Recording video of our trip was a high priority as we wanted to capture the adventure so we could better share them on the internet with others while we were on the road. We’ll also use the clips when the trip is over to produce a DVD of the entire ordeal.
We started out with the Flip video camera and used it for the first 4,000 miles of the trip. It worked well for our intended purposes as it was small, easy to use, and always accessible either in one of our pockets or a handlebar bag.
As the trip progressed we saw a greater and greater need for better quality video. First and foremost we wanted to produce a high quality DVD which captured the spirit of the entire trip, something we could use to relive our adventures for years after we returned home. We needed a camera which captured higher quality footage than the Flip could. At the same time we needed an optical zoom lens. Secondly we wanted a widescreen format which seems to be the direction the world is heading. It seems standard 4:3 NTSC is becoming a thing of the past. Widescreen format is also supposed to be (and I agree) much more pleasing to watch.
After much, much discussion I went out and bought a Canon video camera. It’s been both a curse and a blessing. It’s been a curse because we jumped up a quantum level in complexity. We no longer have a camera we can put rechargeable AA batteries in – we now have to carry around another charger specifically for this one. The Canon, being so much larger than the Flip, makes it harder to protect from moisture, theft, and dust - never mind not being able to stuff it in something like a shirt pocket to make it easily accessible and ready to use at a moment’s notice. I also have to carry a special USB cable to connect our new camera to the laptop. I loved the built-in USB connector in the Flip.
The MOV files the video is stored in on our new Canon wasn’t compatible with Windows Movie Maker so I bought Pinnacle Studio. That program worked fine except our 10-year-old HP laptop couldn’t handle the high resolution video and would bog down so much I could no longer edit video on it. So we bought another laptop so we could do video editing on the road.
When I finally produced our first video I found out that YouTube doesn’t truly support widescreen format as they hinted to on their site. My first video was squished from a 16:9 format to 4:3. I then learned how to letterbox a video. Letterboxing is the process of forcing the 16:9 format to a 4:3 format by putting black borders on the top and bottom of the video. In essence you are embedding a 16:9 video on a 4:3 black background. That worked pretty well but, being the perfectionist I am, I didn’t like the black borders on the movie. That’s when I discovered there were other free video hosting sites that do support true 16:9 widescreen format. I signed up for Vimeo and finally uploaded a descent looking movie that I was very happy with. Check them out here.
The blessing part of the equation is that we now have much better quality video – video we will be delighted with years from now.
In conclusion – stick with a simple camera which records in a standard format (4:3 AVI’s in the case of the Flip) if quality isn’t an issue and simplicity is. Go with a more sophisticated camera only when quality is of paramount importance and you are able to cope with the extra gear.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Keylogging
I'm delving into an area I know little about: keylogging. The more I research it, the more I realize how important it is to us. It's basically a process where someone captures our username and password to a website. It could be an email account or a critical financial site. The advise I've gotten from everyone is that I shouldn't use a public computer to log into any important website; public computers are commonly infected with keylogging programs (programs that capture your usernames and passwords).
Here is an excellent article which explains what keylogging is and some ways to foil keyloggers. It's important to note that of all the research I've done I've read repeatedly that you are never safe from keyloggers, you can only minimize the chances of getting your usernames and passwords stolen. On this site they give you some basic techniques which may foil only the most rudimentary keylogging programs.
One program I use is KeyScrambler which was made specifically to foil keylogging programs. It works by encrypting your input at the keyboard driver level as it enters your computer and decrypts it at the destination application. Sounds good, but in researching its effectiveness, the critics say that if a program is written to do this, it wouldn't be hard for a keylogging program to capture the information before its encripted at the keyboard driver level or after its decripted at the destination level. They have a free basic version of it and a more complex pay version of it.
