Back when I was 19, I had a car accident. It was completely my fault, I was travelling too close to the car in front of me on a busy road. I was heading out to the Canberra Show and I'm guessing so were a lot of the other people on the road as it seemed quite busy.
All of a sudden someone cut it front of car that was several cars in front of me and then they jumped on the brakes as the lights turned red. Everyone then had to perform an emergency stop. The cars in front of me all had ABS, I could hear the ABS firing off, my old car didn't. I locked up the brakes and skidded in what felt like slow motion towards the car in front of me and ended up running into them. Like I said, my fault for travelling too close behind.
Anyway, the car I hit was a brand new Lexus. As for as I could see I hadn't done that much damage to the Lexus, but their bumper bar must have fit nicely in the front grille of my car as it busted it up and pushed my radiator into the fan. The fan carved a nice big round hole in my radiator. We exchanged details and they drove off with only minor damage, from what I could see, there were two scratches in the bumper bar and the guy who was driving the Lexus said it was a company car and that he probably wouldn't even put a claim in.
Several months went by, I'd fixed my car myself with parts from the wreckers and life was good, then I got a letter from the Lexus' insurance company. They wanted $888.97, that's not a made up number that's what it said, eight hundred and eighty eight dollars and ninety seven cents, keep in mind this was roughly 20 years ago. I called the insurer and said that I would like three separate quotes before I paid them anything. They said that as they were an insurance company they didn't have to get extra quotes, they thought the quote was fair and that was that. I'm not sure if that is the truth or not but I believed them and rang around a few repair shops and asked them if they thought the price was fair for repairing two scratches in a bumper. The answer was yes, if anything it was on the cheap side.
So I started saving up to pay them back. I advised the insurance company that I was a low income earner (I was at the time) and that I'd have to pay the debt off to them. I had a small tin that I put two three envelopes in, one was for fuel for the car, another for paying back the debt and a third for spending money, I was living at home with the folks at the time so I didn't have many expenses.
The insurance company were meant to send out some paperwork that I could fill in and sign to repay the debt. After several weeks I hadn't heard anything so I called them up and they advised that they were still sorting things out and would send me the form soon. At the time I was still working the graveyard shift in a supermarket so I had to stay awake until 9am when their call centre opened before I could call them. It may not sound like long, but it was hard when you were dog tired and all you wanted to do was to go to bed.
After several months I had saved up all the money that was owed and I was still chasing them up every couple of weeks for the paperwork to pay them back. They said the delay was because they weren't used to dealing with people, just other insurers.
Eventually they sent out the form and they'd increased the amount I owed. I was livid and called them, the girl explained that she had made a mistake when the quote was calculated and that she thought that I lived in NSW and not ACT and the wages were different. I told her that as it had taken so long for them to get their act together that I had saved up $888.97 and could pay them in full or, if they wanted more then that that I would go on a payment plan and pay it off over the next three years. They took the lump sum.
From this day I knew that if I set myself a target and worked towards it, then I could achieve it. I didn't miss the money I was putting aside for the insurers, I liked seeing the envelope get fatter and that helped me put more aside.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm a firm believer in setting goals and working towards them. I know that if I break it down into smaller chunks that it is achievable and that I'll enjoy seeing the results along the way. I'm going to start setting myself some goals for weight loss, exercise and the YouTube endeavour.
Bomber.
Kicking goals.
Monday, 6 August 2018
Sunday, 5 August 2018
Yesterday was a Good Day
Yesterday, after we'd had breakfast and I'd made myself a coffee we headed into Canberra's city centre, Civic, and went to the Canberra Centre, basically a big shopping centre. I went into the Apple shop and lo and behold, there was the Insta360 One Bundle. I'd done some research in the last few days and discovered that it would be cheaper for me to purchase the bundle from Apple and then buy the Android adapter and waterproof housing online from Amazon (which I've now done).
Wifey took the kids to swimming in the afternoon so I ducked out for a walk and took the camera with me to get some footage. I went down to the river and took some video and some photos. When I came home, I spent some time trying to figure out how to transfer the images to the PC and in the end I looked on the Insta360 website and found out that you can't transfer files via the supplied USB cable, that's just for charging. You have to put the SD card in a card reader.
