Travelling with technology
It’s annoying when you don’t bring your instructions to the Track Stick and you forget what the colourful blinking lights mean since the last time you’ve used it. If it flashes red first, does that mean it’ll record every two minutes? Or every 16 seconds? I really wish I could pay an extra 15 quid for the helpful LED display.
Of course, I got it wrong – and instead of every two minutes, the every 16 seconds recording managed to fill its vastly unimpressive 1MB memory within the first day of use. Last year when I tried to install the software in an Internet cafe, I managed to shut down their entire business for a few hours. So I’ve obviously learned from my mistakes and tried again on this trip. Well it went a lot smoother – I was able to successfully get all of the data off the Track Stick and saved to an ftp site at home where I can play with it later. On the other hand, the big button that says “Delete all data” wasn’t working – so I’m really no better off.
Trying every couple of days whenever I found myself with a spare 5 minutes near a net cafe, I’ve managed to now trick / crash the trackstick into deleting all the data – and I can start recording those all important GPS co-ordinates to pair up with the photos later. And the ones I’ve missed? I’m looking forward to many grueling hours on Google Maps trying to match up aerial photographs with my photos. Maybe I won’t bother 
Maybe the technology needs a little UAT improvements, or maybe I just need to research some different models – it’s not quite perfect, but the results are still fantastic when it works 
And I’m only writing this now, because after filling one SD card with photos … It’s time to back them up to the spare ultra-huge card, just in case one gets lost. Maybe I should have bought a faster one of those, too… The iPAQ / keyboard / mobile phone blogging combo though. That’s down to a pure completely successful art form. So hopefully the rest just takes practice, practice and practice again.
I’m so glad the Internet cafe’s in Poland are so cheap. Good coffee too!
