Cachers interviewed on a Cache-A-Maniac show receive a package like this one. They get the Cache-A-Maniacs Guest coin to keep for themselves and a Cache-A-Maniacs Discovery Coin with information about their appearance to release in their area (you can see Gianster98's coin here). Unfortunately he got the coins a little mixed up in his video, but it was cool to see a guest receive and open his coins. Thanks Gianster98!
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Friday, February 4, 2011
Unboxing a Guest Coin?
A recent guest on our Cache-A-Maniacs show did something a little unexpected. If you haven't heard of an unboxing video this might seem a little strange, but they are common among the tech set. The point is to basically share the excitement of opening a present, but typically a new piece of hardware. Gianster98 was the guest for episode 208 of the Cache-A-Maniacs and hosts his own podcast on TalkShoe titled "Geocraze." He sat down in front of the camera and did a short unboxing video of the Cache-A-Maniacs Guest and Discovery geocoins we sent.
Cachers interviewed on a Cache-A-Maniac show receive a package like this one. They get the Cache-A-Maniacs Guest coin to keep for themselves and a Cache-A-Maniacs Discovery Coin with information about their appearance to release in their area (you can see Gianster98's coin here). Unfortunately he got the coins a little mixed up in his video, but it was cool to see a guest receive and open his coins. Thanks Gianster98!
Cachers interviewed on a Cache-A-Maniac show receive a package like this one. They get the Cache-A-Maniacs Guest coin to keep for themselves and a Cache-A-Maniacs Discovery Coin with information about their appearance to release in their area (you can see Gianster98's coin here). Unfortunately he got the coins a little mixed up in his video, but it was cool to see a guest receive and open his coins. Thanks Gianster98!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
At Geocoinfest 2010
We did a quick trip to the Twin Cities this past weekend for the Geocoinfest 2010 - Twin Cities mega-event. While Firefly03 was out trading (and generally drooling over the coins) I was working on assembling material and editing a couple of video segments for the Geocaching Podcast and Trackfiles. You'll be able to check out the first of those segments on Trackfiles this coming weekend, but the piece for the Geocaching Podcast is available now on YouTube.
You can also hear me talk with the hosts of the Twin Cities Geocaching Podcast on their 60th episode. Our thanks sir_zman and Super R for taking us on some caching Saturday and just a whole bunch of fun. We really had a great time (aside from the problems with the hotel) at the event and have to send our thanks to the committee and team behind this year's Geocoinfest.
You can also hear me talk with the hosts of the Twin Cities Geocaching Podcast on their 60th episode. Our thanks sir_zman and Super R for taking us on some caching Saturday and just a whole bunch of fun. We really had a great time (aside from the problems with the hotel) at the event and have to send our thanks to the committee and team behind this year's Geocoinfest.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Live Streaming Video & the Return of CRT
Thanks to the Ustream Live Broadcaster App for the iPhone (also available for Android and Nokia) I've been playing quite a bit with live streaming recording sessions. This gives listeners a look into the inside workings of the podcasts, and an unedited version of those shows. To make that happen I've been using either the WiFi or 3G connections (3G when we're using the local connection for VoIP) on the iPhone with audio coming into the iPhone 3GS through a camcorder cable, out of the mixer. That audio connection is very hackish, but its much better than the internal microphone and allows the viewers to hear everyone on the recording. Ustream handles all the video processing from there, both live streaming and recording, making the process very easy. Most recently I tested the Ustream connection over the 3G connection during the recording of the Geocaching Podcast episode 134.
We're planning on attempting the same set-up as I used for the Geocaching Podcast to live stream the recording of the Cachers of the Round Table episode 25. That will be Sunday, December 27th at 4:00PM Eastern (3:00PM Central/2:00PM Mountain/1:00PM Pacific) and we'd love to get some interaction with the live audience if possible (we need to figure out a means for someone to watch the iPhone's screen while still pointing the camera at something interesting). If you'd like to check that out, go to my Random Geocaching Happens channel on Ustream to watch live and participate in the chat room. CRT025 will be released to the feed though on January 7th, so this will give the Ustream viewers a preview of the content.
Please let me know if you like these live streams. They do take some work to set-up but I love the concept of people watching in live, especially for things like the Cachercon 2010 sessions. As for the podcast recordings, it might be a little redundant and spoils the finished show. At the same time it could offer a means for the audience to participate and shape the conversation interactively. If people enjoy the live streams though I'll likely keep them going.
