clear of the Gallery API for the time being effectively reducing my problems by half ๐Ÿ™‚

How?

  1. User adds the Blakepics application on Facebook
  2. Setting the Callback URL on Facebook, a request is made to Blakepics.com
  3. Blakepics.com makes use of the Facebook API to check the currently logged in user
    // the facebook client library
    include_once('../modules/facebooktaggedalbums/api/client/facebook.php');
    include_once('../modules/facebooktaggedalbums/api/client/facebookapi_php5_restlib.php');
    // some basic library functions
    include_once('../modules/facebooktaggedalbums/api/lib.php');
    // this defines some of your basic setup
    include_once('../modules/facebooktaggedalbums/api/config.php');
    $facebook = new Facebook($api_key, $secret);
    $facebook->require_frame();
    $user = $facebook->require_login();
  4. Using this user ID, Blakepics requests the first and last name of that user from Facebook
    $user_info = $facebook->api_client->users_getInfo ($user, 'first_name,last_name');
  5. Generate a URL that links to the tagged album, e.g. http://www.blakepics.com/key/kevin+blake. Using the rather cool FBML (FaceBook Markup Language), the link can be sent to Facebook with the instruction that this should be applied as a profile action (fb:profile-action).
    $fbml="<fb:profile-action url=\"http://www.blakepics.com/key/" . $user_info[0]['first_name'] . "+".$user_info[0]['last_name']."\">View more Photos of me at Blakepics</fb:profile-action>";
    $facebook->api_client->profile_setFBML($fbml, $user);
  6. And display a message back to the user, to let them know what’s happened
    print "Blakepics profile link has been added";

And that’s it really. Obviously there’s a lot more that can be done, but the simple application works and is on its way to approval from the Facebook team. All being well, you should be able to add your own links to tagged albums very shortly.

No rabbits in Warsaw Zoo

“New born residents”, said my handy little tourist guide to Warsaw. “a llama”, it continued. I gasped a gasp of “oooh, a new born llama”. The tourist guide had apparently run out of things to say, because it didn’t respond any further. That, and it was made of paper.

So Warsaw Zoo has a new baby llama. I could hardly resist going to check that out now, could I? No – I tried and I couldn’t. So I did.

The zoo is on the opposite side of Old Town and across the river – which gave me plenty of time to go and do some last minute sightseeing on my way, though as my last day in Warsaw, I did want to take it easy and relax as well. It’s not like I’ve been doing very much of that, of course.

There are large areas of sandy banks on the River Wisla at the Warsaw end, which I hadn’t quite expected. Sunbathers and fishermen were all out in force, enjoying the absolutely gorgeous weather. I really have been extremely lucky to enjoy bright and beautiful sunshine throughout my entire trip. Well, except for that day and a half of thunderstorms and rain. But that was ages ago now ๐Ÿ™‚ Regardless, it must have stayed at a constant 20-25 degrees or so, which is how I’m managing to pull of this incredibly healthy looking tan. Off-white, they call it.

As if being a zoo, and rather green isn’t enough, it is situated like so many of Poland’s greatest assets, within the middle of a park. The park also boasts at least one very large metal giraffe structure. I didn’t stumble across any other exciting metallic animals. But maybe they’re there hiding in the bushes.

As far as Zoo’s go, Warsaw’s really quite nice. Rough Guides describes the place as “run-down, yet attractive” , but it wasn’t really in evidence today. Maybe a lot has changed since the publication date of July 2005. Or maybe I have very different standards. Regardless, a large proportion of the animals are thankfully not confined to the traditional “cages”, but in the more modern-zoo style of Oklahoma and Whipsnade, opting for pits filled with spikes and electric fencing to keep the animals where they should be. If you’ve been to a few like it, you probably know what I mean – but it’s essentially the idea of not using a 40cm thick iron cage encased in concrete and buried in sand to keep the bunny rabbit where it should be. Speaking of, I didn’t see any rabbits! I’ve spoken of the zoo in Cyprus, and amazement anyone would want to see the cute widdle bunny wabbits at the zoo when there are lions and tigers. And I didn’t see any in Warsaw. Maybe they don’t have them!

