So, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be travelling overseas to Taiwan. It's a vacation, my first in nearly a decade; and since my last vacation, a lot of technology has changed that perhaps makes this journey a little more comforting to a reclusive geek like myself. The airline I'm flying with, provides a USB socket in its international economy seats, with 5V DC and 500mA charge, meaning I can power a device somewhat comfortably to enjoy a variety of media, and entertainment. So without further ado, I'm going to go into something of a diatribe about preparing for the trip to soothe my inner geek.

The constraints

There's a number of limitations on this vacation, predominantly governed by my travel arrangements (flights, trains, etc.) so listing them out:

• Portability; I'm using a Crumpler 8L backpack; the "Low Level Aviator"
• Power; My gadgets need to last a while, and/or be charged with in-transit USB (5V DC, 500mA - about the same as a USB 1.1 port)
• Media; and Storage for photos and videos from my phone
• Entertainment; I don't expect to have much time, but in the down time and flights I might watch a show, or three...
• Gaming; of course :)

The goal of this post is to put down my thoughts so that I can build up an EDC kit for my trip.

The EDC Backpack

Aside from my wallet - "The Pilot" by Andar; and my iPhone on my person - I'll have most of my gear in my backpack with me:

• iPad Pro 9.7" - it's only 32GB, but it should hold enough of my notes and such to continue being useful!
• Nintendo Switch - previously in Project Cloud Citizen, this would've been my GPD-WIN PC, more on this later;
• Bullet Journal - my bujo, I carry this with me pretty much everywhere
• Pen cases - will hold my pens of course, and insulin injection pens, as well as some bandaids and what have you
• Screwdriver kit - this is a little portable kit with a combined tape measure that I will keep with me just in case
• Glasses case - obviously, for the glasses I wear, as well as a spare pair inside
• Battery Pack
• Cables for iPhone/iPad/Switch

This trip is a good opportunity to really see what there is that I can and can't do when I'm truly away from my home desktop, and must rely on Project Cloud Citizen. I'm packing quite lightly with this trip, and my day-pack is smaller than my usual laptop bag. I'm also trying to ditch the laptop in favour of the lighter-weight iPad, and gaming/entertainment is handled by both the tablet and my Nintendo Switch instead.

In my last Cloud Citizen post I mentioned that I was going to use my GPD-WIN for my gaming purposes; but I am actually thinking more along the lines of no longer using it. For a few reasons:

• Its battery is good, but not as great as the Nintendo Switch or the iPad
• It's far more general purpose, and far more of a compromise in power/features - so I feel like I've sacrificed too much to use it
• The iPad can truly connect with my Cloud Citizen server as a remote client now

For anything really PC related or desktop related, I can actually use my iPad now to remote into my server as needed using a piece of software called Jump Desktop, it works great with a specific bluetooth mouse and my iPad, and should satisfy any mobile needs I might have. In fact, I intend to work on this site and blog while I'm in Taiwan to try and get a feel for it.

So as it seems, I'm going to start using just my iPad and Switch, for this trip. It's a 9 day long trip; so it's a fairly valid testing opportunity!

I've actually made some changes to the site, with a greater focus on nice code. There's some significant back-end stuff happening in preparation for future updates (when isn't that the case?)

New to the site

• A page editor GUI that lets me create static content pages using Bootstrap columns/rows/grid layouts
• Page Editor upgrade that also lets me edit the raw HTML of a static content page
• Better data table handling of posts/pages and elements like logs
• The groundwork for better logging functionality in the future
• A release pipeline, with appropriate versioning based off CI/CD from VSTS

Planned updates

• Blog post comments
• User account creation
• Discussion Forums
• Members only sections

Eventually I'm hoping to have built enough services around the stuff I've got online for friends and family that it grows into a small community. From there, who knows?

So recently, I got a grant for using the NSW state government's Fuel Pricing data in a relatively small, personal project (you'll be able to access some of the results on this very blog in fact!) - it's just by lucky coincidence that Fuel pricing seems to be the talk of the town at present. The goal of the project is simple; "Historical fuel price tracking across NSW, Australia. And to provide a service to find the lowest price fuel nearest to a user."

It's little more than just some hobby tracking project - using a dynamically updating data set, there's just an added benefit that it'd let me save some money hopefully :)