Well, my PC doesn't have a card reader so I was trying to figure out another way. As I don't have the Android adapter yet, I tried my wife's iPhone, but it wouldn't connect. When I first set the camera up it asked me to change to Android mode, now I can't figure out how to change it back and I'm guessing that is the issue. Then I put the SD card in my action camera thinking that it may work as a card reader as that's how I transfer files off of it. No, that didn't work, what it did end up doing was messing with the format of the card so it no longer worked in the camera, doh! Suddenly I wondered if wifey's laptop had a card reader in it and it did, woot! I plugged it in and it asked me to format it.... dang it, I lost all the footage I took. I headed out again today but this time I attached it to the motorbike. I think that I'll need the Android adapter to fully set up the camera but here's a tiny planet photo that I created out of the video footage using Insta360 Studio on my PC.
I worked with the video in Insta360 Studio and created a "Free Capture" video, basically you turn the 360° footage into standard 16:9 footage and pan the camera around. The end result is that it looks like you filmed with a normal camera and were panning around and looking at things, when in fact you just had the camera in the one spot. Then I put the free capture video into Davinci Resolve and had a little play with it. I'd recorded audio on my bluetooth headset but Davinci Resolve wouldn't open the file for some reason, the audio quality wasn't that good anyway but I'll play with the file and see if I can tweak it a little.
I added music from a free music library, added the correct comment in the description and already I've been pinged for copyright infringement. The artist chose to make money from people who used their track. I think it's a bit of a dog act to put music up for free use and then change your mind later and ruin other peoples monetisation efforts. I guess that's the price you pay for using music where the owner can change their mind whenever they like. I haven't monetised my YouTube but I was annoyed that I'd been duped. SO, I went back into Davinci Resolve, changed the music, re-rendered the video and re-uploaded it to YouTube. Oh yeah, by the way, that means I now have the Blog and two YouTube channels to manage.
Anyway, back to the camera, I think for the price and the ease of use of the Insta360 One, I'm pretty impressed, this little thing should do wonders for my motocamping YouTube channel. I'm hoping to start filming proper footage soon so I can put together an intro video for the YouTube channel. The weather is warming up and the days are slowly getting longer, bring on the sunshine.
Bomber
Living life in 360° and contemplating paying for music 😒
Saturday, 4 August 2018
Weighing in
It's weigh in night, so I guess I did drag it out last week but I'm not going to tonight, I currently weigh 111kg. I noticed that there was a variation on the scales depending if I put more weight on my toes than on my heels, so this is the highest I could make the scale read. The lowest was 110kg.
I didn't manage to get out for a walk on Wednesday as I had to work late, however, I had been pretty busy during the day and had already achieved 10,000 steps by early afternoon. I didn't have any morning teas or snacks all week. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was disappointed with how few steps I managed to get last weekend. This weekend is already looking better but Sunday may be a little harder to achieve. I've already surpassed last weeks step total and today when I go to sleep, I'll have done over 76,000 steps. I'm happy with the weight loss, but more than that, I'm just happy that I'm getting better at avoiding junk and getting more exercise than I have in a long time. That alone is good for me and anything else is really just a bonus.
During the week I was speaking to a friend at work about food and
how I was trying to be better, I mentioned that I was having Just Right cereal for breakfast and he claimed that even though it did look ok, it was still really high in sugur. I've just looked it up on Choice and it is given a 4 star health rating so pretty good, I guess it could be better though. I might go back to the good old Weet-Bix for breakfast as it gets a 5 star rating and see if it makes much of a difference.
I was thinking that I might start taking photo's of my tummy to see if I can see any difference in myself week to week. When you actually pick up something that weighs close to 3kg it feels pretty heavy, yet I don't feel any lighter and I haven't had to tighten my belt or anything like that yet. Considering that I haven't loosened my belt any in the last few years either, that's probably to be expected. Most of my weight seems to be above my belt. I think that maybe once a month will be enough for photos, or maybe just a waist measurement or something as I imagine that as I do more exercise I'll also increase some of my muscle mass, I haven't decided yet so there are no photos or measurements.
