Travel, a technology review
JF and I just spent three weeks driving to and around Newfoundland, camping, staying at bed and breakfasts and with friends. I found myself thinking, just like in the days of yore, about the process of travel, about the technology of travel and about the sheer joy of it.
One of the new things I did on this trip was to keep a kind of audio journal using the voice memo function on my iPhone. The only problem with that, I learned after I got home, was that iTunes stores the memos with indescipherable numbers and disregards the neat little titles I put on every memo. Which means that if I want to download them to my computer and then bring them into Audacity to string them together and then post them to SoundCloud, I have to RENAME each and every one of them, and then, when iTunes tells me it can't FIND the audio file, go in and re-hook the link to the new, renamed file. I have 47 of them. Tedious! Oh, Apple, why do you have to be such a pain in the ass? Over and over again, it just doesn't do what it is supposed to, or it makes me jump through forty-seven hoops to get there. Why does iCloud only take SOME of my photos in my photostream and not all of them? Why does my iPhone show not a single music file that I have in the iTunes folder. I did SO want to access my old yoga tape while I was traveling and the Music App is just empty. Why IS that?
The other thing I did was to take notes with the "Notes" app. The difficulty with THAT is that the voice to text function, which is linked to Siri, doesn't work unless the phone is connected to the internet. Isn't it connected? It's a PHONE, right? Wrong. Once we got to the outer reaches of Maine, Verizon went on vacation. And pretty much stayed there the whole time we were in Canada, even though I'd paid for a reduced-price International Roaming package. Once I got to St. John's, it came on, like a little miracle, and I took a phone call from my daughter. I've been holding my breath to see what that was going to COST me, and it turns out the whole episode ran about $10-15, which wouldn't be bad if I'd actually had service. Still, I don't think Siri would work, since I didn't sign up for the amazingly expensive international data plan.
So, taking notes, I got to practice the two-thumb approach to writing text on the phone. I won't say I'm actually any good at it yet. I'm still slow, but my accuracy has improved a little.
Then there was the problem of keeping the various devices I had with me charged. The USB socket (on my radio panel) would charge my phone but not my iPad. The backup battery I'd brought was next to useless. It took hours to recharge and then was good for one iPhone charge and half an iPad charge before it went dead. So much for the promised 8 charges! The other problem device was my Nook. I needed quality time with an electrical outlet to get it back up to reading capacity, and when you're camping, electrical outlets are few and far between. There might be a way to get a campsite with electric and then somehow plug in a power strip. We weren't that equipped; plus, we liked the cheaper rates for just plain tent sites. The Nook refused to play with any of the on-board sources of power. It wanted mainline electricity or nothing. It does hold a nice charge when it gets one, though, and would take me through several days of reading before crying for an electricity fix.
Jean-Francois had a solar charger with us, and it apparently worked well for his phone-- but not the iPad, not the independent backup battery and not the Nook. That left the cigarette lighter socket as a source of power. I could charge my iPad using that socket, but since we have an electric-powered cooler, we pretty much needed that socket to run the cooler when we had food in it. JF has since bought a splitter that would let us plug in the cooler AND another device, but we'll see how powerful it is next time we're on the road. As it was, the iPad just took FOREVER to charge, something I've never noticed before since at home I have the luxury of a couple of outlets that I can use all-night every night.
Jean-Francois is MUCH more into on-board technology systems than I am. He has several cameras that need charging, photo cards that get full and need to have the photos and videos stored someplace with ample storage (1 Terrabyte sounds good to him.) He also has a backup battery that worked better than mine, as well as some sort of system that would send photos and videos to his iPad for viewing. It might even talk to a television; I'm not sure.
Somebody might want to point out that if we spend so much time RECORDING our trip, when do we get to just enjoy it? My only answer to that is that documentation is a big part of the fun for both of us. I love being able to "bring people along" on the trip through Facebook. I get to a wireless connection (provincial parks, Tim Hortons, McDonalds, tourist offices, to name a few in Canada) and post yesterday's pictures to FB. I post no more than, say, 5-- and only really good ones: no blurry photos, no photos in need of cropping or color balance or out-of-whack contrast. JF and I agree about being ruthlessly discriminating about photos. With today's ability to take a million photos on an afternoon, it's essential to keep only flawless photos, or to crop or balance them until they ARE flawless.
I love putting together a slide show from the trip and inviting friends in for an evening of wine/tea and slides and talk. I keep the slide shows themselves to 20 minutes, 30 minutes at the absolute max. I pick the most artistic and beautiful photos, the funniest or most emotional videos, a good map and some sort of logic that is probably not chronological. "This happened and then that happened" tends to the tedious. I want insight, cultural, ecological, horticultural, technological. I want to share what we learned as well as what we laid eyes upon.
