Merchandise

Yeah yeah yeah, I know the story about the cart and the horse, but I can't help that I'm getting excited.
I've come up with some ideas for t-shirts. I don't think that I showed you the logo I came up with for the motocamping YouTube channel as I was trying to keep these two ventures completely separate, yes I know the blog is all about the other venture, but you know what I mean, right?
Well I decided that I would tie the ventures together, this will still be the blog about me and what I'm doing with more than just motocamping, this will still be my diary, but I just want to be able to share what I'm doing with the motocamping YouTube channel without being all cloak and dagger about it.
So, the YouTube channel is called Motocamp360, you can find it here, but there's not any videos on it yet. Anyway, some time ago I created a logo for the channel and I thought that it would look really cool on a t-shirt. The logo is meant to kind of illustrate the four seasons, as well as being a kind of tiny planet image with the trees all around it and in the centre there is a tent and my bike. The photo was taken earlier in the year when I went camping with a mate out to a place called Wee Jasper, great place but that's a different story.
The last couple of nights I've been playing around with the most recent footage that I took and made a few still images from the video. I then played with the images in GIMP, which is basically a fee program a lot like Photoshop. I've got a few designs now and I really think that people may like them and want to buy them off me. The biggest issue I have with t-shirts is the price if you use one of the commercial t-shirt companies to print them and send them out for you, you're looking at over $30 for a cheap t-shirt and I don't think that is good value. When I ran my booking agency, we bought some silk frames and made our own t-shirts. I'm thinking that I could do the same thing for these designs, three of them are only single colour and the other is four colours but I don't have to start out with that one. I could just do black on light colours and white on dark colours and buy the plain t-shirts from K-Mart for less than $10 each. I could sell them for say $18.95 plus postage and I'll be cheaper than nearly everyone else and I'll actually be making more per t-shirt. I'm going to have to be careful with these designs as I don't want anyone to steal them off me or copyright them out from under me, I know that has happened to one of the YouTubers that I follow, so I'll have to look into trademarks and such like that before I go too far. Hopefully that won't cost too much to do as I think my wife's patience is wearing thin on all my purchases of late.
Here's what I've got so far, I've used another site to put them onto t-shirts for me, just to get a better idea of how they'll look.

Bomber.
Getting creative

Time to sort out the kit

This weekend I need to make sure I go through all my camping kit and figure out what I actually need to take and what I can leave behind. The weekend after this one is when I'm heading down the coast to go fishing. I've decided that as long as it's not raining then I'm going to ride and try and take some footage along the way. As I said previously, I don't intend to publish this trip as a motocamping one straight away, this is going to be a learning experience and if it ends up being good I may release it at a later time.
The things that I think I'll need to take with me are:

• tent

  

  $35 Kmart 3 person tent

• ground mat
• sleeping bag
• air mattress
• rechargeable air pump*
• cooking kit
• butane burner with spare can
• knife, fork, spoon, cup and plate.
• head lamp
• table lamp
• chair

  

  Rocky Creek Bikerz Chair

• table (it's a small hiking one)
• change of clothes or two (not sure how smelly I'll get fishing)
• telescopic fishing rod
• small tackle box 
• rain overpants (if there is any chance)
• food (but we may just buy stuff at the shops nearby)
• matches and lighter 
• solar battery charger
• stubby holder
• fly and poles (only if rain is forecast).

  

  Oztrail Hiking Fly

• hatchet
• insect repellant
• sun screen
• hat
• glasses
• first aid kit 
• and all the camera kit

That's a fair bit of kit to fit on the bike and most of it is pretty cheap either from Kmart or eBay but it does the trick. I'll maybe upgrade bits and pieces as they break, but sometimes it's still cheaper to by the really cheap stuff every couple of trips than spending heaps when it'll only last a couple of years anyway. On top of all of that, I'll have the motorcycle clothing that I'll be wearing of course but that has to go somewhere when I'm off the bike which is why the tent is a three person one.
I need to pack things in a logical order too, as there is no point having the tent at the bottom of the bag as I'd need to unpack everything just to get to it. I plan on taking the rear ventura bag that was on the bike when I bought it and my large dry bag. The ventura bag isn't fully waterproof so what ever goes in there need to either be in a smaller dry bag (like the first aid kit), or be something that doesn't really matter if it gets a little damp, like the cooking kit and fishing rod.
I know taking the air pump isn't really necessary but the air mattress I have is a full size single mattress and having the pump makes it so much easier to inflate and deflate. In time I plan on replacing the big air matress with a smaller hiking one, but not one of those tiny self inflating ones, I've had one of them and they didn't pack down too small and they were still uncomfortable. Something like a Sea to Summit Ultralight Matt, but they are pretty expensive and the one I have only cost $9 so it's a pretty hard argument to win.
Hopefully I can manage to knock off early tomorrow and get home to test the microphone on the bike. I'm going to jam it in the helmet first with the chin open and then closed. I'll also try it on my jacket somehow. The windscreen I have does a pretty good job at keeping most of the wind off, I am still waiting on the dead cat to put over the mic and if that doesn't work then I think I'm up for a better mic.
I came up with a couple of cool ideas too for things to film and techniques I could try out. As I'm using the 360° camera I need to try and do things that the other motovloggers can't, something to make me a little bit different without being too way out there.

Bomber.
The days are getting warmer..... just.

OMG I have a subscriber!

Well that was unexpected, the YouTube channel that I use to host videos to upload to this blog has got a subscriber! Roxy K  subscribed, they haven't started following me on here although I have one referral from YouTube in the last 24hrs so they may have come and checked out some of what I'm up to. They appear to be a motorcycle travel/adventure channel somewhere over in Europe, I haven't had a good look at their channel yet but seeing how they are interested in what I'm doing here, it's only right to spend some time checking out their work and seeing if I want to subscribe to them in return.
Getting just one subscriber is so encouraging, I've done nothing to try and promote this blog or the YouTube channel associated with it. The first test video I did now has 29 views and the other two videos I did earlier this week have six and nine views too. I may be onto something here with the 360° camera and motorcycles and camping. I thought that it may be the way to go but it is always nice to get some sort of confirmation that I'm on the right path.
I hope that when I actually get some real videos uploaded that they are appreciated and that I start to get some real subscribers. I put up some of the test footage on my personal facebook page and one of my friends commented that they thought that the video quality wasn't that good. I think it is probably on average for most motovloggers but mine are stabilised at least and I hope that my audio will be good. I do think that it would be nicer if it were clearer

Insta360 Pro

but even looking at the better 360° cameras out there it's pretty good unless I want to spend thousands on a professional one. The Insta360 Pro ($5,299) or Pro2 ($7,499) are probably the cheapest professional 360° VR cameras currently available and they do look pretty awesome and for that price, they'd want to. The GoPro Fusion is probably the only "consumer" camera that is better than the Insta360 One and it still sells for around $1,000 which is more than twice what I paid for what I've got and it's no where near twice as good as it.
I've set up some extra Patreon tiers too and some goals on the Patreon page. The standard tier is $2 per creation. I've added two more tiers, $4 per creation and you'll get extra 360° footage. For $10 per creation you can help choose locations and the music for the videos and a few other perks.
The Patreon goals I've set are that if I get 250 patrons I'll make one video per week for 40 weeks. If that is only off the $2 per creation then that's $500 per week for 40 weeks so I should be able to afford a better camera. The next goal was that if I get 500 patrons then I'll buy a better camera. Then the final goal is if I ever get 1,000 patrons then I'll retire and make the motocamping YouTube channel my full time job. These are patrons on Patreon, not just subscribers on YouTube. I don't honestly think that I'll ever get to even 250 patrons but it is nice to dream. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 patrons is what it would really take to be earning enough money to retire but then I'd have to be making videos every week without a break. I guess that with planning I would only need to do 26 nights of camping in a year and then just do all the post production and what not. I could almost do a big trip each year at that rate, I'd then have to spend a few weeks in post production and scheduling the release of each video but then I could spend the rest of the year doing other things. Like I said, it's nice to dream.