We're planning on attempting the same set-up as I used for the Geocaching Podcast to live stream the recording of the Cachers of the Round Table episode 25. That will be Sunday, December 27th at 4:00PM Eastern (3:00PM Central/2:00PM Mountain/1:00PM Pacific) and we'd love to get some interaction with the live audience if possible (we need to figure out a means for someone to watch the iPhone's screen while still pointing the camera at something interesting). If you'd like to check that out, go to my Random Geocaching Happens channel on Ustream to watch live and participate in the chat room. CRT025 will be released to the feed though on January 7th, so this will give the Ustream viewers a preview of the content.
Please let me know if you like these live streams. They do take some work to set-up but I love the concept of people watching in live, especially for things like the Cachercon 2010 sessions. As for the podcast recordings, it might be a little redundant and spoils the finished show. At the same time it could offer a means for the audience to participate and shape the conversation interactively. If people enjoy the live streams though I'll likely keep them going.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
A Day of Milestones
We hit the road this morning with some caching friends with the goal of making our 3,000th find. Hunting in and around Swartz Creek, Michigan we not only found our 3,000th cache, but our 1,000th find for 2009. YOGO FTF #3 - Country Carriage (GC1YHFF) made our 3,000th find and was disabled shortly after for the owner to replace the damp log. The shock was that we found a total of 54 caches today, much more than I'd expected, and hit our 1,000th for the year -- our personal best -- at We Have A Warrant (GC1JD1B). We did DNF 4 caches though and skip over a couple we decided would take longer than we wanted for a numbers day, especially being that we weren't terribly sure about how much light we'd have to complete the cache (sunset was at 5:26PM this evening for the Flint area). Probably the most memorable hide can in a great cammo job on one find (posted to TweetReel) and available below in a lower quality version:
Overall it was a great day, not because of the milestones (though they were fun), but because we were able to enjoy an amazing November day with some great friends.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
First Midwest Meetup Results
Our Midwest Meetup event (GC1YRRG) is now in the past and boy did we enjoy it! It was the first time we've recorded an actual show with both xpunkx and I in the same location, then add in the live audience and it was really a blast. We broadcast the show live through TalkShoe and even had a summer caching story despite an issue with internet connectivity in the venue. Following the show we had the chance to meet with many of the cachers and finally met many of the names and voices we knew through the show and logs. Of course we found a number of things we'd like to have done differently (like having a mike to capture the audience reactions) and we hope to incorporate those things into the second Midwest Meetup whenever that might be.
Below is another one of these iPhone videos (shot and edited on the phone) for a little bit of the flavor of the recording.
Watch the Geocaching Podcast site or feed for the full show 126 audio to be posted soon.
Thanks to all the attendees (at least 42 by my count) for helping make the event a memorable experience.
Below is another one of these iPhone videos (shot and edited on the phone) for a little bit of the flavor of the recording.
Thanks to all the attendees (at least 42 by my count) for helping make the event a memorable experience.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Midwest Meetup Event Prep
It's been quite a week both in prepping for the Midwest Meetup event (GC1YRRG), not to mention work and personal life stuff. We're planning to not just record a live Geocaching Podcast episode from the event, but to also broadcast live through Talk Shoe. If you can't make it to the event at 3:00PM in South Bend, perhaps you'll be able to join us through Talk Shoe at 3:30PM for the live recording. Anyone who shares a summer caching story either in person or through TalkShoe will be entered into a drawing for a $50 Cache Advance gift certificate. The first 50 people at the Meetup will also be getting one of the goody bags (see the video below).
To give folks a little idea of what we're doing (and to play with the new app) I put together a little video of tonight's efforts. This was done completely through the iPhone using the ReelDirector app. To think that all this power is in such a tiny little device.
To give folks a little idea of what we're doing (and to play with the new app) I put together a little video of tonight's efforts. This was done completely through the iPhone using the ReelDirector app. To think that all this power is in such a tiny little device.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
July Eleventh Cache Run
The concept started while chatting with The Bad Cop following his interview for the soon-to-be-released Cache-A-Maniacs episode 136. He mentioned that he would be in Toledo, Ohio for a couple weeks with his family visiting with his parents. Being that Toledo was just over an hour south of us and dotted with about a dozen virtual caches we had yet to find, we figured it would be a great opportunity to hit the road for some virtual caches with a West Coast Cacher. We got in touch with xpunkx who was game to join the fun, set-up the meeting time, and proceeded to plan from there.
