• 1x Skewer
• 1x Straw
• 1x A4 piece of paper
• 300mm of sticky tape.
• Some type of box

So the challenge is to build a wind powered device that lifts a pencil/pen the height of a desk. The fan is placed 500mm away with 3 speed settings. Ideally you want your design to work on the lowest fan speed. Sounds easy, but that’s because you’ve already seen my solution.

New & Improved Prototype

Just mucking around fixing up a few things on the car whilst I’ve got some time. I had 2 fairly serious rust spots on the boot and I’m trying to patch them without having to sand the entire boot. Hopefully during the polishing process I can achieve a reasonable blend.

The other thing I’m working on is fixing up the peeling paint on my door handles. It seems like Holden used crappy paint as I’ve noticed other VT Commodores have the same problem with the paint flaking off around the door handle. When I was sanding them, it didn’t look like there was a proper primer on there.

Comparison in size against my HTC Touch Pro

This was an impulse buy off Catch Of The Day for $150 but it has some neat features. Mainly being that it can record in full HD with a resolution of 1920×1080 @ 30 fps. It also has some timelapse features and the ability to take photos. It can also record at 1280×720 @ 60 fps.

Below are some test videos showing the difference between 1920×1080 @ 30 fps and 1280×720 @ 60 fps. I prefer the look of the 60fps. I don’t think youtube really shows the difference as they’ve been re compressed but I’ve added the raw MP4 files for download.

Download: Samsung HMX-U10 1920×1080 @ 30FPS Video Test.mp4

Download: Samsung HMX-U10 1280×720 @ 60FPS Video Test.mp4

One thing that bugs me so far is how close the cover is to the USB connection, to me it would make sense to swap the video output and USB around so there’s more room to make the connection. I’m sure the usb plug is going to get used more than the other one. I’m tempted to rip the door off to save stuffing around with it.

]]> http://petesmedia.com/2010/02/samsung-hmx-u10-unboxing-review/feed 0 http://petesmedia.com/2009/12/great-ocean-roadtrip-video http://petesmedia.com/2009/12/great-ocean-roadtrip-video#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:03:12 +0000 Peter http://petesmedia.com/?p=1879

Download this low quality version here – 512×280  H.264 MP4 – 100MB

Download the high quality version here – 877×480 H.264 MP4 – 233MB

Download the video – 28mb

David and I went down the coast for the weekend. I wanted to test out my camera in the surf, it’s a bit shaky but after reviewing this initial footage I’m sure I can improve on this. It has been ages since I’ve been in the surf and we had a great day for it. The water was still cold, hence why we’re wearing wetsuits but it was a lot of fun.

Download this video – 19mb

This video shows the ATC2K mounted in different locations on my bike riding The Oaks firetrail from Woodford to Glenbrook.

Download Video – 17MB

Download the Video – 57MB

Cleaning up more video that I had lying around, this is a 4WD trip video from our trip through Lithgow to Newnes.

Download the Video – 11MB

This was filmed a few years ago.

Download the Video – 52mb

I went for a photo trip with Noor and his new Canon 350D. I dug out my Panasonic GS400 video camera and stuck my Rode Videomic on it to document the day. We’re going on a road trip soon and it’s been a while since I’ve used my video camera and Noor is new to DSLR photography so it was worthwhile to get a bit of practice.

]]> http://petesmedia.com/2009/11/photography-adventure/feed 0 http://petesmedia.com/2009/07/watagans-4wding-fj40 http://petesmedia.com/2009/07/watagans-4wding-fj40#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:26:50 +0000 Peter http://petesmedia.com/?p=1516

It took a while to get this finished but this is the video showing our holiday in New Zealand. The flash video goes for about 17mins and is 65mb.

Download the FLV file here.

Download a 720×400 H.264 MKV here 233mb.