Bomber.
feeling pleased 😄

Back to the Future.... kind of

I came up with an idea for this blog that could be pretty cool. I'm going to start drafting a one year celebration post. Yes, yes that's very ambitious but it's going to be 100% honest and it's going to be set like a time bomb, eg I'll schedule the date and time of the publication and not leave it in a draft. That way if I ever do stop writing this blog, it will still get posted, even if I'm dead it'll still post!
What I plan to do is each month I'll update the one year celebration post with a paragraph or two about what I've been up to during the month and what I think I'll have done and what I still think I'll be trying to do. I'll also use it to mark off the goals I set for myself and how I've been tracking against them.
I plan on dating each post so there will be an entry something like the below. As it's been just over a month it'll be a recap of what I've done and how I'm feeling about the whole YouTube and blogging, kind of like a TL;DR for the year 😄.

28 August 2018 - 
a brief recap of the months achievements and such then some goal tracking
108.5kg. 
0 Motocamping Trips
0 Videos uploaded
0 Subscribers

I just hope that I remember to update the post regularly and that there is more than just one month in the post! I don't want to edit any of the monthly updates after I've written them, they are to be a snapshot or timecapsule and if I edit them in later months then they won't be a true reflection on that month.

I went back to the doctors today. The blood tests didn't show anything and my blood pressure is back to normal so that's a good thing. The doctor has given me more anti-dizzy pills, enough to last three weeks this time and also some pills that are diuretic to see if there is any fluid in my ear that may be causing the dizziness. The trouble with the diuretic is that it may cause dizziness and low blood pressure. I had to laugh when the pharmacist told me that. Anyway if I'm still dizzy in three weeks or if it gets worse, then I need to go back to the doctor. Fingers crossed that I'm on the mend.
Becuase of going to the doctor and getting home later I didn't manage to get out for a walk after work. I did do a little extra walking at work today but I'm only at about 9,000 steps for today. I'll need to make that up tomorrow.

Bomber.
Still setting goals.

Latest Test Footage

Yesterday afternoon I installed what I think is the best way to

New camera mount

mount the Insta360 One camera to the bike. The only thing that would make it better would be a mounting stick that doesn't start telescoping down after a few heavy bumps. I had to stop a few times to put the camera back all the way up so maybe a fixed pole could be the way to go. I may be able to come up with something that has a dual purpose to be used when camping but I won't really mind as long as it's stable and does the job of holding the camera in the right place. The screw is in a position where it shouldn't interfere with any luggage that I want to put on the back and I can always make a cap for it if needed. 
I spent some time last night going through the footage that I captured and put together another little test video. I think I managed to record in LOG mode which should have given me more colour information but not as much colour will show in the footage straight out of the camera. LOG mode is meant for when you are going to do your own colour correction in post production, which is exactly what I did using Davinci Resolve. I also added some text and some music. The music isn't from Epidemic Sound as I don't see the point in starting my subscription just yet, I just used the free YouTube music that is OK but no where near as good as the Epidemic Sound stuff.
First I produced a 360° video and put all the text and everything in that. I tried to put everything in at a size and location that it would work in both the 360° video as well as the traditional video 16:9 video. I then rendered the 360° video and reimported it to Insta360 Studio and made the Free Capture 16:9 video out of it. I'm still not 100% sure that this is the way to go, it's certainly the easiest but I don't want the quality to suffer because of it.
The $2 mic only showed up today and I didn't think to try the phone earbuds microphone idea that I had the other day. I was just too keen to get out and try the new camera mount. I was going to try some drive-by shots but I forgot to do them too. 
Below there are two videos, they are exactly the same footage and music, one is in 360° format and the other in standard 16:9, this is how I plan to release my videos for the motocamping channel. The standard 16:9 video will be on YouTube for everyone to watch and the 360° video will only be available to my patrons on Patreon. 

 

Bomber.

a budding Cinematographer

Fitting the Camera

The camera mount that I purchased isn't going to be strong enough to hold the camera where I want it, at least I don't think it will and I'm not willing to risk it to find out. I mounted the camera to the bike as I was planning to use it and it was flexing far too much just sitting in the garage. I'm using the camera attached to the selfie stick to get the camera up above me, if I hit a bump I'm pretty sure the mount would wobble too much and over time just break off and the camera would fall off the bike and get broken. The mount will still be useful if I want to put the camera in different positions without the selfie stick, such as on the handle bars, or, off the frame lower down on the bike.
I've come up with a way for mounting the camera directly to the rear rack on the bike. This should be nice and strong and help keep the camera more stable. I used an existing hole in the rear rack and just had to drill a small hole in the rubber that protects the rack. It looks quite tidy and seems to do the trick. Another advantage of doing it this way is that if it comes loose, it'll sit through the handle on the rear bag of the bike and as long as the bolt doesn't come all the way out it'll still be attached to the bike and won't be able to fall all the way over.
I discovered that there are two types of self sticks, one that is designed for bullet time and one that isn't. Using the selfie stick for bullet time puts a lot of stress on the mounting point so they make the bullet time stick a little stronger. Lucky for me I have the stronger selfie stick. If you have the same camera and a selfie stick and want to know what type of selfie stick you have, the one designed for bullet time actually says "Designed for Bullet Time" on the side of it, well, at least mine does.
I've also seen people having issues with the plastic thread in the bottom of the camera itself and it wearing out pretty fast. The waterproof case I purchased actually has a metal thread in it and even if it does wear out or break, it'll be cheaper to replace the case than the camera, so I've had a couple of wins without even trying.
I headed out this afternoon and took some footage, I may be able to use some of it in the intro videos depending on how it looks. It's currently being processed so I can't put anything in todays post but I'll put something in tomorrows. 
I've only got a few more days left of the anti dizzy tablets so I'll need to go back to the doctors during the week sometime. I was pretty dizzy this morning and still a little this afternoon but once I had the mount sorted I just had to get out and give it a go. New after dinner and another tablet I'm starting to feel more normal again. I hope the dizzy spell yesterday and today was just because I forgot to take a couple of tablets on Friday and not a sign that my blood pressure has dropped even further. I did have some beer on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night so that may not have been the best idea either. The tablets say that they may increase the effects of alcohol, which I didn't notice at all, but maybe the alcohol decreased the effectiveness of the tablets. Hopefully I'm feeling better tomorrow otherwise I don't know if I should go to work feeling like this, it could be dangerous on the bike and also I don't know how much use I'd actually be.

Bomber.
....like a whirlpool that never ends....

