Backpack Geek

Wahooo! First blog post for me!!! We have put some pics up of Rob’s backpack and our little computer we are taking with us, she’s called Eee! No not named after me It’s definitely a girl as it’s cute and small so if Rob ever says otherwise he is wrong. Aaaanyway back to things you may be interested in. So you can see Rob’s backpack which is cool, but not as cool as mine which is a lovely shade of ‘duck-egg blue’!

We will have a picture up soon of mine but Rob’s will have to suffice for the moment! We’re both very excited about setting off next week on Sunday and have just done a practice bag pack!! Relatively successful I must say, but his is the larger of the two, and well, I’m a girl so he will just have to carry some things of mine! So here’s to my first blog, our first bag pack and our first set of pictures!!! Enjoy what’s to come!!!

15 days until we depart and things are looking, well, OK!

We’re insured now (at last!), we’ve got our backpacks, all our medical stuff, vaccinations, hostels booked, flights, tranportation, some trips, monies..wow!

First things learnt is to understand that there’s a significant expense outside of spending money, flights and accommodation. Sun cream is around about £10 a bottle, a mosquito net is £25, your backpacks and boots are at least £50 each, anywhere up to £300. Malaria tablets can run at £3 a pop (for the decent ones), yellow fever is £50 and your insurance can be about £50 a month. For those of us outside London there’s also the train/plane down there (£10-40) and maybe a nights stay (£40+) if you leave from Heathrow.

None of these is particularly expensive on it’s own but add them together and you can be approaching £500-600+ extra cash which all has to be spent before you even leave. We were quite glad to have paid for so much of our trip up front so all these “hidden expenses” haven’t been too troublesome.

Pictures of gear, garb and gadgets coming soon!

Ciao for now,

Rob

Wah-hey!

The site’s hanging together pretty well at this point. Let me give you a tour:

The Trail
Look right. That list of bullet points there is “The Trail”. It shows you exactly what we’ve been up to. It’ll show the images we’ve posted, the tweets we’ve made, the videos we’ve uploaded, the blogs we’ve written and the check-in’s on Bright Kite. It’s powered by the brilliant friendfeed, and lets you quickly see what’s new when you visit.

The Photo Section
Alas, a little bare at the moment, filled with only a few flags and a picture of my Yoshi toy at work. It shows all of the photos we’ve taken on our trip, broken down by location. There’s a nice little javascript plugin called “lightbox” which displays the photo at full resolution in a nice overlay. It’s all powered by Flickr, which will take care of hosting our photos as well as letting us upload with one button from iPhoto (09) on the lappy! No fuss, good results!

The Map!
The map is magic. Super voodoo magic! All of our photos on flickr are GeoTagged – meaning they have a location attached to them (thanks again to iPhoto 09). This map shows you where all of our photos were taken on the planet in a slick interface. Hopefully as we travel you’ll see a line of pin pricks showing a trail of photos, videos and tweets all sat on the exact location they were recorded. Powered by uMapper.

The Blog
You’re already here? Nothing too magical about the blog really, other than it’s powered by wordpress; and is the framework for all the other cool shit ™ listed above. Being wordpress powered makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside – a good thing, this weather being what it is…

To Come…
Videos – need to figure out the best video site, and how I can tie it into wordpress and the map. Also, an information section with a little bit more about the plan, goals and methods of the site.  Lastly, I need to get Elee on here…hmm, perhaps something Disney?

Ciao for now,

Rob