I'm trying to figure out which of my electronic gadgets I need to take along. I have a several years old hand-held GPS that might come in handy. I'll need to read the manual again since I haven't really used it in a couple of years. We also have a pair of Walkie Talkies that we took with us to Alaska to keep in touch in ports. It could come in handy for the library assistants to use to contact me on the ship, but I wish I knew if it would transmit through several floors of steel.
I also got a new Netbook to use for blogging in ports and for just general email and communications. I'll be taking my work laptop, but I don't want the weight in ports. Of course, these require chargers, etc. The etcetera includes an external 320 gb external drive to back up all our pictures. I'll also use it to take some documents that we will use for classes. I just got an external DVD/CD reader/writer for my Netbook, so I can watch videos anywhere and swap photos with people.
For pictures, I have a Flip Ultra video camera that I've had for several years. I'm also taking my Canon Powershot and Rebel XTi. These require cords for downloading and different chargers for the batteries.I've got a pocket full of SD cards for the cameras and USB drives for various uses. We don't have international coverage for our cell phones, so they will get little use once the voyage begins.
Let me know if you can think of anything else I might wish I had.
Those who brought walkie-talkies on our voyage found the did not work across decks. Cabin phones are good choice. We should have used "gchat" or 'ichat' or like more.
ReplyDeleteSmaller cameras, like the Flip, are better - you're less conspicuous using them than bigger cameras, which are also heavier and bulkier to tote. If you want to observe, blending in as much as possible is a good thing.