I bought the iPhone 12 Pro Max for it’s excellent camera array intending to elevate my vlogs, but within the 14 day cool down period I decided it wasn’t for me and returned it. I think I got suckered into the marketing hype.
Instead I decided to get a proper camera for myself, the Sony ZV1. It’s a point-and-shoot form factor designed specifically for video, based on the RX100 line. I wish I did this ages ago.
With a notional risk of community transmission I decided not to meet up with friends this weekend, opting instead for a call and some Animal Crossing. But I still wanted to do something with myself and get some exercise, so I decided to ride into the city and take some b-roll.
It was a fun ride, and I managed to use some of the new CityLink paths. They were not especially convenient coming from Roma Street but I appreciated them nonetheless.
I spent a little time in the city, but for the sunset I camped out on the Goodwill Bridge to watch the birds, ferries, and generally life go by. It was cold but nice.
There’s no shots from the camera because it’s really only for video. But I got a few good clips you might see in an upcoming vlog.
It wasn’t a spectacular sunset, but right toward the end as the daylight died it delivered the goods.
I was taking a walk in West End after having breakfast with Tae when I discovered the old rainbow footpath in West End.
It’s worn down pretty badly. Reminds me of chalk drawings on the road after the rain. But it’s probably fair enough cos it was thrown together by volunteers and I guess they just used whatever paint they had.
I first stumbled on it when it was brand new back in 2017 with Joel, Tom and Shashi. This was just after I got back from Amsterdam for the first time, and I assume Shashi & Tom were visiting for xmas.
Not linking to the bad website, but here’s the description from the original Facebook message where Cr Sri got folks together to paint it:
This is partly a political statement, and partly just an excuse to bring a bit of colour to an old stretch of bitumen footpath at the corner of Besant St, O’Connell St and Vulture St.
If you have a bit of spare paint lying around that you can bring down to donate to the cause, post up in the comments with the colours and quantities, or just rock up on the day and lend a hand as you see fit.
It would be good to use paints that are designed for outdoor surfaces and will last a while. We’ll try to paint in segments, leaving one part of the footpath clear until the other painted areas have dried so as not to inconvenience any mobility-impaired pedestrians.
If anyone wants to bring down other things like baked goods or a bit of music to entertain the painters, that would be cool too.
Jonathan Sri, Councillor for The Gabba
It’s still visible four years later. But might need a fresh coat soon.
We had been loosely planning to catch up this weekend, so after some finagling we decided to meet at Office Works and have burritos in the park.
It wasn’t an especially beautiful day, but it was nice and cool to sit outside on the bleachers (what even is the Australian word for these?)
There was a women’s hockey game being played nearby which was strangely compelling. I don’t really care for sport, but I was drawn into the action on a couple of occasions. The number of times the sticks went flying reminded me of the SBS feature on concussions in women’s sport from a couple of nights ago.
All in all, a decent way to spend a few hours. Gav mentioned this area always feels like the gross old sporting area, as seen while walking along Enoggera Creek. But it’s quite lovely when you’re in it.
I was in the shower today and a low-flying plane flew past the window and startled me. Partly because I wasn’t expecting anything to be up there in that clear blue sky. But I also realised that my little escape from the continent has left me with an aversion to air travel.
Sure, airports always sucked but a trip in an aeroplane used to have this excitement of adventure about it, a chance to climb into the tube and escape from reality. But now all that conjures is masks, hazmat bags, the unforgivable malice of the person leaving their mask down over their nose. Being stranded in a foreign country as the world ends.
It was one of those little culture shocks to be back in Brisbane and see a plane flying overhead for the first time like everything’s fine. It was like a little omen, there to remind us of our hubris. They still startle me, and I didn’t know why. But perhaps now I do.
Between corona and the climate I would happily never step foot in a plane again. I don’t think that’s realistic. But it’s a feeling.
The little West End trendy Scandi brekky cafe. Tae and I hadn’t seen each other for some time and we decided to catch up.
It’s been a fairly miserable week weather-wise. Wet and dark. But that’s a welcome la niña change from the usual Brisbane dry, so we were both happy to head out and grab breakfast before work.
I had the chilli scrambled eggs, crispy coconut sambal, plum chutney, roti bread for $17.0. Tae had almost an entire pumpkin on sourdough. We both drank our volume in coffee and it was nice.
I’ve missed breakfast. The best I managed in Amsterdam was brunch at 11 am, which was fine but I remember it being a stressful affair. Working weird Dutch hours means I haven’t really had mornings since I’ve been back. But I’ve been working on that.
I was curious why the pound sterling was called such.
Turns out it’s from Latin, lībra pondō (“a pound by weight”), as in a pound of silver. Has the same roots as the lira.
The “£” symbol is a blackletter “L” for “libra”, similar to the imperial weight “lb”. 🤯
Occasionally when I’m converting currencies I’ll “convert 100 lbs to aud” for a laugh. Google understands I mean “gbp” and that’s always amused me. Now it feels more connected.
