Woo, new video post; the night before leaving we packed all our stuff, chose our tools and headed to Zac’s house (closer by time to commute to Waterloo):
Oct 232011
There was a time when we’d take 6kg of tools with us on each trip, and generally suffer the consequences of being barely able to lift our bags in return. As we mentioned last month in a vlog, we decided that we’d up the ante a little and remove some of the safety nets that we’d been taking with us; namely the Toughbook and most of the tools. We thought long and hard about exactly how we’d put a restriction in place that would be balanced depending on how long the trip was while still maintaining a level of difficulty due to the restriction. What we came up with was this:
So our formula for calculating max points (if you didn’t watch the video), is:
Oct 062011
As seems to be the way we do things around here, at T-1.5 days from leaving for the trip, we finally sat down to do planning, buy maps, and figure out how we wanted to shape OneLastTrip. This somehow included calculus… we decided that we’d enact the points system for this trip, and as I was editing this video, the answer to the equation popped into my head; we’ll blog about that later. Check out the nuclear powered turtle video from a few years back too.
We leave Friday at 9:25, so expect only tweets from that point onward at http://www.twitter.com/onelasttrip.
Sep 292011
We’ve been vlogging again, as you can see, and have another trip planned for the 7th-10th October starting in Bournemouth. We need ideas though, a goal for the trip, as opposed to just driving a route; we’ve done lots of research but haven’t yet found anything that would be super awesome, so if you’ve got ideas, then let us know…
Sep 242011
We’ve come to the realization that we’re in desperate need of a pair of creative hands to help us with the planning and execution of what we do… Here’s the text from our gumtree ad:
Are you willing to do things that most people would think extreme or stupid? Creative too? If so, you’d probably fit in well with us.
We buy cars for less than 150 pounds and take them on long road trips with a high probability that they’ll break down and strand us on the top of some mountain or other while filming the results. Our last trip was 4000km around Europe, starting and ending in London, in a 1995 Honda Civic. It didn’t break down, unfortunately.
What we’re looking for is someone to help us out with the planning and editing of trips, and, generally, some fresh creative ideas to bring to the table to increase the viewership of our videos. We’re good mechanics, drivers and navigators, but, we suck at coming up with creative ideas.
We’re titling this as a production assistant, beginning with a few hours here and there while we’re in London, and eventually joining us on the trips themselves to film/produce/direct and generally help keep the quality of content high.
We’re not a business, and don’t make any money doing this, so it’s an unpaid gig. However, it is something that you could put on your résumé and have tangible evidence for… and hopefully have a lot of fun doing. I guess ideally we’re looking for a film school student.
You need to be in London, as we tend to do all of our planning over coffees at cafe nero, but aside from that there’s no real barrier to entry.
Drop us a line if you’re interested!
Do you know of someone who’d enjoy taking part in our project? Is that person you? If so, get in touch. The next trip is taking place on the 7th of October, so we’d ideally like to have someone on board by then… We can promise lots of coffee and delicious cake!
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We’re also looking for someone who’d like to join us on the next trip as a passenger and partner in crime; you’ll need to have the 7th-10th October free, be able to get to Manchester on your own, have a tent and a sleeping bag, and not mind the possibility of horribly adverse weather conditions; if that’s you get in touch :D.
Sep 222011
We’re changing the game a little to make things more interesting, and we’re also in the market for a volunteer production assistant to help us with planning and ideas and possibly video editing, maybe even going on the trips with us too, know someone who might be interested, or think you’re that person, then drop us a line. We plan on releasing a lot more of our content as primarily video now that we’ve got the technology to do so too, so subscribe to our YouTube as not everything is guaranteed to be posted here.
Sep 212011
So, one aspect of Azemute and I’s off-time is the playing of games, which is unsurprising really when you consider that is how we met (through EVE Online). Creating the podcast last week sort-of naturally fed into the idea of doing some gaming let’s play videos and putting them up on YouTube. We got together a few of our mutual friends, and sat down to play Minecraft… if you haven’t yet heard of it, and you like playing games, it’s the type of game that will steal your soul and all of your free time.
So, if you like let’s play style videos, check out our newest YouTube channel: gEARWiT
No need to worry though, if gaming isn’t your thing, entries posted to the gEARWiT category won’t be showing up on the front page… however, if you *do* want to see them, either subscribe to the category rss, or view it directly.
Yep, it's as awesome as it looks.
In other news, our new video camera arrived today, which we were able to buy due to the last car selling at a good price; we’re going to go test it out later, and maybe get some stuff uploaded. Either way, our future videos (and weight of our bags) should be much better now that we’ve got this new toy.
Sep 132011
With another trip rapidly approaching, and this one absolutely guaranteed to have some craziness in it (we’re planning on off-roading a 2wd car…), we decided we’d better figure out some recording equipment better than just our iPhones, and something that we could easily record a lot of high quality footage with that would in turn encourage us to keep the camera rolling where otherwise the iPhone would have just gone into the pocket and missed out on a lot of things. This was spurred on by the fact that I recently upgraded the software on mine, and no-longer have a jailbreak installed. We have some serious issues transferring video off our iPhones on the toughbook without using iFunBox (some software that allows filesystem access), and so we’re now in the situation where we have no way of recording video during the trips.