The day began with a thunderstorm hovering over xpunkx throughout the drive from Indiana. We encountered the storm as well for our drive, but it broke long enough for us to hit a couple of the virtual caches off I-75 we'd wanted to grab for months. Arriving a little early in town, we hit a couple of traditional caches meeting up with xpunkx purely from coincidence at "Wanna Buy a House or Car ? (GCHWR9). We signed the log then called The Bad Cop to see about starting our adventure a little early. No problem. We arrived at his parents' home and piled into the Honda Element (my caching vehicle) and drove the short distance to the first scheduled cache -- "Traffic Jam" (GC9564). The rain was still coming down at this point though the thunder had stopped. The dark, rainy image was hard to see on the iPhone, where we captured the Webcam frames, but we pulled it off grabbing four frames (one of the group, then one of each team). There was a local fast food joint nearby which we had parked at and was said to have WiFi access available. Sadly the WiFi service was discontinued the first of the month so we weren't able to check the images on xpunkx's netbook, but we were able to dry off a bit and grab some beverages to start the morning. As we left I checked the list of caches and routed to the next one on the Nüvi 260T. Unfortunately it was to become obvious a little while later that I had hit the wrong cache throwing off the well planned route by a few miles.
We got all the caches we'd skipped and were back on track quickly though and all we lost was about 20 minutes and a quarter gallon of gas. The sky had started to brighten though and we were seeing parts of the region we didn't know existed. The Bad Cop, who grew-up in the area, commented that he hadn't visit some of the locations before and the first earthcache took us by surprise. By now the rain was gone and the day brighter, getting warmer and more humid. We had fallen into the groove when we stopped at Farnsworth Metropark. Here we planned to hit an earth and a virtual cache. When we arrived at the location for the virtual cache we discovered that there was another virtual cache at that same exact location. This one was a little different though as it was a five stage cache, all points listed on the page. That was the thirteenth virtual cache I had originally found and planned (while looking for the caches in Google Earth) to hit before building the route through Garmin's RoadTrip for Mac. We figure that either one of two things had happened -- either the point did not get imported (it had quotes in the name which has confused many beta products I've used) or simply because the two caches -- "Drive-By #1 'Victory Lap'" (GC9F32) and Roche De Boeuf (GC9D31) -- were on top of each other I couldn't see the multi-stage one to drop it into the route. So we added this cache into the plans on-the-fly. We manually entered the second stage in the Nüvi 260T and made our way there after completing the earthcache keeping our eyes on the other virtuals we'd planned to hit on the route. That second way point was very close to the next virtual cache on the list. So we got both at the one stop and continued on. All the points for the multi-virtual were along that route I'd plan so we didn't loose any more distance, just the time to collect the information. And so continued the adventure as we wrapped up that virtual and made our way through Wauseon Ohio -- home to the Midwest Geobash 2009. The whole time we recorded audio during the longer drives talking about the trip for a special edition of the Geocaching Podcast. The longest of those drives was between "An Old Ohio Bell" (GCB389) and "Official Wood County Park District Cache # 3" (GCHKHD) we took advantage of the drive for some discussions about the trip to that point. It was the first time xpunkx and I have had the chance to record together within a hundred miles of each other. Despite the nearly hour long drive though, the time passed quickly and we'd come to that second-to-last cache of the day. This one was a little puzzling, and depressing, but you'll have to listen to that special edition of the Geocaching Podcast to hear more about it as we had one last cache to hit and the day was getting long. 
It had also been since about 10:00AM that any of us ate anything so we were getting hungry. That meant it was time for dinner, and being in Toledo we had to hit Tony Packo's Café. Xpunkx had not heard of this Toledo icon so he was in for a treat. As usual the food was excellent (even Drie who wasn't about to eat beef loved her Chicken Salad Sandwich) and the company terrific. It was the perfect end to a great day of caching in Toledo, but there was one more thing to do. We had to finish up the recording of our audio for the show. The evening had turned much cooler with some very comfortable breezes by this point. So we sat on the porch of The Bad Cop's parents home and wrapped up the recording in a most comfortable manner. We stood around for a few moments follow the recording bidding our farewells and restoring our gear to the appropriate owners then made our ways for home as it was nearing 9:00PM. Xpunkx had a more than two hour drive in front of him and wanted a couple more caches before he called it a day so that he would have a total of twenty for the trip. As for the group though, we ended with thirteen virtuals, two earth, a webcam cache, and some great memories.
