Scott Hadfield | the best things in life are free

Calling a friend generally consists of picking up your phone and dialing the phone number your friend has given you. Giving your phone number to a friend generally consists of telling them the same number that was assigned to you by your phone company. This doesn't necessarily apply in Argentina.

This is a picture of a back of a sheet of paper our spanish teacher used to explain the phone system here.

1. The base phone number in Argentina is 8 digits, i.e. 1234 5678
2. The area code for Buenos Aires is 11, so 11 1234 5678
3. Unless you're using a cellphone in which case it's 15, so 15 1234 5678
4. To call a cellphone from a landline (which, btw your landline will need to have a special plan to do) you use 15.
5. To call or SMS a cellphone from another cellphone you use 11, not 15.
6. To call a landline from a cellphone you also use 11.
7. When receiving calls from a cellphone the caller ID will appear as a 11 number.
8. When receiving SMS's from a cellphone the caller ID will appear as the full international +54 number.

And for international (incoming) calls...

1. The country code for Argentina is +54
2. You never use the 15 area code when dialing into Buenos Aires, cellphone or landline, you always use 11
3. You might think.. "ok this is easy enough, so the phone number would be +54 11 1234 5678" but you'd be wrong.
4. In addition, the telecom company here has decided to also insert a '9' directly before the area code into international incoming calls. So the number would actually be +54 9 11 1234 5678

So to sum up. My phone number here is 15 3346 9192. If you want to call or sms from a cellphone here it will actually be 11 3346 9192. If you want to call me internationally you'll dial +54 9 11 3346 9192. And hopefully you don't need to call me from a landline in Buenos Aires, cause it probably won't work.

3G with Claro in Argentina

My phone company here is called Claro. A couple quick searches on The Google for an APN username and password and password for Claro were helpful :) . There's no username/password as usual, and the address is internet.ctimovil.com.ar - set that up on your phone and presto! 3G. Much easier than actually figuring out how to call someone. Claro data rates aren't cheap though. I think I'm probably paying close to 10ARS/MB, or roughly $4CAD.

For future reference this looks like a useful list of the APNs for most carriers world wide.

Whenever you go to a completely new place you get a bit of culture shock. I think even coming home from a long trip you can often experience it as well. When me and Scott Mac went traveling in Europe we started our trip in Amsterdam. I think I remember the most "shocking" things right on arrival to be the language (all hundred of them spoken there), the european style of streets, getting almost killed by cyclists, and the alcohol prices :). We didn't find the red light district until we'd already been in town for a day and a half... we couldn't figure out for the life of us what this so called "red light district" was, or why it was called that ;-).

I've traveled a lot more since then and I still enjoy the "culture shock" when arriving to a new place. In New York I talked to a couple people who were just so totally rude to me I could do nothing but laugh... I don't think that helped the situations either though :).

I think maybe formally culture shock is defined differently... but I mostly just use it to describe anything that's different that catches me off guard.

The phone system is always one of them, everywhere phones work differently, they have different tones and different rules when calling (for example, unless you have a special plan, land lines can't call cell phones in argentina). Sometimes even the pay phones them self are quite different.

In my opinion, North Americans eating habits and food are quite tame. Liver is probably the grossest looking thing you'll get in a supermarket.

I cooked up the bottom left one for Sam and myself, goes great with some garlic butter.

Buenos Aires is a very European city, the streets and buildings all have that feel. I still always feel like I'm going to get hit by cars when walking across the street... need to fight your way through the crosswalks even. Probably doesn't help that our apt is on the corner of one of the major intersections here.

It's a really great city, weather has been awesome too... these people just need to learn to speak English!

Finally sorted out my phone situation. So, if you want to contact me while in Argentina...

1. skype - shadfield
2. Phone - +1 604 248 4875 (VoIP forwarded to my Cell)
3. SMS/Phone - +54 9 11 3346 9192 (15 3346 9192 if you're in Argentina)

I won't be using my 778 number at all while in Argentina.

Update: the timezone here is UTC-2 - 6h ahead of PST. If you call after 6pm PST, I'll happily return the phone call when I get up at around 9am my time the next day :).

I've been in Buenos Aires for just under a week now and so far things have been amazing. The apartment is really nice and in a fairly central location. Biggest complaint so far is the noise, but I guess that's to be expected when you're at the corner of a major intersection.

