Browsing improvements on this site
Dear visitors,
As of today, this site has received a number of minor enhancements, in order to improve the ease of browsing through my numerous blog entries. I hope that you will find the following new features on the site convenient:
- There is now a monthly archive of all blog entries. You can view all blog entries for each month (grouped by day) on a single page! Should make it much easier to catch up on older blog entries, and to keep track of which entries you have and haven't read. Also provides fixed pages from which you can access all the entries, rather than the reverse chronological listing, where the entries on each page number change constantly.
- At the bottom of each blog entry (the full entry, not the summary), there is now a link to the previous and next entries (according to date and time). So you can now "cruise" from one blog entry to the next, without having to keep going back to the index pages.
Additionally, the blog is now more up-to-date than it has been in over two months (for the first time since then, it is actually completely current), due to a combination of my having a fair bit of free time, and a lot of cheap and fast Internet in the past few days.
I've also updated the 'about' page to have a bit more information, particularly about the features of the site's various sections. Hope you like these little improvements to the site, and be sure to come back and to keep reading!
PS: these changes were made in an Internet cafe in Arequipa, Peru — not the easiest place in the world to do web development. Further improvements to the site are not likely in the near future, as it is very hard to find the time or the resources to make them, while I'm on the road in South America!
Hard but possible
Hi Alex,
Great to hear that you're thinking of doing a world trip yourself, and thanks for your questions. It's an amazing experience, and one that everyone should dive into, at least once in their lifetime!
I'm not travelling with a laptop: I've just been using Internet cafés in each town that I go to, which is enough for email, blogging, photo uploading, etc. The only exception to this was the 1 week that I spent in San Francisco, at the 2007 OSCMS Summit, where I hired a laptop for a week. So I can't really recommend a particular laptop to you, except that if you have to travel with one, choose a 12-inch model or smaller, make sure that its wireless card is 802.11 b/g (which is standard), and otherwise, get the highest specs that you can afford.
The Internet connections haven't been too bad on my trip so far. Of the countries that I've visited, Chile has great Internet (highest speeds in South America), Peru and Mexico have reasonably fast speeds, and Bolivia's Internet is only just usable (slow at best). So apart from Bolivia, the Internet has been more than adequate for my needs — and even in Bolivia, I got by.
Doing development while travelling would be very hard: I'm not even bothering to try it. First, there are too many other amazing things to do while you're backpacking. Also, finding an adequate dev box is hard. I'm sure it's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it. Remember, there are always more improvements to be made to Drupal, and Drupal will still be there and will still need you when you finish your trip; give Drupal a break for a bit, and see the world!
Good Luck,
Jaza.
Plannings for my own worldtrip...
Hey Jaza,
I'm Alex from Berlin and I stumbled upon your blog. I'm currently planning my own world trip, but first I have to clear some major issues and that's why I contacted you (the math spamprotection on your contact page doesn't work and I'm sure that 3+12==15). By accident I'm also working as a "microISV" and even better, drupal is my choice :) maybe I'm gonna start contributing some modules during my trip, 'cause a) I have to go on working and b) this will be a drupal implementation project with some special features needed. So the trip would be a 50:50 work/travel thing.
My questions to you Jaza: how do you handle the internet connection at places like, say, Bolivia?? Do you have such UMTS/HSDPA/EDGE/GPRS/GSM/...whatever cards in your laptop? Can you recommend a laptop model that suits all mobility aspects, whats your model? I'm sick of evaluating thousands of laptops without knowing how to guarantee that I'll can work with it everywhere I want to/have to.
So thx in advance for some tips and tell me when u come to Berlin ;)
greets
Alex