GoPro HeroHD Cheat Sheet

I just purchased a GoPro HeroHD and it's a fantastic camera! In order to keep the size small and the weight down, they put a minimal LCD screen on the front. This makes changing the settings a bit more difficult than on a large screen.

To help me remember what all of the abbreviations stand for, I put together a little cheat sheet to print out and keep with you when you need to change settings on the go.

Here's a printable PDF of the commands that fits in a 1/4 sheet of paper. This is what's on the sheet:

onO / onF - One button on/off
F / P / 3 / PES - Default mode
r1 - r5 - Recording resolutions
Cnt / SPt - Exposure mode
- use SPt if inside car and want to record outside
UP / UPd - Upside down mode
LFF / LFO - Live feed off/on
oSO / oSF - On screen disp on/off
P2 - P60 - Picture Every x secs
bLO / bLF - LED Blinking on/off
bPO / bPF - Beeping sound on/off
nSC / PAL - NTSC / PAL mode
LSt - Delete last file
ALL - Delete all files
- shutter to start blinking, shutter again to delete
OFF, 60, 120, 300 - Auto off secs
dAt - Set date

April Recap

No lights and no meat makes Jason something something. Go crazy? Well actually, not at all.

This post is a bit late because I've been spending most of my spare time on a side project, but I finally want to recap our month of no lights or meat.

No Lights

The month started off to some adjustment. Living without light got us into a routine of laying down with the sun. By about 7:30, I was already starting to feel tired, sluggish, and unproductive. This kind of concerned me because I took on a new programming project about halfway through the month and really wanted to work on it until late into the night.

I found that working on the computer with the monitor as my single source of light was really what was causing this problem. In response, I set up my desk with some candles and was able to be quite productive using only a few small peripheral candles. I also found that even having the slightest bit of ambient candlelight in any other room really helped my mood overall.

Cost Savings

I made a spreadsheet of candlelight usage vs. room light usage and the results were pretty positive. Based on my estimations, we use about $7.50/month in lighting and less than $1/month in candles. It's not a huge cost savings, but we live in a pretty small apartment so the savings could be much more in a larger house. Somewhat ironically, our power bill went up from the same time last year because, I believe, we did a lot more stovetop-cooking and baking than we normally do by not eating meat during the month.

No Meat

Living without meat has been a very refreshing experience. Neither of us really miss it and it has made us much more aware of the food we consume. We've started buying food from the food co-op and farmers' market more regularly because we are actually able to finish all of the food we buy before it goes bad.

One of the best things about living without meat is our expanded menu of food. For a long time we got into a rut of making the same things over and over, but this forced us out of our shell and made us explore new things. I've found that you can make almost any traditionally meat food you can imagine with some very tasty vegetarian substitutes.

An interesting side effect of eating no meat is how people react to it. Many aren't sure how to cater to our new diet and it seems to scare some people. We've been more than happy to bring vegetarian dishes to any occasion and I think most people that have tried them have been impressed.

Summary

One of the best lessons I have learned from living without lights is how little artificial light I really need. Sunlight provided almost all the light I really needed and when the sun wasn't out, candles provided all of the necessary light. The two exceptions here are the bathroom and the closet, neither of which have windows. The hardest thing about candlelight in the bathroom is shaving and reading, but every other task is completely doable.

We're trying to stick with no lighting as much as possible, but there are times when we use them just for the time savings. The candles are much dimmer so finding stuff by candlelight is more difficult, but I have really learned to love the glow of the candles.

We're also going to stick with no meat for the foreseeable future. We've found an ample amount of vegetarian meals that satisfy our appetite and feel much better all around because of it. I personally am not going to be strict about it and will eat meat from time to time, but I'm trying to only eat meat when it comes from reputable sources like local farms.

Overall, the experiments during the month of April were a huge success. If for nothing else, it gave us both a new perspective on the things we put in our bodies and the necessity of light. We've got a few more experiments planned coming up, but that's for another post.

TL;DR

Candles provide enough light for most activities and vegetables can replace meat for almost everything except when you get a hankering for a burger. We're sticking with both for the foreseeable future.

Mid-April Update

It's been two weeks without meat or lights and we're still alive. In fact, I would say this is shaping up to be a pretty awesome month. Before I get into more of an update, I want to answer a few questions people have been asking:

1. For our candlelight experiment, we have not changed anything else except for not using room lights. We still use computers, phones, and electricity.

2. I don't yet have any concrete numbers in terms of money savings or environmental impact of this experiement, but I have started a spreadsheet so I can make an educated guess.