Bomber
111kg
I didn't manage to get out for a walk on Wednesday as I had to work late, however, I had been pretty busy during the day and had already achieved 10,000 steps by early afternoon. I didn't have any morning teas or snacks all week. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was disappointed with how few steps I managed to get last weekend. This weekend is already looking better but Sunday may be a little harder to achieve. I've already surpassed last weeks step total and today when I go to sleep, I'll have done over 76,000 steps. I'm happy with the weight loss, but more than that, I'm just happy that I'm getting better at avoiding junk and getting more exercise than I have in a long time. That alone is good for me and anything else is really just a bonus.
During the week I was speaking to a friend at work about food and
I was thinking that I might start taking photo's of my tummy to see if I can see any difference in myself week to week. When you actually pick up something that weighs close to 3kg it feels pretty heavy, yet I don't feel any lighter and I haven't had to tighten my belt or anything like that yet. Considering that I haven't loosened my belt any in the last few years either, that's probably to be expected. Most of my weight seems to be above my belt. I think that maybe once a month will be enough for photos, or maybe just a waist measurement or something as I imagine that as I do more exercise I'll also increase some of my muscle mass, I haven't decided yet so there are no photos or measurements.
Bomber
111kg
Friday, 3 August 2018
fRideday Pieday
 |
| Pie at Batemans Bay |
I headed off around 10am. The weather was awesome with it clear and sunny, it started off around 12°C but by the time I was at the bay it was up to 22°C. I found somewhere to park near the water and made my way to the bakery. It was basically spot on midday. I ate my pie and went back to the bike and came home in time to walk down to the kids school and pick them up. I would have liked to have stayed longer at the coast and maybe gone fishing for a little bit (I have a rod that telescopes so taking it on the bike is easy), however there was rain forecast for this afternoon and although I don't mind riding in the rain, if I can avoid it I will. It was pretty windy on the way back so there is definitely some weather coming in.
Good news today too, the wife has agreed to me purchasing a 360° camera. I'll put up some photos and such when the camera arrives and I've had a chance to play with it.
I'm feeling more relaxed than I have in a while so I think taking the day off and going out for a ride was good medicine. I've also managed to keep my steps up and even with the ride will easily surpass 13K steps today.
Bomber
Enjoying the little things.
Thursday, 2 August 2018
Music
I started looking around for music for the YouTube channel and decided that I could probably just get some free software and make my own. I used to play guitar and I come from a musical family so it can't be that hard right. Wrong. I think I'm just going to have to use some of the royalty free music that is available on YouTube and some of the other sites.
I don't want to have to pay a subscription for the music, I'd be happy to pay a one off licensing fee for a track that I'd use in my intro and outro, but for the background music during and for any riding sequences that I want to put to music I'm going to have to find some decent free music.
I was thinking that I could possibly hit up Airtasker, but for music I think that there might be better ways to do it.
I've designed a logo for the channel too, I quite like it but it may need a little work to get it to something that will work on tee shirts and caps.
This is all starting to get quite time consuming, but I'm enjoying it and really just want to get out there and start filming. I've actually taken tomorrow off so I can hopefully get out for a ride and take some footage with an old action camera that I have. It claims to be 4K but the image quality just isn't there so it must be upscaling or something. I'm currently downloading Davinci Resolve which I'll be trying to use to edit the video and combine audio and put in text and all sorts of stuff if I can figure out how to use it.
If I can sort something out I'll try and post it up here in the next few days.
Bomber.
13,000+ steps
I was thinking that I could possibly hit up Airtasker, but for music I think that there might be better ways to do it.
I've designed a logo for the channel too, I quite like it but it may need a little work to get it to something that will work on tee shirts and caps.
This is all starting to get quite time consuming, but I'm enjoying it and really just want to get out there and start filming. I've actually taken tomorrow off so I can hopefully get out for a ride and take some footage with an old action camera that I have. It claims to be 4K but the image quality just isn't there so it must be upscaling or something. I'm currently downloading Davinci Resolve which I'll be trying to use to edit the video and combine audio and put in text and all sorts of stuff if I can figure out how to use it.