I don't have alot of faith in KeyScrambler so I'm now trying a combination of KeePass and KeeForm (both are open-source software where KeePass is the application program and KeeForm is an extension of this program). According to the forum on KeeForm (and other places I've searched), they generally say something like this: "KeePass will not prevent key loggers intercepting your keystrokes, but if used with KeeForm it will. KeeForm uses the COM interface of Internet Explorer to send login details without any keystrokes. Mind you, no secure transaction should be made on a compromised system." Follow these instructions for installation of the most recent version of KeeForm.
Since we carry our own laptop, I'm not quite sure of the risks involved but to be on the safe side we'll use KeeForm and KeyScrambler. I tried researching how safe we are when using our own laptop and connecting to public wifi but haven't come up with anything.
If we ever have to use a public computer I'll use KeyForm installed on a USB dirve and hope that the computer gives me access to the USB drive. If it won't I won't do any important transactions and will use the basic keyboard techniques to minimize any chances of getting our passwords stolen. Third world countries are notorious for being infected with keylogging programs so I'll have to be very careful.
Please let me know if you know of any other techniques for foiling keylogging programs.
Here is an excellent article which explains what keylogging is and some ways to foil keyloggers. It's important to note that of all the research I've done I've read repeatedly that you are never safe from keyloggers, you can only minimize the chances of getting your usernames and passwords stolen. On this site they give you some basic techniques which may foil only the most rudimentary keylogging programs.
One program I use is KeyScrambler which was made specifically to foil keylogging programs. It works by encrypting your input at the keyboard driver level as it enters your computer and decrypts it at the destination application. Sounds good, but in researching its effectiveness, the critics say that if a program is written to do this, it wouldn't be hard for a keylogging program to capture the information before its encripted at the keyboard driver level or after its decripted at the destination level. They have a free basic version of it and a more complex pay version of it.
I don't have alot of faith in KeyScrambler so I'm now trying a combination of KeePass and KeeForm (both are open-source software where KeePass is the application program and KeeForm is an extension of this program). According to the forum on KeeForm (and other places I've searched), they generally say something like this: "KeePass will not prevent key loggers intercepting your keystrokes, but if used with KeeForm it will. KeeForm uses the COM interface of Internet Explorer to send login details without any keystrokes. Mind you, no secure transaction should be made on a compromised system." Follow these instructions for installation of the most recent version of KeeForm.
Since we carry our own laptop, I'm not quite sure of the risks involved but to be on the safe side we'll use KeeForm and KeyScrambler. I tried researching how safe we are when using our own laptop and connecting to public wifi but haven't come up with anything.
If we ever have to use a public computer I'll use KeyForm installed on a USB dirve and hope that the computer gives me access to the USB drive. If it won't I won't do any important transactions and will use the basic keyboard techniques to minimize any chances of getting our passwords stolen. Third world countries are notorious for being infected with keylogging programs so I'll have to be very careful.
Please let me know if you know of any other techniques for foiling keylogging programs.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Should I host my own blog and photo gallery?
When setting up our website I had to decide whether to host a blog on our site or use a free blogging site such as Wordpress.com or Blogspot.com. In our particular situation I felt it better to host the blog on our site. Consequently I installed a free program from WordPress.org. What the heck, it's open source and free. It's not always advantageous to do it this way. Here are a list of advantages and disadvantages of blog hosting:
Advantages of hosting your own blog:
- Hosting your own blog is infinitely more flexible in that you can customize the blog to fit your own particular needs. Each blogging site has different rules you must follow. For example WordPress.com doesn't allow AdSense. Others limit what you can and can't do in the sidebars. When you host your own blog you are in total control of it. Compare the two ways of hosting a blog. The blog you are reading this on is a free website hosted on blogspot. Contrast it to the one we host on our website.
- Space - Free blogging sites limit the amount of space you can use.
- You can use your own domain name (eg. familyonbikes.org/blog as opposed to familyonbikes.blogspot.com)
Disadvantages of hosting your own blog:
- It takes technical know-how to set it up and to customize it. I had to use HTML and PHP in order to do the customization I wanted.
