Don't Forget Your Digital Lifelines: A Traveler's Guide to Tech Accessories

Travelling with multiple devices means juggling way more than just your laptop and phone. Between my smartphone, Garmin watch, camera, and laptop, I've learned the hard way that forgetting the right cable or connector can add unnecessary stress to your trip.

The real challenge isn't the obvious stuff like chargers - it's all those little connectors and adapters that keep everything talking to each other. I've streamlined my setup into three essential kits that pack flat and won't eat up precious backpack space.

First up is my "USB Octopus" - a clever bundle of standard cables wrapped together with spiral cable wrap that folds into a neat circle. It handles all my older devices that still need dedicated connectors.

Next, I keep the modern adapters in a homemade green cloth wallet (thanks to my wife's sewing skills!) with sewn pockets and velcro closure. This holds my USB-C to HDMI adapter, USB-C hub, and other current-generation connectors. Don't forget an SD card reader if you're shooting photos!

Finally, there's my trusty external hard drive - an old 1TB unit that serves double duty as backup storage and entertainment centre. It keeps my work and photos safe while carrying a few movies and music for downtime.

The key is thinking beyond just power - you need connectivity, storage, and backup solutions all working together. Once you've got your system down, travelling with tech becomes much less stressful.

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4 (AI)

What's in my Camera Bag Now?

It’s been a while since  I posted what’s in my “travel” camera bag. It's got a lot smaller. Back in the day before I retired and was travelling internationally too much My camera gear took up most of my backpack as well an extra camera bag or two. There was quite a lot to carry around and I still often forgot extra batteries or specific cables or card readers. Things changed a lot and I probably have purchased too many different camera bags (and more than one backpack). Such is life.

A Think Thank Mirrorless Mover bag and my little mirrorless OMD10 opened my eyes to the lighter and happier world of smaller kit. 

Over time yet a smaller lowpro shoulder bag and another Olympus has joined my gear. Now everything is in one bag, available at any time, its easy to pick up the bag and I’m off. It currently houses two small Olympus bodies, new OMD5 & original OMD10, 4 lenses, extra batteries, memory cards and other paraphernalia. I have everything I need.  

The small travel tripod (it's very light and fits nicely in my suitcase case and some of the ancillary gear, like a wireless WIFI modem, battery charger and extra USB cables travel in my luggage. When away for extended periods I also pack an external USB harddrive for backup and my old HP Spectre laptop (not shown in the photos). 

The phone, which does sport a decent camera, travellers in my pocket.

Day 7 :: Getting ready for the next Endless Summer Project

Repacking my camera bag in preparation for my next trip. Rather than pack on the last day I repack a couple of weeks out so I have time to realise if I am missing something important. During my year long art project travels I have been progressively trimming down the stuff I carry around.

My revised camera bag packing list has, starting at the top right and moving clockwise.

1. My Pentax K20 (my favourite camera, with my favourite lens a Tamron 18 to 200mml zoom Note this camera now has a wrist strap, rather than cumbersome neck strap.
2. In the side pocket of the camera bag I have cables, spare batteries etc in a zip up mesh bag.
3. My Sigma 70-300 Zoom Lens
4. A couple of white "Face washers" (to clean the cameras not the lenses)
5. Blower Brush
6. Lens pen (microfiber cleaner and brush)
7. Business cards & pen
8. My home made string monopod
9. My ThinkTank Mirrorless Mover 30i Camera Bag. Although it is designed to carry a mirrorless camera system & Ipad mini I find to perfect for my gear in a relatively small shoulder bag. I also a small kit of sketching gear in the Ipad slot (not shown here but includes an A5 sketch book, couple of pencils & pens, waterbrush & small Cotman's watercolour Sketchers Box)
10. Sealed packets of alcohol lens wipes (I haven't used these for a while prefer the lens pen)
11. Spare SD cards (I'm taking 4 16GB cards & 6 8GB cards of my next trip, 20 days)
12. An old Smartphone (with no SIMS card, but the camera and GPS still work fine)
13. A polarizing filter
14. Tone Reference cards

Travelling lighter

I’m preparing for a trip to Canada and will be away for a just over a month on the road. This time I”m travelling a lot lighter than the almost 12kgs of laptop, charges and related computer gear I took to Norfolk Island. Believe it or not the photo shows my full compliment of HP spectre and miscellanies bit, and they have a combined weight just a fraction over 2kg. Importantly it is not as if I’m missing anything. I have my photo software mistresses (Picasa, Ligthroom, Aftershot Pro and OnOne Phot 10.5 and now Nik Software add ins and Polarr) all installed. I’ve cleared off the 256GB ssd drive to 191 GB free (hopefully more than plenty of a month of photos). The customized cloth travel wallets were made by my wife and are padded. They keep everything wonderfully tidy when travelling.

