Bike-cam Videos

 Reposted from the Pedal to Peace blog

I took some experimental videos using the Nexus 7 strapped to my bike.
 A sort of "Go-DIY", you might call it. The foam bumper case was an ideal shock-absorbing mount.

At first I wanted to take time-lapse pictures, but I discovered that the stop-motion app on the tablet didn't have a timer setting. Rather, you have to press the preview each time you want to capture an image. I rode around testing that for a few seconds before abandoning the idea as too dangerous!

I have two videos below. For the first, the tablet was mounted more centrally, and the front brake cable spoils the view. It does, however, stop the auto-focus from going crazy, like it does in the second video.

The first video is on the way down from the first night's camp site, in Yamaguchi prefecture, and the second is coming down from the mountains at the start of the day we entered Nagasaki. 


Its hard to describe the satisfaction one experiences coasting down a hill which took great effort to pedal up. Its like a reward for all the hard work expended!

 

Lessons Learned on a Bicycle

 Reposted from the Pedal to Peace blog

I recently completed the cycle to Nagasaki, or more accurately half of it, since we teachers split cycling and driving each day. That's half of 450km in 5 days, which is not too bad at my age. Anyway, I trained seriously for the trip, and wrote this blog post about the experience.

Rapid Pi Case 2

This is version 2 of the Rapid Pi Case. This one is more elegant and even more rapid than the first. It also has some ventilation, and easy access to ports on the Pi using a craft knife. In this case, you can see the HDMI plugged in.

On the Inadequacy of Mobile

These days all we hear about is the convergence of desktop and mobile, and we are made to suffer those ugly and cumbersome interfaces like Unity and Metro (or most of you are; I stick to a traditional desktop), where actions you used to take for granted are no longer possible, and someone else has decided what your computing experience will be like.
So on the recent Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Ride, I decided to take only a Nexus 7 and my phone (still using my trusty Galaxy Nexus after all these years). In any case, with most nights being spent at camp sites without power points, it seemed unlikely that I would be able to make my laptop battery last the whole trip, while the tablet and phone could be charged in the support van, either directly or via external battery packs. All we needed to do was take plenty of photos, update the team Facebook page (that was one of the students' job), check e-mail, and write blog posts. My reflections on the experience follow.