JetSetterJoe.com

Video: Asakusa

Posted by camuyano on 20 Jul 2009 at 9:20 am under Japan, Travel | No Comments

Video: Tsukiji Fish Market

Posted by camuyano on 18 Jul 2009 at 3:20 pm under Japan, Travel | No Comments

Video: Arrival in Tokyo!

Posted by camuyano on 17 Jul 2009 at 7:36 am under Japan, Travel | No Comments

As my trip to Japan and China grows ever closer, I get more and more restless. Over the past couple of months we’ve been steadily checking off items from out to do list and now it is almost complete. Despite this, I cannot help feeling that I am utterly unprepared for this trip to the other side of the world and countries whose language and culture could not be further from my own.

Part of this is normal pre-travel jitters but part of it is my control-freak nature and my uncanny ability to believe that the worse will always come true. Here’s a couple of tips that could help nervious travelers like me be better prepared for “worse case scenarios”:

US citizens can register with the US state department’s travel website. I suspect other countries probably have similar services. This will allow you to receive last minute travel alerts via email. Additionally, you can register with the local embassy for the countries you will be visiting. Conceivably, if the worse does happen and you are involved in a military coup, natural disaster or whatever, this registration should make it easier for those trying to find you amid the chaos.
Make copies of your passport, visas, IDs and credit cards and keep them separate from the originals in case you loose them.
Send a detailed itinerary to someone not traveling with you detailing the places you are planning to visit, when you plan to be there and where you plan to stay. Plans change but even if the itinerary does not stay 100% accurate, it will give people back home an idea of where you might be in case of emergency.
Check with you health insurance provider about international coverage and ask for a list of providers in the areas you will be visiting. For example, Blue Cross Blue Shield has an international website where members can obtain lists of providers and country by country medical information worldwide.

Some of these tips are fairly obvious but others I only found out about recently. I hope this helps ease travelers’ nerves. I know it did for me.

Posted by camuyano on 13 Jul 2009 at 10:32 am under Rants, Travel | No Comments

iPhone travel tip of the week

iPhone showing PDF content loaded using FileMark Maker

Okay, well maybe a I won’t start posting a new iPhone travel tip every week but this is a good one. The iPhone comes with the ability to view PDF documents but only as email attachments. For our upcoming Japan trip I wanted a way to access reference materials on the iPhone without having to go online and pay exorbitant data roaming charges. The solution is a MacOS X app called FileMark Maker which allows you to store PDF files as offline Safari web pages and add them to your bookmarks on your Mac. The next time you sync your iPhone, your files will be transferred to the phone and added to the bookmarks directory on the phone. It works pretty well even if the interface is kind of awkward for converting multiple files. (You must drag the files one by one and drop them on the FileMark application.) I am using this tool to store web content like train schedules, maps and directions from sites like japan-guide.com so I can review it from the plane and on-the-go without having to go online. Check it out!

Posted by camuyano on 09 Jul 2009 at 8:06 am under Gadgets, Mac OS, Travel, iPhone | No Comments

Tokyo or bust

After years of dreaming and planning (and one potential departure date canceled due to injury), we are headed for Japan this summer. I have been meaning to write extensively about our preparations and planning but our departure date, July 15th, 2009, is almost upon us and I have been too busy preparing. Unlike our 2005 European trip, I hope to do a bit less writing and a lot more posting of video and pictures while on the road. Stay tuned for further updates.

Posted by camuyano on 05 Jul 2009 at 5:33 pm under Japan, Travel | No Comments

Boats: Buy one get one free…

You know the economy is bad when they start advertising “buy one get one free” deals on boats. This is no joke! I received this on a promotial email from Yachting magazine. Oyster Harbors Marine of Osterville, MA is giving away a 24 FS Regulator center console boat with the purchase of a Maritimo 52′ cruising motor yacht and a 26 FS with a 60′ cruising motor yacht. The only catch is that the 52′ Maritimo will set you back $1,159,000 while the 60′ will cost $1,659,000 not to mention the thousands you will have to pay for docking, fuel, maintenance, taxes, repairs and winter storage for not one but two boats. (Nevermine that the Maritimos are discounted from $1.4M and $2.2M, respectively.) But if you have the dough, both are nice boats. In fact, the Regulators alone are better than my current rig.

