The Happy Pilgrim : April 2015

Wow, where did that week go? On Sunday it will be only three weeks until I depart! The scary reality if that threre are only 12 days left at work (one of those is a training day) It would come as no surprise tho those who know me that I am working hard to get all my projects up to date and in good shape to hand over.

Tonight I am just sitting back relaxing in my pjamas. It's raining and I am not so interested in taking the little dog for a walk tonight (much to his dismay). I am tired but know there are things to learn and practice (and do) before I leave on my epic adventure. I need to practice my blogging so that it is easy and seamless for me while I am away.
I am keen for some ice-cream though, and the more I think about it the more I think I need some!
I will practice this post and try and get an early night. I am pretty up to date with my trip rganising and am ticking off my final arrangments. I got a lot done at work this week and I have been surprisingly productive before and after work and have even found a little time in my lunch breaks.

have been pleased with my efforts including;

1. Finally got around to organising my travel insurance (yeah)
2. I have purchased my Euros and a little back up stash of American dollars and pick them up on Monday
3. I have advised my bank I am going overseas (so they don't cut off my cards if I use them)
4. I have booked a final hair cut (and a contingency colour if I need one)
5. Checking in all my hard copies of travel my documents (and e-copies on my iPad)
6. Final locks and security for my luggage are now all sorted
7. I got a small money pouch which I can tuck away and a coin purse
8. I have made a decision to leave the zip-on bag which attaches to my larger Osprey wheeled travel bag. (It can't lock all the zip parts down) and fear that I will be inclined to over pack if I keep it "zipped on". It is now officially "zipped off" and staying behind.
9. Reviewing all my packing and the official test "weigh-in" will happen this weekend. (Crunch time). I am not going to leave it till the last minute only to find I have to make crucial decisions about what I have to leave behind.

What's left to do?
1. Purchase a flash card for my camera and work out how to use the two-card system. I want a larger back up flash-card and a smaller SD card (I will shoot and save doubles) larger files and smaller files. I need at least one flash card and then I need to make sure I understand how to actually do that! (So that will keep me busy).
2. I need to practice more with my new camera (generally).
3. I think I need to go into the city on Saturday afternoon and visit Paddy Palin (I am looking for a small storage container) but I need to have a little browse just in case there is something that I may need.
4. I need to walk a bit more to and from work (so I aim to do that one day next week)
5. Keep learning to blog on my iPad (I have decided all new posts should be done exclusively on my iPad) which is such a lovely little piece of technology and such a pleasure to use. I have a mini, with a full size apple key board and a stand. But will save my photos for Spain!
6. Pick up my cash.
7. Check my accomdation in Bilbao and my flights upon landing in Barcelona.
Note this page will be deleted before I go. it's just me prattling on while I practice. It's neither informative or interesting IMHO (in my humble opinion).!

Posted with Blogsy

Not sure if these apps are nearly as good as the reviews they have in iTunes (if they are there at all).
The screen seems easier to read (so that's a plus).
The tutorials are quite good and I finally got the sound to work on my iPad ...

Sagrada Familia - Barcelona

Just a few lines of text using my new app "Blog Touch"

There were lot of people in the Apple Store again today with lots of interest with the new Apple Watch. It's not on my list at the moment but "number one son" is interested (of course!)

Park Guell

The quirky part of the day was that I sat in the same spot as I did on Easter Monday and there was a lady getting a One-to-One lesson who was also in the store at the same time (de ja vu). We said hello and chatted and both of us had lovely young ladies with excellent communication skills, walking us through our technologies. Life is really quirky like that! She said my blog was lovely and wished me well on my Camino.

I downloaded some photos from the internet (saved them to my camera roll) and then uploaded them using this new "uprgraded" version while I was having my lesson. I played around with the iPad app and asked questions. A very good place to learn (much better than just watching YouTube or reading endless Google posts!)

A tried something new using this table format.

It's obviously unique to the iPad app because I couldn't insert a table into a new post at home on the iMac for some reason.

Summary of events

Having fun with One-to-One lessons in the Apple Store.
Table format looks nice, seems to work on the iPad but not back home on the iMac? Go figure!

Apple Watch big promotion day meant the Civic Store was quite busy today.
Not on my purchase list as the moment.

Today's tutor visited Barcelona and of course the Sagrada Familia (see photos above).
Now at Uni, this friendly and smart young woman was fortunate to travel across Europe on a school excursion for three weeks visiting all the classic art venues in Paris, Venice, London.
Her tour also included this magical place where I am also visiting at the end of my Camino!

My initial thoughts about my new you-beaut BlogTouch (Blogspot for Blogger) App.
Not so good at working from the iPad - a few more wrinkles to iron out.

I am now working on "Blogsy" and really need to get out and have a walk after all this sitting down today!

