Tag 4. Ahoy!

The morning pulls me outside and I go for a pre-breakfast walk on deck. There is already coffee for the early birds at the Anytime Bar. I'm greeting the loafing smokers while passing them. Armoured with book and covered in blankets I occupy a beach sofa on deck 11 after breakfast. It is windy, cloudy, somehow nice but still quite cold.

The 'Yellow Blankets' are demonstrating for more relaxing and better weather

The weather is getting worse and so I'm looking for a quiet place inside in the early afternoon. This proposition turns out to be not as easy but the AIDA bar is slowly becoming a regular residence. I am so inactive that I skip lunch. Also I'm getting a bit petulant. In the afternoon there is finally some edutainment to attend and I book the excursion to the Nordkapp.

A tourist does what a tourist has to do.

More weather

Our ship is accompanied by two low-pressure areas. A high-pressure area over central Europe causes spring-like temperatures in the German homeland but also a huge airmass exchange between these three meteorological phenoma. As a bonus the low-pressure area over Iceland is greeting us with foaming waves over the Atlantic ocean.

Short: We are caught in a storm with some respectable swell. A lot of it.

What's also there a lot of: much space at the dinner restaurants and the bars. One prancels through the familiar, staggering ship. The evening entertainment programme was delayed to the next day and the decks 6 and 11 are completely closed for safety reasons.

Anybody who isn't seasick spends the time playing games and chilling in the bars while dreaming of tomorrow's shore leave Bodø.

Orga

A not so very polite opportunity to spend your time on a staggering ship is to watch the staff work.

After a few days you notice some patterns: they always work (12+ hours) and mostly at the same positions. Going for a walk or run in the morning you recognize the guy open the pool bar. The same guy makes you a coffee three hours later and a beer in the evening. I bet this real nice Indian guy does a shift at the crew night club afterwords. Maybe this guy is a vampire...? Same for the restaurant staff. The guys you are greeting at breakfast, you are greeting at dinner again.

And all of them are so damn kind all of the time. I really hope they are getting paid appropriately, otherwise I could not go on a journey like this again...

Daily staff carousel of the star-shaped AIDA Bar

The default markup language of input files in Nikola is restructuredText. You can, of course, configure Nikola to also process Markdown formatted files but by default there are missing some features like admonitions or table of contents which can be enabled by extensions.

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)
PAGES = (
    ("pages/*.rst", "pages", "story.tmpl"),
    ...
    ("pages/*.md", "pages", "story.tmpl"),
)

MARKDOWN_EXTENSIONS = [# all extensions of extra available
                       "extra",
                       # other officially supported extensions
                       "admonition",
                       "toc",
                       # third party extension
                       "markdown_include.include",
                      ]

MARKDOWN_EXTENSIONS_CONFIGS = {
    DEFAULT_LANG: {
        "ext1": {"option1": value1,
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    "other_configured_lang": {
        "ext1": {"option1": value1,
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}

Day 3. God morgen, Haugesund!

We are on time landing in Haugesund which is our first and most southern stop. After having breakfaast we prepare for our shore excursion.

Haugesund havn

Soon we are strolling through the small inner city and stopping by at the tourist information because we are experienced individual tourists and know our duties. Haugesund's main attraction is within walking range so we visit the combined monument Haraldshaugen (with the Haraldstøtten obelisk) und Krosshaugen (that with the stone cross) in memory to the rule of king Harald Hårfagre (Harald Fairhair) and the country's christianity.

Harald Hårfagre

My travel mates decide to take a rest after the walk and I decide to fight at the pie buffet again. I am triumphant and celebrate my victory with cake and tea.

No human or other creature was harmed filling this plate.

We depart in the early evening and face another complete day at the ocean. Later on the winds intensify, at Beaufort force 7 both of our male travel party members call in seasick.

The noise of the sea

Travelling by ship is done on purpose. Being on the way moving is part of the destination. It is proven that maritime surroundings do have positive health effects on humans. One can even buy recordings of maritime and water noises or just listen to these on YouTube.

That is interesting because for humans the ocean is a hostile ecosystem full of dangers and therefore a natural frontier. To us the sound of the rushing sea is fascinating and we are able to watch the movements of the water and the waves for eternity. Instead of calming us down it should make us freak out because without the safety area of the steely colossus we would be dead within minutes.

Friendship

Last summer during a sailing trip on the river Havel I got into a heavy and fast moving thunderstorm with winds between 7 to 9 bft causing huge damages on land. We were able to take our position in a bay to let the storm pass over us maneuvring with as little sail as possible. That worked pretty well, still that was a tough and shaky situation involving massive amounts of water from various directions.

