Tag: gadgets

April 29, 2012
A couple of years back, I treated myself to a pocket video camera – a Kodak Zi8. I had big plans to do various things with it – including some music videos and perhaps some cooking demos on YouTube.

My first outing was to the Gadget show, where I filmed as much as the SD card would take; subsequently I filmed some other local events, just to get a feel for it.

But I was greatly disappointed, as almost everything I filmed had audio sync problems. I spent a long time online, and discovered this was not an isolated problem. The Zi8 saves to a MOV file, and uses a fairly obscure codec, little used by anyone else. As a result, films worked with the Kodak software, but loading it anywhere else (or exporting it), I found I had syncronisation problems.

I should have really returned it for a refund, but I was hoping to find a solution. In the end, the camera got put away, and my dreams of video editing were forgotten.

Then the other day, I saw that Amazon had the Bloggie 3D camera reduced to 89 quid. Last time I looked at this, it was over 200 pounds. So even though I have bought too many toys lately, I decided I had to have one.

April 11, 2012
February 24, 2012
[Note: thankfully this issue has now been resolved]

After it got dark, I was able to do the final test, and the answer is a minor *sigh*.

I really don’t know what it is about equipment manufacturers and backlit keys and displays, especially for machines meant for the bedroom. Am I the only one who thinks the bedroom should be relatively dark?

February 24, 2012
February 6, 2012
I have a Casio AP60R electric piano. It isn’t the best electric piano in the world (although it ain’t bad), and it is getting on a bit, but I like it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was moving a heavy object, and it slipped out of my hand, down onto the keyboard. Thankfully, only one key was broken, but it was pretty thoroughly smashed.

October 20, 2011
A while ago, I posted that I had bodged together a pair of prescription passive 3D specs. They worked well, until I decided I could improve on the taping of the lenses, and managed to completely mess one of them up.

Meanwhile I discovered these on eBay. They are framed, and therefore not flimsey like other clipons, they are fairly flat and not curved, which means they fit well to most prescription frames (at least those I have tried). And they are only 4 quid, including postage.

October 1, 2011
A couple of days ago, I mentioned that the shelving unit I had prevously bought to stand my (original 2D) TV on turned out to be too high for my new 3D TV. This is because the tv stand provided with it pivots from side to side, but has no tilt; and viewing the TV from below spoils the 3D effect, with significant crosstalk. However, viewing it from the “sweet spot” gave a perfect picture – unfortunately, my sofa isn’t that high!

I was contemplating wall-mounting it with a tilt bracket, but today I decided to move some furniture about. This was not a decision lightly made, as I had only just got all my audio-visual separates set up.

September 30, 2011
Tonight, I am playing with a new toy, the ProQ Eco Smoker.

This is cold smoking, not hot. The small mazelike device (the ProQ Cold Smoke Generator) is filled with wood dust (“today, I will be mostly using oak”) and set to smoulder with a small tea-light, which is removed once the dust catches. After that, it will produce smoke without heat for up to 10 hours.

September 29, 2011
Lots of stuff happening here, but I haven’t been finding the time to write about it.

I have a visitor staying with me – Sovay is a collie belonging to and , who are off for a few days. It has been pretty painless, apart from her thinking that my trying to get her to bed last night was actually a really fun run-around-the-room game. Am blatently using her as an excuse to get out more regularly for walks.

July 7, 2011
I haven’t done that much on my Barbduino BBQ Controller project for about a month. No good reason, other than simply doing other stuff.

After hesitating over how the device is going to connect to the outside world, I decided to abandon the idea of a WiFi shield, and bought a standard Ethernet Shield instead. The reasons for this were various.

June 4, 2011
Earlier, I posted about my plans to build a digital controller for my Traeger pellet grill using the Arduino open source microcontroller board.

I’m new to the Arduino (although not to programming), so my first step was to buy a simple Arduino experimenter’s kit and do some general non-BBQ projects, to familiarise myself with the kit and its capabilities. This is still ongoing. I made a point only to buy the Arduino kit, and not the add-ons I might later require, such as the WiFi and LCD Screen options – doing so means I will learn to walk before I run, and limits my spend, in case the project doesn’t fly.

May 21, 2011
About the same time that I bought my Kindle, I noticed the Wii Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock full band kit was being sold by Amazon for a ridulously low price of 60 quid. I ordered a copy, on the principle that even if I decided I didn’t want it, I would easily sell it on at a profit.

I did open it up, to check everything was there, but then it sat in its box for over a month, because I was too busy to do anything with it.