It's starting.  Spouses, siblings, friends and parents are starting to eye you up.  Not for anything nefarious, or at least nothing more than the usual nefarious things they eye you up for, but because they're trying to figure out how to get you away from that computer and into a plane/train/automobile for some "vacation."  Now I don't know about you, but a week off of work with nothing but some good tunes, my cats and a brand new operating system to play with *is* vacation.  Ok, well, if I could manage not to have to deal with their litterbox it would be.  Unfortunately, the n00bs in my family just don't understand that the sun is trying to kill me!!  Or they're in on teh evil plot!

I'm not afraid to say that I'm an occasional reader of Cosmo, Vogue and very rarely Martha Stewart.  What?  I'm making sure I know what the other girls are thinking and yes, this is so that I don't completely make an ass of myself when out with non-geeks.  The one thing I notice, is that their penultimate travel guide never EVER has a single thing that I would bring with me.  Seriously, they don't even mention computers, cameras, and mp3 players.  Do they really expect me to leave all my tech at home?  You're kidding right?

So without any further ado, the geek girl's guide to travelling!!

I'm not really going to talk about clothing, because really I can barely dress myself let alone anyone else.  Besides, Cosmo, Vogue and all the rest have all that stuff already covered.  But!  If you're in need of new geeky shirts, my favorite place is Jinx and FBod Studios as they're just awesome and have something for the geek in all of us.  Seriously, though, clothing is usually not optional and you do want to remember some.

If you're like me and you have to have your computer pried away from your cold dead hands, this is just the thing.  Netbooks are all the rage right now, and with the introduction of HP and Dell into the market you can tell they're more than a fad.  These are perfect for travel as they're small, light and can easily fit into a purse or carry on bag.  They've got a 3 hour battery and with a price tag of $180 dollars for a brand new low end model, you really can't beat it.  Especially if you just need to indulge in your Facebook obsession and chat about the latest Star Trek Movie.

Now if you're like me, you'd love to have tunes at the beach but don't like sharing.  It's the way to block out the world, pretend that you're in your den of geek and forget all about that evil sun that's trying to do you harm.  These sunglasses are a great way to look cool and still have your tunes.  They're bluetooth enabled headphones, so totally wirefree and awesome looking, as long as your ipod or cell phone has bluetooth.  If you're strapped for cash , and who isn't right now, or don't have bluetooth enabled music there's also these cool looking sunglasses as well, though they have the mp3 player built into the glasses instead of bluetooth.  Still, a 1g mp3 player might be a better choice than of potential damage to the ipod.

 

 

Of course, if you're a bit old school like me and enjoy headphones with wires, or you're just anti-batteries, there's much love for skullcandy headphones.  These are the most comfortable headphones I've ever owned and I've owned plenty.  They have high fidelity headphones for every person, plus they come in awesome colors.  Hot pink?  Rastafarian stripes?  They have them, no doubt.  Plus?  My low end ink'd earbuds work a helluva lot better on an airplane than my 70 dollar noise reduction Sony headphones.  And starting at 19.95 for the ink'd they're a fantastic steal. (Actually, Amazon has several varieties of skullcandy earbuds (like those shown to the right) for $12.95 on sale. ~ the Manegement)

 

Cameras are another great thing for vacations.  If you're low on storage or going on that vacation of epic proportions you'll probably want to buy a new camera card, and if you have kids or really annoying family that just can't wait for you to upload your pictures an EYE-FI card is a great little gadget.  Retailing at $49.99 for the very basic 2G card, this little card allows your camera to upload it's photos on it's own.  The way it works, is that the Eye-Fi card has a small wireless device in the card, and if it can connect to the internet it'll upload your pictures.  If your home computer is on?  Well, then it'll go ahead and download your pictures from the Eye-FI servers, meaning that you have your pictures safely on your drive at home, away from accidental sunscreen damage.

Now that we've got our tunes, our camera, and our computer the question is, where the heck are we gonna put it all?  This is gonna sound a little controversial but bear with me here.  I have found the coolest thing ever for taking all the goodies on the plane.  You know those boxes that our sisters and moms carry?  You know the ones, that they swear by that have all their cosmetics and such?  They go by the usual name of vanity case.  They're usually hard cases and come with a nifty shoulder strap.  Well, the one thing that our moms and sisters failed to mention is that they've got a bunch of pockets and elastic straps to keep all their little bottles upright.  Well, we've got a bunch of wires and cords and small techy items that will fit perfectly in all those little things.  Plus my netbook fits perfectly into it and so all my geektastic fun is in one place and actually organized.

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Due to a very sad set of circumstances, I've gone through not one, but three digital audio players in the last two years. Two were Creative and one was an Apple. The latest, when my Creative Zen ran away from home on the night of the Inauguration, gave me the opportunity to buy what I had been drooling and wanting for over a year. An iTouch.

First, I will say that unless you are willing to jailbreak your iTouch, if you have Linux this is not the device for you.

