This is a long email I got from another guy traveling the world. Only he's doing it on a bicycle. If anyone has any suggestions to what he says, email me or leave a comment.
A lot of his suggestions were part of my original idea -> AA pda, roll-up keyboard -> time to work on journal and answer email during "down" time instead of paying at an internet cafe for web access. I've got less than 4 months to figure this out. Are there any AA digital cameras that have a setting to record pictures "for web use"?
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Hi chimpo13
Just picked up your Slashdot submission about transferring pictures to CD - too late to put in a reply there, so I'll email one. It caught me because I face the same problem, I'm also going round the world, on a pushbike though (bah, engines are for wimps), and I thought you might like some advice from the field.
Basically, like some of the submissions suggested, I wouldn't bother with a specialist device to transfer pictures to CD. Such a gadget would be inherantly fragile, and travelling on a pushbike or motorbike is hell on electronics and anything with delicate moving parts - heat, humidity, vibrations, sand and dust will quickly kill anything not heavily padded and sealed. Also, when packing space is at a premium you don't want to be carrying around something like this, with all it's extra padding for protection, which you will only rarely use, if ever.
My advice, just take more digital film and a couple of USB adapters for them, and a win98 driver and Photoshop or whatever thumbnail software you use on a CD, backed up to a second CD. You will find cyber cafes in the most unlikely places, with usually one or two with USB. If you have a techie background that helps to get in with the guys that run the places, and I've always found them willing to help me load up drivers etc. when I explain my problem. If you don't find a cybercaf then even in the most underdeveloped areas you'll find NGO's, Peace Corps, embassies, foreign businesses etc. with computers. In western Africa it's been at most a few weeks between being able to upload text and a few pictures and perhaps a month or two between major cities with decent speed internet, CD burners and a DHL office. And that's on a pushbike. In your case look at your route, find the longest distance between capital cities, estimate how many pictures you'll take in that time and how many flash cards you'll need, triple that number and you'll be fine.
A couple of other bits of unasked for advice.
Stick to one kind of flash storage, and prefer CF to the others - they're cheaper per MB, you can get them in huge capacities, more robust, and (important for us Slashdotters) no DRM. My digital video, PDA and mp3 player all use CF and I haven't had a card fail on me yet.
Stick to electronics - PDA's, cameras, music, GPS, torches etc. that use AA batteries. Avoid anything with lithium batteries, proprietry battery types, or anything that has to be recharghed directly. Take a fistful of high capacity NiMH AA's and a good quality multi voltage charger. The 2200 maH batteries I use last longer than Duracells, and in an emergency you can find standard AA's anywhere on the planet. I also carry a solar charger for the AA's but have never really had the need for it - it takes days to charge a pair of batteries and I've never been away from civilization long enough to exhaust them all - I can last about 2 weeks before a recharge, and that's about as long as you'll want to be without a shower anyway. The only exception to this rule is the video (no choice, and Sony are a bitch with their funny power connectors), and the GPS which uses AAA's but that also fit in the charger.
Get a PDA with a good quality keyboard that takes flash storage and that can edit plain text files. The best is the old Psion 5mx, not made any more but you can still get hold of them if you look hard enough. In areas where internet access is slow and expensive (and that's a lot of the world) it's a godsend.
The procedure is as follows:
Go to cybercafe, plug in the CF with the adapter.
Cut and paste all incoming emails into a text file on the CF
(Optionally) save any interesting looking topics on Slashdot onto CF
Leave cybercafe.
Then, in idle moments; sitting in hostels, camping in the desert, waiting for trains etc, reply to your email into another text file, update your website journal, peruse Slashdot.
Next time you're in a cybercafe, just cut and past the email replies and update your website directly off the CF, and download any new emails, Slashdot discussions etc - no thinking time involved, and with a half decent connection can all be done in half an hour.
Once every six months I'll load Mozilla onto someone's PC and download all the emails I've sent and received in that time (my ISP lets me POP3 from anywhere) - this gets burned to CD with my pictures. This clears out the account (important if there are storage limits) and since Mozilla stores emails as plaintext you have a nice portable archive of all your trip emails.that you can peruse on your PDA.
Advantages
- Saves a lot of money at cybercafes
- You can take your time and write some decent emails, rather 'Hi, I'm here, I'm fine'
- Your journal will be higher quality too. I don't know about you but I just can't use pen and paper to write down and organize my thoughts, and I type much faster than I write and I can't read my handriting anymore anyway.
- You don't have to struggle to write a personal email to a friend while worrying about the $6 an hour rate, on a slow connection that could cut off any second, on a strange foreign keyboard while some kid's playing some world war three game on full volume at the next terminal
- There's nothing quite like being able to write to someone that's stuck in cubicle hell, 'I'm right at this moment lying in a hammock wathching the sun go down on the Indian ocean, sipping a chilled pineapple juice just off the tree. So what are you doing?' If you're feeling cruel that is.
- When you're in some isolated part of the world a hundred miles from anywhere, reading and replying to emails, and reading slashdot (hey, once a geek..), helps keep you sane.
- As a bonus, most PDA's will have some kind of spreadsheet (for calculating mileages, budgets etc., contacts organizer (for all the new friends you'll make), games to while away the time etc. These are pretty much optional.
- As another minor bonus, if your PDA and camera use the same type flash you can use the PDA to organize your photos and perhaps view them (the Psion only has a monochrome screen; great for battery life, not so great for pictures)
- As a minus, some PDA's have programming capabilities - the Psion has it's own language and a Perl interpreter available, and I hear some idiots are even trying to port Linux to it. Avoid. Geekitude is something I'm trying to get away from. Hey, hold on a minute, You think it might be possible to come up with a perl scrip to thumbnail jpegs? Damn, damn damn. Like I said, once a geek....
Right, that's quite enough geek talk for now. I'm right now taking a brak in the Catholic mission in Bamako, Mali. I've just spent a couple of tough weeks crossing the border from Senegal - great going, nice scenery, lots of tiny villages along the way - the sort of places you have to talk the chef du village to give you permission to stay, incredibly friendly and hospitable people. But the track was tough, rocky and sandy, I took a few tumbles on the way, it's been very hot - 43 degrees today - and the few nights of sleeping in the bush has left me with some scary looking sting marks. I've also been nearly a year on the road, so I'm going to take my first big yearly break, going to leave Betsy (the bike) here and fly to Casablanca in a few days, then take the train to Spain, find somewhere quiet and cool, and do absolutely nothing for a month or two. Let me know how your preparations are going, feel free to ask anything. Looks like our wheels may cross sometime - I look forward to having a drink somewhere along the road.
Tom
Bamako, Mali