Wearing Different Hats

So, I'm away camping and no I'm not blogging whilst I'm away, I wrote this post prior to going away. I thought that I'd share with you some of what I've done career wise as I've done a fair few different things.
My first paying job was delivering pamphlets, that was a complete rip-off. I was a teenager and would spend a heap of time sorting and packing a bag to only make something like $14 for a weekends work. I reckon the person who was paying me was ripping me off. I never really counted that as a job, but I guess it was. When I was 17 I started working as a checkout chick at a Coles supermarket. I'd work a couple of days a week for 3 to 4 hours after school and another 3 or 4 hours on Saturday and Sunday. I worked for five years at Coles and ended up doing shift work, three to four graveyard shifts per week.
Around the time I finished school and whilst still working at Coles, I borrowed some money off my Dad and bought a mobile DJ business. I would DJ weddings, birthdays and school socials. It was good fun and I managed to start building the business. I think the DJ businesses time was limited as online music and iPods were becoming all the rage and people could download music and make their own play-lists without the need for a DJ.
I left Coles and started working in a pub, whilst still doing the DJ thing when I could. I ended up managing the pub, it was only a small place but I organised live music 5 nights a week, Wednesday was darts night and Sunday the pub was closed. At one stage, my Dad looked at buying the pub as he was worried that I would never find a "real" job. Together we decided that it wouldn't be a good idea and it's a good thing we made that decision. The owner of the building jacked up the rent and the pub closed. The old publican and myself started working on a business plan to open a new pub but that never eventuated, instead we started a live music booking agency and started running blues and roots musicians up and down the east coast of Australia as well as looking after the cover bands that played in the local pubs, at one stage we had something like 15 different venues in Canberra that we organised bands for. That business was ok but neither of us were any good at managing our money and some of our artists weren't very good at paying us what they owed us. I was still working in pubs at night and at times I'd open my wallet to pay our staff member out of money I earned the night before pulling beers. That was enough for me, I closed the business and almost went bankrupt from all the unpaid bills. 

It was around this time I met my future wife. I started doing more shifts in pubs again and also spent some time in a computer repair shop. I was kind of odd as the computer repair shop was in the old shop that we started the booking agency in, just a few doors up from where the pub I used to manage was. Canberra is really a country town pretending to be a city.
I started looking for work again after a few months and got a job full-time in retail. I guess it was my first proper job since Coles that paid properly including super, annual leave and sick leave. After being there three years, I'd worked my way up to being assistant store manager and was being sent around the country to help out at other stores. I got married and I wanted to earn more money so I left retail and started working in information technology. I worked for one company for around three years and then changed to my current company where I've been doing the same job for the last seven years.
Now I'm essentially starting another small business, but this one is more of a hobby and unless it can exceed my current salary then I'll keep my full-time job. I guess if I start making more than half my current salary, I could look at going part time, but that would be a big decision to make.
 

Bomber
hopefully having fun at the coast

Ready to Roll

The bike is loaded up and ready to roll in the morning. I'm not sure what time I want to set off just yet, it takes about two hours to get where I'm going but I do want to stop and film some ride bys and the memory card isn't big enough to just leave the camera filming the whole time, the battery wouldn't last that long either, it's only meant to last 70 minutes.
The forecast for the weekend is that there is a chance of showers but that can also be a good thing as it means it probably won't get as cold over night, only down to around 10°C, hopefully it doesn't rain too much, or if it does rain it's overnight.
Last weekend I was wondering what my sleeping bag is actually rated to, so I took a look at the bag to see if there was anything written on it, that's when I remembered a mate saying that I should buy a compression sack for it. I took a look on eBay and found one for fairly cheap and it arrived this week. I've had this particular sleeping bag since I was in my late teens and I always thought it was a down sleeping bag. It turns out that it's not down, it's two layers of 200gsm siliconised, high loft, hollow fibre. I'm not really sure what that means but by googleing around a little I think it would be rated to somewhere around -12°C or at least it was when it was new. That doesn't mean that I'll be comfortable at -12°C, that just means that I shouldn't die. What it does mean is that anywhere down to 0°C I should be fine in. I was a little concerned about going camping so early in spring as the mornings can still be really cold with the occasional frost. The sleeping bag is still in really good condition, I think my Mum and Sister did a really good job when they got it for me.
I've got Monday off too, so if the weather is nice and I really feel like staying an extra night, I just might do that, in fact, I've pretty much convinced myself that I'll try and come home via Araluen and stay at one of a couple of campsites along the way. Hopefully my camera battery and storage card can handle it all as I'm going to try and make the Araluen camp the first official video of Motocamp360.