The day began with a thunderstorm hovering over xpunkx throughout the drive from Indiana. We encountered the storm as well for our drive, but it broke long enough for us to hit a couple of the virtual caches off I-75 we'd wanted to grab for months. Arriving a little early in town, we hit a couple of traditional caches meeting up with xpunkx purely from coincidence at "Wanna Buy a House or Car ? (GCHWR9). We signed the log then called The Bad Cop to see about starting our adventure a little early. No problem. We arrived at his parents' home and piled into the Honda Element (my caching vehicle) and drove the short distance to the first scheduled cache -- "Traffic Jam" (GC9564). The rain was still coming down at this point though the thunder had stopped. The dark, rainy image was hard to see on the iPhone, where we captured the Webcam frames, but we pulled it off grabbing four frames (one of the group, then one of each team). There was a local fast food joint nearby which we had parked at and was said to have WiFi access available. Sadly the WiFi service was discontinued the first of the month so we weren't able to check the images on xpunkx's netbook, but we were able to dry off a bit and grab some beverages to start the morning. As we left I checked the list of caches and routed to the next one on the Nüvi 260T. Unfortunately it was to become obvious a little while later that I had hit the wrong cache throwing off the well planned route by a few miles.
We got all the caches we'd skipped and were back on track quickly though and all we lost was about 20 minutes and a quarter gallon of gas. The sky had started to brighten though and we were seeing parts of the region we didn't know existed. The Bad Cop, who grew-up in the area, commented that he hadn't visit some of the locations before and the first earthcache took us by surprise. By now the rain was gone and the day brighter, getting warmer and more humid. We had fallen into the groove when we stopped at Farnsworth Metropark. Here we planned to hit an earth and a virtual cache. When we arrived at the location for the virtual cache we discovered that there was another virtual cache at that same exact location. This one was a little different though as it was a five stage cache, all points listed on the page. That was the thirteenth virtual cache I had originally found and planned (while looking for the caches in Google Earth) to hit before building the route through Garmin's RoadTrip for Mac. We figure that either one of two things had happened -- either the point did not get imported (it had quotes in the name which has confused many beta products I've used) or simply because the two caches -- "Drive-By #1 'Victory Lap'" (GC9F32) and Roche De Boeuf (GC9D31) -- were on top of each other I couldn't see the multi-stage one to drop it into the route. So we added this cache into the plans on-the-fly. We manually entered the second stage in the Nüvi 260T and made our way there after completing the earthcache keeping our eyes on the other virtuals we'd planned to hit on the route. That second way point was very close to the next virtual cache on the list. So we got both at the one stop and continued on. All the points for the multi-virtual were along that route I'd plan so we didn't loose any more distance, just the time to collect the information. And so continued the adventure as we wrapped up that virtual and made our way through Wauseon Ohio -- home to the Midwest Geobash 2009. The whole time we recorded audio during the longer drives talking about the trip for a special edition of the Geocaching Podcast. The longest of those drives was between "An Old Ohio Bell" (GCB389) and "Official Wood County Park District Cache # 3" (GCHKHD) we took advantage of the drive for some discussions about the trip to that point. It was the first time xpunkx and I have had the chance to record together within a hundred miles of each other. Despite the nearly hour long drive though, the time passed quickly and we'd come to that second-to-last cache of the day. This one was a little puzzling, and depressing, but you'll have to listen to that special edition of the Geocaching Podcast to hear more about it as we had one last cache to hit and the day was getting long. It had also been since about 10:00AM that any of us ate anything so we were getting hungry. That meant it was time for dinner, and being in Toledo we had to hit Tony Packo's Café. Xpunkx had not heard of this Toledo icon so he was in for a treat. As usual the food was excellent (even Drie who wasn't about to eat beef loved her Chicken Salad Sandwich) and the company terrific. It was the perfect end to a great day of caching in Toledo, but there was one more thing to do. We had to finish up the recording of our audio for the show. The evening had turned much cooler with some very comfortable breezes by this point. So we sat on the porch of The Bad Cop's parents home and wrapped up the recording in a most comfortable manner. We stood around for a few moments follow the recording bidding our farewells and restoring our gear to the appropriate owners then made our ways for home as it was nearing 9:00PM. Xpunkx had a more than two hour drive in front of him and wanted a couple more caches before he called it a day so that he would have a total of twenty for the trip. As for the group though, we ended with thirteen virtuals, two earth, a webcam cache, and some great memories.- Traffic Jam (GC9564) Webcam
