My college roommate's visit: Hanauma video

Yesterday, I told the story of the trip my college roommate and I took to Hanauma Bay. Here's the video footage I compiled from the snorkeling adventure. I forgot to show my friend how to take video on my camera, so all the footage is mine. Since I was mostly swimming at the surface of the water (the inner bay is very shallow), I get knocked around a bit by the waves, so it's not very steady. But you can see the "good spot" that we spent a lot of time at, a fish eating/playing with one of those "sea pen" seeds, a parrotfish crunching away at the algae on the reef (most of the video's sound is just annoying noise, but listen for the scraping sound!), and yes, the beautiful octopus cruising along the reef.



I hope you enjoyed my recent Hawaii photos. Next week, I'll have photos that the Housemate has taken in Antarctica; they will be posted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. First up: penguins!

Story Time Sunday: For 20 Feet

It's been a long time since I did a Story Time Sunday post; I guess over the summer I had plenty of new stories to tell, leaving no time for narrating old favorites like this one. Anyway, this is the story of the time I broke the law for 20 feet. Not so serious, but it's fun to tell, anyway.

Apologies for the lame visuals for this one. This should really just be an audio thing, but Blogger is weird and I only know how to do videos.



P.S. In case it's not obvious, during driver's ed I only had a learner's permit, allowing me to drive only with a licensed driver in the passenger seat.

Snorkeling in Sharks Cove - Video

Tuesday's photos post tells you everything you need to know about my snorkeling outing in Sharks Cove on the North Shore of O'ahu. The video is pretty self-explanatory, with some annotations added for the fish that I could identify. Keep an eye out for the OCTOPUS!

Watch it in 720p HD if you like.

My Big Island trip: Snorkeling and Volcano Videos

Finally, I've sifted through all the video footage the Housemate and I took on my camera during our trip to the Big Island to bring you only the best (or at least the better). I ended up making two videos.

The first includes all of my good snorkeling footage; though it does have a couple clips taken while not snorkeling, they are at least water related (such as the baby eel from the tide pool at Pine Trees Beach). I figured one snorkeling video was more convenient than separate videos for each of the beaches I went to. I will note again that the Housemate is much steadier with the camera while snorkeling than I am, in part because he is much more experienced with free-diving than I am. So you can mostly tell the shots that I took by whether or not they look jumpy. The steady shots underwater are basically all his.

The second is the video I took at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park; it has some short clips of craters and steam vents, but it's mostly the awesome video footage from when we went to see the red hot lava. Since when I was filming, I didn't know which clips would be put in the final video, or even that I would be making a final edited video, I prepared many of them as standalone clips. That is to say, I did quiet little narrations in many of them (e.g. "This is the Halema'uma'u Crater on August 28, 2010"). How many times can you hear me say the date? Oh well, you can ignore my commentary, since the subtitles tell you what you need to know.

Note you can watch it in HD (720p). Enjoy!

Snorkeling video


Volcano video


Here are the links to all of my previous posts of photos (and stories) from our trip to the Big Island (just to have them conveniently all in one place).

Magic Sands Beach Park (first snorkeling trip)
Pine Trees Beach (lava rock beach with tide pool)
Hapuna Bay (second snorkeling trip)
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: Halemaumau Crater and Thurston Lava Tube
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: Kilauea Iki
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: End of the Road
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: RED HOT LAVA!
Pu'uhonua o Hanaunau (the best snorkeling)

Playing with the new camera: Snorkeling HD video

I mentioned before that one of the biggest differences between the Housemate's underwater camera and my new Panasonic Lumix TS2 is that mine takes HD video. So how is this underwater HD video? Here is a collection of clips that I took snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. Unfortunately there's nothing exciting like on my last trip there, and I apologize for the shakiness of the cinematography--I blame it on the waves in this part of the bay, but I'm sure I can improve. Still, it's enough to get an idea of what the camera's underwater video looks like. (You should be able to watch it at 720p.)



First, the sound is weird. Maybe little tiny flows of water around the microphone, with particles of sand hitting the camera? I expected to hear me breathing, since that's the sound that I notice most while snorkeling, in addition to background water movement sounds. It's a bit annoying, but not too bad. I am impressed by the auto focus. There's one moment in one clip where I notice it trying to focus on a field of fish as I swing it to the right, but the rest looks pretty smooth. And the HD is a noticeable improvement over the other camera's video.

Next time I'll try not to jiggle the camera as much. Then all I'll need is to be attacked by a fish, and it'll be golden.

I've been posting all photos for the past two weeks (yes, I'm a bit obsessed with my new camera). I'll return to a little normal geekery soon.

Story time Sunday: The Chocolate Orange

Following my first Story time Sunday post a couple weeks ago, here's another one in which I recount an embarrassing tale of momentary stupidity. I don't know why I end up telling people this story, because it is a little humiliating and I was alone at the time of my stupidity so no one ever had to know about it. I guess it just comes up sometimes.

Humuhumu Epic Video!

As promised in Tuesday's post of photos from Hanauma Bay, here is the epic video of the humuhumunukunukuapua'a you have all been waiting for! Or, well, at least I've been waiting to post it.

Even though there is no sound to go along with this epic video (anyone have a suggestion for a good soundtrack?), I think it speaks for itself.




