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To say I travel a lot, is an understatement! I am well over the implied romance of flying and I particularly zone out through the airport ordeal. With security now beefed up it is time to slim down the stuff inside my camera bag, which I always hand carry on flights. I haven’t got enough trust established to let anything breakable go into checked in baggage. I also always hand carry my laptop computer. None of this seems to come under special scrutiny from the Security X-ray team.

So what to I like to carry?  As little as possible. Extra memory cards, SD cards are getting cheaper and are the best way to give yourself extra capacity. Don’t be afraid to buy extra cards along the way (but they will be overpriced in those duty free shops). Next I have a simple USB memory card reader. I have an SD card reader built into my laptop, but not many cyber cafes do. I can also easily transfer stuff to clients computers via this card reader. This has saved my bacon many times. Next I have my phone and a cable to connect it to my computer, and still use it occasionally as a GPRS modem (this is painfully slow but works reliably). I also have a Next-G modem (not shown, because it lives with my laptop) with which I have a love/hate relationship (its broadband and...

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table style="width:auto;"trtda href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/DsKfS53Nd0yXUEfm_okhzg?authkey=gm6S7AkB3E0feat=embedwebsite"img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SYvCyzRomvI/AAAAAAAAGWM/p1ef1OtjWrI/s144/IMGP5217.JPG" //a/td/trtrtd style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-align:right"From a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/imageo/NewZealandTrip?authkey=gm6S7AkB3E0feat=embedwebsite"new zealand trip/a/td/tr/tableTrying out using Picasa Web Album as a progressive store of my photos as I travel. The convetional photo upload can be a bit tedious and prone to drop outs, where as the web album upload seems to be an ftp that can restart where it last got to (also click on the preserve bandwidth box)

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Whilst more and more of the world is getting wired to the broadest-band width, the places I often find myself seem to be less connected at slower rates. So here a few more tips and revisions about trying to travel and upload photos & blog.

1) Turn off automatic updates (found under control panel). This avoids a really long delay before you can even get connected.

2) Resize your photos, for blogs and to emails others, your photos only need a lower resolution and considerably smaller file size (eg 600 by 800 pixels is generally plenty) see earlier resizing post

3) Use the no frills methods, the normal flickr web portal for your web browsers is a bandwidth nightmare (I just had a week of hell trying to use flickr in indonesia, usually  waiting 10 minutes plus just to load the log in page! Other times I get a flickr is taking to long to respond message or it crashing out my net connection. You can also access flickr via the mobile portal (http://m.flickr.com/) from any computer and this is a very stripped down version. The biggest trouble for me is this portal does not have access into flickr groups. I also find that the standalone flickr uploader doesn't work on low bandwidth or from internet cafes. If it does work it takes for ever, so I end up using the http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload/ old fashion web page uploader, and patiently

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Having lived in the UK for a couple of years now, I still find it a bit claustrophobic that you have to reserve ferries, trains or planes to get to and from the "continent" as the Brits call it. The Brits probably don't even think about it, but if I were living in Holland or so and returning from a holiday in the South of France, I would just push through and return home in the evening or early night, or a day early if the weather were bad. But with a ferry reservation to meet, it is a different story. This bring me to Troyes; we had occasionally seen a GB car on the campings south, but the Camping Municipal in Troyes was packed with the English and all returning home. We had stayed in Troyes before and loved the city and on our way back I had picked Troyes because it was a mere four or five hours drive from Calais. Funny that so many had come to the same conclusion ^_^

Camera: Pentax MZ-S, lens: Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 EX DG MACRO + ILFORD FP4+

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