Thursday
Dec202007
Rain City Roundup
Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 5:54PM
I'm in rainy Vancouver this week working on 15 new episodes of The Lab with Leo - these are the last episodes of 2007 but I'll be back at the end of January for another round.
We've had some great shows so far, including visits from Frank Linhares of Digitalunderground.TV (who proved to me that 9-volt batteries just contain six AA batteries), social media guru, Stowe Boyd, Blogher founder, Elisa Camahort Page, and my old friends Steve Gibson, Alex Lindsay, Mr. Excel, and Ray Maxwell, who gave me yet another reason to spend money.
Ray showed me his Canon HV20 with a wide-angle lens and shotgun-mic (there's a shoe on top), and once again I impulsively ordered an HG10 (the hard drive based version) for the trip to Egypt. The Panasonic SD5 I was planning to bring has two big negatives: you can't really shoot close-up or big objects because even at its widest it's a little telephoto and there are no wide-angle adapters available for it, and there's no external mic jack. The adapter and the mic have arrived, but the camera is backordered and might not make it before we leave for Boston on Monday. Drat.
Getting back to the show, Cali Lewis even did two gadget segments via Skype - I'd prefer to get her here in person but travel budgets are tight and Skype works pretty well. I even got my muscle tension read via remote control using Skype and GoToMeeting.
Tomorrow, Kristin Sanford is going to make oobleck and nitrogen ice cream. I can't wait to find out what oobleck is.
Meanwhile I'm stuck in the hotel room with a bunch of spreadsheets trying to work out the TWiT payroll before the end of the tax year and wishing I could take some time to add dropdown menus to my blog. I've got the Son of Suckerfish code and Steve Gibson's all-CSS variant, but I really should be doing the books. Ah screw it, why think about money when you can hack code?
Ray showed me his Canon HV20 with a wide-angle lens and shotgun-mic (there's a shoe on top), and once again I impulsively ordered an HG10 (the hard drive based version) for the trip to Egypt. The Panasonic SD5 I was planning to bring has two big negatives: you can't really shoot close-up or big objects because even at its widest it's a little telephoto and there are no wide-angle adapters available for it, and there's no external mic jack. The adapter and the mic have arrived, but the camera is backordered and might not make it before we leave for Boston on Monday. Drat.
Getting back to the show, Cali Lewis even did two gadget segments via Skype - I'd prefer to get her here in person but travel budgets are tight and Skype works pretty well. I even got my muscle tension read via remote control using Skype and GoToMeeting.
Tomorrow, Kristin Sanford is going to make oobleck and nitrogen ice cream. I can't wait to find out what oobleck is.
Meanwhile I'm stuck in the hotel room with a bunch of spreadsheets trying to work out the TWiT payroll before the end of the tax year and wishing I could take some time to add dropdown menus to my blog. I've got the Son of Suckerfish code and Steve Gibson's all-CSS variant, but I really should be doing the books. Ah screw it, why think about money when you can hack code?
Reader Comments (5)
AA batteries? I think you forward an A, eh?
I have a HV20 and it is great the quality is great and it is easy to use.
Yes, he did drop an A. 9V's contain 6 AAA batteries.
I'm not sure if you know this Leo but the HG10 does not have all the features of the HV20 and it uses a different compression (AVCHD), which some say is not quite as good as HDV.
A 9 volt battery contains 6 Quadruple A (AAAA) not double or triple As
if you take the little metal tabs from inside the 9 volt battery and fold them over you can stuff the quad A's in a device that takes triple As