So, I’ll stick briefly to the highlights. Briefly. Yeah. Because I go to Zoo’s every chance I get, and you’re probably all very very sick of hearing about them. Many animals were sponsored by local and international companies. The Puma’s for example, sponsored by … Puma. There’s a sign. I took photos.

The Panther cubs (though not quite cubs any more, I suspect) were extremely entertaining as they played around in the water, chasing and attacking each other. Spring is in the air so many animals were … erm … ahem … having fun. Which was highly entertaining to watch as the group of school kids screamed and laughed I at the elephants, while the teachers turned their heads in shame ๐Ÿ™‚

There were pygmy marmosets! Enough said, I think. If you don’t what I’m talking about – you’re probably not aware of my trip to London Zoo earlier this month. So I’ll continue to leave you in the dark. And a baby giraffe. But s/he didn’t really come out to play, which was a shame.

As of last night, I also have the first guests in a room at a hostel. A family from South Korea have joined – and only the father speaks English – but they are stopping for two nights, before heading to Krakow, Prague, Budapest, Split and Dubrovnik.

So I’m just, like, Mr Knowledge King on four of those. I am not so sure this rumour about young people staying in hostels is true though. I think they’re all at the hotels, because they’re certainly not here.

The hostel meanwhile has been very helpful in its so-called bookcrossing. If you’re not familiar with the concept, you drop off a book – you take a book – everyone walks away happy. The Elephant on the Moon had the same thing and whist I didn’t like the look of any of the books – I dropped one off because they’re just too cool.

In Nathan’s Villa Hostel it works a little differently. “Tired of paying for overpriced English books?” announces the poster. It’s like it was reading my mind. “Only 20 zloty”. About 4 quid. So I’ve finished very book I brought with me – I go take a look. And they’re all second-hand, which is fine – and really poor condition. Like you’d pay 20p for in a charity shop for. Nothing interesting, either. So I went to a shop and paid for an overpriced English book. Tired of it. Yes. But not THAT tired.

So, there’s my Poland experience. I doubt there willl be another entry, unless I do one from the airport and something interesting happens between now and then.

If you’ve made it this far, then you really should have been working – not screwing around reading this garbage ๐Ÿ˜‰

‘Beaten with Sticks’ fertility clinics

I was just reading the Rough Guides book for ideas for tomorrow and I came across something that made me chuckle enough to post a blog entry about it. Traditionally, on Easter Monday in Poland – girls are doused in water by boys to make them fertile. As the guide book describes it, “a marginally better procedure than in the neighbouring Czech Republic where they’re beaten with sticks”. Genius.

It’s with a heavy heart that I’ve now left Krakow, a really really beautiful city that I have really grown to love over the past week. If my flight had not been from Warsaw, I would have most likely stayed. But then think of everything I’d be missing out on! ๐Ÿ™‚ Which wasn’t really very much for my first hour or two in Warsaw. I set all my stuff down at the hostel – which is much more of the stereotypical hostel I had imagined. Bunk beds, IKEA furniture, common rooms and kitchens far more akin to the Big Brother house than the warm homely surroundings provided by Elephant on the Moon. But it’s still not a bad thing by any means and I have still been won over from the every-night-at-a-hotel holidays of the past.

As I was saying, Warsaw is a stark contrast to the romantic city of Krakow. There are far less tourists, and more Poles who are going out to work, building careers as you would expect in a capital city. Life seems a lot more “fast-paced” and everyone appears to be heading somewhere. I am no longer greeted with benches, wide pavements lined with trees, and a healthy scattering of parks on every corner. There is most certainly a reduced amount of festivals, casual sellers, eateries, drinkeries, street entertainers, music – and you really notice. Many of the buildings are large, square, grey and functional – as a city recently rebuilt during Russian “partnership”, Warsaw can appear stark and unwelcoming. But at least it has a Subway.

I opened the guide book in the first park I came across. Far sooner than I would usuallly resort to such measures, usually preferring to get a feel for a city without prejudice. Well – my prejudices were already set, they weren’t good and I really didn’t have anything to lose. I had already started daydreaming about what trips I could go on to get out of here for the next three days.

And then everything changed.

