Anotherblog

Holidays

Back to work after some excellent holidays with Veronica in Brisbane. It would be tedious and hunger-inducing (it’s nearly lunchtime) to list the quantities of food consumed, but somehow we got through the christmas festivities without putting on much weight, and a quick jog last night seemed to sort things out. Hooray!

My favorite bit of loot scored for christmas: CB bought me a solar charger, which is really cool. I’ve already used it to charge up my mobile phone, and it can charge my iPod as well, after being left out in the sun for a few hours (I’m still not sure exactly how long it takes to do so, but it doesn’t seem to be more than an hour or two). Thanks CB! Also scored much other cool loot from Mum & Dad & Jen & Marco & Von & Von’s family - books, CDs and music, which I will review upon consuming.

Work Christmas Party, Guitar

These days are just flying by! We had the work Christmas function on Saturday and it was great to be with Veronica and work people and not have to hide things. And now, suddenly, it is Monday.

I know where *some* of that time went - lot’s of guitar practice. I managed to find a copy of Bach’s Prelude to Cello Suite No.1 in G, transcribed for guitar. It’s a beautiful piece, though quite hard. It’ll be a while before I work it out to any degree of competence.

Also in musical discoveries: The C64 Orchestra, my childhood favorite Commodore 64 tunes, wonderfully arranged.

My Invention

My invention - as linked to in the post below - is all about getting good audio from your video camera. Essentially, it talks about a detachable microphone that can be used as a remote control and which synchronises the audio with the picture whenever you eventually plug it back into the video camera again. It’s like a wireless microphone, except it transmits the sound back with error correction, not in real time, and thus avoids the occasional problems that wireless microphones have (ie. radio interference).

It allows for a bunch of different scenarios - using the microphone/remote to turn the video camera on, thus doing one-person interviews; or leaving the microphone near the people doing the talking, and turning it on/off from the video camera for weddings etc, or more elaborate scenarios with multiple microphones and/or video cameras being controlled from one place and automatically synchronised when it gets time to edit.

Unfortunately, I have no idea when this technology will actually be put into a video camera. It’s a big change. I’d certainly buy one or two or three.

Hong Kong

…was terrific. We ate much good food and did a lot of shopping - Hong Kong action movies were purchased - and visited tourist spots and had an all round excellent time. I’ll put up some photos when I figure out what’s wrong with the photo uploading bit on wordpress!

I’m an inventor!

I have written a number of patent applications. Yesterday I found out one of them had been approved - my very first approved patent! And best of all, it’s my favorite of all the patents I’ve written. I can’t see it in the published area yet (perhaps it’s too early) but here’s the application, patent application number 2004906592.

Hooray!

In Hong Kong with Veronica

I’m on holidays in Hong Kong with Veronica. It’s excellent fun. We’ve seen touristy sights; we’ve gone shopping (me for Hong Kong DVDs, both of us for clothes), and we’ve been eating mightly quantities of Chinese food. Superb!