Posted by camuyano on 07 May 2009 at 6:13 pm under Boats | Comments Off

Goodbye to Baby Wipes!

During our years of camping, travelling and adventuring, my wife must have purchased hundreds of boxes of baby wipes to keep clean whenever a shower or bath is not readily available. I recently learned of a great alternative called Action Wipes after hearing an interview with company founder Martha Van Inwegen on the Fredcast cycling podcast.

These wipes are much bigger than baby wipes and made with 100% natural essential oils (so no more baby-butt smell after washing up on the go). Furthermore, they are reusable by recharging them with the Sports Spray after washing so they are environmentally friendlier than all those baby wipes we’ve sent to the landfill.

I have ordered my first shipment and look forward to using them as the seasion warms up, not only for washing up after short bike rides in the middle of the work week, but also during camping and road trips this summer.

Posted by camuyano on 18 Feb 2009 at 1:55 pm under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Project Bobcat Revisited

A couple of weeks back I blogged about Garmin’s Project Bobcat trip planning software for the Mac. In that post I mentioned how the latest obligatory software update from Garmin broke my BlueChart maps. I was really bummed since I currently do not have any Windows PCs (and was hoping to keep it that way).

Last week I opened Project Bobcat again and it immediately proceeded to download the latest update. After installing the update, my BlueChart maps seem to work again. Given the short time between updates I wonder if a developer checked in some bad code or if a previous version was mistakenly uploaded to the server and tagged as the latest stable version.

As a software developer, I know this kind of thing happens and can taint an otherwise perfectly fine piece of software so I wanted to set the record straight. This is always a concern when you release beta software for wide distribution no matter how many warnings you publish to remind people this just a beta version. (After all, look at what perception has done for Windows Vista.) I still like the user interface of Project Bobcat very much and hope that Garmin keeps developing such products for the Mac.

Posted by camuyano on 21 Jul 2008 at 8:03 pm under Gadgets, Mac OS, Navigation | Comments Off

Project Bobcat: Finally, Garminâ€™s solution for trip planning on the Mac?

As I wrote in my posts about our campervan trip through Europe, one of the biggest challenges we had was lack of route planning support for Garmin products on the Mac. Running MapSource with VirtualPC worked okay but the lack of USB support meant that uploads were painfully slow and still the maps did not seem to upload correctly as on-the-fly route calculation did not seem to work. Despite this, the VirtualPC bandaid got us through a big chunk of Western Europe without major incident.

A couple of years back I was talking to legendary adventure rider Helge Pedersen during a Mortonâ€™s BMW event in Fredericksburg, VA about the dificulties of interfacing Garmin products with the Mac. Helge pointed out that Garmin would soon be rolling out Mac software. It took a while but the Mac software from Garmin has started to trickle out slowly.

Recently, my Sony VAIO died (another long story) and I was back to using a Mac almost exclusively. I tried Garminâ€™s MapInstall to download my maps into my GPSMAP 276C and it worked okay but I beamoned the fact that I could not do any route planning on the computer (a task made much easier with a full keyboard and larger screen).

Some time later I became aware of Garminâ€™s Project BobCat, which is billed as a way to â€œsearch for points of interest (POIs), create and organize waypoints, routes and tracks, and easily send them to your Garmin GPS.â€ The product is still in Beta but I downloaded it and used it to plan a route for a short fishing trip. I was expecting it to be somewhat more limited than MapSource but found that it provided the same capability with a much improved interface. I had a couple of near hang-ups but it seemed pretty stable for a Beta.

All is good, right? Eh! Wrongâ€¦ Because the software is in Beta phase, it forces you to download and install any available updates so during the 4th of July weekend I was forced to upgrade to version 2.0.0.6. The upgrade completely broke my BlueChart Americas capability. BobCat will crash whenever I try to scroll through the map with a lot of detail turned on, zoom in too far or pretty much do anything I really need to plan a route. Whatâ€™s worse is that I cannot even seem to use MapManager anymore to re-convert and re-install the maps.

So, is Project BobCat the much-awaited solution for trip planning with Garmin productâ€™s on the Mac? Iâ€™ll reserve my judgement for after I get my BlueChart working again.

Posted by camuyano on 09 Jul 2008 at 3:04 pm under Gadgets, Gear, Navigation, Technology | 1 Comment