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Tiny Walk Along the Beach

A short while back I was down in Pattaya to visit with some friends for Australia Day, even though I’m not Australian. Mostly it was just a day to pick when we’d all come down from wherever we’re living across Thailand, and meet up for an evening to drink beer and swap stories. It was a lot like what Burningman became to me over time, a single physical location, and a single point in time where I could meet up with geographically scattered friends.

Anyway, for part of one of the days, I took my 360 degree camera down to Beach Road in Pattaya. These photos were taken with a Samsung Gear 360 (2017) camera (about $100 USD) and edited with the free Gear 360 android application on my phone. I did not need to use any other computers or software to change the spherical images into flat ‘Tiny Planet’ photos. The only other addition is that I do use a remote bluetooth trigger to activate the shutter.

enjoying a drink
A mango smoothie on the beach
walking
Strolling down the beachwalk
building out the beach
A lot of beach reconstruction going on
courtyard
The start of my walk. Beach Road and Pattaya Klang in Pattaya Thailand
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Smile! You’re on …

Way back in 2011, before I moved to Thailand, I bought a small Synology DS-211j NAS. The DS-211j came out in 2011, and it has room for two 3.5 inch hard drives. The ‘J’, I’m not sure of. Maybe ‘Junior’ since the J model is the least expensive, stripped down version. That said, it’s still a pretty nice little home NAS. One of the extras that comes with the NAS operating software is an application called Surveillance Station, that I’ve never really used.

Not all that long ago, as my home media collection has expanded, I bought a Synology DS-1517+. This one was made in 2017, and has five drive bays for 3.5 inch hard drives. There was also an eight bay unit but I thought that was a bit much. The new NAS keeps all my media files; copies of cellphone photos, a copy of my music collection, a copy of my book collection, storage for all the television series I’ve felt deserved saving to watch again, copies of movies I felt deserved saving to watch again.

Since I now have a spare NAS, and that unused Surveillance Station, along with a growing collection of Raspberry Pi computers, I’ve been playing around with tight budget security cameras. The standard application though only allows for attaching at most two cameras. Two camera slots are enough to learn about the cameras, and learn about the management application, but two cameras aren’t enough for a good coverage security system. Good thing all I’m really looking for is an opportunity to learn.

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Getting back to how things were–kinda-sorta

When the travel theme I’d been using not only stopped development, but shut down their support site, and the theme broke with an update to the baseline WordPress, I really had no choice to change themes. I picked Twenty-Seventeen since it’s a baseline theme from WordPress. It ought to be around for a while. 

There are a few things I lost though:

  • Google Map with map pins for posts, that link back to the post.
  • A weighted Tag Cloud where the more often a tag is used, the larger the tag is.
  • Automatic page breaks, or “read more” to hide long posts on the home page.

I haven’t sorted the first one yet, but “Options for Twenty Seventeen” by Oliver Campion handily takes care of the latter two. If you’re looking for something to polish some of the rough edges of Twenty Seventeen, I have no reservations about recommending “Options for Twenty Seventeen”. Mr. Campion is a responsive developer and was quick to step in and resolve an upgrade issue I was having getting the plugin activated. 

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The Talking Head

I bought an inexpensive 360 camera last year, and while it’s gotten some good use as a 360 still camera, I really have not done much of anything with it as a video camera. I made a couple of handheld GoPro videos that I wasn’t happy with at all. 

After learning that Samsung has added stabilization to their $100 USD Gear 360 (2017) camera, I wanted to give it a try. It works really well. For walking around with the camera on the end of a two to three foot long pole, the stabilization works amazingly well. 

My very first Gear 360 test video. 

I’m not entirely happy with the audio quality, but that’s going to be true for most small cameras. That’s why external audio recorders are so popular with Vloggers who make vlogs that you actually want to listen to. 

I’m dropping this video here so I’ve something to compare to if I decide to make future videos. All in all though, for a walking and talking style of video, I’m pretty happy with it.