Home made Steadicam Alpha

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See how the camera stays horizontal even with extreme side-to-side motion of my hand. The vertical movement is just my own stupidity.

Jaco and I decided to make our very own steadicam or glidecam after I showed him some videos that my YouTube hero Devin Super Tramp made.

The next day Jaco sent me a link to a DIY page and today we actually started building our own one.

We went to the local Builder’s Warehouse where we found the parts quite easy, but paying for it and leaving the premises was another story.

At the contractor’s desk the lady first had to call in “professional” help for us to be able to buy the wood and pipes we wanted in the minimum length of 1m.

Jaco acting as a comparison tool to show the lenght of the pipes and wood.
Jaco acting as a comparison tool to show the length of the pipes and wood we got even though we only needed 10cm of each.

In the end we only got the 100mm pipe in 1m the 75mm we had to take the full 6m and they gave us 5.4m wood after the sales lady confirmed that it is only 1m that costs R41. At the security gate the lady insisted on remeasuring the wood claiming that it is 1m to long. Upon telling her that I did not have anything to do with the loading of the wood (Builder’s warehouse staff took the slip, cut the wood and put it in the car), she said: “He could be your friend” referring to the guy that cut the wood. Seriously? In the end she let us go, with a “warning”.

We finished the basic concept within 2-3 hours. We still need to add the weights, better secure the gyroscope thingy and build a camera mount, but the preliminary results looks promising.

Watch this space as we fine tune this baby.

Rubik’s Twist

RubiksTwist00RubiksTwist01I saw this Rubik’s Twist today in a Toy shop where everything had a 30% discount. Surprisingly it cost only R55 and even though it’s probably designed for children the shapes you can make with it is still mind-boggling. This newest addition brings my Rubik’s type puzzle collection to… hmmm… only twelve. I thought it would be more.

RubiksTwist02

Offloading a mini with my brother

My brother had an ambitious plan to build his own electric mini. He started by buying a mini shell off gumtree.  When we moved to Brackenfell the mini had to come with, so we hired a trailer and decided to offload the mini with no ramp.

As for the video, this was one of the first videos I ever made. I used OpenShot in Ubuntu and was into what I thought was dubsteb at the time.

Angry Birds Cube

AngryCubeI’m slowly expanding my Rubik’s Cube Collection and today I bought this very cool Angry Birds cube in a R5 store for R8. It proved to actually be quite challenging and if it wasn’t for the photos I took before I started to scramble it I would not have been able to solve it again.

Van Series tot Strafreg

Na my exodus uit Stellenbosch het ek soos ‘n regte student ingeval en 20 ure se series gekyk to 04:00 Donderdag oggend en toe weer Donderdag tot Vrydagoggend 01:00.  8 ure se Game of Thrones S2, 8 ure se Californication S5 en 6 ure se 90210 S4 asook enkele episodes van How I Met Your Mother S7.
Gelukkig oortuig Elsabe my toe om terug te kom kampus toe met die woorde: “Wil jy strafreg bywoon?”

Eerste dag by Maties

My eerste dag van impromptu klasse het vroeër begin as wat ek verwag het.  My dag het vroeg begin (07:00), toe ek veronderstel was om vir ‘n swaarvoertuig les te gaan in die Strand.  My instrukteur het egter gekanselleer.  Wonder bo wonder het ek nie weer in die bed geklim en tot 11:00 geslaap nie, maar besluit om vir Pieter te join vir sy 08:00 klas.

Entrepreneurskap en Innovasiebestuur

BA (Oote oote oote) vs BIng(Vmax cos(wt+b))

Na my eerste dag se sukses is ek weer optimisties om nog modules aan te pak en staan sommer weer vroeg op. Ek kry vir Jurie en die res van die Eendrag Ing gang by Ingang se voordeur.
Ek sien vir die eerste keer die nuwe Ingenieursgeboue, maar die klas is ongelukkig in die Algemene gebou kamer A305.

Stelsels en Seine

Die engelse studente luister na die Afrikaanse dosent deur oorfone en ‘n vertaler wat voor in die klas sit en saggies in die mikrofoon in praat. Sy is middeljarige tannie wat moet byhou by dosent wat baie vinnig praat, maar sy is heel rustig en kan nog terselfde tyd skryf en/of op haar selfoon werk terwyl sy non-stop vertaal. Continue reading “BA (Oote oote oote) vs BIng(Vmax cos(wt+b))”

Walk About Love

After quitting University rather impulsively and flying to Israel I found out about the Walk About Love. An amazing 100 day journey of a 1000km across Israel. We slept on the shore of four seas, went to the lowest point on earth and conquered the highest mountain in Israel. Above all I made life long friends.

Luckily I kept a journal and tried to write down everything that happened. Reading through all this again afterwards I realised that is doesn’t nearly to the real deal justice, but at least I will remember some of the incidents that changed my life. Here is a full account of my experience from Day 21 when I met up with the Walk About Love up to my return flight to South Africa.

Continue reading “Walk About Love”