 

I also have two backup drives. The one in the orange wallet will be updated daily and live in my camera bag so it will always be with me. The one in the denim will be updated as I move from one location to the next and at least weekly. It will be stored in my checked luggage when travelling .

 

I also have a couple of highly desirable accessories. The Pen of course (it came with the computer), and a Blue Tooth Mouse. Unfortunately most photo software is not touch screen friendly and you really require a mouse and to a lesser extent a tablet like a wacom(pen performs these tasks). The big advantage of the blue tooth mouse (over a WiFi/USB mouse) is it doesn’t use up a USB C port (and thus require yet another adaptor) and has a better range. While on the USB C subject it is a fast interface and it can connect many sorts of devises,  it is the way of the future. However very few devices today come with the USB C connector so you must get an adaptor cable, more precisely cables. I have three. The white one is a simple USB C to USD A style (Ie conventional USB style But works with USB 1 USB 2 & USB 3 connections). The black connector is from USB C to HDMI, which lets me connect to a wide variety of screens and data projectors. I can also use a Big Screen TV as an extension Monitor. The small black rectangular block folds out to a USB HUB, connecting two further USB C and two USB A devices. I also have a chrome cast dongle (but now would prefer to use a direct HDMI cable).

 

Note I have two card readers with my computer stuff and another in my cameras bag, because  I’ve had a couple fail and they are not expensive (but remember to buy the fast ones).

Free WiFi is great ….but slow …& other self inflicted woes

I’m sitting at Brisbane airport waiting for a delayed flight, and I thought it would be a great time to upload my best three photos from today. Ok there is free WiFi and it was simple enough to get connected BUT as I  was trying to upload to flickr via the web interface, I came to realise that after 10 minutes I had uploaded less than 10% of the files (an estimate looking at the progress bar). There is a good chance that the whole thing will abort because the three files won’t upload before my flight is ready to load. Do I abort and try individually? … or some other anxiety inducing worry. No the first rule of travel is go with the flow. The free WiFi is slow, so I’ll just wait and see what happens. Nothing is really being lost if I wait till I get home.
So the answer to that wait, is the flickr upload ground to a halt. Time to stop worrying and perhaps have a coffee.  Damn the flight is delayed further. Perhaps I’ll restart. …slowly slowly two of the three images get loaded over the next half hour wait. Now the incoming flight has arrived and passengers disembarking. The public service announcement indicates there is a problem and some passengers have to embark via the rear door and that means going out on the tarmac. It’s sure to be me, no big deal so I go to check my boarding pass on my phone (I’m just trying this for the first time).
Bugger the flight has closed off (and theoretically departed) so my boarding pass is no longer valid, and all I can see on my screen is I no longer have a boarding pass. So I join the queue of people with the same problem infront of a very stressed ground staff at the gate. After talking on her radio for a while, she says we’ll have to go to service desk. So the queue moves over there and eventually I get a printed boarding pass. The plane still is waiting to load and a massive queue is waiting to board but still to board via the air bridge and when the boarding actually starts only myself and two other guys walk over to the stairs to the tarmac, our boarding pass is checked and we stroll to the back of the plane. climb the portable stairs and get seated, everyone else is slowly getting through the air bridge crush and the the narrow corridor between the seats and other passengers arranging the luggage, it take a further 20 minutes to load everyone. Why weren’t they listening to all the announcements? Ah that’s right they where listen to their iPods, or watching video of their iPads or just talking on their phones, and probably their frequent flyer apps didn’t notify them because notify is turned off!

The morale of this story is perhaps we expect the always connected and on-line world to be there, work and look after our interests. However we shouldn’t stress when they don’t, just be prepared to go back to the old methods that work (ie Perhaps just wait to get home to upload, use a printed boarding pass, listen to the announcement)

PS: I was writing this as the events unfolded and I was able to update a draft of the text to blogger via my Open Live writer app, but it got hung up trying to upload the images I had capture on my phone & PC to Google Photos (low bandwidth issues same as flickr uploads mentioned above). So I had to be patient uploading this blog post as well.