Very few people here speak any English, it's actually a bit surprising. It seems to be spoken by significantly fewer people than any other country I've been to.

Figuring out the phone systems has been quite interesting. This will be a whole blog post to explain it ;-). Anyway, I finally got everything figured out today and my phone is now working for sending/receiving SMS's and 3G. I still haven't figured out how to forward my VOIP number here, but until the number you should call/sms is: +5491133469192

Today Sam and I mostly just walked across part of town and back... about 7h worth of it. Will hopefully be posting photos shortly I guess I'll find out if our internet is capped at about the same time.

P.S. Google translator... thank you!

After a few months of planning and nearly missing my ride to the airport, I sit here in the awaiting my flight. In just under 24h from now I'll be in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I moved out of my apartment this past Sunday and I'll be in Argentina for the next 3 months. The whole trip seems a little surreal, to be honest, even after checking out of my apt and sitting here in the international departures area of YVR, it /still/ doesn't seem like anything is really changing. The past week has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride in terms of being both excited for the trip and sad to be leaving Vancouver... of course, leaving Vancouver on Nov 1 to head into summer in Argentina isn't something I'll be complaining about ;-)

As a quick side note... starbucks hot chocolate still totally sucks.

For anyone that wants to get ahold of me while I'm out of the country, you can call - 604-248-4875. I won't be answering my regular cell number, this is an VOIP number that I'll be forwarding to wherever my cell is. Don't send text messages there :).

While I'm in Argentina I'll still be working full time for NowPublic. I've really been enjoying the work I'm doing there and I'm pretty gratefull that they've let me continue my position while I'll be remote. Since the majority of people that I'm managing work remotely from Europe anyway, and my boss is in New York, I'm confident that things will continue to work smoothly.

I'll be living with Sam while I'm down there and hopefully learn some Spanish too.

A quick tip before I head out... drinking all of what remains of your "good" booze the night before a 4:30am trip to the airport is not recommended. Both me and Scott slept through an alarm for 20 minutes and a phone call :).

I'll try to keep my blog updated while I'm down there, but realistically you'll probably have better luck following my flickr feed.

I'll see y'all in February.

Starting Thursday, I began receiving a series of SMS's... most in different languages, all of them in different country codes, and all of them appear to be romantic. I realize (as I'm sure my readers do as well) that I'm really not much more than a casanova in an ultra sexy body, so it really shouldn't surprise anyone that I've started receiving love SMS's from all over the globe.

Nonetheless, I find it a bit odd that I've just all of a sudden started to get these SMS's and I decided to put them out here to see if anyone can guess what might be happening (or perhaps help translate):

Some notes:

• the timestamps aren't entirely accurate
• some appear to have been poorly translated
• they seem to have some typical SMS typos, making them appear more genuine

Number: +34609645605
Date/time: 2008/10/02 12:05

io pero Yo siempre sere tuya y eres y siempre seras el unico hombre en mi vida por q t amo y no boy a renunciar a ti aunq quisas ya tu m olvidat yo t am

Roughly translated this is something along the lines of:

I will always love you and you're the only man for me, I will never say no to you and will never forget you

Lanuage: Spanish
Phone number: +34 - Spain

Number: +2223084657
Date/time: 2008/10/03 15:25

Shina hamoton tinj mi

Language: ?? Possibly arabic translated phonetically to latin characters
Phone number: +222 - Mauritania

Number: +9779842030876
Date/time: 2008/10/03 21:29

sabai thick6 dasaema kasailai luga naheleko buwale matra luga silaunu bhayo mero pani dherai dherai maya tapailai 2 sms but pending k bhaAko dasae khi ramaelo..

I think this is a poorly translated message because of the words "but pending". But it's tough to say... it can't be easy to translate from nepali to english.

