Slashdot Mirror
Cybercafè Travel Kit?
Xthlc asks: "I've been traveling in Europe this summer, and wanted to share photos and a journal with my friends and family as I went along. A laptop was out of the question, since I'm backpacking in some areas where the risk of loss is too great. So I'm limited to cybercafès. I thought I had everything I needed: a digital camera, a USB CF card reader, a universal AC adapter to recharge the camera, and a MovableType installation back home. However, I'm discovering that, in fact, there were a lot of things I forgot: a software CD with drivers and image editing programs, a cybercafè directory that lists things like prices and features, and a dictionary that has the Catalonian word for 'download'. So, for those experienced readers who weblog: what's your ultimate cybercafè survival kit? If you actually travel with a laptop, how do you deal with overseas connectivity? Also, where the heck do you find time to actually SEE stuff instead of just writing about it in your weblog?"
Shouldn't your question be, how can I write in my weblog when I have so much to see? Personally, I'd call my vacation hell at the point when I become the travel channel narrator for my audience back home. Enjoy yourself, plus, if you keep your comments down to the bare peaks of the experience, your writing will be more concise, and more entertaining without the tedious details. No matter how interesting details seem when you're experiencing them, they are boring when watching someone else describe them. Its not what happened, but how you tell it of course. I've nearly fallen asleep during slide shows of african safaris.
Photos.
i bought a really cheap laptop on ebay for $25. it is old; an ibm thinkpad 560e. it came with a pcmcia cf card and an ethernet card. i upgraded the ram to a whopping 80 MB. it had a 2 GB hdd. i got a voltage adapter for 220/240 b/c the battery didn't work, but they so rarely do with ibm. i reinstalled it with win98se and 98 lite micro option. i tried debian on it but just couldn't get xfree86 to configure. anyway, worked fine for connecting, uploading, and i didn't really have to worry about it b/c i spend more on getting drunk than what it cost to get the laptop ($40 inc. shipping.) yo5oy
a slut did tulsa
I went to Berlin last summer for two weeks and took my iBook along with me. More than anything else it turned out to be deadweight that I almost never used. I wrote one letter on it, which I burned to a CD to send at an internet cafe. Mostly, I was too busy *doing stuff* to be reflecting on anything. Visiting museums, eating at cafes, exploring the city--the time for writing about the journey is *afterwards*. The entire thing was burned into my memory so well I can still remember what I did each day of the trip, and I was able to make a pretty good set of web pages afterwards for family and friends to look at. You can spend your time in Europe however you want, but I hope (for your sake) that your memories of Europe are focused more on eating croissants at little streetside cafes than they are installing drivers on a PIII-500.
I was in South America and because I knew I had to fix a relative's computer, I brought my tool kit, a bunch of CDs with drivers on them (including a couple of OSes incase I needed to do a complete install). Later on I was in a Cyber Cafe in a tiny cafe two hours from no where. They had a broken computer and I offered to fix it. After success (some moron had installed some prgram that f@#ked it up), I had free internet access, free food and much gratitude.
IF you know what the hell you're doing, IF you're not worried about travel weight (I was in a jeep) and IF you don't mind blowing off afternoons of your travel time fixing computers you can really help out the locals, make friends and mooch a little.
If you dictate 2 minutes of travel notes onto your own machine, your friend can easily transcribe that onto your weblog for you. After all, you trust this person with keys to your house, you can certainly share your password, then change it when you return home.
If you must take a laptop along, make it an older model. Pick up a 486 for $30, spend $50 getting the battery rebuilt, and rent an acoustic coupler from your local phreak. Such a machine will easily run 98lite or any linux you choose, and if ill befalls it, you're only out a few bucks. If you can get a used Grid or Toughbook or any other rugged machine for a similarly cheap price, so much the better. USB cards require CardBus slots which aren't present on older laptops, so be sure to take a PCMCIA adapter for your flash media.