Back Home & What did I learn?

Yesterday, getting home, took over 6 hours driving. It made me realise that there were many potential photo opportunities that I just flashed past. I’m sure if I’d stopped (and had time) I might have found many more. I realised photography is a pedestrian activity.

The second realization (not a new one) was that whilst there are lookouts at scenic spots, the lookout rail is likely to be crowded and the view more a snapshot than a landscape, probably already reproduced in the post cards at the nearby shops. Even more distressing is the number of people with selfie sticks taking photos of themselves blocking the view.Many of the more scenic places have narrow winding roads and it is not possible to safely pullover. Yet many of these locations also have wonderful bike or walking trails. So you need to turn off the vehicle direction, get out of you car and use the walking or bike directions on your gps. Better still get a detailed local map, We are lucky, in Australia, to have staffed tourist information centres in most towns. Their local knowledge can help you find those magic places.

The moral, get out and walk (and allow time to do it)

Size matters

My HP spectre has a 256 GB SSD drive, which seemed ample for me when I bough it. Roughly 50 GB for operating system and software and around 200 GB for photos. Well that was the theory!
In practise after a week on the road I only have only 64 GB free, but my picture folders (and subdirectories) is only a little 104 GB so what has happened to the space. The culprit is mainly windows 10 update between Windows.old, $windows.~bt & SYSTEM.SAV account for 25 GB. I don’t want to deleted these just now in case I have to recover the install version.
There is still another 50 GB that’s hard to fully account for, Windows itself is Approx 16 GB and my software, mainly photo packages, is just under 10 GB, which only explain around half of this.My original theory was I would use the system for a week or so in earnest before I set up all the system recovery files so I knew I had a viable system to rely on. I just don’t have much confidence in Windows 10 & Microsoft.

Panorama Overload

The wide vista here in the Blue mountains are much wider than my widest lens (18mm on crop sensor). Which has never been a serious problem as I just take an overlapping photos and then stitch them later.
This is all well and good until you spend most of the day taking overlapping Images. Then you automatically have a lot of homework and after a decent day working tracks and climbing stairs, its not surprising I fell asleep a few times waiting for the big stitches to be finished, The one below is made from 22 images (hand held) and generated a massive 16,040 By 7,381 pixelsThis is not the only issue if you have a long stream of similar photos on your film strip or thumbnail grid. It might be difficult to find the start and finish of any series. A neat way to figure out where sequences begin and end is to use photographic punctuation, take a picture of your hand (with fingers out – “take five”) or some close up such as rock texture or flower. These are easy to pick up and it is easier to isolate a set of photos to be stitched. Another organizational assistance can be gained by using the colour patches to help identity those photos that are part of a sequence versus single images. I use Green to flag potential overlapping images (to be stitched in a panorama) and Yellow to flag bracketed sets which I may late choose to process via HDR. I used to always put images to be stitched in a separate lightroom collection, but with lightroom used less and problems transferring collections I have switched over to using the metadata tag ~AS (for Autostitch).A final tool to help keep your photostream (film strip or thumbnail grid) neat is to use stacking. This is a feature that lets group together similar images and just show one typical image (the analogy is you have collapsed the photos into a stack of images one top of the another. Stacking has wider application to avoid clutter in your photos but is an ideal way to group images to be stitched and just display one photo. You can click on the top of the stack to expand it into the included photos. At the moment I only know of Lightroom and AfterShot Pro offering stacking. Lightroom can even be set up to automatically to stack photos that are taken less than a certain time apart

Finding a Vista

Being in the Blue Mountains with good weather, school holidays and perhaps just the normal day tourist flow means there are seldom any car parks at key lookouts and probably no standing room at the rail anyway. The spectacular views however don’t just occur at the tourist traps, They are everywhere.To get “private viewing place” is however a challenge because trees and perhaps other hills usually obscure the vista, yet there are many tracks around the cliffs and the occasional a rock ledge opens up with a breath taking view. 
However no matter which track you take there will be steps, lots of steps.

Getting into a routine

Photography and Travelling with the new Silver Spectre (HP Spectre x2) has been wonderfully liberating.

