If you are using a TP-Link TL-R480T+ load balancing router and have been adding in Policy Routing rules only to find out that they don’t work, then you need to go into the Link Backup page and disable any fail over settings you have. A bit of a weird one, but it is the case nonetheless.
I’ll open with this; chances are if you are reading this from a Sky Cable Philippines Broadband connection then it probably took well over a minute to load the page, that’s if the page even opened at all! The reason for this is that this website is hosted in the UK and to connect from your Sky Cable connection to this server you would have likely been routed via ae-13.r01.tkokhk01.hk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.31) which amongst a growing number of other hops seems to grind to a halt. You would be forgiven in thinking “If this is happening outside of the Philippines then why are you singling out Sky Cable?”, the answer is because this ONLY happens with Sky Cable and not any other Philippines ISP, and this issue is starting to affect many other websites including Apple’s download servers, Amazon S3 Hosting, and even Sky Cable’s own website hosted in Singapore. All of these sites when served or routed through certain CDNs/Hops in Hong Kong or Singapore will not be able to serve you traffic above 20~100KB/sec, or in the case of Apple a slightly better max speed of about 300 KB/sec. That’ll take you well over 5 hours to download an iOS update!
Let me go into more details, and let me get some things out the way first, because I am sure there will be things you are thinking before we get to the end of this post.
This is my first time staying at the Malmaison, but I did work in Farringdon for a number of years, so I am aware of the hotel and the surrounding area.
[SLAM]
So first off, the area. If you have business in Farringdon, then the hotel is in a great location just off Charterhouse street opposite the Smithfield Market. The hotel is about a 4-minute walk from Farringdon underground station and a similar distance from Barbican. Right outside the hotel is a decent size grass park, so if the weather is nice then you can soak up some sun outside.
[SLAM]
If you are here on vacation, then Farringdon is a decent spot to get out of the hustle and bustle of London. But it is a Monday to Friday area with the place being as dead as a dodo at the weekends. There are a ton of great old-style pubs in Farringdon with five or six of them being a stone’s throw from the Malmaison hotel. There is also a decent bar scene with places like Beduain staying open until 3 or 4 am. And if you like to drink until the sun comes up, then I believe Fabric is still operating as a traditional dance club.
[SLAM]
The hotel itself has a bit of a boutique feel to it. The hotel is a bit small with the rooms feeling slightly cramped, but not overly uncommon for this type of hotel in London. The bathrooms are spacious and probably could have been a foot or so smaller to allow the main room to be bigger. The showers in the hotel are absolutely pathetic, and despite there being a rain shower head and a standard one, you are going to need to spend an additional 15 minutes of your morning routine just to get wet! You’ll also likely find that the little water that does manage to make it out the shower head will end up on the floor, so put some towels down.
[SLAM]
The hotel has a decent size restaurant, but I didn’t eat there. I did have some room services and didn’t find the toasted sandwich particularly well made. The two hotel bars stay open until about 1 am, so if you’d rather drink closer to home, then they have you covered until a decent-ish time.
[SLAM]
The staff was helpful and friendly, albeit misinformed about certain things in the area, but no one is expecting an encyclopedia, so no big deal.
[SLAM]
You may be asking yourself why this review has the word [SLAM] dotted about it? Well, the [SLAM]’ing had me wondering what the hell was going on every morning at the Malmaison between the hours of 7 am and 11 am, waking (and keeping) me up on 5 of the 6 mornings I stayed there. I am not sure if it is just the room I had, but each morning, housekeeping would come slamming through the surrounding room and stairway doors up to the point where I wondered if I had paid extra for the mental torture package! Being the stiff upper lip Brit that I am, I obviously didn’t complain about this until the last night, with the staff taking my concerns on board and housekeeping not making a peep the next morning.
All in all, a decent hotel and in a great location if you have business in Farringdon. Be mindful of slamming door housekeepers!
You may have read my previous guide on how to setup and configure the Lightberry HD and come across a line where I said…
If you are a 4K user, then you will want to purchase the 4K kit from Lightberry instead as it uses a different HDMI grabber. If you are thinking “Well, I might upgrade to 4K in the next five years and will buy the 4K kit for future proofing” then don’t bother, get the Lightberry HD kit. If you are unsure of what you need, get the Lightberry HD kit!
At the time I was using my Lightberry HD with a standard 1080p TV so there was no real need for me to push the Lightberry 4K as it is a little overly complicated and also limited in what it can handle. So fast forward to October of last year and I bought myself an nice shiny new LG 65″ E6 OLED which obviously supports 4K. Hmmm, now what am I to do with my Lightberry HD since i’ll now be feeding it some 4K content? Should I upgrade to the Lightberry 4K version?