Weighing In

108.5kg. It was a slow start to the week. I didn't get out on Sunday as it was cold and raining occasionally. Also, I was feeling a little dizzy with some vertigo or something. On Monday at work I started to feel a little light headed and dizzy in the morning and a little like I had motion sickness or something. I did a little research and I thought it could have been an inner ear infection or something like that so I made a doctors appointment for Tuesday morning. I was a little bit worried about riding home but decided that I could always pull over if I started to feel dizzy while on the bike. I also didn't go for a walk on Monday as I was still feeling a little nauseous and I didn't want to have a dizzy spell when I was out, I made my 10,000 steps for the day all the same, so I didn't feel too bad.
On Tuesday morning I went to the doctors as I was still a little dizzy, it kind of felt like I was a little tipsy or something. Apparently my blood pressure is a little low and that could be causing the dizziness. It turns out that one of the reasons that my blood pressure might be a little low is because I've been losing weight. The doctor encouraged me to keep on losing weight even if that is what was making me dizzy. She checked me over and seeing as I didn't have a cold and she couldn't see anything wrong in my ears, she wasn't quite sure what was going on. The doctor ordered some blood tests and she gave me some pills to help with the dizziness. I also went and got the ultra sound done on my knee on  as the doctor was willing to give me a medical certificate for the day off since it was already 11am by the time I'd finished there and I still had to get the ultra sound done.The ultrasound didn't show that there was anything wrong, so that's good, it must have been as I initially thought, tendinitis. As it can take some time to heal properly I laid off the afternoon walks for the week just to be on the safe side.
Wednesday was a pretty big day. I had to work back and things went from bad to worse. I didn't end up getting home until 1:30am. When I was crawling into bed I check my fitbit to see how many steps I'd done and it said just a little over 3,000. I was kind of surprised until I realised that it was referring to 3,000 steps since midnight. For Wednesday itself I did over 16,000 steps, so I really did close to 20,000 steps in total from when I got out of bed until I got back into bed.
Thursday was back to normal apart from being tired from getting to bed so late. I'd done over 10,000 steps by the time I got home from work so didn't head out. Friday was a normal day and I managed to get out for a walk at lunch. I forgot to take my anti-dizziness tablet at lunch and again at dinner on Friday, so I woke up this morning feeling pretty dizzy. I obviously need to keep taking them. I haven't heard from the doctor and my wife wants me to call them to follow up just in case there was something wrong with them. I don't really want to think about it at the moment so I'll probably call them on Monday.
Since my mother died of ovarian cancer several years ago, I always start worrying when I start feeling a little off. Just before she was diagnosed she'd said that she was feeling a little flat and felt like that she needed a tonic or something to give her a little "pick me up". For her own reasons my mother refused treatment the second time around, it had spread to her liver and there was basically no chance that she'd be able to beat it, so she decided to try and get a few months of not feeling sick from chemo and enjoy that time as best she could, unfortunately the cancer was very aggressive and her time was short. I've already decided that no matter what, I'd fight it, I'd never give in. Maybe if I was older like my mother was at the time, then I'd have a different view, but I don't feel like I've done enough in my life or enough for my wife and kids to let it beat me without a fight. I seriously hope I'm never faced with a terminal illness, as that would just be such a confronting issue it'd make everything else pale in comparison.

Bomber.
Walking everyday next week - I hope

Getting Closer to Getting Going

It was only a day or two ago that I was saying how it won't be easy to get started. It's funny how a little time to think can change your perception. I'm not saying that it'll be easy, but I think the initial goal of filming the intro by the end of August could still be achievable. The new camera mount for the bike AND the Android adapter have arrived and it's got me thinking. Over the weekend I'm going to try and get some footage of me riding with the camera in the new position on the bike and also get some of me riding past the camera. Hopefully the new position and having the gyro stabilisation sorted will improve the quality of the footage. My wife is working Saturday morning and I'll have to take the kids to swimming in the afternoon so it'll probably have to be Sunday afternoon. There is a good chance that it'll be raining on Sunday and I don't want to film all the intro in the rain, but I still may be able to test out the waterproof case and get some shots for the intro. It should help fill out the look and feel if there is different weather conditions in the intro video anyway.
For audio I think that I might be able to just use my phone for any audio that I want to do in the intro, the built in mic is pretty good, failing that I may be able to hide the microphone that is on the headphones that came with the phone somewhere in my jacket and do most of the talking for the intro actually off the bike. Apparently one of the best cheap mics is to actually use one from a pair of iphone earbuds, just cut the earbuds off and put some dead cat over the mic. I thought I may be able to give this a go as I thought my wife has an old pair of iphone earbuds and mic hiding in a draw somewhere. She does but they only have the lightning connector on the end so no good for my phone, bugger! I'll keep searching around the place as others may show up somewhere.

A while back I bought a cheap VR headset that you put a phone into. I haven't even tried out the footage I've taken myself with it yet. It's been sitting on my desk at work for probably close to a year since I lent it to a colleague who was interested in trying one of them out but didn't want to spend the money. Once I've shot the intro, or at least shot some footage with the camera on the new mount, I want to have a look through the headset and see if it looks OK. This is what I'm going to be trying to charge people for on Patreon so hopefully it looks good and I'm happy with what I'm doing.
I've mentioned before about the music and how I will probably end up using a subscription to something like Epidemic Sound. I was watching a new channel (for me) the other night and was really getting in the music that was in the videos and wondered if there were any credits in the description, as it turns out there weren't any specific comments listing the artist or tracks but a comment that said if you want awesome music for your YouTube channel to go to this link, the link was one of the Bitly ones and redirected to..... Epidemic Sound. Oh yeah, and the video above, I just checked the description for that too and yeah, he uses them too. It almost like it's a conspiracy.

Bomber.
Getting excited.

Eating Healthier and Exercising

A couple of times in the last few days I was getting hungry in-between meals. Maybe it's just the last of the cold weather or something but instead of reverting to old habits I've been grabbing a piece of fruit or a tub of pro-biotic yoghurt and even I had a glass of Sustagen Gold which is some sort of protein powder that you mix with milk. I still want to avoid snacking where I can even if it is on healthier options as I do want to be losing weight, at least 1kg per week. I've been going alright with my lunches too, still no hot chips or anything deep fried. Still usually a wrap with cold meat and salad, occasionally it'll be a multigrain sandwich or a Turkish roll but I think I'm doing OK with that sort of stuff, you can't just eat the same thing all the time and not expect to get bored with it. I guess when I weigh in this week I'll see if the lack of walking (I've been a little ill) and the extra bits of fruit and stuff have affected the weight loss. I'll be devastated if I've put any weight back on or even stayed at the same weight. That in its self is funny as not that long ago I didn't really care either way.
I think that I might have to get some multivitamins just to be on the safe side, or maybe some pro-biotics as I still often feel uncomfortable in my guts and that may help with that. I've never taken pro-biotics before so I'm not sure how my body will react. I used to take multivitamins and they seemed to help with me not getting as tired throughout the day but the exercise seems to helping with that too and probably not eating crap makes a difference as well.
I'm happy with my progress thus far and really want to make an effort to keep things going as I don't want to end up fat and tired and feeling sorry for myself. There was a guy who I used to work with who retired a couple of years ago, he passed away within a year or two of retiring. He was overweight and didn't do anything about it, he ate poorly and didn't really have any plans for what he was going to do with his retirement. I think that it probably played a part in him passing away so soon after retiring. I'm not sure, there may have been other factors going on that I don't know about but still, I want to retire as early as I can, as healthy as I can and still be able to do the things that I want. I don't want to retire and find that I'm not healthy enough to enjoy life any longer.
My wife was talking the other day about getting a gastric sleeve, she was asking me if I thought she should get one. I told her that there is no point getting a gastric sleeve when you haven't even tried losing weight any other way. She said that diets have never worked for her and she can't stick with them. I just told her to stop eating a big bowl of ice cream every night, stop snacking on crap and start coming for walks with me and see how that goes as it seems to be working for me. She wasn't too happy with my answer but the truth is, it's not worth having if you haven't had to work for it. If she got a gastric band, sure she'd lose weight, but her habits won't have changed, she'll still be eating junk and after a while, gastric band or not, she'd be in bad shape again, maybe not with weight issues but other health issues from not eating right or exercising enough.
Anyway, good thing she doesn't read this blog.

