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!

Recently, it dawned on me that it’s only been 3 months into 2018, where I started a shiny new career at a shiny new company; and in those 12 weeks, approximately half of that time has been spent:

• launching a brand new software platform where the original complement of developers have completely up and left, without any documentation being left behind
• done deep code exploration and software archaeology trying to solve bugs and improve this platform which has been launched
• design and reimplement new processes for the (brand new) software dev team
• get situated with everything in the new company

It’s been completely pedal-to-the-metal non-stop and I absolutely love it. However, in such a short time I certainly feel like I’ve been here for a year at least already coding away on everything.

All during this, I’ve endured some online drama with my favourite MMO, and the guild I started with a partner, who’s since gone separate ways – and I’ve been caught up trying to keep it rolling, while also keeping up with some of the latest games and what I’ve been doing in all my other personal projects.

It’s a super interesting challenge to realise that whilst I’ve started prioritising my career and work more so than my gaming adventures and attempts at starting a gaming business (I’ve wrapped up things with eLeague.gg and Multiplayer United is on the back-burner for now), things are overwhelming for anything outside of my day-to-day job.

It feels like a natural progression now that Project: Cloud Citizen is well underway (see my prior blog posts) that I should look into how I manage the rest of my digital adventures. Namely, what I do in Gaming.

To be honest, I have a tendency to lose my place of where I was up to in Games that I play – and I lose interest the more ‘lost’ I feel with games. Probably just old age catching up with me 😛

Nevertheless, to solve that issue, I’ve created The Gaming Adventures Trello Board a kind of to-do list of things to achieve in a variety of games.

The hope is that I get the most of out my gaming – and actually achieve something in the games. There’s zero pressure on any of the outcomes in that Trello board, it’s more a tool to help me remember whatever I was last doing in gaming.

We’ll see over the coming weeks whether or not keeping such a list helps as a valid timeline of what I’m doing in gaming or not.

My last update was quite a while ago…! Coincidentally it’s also about a topic that I think I should write about again, just to see what’s changed since then!

In my time away, I’ve since started stabilising things regarding my personal career as a coder/developer/designer, and really, have started looking for a place online to write and journal my story. Enter this blog!

So, hopefully, you’ll see me updating this thing a bit more regularly, with a few more personal musings than before.