3. We haven't gone vegan, just eliminated meat from our diet. I still drink milk (I don't think I could not drink milk) and eat eggs.

Candlelight
This experiment has been going really well, though there have definitely been times, mainly when I've lost something and can't find it, when I want to turn on the lights. I've been good, though and avoided room lights completely. It's been kind of funny when people come over and having to light the candles to use the bathroom.

The bathroom and the clothes closet are still the biggest problem rooms. There is no outside light in either one and they typically require lighting for their respective purposes. I've missed spots shaving several times and picking out clothes is a bit difficult even under candlelight. Kitzzy yells at me for bringing open candles into the closet (for fear of fire) so I just do it when she's not around.

I've noticed myself trying to put things in consistent locations so I don't have to light a candle to look for them. At the start of the month, I was very quick to light candles for everything, but now I do my best to feel my way around to find what I'm looking for. It's been working well so far.

Another big change I've noticed is trying to get as much done as possible before the sun goes down. While candlelight helps, there's some things, like working on my bike, that I need more light for. The same goes for making dinner. I try to finish dinner as quickly as possible so I'm not trying to make it by candlelight.

Vegetarian
Speaking of making dinner, vegetarian month is going great too! The amount of varied food we've been eating is fantastic. When we were eating meat, we would pretty much make the same meals over and over. Now, maybe because we're new to this, we've made a bunch of unique and tasty meals.

We've been making a lot of chilies. They are incredibly easy to make and you can pretty much just add any combination of beans, vegetables, and spices and you're good to go. Last Monday we made a huge pot full of chili and a tempeh stir fry and these lasted us almost all week.

My two favorite dishes so far have been Sweet Potato Burritos and the Shepherd's Pie. Tonight we made sweet potato raviolis that came out very good, but the amount of work required didn't justify the result.

As far as its effect on my body, I've been on a few very fast bike rides and I've been able to keep up so I think I'm getting enough protein. There was a few days where I felt sluggish when I shouldn't have and I was contemplating my diet being a factor, but overall my body seems to be adjusting well to this.

Overall, April is turning out pretty cool. I think after the month is over, we'll probably start using some lights again, maybe just the closet at first. I think we might stick with vegetarianism for awhile longer. We've found some awesome new meals and I haven't noticed any adverse effects on my training. Veg On!

Vegetarian April

April is proving to be quite the month for new experiences. I posted recently about Kitzzy and I going candlelight-only for a month and this week we decided to go vegetarian for the month as well.

How did this decision get made? Well we've been talking about trying this for sometime now so the idea of doing it wasn't too much of a surprise. Secondly, I recently watched Food, Inc. and I started to wonder how the meat we buy has made its way to our table. I know I've been eating this same meat for a long time, but to see the conditions needed to provide a large country with enough meat to feed everyone, animal factories make meat look much less appetizing.

I'm not opposed to meat, but I've tried to buy meat that's free-range and sustainable and have spent much more than I care to on it. So instead of spending a fortune on meat, this is a great opportunity to learn how to fulfill my dietary needs during a busy training season with no meat.

Somehow this managed to coincide with me being the chef for the month so I'm getting to learn some really good vegetarian recipes.  The first one I made was just a tofu stir fry. This was lacking in flavor and in general was just poorly executed. I'm not a big fan of tofu, mostly because of the texture.

The second meal I made was a vegetarian shepherd's pie that replaced the meat with a lentil and pearl barley mixture. This came out fantastic! I was blown away by how tasty this was and encouraged that I could make a protein-rich vegetarian meal without tofu.

My third meal was a vegetarian meatloaf that used lentils and quick oats instead of meat. This was good, but not as good as the shepherd's pie. I think it just needed some extra spices.

Well I'm looking forward to the rest of the month and learning to cook some great new food. This should be a lot of fun and who knows, maybe we'll keep this up for longer than the month.

Candlelight Update

Last week I posted about our plans to go without artificial light for a month. Well we're a week in and it has been going surprisingly well!

Bathroom shelf

I finally got all of our needed shelves put up in the kitchen and bathroom so we could have more candlelight around. The tape on the light switches is still keeping us honest from time to time, though I've noticed myself reaching for the switch less and less.

The hardest part about this so far has been shaving.  It seems no matter how many candles I put around me, it's still kind of difficult to really see where you're shaving.

My candlestick after 1 week

One of the best parts about this has been that we open the windows much more now since the candles don't put out a lot of light. We need as much supplemental light as possible and it's also nice having sunlight instead of fluorescent light.