Bomber.
Probably getting in trouble for this post sometime in the future.

Not Quite so Easy

Yesterday I posted about how and when I thought I might be able to get out motocamping, it's not going to be easy. I looked at the option of taking a Wednesday off and went through the calendar looking for suitable dates from when Daylight Savings starts til the end of the year. I came up with maybe nine Wednesdays between now and Christmas that could possibly work. To take that many days off I'd need to really look at how many hours I do each week and work longer days so I would have done enough work hours that my boss would be happy for me to take the time out. There are others at work that already do four day weeks by working longer each day and I'd want to do a 9 day fortnight. I'd also need to chat with my wife and see what she thinks about the idea. She may not be thrilled about the idea of me being away so often. Doing single nights during the week would probably be easier on her really and it would mean that I'd be home every weekend and still have leave to be able to take time out as a family during school holidays and things like that. It would probably also make me a happier person to actually be out camping more and be doing the filming. I did set some fairly big goals for myself and if I don't start working towards them, then I'll never get there.
To start with, I think that in October I'll just take one Wednesday off and get out and do it. I should be able to do that without too many issues and then after I've done one, I'll see about the next. Once I've got a couple under my belt I'll chat to my wife and if she is agreeable then I'll chat to my boss. I think that if I start slow then anyone who does watch my videos and comments on it will help shape the future videos.
I got the 360° camera out of the cupboard this afternoon and had a play with it to see if I could figure out the gyroscopic stabilisation. It turns out that the issue I had with my previous recordings was that I hadn't calibrated the camera. I did end up doing that a while back and then never checked to see if it worked. I recorded one video straight away to see if it kept the gyro info from last time and then recalibrated the camera and recorded another video. I put both videos onto my computer and checked them out. They both worked, so that's really good.
I also discovered that I'll need to export the video out of Insta360 Studio in full 360° first and then reimport the video to be able to do the free capture that I want to use for the YouTube channel. I've messed around with Davinci Resolve too and figured out how to render videos and export them in a format that I can then re-add the right meta-data to that will turn them back into 360° videos.
My planned process at this stage is.

1. Record Footage - sounds simple, right
2. Import into Insta360 Studio and cut out the bits I definitely don't want to use.
3. Export a 360° video out of Insta360 Studio
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each piece of footage for that trip
5. Import all exported footage into Davinci Resolve to do colour correction and piece together the different bits footage into the full video. Add transitions, titles and any text I want.
6. Export the completed video from Davinci Resolve
7. Add the required meta-data to the video to make it a 360° video
8. Upload to Youtube for the Patreon viewers
9. Update the Patreon page with the new video
10. Import the Davinci Resolve export into Insta360 Studio
11. Use Free Capture to make a standard 16:9 1080p video 
12. Export the standard video from Insta360 Studio
13. Upload the standard video to YouTube
14. Add all the links and tags and such
15. Share the standard video to Facebook
16. Have a cold beer and get ready to do it all again

So yeah, not very straight forward but at least I have a plan. I hope that kit I've ordered arrives soon so I can start testing some more things out and also try and record an intro video for both the Patreon site and the YouTube channel. They should be almost identical videos just one will be in 360° and the other not.

Bomber
Getting itchy feet

When am I going Motocamping?

I really want to start planning some motocamping trips but my wife has been working every weekend and it's a bit rude to say, "hey wifey, take a weekend off so you can stay at home with the kids so I can go motocamping". I don't think she'd let me get away with that just now. I am going camping in a couple of weeks with a few mates, we're going fishing on a charter boat as a Father's Day pressie from our wives. I plan on taking along the 360° camera and trying to capture some of the weekend so I can use it as an episode at some stage. The trip won't really fit with what I really want the YouTube channel to be about, so I don't really want to "open" the channel with it. Also, I don't have a mic that'll work as the one I've ordered hasn't arrived, it may arrive prior to going away which would be good as I could test things out. 
I don't think that I'll be able to get the intro video finished by the end of August which was the goal I set myself a little while ago, but I haven't received the mount for the bike yet either and I want the intro to at least be close to what the rest of the videos will be like. Once I have all the kit and tested it out, then I'll shoot the intro.
I was thinking about the schedule that I set myself too, 20 videos for 20 weeks and that it might be a little ambitious. I was wondering if I could get away with maybe 12 videos a year, one each month, but to do that I think each video would have to be a complete trip and not split into two shorter videos. I wouldn't like having to wait a whole month just to see the second part of the video myself so I don't want my viewers to have to do the same. I was starting to like that idea until I realised that it would be 12 nights of camping where my original plan was only 10. 
I think that I will definitely need some more memory cards to capture all the footage for a three night trip, I'm thinking that I may even struggle with a two night trip. This is also why I want to try and record the upcoming fishing trip, just to get some sort of idea on how much footage I can actually hold on the SD card that I have and how easy it is to transfer that footage to my phone (which again needs the adapter that I'm still waiting on).
When the warmer weather arrives along with daylight savings, I should be able to take off the occasional Friday and head out after work on a Thursday. Most of the places that I want to visit initially are within two hours ride so if I'm prepared and have a plan on what I need to shoot each day, I could make that work as long as my wife doesn't have to work late night shopping. At a pinch I could go on the Friday but I'd need to be home early enough for my wife to head off to work at around 8:30am and that may just be pushing things. I don't want to be in a position where I'm rushing things as it will come across in the videos and it's also when accidents can happen. We also visit my Dad most Saturdays, so even if my wife wasn't working, I'd still need to be home in time to clean up and be ready to head out again for lunch.
Thursdays appeal to me as it will be quieter at all the places I want to go so I won't feel as self conscience about filming everything and talking to the camera. It would also give me a three day weekend which is always nice. Another option would be to take a Monday off and do a Sunday night, it should be fairly quiet but the roads will be busier as I head out with everyone else coming back.
As I'm writing this, I'm starting to think that it is going to be really hard to do what I want near a weekend, it's making me think that maybe taking a Wednesday off could work. I can get things ready on Sunday and make sure that everything is clean, packed and ready for use. Plan where I want to go and what I want to try and do at the location, as in walking trails or visiting historic sites. Get home a little early on Tuesday, throw everything on the bike and head off. Another plus would be that it should be really quiet where ever I choose to go. All these plans definitely require it to be daylight savings as I don't want to be arriving anywhere in the dark, it's not fun setting up a tent in the dark and the camera doesn't take good footage in low light either.
So I'll be camping either on Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday or some other night, sometime when it warms up and daylight savings is in effect, sometime between October and March, avoiding public holiday long weekends and school holidays... 10 nights in that time is going to be a little difficult but not impossible with proper planning and realistic goals.