Advantages of using a blog hosting site (wordpress.com, blogger.com, etc...):
- It's easy to setup and maintain. Sign up for the account and you are ready to start blogging. You can, literally, have your first post up in five minutes.
- Minor modifications are fairly easy to do since they have an easy-to-use administrator interface. According to my wife it's just as easy to make a blog entry in both situations.
Disadvantages of using a hosting site:
- Some sites require you to register with them before you can leave a comment. Each time someone wanted to leave a comment they would have to log in. Ugh . . . another username and password to remember.
- You're stuck with one of their templates – customization is difficult or impossible.
Photo galleries have just about the same advantages and disadvantages as blogs but there was never a question on which one we would choose. We chose to host our own since the free photo gallery sites limit the space you can use. We plan on posting LOTS of pictures and would soon be paying extra money for another site to host our pictures.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Laptop or Not?
Months ago, when the debate between Nancy and me over whether to bring a laptop on this trip was raging, we were split on the decision. I didn't want to bring one and she adamantly wanted to. My reasoning had to do with the added weight and space of the equipment along with the responsibility of protecting it from the weather and theft. She, on the other hand, vehemently argued that we could not attain our financial goal of covering part of the expenses of our journey without one. In addition, she argued, we will need a way to keep up with the writing for Reach the World.
"If we're going to be selling advertising space on our site we need traffic," she argued. "In order to get traffic we are going to have to write daily blogs, maintain a picture gallery, and keep up with the people on our mailing list. In addition to that we have to write magazine and newspaper articles to attract even more people to our site. On top of all that we have to write up activities for students on both our educational site and for Reach the World. Oh yeah, and what about the You Tube videos? Video editing isn't possible in the confines of internet cafes."
In the end she won. I bought an IBM Thinkpad plus extra batteries - a total of over 7 pounds. Although it's slow and heavy, it's supposed to be rugged and well-built. Maybe, just maybe it will last the entire trip. I'll let you know how it works out as the trip progresses. A computer with a solid state drive instead of a spinning HDD would be the best way to go since they are much more resistant to damage caused by vibrations or the abuse of being on the road. I'm convinced that the best laptop for our purposes would
be the Panasonic Toughbook. It's probably the most rugged laptop built, intended for withstanding extreme environmental conditions. We would have loved to get a Toughbook but the price tag was just a bit too steep - well actually the price was way out of our budget. The other drawback was its weight. There are many lightweight laptops that may also be great for bicycle touring: the Toshiba R500 and the Sony Vaio TZ150. Look for the solid state drive. They are fast, use less energy, and less prone to crash due to vibration or dropping.
In all fairness it's probably better we take a laptop (especially for Nancy since I'll be the one to lug all this equipment). In addition to Nancy's argument, bringing our own laptop is a much more secure way to protect all our valuable usernames and passwords, eg. our Charles Schwab, PayPal, and bank accounts. We plan on doing just about all our financial transactions online and don't want the cybercrooks in internet cafes getting access to any of them. Identity theft has, all of a sudden, taken on a real priority for us. With a laptop, I can set my own firewall, protect/check my computer for viruses/spyware, and safely manage our passwords with an encrypted password manager - more on all these later.
Suppose you didn't want to lug a laptop around? After all, the vast majority of the cyclotourists we meet don't have one. I have a plan for that, it's actually a backup plan if we lose our laptop. There are basic, no-frills software packages you can load onto a 1GB pendrive that can be used on any Windows computer in which you have access to the USB drive. The only thing I would need an internet cafe for is the operating system and internet connection - everything else safely resides on my tiny pendrive literally no heavier than a pen. These portable applications will be the topic of my next entry.
"If we're going to be selling advertising space on our site we need traffic," she argued. "In order to get traffic we are going to have to write daily blogs, maintain a picture gallery, and keep up with the people on our mailing list. In addition to that we have to write magazine and newspaper articles to attract even more people to our site. On top of all that we have to write up activities for students on both our educational site and for Reach the World. Oh yeah, and what about the You Tube videos? Video editing isn't possible in the confines of internet cafes."