Cymore is keen too and it's stopped raining. Best get my shoes on before it gets too dark, my little walking companion has been growling at me to get me motivated to move!

Posted with Blogsy

In the first draft of this post I put a call out for IT experts to help me get my blog to work. The blog was looking quite nice, but a few weeks ago it was very much "under development".

I would think about stuff and use the "phone a friend" option!. While I was waiting on responses, I decided the safest bet would be to try and work things out myself! I would YouTube or Google or speak to someone. The longer I waited for someone to provide me with an answer the more likely I was to find the solution to my own questions! Before I knew it my IT problems grew smaller.

Moral of this tale:
If you think about things and keep trying - you can almost invariably work stuff out yourself.
There was no need to hold my breath or throw the towel in. I drew on recent advice from a wise woman I know she tells me she lives by this same advice. Sometimes, you just need to "put your big girls pants on" and get on with it. It's sort of like the Nike "Just Do It" motto or the Michelle Bridges "JFDI", same-same but different and it has definitely works for me!

Over the last few weekends (and Easter) I booked myself into One-to-One lessons at the Apple Store. I learnt about how a Blogger App would assist me with navigating through my posts on my iPad. I am pleased I invested the time in the lessons. Now I can do "posts" on my iPad and will be able to transfer photos from my camera on to my iPad and upload them as my make my way across North-West Spain in a few weeks time.

The list of "what didn't work" began to turn into the list of "what I worked out". It just goes to show that life is good when you persist. Happy Blogger - Happy Pilgrim!

What I fixed

The Gallery wasn't working but now it does thanks to a YouTube tutorial and my persistence I have learnt how to insert a Picasa Web album. My gallery contains a small collection of Salvador Dali pieces that I found on a Google search. I am extremely excited about this because I am going to the Salvador Dali Museum just outside of Barcelona. I am looking forward to viewing these amazing pieces first hand. I am going to try out a slide show of my own from the iPad to see if I can organise my photos in a more interesting manner. (But enough late nights, that's definitely a job for the next weekend).
About Post Author - (is working now!) I know, I am truly amazed, I actually edited HTML without hyperventilating. I would like to acknowledge my friend on the SoraTemplate helpdesk in India (who has been very intolerant of me in the past). He really doesn't write nearly enough text in his email responses but I am showing resilience and tolerance when it comes to helpdesks overseas.
And yes scrolling pictures at the top of the home page are now photos of my choice and not those in the template! Some people would have given up by now but I persisted and yes, even did some more tinkering in the html section!
The menu bar now works as expected. I was able to rename the menu tabs and link the urls in the html codes section. This allowed me to link the tabs to all the right pages. This made me a Very Happy Pilgrim!

Last challenge
The only thing I am a bit stuck on now is formatting on the Itinerary page. There is a big gap between the table and the top of the page. When I insert the map (and believe me the map has been inserted and removed about 10 times now) the gap is still there. I have even started from scratch with a new page but still no luck. I have converted the table to html and copied it back into the template and it may just have to do. I like the fact I used the purple table template in Word and when I converted it to html the text was purple too!

I am pretty happy with my blog and my progress. It's time consuming but very rewarding teaching yourself something completely new. The things that don't work so well are small and I have managed to achieve what I set out to do. Needless to say I am going on holidays and I will be a Happy Pilgrim anyway!

I know it's only a matter of time before I work out how to make this pretty little blog template sing.

There are some limitations to what I can and can't do using the Blogger App on my iPad. Posts will be relatively simple however, creating new pages isn't possible using the App. At least I understand the limitations before I head off!

Above is a photo of my passport, Nikon waterproof camera, Lonely Planet Guide Book on Spain of course and my John Brierley Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino de Santiago - The Way of St. James. I also have a large symbolic shell (which I may leave behind and get a smaller one when I am in St. Jean). I eventually decided to ditch the Nikon only to reduce weight and space as it would mean two battery chargers and if I can't use my new camera I can use my iPhone.

Below is my gear (at of 7 April). It is unlikely to change too much but it is likely to change a little in the last few weeks and days as I continue to weigh it and weigh up what I want to bring versus what I need to bring! Generally speaking (unless I have left a bag at home by accident) I don't tend to pack light. I don't really know that I would give myself 9/10 on this challenge, but I most definitely have made improvements.

This test page was about taking photos, moving them off my SD card and onto my iPad and publishing the rest of the page on my portable holiday technology.

I am hoping that I will work out the "Gallery" function as these photos just look like I have "plonked" them in.

I have chosen Osprey bags as my travel companions.

My purple one as my day pack and my larger bag is on wheels but can also be carried as a back pack. While I am on the Camino, this one will be ported. I am taking one walking pole as my hands will be full with my camera for many parts of the day. If this doesn't work for me I will buy a second walking pole.