Bomber
Missing Summer.

Understanding Social Media

When I set up the Instagram account I used a business account and it created a Facebook page for me to manage too. It automatically linked the facebook page to my personal profile which I'm not so happy about. I was trying to keep things a little separate but it appears that it's almost impossible to do that nowadays. I only found out as my cousin started following my Instagram account. I haven't really posted anything there yet but I guess that the cat's out of the bag and that other Facebook friends of mine will either have already seen the link or will figure it out at some stage. I've managed to keep this blog separate for the moment, but I guess as time goes on my wife will probably catch on and want to see what I've been up to when I've been mashing away on the keys each day (Hi Wifey!  for whenever you might end up reading this 😉).
I've realised that I don't really know how all this social media works and I should really find out a little bit more as my kids are going to be all over it before I know it and that scares me.
I grew up with a predominately analogue childhood. Most music was on tapes, although my brother loved buying his on records. CD players were only just coming onto the market when I was in primary school. We didn't get the internet at home until some time in high school and we didn't need to use it for homework, we had encyclopaedias for that, something like 20 big books full of information. 
I had a PC at home that I purchased myself (with a loan from my Dad). I got that when I was in year 11 or 12 I think, it was an IBM Compatible 486DX with a maths co-processor, I didn't really understand what all that meant when I got it and I still don't. It didn't have the internet, it ran a very early version of Windows. The PC started up in MS-DOS and if I remember correctly you actually had to type "Win" in the command line to launch Windows. Or you could just run other programs directly from MS-DOS.
I purchased my first mobile phone when I was nineteen, there wasn't such things as smart phones or even feature phones. It was an ugly Philips Twist and I used it primarily as a

Philips Twist

business phone for the Mobile DJ Business I was running. If I remember correctly, I actually lost it for a few days and it showed up out the front of a girlfriends house where I usually parked my car. It looked like I'd run over it. 
After that I think I had several of the Nokia phones, everyone was in a competition to get make their phones smaller and smaller. Who would have thought that Nokia wouldn't really be around anymore, everyone had one and if you didn't, everyone knew that you had an inferior phone. None of those phones had the internet, it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I got a phone that had any sort of screen capable that was able to do anything on the internet and that was just a feature phone not a smart phone.
I first really started using the internet in my early twenties, that was on computers and now like nearly everyone else I can't live without it. Well, can't is probably too strong of a word, but I do find it very useful and I've embraced a lot of modern technology and want faster internet and faster PCs and more gadgets and dohickies. I'd love to fully automate my home but I don't think the majority of consumers are ready for that yet so everything is still really expensive. 

Bomber
Feeling old.

A Month of Blogging

Well, that's a full month of daily posting on this blog. To date I have about 145 page views according to the stats page. I only found the option for my visits to the blog to not be tracked in the last ten days, when I last wrote about visitors to this site, so some of the visits prior to then are a little hard to determine if they were me or not, but I really don't think that I've visited that many times and I know some of the visits have been from overseas if the stats are to be believed. I try not to visit the site myself, occasionally I've gone back through and checked my spelling after posting but I try and do most of my editing prior to posting. I've been writing some posts in advance and scheduling their release but I usually give them a quick look over each day and also update anything that may have changed. For example I might say that I want to do something, but in the day or two since I started drafting the post I end up actually doing the thing I was hoping to do, so I update the post to be about what I did, not what I was hoping to do. Does that make sense?
Habits hey, I'm enjoying writing daily and putting my thoughts out there, I never thought that this would be my thing but there you go.
I sometimes wonder what I'm going to write about but then I find if I go off and watch some YouTube or do some research into something to do with video editing or basically anything, an idea for a post starts to form in my head. I often have a couple of drafts started waiting for me to finalise and they help with getting the writing juices flowing again.This post is an example of exactly that, I started drafting it several days ago so I'd remember that today was one month in. I actually jumped on to try and write about something else and noticed that this post had already been started, so I started drafting the other post and you'll see that in the next couple of days when I get around to finishing it
I still have 0 followers and 0 comments on all posts, so I don't know why I keep addressing these posts to an audience, but it does help keep me motivated if I believe that someone does actually want to read my daily dribble.

Bomber. 
Wondering when I'll run out of ideas.

Weighing In

109kg.
I'm very happy that I'm still losing weight and that I'm managing to stick with the routine of walking, avoiding snacking on junk and eating healthier for lunch at work. It's not really hard work, just a little bit of self control and that's about it. A couple of times this week I've thought that maybe I could cheat a little, but I managed to keep myself in check. Once I'm down below 90kg, then I can cheat occasionally, but by then I may be more keen on still losing more weight, I guess I'll have to wait and see.
I've swapped to Weetbix this week but I still haven't changed what I eat for dinner or how much I eat. I'm not trying to starve myself or lose weight in a hurry. I want this to be sustainable and I don't believe that going on a shake diet or radically changing anything around your diet is a sustainable way to live, who really wants to live on shakes all the time. I like food, I like eating, I like beer, but I don't like being overweight. I do wonder though just how quickly I could lose weight if I gave the shakes a go, I just don't know if I could stick with them and even though I know it is vain of me, I don't want anyone at work to see me drinking weight-loss shakes. I don't know if they'd have enough go in them to keep me going through to lunch if I had one for breakfast, my work can be quite physical at times. I couldn't have them for dinner, I like eating with my kids and I couldn't very well tell them to eat their meal if I wasn't even eating the same thing as them.
So far, I've lost 5kg in total, I don't really feel any lighter but I am pulling my pants up more often so I put another hole in my belt between the one I've been using and the next one down as that was just too tight. I'm going to have to put some more holes in my belt if I keep losing weight as once I'm out of the halfway hole I'll be in the final hole. That'll actually be pretty cool, it'll hopefully give me some more motivation to keep on losing weight and I won't have to measure my waist or anything. 
I do think that in general I've been sleeping better and I've also haven't been getting as hungry in-between meals. At bedtime in the first week, I was getting hungry but I haven't felt hungry at bedtime in the last couple of weeks. I'm hoping that isn't my metabolism slowing down too much and that the water is doing the trick in keeping me feeling fuller for longer and that my body isn't craving as much sugar as it used to. I did read somewhere a long time ago that once you have a fat cell, you have it for life (unless you get them surgically removed) but keeping yourself hydrated is a good way for the fat cells to not retain as much water themselves. It had something to do with back in the day where we could go through periods of feast where we would pack on pounds and retain fluid to help us get through times of famine. I'm very blessed to live in Australia, there are so many other places in the world that are so much worse off than here that I think we're spoiled and don't really realise just how bad it really is out there. Wow, that's getting a little too deep for this blog I think.

Bomber.
Feeling blessed.

