To be a reporter with an iBook in wartime

Which hardware and software tools and which tricks John Pendygraft, a Florida's journal reporter, used to work with his faithful iBook as a correspondent in Iraq.
by Fabio M. Zambelli
( 28-04-2003)

A couple of weeks ago we published (in Italian) the exploits of a correspondent in Iraq embedded with US Marine corps, who just freed the country from the dictatorial regime.

John Pendygraft, in Iraq for Tampa's St. Petersburg Times, where CentCom, allied central command is, had quite a difficult task in taking pictures and living a war experience hardly to be imagined.

This is the reason why we asked Jack Rowland, St. Petersburg Times technical director, to give us some details about how John Pendygraft was equipped during his stay in Iraq. John has just come back home to be replaced in Iraq by the photographer Kinfay Moroti with the same perfectly working equipment.

As we wrote in the previous article (in Italian) John used an iBook @ 600 full of 640 MB of RAM, a 30 GB hard drive and a dual boot Mac OS 9/Mac OS X.

The iBook was set up as dual boot (Mac OS X and Mac OS 9) but ?was used in OS 9. The journal has not fully made the switch to OS X (training issue) but the iBook had OS X on the drives for emergency booting, soon everybody at the journal will leave Mac OS 9.

John had two cameras with him, a Nikon D1 and a D1h, using Lexar Professional 512 MB Compact Flash card in each camera. This allowed him to shoot all day long without changing cards, thus protecting the inside of the camera from dust and sand (details following) by avoiding card changes during the day.

He used a Lexar FireWire card reader and a Lexar JumpShot USB reader as backup. The FireWire reader malfunctioned during the first week so he used the Jumpshot after that, which is slower but more reliable.

If Compact Flash cards got damaged, John could have used Lexar Image Rescue software. This software only runs in OS X and is used to recover images from corrupt digital cards.

To manage images, reportings and communication protocols the St. Petersburg Times's reporter used following softwares (not all updated to the last available version): Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Camera Bits PhotoMechanic Pro 2.0, FileMaker Pro 4.1, AppleWorks 6, FTupperWare 2.3.1, Transmit 1.7, AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Internet Explorer as browser and web-based Yahoo! Mail account for email.

Essential, to communicate and to send digital stuff to Jack in his Florida's office, was a satellite phone. The satellite phone is a NERA M4 World Communicator ($ 6,600) connected with the UK provider Inmarsat system covering the area with its Inmarsat-3 F2 sat. The connection was made through a USB cable, using the satellite phone as an external serial modem through "old" Mac OS 9's Apple Remote Access software and the "Metricom Wireless 64K ISDN" compatible modem driver.

The NERA World Communicator provided a full 64 Kbps ISDN connection to the Internet, with all Internet services available anywhere a clear line of sight to the sky was available. JPEG photos, approximately 400 KB in size (compressed), were sent in about 60 seconds. The phone costs $ 7 per minute when used in data mode and $ 3 a minute when used for voice calls.

Sending pictures and texts produced by John was made via FTP. Jack, from his editorial office, arranged and edited the images to be published on the journal's web site.

Jack cooperated a lot to get a nice job with John's reportings from Iraq.

A lot of batteries were necessary for John: he carried 2 for iBook, 10 standard and a 30 watt for Nikon cameras and 2 for the NERA satellite phone system.

When John was in the Kuwait camp with HMM 365 Marine Helicopter Squadron in Kuwait, there was a generator providing full electrical current for charging batteries. When away from the camp he was equipped with a Brunton Solaris 25 watt solar panel and Bruton Solo 200 watt power pack, all from ASC Scientific, to charge batteries and power equipment.

He also had a Vector MaxxSST VEC061 ? 350 watt power inverter to hook up to 12 volt systems on military vehicles, it was bought from the nearest market in Tampa.

Another useful accessory to John was the Olympus DS-330 digital audio recorded, used to take vocal notes on the road.

To preserve equipments from negative atmospheric agents, first of all the treacherous and thin dust, often rising even with the lightest wind (just imagine how it could be with the rotor blades), John used Zip-lock bags, gaffer's tape and panty hose to protect the cameras and the laptop. He also used an EWA-Marine U-AV waterproof camera bag for the use in the frequent sandstorms. He taped all switches and entry points on the cameras, and used scotch tape to seal some entry points in the case of the iBook (a rough but a useful way to preserve them).

St. Petersburg Times had no hesitation in choosing a Mac as a reliable computer and the journal owns indeed 14 of these small and very durable laptop to give to their correspondents. They state that iBook is their preferred laptop. About OS, as we wrote before, they told us they're switching to Mac OS X and it's only a matter of time.

For John's reporting the journal had the biggest part of the necessary equipment, they only purchased the satellite system, the solar panel, power converter and an extra iBook battery... plus a gas mask.

They had never considered Windows-based laptops for many reasons. The newspaper and photography industry is dominated by Apple laptop and desktop systems.

It's easier to get help on the road from any other Apple user: Macs are simple to configure and use, and it's easier to train groups of people to use them. Plus "they're just better".

We are pretty sure the most part of our readers will never face expeditions, like John Pendygraft's one, but we think a so clear exp ?lanation of how to work in critical situations, just tells how reliable and trustworthy the Mac systems are. Anyway should anyone be willing to take a vacation in a remote and lovely place, here are some ideas how to be equipped as a "digital nomad".