The wildlife camera experiment continues.
Coyote at front door
A few nights ago it captured a coyote walking right up to our front door.
The camera only fired a few times that night, and unfortunately none of the still were usable.
Tag Archives: video
Camera Hood experiment
After having so many foggy photos (see blog entry) I decided to fab a quick hood out of cardboard to see if it would help in any way. It’s not pretty. I didn’t want to invest a bunch of time in something nice if this wasn’t going to work. It’s an MVP if you will… with quality to match! LOL
This is what the current camera orientation looks like during daylight hours:
Checking the camera the next morning, it seemed to have helped out quite a bit. We had some deer drop by for about an hour or so. Instead of the normally fuzzy images, these came our a lot better.
My plan is to move the camera again, maybe to a higher point and aim it downward, using the camera body to provide more cover for the lens. So far this is my most favored location, but I’m not done experimenting quite yet.
Having challenges with dew on camera lens
Each morning that I get up and check the camera, there is a lot of dew upon it, including the lens. It has a small built in cover but it’s not enough to keep it from getting clouded.
Last night around 2:00 AM we had what looks like you coyote visitor again… but.. as you can see, the blur is from the water collected on the face of the lens housing.
Video is the same story. Little 10 second clip shows the animal strolling off. Definitely some sort of canine.
I think the next step is to look for a small birdhouse, and use that to possibly house the camera and keep the dew from forming on the lens. When it was positioned under an overhang, the dew didn’t seem to be an issue. That is my though process regardless.
Dash Cam Test Run – Santa Cruz to SJC, CA
Sunday afternoon, I mounted my new $25 dash cam (purchased 2 of them from Amazon, $25 each to my door, I figured why not!) inside the windshield of my 2002 BMW ///M3 Convertible, and drove from Santa Cruz to San Jose (SJC airport) California.
Highway 17, has earned this dubious distinction as the most dangerous highway in California. With it’s steep decent from it’s 1800′ Santa Cruz Mountains summit to the Santa Clara Valley Floor below, it’s often this site of injury and fatality crashes.
Audio in the clip is horrible, and unedited. Wind noise due to the top on car being down, plus the fact I was wasting no time on “The Hill“.
While growing up in “The Valley”, heading over the hill to Santa Cruz always seemed like such a journey. Families would pack up food and drink to make it over the mountain. In reality, it’s a fairly short dive (about 20 miles) but back in the 70’s when I grew up, summer time temps well into the 90’s, combined with the fairly steep ascent to the summit (at 1800′) meant there was a pretty good chance you’d be taking a break in one of the turnouts while the car’s radiator cooled off enough to continue the drive. Using A/C on the hill was basically an impossibility, unless you enjoyed being temporarily stranded on the side of the highway while possibly awaiting a tow hook.
As I grew older, cars were built better, and I was able to afford these better cars, the drive to the beach became less and less an practice of gambling upon one’s luck, and simply being able to afford a 1/2 tank of gas on a high school or college student’s budget.
Netflix tries to make nice with customers
As some of you might have read in my Tech Feeds today, Netflix has backed off form the Quickster project.
Here an e-mail I just received from them. Nice Mea Culpa. “Uh.. er.. sorry.. we’re sorry.. prices still going to be same but no new DVD only website.”
Dear David,
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.
We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.
We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.
Respectfully,
The Netflix Team
Some links from my Tech needs today:
Netflix drops unpopular Qwikster DVD plan
Some history on the controversy, this one about 3 weeks ago:
More fun with Time Lapse video
More fun with Time Lapse video!! This time it’s my exciting commute!
Included in this video are these exciting events.
- crossing bridges
- paying tolls
- seeing Washington State Patrol
- seeing Bremerton PD write a ticket
- avoiding I-5 traffic jam
- dealing with the horrible Nally Valley Viaduct
- rain
Enjoy the video, and the calming music:
The best Urban Driving film ever made (1976)
This is without peer. Shot in Paris in 1976, in one sequence.
Sit back, enjoy, hold onto your seat.
C’était un Rendez-Vous from Thom Graves on Vimeo.
Video game classic.
While watching some Anime that the kids enjoy watching on Saturday mornings, a character appeared that was so similar to this great video game villan, I just HAD to find these videos. The first, being the original, the second being a rather amusing techo-mashup.
After all, what technologist would be raising his kids properly, without them knowing such uber-geeky things.
Enjoy these classics!