great day
Today I had to check in with the doc's on my progress thus far on the workout program. Due to schedule conflicts I had go in at lunch and workout. That's not something I usually do but ya know I felt so good the rest of the day I may have to do that more often. I just worry about the time, its hard to do just an hour workout, it never really works out just as an hour, 1.5.. ya I could that.
The doc's and I love my progress so far. Very happy with how its going so far.
After watching an Alton Brown - Good Eats episode on soy products I picked up some Tofu at Trader Joes the other day and dare I say i'm gonna attempt to cook up some tofu this weekend. HA! Crazy dan I tell ya.
The day just gets better and better. After a good dinner with Bob, Lynn, Clint, Traci and Todd I hussled on home to greet the folks. I hadn't seen them in awhile. Need to check in with Ma ya know.
On the way into the neighborhood complex a 6 yr girl playing basket ball with her folks and a friend waves me down in. I stop and she calls out to me "I love your car!". I said the usual thanks and asked if she wanted to sit in it? She just about exploded with happiness. I parked the car and let her romp around in it while I introduced myself to her folks. Tooo funny. Nice kid, nice family, and nice Mini.
I love the Mini. I swear nearly every day I get some little hint at its goodness. From people that pass by to gettin waved down by 6 yr girl. LOL, thats just classic ya know.
Now in other news....
Danger just let the cat outa the bag on the new T-Mobile SideKick II. I will definately upgrade. Why not. In fact I'm shelving the Nokia this week. I never did get into my more robust Nokia camera solution and I blame ATT for that. The have funky policies, what you can do online is not what you can do in their stores. All the hassle of x y and z i'll be happy to leave them. The lastest travel stuff I've been doing made the sidekick a real bonus to have. I love that connectivitiy. I'm pleased to know the new sidekick II has a built in camera with flash and a supposed 60-70hrs stand by time / 4.5 hrs of talk. Thats a big improvement.
Some tasty reviews PC Mag, CNET.
Another product I've been keepin an eye on.
| Archos AV420 Pocket Video Recorder |
I'm always on the hunt for digital video recorders. There is a constant need to rethink how we capture the experience. Flim? DV? Hi8? WebCamera? Still Camera? HD? Lowfi usually works to some degree really. Alot starts from that inital conversation, what do we need to pull to gain acceptable results from this project. What the advantages to this AV420 solution vs say SonyDV cam which is what we do now? Well right off the bat, run time. 20hrs recording vs 90mins ( then ya gotta change the tape on DV ), and believe me that chage the tape thing can often break the mojo of a record session. So its a factor, but then ya lose something, dvd burnable quality. DV tape is more flexibile, you can put it in Avid or one touch dub it to DVD. The AV420 can be an good audio recorder as well. More flexible considering space etc. Would it work with alternate camera rigs? Maybe.
For instance I've been tasked to find/build/discover a camera rig that allows us to:
- record from about 8' feet in the air looking down in an angle at a scene or situation
- control the zoom, views etc
- not change a tape would be better
- semi portable ( ha! )
- easy to use
- flexible power options
Piece of cake! Heh. With DV it would mean basically a nice tripod, probably an LCD monitoring screen, control functionality, but then the tape and the camera mount/dismounting to change the tape really mess me up there. My first question to the folks askin me about this camera rig request is- What's the deliverable?, if its non DVD quality related, I'd seriously ponder an AV420 like solution, its smart and slick - provided i figure out the camera side of it, and I may have to give up zoom control. That's another question I gotta ask. Do ya need zoom? Heh.
I thought about using a FlowPod, I've wanted to buy one of those forever. I really just need to bite the bullet and get one. But it dont think it'd work for this situation.
Now the stealth zoom, I could use that for camera zoom control... ok good gettin closer now. Ok so then we need a ball head on that tripod, something like this or that. I'll have to see if I can get a ball head for the sony tripod we have.
Ok provided we find one, whata we got here... lets see. Bulk wise its a rig no doubt about it, its a DV cam solution that works, ya got the tilt camera support, the dv cams should be light enough, ya got yer stealth zoom action, oh ya add one of those LCD displays as well, gotta have that to see what yer doing. If we could rotate the camera from the base of the stand that'd be a bonus as well.
Power is an issue I gotta address as well. Are we gonna have access to any power outlets in this room? Odds are they are gonna tell me no. Which makes me wanna get closer to figuring out a solution with the AV420 recorder, thing is, we toss out zoom, well theres a slim chance we could get zoom, but we toss out DVD deliverable for sure. But we gain record time, battery life, no change tape hassles and portablility.
I suppose on the DV side of things we could bypass tape and record firewire down to a drive. Firestore. Hmmmmm... 13GIGs per hour of DV storage. 40 GIG firewire drive would give me just over 3hrs recording time. BUT!!! BUT remember dan yer gonna be recording multiple sessions, so think 10hr work day...so big ass drives? Ok so 260GIGs should cover the needs. Again power is probably more of a concern, but we do fix alot of issues with the firestore solution. Not a bad solution pricewise, Froogle tells me $796 bucks but that doesnt include the firewire drive. Least I dont think it does... they seem to have built in drive solutions but i'll need mega storage which again messes up the power question.
Questions questions... well this was a good brainstorm, the only thing left to consider are the questions at hand and the the camera solution for the AV420 route. I'll get into that tomorrow.