So I needed an HD adapter in order to use both my HDTV monitor and the Oculus Rift at the same time (geek world problems), so I swung through Best Buy on my way home on Friday.
And I ended up walking out with a new 360° camera.
I guess their packaging team was going for “pixelated suppository.”
And I’ll tell you, it certainly wasn’t easy to set up.
First, in order to take a photo you must use the cell phone app, which makes sense I guess given that you don’t want half of your picture taken up by someone looking through a viewfinder.
Thing is, the damn camera couldn’t decide whether it wanted to connect to my phone via BlueTooth or wi-fi, so it simply didn’t do either. It took me almost an hour of repeatedly connecting the two to eventually get them to play nicely. And it was a magical connection, by the way… Meaning I didn’t do anything differently, they just randomly decided to connect.
So now I’ve taken a few 360° pictures and videos. And they’re fine. Interesting even. I’m not too thrilled about how wide/distorted my gut looks in some of them. But that’s not enough to stop me from sharing them.
As soon as I figure out how to share/upload them.
See, I uploaded a test pic of Daphne’s playpen to Facebook on Saturday but it ended up looking like a distorted sphere instead of a 360° photo, so I deleted it.
Then I used a function in the app to save the videos locally, but have no idea where they were saved.
And now I’ve tried to send the same photo to myself via Gmail and the app hasn’t sent a single one. (It’s actually given up attempting to send them, and is now just crashing when I try to send them.)
So for anyone who’s interested in 360 photography, you might want to wait a bit.
Yep. I installed and booted up my new Oculus Rift up last night. (Thanks again, little brother, for the awesome Christmas gift.) And no, before you ask, I didn’t get any pictures of myself wearing it.
First of all I was mostly just calibrating it and going through the demos, and second I can’t see a damn thing when I’m wearing it, so it’s pretty hard to get a selfie. (I’ll try this weekend.)
And my first impressions are that it’s…impressive.
There’s definitely never been anything like it.
I used to work with VR gaming machines back in the days of Dactyl Nightmare, and I’d spend all day strapping people into these headsets and battery belts, and watching them flap around for 3 minutes at a time. (And I got paid $4.75 an hour to do so.)
This “Virtuality” system was what I worked with.
And honestly? It sucked.
Once you got over the novelty of the screen moving wherever you looked (which, to give them their due, was pretty cool the first time you saw it), you’d quickly realize that the game was boring as hell. And by the time your 3 minutes was up, you were more than ready to take the heavy headset off.
But the Oculus? Well, I spent about 45 minutes wearing it and wasn’t quite ready to take it off. So that’s a thing.
I went through the entirety of their “Dream Deck” app, which was pretty damn amazing. (Particularly the art deco, Rapture-esque cityscape.) Played some Lucky’s Tale, which was adorable.
No, not “Tails.” “Lucky.”
And then I watched a few 360° videos, the best of which was a National Geographic documentary about the lives of Nepalese sherpas. Now the resolution on these real life videos isn’t anywhere near realistic yet, but I can definitely see how, in the next few years, 360° video will become absolutely amazing.
Tonight I’m going to boot up EVE: Valkyrie, their flagship game, and see how that goes.
And I promise, I’ll try to get some pictures of me using it. If for no other reason than in 10 years time they’re going to look hilariously outdated.
Summer in our house may have officially started last Friday, but I suppose it truly begins with the first pool visit of the year.
You see, in my teenage years I spent nearly every day of my summer break hanging out at the pool in Williamsburg Colony.
This pool right here.
I’m told they’ve since removed the diving board for insurance reasons, which is disappointing. Because it was there that I learned back flips, gainers and 1 1/2 front twists, base acrobatic skills that served me well as a bosun aboard the Clipper City. (I’d use the “splatline,” a long rope connected to the end of the yard, to swing off the railing of the boat, arc over the water, and land on the dock at a sprint so I could catch the docklines and ensure that a 200-ton tallship didn’t crash into the promenade.)
This boat right here.
But that’s another story.
Today’s story is about a little girl’s first trip to the pool.
This girl right here.
She had her very first swim with her mom on Tuesday.
