2014-07-31

Macedonia to Dalmatia ride, mileage calculation

Here are the distance estimates for the July Macedonia, Montenegro, and Dalmatia trip, using Google Maps. Somewhat weird junction points have been chosen for use in this calculation, in order to get Google Maps to draw a route more or less similar to my real route.
  • Macedonian train from Skopje to Prilep
  • Section 1, Prilep - Krushevo - Strezhevo Reservoir - Prespa Lake - Galičica NP - Ohrid - Elbasan, 279 km as follows:
    Prilep to Krushevo 33 km
    Krushevo to Stenje 100 km
    In Galičica National Park, above Lake Prespa and the village of Stenje
    Stenje to Trpejca 33 km  (across Galičica National Park)
    Trpejca to Ohrid 21 km
    Ohrid to Elbasan 92 km
    
  • Albanian train from Elbasan to Shkoder
  • Section 2, Shkoder - mouth of the Bojana River - Old Bar - Šušanj, 102 km, as follows
    Shkoder to Bojana 55 km
    Bojana to Šušanj 47 km
    
  • Montenegrin train from Šušanj to Podgorica
  • Podgorica - Cetinje - Kotor - Risan - Herceg Novi - Dubrovnik - Split, 381 km as follows:
    Podgorica to Cetinje 37 km
    Cetinje to Kotor 45 km
    Kotor to Herceg Novi 43 km
    Herceg Novi to Dubrovnik 49 km
    Dubrovnik to Makarska 145 km
    Makarska to Split 62 km
    

This totals to the 762 km riding distance for the entire trip, which is a bit shorter than the last year's summer ride, Copenhagen to Amsterdam. But the elevation gain / loss were rather higher this time :-)

Actually, the first section was a bit shorter than the Google Maps would show, as I could not make it show the route along the Strezhevo Reservoir (there is no official mapped road there). But riding via Bitola, as Google Maps would of course suggest, would have been easier...

It took about 20 days from leaving Prilep to arriving to Split, including all stops.

2014-07-01

Teaching an Ubuntu laptop to recognize the Ethernet connection

Good advice from Joseph VanPelt

wired device not managed

I had the same problem with a fresh install on my Asus Eee PC 1005HA. The live environment worked with no problems, but once installed I couldn't get the connection to respond or to not read "device not managed". When I changed the text in this configuration file and restarted Network Manager everything worked!

gksudo gedit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
for lubuntu:
gksudo leafpad /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

Now the text editor will open. Find the line managed=false and replace false with true and save the file (ctrl+s) and close the file.

Restart your computer or the NetworkManager service (sudo service network-manager restart).

This worked for me with Ubuntu 12.04 on an Acer laptop as well.