Discussion question: So the short answer is that we travel so we can share, both on-site and at home. What sorts of technology do you travel with and what lessons have you learned about dealing with it?
One of the new things I did on this trip was to keep a kind of audio journal using the voice memo function on my iPhone. The only problem with that, I learned after I got home, was that iTunes stores the memos with indescipherable numbers and disregards the neat little titles I put on every memo. Which means that if I want to download them to my computer and then bring them into Audacity to string them together and then post them to SoundCloud, I have to RENAME each and every one of them, and then, when iTunes tells me it can't FIND the audio file, go in and re-hook the link to the new, renamed file. I have 47 of them. Tedious! Oh, Apple, why do you have to be such a pain in the ass? Over and over again, it just doesn't do what it is supposed to, or it makes me jump through forty-seven hoops to get there. Why does iCloud only take SOME of my photos in my photostream and not all of them? Why does my iPhone show not a single music file that I have in the iTunes folder. I did SO want to access my old yoga tape while I was traveling and the Music App is just empty. Why IS that?
The other thing I did was to take notes with the "Notes" app. The difficulty with THAT is that the voice to text function, which is linked to Siri, doesn't work unless the phone is connected to the internet. Isn't it connected? It's a PHONE, right? Wrong. Once we got to the outer reaches of Maine, Verizon went on vacation. And pretty much stayed there the whole time we were in Canada, even though I'd paid for a reduced-price International Roaming package. Once I got to St. John's, it came on, like a little miracle, and I took a phone call from my daughter. I've been holding my breath to see what that was going to COST me, and it turns out the whole episode ran about $10-15, which wouldn't be bad if I'd actually had service. Still, I don't think Siri would work, since I didn't sign up for the amazingly expensive international data plan.
So, taking notes, I got to practice the two-thumb approach to writing text on the phone. I won't say I'm actually any good at it yet. I'm still slow, but my accuracy has improved a little.
Then there was the problem of keeping the various devices I had with me charged. The USB socket (on my radio panel) would charge my phone but not my iPad. The backup battery I'd brought was next to useless. It took hours to recharge and then was good for one iPhone charge and half an iPad charge before it went dead. So much for the promised 8 charges! The other problem device was my Nook. I needed quality time with an electrical outlet to get it back up to reading capacity, and when you're camping, electrical outlets are few and far between. There might be a way to get a campsite with electric and then somehow plug in a power strip. We weren't that equipped; plus, we liked the cheaper rates for just plain tent sites. The Nook refused to play with any of the on-board sources of power. It wanted mainline electricity or nothing. It does hold a nice charge when it gets one, though, and would take me through several days of reading before crying for an electricity fix.
Jean-Francois had a solar charger with us, and it apparently worked well for his phone-- but not the iPad, not the independent backup battery and not the Nook. That left the cigarette lighter socket as a source of power. I could charge my iPad using that socket, but since we have an electric-powered cooler, we pretty much needed that socket to run the cooler when we had food in it. JF has since bought a splitter that would let us plug in the cooler AND another device, but we'll see how powerful it is next time we're on the road. As it was, the iPad just took FOREVER to charge, something I've never noticed before since at home I have the luxury of a couple of outlets that I can use all-night every night.
Jean-Francois is MUCH more into on-board technology systems than I am. He has several cameras that need charging, photo cards that get full and need to have the photos and videos stored someplace with ample storage (1 Terrabyte sounds good to him.) He also has a backup battery that worked better than mine, as well as some sort of system that would send photos and videos to his iPad for viewing. It might even talk to a television; I'm not sure.
Somebody might want to point out that if we spend so much time RECORDING our trip, when do we get to just enjoy it? My only answer to that is that documentation is a big part of the fun for both of us. I love being able to "bring people along" on the trip through Facebook. I get to a wireless connection (provincial parks, Tim Hortons, McDonalds, tourist offices, to name a few in Canada) and post yesterday's pictures to FB. I post no more than, say, 5-- and only really good ones: no blurry photos, no photos in need of cropping or color balance or out-of-whack contrast. JF and I agree about being ruthlessly discriminating about photos. With today's ability to take a million photos on an afternoon, it's essential to keep only flawless photos, or to crop or balance them until they ARE flawless.
I love putting together a slide show from the trip and inviting friends in for an evening of wine/tea and slides and talk. I keep the slide shows themselves to 20 minutes, 30 minutes at the absolute max. I pick the most artistic and beautiful photos, the funniest or most emotional videos, a good map and some sort of logic that is probably not chronological. "This happened and then that happened" tends to the tedious. I want insight, cultural, ecological, horticultural, technological. I want to share what we learned as well as what we laid eyes upon.
Discussion question: So the short answer is that we travel so we can share, both on-site and at home. What sorts of technology do you travel with and what lessons have you learned about dealing with it?