Busy Week and a bit of a Bitsa Post

It's been a very busy week and I'm feeling quite tired. My knee has started hurting a little again today. I hope that I'm not developing a dickey knee, that would really suck.
I went for a walk at lunch and my fitbit counted it as exercise, I'd also done 10,000 steps by 2:30pm so when I got home I asked the kids if they wanted to go for walk, when they said no, I decided that it was probably best to rest my knee. Hopefully it's not too bad tomorrow.
My fit bit is already claiming that I currently average over 10,000 steps a day, so I'm pretty happy about that. I should find a way to link to my Fitbit profile so you can see what I'm actually doing if anyone actually finds this blog and is interested.
It's meant to be pretty cold (13°C) and windy tomorrow and they are also predicting rain, if it's not raining in the morning then I should make an effort to get out and do something. I still need to prune the apple tree in the backyard and as my wife loves using the shredder it may be a good time to do that.
Everything else is still kind of on hold, I'm still waiting on a few things to arrive in the post before I can head out and test things properly. I haven't really had a chance to do much this week with regards to the YouTube channel or really anything else.
Last night I put together a flat pack desk that we bought to put in the sunroom for the kids computer, which is one of my old ones. I've got to rebuild it tonight or this weekend and set it up so that it can be used by them. My son is so excited by the idea of having a computer that he can use.
Anyway that's about all I've got for today, take care out there.

Bomber
Going to sleep well tonight.

Getting Things Organised

After quite a bit of back and forth in my mind, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and subscribe to Epidemic Sound so I can have some great music in my YouTube clips. As I want each video to be over 10 minutes long, I'll need two or three songs in each video. Epidemic Sound has heaps of great tunes, I have been listening to lots of the tracks just as background music whilst writing posts for this blog and I'm really enjoying it (I'm doing it right now 😄)
The way I look at it is that I already pay about $17 a month for a family Spotify account, that covers four of us for however much music we want to listen to and create and download playlists. Epidemic Sound is $15 a month for me to be able to publish videos with their music in it, that covers up to 500,000 channel views a month. When you do the math it's a pretty good deal. I plan on putting out a video every week for 20 weeks, that's four videos a month. I'd need to be getting more than 125,000 views a week, with each video having 2 tracks in it of say 3 minutes a track.
6 minutes of music per video x 125,000 veiws = 750,000 minutes of music or over 520 days of non-stop music being consumed a week (if everyone watches to the end of the video). $15 per month to cover off over 5 and half years worth of non-stop music (520 days of music per video x 4 videos a month), I think that's pretty reasonable. I haven't told my wife yet, I'm hoping that once I put together some footage I can show here just how must of a difference that good music will make and she'll hopefully agree.
There is some decent royalty free music out there that you don't have to pay for, but you always run the risk of the artist changing their mind at a later date and you'll either lose monetisation from the video(s) that contain their work, have to remove the video completely from YouTube, or, re-edit the video with new music. I've probably halved my beer consumption so that alone would pay for the music subscription. 🍺🎵🤣
I mentioned previously that I had a list of locations that I'd like to try and visit to film at, this week I've been working on how the video should run. I've looked at similar videos that I've enjoyed and tried to put together a run sheet on how I'd like the video to be produced. I think this will help me with making sure I get all the shots I want and have enough useful content to actually make decent videos. I plan to take the run sheet with me and work my way through it. I've included reminders to myself to check things like storage space left on the SD cards and when a good time might be to charge the battery bank. I think if I'm armed with a plan before I leave home, then it's likely to be a successful trip. I plan on doing something off the bike in each video too, whether that is going fishing, walking up a mountain or visiting some waterfalls, just something other than riding and setting up camp.
I plan on doing two or three night trips, but the first one or two will only be single nights so I can get the feel for it and find out just how long it takes to set things up properly. I am a little worried about setting the camera up on the side of the road to capture a ride by, I'm worried that someone else will see the camera and stop and steal it when my back is turned. 
The run sheet should also help me in post-production as I'll know what order things are in on the storage cards and how I wanted to put them together in the final video. 
It's a long post today, I'm almost done, I promise.
Finally, I've being playing with a program called Audacity which is an amazing piece of free software. It's great at editing and refining audio, I managed to tidy up and remove a lot of the background noise from the audio that I captured using the bluetooth headset, unfortunately the voice quality is still really bad, it's good for a phone conversation but not good enough for what I want to use it for. I'm not holding any great hopes for the $2 lapel mic that is coming, I'm thinking that it will also produce quite tinny sounding voice but you never know. The audio that my phone captures from the built in mic is pretty good but I don't really want to hold it like a microphone in my videos either and it won't really work if I'm not close to it. To get a mic that connects to my phone and has decent reviews I'd be looking at around $25, that would be for a BOYA BY-M1 after that it would probably be a RODE Smartlav for over $100 and they keep going up. I don't want anything too expensive as I'll probably break it fairly often.

Bomber.
Ok, I'm done.

Learning New Skills

I've been spending some time recently learning how to use Davinci Resolve, that's the video editing software that I used to make the test video. It's got some really cool features and it seems pretty easy to use. I've never done any video editing previously and I'm really enjoying it. I have a Certificate II in Electronic Publishing but that was from over 20 years ago and concentrated on things like Photoshop and layout for magazines using an Adobe product. It also included time running an actual old school printing press and making the plates to put in them. Since that time I've only done a little bit of photo editing a few flyers and things for my Mum who used to run her own business. 
The test video I put up I've redone several times now using different settings from within Resolve to try and improve the image quality. I haven't updated the uploaded YouTube video itself, I've just been making changes and seeing what the difference is like on my own PC. I think that will be the trick with making videos for motocamping too, double and triple checking the finished video before uploading it to YouTube.
I've been learning how to make animated text, adjust the colour balance and stabilise footage amongst other things.
I'm still waiting for the Android adapter for my Insta360 One so I'm hanging to try out some of the features of the phone app. There seems to be a few options that I can't find in the Insta360 Studio that other people have shown in their own videos so I'm hoping that they are in the phone app AND that I can export those videos in decent quality. Being able to edit videos on my phone could also make the whole post production process a bit easier too, as I could start editing footage on my phone whilst still out camping. I'll need to make sure that my solar charger works properly before I head off on any multi-day trips otherwise I could be having the adventure of my life but not able to record it.
Also I managed to update the camera to the latest firmware and calibrated the gyroscope. I need to test the camera again to see if the gyroscopic stabilisation is working better now. The waterproof case showed up this week so I'm feeling better about getting out with the camera on the bike as it should help protect the camera and the lenses should I accidentally drop it or if it gets hit by a stone or bug. Once I've got all the bits and pieces that I've ordered I'll upload another sample video to YouTube to see what the improvements are like.

Bomber
An old dog with new tricks

Trying to setup Instagram

Dear Lord, What a mess I got myself into. I decided that I would set up an Instagram account linked the YouTube and Facebook accounts for the motocamping channel. I've never used Instagram before and I stumbled my way through settings things up. I did some searching and found that I could link Instagram to Facebook pages and not my personal Facebook account. So I tried to link accounts and it got messy, I couldn't figure out how to link it to the page at all, I then couldn't figure out how to unlink the accounts. I did some more searching and there is supposed to be a way but it wasn't showing up as it should for some reason.
Anyway, I found that I could change my Instagram account to business account. As that seemed to suit what I was trying to do a little better I went and ahead and did that. What happened is that Instagram tried to be so clever and create a Facebook page for me, but of course I already had one with the same name... I ended up deleting the one that I had created and tried to use the new one that Instagram had set up for me. I manged to do a test post and it all linked up and worked, however the page address was what I wanted plus a whole heap of random numbers afterward eg facebook.com/mynewpage-12398762366 where the address had previously been just facebook.com/mynewpage. So then I deleted the page the Instagram had set up for me and as I still couldn't unlink my Facebook and Instagram accounts, I deleted my Instagram account. 
After all that, I went back into Instagram and tried to create a new account and do things right this time, of course my username was no longer available.
I tried again the next day and I still couldn't use the username I wanted so I had to put a full stop "." in it. I've now got things set up correctly (I think) and I can post straight from Instagram to a Facebook page. If I promote my Facebook page I think I can also promote my Instagram page at the same time or vice versa. I need to look into that further but I'm looking forward to uploading some actual content and trying to get some subscribers and followers.

