Thursday, July 5, 2012

Issues and new location...

Greetings, my readers, the few hardy souls who haunt these pages.  I've been working with some new technology for the coming tour--a Samsung Galaxy 8.9" tablet.  The goal is to save weight and bulk and be able to update the blog, check email, etc. from towns and other wifi areas along the way.  I'll have more on the Galaxy soon, but the main issue here is that I'm finding it extremely difficult and cumbersome to draft in a word program and copy/paste to blogger.  Blogger eliminates basic formatting, so multiple paragraphs become one big, hard-to-read block.  Ugh.  There really seems to be no simple way around this.  One key consideration is that I be able to draft wherever I may be then quickly post once we get to a hotspot.  Not happening on blogger, it seems.

Soooo...for the duration of the tour, and for the coming weeks, too, I'll be developing a Crazyguyonabike.com journal:

Divide by Three

Honestly, although I've been enjoying some aspects of learning how to use the tablet, if I'd known in advance what a hassle it would be for the job I want it to do, I would have probably skipped the purchase and just lugged one of the netbooks we have.  Still, I think we'll save about a pound, so that's something.   I need to look at importing a few posts from this blog to give the readers over there some background.

So let's say that An American Explorer is going on holiday over to Crazyguyonabike.com.  See you there!


7 comments:

  1. I see you already have your journal kicked into gear on CGOAB. I'll be checking in regularly. You still have one good knee...use it. Focus grasshopper.

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  2. Thank you, master. Your devoted student will focus, find his chee, and break through the barriers of impediments to celestial cycling...

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  3. Hi Scott I had the asus ep121 with a small light Bluetooth keyboard for my Calgary San Diego descent. Worked fine because is based on Windows7. And you can get Chrome from google, once installed chrome has applications downloadable from google, and blogger application wich I used.

    What about solar panels? I saw a nice model that can fuel up net books and tablets and very light weight.

    All my best and will follow from Switzerland ;)

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  4. Hey, Pipo: Too late for a hardware switch at this point, but I think I've got everything worked out. We decided to skip on the solar panel and just charge up when we get to a town. If that turns out to be a problem, I've seen some lightweight units as you mention.

    Say hello to Switzerland for me!

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  5. I will!
    I'm back home now enjoying some relaxing times :)
    After two months and half around is nice to go back.
    I can say that solar panels really help out, I've spent some time 5 days in a row only on solar energy to charge my iPhone.
    Is nice to have it, you don't have to stop two hours or more in some places to charge.
    For the next travels I will buy something like http://www.rei.com/product/759980/brunton-solaris-6-foldable-solar-array
    I still have to figure out whats best

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  6. Hi, Pipo: Wow, back in Switzerland, a place I've always wanted to visit. It lives in my imagination as a special place since I have been a rock and mountain climber since I was 15. One of my best friends in high school had a Swiss mother, and he showed me pictures of climbing in the Alps. I was envious.

    Enjoy your reentry to "normal" life. Perhaps one day our paths will cross on the back roads. I'll be riding a recumbent, of course!

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  7. If you come here you will definitely have good time, places are really nice in Switzerland, climbing, hiking, cycling, but... We don't have all the wilderness you have in US. :)
    (I never saw so much wild life as in US, and it is a real blessing to cycling in remote places and every now and than see a wolf, an eagle, antelopes, bison's, elks, deers.... All that nature that we miss back home).
    For sure climbing is nice here, but... Always keep one eye open for the weather forecast, as I came back I read in the news, of 9 people died in one avalanche in Mont Blanc around the 11th July, and two others for bad weather in the same period...
    Mont Blanc as I can see it from Geneva now, still all white :) (actually in the top the snow never melt away)

    all the best from Switzerland

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