SD card Messengers

nospam@example.com (Kamal Hathi) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:35:39 -0700

The other day I asked the Tusker Trail folks if there was a way for family and friends to follow the progress of the climb. Turns out that they have a "webcast" for the climb, but than that is to be expected in this digital age. Except that in this case, the way it works is that runners/messengers take SD cards with pictures down from the mountain to the Tusker office where they get uploaded to a custom site. This manual process of "transferring" the pictures from our cameras to the "webcast" will be done every couple of days. I have this image of messengers rushing down with super secret flash cards from high altitudes on the mountain, guarding the flash cards, making sure that they reach the HQ unharmed.

Talk about a manual process and limited bandwidth ! (Oh, and we supply the SD Cards, and so I will be carrying 10 extra cards with me).

If you are interested the "webcast" site is: http://ftp.tusker.com/webcast_hathi.cfm

So, where exactly is Kilimanjaro ?

nospam@example.com (Kamal Hathi) — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:27:32 -0700

I wasn't too sure about the answer to this question ("So, where exactly is Kilimanjaro ?") and thought I would try and provide a brief overview, if nothing else, for myself.

Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa (hence the "Roof of Africa") at 19,340 feet or 5895 meters. It is located in north-east Tanzania near the east coast of Africa, on the border between Tanzania and Kenya (which is to the north of Tanzania). Another interesting fact is that it is only 205 km south of the equator.

Above is a simple graphic showing its location on a map of Africa, you can also check it out on maps.live.com or for an even more interesting view take look via the Tusker webcam.

Kilimanjaro has its own international airport and in terms of distance from the next really big city it is a 50 minute flight from Nairobi and 240km by road from Nairobi and 446km from Dar Es Salam.

Kilimanjaro Endeavors - Background

SD card Messengers

So, where exactly is Kilimanjaro ?