A nice diversion from all the iPhone related stuff lately, yesterday a bunch of us (John, Rebecca, Jen, Keira and Amy) went to Playland for the day. It’s our local amusement park that is the foundation for the Pacific National Exhibition which happens later this summer.
I thought it might be fun to try and shoot a bunch of video of the different rides we went on. I quickly learned that trying to record a wooden rollercoaster by holding the camera with one hand and holding onto the coaster with the other wouldn’t end well:
The video ends abruptly when I hit the power button by accident while being whipped around on the coaster. That and the kidney pummeling I got from the ride as well. You can see a little more of the ride here where I turned it back on and got a short clip….then I gave up due to the difficulty in holding on to the ride, let alone the camera.
You’d think I’d learn my lesson on the Wild Mouse coaster:
It was easily the scariest ride at Playland and inflicted the most physical damage to my knees.
Fortunately I didn’t drop the camera on the Hellevator which was fun but wasn’t nearly as scary as the anticipation of going on it. I thought the Pirate Ship ride had more stomach churning moments:
Judging from the bruises on my knees today, shooting video may not have been the best choice but it was still a lot of fun. Thanks to Rebecca for making the arrangements, Playland for having us and for the weather which almost cooperated the whole day…it actually helped keep the lines down and allowed us to hit the bumper cars over and over - especially when the rain was coming down:
We finally had enough and called it a day after two back-to-back trips to the “Crazy Beach Party”:
Check my Flickr set for more videos and pictures from the day.
In case you’re curious, I shot these videos with my Casio Exilim EX-60 which is a couple of years old now. It’s not terribly popular anymore but it still works great for stills and video. It makes me wonder what the big deal is with those Flip cameras? I mean this camera can be had for about the same price as a Flip - probably alot less (mine even came with one of those 4×6 photo printers for free), is smaller than the Flip, has wicked battery life, can do more (shoot great stills and video) and uses memory cards that can be changed when it’s full. I get a little more than 1/2 an hour of video with a 2gb card which can be bought for about $2-5 a piece these days. Just sayin’.
In quite possibly one of my favorite Lab with Leo segments ever, Dave Olson chats with Leo about his multimedia publishing empire that started back in the 80’s and how now with the internet, it’s all coming back around, except this time, you don’t have to pay for copies on his parents ditto machine.
Dave, we have to hang out again soon….it’s been too long!
I finally received my Moo cards that I had ordered at the beginning of February. This was my third batch and it was strangely the only one to take a really long time to arrive. I wonder if it had anything to do with an influx of orders from people getting them for SXSW which is also the place I was first exposed to them in the first place. What are they? I tend to call them my ‘personal cards’ as opposed to my somewhat boring ‘business card’ that I have for my corporate day job.
Moo cards are small (about half as tall as a business card) but are very personal. You order them in batches of 100 and are comprised of text on the back and photos on the front. You can customize the text that appears on the back and the cool part is that you also get to choose what appears on the front. Since they partner with a lot of photo sharing sites (I use Flickr), you can easily pull your own photos into Moo and create the card front with these photos. Unlike getting cards from a traditional printer, you can choose how many of your 100 cards has which photos on them. You can get 100 of the same or 100 different photos on the front of the cards or mix and match as much as you want. Pretty cool for only $19.99 plus shipping - just try to get card stock photo cards from a local printer for that little.
My third batch has turned out the best…I decided to order a lot of different photos this time around instead of just a couple of my favs. I also got a few geekier photos in there since I’ll probably be giving a lot out at SXSW soon enough. I expect to come back from Austin with a ton of other people’s cards and look forward to the Moo party down there as well. You can use an Altoids Chewing Gum tin as the perfect case for them too.
Thanks to an email from Rebecca, I’ve just joined ‘Team Blogger’ for this years Bowl for Big Brothers Classic event taking place on March 16th. So far I’ll be joining Corinna, Duane, Keira-Anne, John and our team captain, Rebecca. Check out Rebecca’s post if you’re interested in joining the team.
The theme this year is ‘beach party’. This could be interesting…will they allow flip flops on the lanes? Will there be wifi as you know a bunch of bloggers will want to liveblog the event.
I’m always down for hanging with the gang except this time it will be for charity so it should be a fun and worthwhile event.
If you’re interested in sponsoring me, please visit my sponsor page.
I’ve set my personal goal to be at the $150 mark in order to get the beach towel prize which is the minimum. I’ll draw a name from those that sponsor me and give them the prize if I reach that mark (or any mark in case I manage to surpass the minimum).
Now to find my hawaiian shirt.
UPDATE: Looks like we now have a ringer on our team now that Tod Maffin has joined us!
In case you’re curious, I shot these videos with my Casio Exilim EX-60 which is a couple of years old now. It’s not terribly popular anymore but it still works great for stills and video. It makes me wonder what the big deal is with those Flip cameras? I mean this camera can be had for about the same price as a Flip - probably alot less (mine even came with one of those 4×6 photo printers for free), is smaller than the Flip, has wicked battery life, can do more (shoot great stills and video) and uses memory cards that can be changed when it’s full. I get a little more than 1/2 an hour of video with a 2gb card which can be bought for about $2-5 a piece these days. Just sayin’.
