2012 To Do List Update

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Martyn

Back in December I posted some ideas for my 2012 To Do List. I wanted to add a bit more detail on the ideas and update the current status.

Travel more for holidays than for work (aka, do not get back to Qantas Golf frequent flyer status)

This hasn’t started so well in January. I did a week away to Melbourne, that is the 4th full week away since returning to Australia in September.

On the Qantas points front I need 2 more trips to retain silver, but I’d need about 15 more trips before August to get to gold . I don’t see this happening. For the coming 4 weeks I’m due to be working out of my office in Sydney, which would make 6 weeks total without work travel. That is about right.

On the personal travel front I haven’t got any flights booked, but we are planning a road trip to South West Rocks and Byron Bay in late March. I do want to get a holiday booked to go to Magnetic Island, possibly in April or May.

Release a Webapp

This is well underway. I am working with a very switch on developer. The backend system coding has been tough to get through some technical issues, but we’re looking good. We did some load testing and are changing focus to the actual web front end. I’m going to be focusing on work flows and UI design, working closely with the developer to get it integrated with the back end. I need to learn a lot more about Ruby On Rails.

Along with the developer I also have another friend helping out with business side of things. A good combination of skills between us we’re getting things moving. Along with the actual product development we have marketing website up, business registered, pricing, advertising. Now we just need some customers! Stay tuned.

Read more books

I’ve just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, an very interesting read with the usual Gladwell mix of random subjects. I’ve also got a load of books queued up on my kindle to keep me busy. They include:

  • Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
  • Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Assholes finish first by Tucker Max

Write more tech related blogs

I haven’t made a good start on this yet. I have a few half finished post ideas saved as drafts. I just need to focus to get them out. Must try harder!

Eat better

I have changed my diet quite a lot this month. I started to follow the 5 rules of Tim Ferriss’ 4 hour body diet. This basically means no white carbs, no fruit, high protein. It seems to be good so far, I’ve got lots of energy, I don’t want to snack (I’ve only had a couple of days with massive cravings) and I’ve lost weight. Stopping cereal based breakfast was tough at first, but now I enjoy the protein rich breakfast (usual eggs with something like spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes).

Be more efficient at work (aka enabling me to do development work, whilst being consumed on full 9-5 projects)

I’m not really sure where I am with this yet. I’ve been so busy in January with work trips and being onsite with customers that I haven’t got anywhere. Must try harder!

Ride a unicycle

I’ve found what looks to be a pretty professional unicycle on eBay for around $50. I’m not in a massive rush to do this as I’ve got lots of other things going on at the moment. I’m guessing I’ll order this in a month or so, then get practicing!

And a new To Do that I’ve just added….

Scuba dive more

When we were living in France we didn’t do much scuba diving. We did a couple of local dives in France (islands near Antibes and Cannes), we did a dive trip to the Maldives which was awesome. This was around 20 dives in 2 years. Now we’re back in Australia and have easy access to good shore diving it should be easier to dive more. We’ve got friends to dive with and have been lucky to have Ewan looked after whilst we go diving.

I’m also keen to do more night dives (Gaelle isn’t). I’ve got my Halcyon dive light fixed and put a new battery in it.

One other equipment issue is still to be sorted out – my Suunto Cobra dive computer / console doesn’t register being in the water or at depth. I’ve sent this to be repaired and hope it isn’t going to be too long or too expensive to get working again.

Dive more, eat better, write more blogs, finish off my webapp, buy a uni cycle. I could be quite busy, and that means I really need to get that 9-5 thing in check!

Posted in Health, Scuba Diving, Tech, Travel | Leave a comment

Radio Controlled Car

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Martyn

Ewan (and I) got a radio controlled car for Christmas! This post covers some of what I’ve learnt about setting up the car and repairing the car from burnt out cogs and serious head on collisions with brick walls.

It is a Turnigy 1/10 Brushless 2WD Desert Racing Buggy, a car that requires some putting together and extra bits to get it going. All part of the RC hobby experience I am told.

In addition to the car I got:

  • Battery – 5000mAh 2S LiPo
  • Controller – wheel and trigger style, entry level (needs 8xAA batteries)
  • Charger – Duratrax Ice (donated to me by a friend)
  • Mains power supply for the charger (it needs 12v at lots of Amps, I got a 2.5A multi voltage black box from Jaycar).


All up the cost for the car and accessories was about $200 (plus shipping)


Charging the battery

The charging process for the LiPo is quite involved. Firstly you need the charger, which runs from a 12v source – originally designed for people to charge from car batteries – and in my case, the mains to 12v power supply.

Secondly you need to know how to program the charger with correct details for your battery.

Once you’re connected and the charger is happy with the settings (it checks to see if you’ve got an appropriate battery connected), then you just have to wait until it stuffs all those milliampere hours of juice in there.

