Travel apps

Too much stuff, still.

Prior to the trip, I had hoped to connect my camera’s SD card, though an SD card reader and using Nexus Media importer and USB to Go cable, to my Nexus 7 tablet, then using FTP to back up the files our server. This worked when I tested it before we left, but didn’t when I tried to do the same while traveling. I received an error message from the app saying something about the format of the SD card. I think when I tested the upload at home, it was before I formatted the card in the camera, but when I tried this on the road (and it didn’t work), it may have been an issue created after I formatted the SD card in the camera. The card reads fine in my laptop, so I’m not sure what the problem is.

I had no problem using FTP on my phone to backup the photos to my server and upload them to Flickr.

The blog as a tool worked fine. Rather than my prior process of pushing out long emails, I can simply push out links to the blog and or post to G+. We all get way too much email, and at least using the blog, if you’re interested, you can go back to prior posts without having to dig through your email. However, what was not ideal (though it worked), was doing this on a phone. While I always have my cellphone with me, editing the post on the blog and Flickr and uploading pictures from my phone was less than ideal due to the small form factor and (in the case of cellular), slow 3G speeds. I’m thinking about buying a 4G hotspot and then buying a local sim card. I tried renting one a few years ago, but the supplier had issues with the coverage working (though I asked and was reaffirmed before I left) and had few drop-off points. I was able to connect 1 day out of the 10 I rented the device. YMMV, but mine wasn’t very good.

Plex worked fine,at the hotels except for the time when the power went out at the house. Since I didn’t have a UPS on my Mac Mini, it shutdown. So I asked someone to go restart everything. The lack of a UPS is a problem that will be fixed soon, though, because the server was on a UPS and stayed up as long as the power outage (had to be less than 15 minutes). Plex didn’t work on the airplane though. Just too much bandwidth being shoved through the airline’s meager Internet connection. Worth a try.

Anything I left and needed?
I could not find my Gorilla pod tripod before I left. I still need to find it. I struggled long and hard to decide whether to take a monopod. While it would have been nice for the evening/night shots, the bulk of the time it would have been just another thing to carry.