If I can sort something out I'll try and post it up here in the next few days.
Bomber.
13,000+ steps
Wednesday, 1 August 2018
Setting up Social Media
I know, I know, I'm probably putting the cart before the horse but I started setting up some of the social media accounts that I'll use for when I start my YouTube channel. I was trying to come up with a name for the channel and when I settled on one, I did a bit more searching to see if it was available on YouTube, FaceBook and Gmail.
My first choice was moto360, as it turns out there is already a moto360 and although it's not really anything to do with what I want to do, I didn't want any confusion or any chance of being told that I had to change my name. The moto360 is actually a smart watch by Motorola.
I'm not sure if I want to link my moto vlogging with this blog at this stage, so I won't put the name I've decided on in here, but I've been setting things up and have been playing with logos and backgrounds. So far, I've only put up that the first season is coming and I haven't uploaded any videos yet.
I've been doing more research into how to promote a YouTube channel too. Basically, what I've read and watched so far is what I was expecting, high quality video with high quality audio does a lot better than lower quality, no big surprises there. I've been learning about paying for placements too, I'm not sure if that's a path I want to go down but I might give it a go.
So I have my YouTube, FaceBook and Gmail sorted out, I still need to sort out a website and/or a Patreon site.
I still need to purchase a 360° camera. I thought I'd decided on going for the GoPro Fusion but I don't know if the slightly better image quality is worth paying over twice as much for. I know the better the image quality is, the better the content is and the more likely I am to succeed, I just don't think it is worth all the extra money. I'm leaning back towards the Insta360 One, it gets very good reviews and the price is appealing too.
Bomber.
- Two weeks of daily posts.
 |
| Moto-360 by Motorola (a watch, not a YouTube channel!) |
I'm not sure if I want to link my moto vlogging with this blog at this stage, so I won't put the name I've decided on in here, but I've been setting things up and have been playing with logos and backgrounds. So far, I've only put up that the first season is coming and I haven't uploaded any videos yet.
I've been doing more research into how to promote a YouTube channel too. Basically, what I've read and watched so far is what I was expecting, high quality video with high quality audio does a lot better than lower quality, no big surprises there. I've been learning about paying for placements too, I'm not sure if that's a path I want to go down but I might give it a go.
So I have my YouTube, FaceBook and Gmail sorted out, I still need to sort out a website and/or a Patreon site.
I still need to purchase a 360° camera. I thought I'd decided on going for the GoPro Fusion but I don't know if the slightly better image quality is worth paying over twice as much for. I know the better the image quality is, the better the content is and the more likely I am to succeed, I just don't think it is worth all the extra money. I'm leaning back towards the Insta360 One, it gets very good reviews and the price is appealing too.
Bomber.
- Two weeks of daily posts.
Tuesday, 31 July 2018
My Fitbit
Seeing as I keep mentioning my Fitbit and how I've been using it, I thought I'd do a bit of a write up of it, how it works and what functions I use and those that I don't.
The Fitbit I have is the Alta HR. It is not as full featured as some other Fitbits but I really like it. Mine was a birthday gift from my wife and I think she chose a great model as it doesn't have too many bells and whistles that mean it needs charging all the time, but it has enough useful info on it so you can see what's what at a glance and it pairs with your phone so if you want any more in-depth information it's all their in your pocket.
I replaced my watch with the fitbit. I have a couple of alarms set for different times throughout the week and it does that no problems. You set the alarms on your phone and at the specified time the Fitbit starts to vibrate. You don't even need to be anywhere near your phone for the alarms to work, you could leave your phone at home and the watch will still vibrate at the correct time whilst you are at work.
The fitbit tracks how many steps you take throughout the day and you can always check that on the fitbit itself at any time by tapping on it twice to wake it up and then tapping once to scroll through the different information available. You can customise what information you want displayed and in what order on the app on your phone. It also has a G sensor in it so it often detects when you've moved your wrist to a position where you would normally read the time on a watch and wakes itself up.