Language: Nepali ?
Phone number: +977 - Nepal

Number: +18099172488
Date/time: 2008/10/03 21:51

rke le haz dado a mi corazon una razon para latir, siento ganas de ti de nadie mas solo podrias calmar mis ansias. Cuidate mucho y recuerda siempre ke te

I think that 'ke' is a typo of 'me' or 'le' and that 'rke' is possibly the same.
Google translator:

I do it because my heart beating for a reason, you feel the mood of everybody else alone could soothe my cravings. Take care a lot and I always remember you

Language: Spanish
Phone number: +1809 - Dominican Republic

Number: +66873897361
Date/time: 2008/10/03 22:58

hi my darling me too have freuen and happy see u. 1 october i win lotterie bisschen love miss u genitalien mak milk

Language: english + german - looks like they may have used a crappy translator
Location: +66 - Thailand

As per usual, prior to leaving in August I had all these great hopes that I'd actually update my blog while I was traveling. However, and for some reason this always happens, it turns out there's other things I'd rather do in a foreign country than update my blog and post photos to flickr.

Overall the trip was great, I enjoyed this DrupalCon a lot more than Boston's, but I'd say I had a better time in Barcelona last year.

Anyway, I've posted a bunch of photos from the trip and of the NowPublic dev team here.

I also did a couple short photo walks around Szeged and Budapest, will be posting those shortly.

On my way to Hungary and currently at my first stop over on the way there in New York. I arrived just after 9PM and leave at 5:40PM the tomorrow. This is my first time here and I'm pretty excited about it. So far my only comment is that this city is /big/. I'm actually a bit overwhelmed right now :-).

On the airplane I met a couple guys coming here to skateboard for the weekend, so we caught a cab downtown together and I walked around there for a bit while I tried to get a hold of the person I was staying with. After finding some pizza I caught a cab and headed to the apartment in harlem (the customs officer gave me a hard time about it :-) ).

The flight was really good. I flew Cathay Pacific and I'm definitely impressed. All the flight attendants were really nice, good amount of leg room, comfy seats, and a great in flight entertainment system. Just how great? Well check out this pic from when it was rebooting :-):

Tomorrow I mostly just plan on wandering around manhattan with my 60lbs of luggage, finding some donuts, bagels, pizza, hot dogs, maybe a burger... you know, just the healthy stuff. Maybe hit up some record stores and mostly just walk around and take photos.

ultra-high resolution photo of manhattan from the plane

With just over one week remaining, Drupal's bi-annual conference is fast approaching. This time around the conference is being held in Szeged, Hungary. I'm no expert, but this could be one of the most exciting things to happen to the city since the birth of one of NowPublic's own developers, Peter Galiba.

Drupal is a web development framework and content management system. It's the base of the NowPublic website and quickly growing as one of the most popular CMS's on the web.

With just shy of 500 registered attendees, this will prove to be the largest European DrupalCon to date. There will be over 50 sessions in 4 tracks over the 4 days of the conference. Rasmus Lerdorf (creator of PHP) will be giving the Keynote for the conference. A lot of the sessions look interesting, but a few of the ones I definitely plan on attending are:

• Kyle Mathews: Introducing Memetracker
• Konstantin Käfer: Front End Performance – How to make your website blazingly fast
• Katherine Bailey, David Eads, Stella Power: jQuery in Drupal, part 1 & 2: jQuery basics
• Adrian Rossouw: Deploying and maintaining Drupal sites using the Aegir hosting system.
• Alex Barth, Aron Novak: A new aggregator for Drupal 7
• And of course the testing party! Angie Byron, Sam Boyer, Karoly Negyesi, Florian Loretan, Charlie Gordon, Damien Tournoud, Kyle Mathews, Nathaniel Catchpole: Testing, part 2: Awesome testing party!

I hope to be posting updates and photos as the conference progresses, so stay tuned :). I'll be tagging everything with drupalcon and drupalconszeged2008.

(re-posted on NowPublic.com)

Decided to spend a bit of time tonight and upgrade my blog to drupal. Some of the old "perma" links probably won't work (but I've tried to create proper aliases to any posts that had been linked to externally), and you may get a bit of funkiness in your feed if you've subscribed, but hopefully not. I think this is the 4th blogging platform I've used in the almost 4 years that I've had this blog.

The last being wordpress (w/ akismet, which caught me a pretty 250,000+ spam comments :) ). Not that I have anything against using wordpress, but I wanted to start doing a bit more development again, and tbh, developing for wordpress has always been much more painful for me than developing for drupal.

Please let me know if you have any problems. I'm going to be trying out mollom to handle comment spam for a while instead of akismet.