Download the video here –> [512x288 MP4 15MB]

Brendan and I headed out in the rain in my FJ40 in search of some 4wd tracks. We aimed for Baal Bones Gap but couldn’t see Pantoneys Crown due to the fog. The track wasn’t too bad, a few hills and some great scenery. We ended up on Blackfellows Hand Trail and stopped for some lunch. Brendan spotted an arrow stuck in a tree, we managed to pull that out for a souvenir. After getting a little lost down a bunch of new power line tracks we ended up on a track that we’d been on before. This time however, there was a lot more mud and it was slippery.

The first difficult section was a right hand turn that dropped steeply into a ditch on one side. With the thoughts of tipping the FJ on it’s side, I used the shovel to create a slightly better drop into it. We chucked some branches in to give us some grip and ease the drop. My heart was pounding, all this lead up work to what seems easy in the video. The back end slid around as the front dropped into the ditch and we drove out fine.

The next section was on the uphill. 2nd gear low range was my choice, I got over the hump which lifted my front left wheel right into the air. Headed towards another ditch, it didn’t seem too bad when I first looked at it. Gave it some momentum but it wasn’t enough. The wheels started spinning and I slid backwards. A few attempts at reverse/forward until the FJ slid down and rested up against a tree. Bugger! A bit of faffing about with all sorts of thoughts going through my head as to how we were going to get out of this situation. Once I got out and had a look around it was pretty obvious that I had to try and reverse and turn the wheels to limit the front end rubbing against the tree. Luckily this worked and it didn’t cause major damage. The front left fender got a little bent. A bit of OMFG later and we headed home.

This is a duplicate of my famous post on Wrigleys Video Productions forum. Majority of my sites traffic is from people downloading this video.

Once setup, this is an easy and efficient way of importing VOB (DVD) files into early versions of Adobe Premiere without the need for re-encoding video.

First you will need:

Adobe Premiere AviSynth Import Filter Plugin – http://urchin.earth.li/~tomford/avisynth/index.html
AviSynth – http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Avisynth
Microsoft .NET Framework – http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/default.aspx
MeGui – http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=MeGUI

Once you’ve got these installed, ensure you update MeGui so that it downloads the latest version of DGIndex then watch the tutorial video on how to use them.

Tutorial Video – Importing VOB files into Premiere – 3.70MB WMV9 3:28

This also works for MPG/MPEG videos.

Although MeGui features a “D2V creator” I had problems using this, hence I load DGIndex separately.
People have mentioned renaming the “.vob” extension to something else such as “.mpg” or “.avi” I’ve tried this method and found that any edits aren’t as precise once rendered and sometimes premiere will give an error about being an usupported or a damaged file.

For further assistance, I’d recommend reading through the post on Wrigleys Video Productions forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8A6T8H0TOY

Ben Halpin and Alex Garruccio ripping it up at the local skate park. A combination of tricks including tailwhips, footjam tailwhips, no handers, 180′s and a few 360′s.

Music: megaphone – Not Your Enemy

High Quality: http://petesmedia.com/web/BMX2.mov – 33MB H264 768×432

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_kOdLNcNlU

Taken on a trip down the South Coast with the intention of getting some good camera angles and complimenting the scenery. Filmed with Panasonic GS400.

High Quality: http://petesmedia.com/web/CoastSceneryDV.mov – 24MB H264 768×432

I thought I lost this but as I was going through photos of my FJ40 restoration I came across the original Photoshop file. This was made as part of our holiday video in New Zealand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_QkFT4IhbM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRqmJxhPNZw

This was filmed for a competition SBS was having. It was completely scripted and a shot list was made prior to filming. I made it as a top 20 finalist and won some free movie tickets.

High Quality – FJ40 Review 720×400 h.264 33mb

Puzzling World, and the long drive back to Christchurch.

It snows in Queenstown. David jumps off the Nevis Highwire, and the Urban Bungy. We all play minigolf.

David jumps off Kawarau Bridge. Snowboarding at the Remarkables, best snow day ever.