For the interest of anyone stalking me from afar – Number 1 – that’s weird, reach out on facebook and say hi! and Number 2 – Elizabeth and I had a daughter named Avery in August. She’s amazing and we love her a lot. A very large amount even.

So.. I drooled over this for a long time, always thinking it was too much for me and my use. But I finally got one.. and it’s amazing.
In my obsession over them, I found they essentially never show up secondhand – that’s how useful they are. I got the work stop attachment too, which I haven’t seen much on youtube, but it’s also great.
Another thing that showed up, is that there are actually two versions of the joiner – an older one with metal alignment pins, and a newer one with plastic ones – and a few other differences too.
Systainers are great, the documentation is amazing.. I just wish it wasn’t quite so expensive – but buy once, cry once, right?
Don’t.
Ok, how about with Mojave?
Again, don’t.
But I already own it! and I have a Mac with firewire. I should be good to go for finally converting all those old tapes right? Hard drives are cheap now! I could copy Michael Lynch!
No.
And here’s why – VCR tapes are made for CRT TVs. This means that they’ve never been too precious about timebase, because it hasn’t mattered. Unterzuber here has a great page about timebase and why it’s important to get a good one for for video conversion.. but I’ll skip all that and say this – devices like the ADVC-100 really needed one for knowing where and when each frame begins and ends, because they use that to create IEEE 1394 digital video frames – if the timebase is bad, the audio stutters, frames drop and all sorts of bad happens.
I got my ADVC-100 probably 15 years ago, work was getting rid of a bunch of them. They were originally USD$199 new, because digital video, firewire and conversion is hard and people should pay for it. I only ever used it for capturing from my now deceased DVD-H40A, one of the first DVD players with a hard drive recorder built in, and which output a perfect timebase signal, so it was never an issue.
But I’m trying to convert some videos from tapes for family, and oo boy is it not liking it. I didn’t want to pay upwards of $100-150 for some of the retail device that might not work – but I came across this video from a channel I trust and enjoy, Technology Connections – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC5Zr3NC2PY
Again, skipping to the conclusion – I bought a composite to HDMI converter, and then a HDMI capture device for $15 each from eBay, so $30 all up, and with the exception of NTSC443, it’s perfect.
The ADVC-100 was an amazing device for its time, but its time is over. Sorry.
I’m mostly writing this for my own reference, because I keep forgetting it, but I have to hold down GPIO0 button to actually upload sketches to this board, despite them proudly crowing that it doesn’t need to be reset to upload sketches.
I’m using it with a DHT11 to record temperature and humidity to apache logs for an assignment Eliz has.
On this day, 20 years ago, I signed up with Internic for theducks.org. I paid AUD$110 for 2 years of registration. In the interceding 20 years, I’ve had to explain many times why my email address is @theducks.org – including once to the Federal Court as part of an anti-spam prosecution. These days I now mostly give away @alexdawson.net as my email address, but I still think theducks.org is a fun domain to have.
I’ve had one of those couple of weeks where everything seems to be breaking or there’s lots of projects to do. Some of the projects I’ve been working on..
Since it isn’t specifically stated here – for those following from afar, we moved back to Australia.
In late 2016.
Canada was great, we had some amazing experiences and made some awesome friends, but housing was too expensive and we missed our families and friends here. Any one of those wouldn’t have done it, but the combination meant it wasn’t what was right for us, for now. But we are and remain proud Canadian citizens – we hold a Canada Day party every year as a winter catch up, and you never know what the future holds. We moved to Canada on a two year plan, and since I was always bad at maths, we stayed for 7. We’re back in Perth on a 10 year plan (almost 2 years into it!) so we’ll see what happens next. We bought a nice house, close to friends and family, and we’re enjoying it so far.
Not many.
These saws all seem to be varients of the Huafeng M1H-ZP2-250
Having owned the Ozito one.. they’re not terrible. My major complaint is the miter slot not being 3/4 inch width – and the shortness of the rip fence ruler – The Evolution and ParkerBrand ones have the longest, so they would probably be my choice.
So, I finally bought a house, after starting to look in 2004 ;)
In fairness – life plans etc meant buying one earlier wasn’t the right move.
But I have some rants about the process so far.
But we’d just as soon be back in time, for all the chance you’d change your mind..
I recently went on a once in a lifetime trip to St Maarten.. it was pretty awesome. I had done some pre-scouting online, and worked out that my primary photographic objective was planes at SXM (you’ll know when you see it..), but that there were also some really cool beaches there, so I figured now was as good time as any to get a water-resistant digital camera, and that since I would be taking photos of planes with good lighting at close range, there would be no need to take my DSLR and piles of L-Series lenses.
Also on my wishlist for a waterproof camera were Geotagging from GPS and wifi connectivity. All of these led me to the new Nikon AW130. My local camera store had one, and I picked it up for C$414 (with taxes included). Not super cheap, but affordable still. I also took along my iPhone 6, but not for underwater use, perhaps obviously.
I took about 500 photos with it, but before I get effusive about its photos, let’s break down what I don’t like about it:
But on the plus side – it works nicely underwater, and takes pretty good photos, limitations notwithstanding. I don’t regret buying it, and it was great to have it with us for the trip. It’s just.. a pretty shitty UI. But I’m spoilt by iOS.
Check out the photos from our trip – some are from the iPhone, and some from the Nikon.
As another observation, it’s also really weird holding a brand new piece of digital equipment.. and jumping into the ocean with it.