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August 27, 2006
Our first Bike Night
I spend a lot of my online time chatting in a forum called WWR
(Women Who Ride). It's a great place for lady riders of all ages and
experience levels to share their riding stories and a fun place to waste some
time. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a fellow lady biker
from the WWR asking where I lived. Turns out she lives on the same street
as me! (How funny!!) 
After a few email exchanges she told me her and her
boyfriend were members of the SCRC
221 (Southern Cruisers Riding Club - Stone Mountain chapter). They invited
us to join them for Bike Night at one of the local Sonic drive-in restaurants.
Tonight we hopped on the bikes and followed them down there for our first
one. We had a lot of fun and met a ton of great people, most of which I
can't hope to remember their names. 
It was great getting to meet many of the people in person that I've only had
conversations with over the web. There were a ton of beautiful bikes
there. Many thanks to our neighbors for the invite. I'll close this
post with a couple of crappy photos I snapped while there:
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Posted by pixelbrat at 10:05 PM | Comments (1)
August 20, 2006
The Deja View Camwear 100 in action
I know it's been a couple of days but I was finally able to test out my Deja View Camwear 100. I'm happy to report that it works pretty decent for the price I paid for it. It's certainly not Mini DV quality by any stretch but it's fun for quick stuff around the house. I haven't captured any spectacular moments yet so you'll just have to suffer through this quick test video of the kitties below if you'd like to see how it looks. I had it attached to my hat for this one.
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So far so good, right? Well, I decided to take it on a motorcycle ride
today,
which was really my intended purpose for this cam all along. I hooked it to my
sunglasses and ran the wire from the camera down the inside of my shirt so it
would stay out of my way. Off I go on the bike, zipping around the block
hoping I've grabbed some cool video. Much to my disappointment I found that
the bike appears to be causing some sort of interference in the video. 
It shows up as a reddish area on the bottom of the video that fades in and
out. This happened in all of the 15 clips I got on the bike. Click on the image
below to see what I'm talking about. (To save your ears I went ahead and muted
the sound on this one.)
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Any video/electronics experts out there know how I can prevent this color distortion? Any info would be much appreciated. I may try a few more experiments to see if I can find a workaround. If you can look beyond the red funk it's a pretty neat perspective. Almost like you're riding it yourself. I'll be sure to post another if I get this little glitch worked out.
Posted by pixelbrat at 9:50 PM | Comments (2)
August 17, 2006
A new (to me) gadget and mini-rant
I think it's cruel and unusual punishment to make a gadget-lover wait over 3
hours for batteries to charge before they can use their new gadget. It's
simply wrong... WRONG I say! What is this glorious new piece of gadget
love I have purchased? Well, it's actually not new at all but very cool
nonetheless. It's called the Deja View Camwear 100. This ingenious
piece of equipment is a small wearable video camera that records events
"after the fact". I can almost hear you now..."What in the
hell does that mean?" It's a wearable video camera that's designed to ensure that the user never misses that important
moment. The camera mounts to a hat or glasses and monitors
everything you see. When something happens that you want to save, you simply
press the record button and the last 30 seconds of video with audio are saved to
an SD memory card. Neat, huh? These came out in 2002 at a
prohibitively high price of $400. 
I got a used one for a fraction of that from ebay. I think it will be neat
to wear this on motorcycle rides. When I ride through a particularly cool
section of twisty road or when some 
cuts me off I can hit the record button and save the last 30 seconds. It
should be fun catching the kitties when they do cute stuff too. Of course,
I can't do this, or even test it to see if it works, until the damn batteries finish
charging!!! 
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Editors Note: Yes, I realize I will look like an enormous dork
wearing something like this in public. I think I can pull it off wearing
it under a motorcycle helmet or around my family. Hell, they know I'm not
right in the head so it shouldn't phase them. 
Posted by pixelbrat at 8:15 PM
August 15, 2006
Goodbye to an old and dear friend
This morning while getting ready for work, we found our oldest cat, Hobbes,
was struggling to breath. We took him to the vet this morning as soon as
they opened. I'll spare everyone the sad story but he died shortly after
arriving. Thankfully he didn't suffer. This was not entirely
unexpected as he has not been doing well lately, but it was very hard
nonetheless. He was in my life for 8 of his 16 years and I will miss him
greatly.
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Posted by pixelbrat at 4:40 PM | Comments (4)
August 13, 2006
The perfect day for riding
My friend Tom helped Rob install a new windshield and highway bars on my bike
last weekend so I decided to take the bike for a spin today. Rob was feeling a
bit under the weather so I headed out on my own. Despite the clouds that
hung overhead for the duration it turned out to be the perfect day for
riding. The temperature hovered in the 70's and traffic was fairly light,
being a Sunday. Before I knew it I had racked up 161 miles.
I love love LOVE my new windshield! It made the ride so much more
comfortable. You can see a photo of my bike with the new stuff on below:
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I think my next bike-related purchase will be saddlebags. My Biker's
Friend, that's the tube looking thing on the back seat, is a bit limited in
the storage department. Sure, it's great as a backrest but I can only fit
my purse, hat and water bottle in it. The saddlebags would give me room
for rain gear, a jacket and other essentials. Hmm... what can I sell on
Ebay... 
Posted by pixelbrat at 8:13 PM
August 2, 2006
Photo of the day
I saw a funny sight on our deck when I got home from work today. I grabbed my camera and got this shot below. This squirrel raids our bird feeders on a daily basis. It looks like he got more than his fill this time.
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Posted by pixelbrat at 7:19 PM | Comments (2)