In the end she won. I bought an IBM Thinkpad plus extra batteries - a total of over 7 pounds. Although it's slow and heavy, it's supposed to be rugged and well-built. Maybe, just maybe it will last the entire trip. I'll let you know how it works out as the trip progresses. A computer with a solid state drive instead of a spinning HDD would be the best way to go since they are much more resistant to damage caused by vibrations or the abuse of being on the road. I'm convinced that the best laptop for our purposes would
be the Panasonic Toughbook. It's probably the most rugged laptop built, intended for withstanding extreme environmental conditions. We would have loved to get a Toughbook but the price tag was just a bit too steep - well actually the price was way out of our budget. The other drawback was its weight. There are many lightweight laptops that may also be great for bicycle touring: the Toshiba R500 and the Sony Vaio TZ150. Look for the solid state drive. They are fast, use less energy, and less prone to crash due to vibration or dropping.
In all fairness it's probably better we take a laptop (especially for Nancy since I'll be the one to lug all this equipment). In addition to Nancy's argument, bringing our own laptop is a much more secure way to protect all our valuable usernames and passwords, eg. our Charles Schwab, PayPal, and bank accounts. We plan on doing just about all our financial transactions online and don't want the cybercrooks in internet cafes getting access to any of them. Identity theft has, all of a sudden, taken on a real priority for us. With a laptop, I can set my own firewall, protect/check my computer for viruses/spyware, and safely manage our passwords with an encrypted password manager - more on all these later.
Suppose you didn't want to lug a laptop around? After all, the vast majority of the cyclotourists we meet don't have one. I have a plan for that, it's actually a backup plan if we lose our laptop. There are basic, no-frills software packages you can load onto a 1GB pendrive that can be used on any Windows computer in which you have access to the USB drive. The only thing I would need an internet cafe for is the operating system and internet connection - everything else safely resides on my tiny pendrive literally no heavier than a pen. These portable applications will be the topic of my next entry.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
My Philosophy of Technolgy for Travelers
My philosophy for dealing with on-the-road technology is very similar to my philosophy on bicycling equipment: keep it simple and pragmatic. Just as I want to minimize bicycle breakdowns and maintenance, I want to minimize the same things in the technolgy we lug around with us. With the exception of the still camera, I'd just as soon not bring any at all, but because of what we're trying to accomplish on this trip we are forced to pack a wide variety of it. We need pictures for the picture gallery we're running, entries for the blog we maintain, videos to liven up our site, and on top of that we're keeping track of a mailing list of people who are following our adventures. To add to the confusion there are cyber-thieves lurking about in the internet cafes and hot spots we are forced to use hoping to capture our important passwords. There are viruses and spyware itching to enter our computer with the purpose of raising havoc or making our life miserable.
The purpose of this blog is to share what I've learned about the technology we're using on our expedition. I've spent lots of time researching and testing different ways of accomplishing a variety of tasks and wanted to share this knowledge with anyone interested. Even after I write an entry, I'll update it when I learn more or discover things I hadn't known before. If there is anything in particular you want to know, leave a comment. Do the same if you have any advise for me. A technology expert I am not, so don't take what I write as gospel truth - consult the web or other people knowledgeable in the area of your interest for a second opinion. Keep in mind that I'm on the road and its difficult answer questions so my response may take a while.
The purpose of this blog is to share what I've learned about the technology we're using on our expedition. I've spent lots of time researching and testing different ways of accomplishing a variety of tasks and wanted to share this knowledge with anyone interested. Even after I write an entry, I'll update it when I learn more or discover things I hadn't known before. If there is anything in particular you want to know, leave a comment. Do the same if you have any advise for me. A technology expert I am not, so don't take what I write as gospel truth - consult the web or other people knowledgeable in the area of your interest for a second opinion. Keep in mind that I'm on the road and its difficult answer questions so my response may take a while.
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