|
Updating a Travel Blog From the Road
Tuesday, August 30, 2005-1:21 PM
While I was out traveling these past few months I documented everything I could on this website. Now, it's commonplace to have a "travel blog" that you update from Internet bars to keep friends and family posted on what you're doing.
But I wanted to see how far I could take the travel blog. I had a few goals in mind to see just what was possible.
First, I wanted new material to appear every day. Not many people do this, and perhaps in the case of this blog it's overkill, but, from my experience working in an office with nothing to do, I know how valuable websites that are frequently updated are.
I accomplished this by adding a delay between the time I add new material to the website and the time it appears. After I upload pictures or write some copy, I choose the date I want it to appear. At 12:01 AM (I'm not sure in which time zone) the server that hosts this website goes through and publishes everything I want it to publish for that day.
This procedure has been prone to error and is still improving. But it accomplishes what I want it to. At times I have lots of pictures and stories to post, I don't overwhelm anyone who reads this website. At times there's nothing new, I still have stuff in stock I can use for the lean times.
The second thing I wanted to do was post pictures from the road, not wait until after I got back home to add them to the website. This not only gives people reading the website something new to look at. It also saves me the job of going through hundreds of pictures the day I finish my travels.
But in order to add pictures to the website, I need to be able to transfer them from my camera to a computer at an Internet bar. This means I need to have access to a USB port on the computer in the Internet bar.
Sometimes this is easy. Sometimes it isn't. In some cities, I'd visit four bars before someone would let me plug something into the USB ports on the computers. The ports would often times be in the back of the computer which would be locked in a cabinet making access extremely difficult.
In other cities, I could simply pop my USB device into a port on the front and be done with it.
The third thing I wanted to do was post video, edited with Final Cut Express on the website from the road. Besides all the typical problems associated with editing video, there was one more big problem I didn't know if I could overcome: video files are huge.
In order to transfer video files to the server my website is hosted on, I need a fast internet connection, not only fast downloading stuff, but fast uploading stuff as well. Even a short thirty second video can be as big as two megabytes.
I was forced to save two copies of every video I made, a high quality copy and low quality copy video. First, I'd upload the low quality copy. Even that wasn't always easy. After that was successful, I'd try with the high resolution copy.
I carried a digital office on my back, the three main components being a laptop (Macintosh Powerbook), digital camera, and digital camcorder. I also carried with me a host of accessories, a power supply, a surge protector, miniDV tapes, USB cable, firewire cable, optical mouse, even a wide-angle lens I almost never used.
I was anxiety-ridden about getting something stolen and kept everything as close to me as I could. I was even more worried about another thing, though. What effect would this kind of trip have on my two and half year old Powerbook?
The buses had me most concerned. The roads in the West of China were usually bumpy. I didn't know what this would do to my hard drive.
It turns out it was never a problem. I figure as long as the hard drive isn't running your computer receives a jolt, it's unlikely anything will happen.
I refrained from doing one thing that would have further tested the limits of keeping a travel blog but would have also wasted my time and added no useful content to the website. I did not produce a Podcast from my hotel rooms.
|