Reminded of this event I watch the waves and try to think through the thought experiment we sometimes talk about at sunny days: if we piloted the boat in direction New York, how far would we get in that nutshell (Friendship 24 sailing boat)? When well prepared and equipped and a bit lucky regarding the weather one can get mildly optimistic but if you are knocked out or thrown overboard at 10 bft and 12 meter high waves your remains will not ever be found.

That brings me to another question:

When do people realize somebody is missing?

I did not count how often I was advised not to pull a Küblböck in advance of the journey. In case you do not know (which is probably the case): Daniel Küblböck was a casting show/reality TV personality who had become a last sad media footnote by jumping off a cruiseship into the ocean in some previous year.

In this video by a travel journalist it is stated that up to 19 persons vanish from cruiseships every year.

Jumping off a sailing ship into the ocean is a very, very safe method of committing suicide. Even if there are witnesses it is almost impossible to keep track of the lost person in the water if the person is conscious and gets back to the water surface at all until rescue measures are initiated. Any person who ever has performed a "man/buoy over board" maneuvre will comprehend this.

If one goes overboard without witnesses, it will not be noticed at first.

The Red Telephone

Crew

Missing crew is probably noticed quite rapidly. From my observation the staff maintaining the outer decks seem to always work in teams of two or more. Taking this premise into account a missing crew member should be recognized within working shift but considering these guys do not do a 9 to 5 job here this may also be half a day. By the beginning of the next day's working shift it will be noticed.

Time frame: 0.5 to 24 hours? Are there a mandatory report intervals for outer deck staff?

Passenger

In this case it is reasonable to differ between single and non-single travellers.

One can move freely onboard and is not forced to leave the ship at ports. It may be likely that a missing single traveller is noticed on check out. But there is the housekeeping factor. Do they report if a cabin is not getting used for a while? It is possible in theory that that person stays overnight in other cabin(s) or mastered slepping on barstools...who knows?

So does the housekeeping report on this and if so, when? From day one, two, three...?

Time frame: one to several days?

For people not travelling alone the degree of social binding is probably crucial. There are many corners for retreat on a cruiseship. The larger the ship the higher the probability not to run into each other. Even on the small AIDAaura I met new people until the end of the trip that I was convinced not having seen during the last two weeks before.

A part of a married couple might get suspicious at the next meal or at least when going to bed if the other is absent. But there are also people in groups sharing cabins. A sleepover in another cabin might appear inappropriate to some but not impossible. But afterwards the person will have to return to the cabin sooner or later so the time frame is extended to maybe a day.

Time frame: minutes to 24 hours?

References

• Spotify playlist: 5 hours of sea noise
• Spiegel Online: Wilfried Erdmann: Erster deutscher Weltumsegler 1967/68 (German)
• Wikipedia: Blauwasserrouten (German)
• GEO: Darum wirken Naturgeräusche so entspannend (German)
• stern: Warum uns das Meer glücklich macht (German)
• YouTube: 9 Things Cruise Lines Don't Want You To Know. And Won't Tell You

Day 2. Weekend and sunshine

The bright winter sun pushes the passengers onto the upper decks, covered in yellow fleece blankets people are laying in the sun like being on a holiday.

Plans and information

Now we are getting serious on planning our next steps: what can you do onboard? What are interesting shore excursions? The AIDA board portal becomes a permanent open browser tab; one finds any relevant information for the life onboard there: access to the cabin account, ship position, speed and course data or weather - the bridge is now under surveillance - dayplanner for events, schedules, menu plans etc.

This cruise is promoted as part of the "AIDA Selection tours". This concept is applied to niche routes like winter cruises in the northern hemisphere or long-tail world cruises. The standard light entertainment programme is extended by lectures and workshops about historic and scientific topics adjusted to the cruise.

I attended all of the scientific edutainment programme that was astonomy related. Of course one lecture was about polar lights. One may guess that these lectures were not university astrophysics level. As a person being not very fond of classic cruiseship entertainment I really enjoyed these events.

Coffeecalypse

In the afternoon there is "Coffee and pie" on the Calypso restaurant's schedule, that sounds cosy, doesn't it? IT IS NOT! Arriving at the resaurant we realise that the rest of the ship is already present. There is an incredible crowd at the almost empty pie buffet, no unoccupied seats at the tables, too many people, too noisy, what a mess.

I hatch a plan that we take seats outside of the restaurant while I go back inside and organise some coffee and sweets - I'm just more agile acting alone.

Beverage flat, the second time

The coffeepots on the table are defended by the bloodhounds so I withdraw and step up to the coffee automat. The thing that not only makes me wonder is that I am asked to put in my board card, not my beverage flat card.