I still haven't covered the aquarium light, but I'm shortening the photoperiod (it needed to be shortened anyway) so the lights shut off at 7pm instead of 9pm. This will give us more of the evening without lights to make this more realistic.

I'm very optimistic abut the rest of the month and can see this going on for longer than the month. There have been times, particularly if I've lost something and need to find it, that I've wanted to turn the lights on, but I've managed pretty well without them.

Lights Out

On Saturday night, Kitzzy and I had an Earth Hour game night and BBQ to which no one showed up. But that's okay; we played the Game of Life, then sat around in a candle-lit room for awhile and talked. It wasn't so bad sitting in the near darkness, so we decided we would try it for a month.

Starting today, we're going to go for a month using almost only candle-light. I say almost because there's a few things we can't shut off, such as my aquarium, and other things we just decided to leave, like the refrigerator light and Kitzzy's alarm clocks that gradually increases the light to wake you up. Everything else is off.


I put masking tape over all of the light switches to help alleviate the accidental turn-ons from the habit of turning on the switch when entering the room. This has already helped a lot for the cause.

Kitzzy has a bunch of candles and accessories from when she used to do Party Lite so we got all of that stuff from her parents. I wanted a candle to carry around, a la Victorian England so we went to IKEA and I picked up a candle holder and some more candles. Kitzzy says if I had a stocking cap, I'd look like Ebenezer Scrooge carrying this around.

I'm very much looking forward to the next month. I like the glow that candles give a room much more than artificial lighting. I'm looking forward to seeing how different life is without artificial lighting and how to adapt to it.

I'm going to attempt to limit the amount of light my aquarium gives off to the room, but that's a difficult thing to do. At some point, I would like to make a cost comparison of using candles to using lights, but I won't know enough about candle costs for a week or two.

Deaf in the Mall

One of my assinments in my ASL class was to go to a mall and act as though I was deaf, trying to communicate completely through sign and gestures. Kitzzy and I were going to the Prime Outlet mall near the Mall of Millenia on Saturday so I figured it'd be a good opportunity. Kitzzy knows some sign language, enough for us to get by chatting back and forth in the mall. This was a great learning experience for me and it was fun, frustrating and thought-provoking.

I noticed a few things right off the bat that I hadn't expected. For one, it was easy for me to turn off my voice, but I had a much harder time turning off my hearing. In the first shop we went to, I was looking at some clothes and one of the sales people came up behind me and asked if I needed some help. Of course my natural reaction was to just turn around and say no, and just after I did that, I realized that killed my opportunity to act deaf. Similarly I kept telling Kitzzy to turn off her voice so I wouldn't be tempted to look at her when she talked to me.

It took us about 30 minutes before we were finally able to get into the no-voice/no-hearing groove and once we did, it was actually kind of neat walking around signing to one another. Walking around the mall, I noticed we were getting a lot of looks. It felt like a lot of people were watching us sign.

Our signing, while not 100% accurate, was actually pretty understandable and we almost never had to speak to clarify what we were saying to each other. I think the mall is a good setting for this exercise since there's a lot to look at and talk about there. I might try this at Disney some day.

One thing we did find difficult was walking and signing. There were a lot of people there and avoiding obstacles like support columns and kiosks was quite a task while we were busy looking at and signing to one another. Several times we stopped and stood off to the side to finish talking before we started walking again.

The first store where I talked to someone was the Pearl Izumi Outlet. They sell mostly sports-clothing and I was looking at some cycling shoes. I tried to ask the salesman about two of the shoes and found myself asking more of a "which one do you like better?" and me holding up two of them. He was polite, but I was a bit nervous so I didn't talk to him as much as I would've liked to.

After visiting a few more shops, we made it to the food court and went to Tropical Sensations, a sandwich and smoothy place. We stood there for awhile looking at their menu and signing back and forth about what we wanted to eat. We pretty successfully communicated to one another what we wanted and I went up to order. I think the guy working at the register realized we were deaf and was ready for us. As soon as I started ordering, he just handed me a sticky note and motioned to write down what I wanted. This was a bit anticlimactic since I was really hoping to try explaining my order with gestures.

One thing I started thinking about during the experience is how often do hearing people imitate deaf people for things less honorable than academic pursuits. I would say I could've probably done this without knowing much sign language at all since communicating with the salespeople was more focused on visual descriptions than detailed conversation.

I had a wonderful experience doing this and I may try it again in the future. I think having another person with me was beneficial because we could sign together and worse comes to worse, I can have them be my interpreter or vice-versa. I think this was a great exercise and really gave me a good perspective to see part of the world through the eyes of a deaf person.