Firstly it has speed up the loading of photos off two cameras (via SD cards) and occasionally from my phone. The Spectre only comes with a mirco SD card reader (and the draw for it is jammed anyway) and as I didn’t want to fork out for new Micro SDs and adaptors I instead just bought a single.USB C to USB A connector. Today I loaded 400 image's onto the spetrce from two cards in less than 2 minutes (I still use picasa rather than lightroom). Then I import them from the SSD disk into lightroom (less than 3 minutes for todays 390 photos and 10 videos) which is now lightening fast. Only a few snips into my coffee and already everything is loaded.

Second I have a toshiba USN external backpack style drive. It has a USB 3 connector but an older style USB A plug. So off with the card reader and in with the external drive. A bit of file explorer navigation and I can backup all todays images and videos (only another minute) and plenty of coffee left.

Next is when I scan through the images and cull the bad, ugly and unfortunate ones (only a dozen today). This is an area I have refined yet. Because waiting for lightroom on the laptop was so tediously slow I had got used to just using Aftershot Pro, which is also lightening fast. I can also use picasa and OnOne in browser mode, which is perhaps becoming my favourite. Mainly because I can flick across to lightroom and back painlessly.

The biggest advantage here is I can do all this where ever I like, such as out on a deck watching the sunset (providing ambient light on the screen isn’t too stong). The battery life on the spectre seems to be a couple of days even with a fair bit of post processing at night.

Travelling back in time

I’m doing a trip from Melbourne to The Blue Mountains but travelling by some of the back roads, places I haven’t been before and the only map I have is an old version (1964) of The Reader Digest Complete Atlas of Australia.The two relevant pages do have maps that do have most of the significant roads as they were back in the 1960 but none of the fancy new freeways and no highway names. Still I just wanted to get to a few key towns and it wasn’t hard (just sometimes confusing as to the most direct route) and with the occasional directions as I got petrol or a coffee. Anyway the trip was a delight and I didn’t get lost. AND I didn’t have to resort to the GPS in my phone. Some of the places I passed through looking as if they haven’t changed at all since the 60s (or even before). However many of the inland large towns looked quiet prosperous and up to date, then just down the road you were going back 50 years again.

Traveling companions

It didn’t take long to collect some extra things to take along with the new computer when I’m on the road again (that’s tomorrow). The most import items are the USB adaptor (the HP spectre only had USB C sockets and my card readers which are the older USB A (I have more than one because they are prone to damage and being lost). Once I had the adaptor to the conventional USB I figured a backpack style USB harddrive (for backups on the road) and a mouse (easy of use in full screen mode) may as well tag along. The mobile Wifi is to give me web access when there are no local WiFi hot stops. the phone can also acts as a local hotspot at a pinch but it is here as an extra camera.

The full kit and chargers is just over 2kg (that’s light).

I do love the spectre x2 hardware & performance

I trust I’m not giving the impression that I’m  a cranky old man. I’m just a frustrated one. I do love the HP Spectre its got a decent enough size to do “proper” photo post processing. Further the software I have Installed has worked without problem (just registration of aftershot pro has not worked yet). Lightroom in particular is blazing faster than on anything I’ve used before (probably because of the SSD drive). Even importing over 200 photos in both raw and jpeg took well under a minute (no time to go and make a coffee and stop and chat anymore). It is also really responsive in the library module as well. Maybe I’ll get better acquainted again. Picasa, OnOne, NIC software add-ins and are all more responsive than on my desktop or laptop. Aftershot Pro 2 is on steroids its so fast to load photos and scroll etc,

A downside I had not considered is the realisation that these are not touch screen aware, and have to be run full screen, when in tablet mode, without the advantage of touch screen controls, but that is where the pen comes in perfect. I’m used to using wacom tablets so the pen control is familiar to me. However if you are used to a mouse only, it might be a struggle (for the first few days, or maybe a week or so) It wasn’t long before I found a spare USB mouse for convenience, but I do use the pen mostly for photo editing.The screen is perfect for me it is more vivid and a little stronger (when set to a higher brightness +75%) for old eyes, even though it has lower resolution than the surface or a retina screen I couldn’t possible discern that extra resolution and there are plenty of tools to zoom in anyway. As with other IPS screen it is hard to read outside in strong direct daylight. Finding a little shade and having brightness at 100% works fine for me.

 

The Aftermath

Whilst the art and camera gear I took travelling was fine. I didn’t use everything but what I had was certainly adequate to sketch and get some great photos. The joy stopped with the computer, which I have travelled with a many times before but never had any problems. That is until it was ungraded, in retrospect a bad decision. The problems have spilled over from the trip. On the way hoe the cabin baggage was weight and my backup, which doesn’t seem heavy to be was well over the limit to I had to hand carry the laptop. Not devastating but inconvenient.

