Arrival

We left at about half an hour after midnight from Gatwick, with a bus
full of people attending the film festival and after the expected
grueling trip through the Sahara Desert, we made it safely to the
Saharwi refugee camp in Dajla sweating and dehydrated but otherwise
absolutely fine.

We are staying with Mr Zeini Mohamed, head of a neighbourhood out here
and he and everybody else out here have been incredibly friendly and
helpful. Our room is comfortable against the odds, basic and clean but
Mr Zeini put on a huge and delicious feast for us of chicken and
salads and bread and water and mango juice. And water. And more water.
I think I may be getting obsessed...

This post was done from the only available internet place in the camp
uploaded by email direct to the mailto blogger address for the site.
This is my first connectivity test to see if it´s possible to blog
from the middle of the desert.

I´m using gmail for the job in basic html mode and hitting the save
button at every possible oppotrtunity. The electricity has already cut
out on this opst 3 times and I don´t want to risk it again.

I have a number of cunning blogging solutions up my sleeve, and have
been worknig with the technical guys on the team to find out if it´s
possible to get around the sporadic connection and electical issue by
blogging using google gears. I know that google docs has an offline
mode, so my first cunning plan is to compose in google docs while
offline then when connection erturns IO want to hit the share to blog
and upload. This has a few cool advantages, not least that my work is
then saved locally and in the cloud, then on top of this I can
collaborate with people back at base when editing a blog.

Another clear issue that has arisen is the upload of audio visual
material. I don´t honestly think this connection is up to the job. I
have discussed with the tech guy Oriel and he has mentioned using curl
scripts, whicih I know nothing about, and I am still thinking email
for youtube, but am losing faith in that worknig.

After a little thought I figured we could perhaps try a stopgap
solution of recording audio on the audio recorders and uploading a
corresponding photo until we get back to the ranch, so I´m now testing
that out. Looking in podomatic right now for a possible email upload
method.

Now got my fingers crossed this blog uploads before electricity cu....