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.

European Electricity

Wow! European electricity is crazy! Well not really; I just needed a powerful first line to entice you to continue reading. But don't worry, I'll keep this post short. Despite how boring this topic is, and how much time I wasted researching, it is useful information for if you are bringing any electronics to Europe.

I'll start off by briefly talking about electricity. Around the world, electricity is classified by a voltage and a frequency. For residential purposes the voltage is between 100V and 240V at 50Hz to 60Hz. North America is 120V at 60Hz and Europe is generally 220V to 240V at 50Hz. Check the following link for a listing of all countries:

Voltage, Frequency, and Socket

It may sound complicated but a lot of electronic companies make their products compatible with a range of voltages and frequencies. You will need to check the power label on your electronics and compare it to the requirements of the countries you are visiting. For example, the picture below shows that my Canon battery charger will work on 100V to 240V and 50Hz to 60Hz. If an electronic fails you will need to buy a power converter.

Note: my iPod, Canon camera, and electric shaver do not need a power converter. However, I will still need socket adapters. Refer to the top link for the list of countries and their respective sockets.

Well, that's about all you need to know about European electricity. Here is another website that I found useful:

Electricity in Europe by About.com

Update (29/07/07): I just bought my adapters and it was a lot easier than I expected. I came in with a printout of each adapter I would be needing for each country. However, it turns out that there is really only 2 types needed for European travel; 1 for the UK and 1 for the rest of Europe. So, basically I was worrying about these adapters for no reason. I bought it from The Source (used to be Radio Shacks) and it comes in a nice light and compact set with 3 adapters (the other for North America/Australia).

3 Months Worth of Pictures

Many hundreds and possibly thousands of pictures will obviously be taken on this trip. This got me thinking; I have a digital camera but it only has a 256 MB card. After about 250 pictures I will be left stranded, which is the last thing I would want. Therefore, I needed a solution to this problem. My option was limited to buying a new 1 or 2 gig SD card for my camera until I came across the iPod Camera Connector.

I recently bought a 30 gig video iPod, so clearly an iPod Camera Connector is the better choice. Especially when considering the price per gig of storage. Fortunately, I was given the connector for my birthday because it is incredible. It takes awhile to transfer the pictures from the camera to the iPod but other than that it works perfectly. For any trip, this connector would be great and I recommend it to anyone who has an iPod.

With the pictures problem is solved, that is one less thing to worry about. Unfortunately, there is much more planning left but that is half the fun, right!!!