The last straw was when I got home the wifi was working but I had to yet again re-licence OnOne and After shot when I went back to me original user account. Now lightroom is stalling.again. Perhaps it is time to take the photographic stuff off the laptop and dedicated it to my consulting work (and leave it in the office). Just leave the serious post processing till I get home and can use my desktop.  Either that or do a cold install back to windows 7, then reload everything (not a task I fancy).

Packing for Travel

 
I’m about to start a period of extended travel and I’m doing a final pack. I intend to take a trimmed down version of my fold out studio, two cameras, a tripod and a laptop. The challenge is to get the “studio” (darker blue travel bag) and supplies (in the light blue folio) and the portable tripod (black tubular bag) into my case. Not a lot of room for clothes! That space also has to house battery & phone charges, wifi modem, spare cables and a chromecast dongle etc. However it all fits and only 16kg all up with clothes and shoes, should be airline friendly. I will be carrying my laptop, USB drive (for ongoing backup) and extra camera body in a backpack and the lenses and first body in my camera bag (collectively another 6kg). So I can easily hand carry everything if necessary. However the proof of wise packing will unfold as I go along. Let’s hope I have all that I want and not too much more.

Creative Spaces :: The Plein-air Sketching Kit

I enjoy painting and sketching outside. Very little of this work gets directly into exhibition pieces but that’s not really my purpose. I find I do remember more and connect with a place more strongly when I have spent a little time sketching.

Over time my “sketching bag” has evolved to include more paints (watercolours and water soluble media) and brushes. If I use pencils they will probably be really soft (eg 4B or 6B) but I have begun to use ink pens more often. I’ve become a real fan of Derwent’s Inktense blocks.  Whilst charcoal is good for the studio, it can’t stand the travel and rough handling so I have found conte is way better.

I currently have two identical smaller re-purposed shoulder carry bags (handout from a tour group) and have them fitted out with similar basics. One is just a little more slimmed down than the other. Things get used up and I make occasional changes of what I consider is essential, particularly the surfaces I am painting/drawing on. Sometime I just have a basic sketch book, other times I might want good quality watercolour paper (ie > 300gsm) I pretty well always have one packed and ready to go. At the moment I have only the one folio to carry better quality media (ie individual watercolour or pastel papers) it also holds a drawing board that can be attached to a camera tripod, (see my tripod easel post), This normally travels with the larger kit which is logical as it has more watercolour paints.

Yes all that stuff does fit in the dark blue bag! Easily!

The Patch :: Revisiting some travel photography

This weeks the patch theme is marketing & travel, which should be made for me (I travel a lot but not often to tourist destinations). However the wet weather and family commitments etc.. keep me firmly in one spot. thinking of the travel immediately drew me to the photo I took in Russell (Bay of island in New Zealand). All I did was rest my camera on the table behind our drinks, non looking through the view finder, pressed the shutter button and camera autofocused, and a glorious photo).

I did try scouting a couple of nearby location but leaden skies aren’t encouragement to travel. So I resorted to reprocessing some recent photos from my recent travels to Saudi Arabia.

I was fortunate to reach Bulgah Rocks at sunset (not a place on the tourist trail) but very much a special place for the Bedouin trade routes. The trees between the rocks mark a place of permanent water. I did take several images and post an autoawesome HDR prepared by google+ at the time. However I felt I at least need to postprocess the photos this week, to be “almost” legitimate for the patch  So I used both lightroom and perfect effects 8. In lightroom I did my fairly standard tonal adjustments and a little noise reduction. Then I did the round trip into Perfect Effects and used the layers to handle the sky and the foreground separately. I also had taken a series of overlapping i9mages of the rocks, which I have stitched with Autostitch into a panorama, but panoramas are not well treated in google+ so its the the post processed sunset is the candidate.

Taming the Tangle

One issue that has bugged me for a long while is the tangle of cables and cords, in my computer and camera bags. Preparing the photo to illustrate my previous blog post highlighted just how many USB cables I depend on, and that doesn't include power transformers and battery chargers! So here are few interim suggestions.