- Ft. Meigs (GCAC1D) Virtual
- Official Wood County Park District Cache # 5 (GCHKHJ) Virtual
- 577 (GCB046) Virtual [good photo location]
- Official Wood County Park District Cache # 6 (GCHKHN) Virtual
- Maumee River Alvar (GC1341F) Earth [good photo location]
- Just Ducky (GC9DC1) Virtual
- Roche De Boeuf (GC9D31) Virtual [good photo location]
- The Bowling Green Fault (GC14VGG) Earth
- Official Wood County Park District Cache # 4 (GCHKHG) Earth
- How's Your Labino? (GC9EDA) Virtual
- Drive-By #1 "Victory Lap" (GC9F32) Virtual
- SQ-Red Fox Trail (GC9EDF) Virtual
- An Old Ohio Bell (GCB389) Virtual
- Official Wood County Park District Cache # 3 (GCHKHD) Virtual [good photo location]
- Official Wood County Park District Cache # 2 (GCHKH9) Virtual
Thursday, July 9, 2009
One Week With My iPhone 3GS
I've had me new iPhone 3GS for a week now and have really come to like it. The biggest thing has been the better performance for basic things. Gone are the problems I saw introduced with 2.2.1 where I was unable to answer or disconnect calls in a timely manner. (Though only missed one call this way, wasn't that the argument Apple used for controlling Apps so tightly?) Where the 3G would pause for a half-second, the 3GS rips right through without a hiccup. Even typing is responsive enough that i can write this entire post on the 3GS comfortably. Especially the new 3.0 Copy-and-Paste process is much faster and more useful. I don't find myself using the Voice Control as I'd expected though. Voice dialing had been a staple of my phone usage on the dumb phones, but here I've grown accustom to jumping into the phone or contact app to do everything so it just isn't ever used. The camera is a surprise though. The tap to autofocus and meter function really makes the camera much more useful. Giving me the power to select the point at which it meters gives me the ability to capture backlit subjects and have them be visible. More surprising though is the quality of the video. Much like the stills from the 3G, I find myself shooting little videos for the instant send capability sending them directly via e-mail or through Tweet Reel. We even used it at the office to submit silly videos to EternalMoonwalk with results rivaling many consumer cameras I've recently used. As for Geocaching I made five finds last Saturday with nothing most than the 3GS. It works as well as the 3G did, just switching screens is a little quicker. The Geocaching app doesn't yet support the compass but iGeoCacher released an update Sunday with support and I look forward to giving that a shot. The one disappointment has been the new screen coating. While it's better it doesn't jeep the screen as free from finger prints as I'd like an it's still difficult to read through the glare in the sun. I'll be adding the anti-glare screen protector to mine very soon. As for the reported heat issues I have noticed them when either radio (3G or WiFi) is running for more than a couple minutes of heavy use, but it's amplified when charging. The battery at the same time. Having only been briefly on the 3G with the 3.0 software I can't really speak to the battery life though. The 3GS does not last as long as the 3G did under 2.2, but under 3.0 even the 3G lost time of usage.i wouldn't have been likely to do the upgrade if my 3G would have behaved itself after rebuilding it, but between the home button not responding and not being permitted to terminate a call for five seconds or more, I really felt I had to do something. Overall it's been a worthy upgrade and I don't have a moment's regret over spending the extra $182 for an unsubsidized phone (I'm only nine months into my contract). I find myself using the iPhone now when I would have grabbed the laptop before and never really pickup the netbook.I will mention though that I'm still not pleased with many iPhone limitations and will be taking a hard look on about a year at the Palm Pre and Google Android phones. Hopefully both will have more options and better support before then and if so I'm likely to move from the iPhone to one of those. As annoying and costly ad AT&T is though I might stick with them for the 3G GSM service since it allows use of the phone and data as the same time. My understanding is that CDMA (which is what SprintPCS and Verizon use) is not capable of running both services without duplicating radios - one for each. My three big complaints with Apple an the iPhone are the single carrier, lack of background tasks (not even multitasking, just back polling functions are all I need), and their total control over the App store. Who knows though - in a year they might fix those things too.
-- Posted From My iPhone
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