AZ Wado Karate Belt Test 08-10-2009

Took the FujiFilm Finepix S9100 along with the slave flash setup I have for grabbing pics of the kids at tonights belt test. Not impressed with the 'softness' of the photos. I'm getting spoiled by 12MP versus 9MP I guess? The S9100 took some killer outdoor MTB Action shots
like *this* one... but indoors I haven't found the magic combination to take good shots. More and more I'm finding myself grabbing the Kodak P880 or the Kodak Z980.
It may be time to FleaBay this sucker.. oh well, live and learn! :)



Video of Olivia and Jared doing their Katas

A New Kodak Camera - Z980 wide angle with *crazy* zoom (24X)

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I'll post an in-depth review hopefully this week. For right now you can feast your eyes on the shots below, and the whole background story!

Get the full-sized versions of the photos below by heading over to

my flickr photostream

In the film days it was a Mamiya and Pentax SLR and for my adventures a Yashica T4 with Kodak 64 or Fuji Velvia. In the digital age it seemed that Canon and Nikon were at the top of the heap, although the first digicams and pro digital SLR's came from Kodak. I've liked the idea behind the Powershot G series from Canon. With the exception of a few stray models, they kept the same general form factor, buttons on the outside etc: Optical 'rangefinder' like viewfinder, plenty of manual modes and the like. The S400 Digital ELPH is a little tank.. keeps going and going and takes wonderful photos. I've been a Canon fanboy for a while now. But lately I'm starting to like Kodak? Huh? you mean those guys that used to make film?

Yes!

This all started a year or so ago. I noticed that some of the new Kodak line of point and shoot cameras were starting to incorporate HD Video. The V1273 came out, I bought one a few weeks after it hit the shelves and I've been pleasantly suprised with the quality of photos and having the ability to shoot HD Video in a compact package. Likes? The Schneider optics (maybe it's the name?), the image quality, the 720p video. Dislikes? the touch-screen 'ipod' like LCD and lack of buttons / viewfinder. The camera is nearly impossible to use in the sunshine but with a good hat as a shade, and peering over your sunglasses you can make it work!

Here are V1273 photos from last weekends mountain bike ride.

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Having HD Video capability in your digicam is cool! With a bit of effort, you can turn a static story into something that helps people *really* see and feel what it was like to be there! Check out this fun HD video from an undisclosed location in San Diego :)

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So when I received an email coupon from Kodak for St. Patricks day, I dove in and started reading about their latest offering the Kodak Easyshare Z980.....

(to be continued..)







Get the full-sized versions of the above photos by heading over to

my flickr photostream

If you like what you see, let me know! I'll post up the rest of my review soon. In the meantime, here is a link to the specs on dpreview.com and a brief writeup I posted there.

Goat Camp Out and Back Ride

Sam pinged me on Facebook the other day and asked if I wanted to tag along for a run out to ride the 'Goat Camp' trail in the White Tanks. Greg and I had already made plans for a dual climb/bike day on Sunday, but when that fell through, I switched plans and met up with Sam at 6:30am for the trek out to the westside.

It's starting to get hot here in Phoenix again. This means early early starts, and lots of sunscreen and water. Today, the breeze out of the northwest saved us. It would have been much hotter without it!

Legs started cramping on the way back down and I ran out of water right at the end of the ride, good workout, but getting warm!

I posted up a few photos from the day over on Flickr, and the Garmin 405 data is here:



As promised.. here is the embed of Sam's video which is excellent!
Even got to close out the video.. witness my weeak manual
attempt at 5:51 or so ;-)



Tossed together this quick video using Quicktime Pro

Click to play

I spot a Green 5 Spot

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IMG_1704
Originally uploaded by honemastert.

Got the bike built last night/morning late.. uuugh. The desert is starting to really green up around here. Beautiful weather today

IMG_1701
Originally uploaded by honemastert.

One more shot from the other angle/side

Shipped!

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15lbs, signature required... What is it!? hmmmmmm, stay tuned

Az MTBR 'Double Bypass' Ride

I went Saturday for a ride up in the McDowell / Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale, AZ. Many of the group were doing the 'Quadruple Bypass' ride. Thus named because you climb up and over 4 passes as you circumnavigate the preserve. I ended up just doing a 'Double Bypass' which was enough for me mileage wise. I need to get out and do these trails more often. They are such a bear to climb up that you get a tremendous workout, even if you have to push/carry your bike uphill for part of the way!

The Garmin 'Connect' website looks like it's gone through some upgrades as of late. Check out this link to the data from the ride that day. You can play it back in your web browser, and it steps through the waypoints and annotates the data. Pretty neat!



The engineer in me loves this kind of stuff, although the truth of the data is sometimes a bit of a blow to the ego!

Mountain Biking South Mtn,

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Greg and I met at the Cactus Bike parking lot today for a quick couple hours jaunt on SoMo. We rode from there, to the trailhead, then up Mormon to National, then back down.