Both of my beautiful girls.
And as you can see, she hated it every bit as much as splashing around in her baby pool last weekend. She also quickly learned that swimming is a pastime that is not only pleasant and exciting, but exhausting.
You probably didn’t notice, but I spent some time transferring all of my old published articles here yesterday, and added a link to them on the top bar called, “Writing Portfolio.”
So if you’re ever bored while waiting for a new post from me, or desperately need a BumbleFix over the weekend, you’re welcome to peruse some of these (decidedly mediocre) articles that I wrote 10 years ago for an awful magazine here in Texas.
I actually reread a few yesterday as I was uploading them, and some are pretty damn embarrassing.
Although, in my defense, I had some editors that were good. And others that were…not so good.
Like the one who apparently had never heard of the City of Dis, and subsequently changed it to, “City of DJs” on the assumption that I’d made a typo. Or another who would simply write her own stuff and include it on the page with mine, without annotating it as hers. (And her stuff was really, really bad…)
It was always an adventure on the first Thursday of the month, when the new issue would hit the stands. I’d sit down at Onion Creek with my morning coffee, take a deep breath, then flip to my article to see how badly they screwed up my prose.
Speaking of Onion Creek, that was actually my only request for Father’s Day. I’d like to take Daphne to the O.C. in the morning, sit on the patio with coffee and a croissant, and relax for a little while.
So Daphne was rummaging through some random geek detritus that I’d left in a box upstairs, and came across some colorful little cards that she immediately snatched and carried around the house for nearly 30 minutes, which is the equivalent of 3 years in “Toddler Time.”
Hi. Wanna play Magic?
Great! But I have 2 cards, and you don’t have any.
Mom! Do we have any more of these things?
No? Okay. Well, um, both of these are really good…
But I guess you can have one.
Hah! I win!
Okay I’m going to play against this baby here, since she already has cards.
Posted: June 13, 2016 · Leave a Comment
Three Sixty
So I needed an HD adapter in order to use both my HDTV monitor and the Oculus Rift at the same time (geek world problems), so I swung through Best Buy on my way home on Friday.
And I ended up walking out with a new 360° camera.
And I’ll tell you, it certainly wasn’t easy to set up.
First, in order to take a photo you must use the cell phone app, which makes sense I guess given that you don’t want half of your picture taken up by someone looking through a viewfinder.
Thing is, the damn camera couldn’t decide whether it wanted to connect to my phone via BlueTooth or wi-fi, so it simply didn’t do either. It took me almost an hour of repeatedly connecting the two to eventually get them to play nicely. And it was a magical connection, by the way… Meaning I didn’t do anything differently, they just randomly decided to connect.
So now I’ve taken a few 360° pictures and videos. And they’re fine. Interesting even. I’m not too thrilled about how wide/distorted my gut looks in some of them. But that’s not enough to stop me from sharing them.
As soon as I figure out how to share/upload them.
See, I uploaded a test pic of Daphne’s playpen to Facebook on Saturday but it ended up looking like a distorted sphere instead of a 360° photo, so I deleted it.
Then I used a function in the app to save the videos locally, but have no idea where they were saved.
And now I’ve tried to send the same photo to myself via Gmail and the app hasn’t sent a single one. (It’s actually given up attempting to send them, and is now just crashing when I try to send them.)
So for anyone who’s interested in 360 photography, you might want to wait a bit.
It’s still a little choppy out there.
j.s.
Posted: June 10, 2016 · Leave a Comment
Rifting
Yep. I installed and booted up my new Oculus Rift up last night. (Thanks again, little brother, for the awesome Christmas gift.) And no, before you ask, I didn’t get any pictures of myself wearing it.
First of all I was mostly just calibrating it and going through the demos, and second I can’t see a damn thing when I’m wearing it, so it’s pretty hard to get a selfie. (I’ll try this weekend.)
And my first impressions are that it’s…impressive.
There’s definitely never been anything like it.
I used to work with VR gaming machines back in the days of Dactyl Nightmare, and I’d spend all day strapping people into these headsets and battery belts, and watching them flap around for 3 minutes at a time. (And I got paid $4.75 an hour to do so.)
