Up the River With Heat, Humidity and Computers

I’m in Peru’s Amazon River basin this week covering the Jason Project, which encourages middle and high school students to study the ecosystem of the river and the rain forest. I’m doing daily Web updates from here (https://www.ajkids.com/jason) so, to get the job done, my photographer and I are relying on the PCs and digital cameras we brought from the States.

Until two weeks ago, the area was 100 miles from the nearest electrical outlet or telephone, but the Jason Foundation brought in generators and satellite dishes for voice, data and broadcast transmissions. Still, this is a pretty rough area for computers, thanks to extreme heat and humidity and, when away from the base camp, many hours without electricity.

Knowing that conditions would be tough, I took some extra precautions. In addition to my Gateway Solo notebook computer, I made a last-minute decision to bring a Toshiba 3015C ultra-light notebook PC that I had borrowed to review. And not knowing how often I’d be able to recharge the PCs, I also brought along a 2 1/2-pound Hewlett-Packard Jornada 820 Windows CE machine that, unlike standard notebook PCs, can operate for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge.

As I lugged my equipment-laden backpack through four airports, two boat docks and a jungle path, I kept thinking this was overkill. But after a day in the rain forest, I realized the advantages of redundancy.

On the first day here, I used the Gateway in a muggy open-air dining hall and then moved it to an air-conditioned shack so I could connect it to the Internet. I turned it on the moment I got into the comparatively frigid room, and that’s when I learned about the dangers of condensation. I can’t prove that the sudden change in humidity was the culprit, but several engineers I spoke with suspect that’s why the LCD screen on the otherwise reliable Gateway started flickering and going blank. It didn’t start working properly until the final day of the trip, when the condensation had dried.

So I unpacked the Toshiba and treated it like the delicate instrument that notebook PCs can sometimes be. I’m not usually that gentle with equipment, but when a 2.9-pound, 0.8-inch-thick PC is your only link between success and failure, you treat it with a bit more reverence. Whenever possible, I worked in the air-conditioned room, but when I had to use it away from that room, I always waited at least an hour to acclimate it to the humid conditions of the rain forest.

If I ever take a trip like this again (with or without borrowed equipment), I’ll bring along at least one extra battery and an external battery charger, and I’ll spend more time learning how to operate the equipment in the conditions I’m likely to encounter.

The HP Jornada came in handy when I had to work for extended periods away from an electrical outlet. The version of Microsoft Word built into Windows CE devices doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Word 97, but it’s good enough to write articles and the files are compatible. What’s more, the machine’s light weight, small size and instant-on/instant-off feature made it perfect for pulling out of my backpack to take notes. CE machines come with a cable that lets you transfer files to the PC.

Pictures were a big part of the story, so I was accompanied by Patrick Cashmore, a professional photographer with a $15,000 Kodak DCS520 digital camera. As a backup, I also brought two consumer digital cameras--a $699 Kodak DC220 Zoom and a $499 Canon PowerShot A5. Pat took some stunning pictures that we were able to post on the Web site, but he had technical problems the first day and was sick another day, so my little consumer cameras came in handy.

The DC220, with its 2x zoom and ability to audio-record notes about each shot, is a fine camera, but it weighs 1.2 pounds and is considerably bigger than the Canon A5. When it came time to board a boat to a remote village or to hike through the jungle, I usually wound up reaching for the half-pound Canon PowerShot, which is small enough to fit in my pocket.

The pictures, at a resolution of up to 1024 pixels by 768 pixels, are more than adequate for posting to a Web site and pretty good even when printed. There’s something to be said for the bells and whistles of more sophisticated equipment, but there are times when weight, size and simplicity win the day.

Access to the Internet was a lifesaver when Pat discovered--on the first day--that he had a corrupt file on his Apple G3 PowerBook that was essential for downloading pictures he took with his camera. Iquito, which is 100 miles upriver, has only one computer dealer and, as you might expect, it doesn’t carry Mac software for professional digital cameras. So once we figured out which file was corrupt, Pat called his son and talked him through the process of e-mailing the file to my PC. We saved it to a PC floppy.

So along with coping with yellow fever shots, malaria medicine, mosquito repellent and other necessities in the tropics, I’ve now learned a few lessons about keeping equipment working and backed up under not-so-computer-friendly conditions.

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Lawrence J. Magid can be heard at 1:48 p.m. weekdays on KNX 1070. He can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web page is at https://www.larrysworld.com. On AOL, use keyword “LarryMagid.”