New Pool Toy

For a long time now I've wanted a "sports camera" to make videos of bike rides and other outdoor activities. The most popular camera for that purpose is the GoPro Hero series. Two days ago I finally bought a Hero 3 Silver Edition.

Of course we had to play with it right away. I charged it during the evening and, as is my geek habit, I read the owner's manual cover to cover. One of the main features of the GoPro line is that it comes with a waterproof case that protects the camera to a depth of 160 feet. So yesterday we took it to pool to experiment with the camera's time-lapse and slow motion capabilities. Click on the picture to see a video I made from our experiments.

I chose a 5 second interval for the time-lapse portions. That turned out to be too long for the activity we were filming so the motion of people in the pool looks almost random. Perhaps I'll try it again with a 1 or 2 second interval.

The slow motion footage came out quite well. This model can shoot at 60 or 120 frames per second (fps). Normal video framerate is 30fps. Video shot at 60fps can be converted to 30ps, resulting in half speed slow motion. 120fps footage converted to 30fps results in 1/4 speed slow motion. I shot some of each.

One pleasant discovery I made is that even though the 120fps footage must be shot at a lower resolution, iMovie (which I use to edit videos) had no problem scaling it and it looks great at HD resolution.

The video we shot comprised a bunch of random length video clips. When the camera is in its waterproof case it doesn't pick up much sound so I decided to put the video to music. Then as I watched with the music I found that I really wanted the cuts to match the beat of the song I'd chosen so I edited the clips to sync to the beat. It's the first time I've tried that. It's not perfect but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

We'll think of lots of other activities during which to use the camera. It can be mounted on a window, a helmet, bike handlebars, etc. Even the front of a ski! Maybe that will be the next video you see from me.

Audrey Turns Nine

Slideshow | Video

Carol pulled off another great birthday party at home for Audrey's ninth birthday. This year the theme was games. There was a game where kids had to move M&Ms from one bowl to another using a straw. A game based on Battleship but using Hershey kisses and hugs and when you guess a location you get that piece of candy. Carol made a giant Tic Tac Toe board out of felt. They played "Quack", where a player is blindfolded in the center of a circle and then has to guess a person's identity just from hearing that person say "quack." Plus maybe another game or two I can't remember.

Carol also made and decorated the cake. Audrey chose the design. It started as a chess board in honor of Audrey recently learning the game. Then instead of chess pieces on the board it turned into chess and music, in honor of Audrey's love for singing around the house and trying to learn the cello.

Audrey invited a bunch of friends from school. It's our practice that the non-birthday girl gets to invite one guest so a friend of Charlotte joined in. It was a cacophony of giggles and screams for two and a half hours but quite fun. Carol also served dinner in there somewhere between games, cake and presents.

It is taking a while for it to sink in that we have a nine year old. That's halfway to adulthood! I feel so far behind on what I want to teach her! Not to mention fixing all the stuff I've not done as well as I'd like.

C'est la vie.

All we can do is try harder.

Here Comes the Big One!

The Blizzard of '13 is on the way. The National Weather Service says we'll get 18-24". The local TV weather guy thinks those of us north of Boston might get 33".

The girls have been wishing for a snow day all winter. They got their wish: school on Friday was cancelled at noon on Thursday.

We're looking forward to hunkering down during the storm and then enjoying some excellent sledding after it passes.

Jupiter!

One of my many interests is astronomy and astrophysics. I read a fantastic blog called "Starts With a Bang" by Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist and great teacher from Portland, OR. I often share what I learn with the girls. Ethan frequently uses images from the Hubble Space Telescope which are especially amazing and inspiring. I try to inculcate the girls with a sense of wonder about the sheer scope of the universe. Audrey has taken a real interest, to the point where she sometimes says she wants to be an astronomer.

For some time I've been desiring a telescope for skywatching with the girls both at home and while camping away from the light pollution of the city. It took me a long time to learn enough to select a telescope. Last week I finally felt confident enough to choose and I ordered an Orion XT4.5 Dobsonian telescope. This particular type of telescope strikes a good balance between observing planets and deep space objects like nebulae and clusters.

From reading the amateur astronomy forums, it sounds like there is a law of nature that when you buy a new telescope it will be cloudy on the day you receive it. It was true the day we received ours. Last night, however, the clouds dissipated around sunset. We went out to dinner and when we returned I pulled out the new scope. It was only 34F out so I knew we wouldn't be outdoors too long. Jupiter was conveniently right overhead so I sighted it in. Each of us got a good look at Jupiter and we could also clearly see four of its moons. We don't have a camera for our telescope yet (you can bet we will) but what we saw, other than the positions of the moons, looked very much like the image above.

I've very satisfied with the instrument I selected. I'm very excited to have many years of skywatching ahead of us and it's going to be a fun addition to all of our summer camping trips.