The Saturday morning technology report!

Posted on by kymdt



Technology!!, originally uploaded by kdt.

Well every holiday seems to involve a series of compromises in relation to the technology required to take photos and blog. This time we’ve ditched the hacked Dell Mini running Mac OS X and external hard drive. We have replaced it with two iPads, a photo back-up (Sanho iPad Hyperdrive), wireless router (for fixed internet in hotel rooms). Don’t forget three cameras!!

Well for those contemplating this setup I can provide some advice. The iPads work wonderfully well. Flickr Stackr is a great App fro managing your Flickr account (You can’t use all of the Flickr online functions on iPad’s Safari), Photoshop Express is great for a quick crop, rotate and touch-up. I can not be so glowing about WordPress application for blogging, it seems to have unexplained problems uploading sometimes. I find Flickr’s blog to WordPress function the easiest way to get a photo onto the blog.

The biggest problem is that a typical holiday could involved 40gb of photos, no iPad can handle that. The largest available is 64gb and with Apps and Music that is cutting it fine. So here steps in the Sanho iPad Hyperdrive. It is a portable, battery powered hardrive. It pretends to be a camera card so it can upload photos to the iPad. It also offers incremental backups. Sounds great? It did, we bought one. It has, in my opinion, very flakey operating software. I have had to format the harddrive twice and it seems to have problems with incremental back-ups. In no way would I recommend it someone for a road-trip.

So what gives? Well Apple has made a great platform with the the iPad, but Apple either needs to release a larger iPad (128gb or 256gb would be nice) or it needs to offer a better way of having external storage. Until that time it is a bit of a hassle for a long-road trip. I also hope that the next version of iOS makes it easier to delete events or photo albums on the iPad, currently it seems you can only delete a photo at a time! Ickkk that could cause RSI!

Your on the road technical advisor!

A rainy start to stage 4 in Lorient

Posted on by helenhmk



Last Import-19, originally uploaded by Helen K.

Rain has a tendency to put a dampener on events – especially while on holiday. However for us, it gave us the advantage.

We drove in early to Lorient…. And spent 25+ mins walking to the start, as today’s TDF started near the submarine base (makes sense – away from the centre of town). It all looked good, slightly over cast, and cool. The biggest decision of the morning was “do we wait near the actual start or go where cyclist will be signing on?”. Given we had 3 hours before the start, we decided to go with the sign on area, even though we weren’t on the barrier to get the best view.

Entertainment during this time took the form of TDF sponsors giving out food, newspapers, and a range of promotional products which are meaningless to us. There were kids, men in costumes, and a band, but at 10:30 the overcast sky started to rain on their parade – and us.

No person need go hungry on tour

Posted on by kymdt



No person need go hungry on tour, originally uploaded by kdt.

The caravan is an amazing temple to consumerism. Like a Christmas Pageant on steroids a very long cavalcade of vehicles with pretty young things gyrating to pulsating dance music travel for the length of each stage. Alternating between taunting and delighting the crowd. The objective is to get the spectators to worship the products. This year a sausage maker is celebrating 40 years – the crowd sings its Happy Birthday in French. The sweet manufacturer has the crowd chanting its name. The bottled water supplier sprays the crowds with water while conducting acrobatic contortions from a slow moving truck. There are banks, newspapers, betting operators, television channels, the police and fireman are represented.

The photo is some of the stuff we have collected in two days. We need buy no more water, madeleines, sweets, snack foods while in France. I have a hat for every occasion, a baguette back (one of the best), pens, bottle openers, washing detergent (yes, that’s right we can wash our clothes), hand clappers, and to Helen’s delight three massive PMU hands.

After 5 Panches (A no alcohol beer freely served to the crowd), Helen was a convert. Oh did I mention the fresh bread and Nutella! If only I were a kid!

If only it passed through poor districts or visited the homeless!

What is it?

Posted on by helenhmk

Okay… It’s big and white… But what does it have to do with the Tour de France?

Darn good question… But it does help to pass time.

TDF post to come. Too tired.20110707-120641.jpg

Subway eat your heart out ……

Posted on by kymdt



Subway eat your heart out ……, originally uploaded by kdt.

You may all be expecting a TDF report, but you probably have a better idea of what is happening than I do. We stayed the night in a gorgeous (well priced) guest house at Les Rosaires beach. It has no wifi or tv in our room. A great break from it all (sounding like a person who has been on holiday for weeks and not the actual few days we have).

I digress, the purpose of this post is to share with you the wonders of the French boulangerie and what were described as American sandwiches. They are quite simply what subway should be. A well sized (I.e. Not overdone) piece of fresh baguette (yes, real bread) with a very simple but tasty fillings (no choice overload). Best thing is you can get a fresh pastry and an oragina and the cost for all of it is €10 (for 2 people!!!), that’s cheaper than a footlong and Subway meal deal for one in Australia. What gives?

The photo is one of Helen’s.

Ah.. So to the tour

Posted on by helenhmk

Leaving Nantes we headed for the feed station… Well at least we attempted to head to St. Mars de Coutais. However, surprisingly when you type in the name of the town on the GPS guide it doesn’t exist. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not familiar with the roads here…. So you can imagine the few choice words uttered in the vehicle. Thankfully we saw a road side information bay (hooray!), it was then I worked out we were onto wrong side of Nantes with under an hour before the caravan was due to pass the feed station.

Thankfully, we were able to enter a larger town name into the GPS, and we were off again. You know you are on the right road when you see a large number of French people on bikes. After parking the car on the side of the road (along with everyone else) we walked towards the route to wait for the caravan to drive by.

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Biclooing around Nantes

Posted on by kymdt



Biclooing around Nantes, originally uploaded by kdt.

We have completed the first ride of our bike trip. This wasn’t one that has been agonised over for weeks, days or even hours. We had a need to find our car hire place.

We walked out of our hotel across to the train station, just happened across some fine French pastries (oops) and then we found the Bicloo stand. It was like a siren calling a captain. We gravitated helplessly toward the Bicloo stand. Hey we had 30 minutes surely thats enough to see Nantes???

We stood in front of the device haplessly pressing some buttons (the English button is particularly useful) shoved in my credit card (Why is it that everyone expects me to enter a PIN, but the machine never actually wants it???) to the machine and €2 later we were on our VERY HEAVY 3 speed bikes. While they could not possibly break time trial records they were easy to get going even up an over some bridges. In fact, we saw quite a few nice spots of Nantes. As you can see from our photos below.

The best thing, is that you can just drop it off and leave it. I reckon there is no better way around town. Can’t wait to try them in London, Paris, and Copenhagen. I hope it catches on in Melbourne and that perhaps we see more in Australia.

Advantage us

Posted on by helenhmk

Instead of paying for breakfast at the Nikko Narita, we took a gamble we might have access to the business class lounge. Thankfully the gamble paid off, enjoyed a Japanese style breakfast of fish, rice, miso soup, salad, and French crossiants. Delightful! Although the dinning area was full, so no time to mess around taking photos. Currently sitting back reading the news waiting for our boarding call, and thinking about the past days highlights in Japan.

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