confessions of a serial hobbyist

So in deciding that I want to pursue screenwriting and possibly even make a small ultra-low-budget movie (most likely a short) I decided it was time to get a new camcorder, one I could actually use to capture video that I could then use and edit. So after some thought, and reading over a ton of reviews at CamcorderInfo.com I narrowed down my criteria:

1. It had to be Hi-Def. Buying anything standard-def these days is just buying obsolescence.
2. It had to have a mic-in port. If I’m going to do any hobbyist shooting (beyond recording my son to send DVD’s to the grandparents) then I’ll want to use a nice shotgun mic and boom for getting better audio, and having the camcorder record it onto the same tape as the video is easier than managing separate recordings and trying to sync it all up in post.
3. It needed decent manual controls. I don’t need to be able to tweak every little thing, but I want atleast a basic level of control over how the footage will end up.
4. It had to me affordable. So this instantly killed my first choice, the $3500 Canon XH A1. Let’s face it, $3500 is a whole lot of pissed-off-wife to have to face.
5. It had to be a format that’s easily editable. This IMMEDIATELY canceled out the plethora of AVC-HD camcorders. Sure h.264 is great, but a camcorder that records in a format that just about nothing supports means it’s not so useful. HDV won out here, as it’s editable (or atleast importable) by just about everything, and $5 MiniDV cassettes make for cheap archival.

And so, after searching, and waiting, and looking, I settled on my choice, the Canon HV20. It records in 1080i OR 1080p24 (24fps progressive scan…it has a certain cult following), it has a mic-in port, it has decent manual controls, and it’s HDV. Now the price was a bit more than I was hoping to spend, but between finding some good deals and using some online coupons I took a decent chunk out of the MSRP.

So far I haven’t had too much of a chance to use it (had it a day now) but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s comfortable to hold and use, and the button layout fits my hand pretty well – I can reach each of the buttons without stretching. If I get a chance to use it some more, maybe I’ll toss up some footage recorded to give people an idea of the quality…but it’s crisp. I should note that this is the only HD video source in my house – I have a 32″ HDTV but none of my inputs are HD, so maybe that’s why this looks so crisp to me. But overall, it’s a nice camcorder so far, and after a bit more use…or abuse…I’ll post a followup.

So I’ve been playing with a bluetooth keyboard while at work today and discovered that with it, my phone, and a bluetooth headset, I hadn’t used my laptop at all. The keyboard was very usable (the Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard) and has convinced me that I don’t care if my future perfect mobile device has a qwerty keyboard or not, because T9 is fast enough if I’m up and about, and if I need to really write, I can surely find somewhere to sit down, pull the keyboard out of my pocket, and type.

My usage scenario earlier was:
I was typing an IM with a friend (in IM+, I’ve been using PacketBox to use the built-in IM client on my Nokia N80, but it was having some aweful lag issues earlier today) and got a call from my wife. So I hit the button on the bluetooth headset, got the call (while still typing an IM), answered her question, hung up, and because the call was short enough the GPRS connection resumed as if nothing had happened. If I was on a 3g phone the data wouldn’t even have been put on hold. After the call I hopped over to the podcasting app, began downloading the Engadget podcast (Cingular must love my data usage…but that’s what they get for selling me unlimited). Resumed IMing with a friend about stuff. Then I actually took a break from all of this to, you know, get work done, and then 20 minutes later when I went back to the phone, switched to the podcasting app and started playing the Engadget podcast. So of course then a coworker had a question so I got up, went over to his desk (with earpiece in one ear, still listening to the podcast, despite the phone being on my desk cradled on the keyboard. All in all, I was able to achieve about half of what I do on my computer with those 3 small, pocketable devices. And it was all powered by my phone, which means I could have picked up my phone and walked off, without losing an IM or stopping the podcast download.

What’s still lacking:
The ability to do my core job: programming for closed systems that require windows to run SDKs for, and web browsing (technically I could, but the browser eats enough ram that all other apps would shut down, and web browsing on a cell phone while getting better with the new S60 Web Browser, is still less than preferable). I’m wondering if adding 1 more device, something like the Nokia N800 (with rdesktop for access to a remote windows machine for work) would get me to the point where I could do everything comfortably, and then have everything fit in my pockets instead of bringing the laptop bag with me…

As people, we all have a hard time giving up on the bad ideas we have, that we just can’t let ourselves believe are really bad. As I had mentioned, one of my current hobbies is screenwriting, or maybe I should say the idea of screenwriting, because I’ve yet to even half-finish a script. But I have my idea, I think it’s fun, and cool, and could be a good movie. So what do I do? I mention it to some friends to get feedback. And I get the same response from all of them, the dull, uninterested, “oh, yeah, that could be cool I guess.” So the natural response, atleast for me, is to tell myself well maybe they just don’t get it, or maybe I just didn’t explain it well enough in my 2 sentence blurb. But ya know what? Maybe it really isn’t that great of an idea.

There’s a quote I came across on another blog (Tommi’s S60 Blog) recently:

“Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.” — Ira Glass

Oh how depressingly true that is. We all want to believe we’re smart, that our ideas are good, that our jokes are funny, etc. It’s easier to believe that other people just don’t “get it” than to admit maybe just a little, the idea is crap. And so the less-than-half-written script for screenplay idea number one is in the trash (well actually it’s in a random folder sitting on my laptop, but same difference).

I’ve been reading a number of blogs, articles. whatever I can on the technical side of script writing. Now that I discovered the first idea just maybe was crap, I just need to find something else. Or who knows, maybe the best plan is while I don’t have another idea, continue working on the crap, after all, even a bad script could have a few good scenes come out of it that I’ll want to use in something else.