Well unfortunately, upgrading to the 4K version wasn’t really an option and this is due to a limitation with the Lightberry 4K hardware. Basically the HDMI port on the 4K Grabber is limited to HMDI 1.4, this means that it can only support 4K at 30 frames per second (FPS). Now whilst this is entirely fine for most Movies and TV Shows which are 23-25 fps it is obviously an issue when it comes to PC Master Race 4k 60 FPS gaming, or future 4k 60fps video. After searching the internet I came across a device that should help me out. Enter the HD Fury 4K Linker.
Now what does this strange looking device actually do I hear you cry? Well my friend, the 4K linker is a pretty neat bit of kit and what it does is supposed to do is take a 4K feed and then allows you to down-sample that feed into 1080p or lower. Not only does it do this, but it also sends a fake signal to the rest of your HDMI equipment in your chain to pretend that it is a fully 4K capable device. This is important because of the way HDMi works, basically your highest resolution can only be as large as the lowest resolution in the chain. In English please? If you have a 1080p only device connected to any part of a HDMI chain the the max resolution to be passed along that chain is 1080p, so your lovely new 4k TV will not switch into 4k resolution!
Most people know that you can’t really go wrong with a Shangri-La hotel, and the resort in Boracay is really no exception.
First off, if you are from the Philippines or are heading there on vacation, then someone somewhere will have told you about the pristine beaches of Boracay. Unfortunately, a little too many people have been told about Boracay and it is about the most touristy and commercial holiday destination you can get. Absolutely great for an 18 to 30’s holiday, not so much if you want to relax a little.
Thankfully, the Boracay Shangri-La has us covered. The resort is set off to one corner of the island and is separated from the main white beach from a large rock formation jutting out. To get to Boracay from Manila, you either fly to Caticlan or Kalibo, both of which is a 45 minute flight time. From Caticlan, you will need to take a 15-minute boat ride from the ferry port (5 minutes from the airport) to get to Boracay Island itself. If you landed in Kalibo, you would need to take the same boat ride, but it would be about a 45-minute journey from the airport to the ferry port. Since you have spent all that money staying at the Shang, they offer a private speed boat to ferry you directly to the resort, which saves a ton of time waiting around and is much more comfortable.
Once you get to the resort, you get the standard welcome drinks and cold towel, and check in is nice and quick due to the many counters available. From there, you hop into a six-seater golf buggy which will drive you to your room/villa. I actually stayed in a Villa back in 2010, and whilst exquisite, I did find that they are a little too far away from the main pool/bar area of the resort. This time, I stayed in the premier sea view rooms which sit right on top of the large beach. We found it a little easier to get around as it meant we could walk, as opposed to having to wait for a buggy to pick us up each time.
The rooms are nice and spacious with a large bathroom. The rooms have a bathtub and a rainfall shower. Unfortunately, the pressure in the shower wasn’t too great and there seemed to be very little difference between dialing in hot and cold. The rooms also have a nice balcony (veranda) which has two beds you can lay out on. The main bed is firm but comfortable and housekeeping provides four large bottles of water to your room each day.
The problem I have with the room is that the curtains do not fit all the way across, so it leaves a gap of about 6 inches for the sunlight to wake you up at 5:30 am, pretty uncharacteristic of a Shangri-La hotel, along with us having an issue with our key card and room lock.
The main pool area is nicely laid out with its accompanying beach. You can find a poolside bed to lay on and camp out there all day without worrying about much else other than relaxing. The pool is nice and large, has a Jacuzzi, and is kept warm by the sun. The beach sand isn’t quite a talcum powder as the main white beach on the island, but you’ll not be complaining due to the exclusivity of it.
There are really only three restaurants in the resort and two bars (discounting the games room as a bar). The pool bar closes at 10 pm, with a few people commenting that they would like to sit around the pool and have a drink much later than that. There is, however, another bar that is open until 1 am, but it doesn’t quite have the relaxing charm of sitting near the pool, despite a large open fire to keep you warm in 30 °C heat — it does look nice though. Both bars offer the usual bar type snacks and are of good quality. I recommend the Kofte Wrap!
The fine-dining restaurants are Italian and basically seafood restaurants. Both had limited menus, as far as I am concerned, and whilst the food was nice, the portions were quite small. The third restaurant houses the breakfast buffet and offers a more homely selection of dishes, but I still felt a little limited by the choices available. There is also quite a limited beer menu from all the bars and restaurants, which isn’t necessarily odd for the Philippines. But I would like to see the Shang offer a little more than the standard San Miguel pale and light. Checkout can be a bit of a pain with the boat only leaving each hour, however, once you get to the Caticlan ferry port, you can sit and wait all you like in the private Shangri La area before you are transported to the airport.
We were there in July for a wedding which was organized very well. I would expect us to return to this resort despite not having much love left for the island of Boracay itself.