And then I learn that coffee from automats in the restaurants is charged to the cabin account. If I order a coffee at one of the bars it is covered by the beverage flatrate. Sounds weird but fact!

Step by step it becomes clear what is covered by the flatrate and what is not:

->  X is served in bottles: not covered
->  X comes from a bottle and is mixed in a alcohol-free cocktail: covered.

Sounds weird but fact!

Dinner disaster

This are more complicated when travelling with a three-year old. He is too old to be pacified with baby food and then be parked afterwards and on the other hand to young to adjust to the needs of adults.

At the buffet restaurants dinner is from 6 to 9 PM. To this second day we did not see through the guests dynamics or just did not pay much attention. That now takes vengeance.

About 7 o'clock we enter the Calypso restaurant. Our serenity turns into irritation because we cannot find a table for the five of us. Hoping that this task would be more successful to find a table for three in the Markt restaurant, I propose to separate so we can manage to get the kid fed. Well, two minutes later K. comes out the Markt restaurant nodding her head "They are all just sitting in front of their (wine) glasses."

In this moment it fell like scales from my eyes why the Markt restaurant closes for half an hour during dinner time - it is the only chance to have a seat after 7 PM.

For the three-year old this option turns out being too late and so dinner becomes the most stressful part of the whole day.

Airing

Baby, it's cold outside...

After one complete day at the sea and the stressful dinner I prepare to go for a walk on the upper decks. I am logging my 70 minutes walk with Strava to prove that I can go on water...you can't explain that!

Returning to the AIDA bar to my surprise K. and M. just take part in a discofox dance competition - and they win! - of course they do because they are really good and trained at dancing together. Great cruiseship atmosphere. Cheers!

Prologue

The long planned family vacation to the Northern Lighs is close. It was distinct from the beginning that it will be a cruise. Everyone who would get to know of these plans would then immediately ask the one word question "Hurtigrouten?". The one word answer to it is "No.", the more elaborate is "No, we decided to go with AIDA primarily because of the easy arrival within Germany. Yes, I do believe that we will be spared the loud holiday club and party atmosphere like on Mallorca on this route."

The journey is called "Winter in the high North" and part of the travel operator's catalogue since 2017. You can read two travel reports in German here:

• Winter im hohen Norden mit AIDAcara
• Reisebericht: Nordlichter und Winter im hohen Norden mit AIDAcara

Hints

1. My notes have been unexpectedly evolved into a lengthy report (>5000 words) separated in several articles. You find a one page version here.
2. Initially some bullet points were written down to remember when filling out the AIDA feedback form but I left these here. I put these in a blue box.
3. Personal tips and side notes are put in an orange box.

Day 1. Hamburg

Habemus luggage

We are four adults and one three-year old on a two-week winter vacation. To almost everybody's surprise the complete luggage is stashed silently into the car's trunk. Being either in good or just indifferent mood we are heading Hamburg. A few hours later we arrive at the shuttle service's parking lot, hand over our luggage, check in and there we are standing on the boat.

The ship seems like an ant hill - in the inside passengers are swarming looking for cabins and orientation and crew is distributing the suitcase masses and fulfilling all their other tasks. After settling and coming down in the strange surrounding our small first-time cruise travel party decides to have a coffee before departure.

Arrival

The beverage billing system

We had booked the alcohol-free beverage flat in advance and an additional card at the check-in. That thing should now let magically appear some hot beverages on the table.

After getting our drinks to our surprise we got a receipt to sign. We confronted the service staff member with our confusion but that was not very helpful because his English skills were close to non-existent. That is going to be some fun...

Finally I was able to retreive the relevant information from the slightly overstrained and a bit scared very young staff member. All drinks are called to account at the normal price either to your cabin account using the bord card or to the flatrate account using your flatrate card. In every case you have to verify the recept with your cabin number and sign. The receipts are collected, scanned and available for inspection upon request (to find out abuse or wrong billings). But nobody tells you that.

Cast off!

Six o'clock sharp we are standing on deck 6 to watch the ship slowly depart from the pier and Hamburg harbour into the night. There is dinner and the welcome show at the theatre waiting.

Sometime around 10 PM, we are heading Danmark, it has become quiet on the ship. My day, the whole week were long and busy and eventful so I decide to calm down in the hamster wheel at the finess studio on deck 9. Best sleep tonight.

Sailing away from vespertine Hamburg harbour

Nikola is a great static site generator with lots of available plugins to extend its functionality.

One of these plugins is the Project Pages plugin. The principle of it is that you create source files with (meta) information in a determined 'projects' folder and Nikola generates an index site and one page per project. You can see what it looks like on the developer's website or here at my site.

