Photo storage on the go

I love travelling, and when I do - I always take a camera with me, capturing the places I've seen and moments I want to remember. For the past two and a half years I've had the 400D Canon DSLR and its counter is getting close to the 20,000 photos mark. Those are a lot of great memories, but also quite a bit of storage space, especially since I always shoot in RAW format to have the flexibility for future editing. I some cases, I actually shoot RAW+JPEG, so that I can easily browse and share photos during the trip using the JPEGs, and the RAW files are for later storage and editing when I get back home. And when the trips get longer, there's the question of how to store all those photos on go.

The simple choice at first is just having more and bigger memory cards. I got to carrying 3 cards with 4Gb each, and this would usually be sufficient for my normal two-week trips. But there's a limit, and when I was preparing for my 7 months long trip to South East Asia last year, I had think of another way. 

First of all, just buying more and more memory cards is expensive, hard to carry and manage, and I wouldn't want to store too much on a single card. A common solution is to have a portable hard drive - it's easy to use, has plenty of storage space, reliable, relatively inexpensive and useful in itself in daily life even after the trip. However, since I wasn't carrying a laptop this meant relying on external computers, which isn't trivial on a trip to SE Asia. Internet Cafes are usually not hard to find on the beaten track of trekkers, but the quality of computers varies greatly and many of them are infected with myriad viruses transmitted by different USB devices. So finding a reasonable computer, scanning it for viruses and using it to copy the photos from the card to the hard drive it a rather long and annoying procedure.  A bigger problem was the longer treks, such as the Annapurna Circuit, which take several weeks with no computer access.

My solution was a portable hard drive with a twist, in a metal case with an internal battery and a built-in card reader - Nexto ND2700. The main advantage of this device is that is can directly copy photos from the memory card, without the need for a computer or even electricity. The charge is sufficient to copy some 80Gb of photos, which gives you more than enough travel time between recharges. The device itself is basically a sturdy metal case with a laptop hard-drive inside - it's even easy to open the case and replace it. And besides travelling, it is useful as a regular portable hard drive with a USB connection. I've had it for a year and a half now, and the only disadvantages I can think of are that it's a little more cumbersome to use than a regular portable drive, since it has it's own power button; and the price - when I bought it, the 250Gb model cost about twice as much as simple hard drive with the same capacity.

So who would I recommend such a device for? It is mostly useful if you take lots of photos, usually RAW on a DSLR (since JPEGs from compact cameras take much less space) and might travel for several weeks at least with no laptop or reliable access to computers. Otherwise, a regular portable hard drive would probably suffice.

Shopping and Shipping from US to Israel

It is often when purchasing something, especially electronics, that I would much prefer to buy in the US than in Israel. It's usually because the price difference is so large (a Canon lens I just bought costs 440$ in US and 670$ in Israel) or because some products are sold in US only (like the Nook eReader). In any case, shipping is a problem, either because a direct UPS delivery to Israel is quite expensive, but more often because the stores would only ship inside the US.

For a few years now there exists a company that solves just this problem - Mustop (they have merged with a similar company called Usonestop). The idea is simple - you register, and get your own unique address in the US, which is where you ship you purchase (they have warehouses in New Jersey). More often than not, the stores will also have free shipping to a US address. It's also recommended that you forward to Mustop your purchase receipt email. They receive your package and forward it to your Israeli address using DHL. 

The shipping price is very reasonable, and for larger purchases is quite worth it - there's a 15$ handling fee, plus a shipping price based on the package weight and volume (details here). They recommend you contact the store and ask for as compact a package as possible. You still have to consider the customs and VAT costs in Israel of course, but it is often much cheaper than to buy in Israel (and there are no customs for photographic equipment for example).

So - happy shopping everybody!

Recycling Electronics

Cleaning up recently I had a lot of old electronic stuff to throw away - broken CD drive and power supply, batteries, a couple of speakers that no longer work, etc. Before tossing it all to garbage, I took a look if there is something more useful that can be done - perhaps some of those parts and the metal in them can be salvaged and reused. That got me to this list of locations (.doc) all around the country (via this site) where electronic waste can be disposed of safely, which I did. So take a look next time, there's probably a collection facility just nearby.

Corporate Spam

When receiving corporate email, it often includes a signature with the senders position, contact info, and possibly a company logo or some other small branding element, which I think is appropriate. Recently however I received a work related email which had in it, embedded around the mail content, four corporate ad images on the side, a large banner on top and the following signature at the bottom. 

I could not imagine how hijacking any outbound company email and "enriching" it with company ads in such a manner could contribute to the company's image, not to talk about the signature ad for the external service doing this, which mostly reminds me of the crappy "sent by hotmail" sigs.

However, after a second glance the bottom "do not enrich" link gave me hope that I might still unsubscribe. Clicking on it, I was asked for confirmation and then presented with the following message:

So now, someone should decide in person if I am deemed worthy enough to not receive those ads in my inbound emails from that company... And knowing the company, this request of mine was probably forwarded to whatever in-person version of /dev/null they have.

Listen...

This post is about something I "discovered" for myself some seven years ago, and have been doing ever since - listening to audiobooks. This manner of storytelling existed long before the invention of print - whether sharing some experience near a camp fire, or a father passing knowledge to son. And although print allowed us a much more efficient and durable way to transfer knowledge, listening to a story is a profoundly different, and better experience. 

When told by a narrator, the plot becomes much more personal, and the characters become alive compared to just reading the "dry text" of the story. And yet, unlike movies, which seem to provide you with even richer experience, audiobooks do not take away your freedom to imagine and create your own world from the words to the writer. Because after seeing the movies Lord Of The Rings or Harry Potter for example, those images will be fixed in my mind when I reread the books, which looses some of the richness of possibilities in the world created by the author. Furthermore, listening to a narration requires you to slow down and pay attention, whereas my ability to read fast may sometimes cause me to skim through sections, and thus loose some of the detail and feel of the story.

Besides being a great way to read a book, audiobooks are very practical - they can be listened to almost anywhere and are an excellent way to use any "dead time" you might have. I've finished some four or five audiobooks just this month, and that's without much dedicated "reading" time - I've been listening in my car while commuting to work, when going to a store to buy groceries or when running on a treadmill in the gym.  I actually went running instead of swimming some time lately just because I had to get to the end of the plot... And listening to audiobooks in the car has a very interesting side effect - I am not impatient or annoyed when being stuck in traffic, because this is no longer "wasted time". There were even several times when I parked at home and then just kept sitting in the car for a couple more minutes, just to finish listening to some interesting part of the story.

For shorter periods of time, when you might not want to listen to just a small part of a long story, I would recommend listening to podcasts. There are thousands of great programs that can be subscribed to and downloaded, for every possible taste, and those are usually shorter recordings. A friend of mine recently recommended me a wonderful Israeli podcast called Making History - those are about 30 mins programs about a variety of subjects, often connected to science but not only. This is a great program to listen to in the morning, on the way to work - subscribe to it here.

I hoped I convinced to you try it out if you haven't yet, and if you want - I have a hard drive full of things to listen to...