I have mine set up to remind me every hour between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, if I haven't taken at least 250 steps. At 10 minutes to the hour, the fitbit will vibrate and display a message telling me I need to take some more steps to reach the 250 step goal for that hour. Unfortunately you can't change the 250 hourly step goal but it is still good as sometimes I get stuck into something and I lose track of time, this reminds me to get up and away from the computer. Sometimes I just walk to the kitchen to refill my water bottle and others I need to go a little further, but you soon figure out how far 250 steps is around your workplace. Some days I seem to get a reminder every hour and others I am doing over the 250 steps each hour anyway so it leaves me alone. The Alta HR also displays your heart rate (hence the HR) in its name. I don't actually look at this very much during the day but what it means is that it can calculate roughly how many calories you've burned and how long you've stayed in the "fat burning zone".
The fitbit automatically detects different types of exercise but I haven't found it that reliable. When I mow the lawn, it detects it as "Outdoor Bicycle". If I walk around a lot at work, and go up and down several flights of stairs opening doors and such as I go it can sometimes detect it as "Sport". You can go back in and edit and delete the detected activity, so I usually update the times that I've been mowing the lawn as I figure that it is technically exercise and I delete some of the other just walking around the office entries. I'm guessing that as I'm overweight that my heart rate goes up faster than a healthier person which is why it incorrectly thinks I'm exercising instead of just going about my business.
When used with your phone, the Alta HR can GPS track your exercise and show you a map of where you went, how far you went, how long you were exercising and things like that.
In the app you can track things like what you've eaten and how much water you've drank but I found that a little too much of a chore. It is pretty clever, you can scan barcodes off food products and it will usually detect it and update the nutritional information for you, or if it doesn't recognise it, you can add it yourself. You can also put in things like Big Mac or Large Red Apple and it will know what you mean.
I'll be putting my weekly weight into the app too so I don't forget where I started and so I can see any trends developing. Writing this blog will help me with that too, but if I wasn't writing it down here, then I may forget what I weighed in the previous week.
Each week fitbit email you with your weekly stats and you can look them up at anytime on the app.
I'm pretty happy with the results of last week, I did 68,318 steps, my previous best week as far as steps goes was back in late Jan early Feb with 67,569 steps. My three month daily average is currently 6,043 steps per day, so this should go up and by the end of October I'm hoping my daily average will be over 10,000.
I wear the fitbit in bed each night and it tracks my sleep for me, I have a goal of 8 hours sleep each night but I only ever get that on the weekends, I'm not really concerned as long as I'm not feeling too tired at work, my weekly average is usually somewhere around 7hr 30min. I try to go to bed around 9pm and my alarm goes off at 6am on weekdays, so you'd think that I'd be getting plenty of sleep. I usually read for a bit before going to sleep and the fitbit tells me that I'm usually asleep somewhere between 9:30pm and 10pm but I wake up several times each night, sometimes I'm awake for a while and other times I think I just roll over and go back to sleep almost straight away.
So that's what I use my fitbit for, I'm sure you could do more with it if you wanted to. I didn't go into some of the features I've never even played with like "Female Health". I'm not sure why this is even an option for me when my account is clearly set up as a male, but you can hide features that you don't want to see. Out of curiosity I've opened the female health option up just now and it states "Fitbit can help you track you period, fertile window and symptoms like cramps and headaches". So I'll be hiding that again right about now and I'll continue to be happy that I'm a bloke.
There are challenges that you can set with your friends and some which are just personal challenges. I don't really get into them but I'm sure they help some people stay motivated.
As far as charging it goes, I charge it once a week, usually on a Sunday night between dinner and bedtime and it lasts the week, it is usually warning of a low battery by that time too. The only time I take it off is to shower or if I need to get my hands wet, or when it might get dirty like when washing the car or cooking dinner.
Bomber.
 |
| Fitbit Alta HR |
I replaced my watch with the fitbit. I have a couple of alarms set for different times throughout the week and it does that no problems. You set the alarms on your phone and at the specified time the Fitbit starts to vibrate. You don't even need to be anywhere near your phone for the alarms to work, you could leave your phone at home and the watch will still vibrate at the correct time whilst you are at work.