Nothing sucks like blowing up your partition table a thousand miles from home. Laptop drives are tiny and light, and old 400 meggers can be had for a song. Pack a spare preinstalled with your road warrior configuration.
Drip superglue into an rj45 end before sliding the wires in and crimping it. Ping -f and wiggle all connections before considering any cable finished.
Keychain LED lights make nice thank-yous for helpful people, or barter if money exchange is problematic. They can be had very cheap in quantity. Pack a dozen.
Tupperware-style containers are nearly as rugged as ammo boxes, just as waterproof, and they weigh mere ounces. Bake the moisture out of a few dessicant bags and throw 'em in.
Things that have saved my ass:
I've been using a Sharp Zaurus 5500 for a while, and I think that this would be the perfect device for you. You have both a Compact Flash and SD slot available, so you could have one of the new SD 802.11B cards + the CF from the camera mounted at once. You could also carry a card with a standard wired ethernet jack for Cafe's without wireless. Yes, the keyboard is small, but you can type surprisingly quickly once you get used to it, and besides this is a blog not a novel. Also, since it runs Linux you have a ton of apps to choose from for any other needs you might have on the road. Also nice is the fact that you can now find the 5500 for less than $200 if you shop around. I would however recommend getting some sort of case for it. I haven't had any problems with my unit, but I wouldn't want to drop it unprotected... It just sort of feels like it wouldn't hold up well.
\/\/oobie
As always, only blog when you have something to say. I posted once every few days. This gave me time to see things and made sure I had some news worth posting.
Tell your readers about the places you've been to but also what you thought of the places. If you found something was worth checking out, or if you wasted your time seeing something that turned out to be dull, say so. But keep it concise, and make sure that you've said everything you want to say in a few paragraphs.
Don't bore your readers with accounts and descriptions of the people that you met/hung out with/got drunk with/kissed/whatever! No-one really cares about Eddie's Personal Soap Opera except Eddie. Just keep your blog focused on your travels.
Always include links for places or areas of interest so that people can get more info. A quick set of Google searches will make your blog much more interesting and accessible.
Make sure you use a cybercafe that allows you to pay after you've used the machines (i.e. not one where you have to buy 'credits' and where your time is being counted down on the screen all the time). It sucks to be pressured to write because you're running out of time.
Perhaps an obvious one, but use weblog software that won't break. You may not be able to telnet into your box to rework the config files when you're travelling, and it's so frustrating when you're not able to post that all-important account of your experiences. I use Blogger which is an online weblog service and is free for the basic version.
If you're in a city for a while (e.g. a few days), don't use mainstream cybercafes. They often have software that restricts your use of the machine. Spend some time searching for a facility that may be off the high street or smaller, but that offers the same deal without the restrictions. The best places I found were not cybercafes at all - they were travel shops that had a few internet-connected PCs. The advantage is that, in these places, the owners are less tech-savvy and you'll have a machine that you can install things on (e.g. software for processing and uploading photos - see below). Plus you won't be restricted because of firewalls etc. (e.g. for FTP).
Photos: I uploaded my photos once every few weeks. I regularly dumped them to CD in a photo store, made a selection, processed each image in Photoshop, created thumbnails and HTML files with Express Thumbnail Creator and uploaded them to my site with WS FTP LE. Photoshop is obviously not free, and I had to find cybercafes that had it pre-installed (wasn't always easy). Express Thumbnail Creator is shareware, and WS FTP LE is free. The best thing would obviously be to have all this stuff on CD before you sit down at the PC.
Be aware that some cybercafes will charge you for upload bandwidth (never very much though).
COMMENT all your photos! It takes time but it's worth it. Express Thumbnail Creator has this feature built in. Nobody really wants to go through pages and pages of unlabelled thumbnails of sunsets and mountains. Also, commenting your photos is a good test for yourself to ensure that you're only putting interesting photos up.
As soon as your photos are up, announce it in your blog and send out a mail to everyone in your address book who may be interested (mail to yourself, BCC everyone you're sending to).
M.
---- scrm