Archive for September, 2010

Travelling without a laptop

/ September 28, 2010 / Photography, Travel / 2 Comments

Recently, I booked a last minute trip to Northern California for a week. Whenever I travel, I always struggle with what I will want to have on hand while away. I try to travel as light as possible, whenever possible. For this trip, I decided that I was going to start by leaving my laptop behind and only rely on my iPad and iPhone for internet connectivity.

Apple iPad Case

This means that I can potentially take a smaller bag, without the need for a laptop sleeve/slot. I opted to take a small camera kit (my DSLR, a couple of lenses and the iPad connection kit). Using the iPad’s camera kit is great if you’re not taking a ton of photos since your storage is limited to the size of your iPad. I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing so as a backup, I brought along a small portable external hard drive that I could dump my memory cards onto using my friend’s computer where I was visiting. This was also useful to store a bunch of movies for watching during my flights (again, using my friend’s computer to swap videos around on memory cards that then attached to the iPad).

While not ideal, at least this meant I didn’t have to bring more gear. Of course, this wouldn’t necessarily work if you were going somewhere without local computer access but for this trip, it worked just fine.

So what did I miss out on by only bringing the iPad? A few things:

  • software updates – while I was away, there were some updates released for the iPad & iPhone. I couldn’t update them since Apple still doesn’t have over the air updates or syncing without connecting to a real computer. Wouldn’t have really mattered since my iDevices are jailbroken and I wasn’t compelled to undo that for the features that the updates brought anyway, and I wasn’t about to wipe the devices using my friend’s computer either
  • clunky photo file uploads – I regularly use Flickr’s email posting method to post photos from my iPhone. This also works great with my iPad but the preset tags I use on Flickr are meant for iPhone usage so it required me to manually change things around once the photos were posted. As of this writing, there still isn’t an elegant Flickr uploader for the iPad that I’m aware of. There is also no way (that I’ve found) to do any kind of batch organization with Flickr on the iPad as they haven’t updated Flickr to recognize an iPad and its touch interface. I also could have used my friend’s computer or simply waited until I got home to upload any photos/video.

That’s pretty much it…it was a pretty decent way to travel.

I made future trips even easier to decide by selling my laptop recently. I’m going to see if I can ‘get by’ with simply an iPad and my desktop machine at home. Considering I’d rarely used my laptop aside from a few key times (for my work VPN and to give a hands-on software demo – both of which I could likely borrow someone else’s in a pinch), it shouldn’t be a problem.

We’ll see how long that lasts. Do you think you could survive travel without a laptop?

Six months later, hearts are still glowing

/ September 27, 2010 / Wrapup / 1 Comment

A little over six months ago, I participated in what can only be described as one of the most exciting and fun events I’ve ever experienced: the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

I put together a highlight video of my experiences but realized that I hadn’t actually put that much into words to describe the experience.

Vancouver celebrates the Olympics

This was my first Olympic games. I was inspired to dig a little deeper due to the previous experiences documented by my good friends, Robert Scales, Kris Krug and Dave Olson. All these guys have been to multiple games over the years, all documenting their experiences and sharing them freely with anyone that was interested. What was compelling for me was the fact that they were on the ground, in the crowds, interacting with athletes, politicians and regular people that were fans of the games.

Myself, I was indifferent in the beginning about the games being held in Vancouver. I’ve watched the previous games on television with interest but it was more of the spectacle that was interesting to me, rather than the sporting side of things.

Seeing Scales & Kris walking around Beijing with their cameras during the Summer Games really struck a cord with me. The games are one of the few global events that bring people together for positive reasons rather than war or disaster.

There's a party going on...

This concept was something I completely underestimated with Vancouver. Despite the years of debate, dissent and protesting, once the games actually started, the negative pall quickly faded away and the city was awash in positive vibes and genuinely happy people…to the likes I’ve never witnessed before in my life.

Granville Street

Even up to a few weeks before the Winter Games, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do during them. I had thoughts of getting out of town for a good portion of the time. Then I received an email that my media credentials had been approved. All of a sudden, I had a means to really see the Games in a way that I wasn’t expecting. So I booked off the balance of time with work and started gearing up.

Badges!

At the same time, the True North Media House was taking off. People began to see that we all were doing and they began printing their own badges and documenting their own experiences and sharing them through our hashtags and Flickr group.

The week leading up to the opening ceremonies things started picking up with invites to media events leading up to the start of the Games and it never slowed down until the very end.

Who doesn't miss the zipline?

Over the next few weeks I’d managed to shoot a little over 23,000 photos and dozens of hours of video during the Winter and Paralympic Games.

I met so many amazing people during the Games and am constantly reminded of those people whenever I pass by a spot that I visited during the Games.