Warsaw was almost entirely levelled in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. It was one of the most bloody and destructive battles of World War II. The Nazis were already being pushed west by the Red Army and their withdrawal from Warsaw seemed a strong possibility, which is still greatly debated by historians today. With over 400,000 soldiers, the Polish Home Army was the largest resistance force of anywhere in Europe. Advised by the allies to cooperate actively with the advancing Soviet forces, the arrival of the first Soviet tanks across the Wisla in the Praga district of Warsaw prompted the Polish forces to launch a single handed attack on the Germans. On August 1, 1944, 50,000 poorly armed troops sprang an assualt on the city centre and manage to capture large areas of land from the Nazis. The successes were short-lived and the Nazi recapture of the Wola district on August 11 was followed by the massacre of 8000 civilians. Women and children were tied to the front of tanks and rows of civilians were marched in front of German troops to deter sniper attacks. 63 days after the fighting began, the Polish forces surrendered – but not before 20,000 of their soldiers had been lost, and 225,000 civilians killed during the fighting. Nazi demolition squads under orders from Hitler levelled the city, destroying all but only 16 buildings from the centre of Warsaw – compounding the damage already carried out by the German bombers.

The city has since been rebuilt, including the cobblestones and the Stare Miasto (Old Town) is modelled upon Baroque-era drawings by Bellato. Some older residents even refer to these replacements as improvements on their pre-war counterparts which contained a number of 19th and 20th century improvements. Well, I was fooled. Exploring Old Town today was a vast improvement over the skyscrapers of the new Warsaw I had arrived at. St Ann’s Church, the Royal Castle, Old Town Square and The Barbican (not to be confused with the cement-tastic monstrosity of London) are all beautiful structures that bring the city somewhere towards the same life that Krakow has. The Palace of Culture and Science is quite stunning, even though many Poles have incredibly mixed feelings about it. Provided as a gift of friendship from Stalin, it is apparently the tallest building in Warsaw (I’m not sure, some of those skyscrapers are BIG – I’ll check tomorrow). With a surface area of over 80,000m(3), and 234.5m high, it is not the sort of gift you can ask “Gee, thanks Stalin. Hey, did you keep the receipt? You know, in case there are any breakages or I need to take it back to the store or anything?” Which I kind of get the impression they’d like to ๐Ÿ˜‰

But still, it’s here to stay and the symbol is represents to the people of Warsaw of different, more unpleasant times is slowly being forgotten by every passing generation. It’s definitely helpful in finding your way around, anyway ๐Ÿ™‚

And lastly, food. Today’s dish of the day was Pierogi domowe z kapusta I grzybami, okraszone skwarkami z boczku, from the Restauracja Barbakan, or in English – Homemade pierogi with cabbage and mushrooms, cracklings. Pierogi is something of a celebrity in Poland. It’s a kinf of flour-based pastry / pastery pocket thingy filled with meat or cabbage, potatoes with cottage cheese and onions, or fruit. Not totally unlike that pasta stuff I can’t remember the name of. But they’re really good ๐Ÿ™‚ The same restaurant also sells the Zurek soup inside the bread, as recommended by Gregory. So if I find myself in that area again in the next few days – I may stop and try it out. It’s just so crazy, it might even work.

But that’s all for the rest of my trip. Which I’m certainly feeling a lot more uplifited about, after the ropey start. Come to Warsaw – but keep your eyes closed until you’re in the old town. And maybe visit Krakow AFTER, as I had originally planned. That probably would’ve helped ๐Ÿ™‚

The Elephant on the Moon Hostel and Polish cuisine

After my trip to Auschwitz, I leapt into the nearest bar that would serve me beer and food. It’s a necessary extension to the trip and one that should by all rights be included in the ticket price. But before we get there…

I arrived at the Elephant on the Moon Hostel. As I’ve said before, it’s the first time I’ve stayed at a hostel and the experience cannot have been better. Gregory and Kate are both fantastic and very friendly people who have been both informative and helpful in my stay around Krakow. The more I think back, the more I regret not just coming here in the first place, with the hotel and its building site next door, the room next to the lift, being 5km from most things of interest and seemingly nowhere near as knowledgeable staff. Still, not much I can do about that now ๐Ÿ™‚

Upon arriving I was given the run-down of things to do and see in Krakow, a map (ye gods – 3 days without a map until now), a list of upcoming clubs and concerts, and a tour brochure with the helpful advice that they could happily organise a tour to Auschwitz, it left at 9.20 in the morning and all I had to do was hand over some cash. And that’s the last I did about it until 9am the next morning, 20 minutes before I needed to be at Hotel Novotel for the coach.

