The Magical and Revolutionary device that is the iPad

The iPad could just be the ultimate travel accessory. Think about it:

• up to 10 hours of battery life, enough for most trips
• movies to entertain the kids
• a handful of board games that you can not lose the pieces for all in one device
• other amazing games
• audio
• apps galore
• ebooks

The iPad, while not perfect, seems to have something for everyone. Games for the kids, Movies for the families, ebooks for the parents. And it is all in a portable package!

Feel the Power

My wife and I recently completed a trip to Havana Cuba as I mentioned in one of my previous posts. During that trip we quickly found out the importance of planning ahead.

Having brought along several pieces of electronic equipment for the trip: laptop, camera, battery charger etc. Only to forget the most important thing. A power adapter. We had a European power adapter at home, but I forgot to bring it along. I pretty quickly discovered this mistake when I attempted to use my battery charger for my camera and it promptly died. Pretty stupid.

Make sure that you plan ahead for these sorts of things. This one little error lead to running out of battery power for my camera at one of the most photogenic locations in Havana. The Colon Cemetery. This location had some beautiful stonework for various graves and tombs. Fortunately I got a few pictures, but not nearly as many as I would have liked.

If I'd been more careful I could have charged my batteries in the hotel lobby, but that is what I get for not paying attention.

Plan ahead.

NDrive Canada

NDrive Canada For the IPhone.

While definitely not the most feature laden Navigation Program available it is definitely affordable costing just $24.99 for the Canada version. The North America version cost $44.99.

The NDrive software has served me pretty well in Calgary. The directions are pretty accurate and it gives you enough time to get prepared for turns. I find the menus a bit odd and could use to be simplified and more intuitive. There are no monthly charges and you get lifetime updates to the map. It also claims you do not need any data plan to run the software.

Not the best app out there but its ok for the price. I give it 3/5

Stone Rings

When I was a kid I became very interested in neolithic sites. One of the most famous of these is of course Stonehenge. Unfortunately when I went there I found it to be a bit of a tourist trap and as such you generally can't get up to the stones. If you are interested in these types of historical sites there are many others that are less well known and much more easily accessible. A little bit of research and you can find all sorts of these sites both in continental Europe and across the British Isles.

I had the good fortune of visiting Orkney and for neolithic sites it is a wonder. You can find everything there from tombs - complete with Viking graffiti - to standing stones, to settlements. The neolithic village of Skara Brae overlooking the Bay o' Skaill and originally inhabited between 3200BC and 2200BC is an incredible site to visit and well worth a trip if you are in the area. The standing stones of Stenness are also quite beautiful, especially at sunset and are easily accessible - just watch out for the sheep. The Ring of Brodgar is another group of standing stones and is just down the road from Stenness - just a few minutes apart by car.

I took the ferry from Gill's bay to St. Margaret's Hope to get to Orkney, driving up from Inverness but it is also possible to fly to Kirkwall from other locations in Scotland to get there.

Travel Tips

My wife and I are planning our next great adventure. When we do this we like to do a lot of research on the locations we want to go. This is what most people do. But, it is not the only type of research you should do.

Another type of research you should do is to make sure you know your rights with the airlines. Most people don't know about the airline 240 rule. Check out "10 Useful Secrets the Major Airline Don't Want You to Know". You'll learn about the 240 rule and much much more.

Something a lot of people don't check, especially when going to a more exotic location, is the HealthMap. This site will let you know if there are any disease outbreaks where you are planing to go. This way you can ensure you have any necessary shots, or maybe you might want to avoid it for now.

As to the common types of research on a trip, our favourite site for researching where we are thinking of staying is TripAdvisor. This is a site that has reviews of hotels, reviews of restaurants, and cheap flights by people that have actually been there. Not only have they been there, but they were probably just there yesterday, or last week. Places can change, and that nice review in the magazine may be several months or a year old. You also have no idea if there was any kick backs on the review. The TripAdvisor reviews are by ordinary people like you and I. But, like all sites like this, you should probably toss out the top and bottom results and see what the consensus is.

Plan Your Route

Easter weekend, my wife and I took a trip down to Washington D.C. We had a great time, but it would have helped tremendously if we planned our route there and back a little better.

On the way home we missed a turn and ended up way off track in New York City. All we could do was head north and hope to reconnect with our route. Fortunately just when it was getting really stressful (we ended up under the train tracks here) we managed to hit a main road that helped us get back on track.

