Gone Fishing

Trish and I bought a canoe as our first combined big ticket item for our 2 year anniversary and we spent the weekend fishing. It was great! We both got burned and totally relaxed... Without thinking about it this was by far the best anniversary ever.

As for the Fish Cam- I'll still be posting a how-to and I can saw it works. However, I need to put a tint on the lens as the B&W camera is way too sensitive to daylight and it washes out totally. I did a quick test by putting my sunglasses on it and it worked like a charm. Since the camera lens is small I may be able to get away with just putting a piece of old negative film over it. I can't wait to use it more!

Fishing has been going well. We've both caught loads of bluegill, green sunfish, and pumpkinseed. Plus various mixes of them. We've also caught smallmouth and largemouth bass, and Trish caught a rock bass at one point. I've caught the biggest fish so far with the best being a 2-3lb largemouth :)
We do have pics ;) Trish 98% landed a trophy perch. It was at least 20-30cm long and thick! She caught it while reeling in a tiny little perch- greedy cannibal perch! The wildest thing is that she was having trouble unhooking the small (10cm) perch she had on and the massive perch would just sit at the edge of the canoe and watch, then when she would put it back in the water to keep it alive the predator would strike immediately and she'd have to yank the poor little guy out again! I have NEVER seen anything like it! It actually managed to get her fish all the way in it's mouth and she had them both almost in the canoe when it finally spit out the poor little guy and took off for good. I wish we had that on video... just unbelievable and the whole thing went on for about 3 or 4 minutes.

We're thinking that we may try out carp fishing as the local pond in St. Thomas seems to have changed a lot since last year and the pan fish & bass have been largely replaced by carp, carp, and more carp. :( I hear they're tough fighters and there's no doubt they're shy (they go nuts trying to get away from the canoe when we come close) but I'm just not excited about fishing for something where it's just a throw in the line & wait scenario. Oh well, we'll see how it goes...

Steam - Not Fun When Broken

I stupidly decided to opt-in to the Steam Beta client today. WHAT A MISTAKE!
After applying a patch and restarting Steam I was greated with the following error:
"Error...steam.exe (main exception): " yada, yada, yada but the best part is that the error was Error 1 or 0 "unknown error".
Awesome.

Well after about 45 minutes I got things working again.
I used the repair option given from the installer on my original Orang Box DVDs. Then, I deleted the Registry Keys "beta" and everything under "Users" at the following location:
HKCU\Software\Valve\Steam

After that Steam started, updated, and I simply logged in again. Bingo!

Fish-Cam is GO!

I recently made a nice little to-do list on my fridge with a dry erase marker I've had since university. It doesn't judge me; you shouldn't either.
..anyways I've made some very good progress on said project and have now officially kicked off my "Fish-Cam" project. It is essentially a budget/DIY version of this or this.
I decided to use a portable DVD player instead of a stand-alone mini-LCD or *gasp* a mini-CRT. The main reasons for this decision are:

• Cost. A portable DVD player is ~$80 - $180 CAD right now. Mini LCDs are $110+
• Design. Portable DVD players are meant for lugging around. Mini LCDs are really meant to be mounted somewhere.
• Features. A Mini-LCD is useless on it's own. A portable DVD player plays DVDs, mp3s, etc.
• Availability. Wal-Mart had plenty of portable DVD players. Only a few shops have mini LCDs... and questionable return policies if things don't work!

I've also picked up a B&W (I can upgrade to colour if this works well) CMOS security camera with 6 IR LEDs on it for $29 CAD. It comes with 60ft of cable so all I need to do now is get some PVC tube and acrylic that I can mount the camera in. Then the Fish-Cam will be complete!

Review: Portable DVD Players (RCA DRC6338 & Toshiba SD-P70S)

As part of my Fish-Cam project I decided that I'd look at purchasing a portable DVD player to use as the monitor. So I went over to Wal-Mart and picked out the RCA DRC6338 8" portable DVD player because it was on sale and had an 8" screen. What a mistake! Luckily upon return of that unit I picked up the Toshiba SDP70S and was very pleased.
Here are my reviews...


RCA DRC6338
Cost - $119 CAD
Features - Car charger, wall charger, built-in battery, 8" screen, audio/video inputs & outputs, remote
Review - Crap. It has a cheap feel, doesn't include the special cable you'll need for av i/o, and didn't work with my video input source at all. It also lacks the ability to output digital audio (not that I care). Even worse; you can't use the device and charge it at the same time! Really poor design.
This unit went back as soon as it failed to display my video input source.

Toshiba SD-P70S
Cost - $98 CAD
Features - Car charger, wall charger, external battery, 7" screen, a/v in & out, remote
Review - Excellent. It feels well built and the packaging is many times better than the RCA. It also INCLUDES the special a/v input cord you'll need and does do digital output. It worked right away with my video input source and I didn't even have the battery plugged in to the unit. This is great as I plan to run this 100% from a 12V battery as part of the fish-cam and I don't want to worry about battery life at all. The unit CAN charge and play at the same time.
Although it does have 1" less viewable space I'd consider this unit superior to the RCA. The fact that it includes the a/v cables makes up for the screen size IMHO.