Hardware | Connection | Software | Problems
As you may have guessed, I am packing a few toys with me on my journey. The obvious would be a notebook and a digital camera. For me, these are a Toshiba Libretto 100CT and a Kodak DC215 camera. The Libretto is a P133 with 64MB of RAM. It has a 20GB harddrive to store all my pictures as well as hours of mp3 files for hours of listening pleasure.
I use a 32MB Compact Flash card to transfer images from the camera to the Libretto. I can store about 60 or 70 images on the card although I tend to transfer them more often than that to evaluate and organize them for the website. I take all the pictures at the camera's maximum resolution (1152x864) and then drop them down for use on the web.
I have also involved my Jornada 548 PocketPC in the fun as well. I try to find digitized maps on the internet and then transferring them (using a 4mb CF card) to the Jornada to review on the trail. The screen brightness makes it difficult to see in sunlight but with a bit of shade you can make things out fairly well.Connection
To be able to constantly update this website, I need to be able to connect to the internet to upload images and text to my FTP site. I use NBCi (formerly Xoom) as my website host. It's a free service with a banner but I haven't had any complaints from visitors yet.
I use Sympatico at home but I have yet to be able to connect (through roaming) to the local Sympatico provider, MTT. I have made numerous phone calls but I have not had any luck as of yet. I have been able to provide the initial update on the kindness of people I have come across along the way. I hope to have this sorted shortly. I have been able to connect once moving to Newfoundland.
I have also had an opportunity to try a new means of connecting to the internet - the pay phone. MTT (and possibly other jurisdictions) have started adding data ports to the pay phones so that people with notebooks can plug in and connect. If dialing locally (as I am) you can just put in your quarter and dial away. There is also the ability to use calling cards and credit cards once the correct steps are set up.
On my end, I use a Pretec 56K Compact Flash modem (with a CF to PC Card adapter) to connect and WS FTP as the FTP client to connect to NBCi's server.
When I am unable to connect with Sympatico, I can access the network of C@P sites (Community Access Points). They allow for email checking and occasionally have a phoneline that I can borrow.Software
The other part of technology that goes with the hardware is the software. I use MGI PhotoSuite to touch up my pictures (far more than I thought I would need) and to crop and resize. I've found that my DC215 has a bit of a right sided slant which I hope to sort out in the near future.
For the website design, I use the near obsolete AOL Press. It's a very basic WYSIWYG html editor that I've come to love.Problems
Well, no high-tech venture is complete without a few technical difficulties. Mine started as soon as I pulled out the computer and tried to check email. As I've mentioned, Sympatico in Nova Scotia is not set up to validate the usernames and passwords of Northern Telephone customers. I have put in a few calls and haven't really gotten anywhere but the problem was put on the backburner when I crossed over to Newfoundland. Once I got here, I tried to connect and was able to quite easily with my NTL username and password. I guess the next step in this saga will play out when I head back over to Nova Scotia.
The second glitch has been an unreliable FTP server from NBCi.com. I started getting an error message when trying to upload my pages. After a few days, I checked the NBCi site and they had a note the some users were experiencing problems with the FTP service. A few days later, that message changed to "Server down for Maintainence". I've considered switching to the NTL webspace that I have available to me but the response times for connecting have been abyssmal and it would take a while to get up and running.