I wasn’t sure if this is one of those things Europeans know that was never taught in Australia, but it does seem pretty esoteric. And Shawn hadn’t heard it before so maybe not.
After a cold snap in Brisbane, we’re back to our usual summer programming. It was only 34 today, but it’s still uncomfortable to be amongst so I’ve been trying to optimise my ventilation.
It has reached the point of the day where outside is cooler than inside so now I get to open up the house.
HOWEVER the little portable aircon I bought is still running in the office. Even though it can only ever bring it down about 3 degrees, it’s still much more comfortable than sweating into my seat. I’ve been trying not to use it too often, but a little climate control is invaluable while I’m working.
I remember the old days pelting down Elizabeth Street on my bike (and probably breaking the speed limit) so I could make it up the hill on the other side and keep up with traffic. The citylink separated bikeway is way better 🥰
It was a bit of a surprise to wake up this morning and find we’re heading into lockdown.
After developing a case of the sniffles and going for a test the night before, I’d preemptively cancelled all my weekend plans already. But it’s different when it’s official, you know?
I always joked that moving into a proper house with a yard was a reaction to living isolated in a shoe box in Amsterdam. That the next lockdown I would be stocked and ready. Turns out despite the physical preparation I still wasn’t there, mentally at least.
At work in between tickets I would check the ABC News live blog for updates. It’s a bad habit, of course there aren’t any, but in a time when we don’t know anything, even the smallest scrap of insight seemingly means something.
Part of me just wants to jump forward a couple of weeks when we know the outcome of the outbreak. Skip to the end of the book and read the last page. Do things turn out ok?
But I’m doing fine. It’s been raining, so I’m very cosy on the couch under the doona. I have a naan dough and some curry ready to go tomorrow and we’re making pizza for date night on Sunday. Everyone on Twitter is talking about the Star Trek finale, so maybe I’ll put that on now and tune out for a bit.
Over Christmas while we were packing stuff up to move it around, my mum confided that she doesn’t use the hifi system in her office. It doesn’t get any radio signal and she doesn’t have any CDs to play in it any more, so it just sits there doing nothing.
Since my living room only has the tiny Google Home speaker, I offered to take it off her hands to hook up as an aux device to my living room TV to improve the sound. And it’s delightful.
I love a bit of a retro nostalgia trip, this website is proof enough of that, and this hifi system is really doing it for me. It harks back to a time when things were simple enough to plug together and screw around with. A good time for a kid like me.
This thing is a little beast. It’s an AM/FM CD/DVD player from back when these sorts of things were common. The year 2003 to be exact, just a year before HDMI was first released in consumer gear, so it’s the absolute peak of analog tech before digital signals fully took over.
Hooking up to my TV was a simple affair, I grabbed a 3.5mm audio to RCA cable to connect the TV straight to the hifi system. I could have bought an optical DAC (digital audio converter) for better quality, or even a HDMI audio splitter so I can play audio without the TV on, but this was the most straightforward solution and it sounds flawless.
It also happens that my TV is a hand-me-down old enough to support composite video directly (thanks Ben!) so I hooked it up in reverse to (theoretically) play DVDs. Why? Cos why the heck not.
The early and kinda disappointing days of digital video
Around the time this thing was made I was browsing an electronics store in Singapore and stumbled upon a VCD of the 2002 film Resident Evil with a gorgeous holographic cover (Video CD being the precursor to DVD icymi).
I needed to have it! In part because it the cover was cool, but also because I didn’t have a DVD player at home so I’d be able to watch this with the CD drive on my computer.
It was a pretty bad, but fascinating technical choice. Turns out VCDs have exactly half the resolution of VHS tape, and only fit about 80 minutes of MPEG-1 video per disc, so the movie was terrible quality and chopped in half to fit over two discs. Not only that, but the censors also cut out a bunch of good bits.
Still, I loved that film and I’ve been trying to burn a VCD with some old vlogs just for a nostalgia trip.
(Side note: Super VCD used MPEG-2 and had a higher resolution, so they’re almost passable quality-wise. But they’re still limited to 4:3 for that old school cool)
I didn’t have much luck creating a VCD in in the year 2020 because it’s all pretty outdated, but I found an all-in-one burner alled Devede which actually managed to take my rips from youtube, crop and convert em, then burn onto an SVCD disc.
Unfortunately the unit didn’t seem to be able to play them. I’ve got a couple of rewritable DVDs coming in the new year so maybe there it will have more luck with those.
Day to day Panasonic SA-DP1
Cool old tech aside, I’m mostly likely to use this as an aux system for the TV with the Chromecast as a source, because any other configurations are really too outdated to want to use on a day to day basis. And for that it’s fantastic.
Amazon is filled with reviews from people who loved this thing fifteen years ago. It wasn’t super expensive, it’s a solid piece of kit, and it sounds great too.