Gregory even packed up some breakfast for me into a bag since I was in a bit of a rush while Kate phoned for a taxi. By around 1 o’clock on the Auschwitz tour with no break, he had quickly become my favourite person in all of Krakow. Or, to put it another way – I was being well looked after. I’ve mentioned I don’t really have a point of reference for hostels, but the Elephant on the Moon is clean, tidy, with friendly people, perfectly comfortable and a fine breakfast (add some slices of ham and it’s exactly the same as the hotel, to be honest). I’m pleased with my choice, yes. I’m repeating myself and I get the point, I’ll move on.

Following the frankly appalling diet I’ve had over the past few days of hamburgers, steaks, mixed grills, pizza, hot dogs and kebabs – Kate took it upon herself to make sure I spent my last day in Krakow eating decent, proper Polish foods. Well, all I’ve seen people eat so far is all of the above, so it’s not really my fault – is it? Yes. Apparently it is. So, armed with my new map and a marking on it where to find a good cheap student hangout I was on my way. I was on a roll – straight down Al J. Slowackiego, turn right onto Krupnicka, and it’s on the corner of Garncarska. I say these names only to wow and impress you of all of their extra unnecessary letters. The Polish have a love for the latter half of the alphabet that we just can’t ever hope to replicate.

As I bounded into the restaurant with a massive grin on my face, pleased with successes of finding the place as well as the opportunity to eat some real food, everyone stopped eating, and talking to stare up at me. I walked up to the group of 5, yes 5, attractive waitresses and grinned.
“Uuuuuh, anyone speak English?” They all looked at one another, then back at me, eager for someone else to take charge.
“Yes”, replied the one in the middle “only reservations. No tables”.
“Oh right…” my big grin slightly fading. “Well… can I make a reservation then?”
Blank look.
“Or….should I come back?”
“Yes, yes”, responded the waitress. “Come back later”, a little too enthusiastically. “About four”.

I assumed that they closed at four. Or that maybe there was a shift change. Either way, I knew in my heart that I probably wouldn’t be returning at four. It would be a terrible inconvenience to walk twenty minutes out of my way. Whichever way that way might have been.

“Okay”, I replied, by huge grin returning. “Four o’clock”, as I bounded enthusiastically back out the door.

So, I didn’t partake in the recommended cuisine. But, my map had more. Kate had also written the names of the dishes I should be trying as well. This would be easy. All I needed to do was find another restaurant selling “Zurek w chlebie”, and “Pierog ruskie”. how hard could it be, really? Not as easy as you’d think apparently. The first one is a soup, the second – I still have no idea. My suspicion is that it contains cabbage though.

So, long story short – because it’s really long enough already. I didn’t find either. But I came close. Oh yes I did. I found Zurek polski z ziemiakami. Which is the same soup, but with potatoes and without the rather interesting method of putting the soup inside the bread (???). I didn’t understand either. But it sounded fun. It’s a traditional sour polish soup, and really quite nice – with bits of sausage, and in my case, chunks of potato as well (that’s the z ziemiakami part, I’m told).

Not really knowing what else to look for, I also went with Kotlet schabowy, or as we like to say on the English side of the menu … “Polish chop”. It had the word Polish in the name so I naturally assumed that maybe it contained something to do with Poland. It wasn’t as good a choice as the soup and that’s not a testament to the fantastic flavourings flourishing past my taste buds. I also doubt I’ll ever get to use that phrase again, will I?

It could have been better. It basically consisted of mashed up, breaded pork chop with chips and salad. Or as we like to say on the REAL English side of the menu. Tesco’s value meal – 2.49.

I have three days now, to find this magical Pierog Ruskie. But I am leaving Krakow tomorrow morning, and heading to Warsaw for my final stop at another hostel – Nathans Villa Hostel.