It really is a shame the camera didn't capture any sound for my epic video. Full disclosure: I made quite a comical scream into my snorkel as the fish lurched towards my fingers. I actually have a very early memory from my first trip to Hanauma Bay at the age of five, when I got my fingertips bitten by fish. I was bleeding and my dad had to walk me over to the lifeguard for some band-aids. So an alarmed shout into the snorkel was not out of line.

Really, I was kind of asking for it. I knew that the fish was being feisty/moody, but since usually when I film fish they swim away from me, I just had to get some more footage of the humuhumu. You can see the "trigger" on his back/on the top of his head go up and down. I never knew what it was for, but the fish seems to use it when he's alarmed, or maybe as a warning. And thanks to the fish coming in for a, uh, closeup, you can even make out the detail of its little scales. Pretty cool. I was planning that all along...

Well there you have it, my epic video. I am hoping to get a new underwater camera of my own this summer (as the one that filmed this belongs to my Housemate), which will take HD video that can zoom while filming and will have sound. So here's hoping for more epic videos to come.

By the way, my fingers are all fine, thanks for asking.

Another trip to Hanauma

I mentioned in a post last week that I had gone back to Hanauma Bay, the most popular snorkeling spot on the island (see my post on Hanauma from last summer here). As before, the Housemate and I went armed with his underwater camera (Olympus Stylus Tough 8000).

We didn't see any honu (sea turtles) this time, but we saw lots of different nice fish. I even got an awesome, epic video of a humuhumunukunukuapua'a (Hawaii's famous reef triggerfish). Here are some of my favorite pics (taken by me unless otherwise noted):

Taken by the Housemate, this spotted guy is pretty cute.


The colors aren't any good, but it was fun to swim with a school of fish.


The Housemate took this one; he liked that part of its tail looks a bit like a clownfish (as in Finding Nemo).


I thought this coral was a nice color (and there's a little fish).


The Housemate took a bunch of photos of this fish, and while this one wasn't the clearest, it had the best shot of the angel fish's interesting dorsal fin.


Again, not a very clear picture, but this raccoon butterflyfish was so cute.


Some threadfin butterflyfish down below.


I love the way the light plays underwater.


In the past, I've only seemed to be able to take pictures of the humuhumus swimming away from me. That was not the case with this guy. And see his "trigger" raised on top of his head? Yeah, that pointy thing is usually down.

This is the same humuhumu who stars in my epic video.

This is not the epic video. Sorry, the epic video gets its own upcoming post. This is a calm, lazily-following-the-different-fish video, including a somewhat... shier... humuhumu than the one in the photo above (notice the trigger is down). Don't bother messing with your speakers; there is no sound (I don't know if the Housemate's camera doesn't do sound or if we just had it on the wrong settings). Enjoy!

Story time Sunday: The Princess Diaries in Prom Dresses

Do any of you have favorite stories from your amusing life experiences that you like to bring up at parties, hanging out with friends, or basically any time the opportunity arises and you're with someone who hasn't heard the story before? Maybe I'm kind of lame, but I have a bunch of those stories. I guess I can be a bit repetitive; my brothers have probably heard me tell some of these stories (to other people) tons of times, and sometimes I have to stop and ask people, "Have I told you this before?" because I lose track.

Now, I don't tell these stories out of nowhere, I'm just good at taking opportunities in conversations where I can smoothly (or maybe not so smoothly) transition into them. This means, however, that they mostly haven't come up on this blog, where I am (almost) always the one initiating the conversation. So I've decided to do a series of posts on my favorite stories. I've called it Story time Sunday because, well, it has the alliteration. But I haven't decided how often I'll do these posts. I don't want to run out of stories too fast, after all.

Because these are stories that I'm accustomed to telling verbally, in conversation, I figured it was only appropriate for me to tell them in audio on my blog. It's part of the experience, me rambling on about something I think is funny. Blogger is kind of stupid, however, and I couldn't figure out how to insert just an mp3. So I've been forced to turn it into a sort of video, hastily thrown together, so go easy on me. Anyway, without further ado, here is my first favorite story.

My sledding video!

I posted photos from my Vermont trip yesterday, but I have not yet posted the sledding video I made. Why did I make a sledding video? Well, the Housemate was talking about how he would take video of himself surfing in Indonesia this winter break so he could show me the awesome Sumbawa waves, and he even has this cool camera that he can attach to his surfboard and all, so I said, "Well then, I'll take video of me...um...sledding." I was thus committed to producing a sledding video.

As most of my stories go these days, my camera could have cooperated better. The main problem actually was not enough memory, so I could only get one take from each camera position. The second problem, of course, was not being able to see the screen, so I couldn't actually see what I was shooting when I had the camera perched on my shoulder. Right--I had this cool rigging set up so the Gorillapod (which I received in my stocking this Christmas) was holding onto the overall-like straps of my snow pants, and the camera was held upright by being nicely nestled in the neck of my parka. Anyway, since I was leading forward most of the time while sledding, all the camera really got was my legs (not very interesting--all bulked up by the snow pants), the red sled, and a bit of snow whooshing by on the side. So most of that footage was wasted. Ah well.

This is by far the most edited video that I have ever put together--I was learning the software as I went along. I think it came out reasonably well all things considered. Hmm... this will be the first sample of my voice on my blog. I'm not sure it's particularly representative, since I was being silly while narrating my video, especially with the "Oh noooo!" as I try desperately to stop before the gate at the bottom of the hill without getting my camera wet in the snow. Pretty tricky.

Well, here it is. Enjoy!