Trains
======

I was in  Prague at Friday and  in Brno an Saturday.  Czech Republic is
small so it's about  3 hours and 20 minutes to Prague  and some 2 hours
20 minutes to Brno.  I used services of the state  train company in all
cases.  It's  not  bad  but  these  are  differences.  There  is  tough
competition on  the Prague-Ostrava  line as  there are  three companies
(the state  one and two private  ones). So the prices  are competitive,
free WiFi is standard service and so.

On the Brno-Ostrava line it is  different. This is less important route
so there is no competition. The trains  are older, there is no WiFi and
even no 220V  outlets. Surprisingly, in some trains there  is near some
service:  I started  to write  this  post in  the train  from Brno  and
exactly when I wanted  to write that there are no  services then a girl
with a mini-bar appeared and offered tea and refreshments for very fair
prices (I really  appreciated the cup of  hot tea) - a tea  and a snack
for about $1.

But that's OK. The  only advantage on the line to  Prague is that every
seat  has a  table so  one can  place  laptop on  it (at  least in  the
Pendolino trains). This is not available  in trains of the Brno line so
one actually use the laptop as the  "lap top". It is not easy because I
have been using the small (7") GPD Pocket.

During these two days I tried to do  some work when I was in train. For
a limited period in the past I frequently travelled to Prague and back.
In that time I had a Dell Precision  M60 (I think it was this model, it
had a 1600x1200 screen and a  fair keyboard with the trackpad) with the
Ubuntu  and I  was able  to do  lot of  work during  these journeys  (I
usually  departed  in the  morning,  had  some  meeting in  Prague  and
returned in the afternoon so I had over 7 hours of time for work in the
train). But after that I never did  any useful work in the train (after
all, my train journeys were very  infrequent for a long time, and often
also in bad time - in very early mornings or during late nights).

This time it was  technically my free time so I had  no reason to work.
But I got my GPD Pocket with me. And I was actually able to finish some
things at Friday (edited some documents, updated some stuff, wrote some
letters).

At Saturday  I decided  to do  some programming. I  needed to  add some
relatively simple  functionality to  my FEA software  but I  never find
time to did it.  So it has been written during  the journey. Using such
small device for coding  is not ideal but it is far  better than use of
touch phone or PDA.

When I  used the  WiFI (and  the Firefox  and/or the  Thunderbird) then
estimated battery  life was about  6 hours  (it was no  problem because
there was both WiFI and power  outlets). In the train without WiFI (and
thus without  running Firefox) the  battery life estimation  never felt
under  12 hours  (even after  2 hours  of actual  use -  which included
frequent compiling  of C  code -  and the  indicator still  showed such
values). Hmm...