For added travel security I have purchased a Pacsafe Exo-Mesh

Tripod

It's very light and was only $20, I may regret taking it, I may regret leaving it behind.

I am not sure if this little friend will fit... still contemplating that one.

I really am happy with my three packing cells (they are just like drawers) and are keeping me focussed on what I want to bring versus what is necessary to bring.

My Keen sandals will come in handy during the warmer days and to give my weary feet some respite.

Below is my 2lt Osprey water bladder which will tuck nicely into my purple day pack.

I have tried it out on my walks round the lake with Laurel and her dog Gabby and also going to and from work.

Carrying 2 litres of water is quite heavy. I am not sure if I will fill it all the way up every day to be honest.

It's a handy piece of equipment and I like it very much never-the-less.

I have decided to ditch the additional (smaller) back pack which zips onto my larger wheeled bag.

(See below) the smaller back pack is handy and zips off but will be difficult to keep securely locked.

I may also be inclined to pack more so best to leave it at home.

In 2013, inspired by my cousin Shelley (now an ex-pat in Doha) I discovered the joys of WordPress. WordPress is an easy to use, customisable free web hosting site with a range of templates to chose from. This is where I began my journey with blogging. I figured if I was going to walk across Spain it would be nice to communicate with interested people back home. I planned to share the fun and humour of my quirky adventures and maybe some of my insights. I don't really expect to have insights to share all the time, but if I have one, and I want to share, I have a platform!

Fingers crossed I would have the energy with all those kilometres ahead of me! I am sure I will send a few Emails but a blog definitely appealed to me, especially if I can write it anywhere and upload it later. For quite some time now I have been having fun practicing my blog writing skills and teaching myself through trial and error how to manage the IT. The ongoing challenge will be to write things that appeal to my audience. If that doesn't work, I will still have a travel diary for my own purposes so "que sera sera"!

I had the WordPress thing pretty much worked out and was quite pleased with myself. I documented many of my favourite walks around Canberra and uploaded photos and experimented with labels, formats and templates. Version 1 - Preparing for Spain had a handful of loyal followers and gave me a platform to experiment on and iron out glitches. As I got closer to my departure date I wanted to launch a "new look" version. I ruminated over hundreds of WordPress free templates and a large contingency of expensive options and found nothing that I really liked. Finally, I stumbled across this one and fell in love with it. What I didn't know as I whipped out the credit card and paid a bargain-basement $6.95US dollars was that it wasn't a standalone product (template and web-hosting tool) like Wordpress. It only worked with a new web-platform called "Blogger". This meant starting all over again and learning something else new...... This wasn't part of my plan!

"What to do? .... what to do?"

Clearly the cosmetic draw of the pretty shiny-new template won me over and here I am practicing on the Microsoft platform "Blogger" with my new $6.95 template (Sora Article). It was a challenge for me at first. Needless to say I made a new friend in India and our email conversations will make an excellent case study one day. My "friend" was obviously good at writing html but wasn't able to demonstrate that same level of competency when it came to communicating with a determined women in her mid 40s who wanted to learn more. I don't think I will be inviting him to follow my epic blog adventures across Spain. In the end it's always something quite simple like changing to an incorrect timezone (who would have guessed?!) This made all the difference and the "higgledy-piggeldy" was fixed and the text lined up nicely. As my departure date closed in, there were still some buttons and links I couldn't get to work. At the time I wrote this first post I was hoping to iron them out and wrote about it with confidence and determination.

The photos below aren't mine obviously because I haven't left yet. I found them on the internet and have used them to practice uploading. My Camino lessons have started long before the walking and I know will continue way after I return home. I started practicing on the iMac and am currently learning how to transfer photos from my camera to my iPad mini. Today I uploaded a new Blogger App on my iPad and practiced editing and publishing my blog from the Apple Store in Canberra. I think I am doing okay and should have it sorted soon.

At the time I first published these draft pages and blog (11 November) I crossed a significant milestone and purchased my flights. I will be coming home via Qatar and will visit cousins Keith and Shelley in Doha. They are fabulous people and a great source of inspiration to me on many levels. Shelley and Keith are creative people and great travellers and also have a fabulous eye for a photo and a dedication for capturing moments in time with journaling (blogging) and also digital scrapbooking. I will be with them from Tuesday 7 July and fly out on Monday 13 July. I will arrive in Doha in the last week of Ramadan and in the "very - very" hot part of the year. I am excited about this last leg and know that the Middle East has so much to offer in both history and culture. I have another 'test page or post' on Qatar. I will fly home to Sydney via Hong Kong. All going well, I hope to catch up with my dear Uncle Christopher in Sydney airport while I wait for my final flight home to Canberra on Tuesday 14 July.

Let's see how this new blog and template works out. Your feedback is welcomed.