Friday, August 17, 2007

Backup Your Pictures

I have talked about storing pictures on my iPod in a previous post but I no longer feel safe with this idea. The iPod is very reliable but is it 72 days straight reliable? The last thing I want is my iPod breaking or being stolen on the trip and losing thousands of pictures. So, to ease my nerves I have found a second way to store my pictures, Picasa Web Albums.

Picasa Web Albums is a Google product for storing and sharing pictures online. I checked other photo sharing websites but Web Albums seemed to be the best. It doesn't reduce the quality or resolution of pictures. You can easily organize your photos and share them with friends. As you may have noticed I have a pictures section in the sidebar of my blog. I found it cool how you can embed a slide show. I will be using this feature to show pictures from different cities throughout my trip.

With all these good things said about Web Albums, there is a down fall to using this alternative. The time and nuisance to upload photos. The website allows uploading of 5 pictures at a time, which can take up to a few minutes. If you have 70 pictures, that will take while. Fortunately, Google has given a second option; this is to download their Picasa program, install it, and then upload entire folders worth of photos at one time. Perfect! Except that you must be aware that some computers in hostels or internet cafes may restrict the installation of this program. A second issue, that I was concerned about, was the program only being able to run using Windows. However, I have debunked this; the program can run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

Of course when it comes to storing thousands of pictures (talking many gigabytes) on a website they can only offer so much free storage. Web Albums allows up to 1 gig free but you can buy extra storage. There are levels of storage that you can buy and for pictures the 6 gig level is good. This will cost $20 US for one year. Note: 6 gigs should hold almost 4000 photos at best quality from a 3.1 mega pixel camera. I have bought the extra 6 gigs and if needed I will buy another 6 when in Europe.

As a final note, I did a test to see how long it would take to upload 66 pictures (total of about 80 megabytes) using the Picasa downloaded program. I did this on a DSL connection (my internet connection has been slow lately) and the upload took about 27 minutes. An average of about 30 seconds per photo. Reasonable, but I would expect the internet in the hostels and cafes to be about twice as fast. In the end I am convinced that Picasa Web Albums is a great alternative for storing pictures. Now that my pictures will be on Web Albums with backup copies on my iPod I will have peace of mind that I won't lose any precious moments.

Note: You do need a Google account to use Web Albums. Sign up for one here.

Once again, too much writing. Hope you enjoy this video.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Plugging TripAdvisor...It's That Good!

Yes! I am putting a plug on my blog for TripAdvisor.com without them knowing (I hope they don't get mad :)). The site is really that good! I first heard about this website through The Amateur Traveller Podcast, which is useful for tips and travel advice. Despite, the interviews being a little boring and awkward, they are informative.

Anyway, I was, and still am, very impressed with TripAdvisor.com. It has every attraction, a lot of hotels (and some hostels), a lot of restaurants and bars, and useful travel tips from around the world. I know what you're saying, "Well, there are many sites like that." However, this one is different. It has all the above rated and reviewed by fellow travellers, which is great for picking what to do and where to stay. In addition, there are candid pictures and videos uploaded from other users.

Other than the great community feel of the site, users can save any attraction, hotel, restaurant, or review in an organized way. I apologize for my poor description of the capabilities of the website but once you try it out, you will understand its potential. Finally, it has goLists, which are users' trips for anyone to view and possibly replicate. To be honest, I have only scratched the surface of what this site is capable of.

Before ending this post I want to fill you in on the changes to our trip. Recently we have cut out Greece, Austria, and possibly the French Riviera. We felt we were travelling to much and not giving certain cities the time they deserved. Therefore, we have given a few extra days to some of the originally planned cities. This will help keep our trip a vacation, more relaxed. I can only imagine that other travellers try to pack too much into a trip and I advise against it. Take the 'pack your suitcase and then take out half' advice and apply it to travel destinations (maybe half would be too much but you know what I mean).

This post and the last have been too much writing. Here is a brief video of a similar trip to mine.

Getting Around The UK

The Eurail pass is incredibly handy for travelling from city to city in Europe. However, the United Kingdom likes to be difficult and has presented travellers with a problem; what is the best way to get around the UK? Well, the answer didn't come easily but the three of us believe we have found the best way. Actually, the truth is that we can't take full credit; a good friend told us about the 'secret' rail line that runs in the UK. He lived in London for a year and thus, is always full of great tips.

The original thought was that we would take a train from London to Edinburgh, a train from Edinburgh to the coast, a ferry to Northern Ireland, and then a train to Dublin. In addition to the complexity of this plan, it is very expensive. A Britrail pass and ferry ride would have cost us about $350 each.

We knew there had to be a better option. Fortunately, there is one; the 'secret' rail line! The GNER (Great North Eastern Railway) offers discount trains from southern England to northern Scotland. A ticket from London to Edinburgh is going to cost us less than 20 GBP (~$40 CAD). We were ecstatic until we found out the train does not run to any cities that have ferries to Ireland.

To solve this problem we are taking a Ryanair flight from Edinburgh to Dublin. I highly recommend this to everyone. Not only would our original plan have cost us a lot more but we would have lost precious time. By taking a flight we are giving ourselves more time and money; it is an $80 CAD, one-hour flight. All I have to say now is "nice try UK, but we have cracked your travel dilemma."

By solving the UK travel dilemma we are nearly finished planning our trip. Despite my desire to start my trip, I am saddened by the fact that the planning process is almost over. Don't get me wrong, I have been eagerly awaiting this trip for years but the planning process has been a great experience. It has presented challenges, fun, debates, and most certainly rewards, like saving over $200 in UK travel. All in all, every part of this trip has been extremely rewarding and I wish everyone could have the opportunity to experience this.

Update (22/08/07): I booked the GNER train tickets today but I had to do it over the phone because the internet booking seems to only be for UK residents. It took me awhile to figure out how to make an international call but eventually I figured it out. If you're calling from Canada the number is 011-44-#. 011 is for an international call. 44 is the UK 'area code'. Finally, # is the phone number for the business you want to call; however, if the number starts with a 0, remove the 0. I may have just made it more complicated but it's not too bad.