Joel Johnson Wilderness Internet Experience
Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson recently spent a week in the woods with a backpack full of electronics, to see if he could work on the internet in the wild using only solar power and his bare hands. This video reveals to the world, for the very first time, what happened to all those bears.
the latest
the latest
Blair Witch much?
Why did a week turn into a single night? Just curious.
It was two nights, actually. Down from three total planned. I just felt like I had tested all the gear but wasn't getting a lot of work done, so didn't want to burn an extra day just for the sake of it.
Two nights in the woods is fun, but not really enough to test out your gear.
In 2005, I hiked for 6 months with a Nikon camera, garmin GPS, iPod (for storing the photos), a sharp Zaurus palmtop computer(to write logs and edit photos), a cell phone (to send out the logs and photos) and a solarroll 4.5 to charge everything.
All of the gear worked flawlessly and I would recommend all of it. However, getting it to all work together was tricky. There was soldering involved and I even had to write a driver to connect the zaurus to the cell phone.
Technology + Outdoors = Awesome!
It would be better if you just hooked up the solar panel directly to the charger. You waste a lot going from DC (solar) to AC (inverter) and then back to DC (power brick).
I'm curious as to why you would introduce a low-efficiency inverter into the mix when trying to charge a low-voltage battery such as the one on your laptop battery. You'd be much greener (both macro and micro) if you used a purely DC path from your main battery to the laptop's.
@FarrisGoldstein That's a very fair question and one for which I have no good answer except that I didn't have time to buy a 12-volt car adapter for the Thinkpad.
Well it looked like you had fun, Joel, and avoided getting snaked. The Brunton solar whatjamithing looks handy too. Tempting...
Good story Joel, What was the name of that tripod thingie at the end? I'd like to have one of those.
it's called the Gorillapod, and it's made by Joby you can get them here:
http://www.joby.com/products/gorillapod/original/
or here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cameras/82db/
among other places.
Cool Whitetail, thanks much.
You can also buy the tripod thingie material (modular hose) in bulk, although it won't have the nifty camera base mount piece. Comes in various sizes, including "huge." (2.5" dia.)
Here's a DIY post for use as a third hand:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Third-Hand-A-multi-use-helping-hand-for-electro/
One source for bulk hose:
http://www.modularhose.com/merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=LL
By far my favorite BBTV episode yet. I hope we get to see more footage in the future because thats funny shit. See, I'm even starting to talk like Joel I liked it so much and shit.
Didn't you bring along a tent? I remember you mentioned you didn't learn how to put it together before leaving for your adventure. I didn't realize you'd be staying in a "shelter" anyways. Shit, thats still about 300% more roughing-it than I've ever done.