Monday 6 September 2010

What would a Geek take to the Jungle

Anyone who has read this blog before knows that I am an unashamed geek. With my university I'm lucky enough to be going to Borneo on Thursday. So as a geek what am I taking to the Jungle?

Final Borneo equipment
Click to see a larger tagged version.

So I'm taking;
  • 1x iPod Touch (1st Gen) filled with music and games for the 8 hour coach journey to Heathrow, the 4 hour wait at Heathrow, the stupidly long flight (God knows how long it really is my itinerary goes on local time!?!?!?), and all the journeys back again!
  • 1x pair of Sony MDRNC7B Noise Cancelling Headphones For previously mentioned journey! I've also got 2 airline adapters just in case the in flight movie turns out to be something good!
  • 1x Nokia 6300. One of the downsides to owning a smartphone is battery life and while having the internet with me on the coach would be awesome I'd rather not get to Heathrow and have my battery die just when I need to call people so we can meet up! My 6300's battery comparatively will last me about 8 days and will charge from just trickle of power.
  • 1x Kodak PlaySport Camcorder. I bought this camcorder specifically for Borneo. The damn thing is waterproof, drop proof, humidity proof and leech proof. It shoots in 720p at 30 and 60fps and 1080p at 30fps, has an excellent low light sensor and only a 4 second start-up time so I won't miss the action because I'm waiting for my camera to switch on.
  • 1x 6.3mp Fujifilm Finepix A610. This little point and shoot has kept running for years and years, it takes excellent photos and with a firmware upgrade now supports SDHC cards meaning I'm not going to run out of room (16GB SDHC card = 10,000 photos)
  • 3x 16GB SDHC cards. Enough storage for my camera and camcorder.
  • 6x USB powered AA Batteries. Found these at Firebox.com but discovered that Tesco and some service stations also sell them. The positive end of the battery comes off revealing a male USB port allowing these batteries to be charged from any USB port. I'm probably going to take a backup pack of normal AA batteries but hopefully these will work well
  • 2x Wind up torches. Torches always have a habit of dying right when you need them. I'd rather not be walking to the toilet at night in the rainforest and have my torch give out. One is a head torch the other is a hand torch which includes an DC out port for charging mobile phones.
  • 1x FreeLoader Solar Charger. The Freeloader is an awesome emergency battery pack combined with a large solar panel. The panel charges the battery in 4 hours of direct sunlight and can then be used to charge anything using the included adapters. It also has a female USB adapter meaning that if a device will charge off of USB it'll charge off of this solar panel.
  • 1x Platypus 3.0 litre water container. This thing is just plain cool. I can fill it full of water at the beginning of the day, shove it into my backpack and sup all day long.
  • Non-tech gear/other essentials. X Large Trek Towel, folds up very small, dries very quickly and is antibacterial. Buff Headband, its the rainforest I'm going to sweat this'll keep it out of my eyes. Various waterproof bags filled with silica gel. Pen knife. Handlens. Sun hat. Sun cream. Small first aid kit. A bar of shampoo soap, awesome product from Lush, its shampoo but solid! Autan insect repellent, as good as DEET but without the risk of an allergic reaction. Compass. Alcohol Gel handwash.
So that is what a geek takes to the rainforest. I'll be filming the entire time and will probably put together a review of what worked well and what didn't when I get back. See you all in 2 weeks :-)

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