Due to the new encrypted database that the iTouch uses, it's now incompatible with Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox and all those other iTunes like programs out there for Linux. This gave me serious cause for reservation, as up until now I had been happily Windows-free, and loving it, for over 3 years. There was that blip where I got my new HP and was forced due to the less than optimal Libyan, we-will-cut-you-off-if-you-even-think-about-going over-your-allowed-bandwidth, Internet service to use Vista until some sweet soul could send me the newest Ubuntu install, but I don't like to talk about that. However, as my good friend Kim mentioned, I use a virtual machine for my banking as it was, so there should be no problem putting the iTunes on that. Yeah...that was a good thought anyway and got me over my reservations on not being able to use it at all.

After two weeks of having to listen to either staticy Arabic music on the radio or the one lone CD I had in my car, I received my iTouch. Oh it was just as glorious as I remember my brother's being. It was shiny and pretty and I couldn't wait to just look at all the games on it. Only to find, that in order to even turn it on, I had to plug it into iTunes. So I trudged through the rest of my day, staring at the clock and demanding that it hurry up and make it to five only to remember it was Sunday. Pilates class. D'oh, but then I discovered that Apple was joining with all the other manufacturers that apparently couldn't afford the 5 cents it cost to burn a CD. I was going to have to download iTunes, a 200M file on my less than optimal Libyan internet.

Once I managed to install iTunes, after accidentally downloading the 64 bit version and having to start over, I managed to get the iTouch running. I started loading music on it. I set up my mail to sync with the iTouch and my calendar and contacts to sync with Google calendar and contacts instead of the default Outlook.

Then I discovered the app store.

Oh yes, this is where my life took a startling change for the better. Now, don't get me wrong Libya is in the dark ages when it comes to wireless hotspots and whatnot. But, it was the possibility that intrigued me! The thought that maybe, just maybe, this slick pretty little device could finally be the all in one I had been dreaming of since I got my first PDA all those years ago.

I browsed; I talked; I listened. Now I'm from the dark ages of the internet, when freeware was really free and didn't have any sort of virii or spyware attached. Since that was my first introduction to software download, I have a big problem paying for tiny apps that I haven't had a chance to try out. Low and behold, apparently a lot app programs feel the same way. There are loads and loads of "lite" versions for most of the programs. They'll give you some of the functionality, or all the functionality but are ad-based.

Programs that I currently have installed almost all utilized the built in wifi in the iTouch. I installed the Facebook and Myspace programs that give me access to what's going on with those pages. Myspace, and my resistance and confusion by it, is a blog for another day. I installed the free version of Twitterific, a twitter client that allows me to send tweets anywhere I have wifi access.

I've also managed to find an ebook reader, ereader pro, that allows me to download books from fictionwise.com, ereader.com, and manybooks.net. Manybooks.net is a great substitute to Google Books, especially since a lot of their public domain books have all disappeared since their recent settlement with the Authors. eReader Pro downloads the books right to your device so you don't have to be dependent on Internet access, which is a must for me. Now if I could manage to figure out how to load my own content on the thing it'd be perfect.

Of course, all of that is good to go, but to be the go-to device in my own personal arsenal of tech it had to have one more thing. GAMES. Boy, howdy does it have games. There's just about every game you could think of to play on this thing. My favorites right now are Texas Hold'em and CroMag Rally. CroMag is fantastic but I have yet to figure out the pause button. Which makes it not the best for using whlie waiting for my officers to finish their paperwork so I can close the office up at night, as my officers tend to have questions and not understand that I've just got 2 more laps and then I can unlock a new level!

The best part of all, is that Apple has designed all of this without compromising the basic function of the device. Music! When you start music going it will continue to play in the background as you browse through your other apps. Double click the single button on the device and it will bring up the music menu no matter what you're also doing with the iTouch. So very cool and a great step up from PDAs that will stop if you close the program to go do something else.

There are a few things I'm quite annoyed with. The first being that they're no longer bundling the CD with the iTouch. Granted, their software updates on a regular basis and you don't want to be stuck with an old management system, but not everyone has high speed internet. There are still a bunch of people that have dial up and the 200 plus megabyte file is large enough that would it could take hours if not days to download. It really would be good they bundled the software, even if it was out of date, with the iTouch.

Another thing that peeved me was the fact that apparently all my fancy docks, I had an iPod before that died a horrible death in December of 2007, no longer charge the new iPods. This is simply total crap, in my not so humble opinion. It's not like the iTouch has a radically different plug. In fact, it looks like the same plug it always has been, just slightly smaller in width. I'm not about to spend hundreds of dollars on new speakers when I have perfectly good speakers that simply no longer charge my iTouch. For this Apple gets a big ol'Fail from me. The fact that the iTouch has to continually tell me that it won't charge on this device, like I didn't see that the first time, is also quite irritating. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn off those notifications and in fact they build up, like reminders on Outlook, that every time it turns on it felt the need to tell you that it can't charge on this device. Once would have been more than enough, kthxbye.

In conclusion, I still love my iTouch. It's a great little gadget even in the Great Jam where Internet is pretty much limited to houses. I can't wait to get back to the land of Internet Everywhere and see exactly what I can do with this little thing. Until then, I'll just be over here, jamming to my tunes.

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