 

Burnt out slipper clutch / spur gear

On the car’s first outing we had a good zoom around a park area near our house. It was a nice mix of path ways and grass. After about 25mins the car stopped going at it’s usual crazy speed and quickly gave up to just sitting still and making lots of sounds when you reved the throttle. It was quite strange that when you have the car off the ground and gave it throttle the wheels would turn, but if the wheels were on the ground it wouldn’t move. I spoke with my RC savvy friend who told me that it was likely to be a problem with the “slipper clutch”, a foreign concept to me at this point. I got the car home and got the instruction manual out.

Thankfully these cars have very good manuals and plenty of online advice from forums. I quickly found how to remove the cover for the transmission and could immediately see the offending part.

Here you  can see the burnt out spur gear and on the right the replaced and well adjusted gear.

I found out that the car I had bought was basically a copy of a Kyosho Ultima DB. This is good news as parts for that car are easy to get hold of. This part was a UM564-82 (82 teeth).

 

This picture was taken after I had replaced the spur gear, adjusted the tightness of the spring and moved the other gear to be inline.

Along with the one off replacement gear I had found locally in Sydney, I also purchased a couple of spares from eBay.

 

Broken Suspension

Before taking the car out again I was talking to my RC savvy friend and he said “oh, you’ll want to order some part suspension parts, they’ll be the first things to go”.

So with this I went out and had one of those crashes you see in formula one races. The car hits the barrier, suspension bends, wheels are dragging along side the car, the only thing I didn’t see was the sparks flying.

 

 

 

After recovering bits of car and going back to the pits (aka the spare room) it turns out that two parts of broke. There is a small plate that connects the front lower suspension arms together and a hub carrier (the thing that holds the wheel to the suspension).

I have attempted to glue the parts, but they are too weak to be used. The front suspension mount was quite weak anyway, as you can see from the photograph it snapped at the thinnest part near where the 4 screws go.

Unfortunately this spare part is on back order, so I’ve temporarily used a couple of cable ties to hopefully, along side the super glue, give it some strength.

I’m waiting for the new suspension and wheel knuckle parts to turn up. As my friend advised, I’ve ordered a few as I don’t think this will be the last time this will happen!

 

Ewan driving the desert buggy

 

Posted in Ewan, Tech | Leave a comment

2012 To Do List

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Martyn

About this time last year I posted my to do list for 2011.
It was pretty successful, my pizza making was pretty awesome, I did sort out my work situation, I rode on a segway. I was very happy with the outcome.

Now I’m outlining my To Do List for 2012:

  • Travel more for holidays than for work (aka, do not get back to Qantas Gold frequent flyer status)
  • Release a Webapp
  • Read more books (ok, this was on last year’s list – but I think I need to read more still)
  • Write more tech related blogs (I didn’t do that well on this during 2011, so I’ll give it another shot)
  • Eat better
  • Be more efficient at work (aka enabling me to do development work, whilst being consumed on full 9-5 projects)
  • Ride a unicycle
Posted in Family, Health, Tech, Travel | 1 Comment

JNCIE-M #876

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Martyn

My plaque arrived!

Posted in Tech | Leave a comment

Time lapse how to

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Martyn

Recently I posted a time lapse video and I’ve had many people ask me how I did it.  I thought I should write a post to explain my process and equipment.

I didn’t need much equipment for this, just my Canon EOS 550d, a cheap intervalometer I picked up on eBay, a tripod and a Mac to edit it all together.

Before I started the actual time lapse pictures I did some test shots. This was to make sure I had the framing and exposure correct. I actually did some shots in full auto to see what the camera chose and then only adjusted those settings very slightly in aperture value mode (Av). I have read that using Av mode is useful especially for longer time lapses, especially night time shots where you want to vary the shutter speed to get the appropriate light in. Also make sure you switch your lens to manual focus, get the focus set correctly and then you won’t have re-focusing and the possible variation that means for each shot. It also drains your battery too.

I chose to set the remote to interval setting of 3seconds, to try to give some smooth motion. If the sequence was over a longer period I think you could tweak with this somewhat, a range of something like 2-8 seconds is ok.  When you’re ready just hit the start button on the remote, and sit back (or get involved in the action if needed)!

Once you’re finished, hit stop on the remote. Transfer the files to your PC and then it is time to put it all together.

There are a few pieces of software that you can use to combine the files in to a video, the most popular and simple I’ve found was Quicktime Pro 7. When you have your files in a folder just select “Open Image Sequence” from the file menu. You will be prompted to select a frame rate for the output video, I think in most cases you’d want to pick 25 frames per second but depending on your desired effect that could change up or most likely down.

Quicktime will then display your finished video, but you’re not quite finished. You have to export it to be something usable. Select “Export” from the File menu, and here you can choose what you want to save it as. I chose to go with a standard setup for 1080p video.

  • Compression: H.264
  • Frame rate: 25
  • Dimensions: 1920×1080
  • No sound, no filters

Save the file and then import that in to your video editing program, which in my case is currently iMovie. Do any editing, adding music and titles you need as you usually do with any regular video footage.