Bomber.
I thought I knew stuff.

Testing out my Knee

Today I was pretty busy at work, up and down ladders and basically doing everything that I did last Monday at work. I didn't do as many steps so maybe not quite as busy, but I did go for a walk when I got home. I realised after all of that, that last Monday night and into Tuesday morning is when my leg started to really get sore. I'm hoping that I haven't got a repeat of last week on the cards. Then again, if it does happen again, at least I'll know for sure what caused it and be able try to prevent it from happening again. If it does come back, I'll also book in for the ultrasound that the doctor wanted me to get. I didn't see the point in going once the pain had gone as there was a good chance that whatever caused the pain had gone too.
It was freezing when I got home and I was considering not going for a walk even though it would mean that I would likely get under 10,000 steps for the day. As I came inside, the first thing my son said was "are you going for a walk, because if you are,  I'm definitely coming with you". So that was that. On the walk I didn't go as far as usual, I was just trying to concentrate on getting over 10,000 steps and getting home. Both the kids came with me and we stopped at two different parks so the kids could go on the swings and slides at each of them. The wind was freezing and it was blowing quite a bit. 
I'm happy that I did get out and walk and get over 10,000 steps for the day, but I think I'm struggling with a bit of Monday-itis, both today and last Monday. I'm really looking forward to the warmer weather now, I can't wait for the longer daylight hours and having the house opened up to let the fresh air in.

Bomber.
Hoping that I'm not hopping tomorrow.

Getting Out There

I'm still waiting for my Android adapter and waterproof case for the camera but I plan on heading out to take some footage to use in the intro in the mean time. I want some scenic shots of me riding by the camera as well as some shots from the bike. The intro may not have any actual camping in it but I can show me riding and maybe making some lunch and a coffee or something at a site near where I live to make it look like I was camping. I can also record a voice over for the intro video so I don't have to use the bluetooth audio. I did end up ordering a $2 lapel mic from eBay to test with my phone. It was so cheap that I couldn't let it go without at least trying it. The bluetooth helmet mic quality was rubbish. I ended up converting it to another format and I still couldn't use it. I'm hoping the Lapel mic will work ok with my phone so I can record to that. Failing that I'll have to try and get a proper audio recorder. 

I also purchased a mount for the camera that I'm hoping on putting on the back of the bike somewhere. I don't like where the camera was in the test video, I've looked at the possible options and I think I've come up with a way that the camera can be mounted behind me and slightly above my helmet. It should also be supported by the luggage rack that I currently have on the bike. I may end up using some cable-ties or something to secure the camera in place as the last thing I want is to have the camera fall off the bike and get damaged. 
I'm hoping that the camera will also record a more stable image once the firmware has been updated but again that is waiting on the Android adapter.
Today's goal is to have the intro video shot, edited and uploaded to the channel by the end of August. That's only two weeks away so I'd better get cracking.

Bomber.

Weighing In

Today I weigh 110.5kg. No messing around or making idle chit chat, that's what I weigh. Not really happy with that result but any loss really is a win as at least I didn't put on weight. I'm still doing really well with avoiding junk and drinking more water. I have decided that Sundays will probably be a day of rest, if I've already made 70,000 steps by Sunday, then I won't go for a walk if I don't really feel like it. Sundays are a good day to work on the blog and edit videos as the wife goes to work and the kids usually want to take it easy too.
It was raining on Monday so I didn't go out for a walk, I didn't feel too guilty as I'd already done over 11K steps by the time I got home so I was happy to avoid walking in the rain. Monday night is when my knee started to play up so I didn't walk on Tuesday or Wednesday. I should have done some upper body workouts or something since I couldn't walk but I didn't think about that until later. I got out walking on Thursday and Friday after work but I didn't go as far as usual as I was cautious of upsetting my knee again. I did at least get over 10,000 steps each of those days.
When walking yesterday I had to tighten my belt to stop my pants from falling down. The tighter hole was a little too tight and today I'm back using the old hole but maybe, just maybe, something is happening.
I took the kids to the park this morning so they could ride their bikes and I walked a couple of laps of the park myself. I should fix my own bike up so we could go for rides together. I'm pretty sure my son would be up for riding around Lake Burley Griffin, or at least some of the way around it. I'm not sure how my daughter would go just yet, but she'd probably give it a go.
The goal I set myself today is to be under 90kg by Christmas. To achieve this goal I need to lose roughly 1kg each week. I think that this is easily achievable. It may require that I give up beer altogether but I if that's what it takes then that's what'll have to happen. I know I said that I would only drink on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, but the last couple of weeks I haven't drunk on Thursday. I did have a couple of beers on Sunday though as we had BBQ for dinner and I lit a fire in the fire pit and enjoyed sitting out there after dinner.
I can't remember when I last weighed 90kgs, I'm guessing that it would have been 10 to 15 years ago. I don't want to stop at 90kgs, I'd like to lose more than that and get down to somewhere around 80kgs but also by then I want to be doing some weight training too, so I may put on weight in muscle mass. Still a long way to go so not going to think about it too much. Just keep on with the walking, water and no snacks and see where it gets me. 

Bomber.

