BrnDmp » Gadget

Kodak Zi8

Arjen — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:05:00 +0000

For one of my projects (bikes-r-us.nl) I’ll be producing instructional videos on bike repair. That’s all nice but I didn’t have camera. Browsing the net for viable options I really liked the Flip. I Especially like the idea of producing a cheap good enough product, like Intel and Asus did with the Atom processor and EeePC netbook. Wired magazine wrote a really nice article about that in issue 17.09: The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine.

Reading review and comparison sites I found out that Kodak also jumped the band wagon with it’s ZiX series. Comparing the Flip and the Kodak most sites agreed that the Kodak Zi8 was the gadget to have. I bought one for 155 Euro (including shipping) and the mailman delivered it to me in one week.

It’s exactly what I wanted: a camera producing good quality video (HD 1080p though you can also opt for 720p to save space) and easy to operate. I like gadgets for which you don’t need a manual. The whole thing is just self explaining. Hit the camera button and you’re in camera mode. Hit the red button and it starts recording. Hit the red button again and it stops recording. Nice. Plain and simple for a video amateur like myself.

The thing I maybe liked even more is the extra stuff you get with it:

I’m quite happy with my purchase. Now I just have to get expert at video editing.

Verdict

Maradonna as a player: easy to use, lightweight, connectivity, video quality

Maradonna as a trainer: butt ugly sticker (though it peels of easily), no SD card included

HTC Hero

Arjen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:05:39 +0000

So here we go: I finally stepped into the twentyfirst century and bought a new phone: the HTC Hero with Google Android OS. My previous set was a nokia from 1837 which allowed to make and receive calls and send the occasional SMS. I was never really interested in all the new phones that came out with just a few more Mpixel camera, radio, ability to play mp3, crappy symbian apps or Uncle Steve’s ‘Look I’m part of the Cult’ Badge.

Then came Google with Android. Android is an open platform. I like open platforms. But I didn’t like T-Mobile’s G1, which was the only Android phone for a long time in Europe. So I had to wait a few more months and be patient and then there came HTC with it’s new Android phone. Fine, I bought one, I got one, I’m happy and I’m satisfied. Finally I have an internet enabled hand held, pocket size open platform. Great. Now I can be even more productive.

For comparison, here’s my old phone and my new phone together. A small step for mankind but a major leap for me:

Wacom Bamboo

Arjen — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:05:46 +0000

I recently bought a pen tablet because I was always struggling with the mouse while doing graphical editing stuff in the Gimp or Inkscape. After some research I found the Wacom Bamboo a reasonable and cheap option.

When I returned from the shop I figured I’d be the whole evening editing text files and configuring the devide in Linux. But…

Ubuntu

…the days of swearing at your Linux box and threatening to throw it out of the window are over! Here’s Ubuntu 9.04 and my precious new toy worked out of the box! That’s truly amazing to me but I do realise that that is actually what you should expect.

It works!

After playing with it for an evening I produced my first crappy result which is the header on top of this page. Looking back at it after a week I decided my blog theme looks like crap. So why not make a nice project out of it? I will gradually update the blog theme and report on the progress in this blog. As a starter, here’s the screenies for bleeding pre-alpha version (at time of posting it’s actually the current layout):