Saturday 25 January 2014

Padded Bra Test

I went for a ride today and tested out some bra padding.

No, I wasn't wearing a bra to contain my man boobs, although I probably need to. I was testing out using bra padding as a wind filter for the microphone I use when I am moto-vlogging. This was suggested by ++AccidentalBroadcast so I thought I would see how it worked.

Take a look at my latest video and let me know what you think of the sound. Is the wind noise reduced? Is it acceptable to watch/listen to?

Video can be found here on the you tubes,


Friday 10 January 2014

Riding without Teeth

Oh No, Quelle Horreur, only 3 days of my holiday left ......

Where on earth did those three weeks go!

Back to work on Monday so I thought I would take the opportunity this morning to go for a little ride. I fancied some twisty bits, so took the following route:


  • Palmerston North to Balance Valley Road via Pahiatua Track
  • Balance Valley Road to Ashhurst via the Manawatu Gorge
  • Ashhurst to Bunnythorpe
  • Home to Palmy


Had a great ride, and as always, I came back feeling full of energy.

Here is some footage of the ride with some commentary from me. Forgive the wind noise as I am still trying to find the ideal position for the mic inside my helmet.


Saturday 4 January 2014

Vlogging

I am now a Vlogger.

Now before you jump to conclusions about me embracing medieval masochism of some kind, a Vlogger is a Video Blogger.

I have now just lost ⅔ of my audience, who had tuned in expecting something completely different. Oh well, c'est la vie. It's just my sister and some person from the Ukraine who doesn't speak English left now.

Anyway, I digress, back to the topic.

I bought a microphone for my GoPro. I followed the youtube instructions which showed me how to drill a hole in the side of the GoPro case (here is a link). I actually managed to do this without destroying the case, so yeehaa (I have my teeth in and the hillbilly still comes out in me), $65 saved. I have a helmet mount for my GoPro and run the microphone cable down into my helmet, under the cheek pads inside the helmet, clip the cheek pads back into place, and Voila .... I am ready to Vlog.

Went out today and recorded my first video with voice. It is not as easy as it seems and the odd swear word did get into the video, I will have to find out how to edit swear words out, but for now, block your ears kiddies.

After some basic editing, the result can be found here on my YouTube channel.

Happy Watching.

Thursday 2 January 2014

Improving my cornering technique

I have always used the "vanishing point" technique for cornering on my motorbike.

Basically this is where you look as far around the corner as you can, keeping your eyes always on the furtherest point you can see. If that point starts coming back towards you, you are going to fast and need to slow down. If that point starts going away from you you can start accelerating as the corner is opening up.

Earlier this week I was watching a "Vlog" by the Baron (BaronVonGrumble on YouTube), and he was talking about a technique he used, the A B C technique. Basically you divide your side of the road into thirds. A is the third closest to the kerb, B is the middle third, and C is the third closest to the centre line.

You normally ride in the B sector. When a right hand corner comes up, you position the bike in the A sector (closest to the kerb) so you can see as far around the corner as possible and take the corner starting in the A sector. When a left hand corner comes up, you position the bike in the C sector, once again so you can see as far around the corner as possible.

I combined this technique with the vanishing point technique and found it really smoothed out my cornering. I will be keeping at this technique until it becomes automatic as it really does seem to work for me and my style of riding.

I took myself off for a pootle over the Pahiatua Track to try it out. The video can be found here on my YouTube channel.

Back on an iPad

I last had an iPad in 2016, an iPad Air 2. When it broke, I never replaced it, I just used the MacBook Air and my iPhone. This year for Fat...