Monday, March 27, 2006

Shoes, Socks and Underwear

I ordered my shoes this week which should be here in the next few days; I went with the Salomon XA Pro 3D XCR trail-running shoes. I tried them on at the store and they fit like a glove, easily one of the most comfortable trail shoes I've ever tried. They have a very supportive yet flexible sole with deep heel cup that keeps the foot in place. One of the best features is the lacing system which just requires a pull in order to even tighten the laces along the whole shoe, for a snug, even fit. Another great feature is that the shoe is primarily made of Gore-Tex to allow breathability but keep water out. I think these are going to be great.

To go along with the shoes, I picked a few pairs of new socks. I've been trying out the SmartWool Adrenaline and I must say that they are some of the most comfortable socks I've used; they fit snug, stay in place, wick moisture. We'll have to see how good the odor resistance is. I also picked up the SmartWool Ultra Light, which is very similar to the Adrenaline but a bit thinner and cooler for those extra hot days. Overall my feet are going to be extremely comfortable (hopefully) on this trip.

Finally, I picked up some super high-tech underwear: the Ex Officio and REI MTS boxers. They are both made of new fangled fibers and what not that help wick away moisture, resist odor and bacteria, pack small and dry quick. Comfort is key.

Packs

I finally took the plunge and ordered the pack that will essentially house my life for the next year. After much deliberation and 'analysis paralysis' I decided to go with the Osprey Atmos 50, the Outside Magazine 2005 Backpack of the Year. My primary concern and cause for deliberation when trying to pick a bag was that I want to be able to use it as a carry-on, and not have to check it when I fly. At ~25in long, the Atmos 50 is slightly larger than the official carry on dimensions of 22"x14"x9"; this was the primary sticking point, but I think that there are a couple ways to reduce the size enough to pass it as a carry-on. We'll find out soon enough I guess.

The primary reaons I decided on the Atmos were it's ultralight design and construction, pocket placement and strap arrangement, all mesh back panel. For full details, see the official Osprey site.

The other pack that I looked at was the Deuter Futura, which came second place among Outside Magazine's backpack choices. What I liked about the Futura was the fact that in addition to top loading, it also allowed access to the bottom compartment direcly, which is a big plus. Its slightly smaller size was another nice factor, but I think it was a tad too small.

What ultimately disuaded me from this pack was that after trying it out fully loaded, I determined that the side and back (primarily) pockets were largely useless when the pack was full. A full pack also made it very hard to open and close the zipper to the bottom compartment. Finally, it lacked the number and configuration of straps available on the Atmos. I still think this is a great pack, just not for this trip.

Intro to RSS

For those not familiar with RSS, I thought I would give a brief overview and point out some tools that can help get you started. RSS stands for 'Real Simple Syndication', the basic idea is that RSS allows you to subscribe to some content that gets updated regularly, such as a blog or list of news headlines. You would use a tool, ie. RSS reader, to subscribe to the RSS Feed of that content and that tool would then automatically check for updates on a regular basis, such as every hour, and anytime the content is updated it will pull down the latest updates. Whats great about this is that it removes the need to manually check for updates. This may not sound like a big deal to some of you, but it's certainly saved me a lot of time. Now lets take a look at a few RSS tools/readers.

Online Readers

There are many, many online RSS readers out there most of which are terrible. It seems that everyone is now coupling an RSS reader with their online email clients, and you can find RSS readers in Gmail and the new Yahoo Mail. Based on my research the best online RSS reader is NewsGator. The advantage of using an online reader is that you can access your RSS feeds from anywhere which is quite handy. One of the major advantages of NewsGator is that in addition to being an online reader, if you want to pay a one time fee of $30 you can get their desktop client which will sync up with your online RSS feeds. Desktop RSS readers have their own advantages which we'll talk about next but I'd say that having an online reader and desktop client that work in tandem is definately the best option, but you have to be a pretty hardcore RSS fan to plunk down $30. The one disadvantage of online readers is that they don't notify you when one of your feeds is updated, you still have to login to check. This isn't too bad, especially when compared to checking many, many pages for updates withour RSS.

Desktop RSS Readers

As with online RSS readers, there are many, many desktop RSS readers most of which suck. There are some great ones out there that have a lot of powerful features, but you usually have to pay for these. Based on some trial and error my favorite desktop RSS reader is SharpReader. It is a very straight forward and intuitive feature that gets the job done, unlike most which are overly confusing for such a simple tool. The main advantage of desktop RSS readers is that they will notify you, via a small pop-up in the bottom right of the screen, when one of your feeds is updated, which takes all the work out of checking. The problem however is that if you have several desktop clients subscribed to the same RSS feeds on different computers the readers will not be in sync, meaning that after reading articles on one computer if you then go to the next computer those same articles will still show as 'new' which can be confusing. As a result, I think its pretty apparent why its best to have the online + desktop client option, but for those that are fiscally minded I would go with the desktop reader if you only use one computer primarily or the online reader if you want to have your feeds accessible anywhere.

Email RSS

A recent discovery has been Email RSS subscription. There are a couple of services out there that I have come across, R|Mail and FeedBlitz, that will actually allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed with your email address. The way this works is that everytime a feed is updated, rather than a reader pulling down the new content, that new content is emailed to you. If you really don't care about readers and you're only subscribing to one or two RSS feeds I think this is the best option, but be careful, if the feeds are updated many times a day you could end up with a lot of mail to sift through. I have R|Mail setup on the left side bar of the main page for my blog feed so feel free to use it to subscribe.

