I’ve tried this on a couple of photo trips and most recently in Iceland – a power inverter. This little gadget will take the DC power supply from a car cigarette lighter and convert it to AC for charging your various portabe devices and batteries. Much easier than having to buy separate ones from each gadget company you can just use the inverter to charge everything with their standard chargers. I’m all for reducing the number of pieces of wire and charging device that I have to keep track of and using this makes things a little easier when you have anumber of different devices with you. I charged my Mac powerbook, Nikon batteries and AA NiMHi batteries using it with no problems. Works best with the engine running, so you can charge while driving from place to place. The model I have is pretty lightweight and was easy to pack for my Iceland trip. You can find them all over the web or at electronics shop, they are inexpensive and work, as far as I can tell, around the world in any car out there.

Recently returned from a trip to Iceland for my brother’s wedding. While there we had the opportunity to travel around the country a little and see some of the sites. The country is really amazing with stark vistas, gigantic icecaps, geysirs, waterfals and volcanoes. Perhaps the easiest way to see the land is to rent a car and travel highway 1 around the entire island. From Reykjavik it takes a week to travel the entire road, but if you have longer then you’ll have time to spend at some of the major sites. Some of the main attractions are the geyser at Strokkur, the waterfalls of Gullfoss and Dettifoss, the icecap Vatnajokull, the floating icebergs of Jokulsarlon, the West and East fjords, Lake Myvatn and surrounding area, and the towns of Akureyi, Husavik. There is more than I could describe in a short post here, but I will add some photos later.

I have posted some images on the my main website under an Iceland Gallery and on my Flickr site.

OK, I don’t go to the movies much and I am not a fan who has to see every movie that gets nominated for an Academy Award so I was amazed that a movie like Babel could get nominated for any Academy Awards, let alone seven (are you folks nuts?). On top of dragging myself through 40 minutes of Borat, another movie that I had seen a fair amount of press about, just a week, before I can only say that we are being short changed by the movie industry.

Borat – my wife gave up after 15 minutes – was just poor quality and lame, with ethnic and gender jokes that simply were not that funny, especially with no decent plot to space them out. I had managed to get the faint memory of it out of my skull by last night and settled down for Babel with the “Brad”.

Babel had a concept that makes sense, seems cool and could really be interesting. How one action in one place could have ripple effects across the great six-degrees of separation Universe; thus, having made a friendly or peaceful gesture in the wilds of Morocco, we see how a Japanese man’s life intersects with people in So. Cal. and the unknowing vectors in between conspire to turn an attempt at friendship into a disaster for someone in another culture and place.

Sadly, really, you find me shouting at the screen “get on the freakin’ bus or let it go”. Why, please someone, why did Brad care if the bus left. His girl couldn’t leave on the bus we were confidently told, so we get scenes of the bus passengers waiting, for what? why? Brad wants to have an ambulance so why does he need the bus around. Let it go! Then we have the idiot nephew of the illegal nanny of Brad’s kids, a wedding, and subsequent deportation from the US. Of course the vectors in the middle who cause the actions are not to be forgotten. Shooting an AK47 at random objects seems idiotic, especially a tourist bus. Then at the police – never a good idea.

All in all, crap.

I had to hope things could get better for the story but no. It just went south. Inspite of the Japanese youth scenes (and skin moments), the Moroccan youth scenes, the Mexican wedding scenes and the Brad anguish scenes.

I say avoid this movie. Seven oscar nominations, what does that say about the horrendous state of the movie industry?

Bring on Die Hard, at least I have no expectations and know what I’ll get!

For more see the Rotten Tomatoes review