We spent a lot of time going back and forth on which camcorder would be best, and even went and had a look at some in a local Currys, but really, until you put in an SD card and hit record, you have no idea how it will turn out based solely off that little LCD screen, and certainly for us with an investment so large we tend to do a lot of research first. So, this morning, the idea suddenly occurred to me to walk into Currys, buy one of their SD cards, and then walk across to the other side of the shop and try out a few different camcorders that we had contemplated.
There were many “Full HD” models, with lots of different price levels, so we grabbed some test footage from the following:
- JVC Everio GZ-HM301BEK @£179.99
- Panasonic HDC-SD41 @£199.99
- Canon Legria HF R205 @£229.99
- Panasonic HDC-SD90 @£429.99
As soon as I was home, I set about putting the footage together into a workable comparison video that we could throw up on YouTube, both to help others who are in the same position as us, and so that Azemute could take a look:
It immediately became clear which one is best (the Panasonic HDC-SD90), and in side-by-side comparison, the others look downright amateur in terms of quality, but then at almost double the price of the Canon, one does tend to expect a slightly better offering; the SD90 also has the added bonus of a hot-shoe for either spot-lamps or microphones, and a separate mic-in port which would allow us to use radio mics in the future. It’s truly a magnificent example of what a high-end consumer/low-end prosumer hybrid should be.
So now, we have to figure out exactly how we’re going to afford to pay for an SD90 and the upcoming trip, but hopefully it’ll be worth it in terms of the quality level of the videos we’re able to put out (yes, we’re fully aware of how bad the iPhone video is). The donate button is over on the right if you feel like helping us, and we’ll happily put you on the Sponsors page too ;-)!
Driving to France appears, on the surface, to be the simplest thing in the world; certainly not something that one would associate great deals of stress with, especially when you’re leaving 6 hours in advance of your crossing time on a journey that google has predicted will take a little under 2 hours.
As is the way with most finely tuned plans beginning with the statement “we’ll get there around 4pm”, it began to fall apart shortly after 3pm. Of course, we were blissfully unaware at that point that it was indeed 3pm – the time we had planned to leave the office and jump onto the nearest mode of tubular transport to our destination. It wasn’t until 3:20 that Azemute looked at his iPhone and pointed out to me – busy cutting up business cards for the trip – that we ought to perhaps leave now, if we ever intended to actually start the drive at a reasonable time. Our practise run the previous day to pay for the car and do the relevant paperwork had let us know that in the very best case, it would take 1 hour to get from our offices in central London to the tube station in the north of London nearest to the car.
Reacting in my usual casual way, I called a taxi, which arrived about 10 minutes later and whisked us through a variety of different side roads that I hadn’t travelled for a number of years to our destination in under 40 minutes. Not bad, not bad at all – we were back on schedule.
So, we have settled on our general route, and it comes to a startling 2315 miles (or 3725km). Interestingly, even with all this distance to cover, we have plenty of time in our itinerary to see things; such is the beauty of doing this over almost 8 whole days. Right now, I’m working on importing the gmap rendition into our laptop mapping system so that we can print off an A3 sheet with the complete routing on it, and so that we have a fallback in digital form should the routier atlas not cover the sections of road we need. In all, we’re much more ready for this trip now.
Below, you’ll see our rough routing. Point A is where we’re collecting the car from on Thursday, before catching the 22:00 ferry from Dover to Dunkerque. From here, we’ll drive down to point D, and then stop at a 24 hour services for a rest until the sun rises; after that, day 2 is a 7 hour journey directly South, taking in the Millau bridge before ending up at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where we’ll set up camp for the night and relax. Day 3 consists of eating somewhere at point F, then going to a vineyard at point G before heading East past Monaco to find somewhere to camp at point H. After we’ve pitched our tent and night has fallen, we’ll drive the Alpine road down to Monaco (if you ever drive to Monaco, approach it from the East, it’s more spectacular that way).
Day 4 consists of us taking on 3 of the stages of the Monte Carlo rally:
- Sospel – Moulinet
- Moulinet – Col du Turini
- Col du Turini - La Bollène Vésubie
Google says each section will take between 15-18 minutes, which is the perfect length for YouTube! With those out-of-the-way, and hopefully the car still running and us still alive, we’ll head North through the Alps and Parc National du Mercantour. The going will likely be slow, as these are all single or double-track Alpine roads, with lots of twisty hairpins, and while I intend to get full enjoyment out of the driving of them, we’ll be stopping regularly to take photographs of the breath-taking scenery that surrounds us. Once we’re a little further North, and lost somewhere within the Parc National des Écrins, we’ll find a place to Camp on the night of Day 4.
Day 5 will find us continuing North and East through Tunnel Fréjus into the very bowels of Italian hell. We’ll then push North on the mountain roads, and attempt to recreate the opening of The Italian Job on the SS27 as we head for Switzerland, and we’ll make camp somewhere on the edge of Lac Léman.
Days 6, 7 and 8 will find us pushing further North through the border of Germany, through Luxembourg and eventually to our last stop at Brugge, before catching our return sailing to Dover.
The itinerary isn’t fixed however, and with this much time, we’re intending fully to allow the scenery and surroundings to change our pace as necessary – this will not be the complete blitz that Wales was.
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