Simply remembering our New York City map would have helped a tonne. In the future I think we'll buy a portable GPS system for our road trips. Something with course corrections would be extremely helpful. Since I'm new to GPS, I'm thinking of getting a simple entry level unit. I've been looking at the TomTom ONE 140-S which has alright reviews at CNET. Simply having something that calls out your turns would be awesome. Plus it'd be nice to have something that I can take out of the car, so I don't have to worry about it getting stolen.

Only thing is, if we get this, my wife loses her job as the navigator and I have to do all the work driving down...

Oh well.

There and Back Again

March 31, 2010
Getting ready to fly back to Calgary. This time I got some magnetic travel games for the kids, namely Checkers and Hangman. They were $5 from Target.

I got some new apps installed on my IPhone for the plane, I have a book and earphones for my IPhone ready in a bag. I got some candy treats also!

I have small bags of stuff to keep with me on the plane so I can grab them from my carryon easily.

April 6, 2010

A look back. Having the small bags worked perfectly, it made things quicker and easier. Things definitely improved over the flight to Houston.

Photography on the road

Two years ago, I decided to start taking photography a little more serious. I bought a starter SLR camera that could photograph in RAW format. This was really cool because I was already quite adept at using Photoshop, and shooting in RAW would provide much more control when editing my pictures.

After getting this camera I quickly learned to shoot off of a tripod as often as possible. This produces photos that are clean and crisp more often. Unfortunately when you are on the go, a tripod can take up a lot of room and may be a little cumbersome to set up time and time again. So I decided to invest in a monopod.

Pretty much like it sounds, one third of a tripod. Very small and takes up very little room. They're great for museums where tripods may not be allowed, and people walking by won't trip over them.

Here is a picture I took of the El Capitolio in Old Havana, Cuba on a monopod. It was an awesome trip and I found the monopod made a big difference in many of my shots.

They are quite affordable, I bought mine for around $30 CAN.

Things to do in Houston

We did quite a few cool things in Houston so far. The Houston Zoo was really cool. A lot of animals and birds that we dont' have in Calgary.

There is just something really amusing about an Orangutan with a towel on its head.

www.houstonzoo.org

We also visited the Downtown Aquarium. They had loads of amazing fish. In addition they had alligators, ray fish and sharks. There were also 2 white tigers plus they had a few rides for the kids.

We ate at the restaurant there which turned out to be really good. The food was tasty and they had a huge aquarium with fish, sharks and ray fish. It was really impressive.

www.aquariumrestaurants.com/

Quick Look: The Geek Atlas

Geeks looking for inspiration for their next trip may want to check out The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science & Technology Come Alive, published by O'Reilly.
Each entry in the book is about 3 or 4 pages long.

There are 1 or 2 pages that tell you the name, the city and country that is located in, as well its GPS coordinates, and the significance of the place. Another 1 or 2 pages give you a brief primer on a related piece of science or technology.

For example, the 15th entry is for Musee Curie in Paris, France, where Marie Curie worked with radioactive materials. The book tells you briefly what they did at the laboratory, as well as the artifacts that have been preserved there. The additional material explains how small radioactive sources in household smoke detectors detect smoke.

With so many places included, it is likely you'll find something worth visiting. There are some that are well-known, like the Kennedy Space Center, or the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. There are also many obscure places for you to discover, like the Eagle Pub where James Watson and Francis Crick announced their discovery of DNA. Even if you don't have the chance to visit all of these places, they are almost certainly worth reading about.

Check back here in the future and I'll post a review once I've had a chance to read through this book.

There and Back Again

Getting ready to fly back to Calgary. This time I got some magnetic travel games for the kids, namely Checkers and Hangman. They were $5 from Target.


I got some new apps installed on my IPhone for the plane, I have a book and earphones for my IPhone ready in a bag. I got some candy treats also!

I have small bags of stuff to keep with me on the plane so I can grab them from my carryon easily.

My Flight to Houston with 3 kids and a full plane

As fate would have it I am currently in Houston visiting in-laws. My flight from Calgary, which involved travelling with my wife and 3 kids taught me some things about traveling. The first thing is that getting the Middle seat on a full plane is not pleasant.

Second, make sure you have apps on your phone(in my case IPhone) installed before you go.

Third, have a small pack or bag of stuff that you want to keep with you on the plane in your hand bag, so you can grab the one thing and have what you need. This goes for the kids too. It was really tough to be grabbing hand bags and trying to find the stuff the kids wanted in the aisle of the plane.

I think an IPAD would be a cool tech toy to have on the plane. Its not really convenient to use a laptop because of the limited space. But an IPAD would be ideal, giving you a bigger screen than a phone and access to lots of things to do, from games to books. Unfortunately, I leave Houston like 3 days before the IPAD comes out here, so I'm out of luck for my flight home.