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This time down at the airport I, ahem, fly out of, Montgomery Field, San Diego. I thought I’d take some film of planes taking off and landing but the place was almost dead. The video was shot in 720p at the 60fps rate and then export in iMovie ’09.

I’m quite pleased with the quality though I’m disappointed that when the helicopter flew over the camera kept focus on the wire fence rather than the bird. I suppose the auto focus had to make a choice.

I must say that I like the new iMovie. I skipped ’08 so the interface is quite different from what I am used to. What I really like, compared to the Flip, is that the native file format goes right into iMovie with no transcoding, I make edits and then writing out the final file to be exported is real quick. Uploading to Viddler et al is still a bitch thanks to my cheap internet connection but that’s what work is for, right?

Today saw the somewhat-highly anticipated game, Flowers, for the PS3 appear on the Playstation Network. The aim of the game is to control the wind which causes flowers to lose their petals and fly through the air and around the landscape. It’s not killing, it’s not racing, but it is relaxing and something different. Maybe it’s a game that becomes art? Anyway, it’s available to buy today if the following trailer piques your interest.

Short video taken with the Flip.

I think TWC didn’t like me uploading so many files all weekend to the various places so I was not able to get these uploaded at home. No such problems at work…. here are the raw files from the camera.

720p (60fps).mov (23MB)
1080p (30fps).mov (26MB)
WVGA (DVD) (60fps).mov (14MB)

My latest hosting plan from Site5 includes unlimited bandwidth and storage space so I may host future videos myself if I can find a nice way to present them. Probably still put them on Viddler or Vimeo too.

I’m not money like db, but I did buy a new video camera last week – the Aiptek Action HD GVS 1080P High Definition Camcorder.

I love my Flip but ever since they brought out their HD version I’ve felt, well, a little resolution envy. At CES Sony brought out the Webbie that looks great and takes really good HD footage (for the price) but just as I was about to pull the trigger on it, I read about this camera and it has something that none of the others have: an external mic input.

I’ve posted a Flip video from the cockpit before and you may recall that it suffered from (at least) two problems: you can clearly see the prop spinning in the video, and all you can hear is engine drone (and me if I shout). This new camera should give me high definition pictures AND allow me to plug the radios into the camera thereby letting you hear all the air traffic control goodness. Look for a test of that in the next couple of weeks.
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This past weekend, my Dad, Teri, her parents and her Uncle John and Aunt Vaneta took a road trip out to the railway museum in Campo, CA, a small place in the high desert between where we live and San Diego. We had hoped to ride the train that they run on weekends but it turned out that it doesn’t run in December as they run a special train for kids instead.

So we made do with a stroll around their rolling stock museum, over 80 items ranging from old steam engines to covered wagons. Most everything is in need of a good sprucing up but it was a cool stroll around the yard and through some of the carriages.

Of course I had my Flip camera with me to capture it all:

So today I was giving my co-worker his daily deserved helping of crap and, for reasons that I absolutely cannot remember, told him he could twist in his sobriety. No, I don’t know what the hell I meant either though it’s safe to assume I wasn’t trying to be empathetic to whatever he was talking about.

Which brings us to this week’s video. Back to 1988, Germany’s Tanita Tikaram and Twist In My Sobriety, from the album Ancient Heart which, if I remember right, was pretty darned good.

Oh, I’m off to Sacramento tomorrow but don’t worry. As our Governor liked to say – I’ll be back!

As previously mentioned, last weekend was the annual Brawley Cattle Call weekend of which one part is a parade down Main Street. I took some video of it on the Flip and split it into two parts. First up is a montage of the school marching bands that took part:

Part two is a collection of some of the other participants:

See you here in 2009!

I think this is the first time I’ve posted a video of the week from an ‘amateur’ but I love this acoustic cover of Flobot’s Handlebars.

And if you want to see/hear the original, you can check it out at this link; they don’t allow embedding.

Even in the puppet theatre world, the actors can have a bad day. Sometimes you know the old joke too well to be able to do it the new way. And other times, you just have idiots for stars. You decide.