The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

I was going to post a vlog about this on YouTube, I even got so far as to record a piece to camera for it, but I realised that I hadn’t written anything for quite some time and that despite being a dry subject, it could be interesting. I want to discuss two fairly seperate items that have melded together for me, and that is my vlogging and my being a consumer whore.

Recently, as well as having a light season on blogging, I’ve also been lacking in putting up vlogs to YouTube. I have actually been recording footage nearly everyday, with some 20 hours worth of raw footage since just before Christmas up to the present, however the editing is tiresome at times and quite often the events don’t really strike me as worth mentioning, and so the footage is just sat in an external hard drive.

I still find times though when something interesting happens or something strikes me and I just can’t grab my camera in time, I know I’m not alone in wishing there was some way to be able to capture those random spontaneous moments of the day or the witticisms of company.

I don’t know how many people will remember the TV show Bailey Kipper’s POV, but ever since I watched that as a kid I wanted to be a walking, not necessarily to broadcast, but so that memories were captured.

Personally, I’d love a floating recording device that could follow me around like Cambot from Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I keep a quotefile/quotebook, but sometimes there are moments that you try to share in words, but never quite come across the same as if someone could witness it.

I actually started to look into things like bullet cam kits, pinhole cameras and extreme sport helmet cams. Bullet cams are the most expensive option, but give very high quality recordings, perhaps too high quality for random videos that may never surface and that I may get bored of in my usual manner. Pinhole cameras tend to be slightly lower quality, but the actual problem for me is that I’d have nowhere to place it that would give a good recording.

The better bet for me would be the helmet cam, these are usually of a semi-decent quality, some going up to 720p high-def quality, but the flaw is that mounting a camera to your head is hardly subtle, you don’t exactly achieve a slimline Borg look or even something trendy like a scanner from Dragonball Z, you typically end up with a thick tube mounted above your ear.

This leads me to telling you about being a consumer whore. I am quite happy to admit that I can be a gadget freak and brand follower, I don’t own very many branded clothing items (besides my Converse sneakers, which I adore because they last a damn long time and are such a classic style) but I do like to buy branded gadgets.

So, as winter has been cold I’ve spent some time trying to walk home in biting weather, chatting on my iPhone and feeling my hand getting very cold as I hold the phone to my ear. Obviously I needed to look in to a bluetooth device of some kind. I’m not overly fond of the earpieces, always finding that they look odd to me, but I did find Oakley Razerwire sunglasses that come with a bluetooth earpiece that fits on the frame. Stylish, branded and gadgetty, it seemed a pretty good option to me.

However, then I found another item which left me torn with decision. Whilst searching for ‘bluetooth sunglasses’ I found a pinhole camera mounted in to sunglasses, which also had a bluetooth device, mp3 player and FM radio built in to the frame. The camera is only to VGA standard, 640×480, but given that it would only be for those moments when a proper camcorder isn’t to hand.

So, I find myself torn between getting a single comparitavely cheap device that could do everything, but to a lower standard, or paying out for items that are actually designed to do a very good job (and not to mention, will be recognisably trendy).

Chances are, I will pay out for the single device to test it, regret the purchase and then have to save up again to fix the decision – because that’s how I roll.

So, seeing as we got this far together and you are still reading, how about a little group therapy session and a question for everyone to answer: Thinking back, has anything recently happened that you’ve wished someone was recording for you? If so, what happened?