Transient Updates

Once I've finished Ride Across Britain I'd like a bit more than sore muscles to show for it. Quite aside from being slightly damaged in the head department, I'm also a card-carrying geek, so it's to be expected that I shall be logging and blogging the trip.

My original plan was to take a netbook with me, and spend a bit of R&R time in the evening getting everything checked in, however we've been advised that laptops are a bad idea (the luggage service is going to be bags in trucks, so in all probability delicate electronics will be bashed to death). On top of that we can expect only limited 3G coverage, especially in more northern realms of the country.

As such I've had to start re-working my e-geek strategy. In the absence of a laptop my next communication tool is my Nokia 5800, a fairly basic and robust smartphone. I tend to pick phones that are suitable for beating people to death, and still capable of working afterwards. I can use this to upload to various services and sites via Pixelpipe. I'll use Twitter as my main target, and build a small micro-site based around a twitter feed to a specific tag (something along the lines of #rab10pg), and this can include video, piccies and updates.

Of course, I need some way of capturing the media. I'll have my compact camera, however that will only be really useful at static locations (base camps, pit stops etc). For photos while cycling I don't really want to risk getting a camera out...in pack cycling thats just asking for it. I've been hunting round for a bullet camera, however I've struggled to find one that isn't either stupidly expensive (normally with a remote storage/power supply, or too heavy), or simply rubbish. I also wanted it to be able to take stills and video.

I finally settled on a Swann MDV 450. It's 60 grams, can do video and stills, is robust, and most importantly saves to Micro SD card, which I can put in the Nokia to upload. It also uses the same charger as my Garmin (unfortunately without a PC I don't think I can get stuff off that, as it's integrated memory).

I'll be testing the camera over the next few days, and then spend an evening whipping up a RSS feed page. While it would be handy to have the netbook, without it I get a couple more kilos of other stuff to take with me (weight limit of 15kg's in total)...probably in food form!