**Please note that when you sign up for R|Mail, you will get an email with a link asking you to confirm your subscription. Once you click on this link you will be redirected to their site with a notice stating stating that your 'Subscription has been activated'.**

Well I think that about does it for RSS. If anyone is interested in a more indepth look at what RSS is, check out this article. If there are any questions/confusions/comments please let me know. FYI...my RSS feed URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/awayaround.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Under the Hood

For any and all interested, I thought I would give a brief overview of all the great and free technology and services that go into making this blog the amazingly interactive, well oiled machine that it is.

Blogger

Obviously without Blogger there wouldn't really be a blog here. While that is fairly apparent, I've discovered that there is more to Blogger than meets the eye. In addition to being able to edit/post blog entries directly from the Blogger website, it also allows you to post via email or text message, as well as use the Audioblogger to post audio directly to your blog from any phone. For those who don't know, Blogger is owned by Google so you don't have to worry about your blog suddenly disappearing due to the company going under as with some other fly-by-night free blog sites. Based on my research I'd say that Blogger is the best option out there as far as free blogs go. For those interested in hosting their own blog, WordPress seems to be a better, more powerful alternative.

Flickr

For those not familiar, Flickr has become the definitive free online photo storage service. Several features that make Flickr so unique are its incredibly intuitive interface, ability to 'tag' photos for easier organization and searching, and unbelievable amount of storage: a free account allows you to upload upto 200MB of photos per month, with fully unlimited storage. Those with even greater needs can pay the $25 a year for a Pro account which allows upto 2GB of photo uploads a month and unlimited storage. Finally, Flickr is owned by Yahoo! so once again you don't have to worry about your photos disappearing suddenly.

YouTube

While I don't have any yet, I plan on adding some video to the blog in the near future and making it a regular feature while I'm out and about. When I do get around to adding some video, YouTube will be the one hosting all of it for me. Another great free service, YouTube allows you to store an unlimited number of videos (in various formats: avi, mov, mpg) for free, with the only limitation being that each video must be under 100MB. As if that weren't sweet enough, YouTube enables you to embed your videos into any webpage you like.

FeedBurner

FeedBurner is a service that allows you to syndicate your blog and supports all versions of RSS as well as ATOM feeds. For those not familiar with RSS (Real Simple Synciation), please see my RSS Primer.

R|Mail

Another nice RSS related tool is R|Mail which allows you to subscribe to any RSS feed with just an email address, so that everytime there is a new post you will get an email of that post.

A Little More Gear

Another little piece of gadget sweetness that I forgot to mention is the Joby GorillaPod: a tripod with a twist/bend/wrap. This little sucker, little being the operative word, has these great legs that are made of rubberized articulating joints that can work as your average/typical tripod or be manipulated into almost any position you can think of. Its great for wrapping around a door knob, fence post, wine bottle, or balanceing on uneven surfaces when a flat surface fails to present itself. Unfortunately, for the time being they only have a model that works with ultra compact cameras, but there is apparently a SLR version in the works. Its about $25 retail, and can be ordered from the Joby Website, and as a bonus they'll knock off $5 if you order the 'unpackaged' version. Happy snapping!

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

It's Official

After months of uncertainty, frustration, and pandering, yesterday we were finally notified of our end dates, mine being May 31. I've received the paper work, the only step left is to sign the requisit docs and do a little 'Knowledge Transfer' and I'll be on my way. For those of you that haven't had the chance to see it in person, this is the cubicle santuary that I will be leaving...

Cubes stretching as far as the eye can see.


My cube. Not quite Gattaca, but it gets the job done.


My view for 8+ hrs a day.

Now to buy a ticket...

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Gear: Round 1

So...I have yet to find out exactly when I will be set free, and while I should be told sometime next week there are rumored 'developments' that indicate some additional people may be kept on, 'detained' if you will. Needless to say I hoping and praying to NOT be one of those unlucky individuals. We'll know in a week I guess.

In the meantime, I've done so much research on where to go, what to do, what to take, etc. that several things are happening: since my options are reasonably limitless and there are so many choices, 'analysis paralysis' keeps trying to creep in; despite not knowing exactly when I'll be going, I have started to accumulate the things that I will be using and taking with me.

One of the big questions that I wrangled with for many months was whether to take a nice, new, bulky dSLR (Nikon d70s) that would be harder to carry around but take amazing photos, or to get a very compact digital camera which might not match the dSLR in picture quality but would be much easier to carry in my pocket anywhere I went, thus allowing for more photo ops. I ultimately decided on the Sony DSC-T9. While I'm still not 100% satisfied with my decision ('analysis paralysis'), I decided that the features, form factor, and price were all right. Time will tell.

Another recent aquisition is the REI Flash UL Pack, which is a 1000cc 'day pack' that turns inside out to become a stuff sack. It has an internal sleeve to hold a hydration resevoir, is made of 'silicone-infused' nylon, and weighing in at only 10oz I figure it will come in pretty handy. The other option was the Marmot Kompressor.

Next on the list: main pack, clothes, tickets, visas, shots. Under the 'Links' section, I've compiled a list of links to some of the gear, travel sites, and other online resources that I've come across during my planning. By far the best source I've found is the 'Travel Independent' site which has a very comprehensive, some might say exhaustive, break down of 'what to pack', 'where to go', 'before you go', 'county summaries', and 'on the road'. I would certainly recommend it to anyone planning any kind of short or long term minimalist/backpacker travel. If anyone has any other resource recommendations please let me know.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The Map

With layoffs pending, patience waning, brain eroding, I have finally started to plan the long awaited trip I've been meaning to take since graduating from college. At this point the trip has grown from a couple months off to a full twelve month round-the-world frenzy. The tentative plan is: denver -> UK -> croatia -> greece -> turkey -> kenya -> ethiopia -> tanzania -> south africa -> india -> nepal -> cambodia -> thailand -> vietnam -> new zeland -> denver.


This itinerary is pretty fluid, so if anyone would like a visit or would care to put me up, I would be much oblidged.