Here’s a great solution for storing a two-piece flyfishing rod and reel with line fully-loaded and ready with fly attached.
Jim Hill of Oatlands, like me, has trouble tying on flies on cooler days, and this way he just pulls rod and reel out of the 40mm tube, joins the two pieces and he’s ready.
He suggested it would work fine with my four-piece rod with a shorter tube and perhaps a 50mm pipe. Watch this space for a progress report …
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There are interesting times ahead for RV travellers who like to read, and who need to cut down on weight.
Already in the marketplace are the Kindle [from Amazon]. shown right, and Sony’s nice, but expensive, ebook reader.
The Kindle has been a winner for Amazon, and next month they are releasing version II, which should go a long way toward given it a cleaner look. On an ugly scale of 10 I currently give it an 8.
Also due next month, according to the rumour mills, is the Mac Tablet, which could give all competitors a big headache judging by previous launches of new products [think iMac, iPod, iPhone … ] by Apple.
However, another ebook reader has snuck under everybody’s radar — Plastic Logic’s as yet-unnamed electronic reader, shown top, and in use below, which was announced today.
According to the company, their reader supports a full range of business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books.
It has an easy gesture-based user interface and powerful software tools that will help business users to organize and manage their information. Users can connect to their information either wired or wirelessly and store thousands of documents on the device.
Watch it in action here:
The reader incorporates E Ink technology for great readability and features low power consumption and long battery life. The Plastic Logic reader is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2009
There’s more information here
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I’ve been working towards official Road Warrior status for some time, but, to be honest, the cost of doing business online was a bit of a worry.
As a web site designer and marketer I need virtually 24/7 access. I have clients in the US, Canada, Hong Kong, mainland Australia and throughout Tasmania.
As an ‘early adopter’ of technology I wasn’t fazed by the ‘how’ but more by the ‘how much?’
It takes me back to the early days when I used to run Desktop magazine from my ‘electronic cottage’ in the wilds of the Tasman Peninsula near Port Arthur.
As Editor I liaised with freelance staff in every capital city, head office in Sydney, and product developers worldwide.
Initially most of of the material was collected by snailmail [and Express Post near deadline], communication was mainly by fax and landline, and emails were just beginning to make inroads — initially via a 2.4Bd modem and gradually creeping up … 9.6Bd …14.4Bd … and a big leap to 56Bd.
They were all painfully slow, and expensive. From my country base it worked out to $12 an hour [thanks Telstra] and sending big image files was simply a no-no.
Then came the move to the city and the gradual embrace of broadband.
When I first started contemplating getting on the road it looked like the only way to go was with a satellite dish — and I was not that impressed with the speed, cost and process of setting it up at each stop.
But, thanks to Moore’s Law [as loosely interpreted by the 'press'] which postulates that computers double in speed every 18 months or so [and roughly halve in cost] I finally have a little electronic dongle — half the size of my mobile phone which allows me to access the Internet from anywhere that I can get 3G reception.
And it works. I get good upload and download speeds; enough to justify the expense and enable me to continue to work on the road.
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Where would we all be without checklists.
At long last I have found the perfect software to simplify the job — and guess what, it works on Macs, PCs and Linux — and is ‘Made in Australia’.
Its called Thinking Rock, and besides being perfect for checklists, it also rocks as a GTD [Getting Things Done] application.
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