Captain Video's Mountain Retreat

No big news... just took the bike into the city today -- met TSP for lunch at Hale's. Weather report said "cloudy" but there was a pretty solid, wet mist until later in the afternoon -- only notable because of all the extra layers I ended up putting on and taking off all day.

I took the time on the boat to play with the Zi8 (Kodak ultra cheap, pocket HD video cam). I'm pretty impressed with it as a point-and-shoot, but the video, hand-held, even with stabilization is way to shakey for HD. I did some playing around with attaching a mono-pod to it, and even just using the mono-pod, fully collapsed, as a weight on the camera, greatly reduces the vibrations that come from trying to shoot with a device that's this light (110 g [3.9 oz] without batteries) .

Apparently, I'm the only one that thought a ride today would be a good idea :)

The Zi8 has a little switch that sets the lens for macro, which I used in the image above. If you haven't heard of this thing, it's worth checking out -- the simplicity and flexibility of this cam is really remarkable. And at under $150.oo... wow. That's cheap enough that I'm not gonna sweat abusing it and maybe breaking it :)

Best features: Input for external microphone, and built in USB jack (so I don't have to haul around another eff'in cable!)