All ready to Go(+Pro)

Jobs are finished and work farewells completed, flat moved out of, the permanent move north to our cottage in Kerikeri has been made, some outdoor maintenance and severe plant pruning (a truck load of green waste) to ensure that we do not return to our own Amazonian rainforest, a host of other annoying little finance and insurance issues dealt to, we seem to have those annoying little health issues you try to avoid before you head away (coughs, mouth infection) to sort out, the gear is ready to pack into bags (that looks challenging) and of course we are now ignoring the usual media streams that give the impression that global apocalypse is nigh.

With the “to-do” list only having in-trip items left on it, I guess we are ready to go.

Speaking of go, as a result of my work farewell, I am now the owner of a GoPro Hero4 Silver.Wow, another gadget to pack and learn how to use.

In amongst all the other last minute arrangements I have tried to work my way through the manual. My first very rough efforts can be seen below an shows a a quick (the air was brisk) early morning cycle around Kerikeri to ensure that I pushed the appropriate buttons to get recording to start, stop and change media formats.

Mainly worked (sun angle was too low – memo – get up later) but I did notice a few missing shots so I do need to polish those skills, especially moving through the controls while cycling (and remaining on the bike), seemed to have messed up the video resolution on this one.

A great enhancement would be to pack a relative of Siri’s into the camera so that instructions could be yelled (breathlessly) at the camera. No, on second thoughts I think that is a really bad idea, I would just have the camera yelling “I do not understand” back at me.

Well future posts will take place on the iPad mini or Phone and, as WIFI connections allow. Hopefully that will occur without the frustrations that I encountered while away last time. I have packed a wireless keyboard this time and WordPress do seem to have improved the small screen experience.

Footnote: Another valuable lesson has been learned, when putting the video together I used iMovie and applied the standard “theme music” that comes with the App. The video has been blocked due to a copyright claim on 49 seconds of that score. You will be relieved to know that all future posts will be sans music, just the sounds of my huffing and puffing. Replacement image is a photo taken on the GoPro.