And the chicken (as usual) was delicious, and the big piece was huge! The two pieces plus the bread “stuff” was $3 and I think I paid about a $1.20 for each of the two Coca-Cola’s that I drank; honestly that sees a little pricy for the Coke for just being the vegetable stand in Cobano, but usually I get the bottles at a restaurant and they’d charge more so it’s hard to tell…
The Word Lens application is amazing, one of the best uses of augmented reality yet! You just point it at a sign (or any text) and it removes the words that are there and superimposes the translation over the old text.
The program is free and if you want to test it out, it’s two translation modes: “erase the text” and “reverse the letters”, while not very useful, make a great demonstration. The Spanish-to-English dictionary is $9.99 (they also have English-to-Spanish for an additional $9.99).
Here’s the sign that was taped up that I wanted to read.
It’s not the best video, but I really wanted to demonstrate this in a real world example. And since in the middle of recording the video I realized it was time for my bus, it’s pretty real world…
You’ll want to make the video full screen to actually be able to read it (and maybe you’ll need to pause it to really see what’s going on).
As I said you’ll want to look at it full screen (in HD) or you won’t be able to see the action on the iPHone screeen, so be sure not to just watch the embedded version.
I forgot to mention, no internet connection is required to use it! Once you purchase a dictionary it’s on your device (I assume it runs on the iPod touch with the camera also), it’s actually got a “dictionary” where you can look up words.
UPDATE: Now they also have Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian, and French available. To be clear the program translates back and forth between English and the other languages, but does not translate between the other languages (yet!).
Actually, later I did notice a few people adding some smaller rocks to the tops of some already existing piles. I was too high up to get some good footage though. Some people calls these piles “cairns” or “ducks”; personally, “cairn” makes me think of something religious or a memorial.
I was really hoping that zooming in would change the rocks scale to make them look huge, but no such luck. Not sure if it’s the plant life or that everything looked in focus (or something else) that made it look so different. But I still thought it was fun enough to share…
Just kind of beast crawling around making a lot of noise on the roof. At first I thought it was someone (I say “he” in the video) up there fixing a leak or something (it’d just been raining). But a little while later I spotted this. The video is a little slow in the middle but it does pick around 53 seconds.
And it’s watchable in 1080p HD, so be sure to watch it full screen! Can anyone tell me what it is?
The next morning I was eating breakfast on the balcony and this guy was up in a tree nearby. It’s something different, doesn’t appear to have the spiky things on it’s back.
The image is a little dark, but you can see better if you click to enlarge it. FYI, I don’t eat breakfast without some kind of camera nearby, you never know what might be nearby. Usually we have the lizards and monkeys, but I’ve not seen any monkeys by the hotel yet.
As always the ride from Puntarenas to Paquera was fun and we got the big ferry which is a lot nicer than the little one. The boat was packed, I’ve never seen it that full of people before. The weather was gorgeous but got a little cloudy at the end of the ride (before the rain that started after the ride) but otherwise it was a great day for the ride.
This isn’t charming music that I edited into the video, it’s what was actually playing on the ferry in the background while I was shooting the video!
This video is watchable in HD (and for the first time you can watch video from me in 1080p! If you do watch in 1080p, let me know how it looks, I don’t have a screen with that high of resolution.
PS – This was mostly just me playing with the zoom on my new Canon Vixia HF20 that I mentioned the other day and I’m still a little shaky using it…
Totally worth going outside for! The eclipse was very cool looking. I’d had a long day so I’d taken a nap and set the alarm to make sure the sky cleared up enough, it did, so I got my gear together and went outside for a while.
It looked much much redder than these shots show (since these show virtually no red). It was actually more of a dark orange with red tinting.
Not that these shots show anything very clearly. Considering that the Moon was now “10,000 to 100,000 times fainter than it was just a couple of hours ago”* it wasn’t a big shock.
And while I saw a few shooting stars, nothing like the meteor show I though that was supposed to be have seen once the Moon was dimmed…
In hindsight, I wouldn’t have brought the camera (or tried to shoot video), so I could have paid more attention. But then I’d have wished I had brought it, right? Actually, the tripod on the SLR probably would have been the best choice. I had it on the video camera but the video just came out too grainy ; plus, the darn Earth andMoon kept moving so I had to readjust.
It was the extended family Christmas celebration today, there were 20 people or so there. Most of my aunts, uncles, cousins and cousins kids were there. Just a lot of food, hanging out, playing Apples to Apples, hide and seek and all sorts of other stuff. It was great seeing everyone and it was at my Mom’s house (she hasn’t had the extended Christmas for years!) so that made it even better.
As I was unloading the chairs and stuff from my car, my iPhone reminded me of something else Christmas-ish.
So I hopped back into my car and drove over to Greenfield Village to catch the Christmas Fireworks! It’s only 3 miles from my house, so it was just a quick trip.
They do a big old fashioned Christmas evening, if you’ve never been you need to go, and they end it with fireworks so I just drove nearby to a place where I could see them. They do it about six or seven times per season, they’re still doing it through the 27th of this month (but they sell out, so don’t wait).