Why I'm doing all of this

Back on the 10th of July, my wife and I were arranging a council kerbside collection of random odds and ends that we'd accumulated over the last few years. It is a good way to get rid of large items that you can't sell and don't want anymore. You can get one free collection each year so we thought it was a good way to get rid of an old mattress, an old broken fridge as well as some broken kids outdoor play equipment. Most things end up getting recycled which is good.
Whilst crawling around under the house looking for other things that we could dispose of, I came across some old tax records and other paperwork from several businesses that I was involved with over ten years ago. I've been a Check-Out Chick, Wedding DJ, Barman, CEO of my own company, Manager, Sales Person, I.T. technician, unemployed, part-time, casual, full time, commission based, over paid, under paid, not paid, not had money to pay others, this, that and many things in between, you get the picture. In Australia you are only required to keep tax records for seven years, I was a little late with lodging my records for several years, so when I did sort it all out I had several folders full of tax records, invoices, bills and general business documentation that I hung onto in a plastic tub under the house just in case.
I was planning on shredding the paperwork and putting it in the recycling bin. As it was cold out, I decided to light a fire in the fire pit to keep me warm whilst I did the shredding. I had the shredder mounted above the recycling bin to make things easy but after about 10 minutes the shredder just jammed up and one of the rollers stopped feeding paper through the blades. After a few minutes of fighting with the shredder I decided that it wasn't worth trying to fix it so I threw it in the bin. I still had several folders full of paperwork to dispose of so I thought I'd just throw them on the fire.....
Much smoking, blowing and waving a piece of card over the coals to keep everything alight later, I had a raging paper fire. As I sat there drinking a beer or two, watching the old company constitution paperwork go up in flames, I got to thinking. For the last year or two I've had this idea to start a two YouTube channels. The first channel was to be about motocamping, the second channel was to be about starting a YouTube channel. So if you haven't figured it out by now, whilst watching all the old business documents burn and reminiscing about all the things I'd done in my past, I decided that it was time to do something and not just keep telling myself that one day I would. I decided that instead of two YouTube channels that I would just do the motocamping one and I would start a blog documenting my journey instead of making a second channel. I also decided that I wouldn't try and promote this blog, that I would just do it and if anyone ever found it and subscribed or whatever to you to follow blogs, then that would be cool. I wanted the blog to be 100% natural, nothing made up, no help from friends, no paying for placements or anything like that. If you have found this blog through social media or any other way, it's not because of anything I've done, it's either someone else has found it and shared it or, you have just stumbled across it yourself. I treat this blog just like a personal diary, I don't try and make it anything in particular, it is just me and my random thoughts. I do try to stick to one topic per post though.
As I was feeling happy with my decisions around the fire pit, I decided that I should take some photos and video to mark the occasion that I decided that I would stop dreaming and start doing.
To date, I think most of the visits to my blog have been me, in the stats area of Blogger you can see some things and there isn't a lot of activity going on currently. I do however have 12 visits from the U.S., so unless it is a web crawler or something, then maybe people are already starting to find this blog. If you are reading this, please just make a comment to let me know that you are a real person and not a machine. You don't have to like what I write, just let me know that you found this little corner of the internet.
The photo at the top of this post is from that fateful night one month ago, I hope my enthusiasm continues to be strong.

Bomber.
One month since the book burning.

Adding up the Cost

I was thinking further about the music for the YouTube channel and how I really want it to be quality music and the last thing I want is for copyright claims to be made against any of my videos, especially since I'll be monetising them. I started looking at the royalty free sites and I found one that has heaps of decent music but it's a subscription based deal.
Epidemic Sound do a YouTube subscription deal where you pay $15 per month as long as you have less than 500K views per month. So yeah that would be me, but I don't think I want to start dishing out bucks for music just yet, maybe if I start to earn any money then I will. At least they guarantee that you won't get any copyright infringements and if you end your subscription, all the tracks you used previously are still covered.
Thinking about money got me thinking about how much setting up the YouTube channel is actually going to cost me (or has already cost me). I'm not including my time as it's more like a hobby at this stage, but I did buy a 360° camera and I've ordered some accessories for it too. I should keep track of all I spend. Maybe from time to time I'll update this list, hopefully I'll be able to include income at some stage in the future.

Insta360 One Apple Bundle $479.95
Lapel Mic $2.17
Lapel Mic dead cat $2.13
Camera mount for rear of bike $5.21
Android adapter for Insta360 One $27.99
Waterproof case for Insta 360 One $29.99
Total so far $547.44

I don't think I'll include things related to the camping trips like fuel and such, as I want to do them anyway. Maybe if I go out of my way, or end up staying in a motel or something, I'll put in the difference in the cost. There are a few things the I already own that I wanted for camping before I decided to do the YouTube channel. I already have a cheap battery bank with a solar panel on it. I've had issues with getting it to work properly but it's better than nothing. The Insta360 One also came with an 8GB MicroSD card, but I'd fill that too quickly. I had a 32GB card in my cheap action camera so I've swapped them over. I also have a 64GB card in my phone and when the adapter arrives, I'm pretty sure I can transfer videos on to my phone to free up space on the camera.

Bomber.
Back over 10,000 steps today!

Long Term Goals

Today I want to set myself some long term goals in relation to the YouTube Channel. I've spent the day at home thanks to the Doctor and got to do some thinking and some more research in peace and quiet as my wife had to work and the kids were at school.
Within a year of "going live" with the YouTube channel I want to have 10,000 subscribers. To do this I may need to pay for some placements on YouTube as well as some advertising on Facebook. To get to 10,000 subscribers in the first year is a huge undertaking and will only be achievable if I really work at making great content and being involved in the community I create. A few of the channels that have inspired me to have a go at this don't even have that many subscribers and they've been going for several years.
The next longer term goal I have is to earn $1000.00 in one month, that will be somewhere in the realms of 500,000 views in one month. I want to achieve this by the end of the second year.
Next up is earning $5000.00 a month, this is enough that I could quit my job and just do YouTube full time. I want to be doing this by the end of five years. If I get to the stage where I can be earning that much each month then we could choose to live in a nicer area where houses are cheaper due to lack of employment opportunities.
Our house is probably worth somewhere around $420K, it's 3 bed one bath on a medium suburban block. We could head down the coast and get a 4 bed, two bath place for that kind of money that would probably be newer than we currently have. I could still do some casual or part time work and so could my wife, but we'd have a better lifestyle and nicer weather too!
The final goal is to meet some of the YouTubers who inspired me to have a go at doing this. Meeting Mark from BikerBits Australia should be fairly easy, but meeting Joe Robinet or FTB would mean travelling overseas. I'm not going to set time frames for these, I just don't want to forget about why I started and who helped me.
Those are some big goals and they do kind of scare me but I think I just have to go for it, you know, aim for the stars. What's the worse that can happen, I don't achieve my goals but I still have a job and get to go camping lots.
My leg is feeling much better today, it's still a little sore but I can get up and get moving without too much issue and once moving there is almost no discomfort.

Bomber.
Hopefully walking tomorrow

Busted

I've busted my knee. I'm not sure what I did to it, but it hurts. I came home from work just after lunch as I could barely walk and I had to ride the bike home. I did a fair bit of walking at work yesterday and was up and down a ladder a few times but I never felt myself pull a muscle or anything. Last night at around 11:30pm the pain woke me up and I had a couple of ibuprofen. I dozed until 1:30am and then got up again and had a couple of codeine and paracetamol tablets. That got me through until the alarm went off. I felt like I'd only had a few hours sleep but my fitbit thinks that I got almost 8 eight hours of sleep plus a further hour of being awake during the night, not sure if that's accurate but it could just be the pain meant that I had a bad sleep.
I went and saw the doctor this afternoon and they said that it could be tendinitis or a baker's cyst. They've given me a referral to get an ultrasound just to be on the safe side and given me some more pain killers. Unfortunately it's put a stop to my afternoon walks for now, hopefully it will be better soon so I can get back to walking. The doctor didn't ask for a follow up appointment but did say that they'd look at the results of the ultrasound and let me know.
In my last post I said I was going to set some goals, so in the next few posts I intend to set some. Some of them may be a little ambitious but if you don't try then you won't succeed. I've already set a goal for walking, that is 70,000 steps a week. Once I've been hitting the 70,000 steps regularly I'm going to increase it to 75,000 and then 80,000 and so on if possible. It should be easier to go for longer walks as the weather warms up and the days get longer as I'll be able to go for a walk after dinner.
The fitbit app can track exercise so I want to try and get at least five days of exercise in during the week. My walks all count as exercise and sometimes it picks up things like mowing the lawn or if I'm working hard at work, up down ladders and such, so it shouldn't be too hard. Again if I start hitting it all the time then I'll change the settings for exercise and increase the amount of time I need to get my heart rate up before it'll count as exercise.

Bomber
aka hop-along