The plugins' templates are based on using a Boostrap theme. If you are using other themes you will run into two problems:

• table and other formatting

• carousel of the featured projects

.. status: featured

% if featured:
<div class="carousel">
  % for p in featured:
  <input type="checkbox" class="faux-ui-facia">
  <div class="slide" annot="${p.title()}">
    <img src="${p.meta('previewimage')}" alt="${p.title()}">
  </div>
  % endfor
</div>
% endif

Mediaplayer mit GStreamer

Im einführenden Artikel zu Mediaplayer mit GStreamer werden Probleme beschrieben, die auf die Verwendung von "xvimagesink" als Videosink zurückzuführen sind.

In diesem Artikel wird als Alternative der Videosink "gtksink" verwendet und nur auf die Unterschiede zu "xvimagesink" eingegangen, da die weitere Vorgehensweise identisch ist.

self.sink = Gst.ElementFactory.make("gtksink")

video_widget = self.sink.get_property("widget")
builder.get_object("video_box").add(video_widget)

Anwendungsstarter in GNOME

Anwendungsstarter in GNOME und anderen Desktopumgebungen werden mit Desktopeinträgen in Form von Textdateien mit der Endung "desktop" realisiert.

~/.local/share/applications
/usr/local/share/applications
/usr/share/applications

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Application name
Exec=python path/to/script.py
Type=Application

$ xprop | grep WM_CLASS

Zusätzliche Programmaktionen

Desktopeinträge können sogenannte Aktionen enthalten, die zusätzliche Wege enthalten, Anwendungen zu starten. Diese werden als Untermenüs in Form von "Quicklists" oder "Jumplists" dargestellt.

Im Desktopeintrag wird das Attribut Actions angelegt, diese Actions werden innerhalb der Datei darunter in "Desktop Action"-Abschnitten definiert:

[Desktop Entry]
...
Actions=option1;option2;

[Desktop Action option1]
Name=Start with Option 1
Exec=python run.py --option1

[Desktop Action option2]
Name=Start with Option 2
Exec=python run.py --option2

Zusätzliche Anwendungsstarter von GPT

It has been a while since I have taken some care of my tool to manage my GoPro footage with but it has gotten some attention so I could not just abandon it without losing my face so here we are...

We've come a long way, baby

Icon

First things first: we have an icon. This is my way of coping with pedantry and an attempt to keep up the illusion of competence. I found it at The Noun Project.

GtkApplication

The application now runs as generic Gtk.Application which includes

• starting/faving from the GNOME shell

• identify/kill the process by name (no more random "Python" task)

• commandline options are available

• cleaner code, p.e. avoid starting the main loop manually

Application window

Since v0.3 there is a second main application window available with media data information and a preview widget realized with GStreamer.

These two windows are now merged into one providing a StackSwitcher to switch between these alternative views. This now is the default application window.

Not convinced to drop the "single view" windows I decided to keep them for now. You can launch the application using by executing the run script passing one of these options:

$ # compact/list view
$ python run.py -c
$ python run.py --alt-gui-compact
$ # preview window
$ python run.py -e
$ python run.py --alt-gui-ext

If you want to use the old commandline interface, you can do so by running

$ python run.py --cli

Run the script with --help option to show all available options.

Fixed issues

• importing from "other" places should do as planned now

• the GStreamer preview now uses the gtksink playbin (this story may be told another time)

• timelapse generation should not freeze the main loop

Burn the widge(t)

I replaced several widgets for modern looks and better desktop integration:

• all dialogs are Gtk.MessageDialogs now

• the dropdown menu is a Gtk.PopoverMenu instead of a Gtk.Menu

Logs and configuration

The output of logging and the configuration file have moved to ~/.config/gpt. You may have to set your working directory again if you have used GPT before.

Installation

Dependencies

That'll do on Archlinux and derivates:

$ sudo pacman -S python-gobject python-yaml python-setuptools python-lxml python-setproctitle mediainfo ffmpeg

And that on Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-gi python3-setuptools python3-lxml gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0 gstreamer1.0-gtk3 mediainfo ffmpeg

Setuptools

The application can be installed by using setuptools. After downloading or cloning the repository run

$ python setup.py install --user  # or
$ sudo python setup.py install

Desktop file

Setuptools will also install a desktop file so you can launch GPT from the GNOME shell or menu. All alternative interface options are available via desktop action so you can start these on right click from the activities overview or dash if GPT is running or added as favourite.

Bits and pieces

• code improvements (formatting, readability, PEP8 compliance, removal of deprecated code, file structure)

• updated and detailed README

• updated localization files

Consult the README for details.