With Glowing Hearts

On October 4th, there will be a screening/fundraiser for the work in progress documentary, With Glowing Hearts, about the Games impact on Vancouver which I and a lot of friends appear in. I can’t wait to see how the film turns out.

As a result of my experiences during Vancouver’s Games, I’ve already decided that I want to do whatever I can to attend and chronicle the London 2012 Summer Games in a similar fashion and I’ve met with some other members of the True North Media House who want to do the same.

I know it’s difficult to pick one memory that stands out from the Games (I can’t pick one), but what was your favorite moment?

My birthday wishlist…a kind of rant

/ September 22, 2010 / Mobile, Technology / 5 Comments

Not really a rant, not a real wishlist but as I approach my 40th birthday next month, I thought I’d come up with a few things that I’d love to get…and I have a feeling some of you will want the same.

Even Pedobear showed up for @kimli's party - yes, I recycled her cake for my post

So here’s my short list, in no particular order, which I may add to:

  • Nintendo to publish their games on other platforms: Sales are declining and yet the big N continues to be stubborn about not developing their franchise titles for other platforms. I’d LOVE to play Zelda (any version) on my iPad…I’m well aware of the hacks/jailbreaks/etc to do this somewhat but it could be so much better if they simply offered it legitimately on the App Store
  • Nokia to stop pissing away their market position: Stop being like Palm and giving up your position…suck it up and populate your great hardware with Android – I still think the N97 mini has a better camera than the iPhone 4 and that it would be a killer platform for Android. The dumbphone market isn’t going to keep floating the corporate boat for much longer.
  • 3D TVs to lose the glasses: I recently got to check out Panasonic’s latest 3D offerings and they were extremely impressive but there is no way I’m paying $200 per pair of glasses so my friends & I can watch Avatar….I don’t spend that much on sunglasses either. During the Olympics I got to see a few glasses-free sets and they were cool…plus Nintendo has a glasses-free 3D DS coming out next year so it’s not like it’s technically impossible (as some would lead you to believe). At first I thought the whole 3D TV thing was a fad but after seeing the output from the consumer level 3D camcorders, I may have to revise that thinking – it was easily the most compelling content I’ve seen in 3D and it was just the Panasonic camera rep’s little girl playing in their backyard…families are going to love that way more than watching Pixar movies in 3D
  • Media companies to realize that Canada wants your content too: I’m so tired of visiting my friends in the US and seeing what they get to play with that we can’t up in Canada due to region locking (and presumably licensing issues). If you can’t get that shit sorted out, and let us legitimately pay for or access your content, we have a simple solution for you: we’ll just steal it..perhaps you’ve heard of bittorrent? Make it hard/impossible for us to watch your stuff, we’ll find workarounds. I’m talking to you Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, all the US TV Networks, BBC, etc.

I don’t think this list is too unreasonable and not too ‘old guy on the porch’ ranty…just a few observations I have about the current Canadian landscape.

Sneak Peak of Playstation’s Move Motion controller

/ September 15, 2010 / Hardware, Reviews, Videogames / 2 Comments

Today I had the chance to get a sneak peak at Sony’s new Move Motion control system for the Playstation 3.

Playstation Move

Similar to the Nintendo Wii’s Wiimote, it’s a wireless controller that you use to control various types of videogames. Today, we got to play beach volleyball.

Playstation Move

Playstation MoveUnlike the Wii though, the Playstation controller also incorporates a camera that sits atop your tv that adds an additional level of accuracy to gameplay. This level of precision is what sets the Move control system apart from Nintendo’s offering, albeit a few years after the Wii system debuted.

Getting the chance to play with the Move system early is one thing, but getting to play beach volleyball against a professional volleyball player, Leah Allinger, who will be competing at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London is another. She completely killed me on the court but it was a lot of fun to try the game against someone like her, who seemed to really appreciate the simulation aspects of the game. The game experience was also a great workout…everyone that tried it worked up a sweat in no time.

We also played around with Start the Party which is a mini-game collection. What impressed me was the precision of the Move controller and combined with the camera, allowed for some pretty stunning augmented reality usage of the controller as you can see in this short clip:

Also unlike the Wiimote, the Move controller is completely cordless so you have more freedom to use the control that the cabled Nunchuk on the Wii.

Playstation Move

I don’t own a Playstation 3 but I’d certainly consider the Move system if I did as it seems to add a level of gameplay not currently found on the Playstation 3. It, like many videogame accessories, will be interesting to see what third party developers create to take advantage of the system. This may be where Nintendo has the advantage (aside from being first in the motion control space) as the cost of the hardware is included in their console (albeit not as precise) but costs as much as $99 to add the camera and motion controller to a PS3. It will also be interesting to see how things play out with Microsoft’s upcoming Kinect camera control system that requires you to get off the couch as there is no handheld controller at all.

Thanks to Future Shop for hosting the preview.