The weather was perfect! Had one small spill, nothing of consequence, a great day to get out!
The rest of the days photos here

Az Wado Karate!

Belt test results were last night for the boys. Jaden added another stripe to his yellow belt and Jared moved up in rank to a blue belt!
Jared Schneider - Kata

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Race Zladik - Kata

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Dojo Slideshow

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Tony Hawk interviews Michael Phelps on the set of
a recent commercial shoot for Guitar Hero World Tour

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See more DissentTV videos at Shred or Die

A blast from the past: Tony @ 14 on a Japanese TV Show.
They asked him to change the names of some of his tricks
to make them more 'Japan' friendly.. He went with it :-)

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See more Tony Hawk videos at Shred or Die

How many MPG (Miles per Gallon) does *YOUR*
Body Get??

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32 miles per gallon

Created by The Car Connection

Weekend Cycling Report:

Got out for a sat. am ride with some of the folks from the
Brumby's cycling club.

The road ride was only 31.5 miles, but managed to maintain nearly
an 18mph average. I'm "sucking less"! :-)

Followed that up with a birthday party for one of Jadens'
classmates, then Mike, Tom and I hit the last of the
McDowell Mtn. Regional Park Pemberton Full-Moon rides

Here is the GPS data from the Mtn Bike ride
47 miles total for the day!

Kodak V1273 Digital Camera Review

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This new camera from Kodak, the V1273) was announced at CES 2008 in Jan.

It just started showing up in stores, the past month or so. What intrigued me about the camera was primarily, it's ability to shoot HD video and wide format photos. 3 of the 5 TV's in our house are now 16:9 format and can deal with the various HD resolutions, so why not? Also, if you're a Macintosh fan, this camera saves its video in Quicktime mpeg-4 format. This helps enable you to pull it right into iMovie, FCE and FCP or QuicktimePro very easily.

Heres a sample from the kids soccer and basketball games today:



While I can say I'm still a big fan of Canon Digital Elph cameras, this compact unit from Kodak and the forthcoming Panasonic Lumix FX500 have some serious features to consider.

Touch screen LCD is cool, very similar to say, an iPod touch. I'm guessing it will burn through the battery quickly and it is a bit harder to see in sunlight. On the flip side, the camera is extremely simple, and super clean. Not many buttons at all!

The "SMART" feature seems to do pretty well outdoors. Rapid fire (for kids sports) is limited to sequences of 3 still photos. (the SD850IS just keeps taking them, till the memory buffers, if you choose a lower megapixel setting whereas the V1273 gives you 3 photos and thats it.

More time playing with the features will help. With 12 Mega Pixels and HD sizes thats a lot of data to push around. Mpeg-4 is also pretty taxing, from a hardware point of view so that might explain some of the sluggishness in the operation of the v1273. On a positive note, this is one of *THE FIRST* digicams that I've used in recent memory, that allows you freedom to zoom in/out while shooting video. Of course, holding this thing steady is extremely difficult, compared to a larger sized Mini-DV or HD Camcorder.

Mind you, it's not that bad really, it's just that I've been pretty spoiled with the Canon which has a bit better image stabilization while shooting video. Consider this video, shot from a road bicycle, while doing 35Mph with a Canon SD850IS :-)

(Re: Canon, I have 4 of them, Powershot G3/G6 and two Digital Elphs s400 and SD850IS)

I *really* like the wider angle lens on the SD850IS, and am looking forward to the debut of the new Panasonic Lumix with the 25mm-125mm effective focal length, Leica lens.

Overall, not a bad entry at a $275 price point. You'll get some great shots and video from this thing in a small, clean package.

Link to the 'pre-review' on Imaging-Resource.com


Here is another mashup of some YouTube video and some
footage from the v1273 done in Final Cut Pro:

IMG_3292 copy
Originally uploaded by honemastert.

Jaden and Colby had another soccer game this morning.. tried to get some close in action shots, they didnt turn out too bad actually!

The rest of the gallery is here

Very cool.. as famous as this guy is, and he's
still posting up backyard videos. Tony Hawk's
self-filmed backyard impromptu session.

Baselining
The new 'Extreme' sport.. looks pretty friggin extreme to me. A combination of slacklining and BASE jumping. I'll stick to tamer stuff like rockclimbing, mtnbiking, skiing, and 'extreme' engineering thank you! :-)

Some vid from "Goat Camp" a gnarly trail out in west
phoenix (White Tanks) A link to the report is
here

Yikes.. this looks hard!

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Goat-Camp-47 - Get Video Code

Goat-Camp-66 - Get Video Code

An Amputee Sprinter: Is He Disabled or Too-Abled?

By JERÉ LONGMAN

Published: May 15, 2007

Some are questioning whether Oscar Pistorius’s prosthetic legs give him an unfair advantage over other sprinters. See the full article here

The Fastest Man with 'No Legs'

Physical Fitness Tests for all Ages

The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports - Publications

The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports - Publications

Howstuffworks "How Exercise Works"

Howstuffworks "How Exercise Works"