Reducing the number of cables

This is a lot easier said than done. However there are only limited number of styles of USB cables. Instead of carrying three or four that are identical, you should carry only one (or two). Also carry the shortest version when there are multiple cables. When it comes to battery charger and power packs they are probably all different size and not interchangeable, but the power cords to them may be shareable. They are unlikely to all be needed at the same time. Typically in Australia they are either 2 or 3 pins and one cable might connect to several. Between my wife and I we need to carry three different battery charges when travelling but they fortunately they all share the same two pin power connection so I only need to carry one extra short power cable.

Where a device can be charged via a USB connection, you will save having to carry yet another transformer, and either charge it off your computer of carry a small USB charging adaptor.

Some duplication may be desirable. There is nothing worse than not being able to charge your phone or connect your camera because the cable is playing up. I found a great universal USB cable set, which was inexpensive and has several "heads" that fit an longer USB extension cable. I pack this in my luggage rather than take up space in my camera bag. I also carry a second inexpensive USB charging plug here.

Staying tangle free

Having your cable in a scrunched up mess is courting disaster, not to mention a lot of time spent untangling. Whilst there are a number of clever cable windup gadgets around, I have found, from bitter experience, that the smaller spring loaded ones are more likely to damage the cable or make its performance flaky. This is because most data cables now are complex in their inner design with fine web shielding etc, small or tight kinks will cause stretched connections or broken strands. It is the end connectors that at particularly venerable to coming loose or breaking off when cable is tightly bent at the junction.

I find winding the cables as open loops  that suit their natural flexure, thinner cables can be kept in smaller loops. Then storing these in cloth pockets or mesh zip bags (as in my photo) really helps keep things organized as well as avoiding damage.

My comfort 3 step travel dance

I have again been suffering a bit of disobedience from my laptop, refusing to wake up. It has become terminally slow a waking up if it wakes at all. I assume it is a Vista thing. Something I’m not really stressed about, because it means I don’t have to check on email etc. However it does take me outside my comfort zone of taking photos and managing them as I travel. It would seem I have become very confortable with “the Picasa 3 step”, and without my laptop (and thus my version of my Picasa database) that dance is a little difficult.
I must admit I have been a bit skeptical of the elaborate digital photo workflows, generally originating from the USA. I suspect much of their origin lies in the complexity to understand photoshop and apple centric expectations (ie there are way too many mouse clicks man!). If you like those workflows use them but understanding what you want to do and doing that quickly and efficiently is the real aim. Still there is a lot to be said for being so familiar with the flow that it is a habit that lives in you comfort zone and does not feel like a chore.
So here is my comfort zone Picasa 3 steps, when travelling
1 Import into Picasa. This is simplicity itself, I just slide in my SD card and get Picasa running, and then press the import button up at the top of the screen, or as I prefer the short cut keys <Ctrl><m>.
2 Weed & Star, I like to scan through my photos and look at them for the first time on a bigger screen (my laptop is not a “calibrated” screen but I am used to it). I usually star, or use the short cut keys <Ctrl><8>, any really good images as soon as I see them. I also get rid of the “total duds”, the unfocused, overexposed, the accidental photos of my feet, duplicates and the just straight “bad”. The short cut to delete forever is <Ctrl><Del>.There might be one of two marginally blurred or underexposed that I decide to keep but I am learning to more be brutal in the weeding.
I once upon a time used to do my “tagging” at this time but it can be too time consuming and hinders the like/dislike selection process. I also avoid doing a lot of image tweaking (exposure, white balance, colour saturation, red eye, cropping) because this also eats up time and diverts attention away from image selection/ranking and is better done on my larger desktop screen that is calibrated.
A really quick way to see an image full screen is to hover the mouse point over a thumbnail image, then with your other hand press and hold <Ctrl><Alt>. The image will instantly be full screen and releasing the <Ctrl><Alt> keys will restore the normal thumbnail display.
3. Backup to my backpack disc. Sometimes I use the Picasa backup, it can be found under tools on the drop down menus, which has the advantage of Picasa then knowing what and what has not been backed up, but just copying the latest directories, via drag and drop out in windows, works just as well.
Whilst on things Picasa, there is a pleasant surprise for Picasa Web Album users, Google have rejigged its quotas for free accounts, Photos less than 800x600 pixels and videos less than 15 minutes in duration no longer count towards your 1GB quota. As I deliberately keep my blog images small (It makes the blog display faster and also tiny images are a little less desirable for people to steal) I went from about 60% to 28% of my quota without having to do anything.