Category Archives: Gadgets & Apps

All posts that don’t obviously fit in one of the sub-categories go here.

15,500 emails. Poof!

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I’ve previously posted about creating a Gmail account in 2004. Google launched the service on April 1st of that year and I created my account (invite-only at the time) on April 21, 2004. In those 20+ years I accumulated more than fifteen thousand emails. Google’s pitch was their search was so good you could just keep all of your emails and they’d help you find it. And it worked pretty much as advertised. But I rarely needed to find an old email. And my ALL MAIL folder just got bigger and bigger. If memory serves, I downloaded all/most of my Google stuff a couple of times during those 20 years but never had a need to use those backups.

Most of my computing these days happens on my iPhone and my MacBook. But given my lengthy history with Google (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar), I’ve never migrated over to Apple for these tools. Until now.

I was very impressed with Apple’s approach to AI (“Apple Intelligence”) and to get the full benefit I’ve decided to go all-in. Starting tomorrow I’ll be using Apple Mail and Calendar. Not sure yet about switching from Google Drive to iCloud. I have a lot of files in Google Drive (850 GB).

As for deleting 20+ years of emails? Felt great. If I experience any regrets, I promise to update this post.

Pocket 3: Chest Mount

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Follow Mode is the default mode and suitable for most shooting scenarios like vlogs and selfies. The pan and tilt axes are unlocked, allowing the camera to follow your movements left/right and up/down. In the Tilt Lock Mode the tilt axis is locked, maintaining an absolute horizontal orientation. You can pan the camera left and right, but it won’t tilt up or down.

I think the problem with today’s video was the gimbal rotational speed. I had it set on fast and the slow setting would have given me slower, smoother movement.

Twenty years of cameras

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Playing with the Pocket 3 is bringing back fond memories of cameras I have owned. I do not think of myself as a photographer or videographer, I spent a lot of hours (and money) over the past 20 years and most of them got a post or two on this blog.

  • 5/1/2008 – iMage Webcam (CamTwist, Ustream)
  • 5/22/2008 – Flip Video Camera
  • 6/13/2009 – Ecamm BT-1 “World’s first Bluetooth webcam” (related: twitCam) –
  • 12/8/2018 – Sony Handycam DCR-TRV 74 (I’m sure I was shooting video with the Sony much earlier but getting that video off the camera and encoded on a computer was such a time-consumer nightmare, it’s not worth mentioning)

I’d have to say my favorite cameras during those early days were made by Casio:

In 2009 I bought my first iPhone and that was pretty much it for point-and-shoot cameras but I have purchased a couple of GoPro cameras in the last couple of years.