I’ve long been searching for the ultimate gadget. The one device I can take with me that will do everything, and liberate me from my handful of gadgets I bring with me everywhere I go.

Currently when I head in to work I grab:
My cell phone (currently a Nokia N80)
My Nintendo DS Lite
My iPod (30gig video)
My laptop bag (containing 15.4″ MacBook Pro, and in its pockets my PalmTX, and the ever important deck of cards)

And I hate it. I want one device, that does everything well, that fits sveltly into my pocket. So, I came up with a list of features for my one ultimate device:

It must be a phone. I need to have one with me so if I only carry 1 device it has to be a phone. VOIP over WiFi won’t cut it (though honestly VOIP over EV-DO or HSPDA data would be acceptible). WiFi is a necessity, and 3G data is preferred, not because of the additional speed, but because of the ability to still work while on the phone. Bluetooth is a must.

I want a decent camera. I don’t do a ton of photography, but sometimes I see something and I want to snap a picture. My current phone, the Nokia N80 handles this quite well as I can take a picture, upload to flickr directly from the phone, and go about my day.

It has to play my music and videos. My cell phone does a pretty good job with this as it is, with the exception of no bookmarking support when listening to podcasts. But there’s the storage limitation there, and even 2 gigs gets filled up rather quickly…but this could be solved by…

It has to be able to access remote file-shares. We live in a data hungry world, and with limitations on size to carry data, it’s much preferred if I can just mount a remote fileshare from a fileserver than to deal with moving parts in a portable device. Accessing via the web is here now, but I can’t write back to it. I want to truly mount a remote filesystem and access the files as if they were local. Plus, I pay for unlimited data from Cingular so I try my best to get my money’s worth.

I need to be able to work from it. As an engineer, and one who usually works with closed development systems, it means I unfortunately needs access to windows. Which in the case of my 1 ultimate device, it means I need to be able to access windows systems via rdesktop or VNC. To properly use windows I need a decent resolution, keyboard, and mouse, so…

I need to be able to attach keyboard, mouse, and monitor (preferably over DVI) when at my desk. I don’t care if on its own the device has a qwerty keyboard or not (I’m fast enough at T9 these days) but I need to be able to attach a keyboard for when I need to get work done – writing code via T9 is a frightening proposition. The video-out should support high resolution (higher than the devices LCD, 1280×800? 1920×1200?) so I can be productive. USB is desired to plug in to a printer, or external harddrive/DVD drive/etc.

Basically, my end goal is to have a single device that I take with me, and is usable on its own, but that I can then plug in to keyboard/mouse/monitor at home and have it be my “full computer” as well.

And the sad realization is that I’ve yet to find anything that meets all of those goals…though I’ve played with and know of a few devices that come close:

1) Nokia’s Internet Tablets. I’ve played with a 770 before, never the N800. It had a good enough resolution that I could imagine getting work done, supports bluetooth keyboard, COULD be modified to support a mouse (it’s linux+X11 afterall), and with some tweaks can use a USB keyboard, or USB harddrive. It can remote mount shared filesystems, and has a decent little development community behind it. Unfortunately, there’s no video-output (though there are some USB-only monitors that were announced recently…I wonder if these could be made to work), and most importantly no cell service so it’s not my phone, which kills it right there.

2) The Nokia N95 or E90. Monsters of the cell phone world with accelerated 3d, TV-out, bluetooth support for keyboards, USB for attaching to a printer, but also not without limitations. No mouse support in the OS (which means rdesktop/vnc into a windows machine to get work done would have no mouse…unless bluetooth mouse support was added in the app itself – possible?), no attaching USB harddrives, no (that I’m aware of) support for mounting remote filesystems, and while it has video out, it’s only TV-out, which a number of monitors support but lacks the high resolution to have a windows VNC session be usable for real work.

Now it’s true that this post has mentioned a number of Nokia products, and maybe I’m a bit of a Nokia-whore these days (and an Apple-whore to be fair) but frankly they just seem to be pushing some of the best converged devices I’ve seen recently. Honestly if I had a device that supported everything I want above, I wouldn’t care who makes it or what OS it runs.

I have what could be thought of as a problem. As I mentioned in my last post, I tend to find new hobbies fairly regularly, and they are almost always expensive. And of course when buying tools or supplies for my new expensive hobby, I generally look at the best and most expensive items possible. The logic here is flawed, but here it is none-the-less:
If it turns out I enjoy this hobby, I know I’m going to keep getting better, and will continue to need better and better tools to work with. So doesn’t it makes sense to just buy the good stuff now, than to buy something as a “starter” and then go back and spend the money on the good stuff later?

As an example: last year I decided I wanted to write and shoot an indie film. Why? Because I’ve always loved writing, I’ve always loved movies, and because it’s a new challenge. So obviously if I’m going to make a movie, I need atleast one camera, right? Now here is where that logic comes in. Since I would just be starting with digital videography and non-linear editing, my wife would most likely recommend that I get a lower priced camera to start with, and if after playing around and learning more I still want to do this, look into it then. Good advice I suppose. But if I’m going to enjoy this and follow through on it (and of course I’m convinced I will because it’s my latest interest) I’ll eventually need a good camera, and so the money spent on the lesser camera would just be wasted.

The best thing here is that I KNOW my thinking is flawed, because I know more often than not after playing around with a hobby a bit I move on, but I can’t convince myself at the time. It’s interesting to me how as humans we can know what’s true and right and yet still believe, or atleast deep down WANT to believe, the opposite. We have got to be the dumbest intelligent creatures on earth.