The fitbit tracks how many steps you take throughout the day and you can always check that on the fitbit itself at any time by tapping on it twice to wake it up and then tapping once to scroll through the different information available. You can customise what information you want displayed and in what order on the app on your phone. It also has a G sensor in it so it often detects when you've moved your wrist to a position where you would normally read the time on a watch and wakes itself up.
I have mine set up to remind me every hour between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, if I haven't taken at least 250 steps. At 10 minutes to the hour, the fitbit will vibrate and display a message telling me I need to take some more steps to reach the 250 step goal for that hour. Unfortunately you can't change the 250 hourly step goal but it is still good as sometimes I get stuck into something and I lose track of time, this reminds me to get up and away from the computer. Sometimes I just walk to the kitchen to refill my water bottle and others I need to go a little further, but you soon figure out how far 250 steps is around your workplace. Some days I seem to get a reminder every hour and others I am doing over the 250 steps each hour anyway so it leaves me alone. The Alta HR also displays your heart rate (hence the HR) in its name. I don't actually look at this very much during the day but what it means is that it can calculate roughly how many calories you've burned and how long you've stayed in the "fat burning zone".
The fitbit automatically detects different types of exercise but I haven't found it that reliable. When I mow the lawn, it detects it as "Outdoor Bicycle". If I walk around a lot at work, and go up and down several flights of stairs opening doors and such as I go it can sometimes detect it as "Sport". You can go back in and edit and delete the detected activity, so I usually update the times that I've been mowing the lawn as I figure that it is technically exercise and I delete some of the other just walking around the office entries. I'm guessing that as I'm overweight that my heart rate goes up faster than a healthier person which is why it incorrectly thinks I'm exercising instead of just going about my business.
When used with your phone, the Alta HR can GPS track your exercise and show you a map of where you went, how far you went, how long you were exercising and things like that.
In the app you can track things like what you've eaten and how much water you've drank but I found that a little too much of a chore. It is pretty clever, you can scan barcodes off food products and it will usually detect it and update the nutritional information for you, or if it doesn't recognise it, you can add it yourself. You can also put in things like Big Mac or Large Red Apple and it will know what you mean.
I'll be putting my weekly weight into the app too so I don't forget where I started and so I can see any trends developing. Writing this blog will help me with that too, but if I wasn't writing it down here, then I may forget what I weighed in the previous week.
Each week fitbit email you with your weekly stats and you can look them up at anytime on the app.
I'm pretty happy with the results of last week, I did 68,318 steps, my previous best week as far as steps goes was back in late Jan early Feb with 67,569 steps. My three month daily average is currently 6,043 steps per day, so this should go up and by the end of October I'm hoping my daily average will be over 10,000.
I wear the fitbit in bed each night and it tracks my sleep for me, I have a goal of 8 hours sleep each night but I only ever get that on the weekends, I'm not really concerned as long as I'm not feeling too tired at work, my weekly average is usually somewhere around 7hr 30min. I try to go to bed around 9pm and my alarm goes off at 6am on weekdays, so you'd think that I'd be getting plenty of sleep. I usually read for a bit before going to sleep and the fitbit tells me that I'm usually asleep somewhere between 9:30pm and 10pm but I wake up several times each night, sometimes I'm awake for a while and other times I think I just roll over and go back to sleep almost straight away.
So that's what I use my fitbit for, I'm sure you could do more with it if you wanted to. I didn't go into some of the features I've never even played with like "Female Health". I'm not sure why this is even an option for me when my account is clearly set up as a male, but you can hide features that you don't want to see. Out of curiosity I've opened the female health option up just now and it states "Fitbit can help you track you period, fertile window and symptoms like cramps and headaches". So I'll be hiding that again right about now and I'll continue to be happy that I'm a bloke.
There are challenges that you can set with your friends and some which are just personal challenges. I don't really get into them but I'm sure they help some people stay motivated.
As far as charging it goes, I charge it once a week, usually on a Sunday night between dinner and bedtime and it lasts the week, it is usually warning of a low battery by that time too. The only time I take it off is to shower or if I need to get my hands wet, or when it might get dirty like when washing the car or cooking dinner.
Bomber.
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