Covered in Bees-tings

We needed to get a lot done this weekend and didn’t do too badly. V and I climbed into our trip entertainment and general trip-tech on Friday. I ripped my entire West Wing DVD set to iPhone video (see end of post for more info). We both still have a lot of sorting to do, but it was a really good start.

Don't look left

Saturday morning we were up early to catch a train into Birmingham for various bits and jabs (around New Street station). I hate needles, but survived. Can’t say the same for our wallets, a total of £245 each for Hep A, Typhoid and Jap B. The latter being £80 per dose – 2 doses ! Seems we will have to go back again in the week for the Japanese B Encephalitis vaccine. They did not have stock even though we had made an appointment for it !

With sore arms we toured the gear shops in the vicinity (Snow and Rock & Blacks) where we picked up a few more bits and pieces. Socks, pants for V, stuff sacks, and my Merino wool t-shirts from Icebreaker. Got to love their marketing and since they are made in New Zealand it will be fun to see if they make it all the way back home. [more palace intrigue below]

Too many meds

The plan was to check out Kickass the movie but the new Dr. Who called us home early (it was excellent – but I miss David Tennant). We decided to to a ‘test’ pack of our gear and get a final idea of what we need to get and what we are taking. It went well. Taking the lightest possible outfit out of our gear (ie: strops, shorts and a T-shirt) we were still able to get the rest of our kit into our packs (30l and 35l ), but it is a tight fit. We spent a good hour sorting the pile of meds we have been collecting – we could open a pharmacy !  But also got that down to a tiny first aid kit and our personal toiletry bags.

Real Russia contacted us for payment – which we made – I have to admit their service thus far has been impeccable. Next up on the list was travel insurance. V poured over a number of options while I goofed around with more iPhone apps for translation and mapping. Looks like we’ll be going with either Virgin or  GlobeLink – and with all that the pre-trip expenses are heading towards £1500 each. OUCH !

Rental van is booked with Enterprise so we can move our stuff up to Manchester – that will be a mission. We have to pack up and drive to Manchester on the Friday night and I’ll drive back to Telford to drop the car off on Saturday (saving the insane one way charge). Then get a train back up.

Today I have to start the trial end of course assessment and revision for my Maths course…maybe a little video editing first 🙂

How I squeezed the best TV show ever onto an iPhone

I only have 32GB and need space for podcasts, e-books, audiobooks, apps etc so it was a bit of a challenge to get 155 x 40 minute episodes into 21.5GB  (dam you Apple for not having a SD card slot). The settings I used as follows;

• Video:  H.264/AVC, Single pass at 384 kbps, 480×320, 30fps
• Audio: Mono 16bit, 48 kHz, 112kbps)
• Had to scale some of the early seasons to suit the iPhone screen resolution.

The end result is around 150MB per episode and since it isn’t an action movie the sound and video quality is more than adequate.

Sample Screen Grab at 100% Wide Screen

Sample clip – one of my faves (will probably get removed from You Tube)