Imaad’s Galaxy S1 and my iPad.

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This mobile office thing is working out fine, except for Imaad, who’s sitting here in a cordurouy jacket with his damn gypsy bag and long hair, making us look like homosexuals. Seriously, he looks like the cordurouy cowboy. We both have tabs which looks odd but efficient enough. He’s just got to take it that extra level.

The Kuruwita Office

The Badulla bus.

Right now we’re nearing Kuruwita, near some place marked Paradise on Google Maps. The bus ticket to Ella (Badulla route) costs Rs. 585 each. For that we get nipple-bracing A/C, which is better than my home office. That said, it’s rainy and we’re gaining altitude and I’m freezing right now. I brought a chavie gangster style trainer jacket. I guess I’ll put that on.

Seriously, fuck, Imaad is leaving long bitch hairs everywhere.

Anyways, where was I. The seats are whatever, my ass kinda hurts and Ella is like six hours away. The music is decent and soft and I can take phone calls, though they tend to come as I’m dozing off.

There’s a nice view from the window usually, paddy or rubber trees or whatnot. I try not to look so much as the peripheral might make me puke.

The Workspace

Mobile phone towers, where ze Internet comes from.

For the last year or so I haven’t had a laptop. I just use a desktop (iMac) at home, which I hustled out of the EPSI guys for like 75k. This is fine, but if I travel I can’t do anything at all. So I finally got a tablet. I’ve had netbooks and they’re fine, but I’ve been Windows free for years and have no desire to go back. So the choice was between an iPad and a Macbook Air.

iPad

I chose the pad cause it was A) cheaper and B) had much longer battery life. That cost about $585. Note that it’s an iPad 2. I had a one week window where family could ferry the thing from the states and the 3 wasn’t selling.

So how is it? Honestly, Apple’s a bunch of fucking Nazis. There’s no Flash and useful apps like Grooveshark (for music) are, like, banned. The YouTube app sucks and is missing most videos, and overall the thing is actually terrible for consuming music and video.

Still, the interface is OK for blogging, and I can do Lightroom class (my class mind you) photo editing and uploading. Which is all I need. Which brings us to two accessories.

Adonit Writer Keyboard

I write. I can’t write on touchscreens, at least not fast or well enough, so I bought this bluetooth keyboard plus case from Adonit. It’s pretty great thus far, if expensive at $100. I just flip the case open and use the iPad as a laptop. It’s got good sized buttons with dedicated keys for copy/paste, etc. I write in HTML, so this is perfect for writing basic code without switching views. The ‘t’ key just got stuck. Besides that, this has been perfect.ttttcttttt. There we go.

EyeFi Wireless SD Cards

EyeFi is a memory card, with WiFi built in. At $80 for 8GB it’s not cheap, but once you set it up it’s absolutely amazing. To upload photos from my FujiFilm X100 I just turn it on, open the EyeFi app on my iPad and watch the photos wirelessly stream across. Then I open Adobe Revel to edit them and upload to Flickr. I can get a photo from camera to Flickr in six steps, more if I want to crop or edit. It’s pretty great.

So

So, that’s about it. It’s still not ideal, but this is the best kit I could put together and it still costs less in toto than a MacBook Air. Oh, and I’m using an Etisalat SIM for mobile broadband, just cause I found it lying around. I usually use Dialog and I think either Mobitel or Airtel would also suffice. Now I’m going to stop writing and listen to Hype Machine for a bit. We just passed Ratnapura and stopped in Lellopitiya for a dodgy bite.

Posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 in Photography, Sri Lanka, Tech, travel.