An Unusual Live Stream, Virtual reality ride, New recruit, Lackluster, Election Eve
I was hoping to be able to skip mowing the grass this weekend but as I surveyed the property on Saturday morning I knew the chore needed to be done. I mowed and got done a number of other things while Cindy was working. During the afternoon Cindy worked on finalizing the prep for our Halloween live stream. She dressed me up as Joe Exotic from Tiger King while she was Carol Baskin. We even had DJ on camera for awhile in his baby tiger outfit which was cute. It was a mostly silly 90 minutes of streaming but we had fun.
One thing that was talked about on stream was the possibility of me doing a virtual reality EUC ride, meaning shooting and publishing a ride in native 360 degree format like the Insta360 One R supports. With a VR headset it could almost feel like you are the one riding the wheel. I decided I wanted to see if I could make it happen.
I combined a number of short GoPro extensions to elevate the camera off the helmet to allow for the best perspective. I tightened up my chin strap to minimize movement and then headed out on my KingSong S18 for the swamp, which I thought would create an interesting environment for a VR ride.
Overall the experiment worked pretty well. I had planned to make two videos out of it, one on the ride in and one on the ride out. Unfortunately the camera locked up and I lost the footage from the ride in. I was able to save the footage from the ride out at least.
As expected the size of the video files from 360 footage is massive. The 20 minute video was almost 30 gig in size. It took forever to process and upload to YouTube. The main file is still not even viewable on YouTube because it is not done processing. I did shoot a brief intro to the ride which you can check out now to see the 360 effect.
Later in the afternoon Katie and DJ came back with Cindy for a visit. I had wanted Katie to try out the Quest 2 to see what she thought of it. Once we got her strapped in she had a similar reaction as I did, her mind was blown. I had her try out various titles but when I got her into Super Hot VR she really got to experience VR. The game is a simple physics encounter where you battle very generic looking mannequins that are coming after you with various weapons from bare fists to machine guns.
To succeed in the game requires all sorts of movement. Katie really liked it and got further in the game than I managed myself. It was cool because you have the ability to stream the video the person in VR is seeing to your phone/tablet, so I could see what she was seeing. By the time she pulled the headset off she was in a full blown sweat, VR can be quite the workout. I look forward to having her try some of the other games.
The Eagles/Cowboys game was Sunday evening. It may have been the least excited I have ever been for a Cowboys game. I just don’t feel like the Eagles are going anywhere this year and the same can be said about the Cowboys. The game was basically a mess. The Eagles turned the ball over four or five times. Wentz threw two more interceptions and fumbled. Despite all of this the Eagles won 23-9 but the game was actually much closer than the score indicated, despite the Cowboys being forced to start a rookie QB that was not very good. So the Eagles are now perched on top of the NFC East with a 3-4-1 record, fantastic.
Today is the eve of the biggest election of my adult life. By all indicators the turn out is huge, possibly the largest in history. Historically that means good things for democrats. The tidal wave of misinformation is still hammering away on social media. Just this morning I had to correct an ex-coworker that was sharinging flat out lies about Biden’s tax plan, she stated he planned to tax all homeowners a 3% “federal property tax”. It took me all of 20 seconds to disprove her claim which I did with the following qualifier. “This is why Facebook and social media in general is so dangerous, lack of due diligence.” If I was the praying type I’d be on my knees from now until the results are final. The madness needs to end.