And honestly? It sucked.
Once you got over the novelty of the screen moving wherever you looked (which, to give them their due, was pretty cool the first time you saw it), you’d quickly realize that the game was boring as hell. And by the time your 3 minutes was up, you were more than ready to take the heavy headset off.
But the Oculus? Well, I spent about 45 minutes wearing it and wasn’t quite ready to take it off. So that’s a thing.
I went through the entirety of their “Dream Deck” app, which was pretty damn amazing. (Particularly the art deco, Rapture-esque cityscape.) Played some Lucky’s Tale, which was adorable.
And then I watched a few 360° videos, the best of which was a National Geographic documentary about the lives of Nepalese sherpas. Now the resolution on these real life videos isn’t anywhere near realistic yet, but I can definitely see how, in the next few years, 360° video will become absolutely amazing.
Tonight I’m going to boot up EVE: Valkyrie, their flagship game, and see how that goes.
And I promise, I’ll try to get some pictures of me using it. If for no other reason than in 10 years time they’re going to look hilariously outdated.
See you Monday.
j.s.
Posted: June 9, 2016 · Leave a Comment
Life Aquatic
Summer in our house may have officially started last Friday, but I suppose it truly begins with the first pool visit of the year.
You see, in my teenage years I spent nearly every day of my summer break hanging out at the pool in Williamsburg Colony.
I’m told they’ve since removed the diving board for insurance reasons, which is disappointing. Because it was there that I learned back flips, gainers and 1 1/2 front twists, base acrobatic skills that served me well as a bosun aboard the Clipper City. (I’d use the “splatline,” a long rope connected to the end of the yard, to swing off the railing of the boat, arc over the water, and land on the dock at a sprint so I could catch the docklines and ensure that a 200-ton tallship didn’t crash into the promenade.)
This boat right here.
But that’s another story.
Today’s story is about a little girl’s first trip to the pool.
She had her very first swim with her mom on Tuesday.
And as you can see, she hated it every bit as much as splashing around in her baby pool last weekend. She also quickly learned that swimming is a pastime that is not only pleasant and exciting, but exhausting.
j.s.
Posted: June 8, 2016 · 1 Comment
New Archives
You probably didn’t notice, but I spent some time transferring all of my old published articles here yesterday, and added a link to them on the top bar called, “Writing Portfolio.”
So if you’re ever bored while waiting for a new post from me, or desperately need a BumbleFix over the weekend, you’re welcome to peruse some of these (decidedly mediocre) articles that I wrote 10 years ago for an awful magazine here in Texas.
I actually reread a few yesterday as I was uploading them, and some are pretty damn embarrassing.
Although, in my defense, I had some editors that were good. And others that were…not so good.
Like the one who apparently had never heard of the City of Dis, and subsequently changed it to, “City of DJs” on the assumption that I’d made a typo. Or another who would simply write her own stuff and include it on the page with mine, without annotating it as hers. (And her stuff was really, really bad…)
It was always an adventure on the first Thursday of the month, when the new issue would hit the stands. I’d sit down at Onion Creek with my morning coffee, take a deep breath, then flip to my article to see how badly they screwed up my prose.
Speaking of Onion Creek, that was actually my only request for Father’s Day. I’d like to take Daphne to the O.C. in the morning, sit on the patio with coffee and a croissant, and relax for a little while.
Hopefully she’ll cooperate with that plan.
j.s.
Posted: June 7, 2016 · Leave a Comment
SEQUENCES – The Tiniest Planeswalker
So Daphne was rummaging through some random geek detritus that I’d left in a box upstairs, and came across some colorful little cards that she immediately snatched and carried around the house for nearly 30 minutes, which is the equivalent of 3 years in “Toddler Time.”
Hi. Wanna play Magic?
Great! But I have 2 cards, and you don’t have any.
Mom! Do we have any more of these things?
No? Okay. Well, um, both of these are really good…
But I guess you can have one.
Okay I’m going to play against this baby here, since she already has cards.
And…I win again!
Good game! **mwah**
j.s.
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