strangely entangled

Today has been one of those days. If it were summer, I’d just give up and go to the beach. Unfortunately, it’s a typical Vancouver day out. That means it’s dismal, gray and dull.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of broken systems and software this morning. On days like this, I find myself missing physics. You know something isn’t right when you’ve decided to install OpenBSD in VMware for “fun”.

The reason I haven’t posted anything in the past week is that I’m just getting over what I describe as “SARS-Lite”. I haven’t been sick in nearly 9 years, and this cold hit me pretty hard.

Now that I’m on the mend, I have a few plans for this website. For starters, I’m still settling on a theme. I could build one from scratch, and eventually I probably will. But for the time being I’m going the prebuilt route. So expect the look to change a bit over time as I experiment.

I’ve still got to put together a proper review of the ScotteVest jacket. I’m thinking I might throw a little video together and upload it sometime next week. Overall I’m happy with the purchase, but I don’t think I’ll buy from them again. I think that the quality of the product is highly overstated. Little things like zippers feel fragile, and the overall construction is mediocre. Still, it does look good, and apparently in Vancouver that counts for something.

Other news: I picked up a Canon ZR800 camcorder awhile ago to record podcasts with. I was on a budget, and the main attraction of this device was the mic input jack. These jacks are sorely lacking on many of today’s camcorders, and are a necessity for any kind of serious work as the built-in microphones usually pick up a lot of noise.

I ordered a pair of stereo lapel microphones from Giant Squid Audio Lab, and received them a few days ago. They sound great! The only problem is, they don’t work with the Canon! I’ve discovered that you must use powered microphones with the ZR800, something the manual fails to mention. I’m a bit annoyed, because Canon went out of its way to make the jack look like a standard mic jack on a laptop. I suppose I should have known better though.

In any case, now I’ve got my eye on a  Samson Zoom H2 audio recorder. The H2 can act as a microphone amplifier, allowing me to use the lapel mics with my Canon camcorder. It can also record audio on its own, at 24-bit resolution. Much higher than the 16-bit audio that my camcorder supports. I’ve found a Vancouver store that carries them, so there will likely be one on my desk by the end of next week.

I gave up on UPS and drove out to their Richmond depot to pick up the package myself. To be honest, my first impressions weren’t all that positive. The jacket is substantially lighter than I had expected, and it didn’t look like it would fit me.

Once I got home I was able to get a better look at it and in the end I’m happy with my purchase. The medium sized jacket fits me perfectly and does look quite good. Overall quality is good, although I did notice a few loose threads here and there. It is water resistant, but I wouldn’t call it waterproof as the ScotteVest site claims.

The jacket certainly does contain a plethora of pockets, and their layout seems well thought-out. My one complaint about the pockets is that ScotteVest has stuffed a business card into almost every pocket, as well as a ziplock bag of cards in one pocket in particular. On the back of each card is a description of the function of the pocket the card was located in. What a waste of paper!

I’ll take the jacket for a spin in the great outdoors and will post a proper review, once I get over this horrible cold.

Update: I’ve discovered ripped stitching in one of the pockets. I’m somewhat annoyed about this as I really don’t want to return it (which would mean dealing with customs / UPS again). I’ve emailed SeV to see what they think. So far their customer service has been excellent (more on this later).