Bomber
tomorrow it could start

Camera Case

I bought a case to keep all the camera kit in and boy was my wife unhappy about it. I guess I'll have to really lay off on all the purchases for a while. The box that the Insta360 One came in was really good, it has a place for everything that came with it. I was thinking that I may just be able to find some Tupperware to put the box in and that would do. Then I bought the waterproof case and the Android adapter, not to mention the other camera mount, the microphone and the flexible phone tripod that will also fit the Insta360 One. The case I've bought fits the existing box in it as well as all the other bits and pieces, there isn't much room to spare on the top but there is a second layer underneath if I really wanted to cram more stuff it.
The pluck and pick foam in it is pretty good but I've seen on YouTube that you can spray it with Plastidip and make it a little more permanent. I'll see how things go for the moment and in the future I may end up spraying my case too. I'll probably have to do that if I want to use the second layer.
The case is a little bulky but it seems really strong and is meant to be waterproof so it should hold up fairly well and it means that I can store the camera kit safely in the bottom of a cupboard instead of it taking up prime real estate in my clothes cupboard.
I think I'm done with my purchases until I subscribe to Epidemic Sound and I'll only do that when I'm ready to start releasing content.

Bomber
picking fights with the Minister for War and Finance.

The Loadout

On the weekend I managed to sort out all my camping kit. I listed everything in the kit the other day so I won't spell it all out again now, but I'm really starting to look forward to catching up with my mates, doing some fishing and telling some tall stories. Getting everything out and making sure it works is kind of fun but also kind of a pain, setting up a tent just to take it down again is never fun, except when I'm using my instant tent. Unfortunately the instant tent is too big to fit on the back of the bike otherwise I'd be using that for motocamping. At a real stretch I could possibly tie it to the side of the bike somehow, but it'd have to go on the chain side and would probably get chain lube on it (the other side has the exhaust on it).
I keep everything in a plastic tub in the garage so it's easy to find and store at the end of a trip. Looking at it, it all seems larger than I remember and that's not a good thing as now I want to try and buy smaller kit. The main thing that seemed larger than I remembered was the air mattress, it's probably about the size of a self-inflating one that is about 2cm thick but it is heavier. The weight doesn't concern me too much as the bike is doing the hard work, but the size could be smaller. The mattress is awesome though when inflated and as long as it doesn't get a hole in it I'll keep using it. 
I'm definitely not taking the poles for the fly if it's not raining. I've never stayed a the place that we're going to so I don't know if there will be a tree I can tie the fly to or not so I really need to take the poles if I want to use the fly. There is a fly on the tent but I don't think that the tent is really all that waterproof. I did spray it down with scotchgard so it's hopefully better than it was when I bought it. 
I can see that I'm going to have a shopping list of things to buy if I start to make any money from the YouTube endeavour. 

Bomber
already finding ways to spend money I don't have

Do I need a Website?

Whether I need a website or not is something that I've been asking myself recently. With the Facebook page, the Patreon page, the Instagram account and the YouTube channel I don't really want to have another thing to update and look after. If I do want to sell merchandise though, I'm going to need to put it online somewhere, even if I used something like Spreadshirt to make and distribute t-shirts for me, people would still need to visit that site to buy them. Spreadshirt by the way, looks a lot cheaper than some other options, If I buy 10 shirts of various sizes I can get them for under $15 each, the cheapest t-shirts you can get from somewhere like K-Mart are about $5 - $10, they have some 100% Australian cotton ones for $8 so I guess I can still make them cheaper but it'll depend on how much the screens and ink actually cost. I'm not sure if I'll make my own or not at this stage or not because of this. I don't really want to go out an buy a heap of stuff and then end up not selling any t-shirts.
You can't seem to sell individual merchandise items on Patreon so I'd need to use something else. There is a site called Shopify that I think starts at $9 a month but I don't really want to be paying a monthly fee as that will eat into whatever little profits I do make. I'm already going to be paying for music and that's more than I really want to pay in the first place (even though I know it is good value), I need to be making something before I start spending lots. Wix is something like US$16.50 per month for a site with a shop so that's not going to work either. The more I think about this as I write this post, maybe I'll just have to set up a private seller eBay store but I'm not even sure how that'll work as the cheapest business store is $24.95 per month, may be Shopify is the best option if I get into selling merchandise. I may just be able to research into using PayPal and doing my own site, or in a post on Patreon or something, or a dedicated website that ties it all together somehow. It's too confusing and I don't think I've answered any questions.


