GoPro – Pro means you can replace equipment all the time?

Published on February 16, 2013 in Gear and rant by taro. Closed

Alright, who at GoPro decided to “upgrade” the HD Hero 3’s outer case lens? Who decided to put a glass lens on an extreme action camera? Granted it’s a fairly significant 1/8″ thick, but it’s still glass. I kinda wondered about this when I first got it, I noticed the lens had an optical coating. Not something you saw on the older generation lenses.

I guess this has superior optical clarity, but all the anti-glare coating in the world doesn’t help when you get this!

 

Yes, I put it in a bad place, that was intentional. In retrospect it was a pretty extreme location as the polycarbonate case has a lot of dings now, but still I’m used to expecting these things to take a beating, that’s the whole point of these cameras, right?

Yet More Wahiawa Sakura

Published on February 16, 2013 in Culture by risu. Closed

Took another look at the Wahiawa sakura trees last Saturday with Root. They were about peaking out. The windy weather expected this weekend will probably make a lot of flowers drop, but there are still some trees that haven’t bloomed yet, so if you want to see sakura on O’ahu, you’ll likely be able to see something through maybe the last week of February.

See the gallery here!

Test

Published on February 8, 2013 in Site by risu. 3 Comments

This is a test post.  Please ignore it as if it doesn’t exist.  Don’t worry about things too much.

Beer Is Good – Aloha Beer Company Aloha Lager

Published on February 8, 2013 in Uncategorized by taro. Closed

Finally found it at Foodland, pours a light clear yellow with moderate head. Clean crisp fairly dry beer. A little bitter that doesn’t linger very long. Light mouthfeel. Easy drinking, but on the other hand utterly unremarkable. Honestly I don’t think it’s much different than a mass market domestic beer.

Barely 2 out of 4 beer bong monkeys.

More Wahiawa Sakura

Published on February 5, 2013 in Culture by risu. 1 Comment

I happened to be in Wahiawa again today. It seems that what I saw last week and this Sunday was only the beginning of the blooming cycle, as the trees that featured prominently in the last entry were just about at their peak. More of the trees that were bare had sprouted flowers, but were still not fully involved. I’m thinking this weekend is going to be about the best. I actually saw a couple of “secret trees” that were in full bloom, and even several that were tapering and actually had already gone to fruit! When I drove by previously, I didn’t even notice the flowers on the trees at the Wahiawa Hongwan-ji. It could have been the lighting, tunnel vision, or not even expecting there to be cherry trees that far downhill. Those also look like they’ve been there a while, as the trees have already thrown out a good head of new spring leaves. Continue reading ‘More Wahiawa Sakura’

Shake Rattle No

Published on February 4, 2013 in Gear by taro. Closed

The new Sony HDR-AS15 (and presumedly AS10) are nice little POV action video cameras. They produce video about as good as and in some respects better than GoPro’s closest priced competition. But it’s got its share of shortcomings and problems. Some of the shortcomings you would have figured they would have figured out ahead of time by looking at the competition.

There is one problem that has shown up and that is a rattle that is very loud in the on board audio. You can hear it when you shake the camera too. Continue reading ‘Shake Rattle No’

Soda C: Sony Action Cam vs GoPro HD3 Silver

Published on February 3, 2013 in Gear and Review by taro. Closed

So I’ve had these two long enough to play with them a bit and take some side by side footage. The Sony is their recent foray into the compact, self contained, HD POV video camera market dominated by GoPro. GoPro has such a strong hold that the name is becoming a verb among the action sports crowd, “Are you going to gopro that?” “I hope you were goproing that!” So it’s interesting to see what one of the big electronics names brings to the table.

I’m going focus on how it stacks up against the GoPro. Continue reading ‘Soda C: Sony Action Cam vs GoPro HD3 Silver’

Wahiawa Sakura

Published on February 3, 2013 in Culture by risu. Closed

It’s that time of year for the sakura (flowering cherry trees) to bloom in Hawai’i. Sakura? In Hawai’i? The answer of course is “yes”! The plant in question is the Formosan (Taiwan) Cherry (Prunus (sometimes called genus Cerasus) campanulata) and was introduced to cooler parts of Hawai’i from Okinawa. Called kanzakura (カンヒザクラ/ 寒緋桜) this is the warmest climate adapted species found in Japan. Although it will survive at lower elevations, it typically will only bloom if it is growing where the temperature drops below around 7 to 10C (45 to 50F). Flowering examples exist in Koke’e, Kaua’I, Wahiawa, O’ahu, and Waimea, Hawai’i (there may be some on Maui too). This species is considered an invasive species in New Zealand, but because of the warmer overall climate in Hawai’i, it can’t spread naturally, since fruiting/seeding is restricted to specific, rare climate zones, and there are fewer seed transporting vectors here. Continue reading ‘Wahiawa Sakura’

Sony Dead Cat

Published on February 3, 2013 in Gear by taro. 1 Comment

So I bought the accessory door pack for the Sony Action Cam, $50 for the flat underwater door and the “enhanced” audio door, ouch. The audio door is what I wanted, it has two openings in the waterproof case door where the built in stereo mics are. But over the two holes is a membrane, it is most likely a GoreTex like membrane found in the LifeProof iPhone case. It allows air to pass, but not liquid water. So it should improve audio recording while maintaining waterproofness to a Sony claimed 10 meters. It still suffers from wind noise so I decided to do the Dead Cat treatment to it also. Continue reading ‘Sony Dead Cat’

I Like the Crakka

Published on January 23, 2013 in Gear and Review by taro. 1 Comment

A few posts ago I showed you the “Dead Cat” I made for my GoPro for a couple bucks. This weekend I did a Soda A, Soda B comparison test. You can watch it here:

My conclusions after the break. Continue reading ‘I Like the Crakka’