One big lesson I’ve taken away from doing this video is about image sizes. I ran out of space on my memory card. Next time I would select the most appropriate size of image for what I need, in this case something that is pretty good quality and more than 1080p. You need to make sure, however, that the image size is small enough so I could fit the required duration on your memory card. For full quality on the 550d the picture size can be something like 5-7MB, so that will fill up your 8GB card in no time, reducing it to 1-2MB will give you plenty more time to lapse.

Here is the finished video.

I suggest checking out Philip Bloom’s website for some time lapse inspiration and tips.

Please leave a comment if you have any other time lapse tips or suggestions.

Posted in Ewan, Photography, Tech | Leave a comment

2011 To Do List – update

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Martyn

It is nearly halfway through 2011, so time for an update to the To Do List I set out in January.

Take more pictures (aka learn how to use my Canon 550d)

I have taken loads of photos with the new camera. The numbering of my photos are now in the 5000 range, but I’ve saved just more than 2000 photos this year. For the most part taken on the 550d with a few hundred from my Canon point and shoot. My photos are a mix of travel, family and other random stuff. A few months back I got a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, which is amazing.

The HD video on the 550d has got me to take a lot more videos. DSLR video is a crazy complicated art, and I’m only just starting to make sense of all the bells and whistles you have to play with to get a decent video. I’ve learnt a lot from sites like dslrfilmnoob.com and  learningdslrvideo.com, along with the tutorials on Vimeo. I still a long way to go though.

Find a simple way to manage all the photos I take

My weapons of choice so far are Picasa for Mac and a new ReadyNAS with 2TB RAID storage. I’m backing up to external storage too. As I mentioned above, I’ve been taking a lot more video – this has meant I’m chewing through storage a lot quicker. I will probably need more storage in about 12-18months time, 2TB isn’t that large when you’re taking a lot 1080p video. Also video management related, I’ve moved from Youtube to Vimeo. I did this for a couple of reasons, I really find the look/feel of the embedded player a lot nicer and it just seems a much smoother service. I am reaching the limits of the free service, and most probably will end up going for a Vimeo+ account soon. Also video related I’m using iMovie to edit footage – it isn’t that flash, but does the job. I will possibly look at Final Cut Express if I get some time.

I have been uploading quite a few of my photos to my album on PicasaWeb here. Also, check out my videos on Vimeo.

Make sure I have sorted out my back pain for good

I completed a series of physio and have been doing a lot more walking and stretching. All in all I feel a lot better.

Ride a Segway


Complete! See video here.

Perfect my Pizza making


I think this will always be work in progress! Here is a picture of an attempt at the New York style pizza recipe

 

 

 

 

Try more wines (more Loire, Bourgogne etc)

I’ve tried a few new Chinon and other cabernet franc based wines so far this year.

Start playing squash again

Not started. I could blame back pain, but I think it is mostly laziness!

Sort out some work related stuff that I can’t talk about here

Complete!

Write more tech related blog posts

I have published a couple of tech related posts and some other general stuff too. Pretty pleased with this so far. Getting lots of traffic to my blog now due to it. I could do more though, and I have a few more topics lined up to work on over the next few months.

Read more books

I’ve read 8 business books so far this year (Delivering Happiness is probably the favourite). Discovering Instapaper has also been a good reading tool. Although not a book, it is great for reading those longer blog posts or web articles on your Kindle.

 

That is 8 completed, 1 not attempted and 1 work-in-progress.

I need to start thinking of some more to add to the list, suggestions are welcome!

 

Posted in Health, Tech, Wine | 1 Comment

Segway tour in Nice

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Martyn

Gaelle and I did a Segway tour of Nice old town. It was a bit wobbly to start with, but you soon get the hang of it.

They limited them to 9km/h, which was probably enough with all the small streets and people walking everywhere.

I’d would definitely recommend giving it a go!

Mobilboard Nice

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

Bull running in Arles

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Martyn

This is some video of bull running from our recent visit to Arles in southern France. This old roman town has a long history with bulls and bull fighting, during the “Feria” easter fair season they close the streets off for bulls to run through and also have a “Corrida” (bull fighting) in the amphitheatre.

The bull running we saw was nothing like I imagined from seeing videos of Pamplona, it was more like boys chasing small bulls. A few exciting bits, especially when a small bull got some revenge by kicking a boy. Bulls 1 – boys 0.

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

Visit to Ile St Honorat

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Martyn

A trip to Ile St Honorat just off the coast of Cannes. A wander around the monastery and vineyards.

Click above to play the slide show, or see the full photo album here.

Posted in Family, Travel, Wine | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Long Orchard BBQ – July 2001

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Martyn

Long Orchard BBQ – July 2001 from Martyn Lomax on Vimeo.

Posted in Family | Leave a comment