Bomber
not quite an entrepreneur (yet)

Testing Out the $2 Mic

Happy Fathers Day. My kids spoiled me and got me a heap of cool stuff as well as a little box of chocolates. I did eat one of the chocolates but I think I'm going to try to ration myself to one per day.
I managed to head out and test the new $2 mic this morning before my wife had to go to the doctors as she's been really sick with a cold and she has to work this afternoon. I attached the mic to the outside of my helmet just on the underside near my chin. When just sitting on the idling bike the audio is pretty good, but as soon as I start riding it goes to rubbish. You can only just hear me as there is a lot of wind noise. These was also some electrical buzzing, I don't know if that was because my phone case interferes with how well the mic plugs into the phone, or if it was caused by some sort of electro magnetic field being generated by the bike. I think I'll try the mic actually stuffed inside the padding of the helmet where the bluetooth mic is, that may get it out of the wind but it'll probably still pick up the noise of the helmet. If in the cheek pad doesn't work I'm going to have to attach the mic to the inside of the chin bar somehow or come up with a different way to to the talking part. There are a couple of Motovlogging channels where the voice over is obviously done in post-production and it works quite well, so I may have to do that, or at least a little bit of each. I'm not sure how I feel about sitting at my desk recording audio as my house can be quite noisy at times.
To see how I'd go talking whilst riding, I tried just to run through what I'd say in an intro to a video. I was trying to be enthusiastic and not ramble on too much and boy was it harder than I thought. I couldn't get out what I wanted to say without being a little disjointed and I kept making mistakes. I know it sounds weird but I'm going to practice my talking and riding skills on the way to work each day and try and get the basic intro down and memorised so it sounds more natural and less disjointed.
I did take the camera out with me as I wanted to try and get some shots of me riding past the bike, this was meant to give me some idea of how far back the camera would actually pick me up and what the audio is like from the camera with it just sitting on the side of the road. I'm still a little paranoid that someone will steal the camera if they see it just sitting there so I don't want to get too far away from it if I can avoid it.
You'll notice that I said that I wanted to, well, I made a rookie mistake and the battery in the camera was flat. I'm pretty sure I charged it up after last time I used it but I must have turned it on in it's case or not turned it off or something like that as it was turning itself off as soon as I turned it on.

Bomber
talking to myself

Weighing In

108kg.
WOOOT! it's the first day of Spring!
I've been a bit of a slacker this week and haven't been walking. I've started taking a once daily multi-vitamin with breakfast but I've also been stacking on some nuts in the evening, I know I shouldn't have but they were there, my wife had bought them for me to try and I was getting bored with being boring.
I started the week a little dizzy still and went to the doctors on Tuesday after work to get more dizzy pills and see if the blood tests shed any light. Wednesday I walked down to my daughters school for Dads and Lads night, we had a couple of sausage sandwiches, played a little bit of French cricket and she showed me what she'd been up to in class the last few weeks. Thursday I just really didn't feel like walking and Friday it was raining and cold so I didn't get out then either. I think my slacking off is reflected in the small amount of weight loss that I got this week. I must admit that my joints feel better, maybe I was over doing it with walking everyday, maybe I need to walk every other day and do something else on the alternate days. Still not sure about any of this exercise business really, but I still am keen to keep losing weight.
Next week I'm going to try and do much better, I'm going to have to, as I don't know what I'll be eating and drinking next weekend when I'm away camping and fishing and I really don't want to gain any weight. I'm not sure if drinking beer is having any effect on the medication that I'm taking for dizziness, I'm going to test it out this weekend and if it makes me really dizzy again in the morning like it seemed to last weekend, then I won't be drinking on Friday night as I don't want to be dizzy get sea sick on the fishing boat, maybe the dizziness will be counteracted by the rocking of the boat 😝
Hopefully it's not raining tomorrow so I can head out and test the microphone, I don't think I'll test the camera again with it, I'll just try and concentrate on the audio and try a few different positions to see what give me the best outcome. I tried at home with recording to my phone and it seems ok, maybe a little quiet but as long as the quality is good, I can handle it being quiet as I can always boost the volume in post. I've got a couple of options for cliping the microphone to the helmet and also to my collar so fingers crossed I can find something that doesn't get too much wind noise. I'm still waiting for the dead cat which will hopefully reduce any wind noise that I do get.

Bomber
still losing weight, just not so fast