Wednesday 28 March 2018

Obtaining a Domain Name


There are many obvious reasons to have your own domain name when running a business, on-line presence with a good domain name will determine the success of your site. If you're not yet ready to take the plunge at least consider securing  a domain name before it's taken by someone else.

$21.50NZ +gst /year

Thats like a family pack of fish and chips for the night, peanuts really.

Would this suit an individual and is it worth it ? This can only be answered by the individual and here I will discuss my reasons for finally getting a domain name.

www.taramai.nz

Having my own domain name just looks good, and I'm so proud I went through the process from searching to purchasing. Choosing https://1stdomains.nz/ to manage the domain was an obvious choice for me, it had to be a kiwi outfit. Is it the cheapest ? maybe but keeping it in the country is important to me.

So now that I have a domain name, what could I do with it ? Well I've been using Googles Blogger for many years now, and that is where my new domain points to (for now, I have plans to run a wordpress site hosted from https://1stdomains.nz/).

On top of this I added 1 mailbox to the account, another $21.00NZ +gst per year. Not only having a cool website name, but having a email address attached to it is even better. philip@taramai.nz gets a few raised eyebrows, loving it.


Thoughts

There was mention of securing more extensions like .com .org etc I could understand why businesses would do this, company brands have to be protected. For me, I don't really care if someone else takes taramai.co.nz or taramai.com etc.

Chord Namer

I know this is kind of random but one of my favorite pastimes is playing the guitar. On many occasions I'm asked to name that chord, and I'm pretty confident at recognizing the major/minor chords.

This website jguitar.com is perfect for filling in those chords I cannot name. So that's what that chord is .. Dsus2

Just got to remember when using the site, the top line represents the bottom string. Clicking on those sound icons at the right strum/progressive strum is a really nice touch and you can hear exactly how it is supposed to sound.

Friday 16 March 2018

13.5km Fitness Walk: A small Blog Experiment

Click here to watch video

The aim here is to break away ties with YouTube, using BitChute as the source to store my video's. As mentioned in the previous post, the disadvantage is the viewer has no playback quality selection.

Original video recorded and uploaded in 1920 x 1080res 50fps, 797.7MB
Post upload BitChute video  15.6MB 768 x 432res 24fps, 15.6MB

The downside of this method, I have create an image, use the images caption as the link to the videos URL, which then opens a new browsers page at the videos URL location.

Thoughts
I wonder if it is possible to easily imbed the video onto this page ...

Saturday 10 March 2018

BitChute vs YouTube for VLogging


Bitchute, is this my new YouTube alternative. I really do miss VidMe, that platform was perfect for small content creators.

If you have a YouTube channel, BitChute gives you an option to copy your newly uploaded from that platform to this one. This may seems like a great idea but I want to move away from YouTube completely.

Here's where I have concerns:-
  • when you upload to YouTube, they process your video to improve viewing speeds, which also reduces the viewing quality. Everyone has accepted this because the content is more important than viewing quality.
  • BitChute then copies this lower quality here, and then further processes this video to suit it's own streaming quality.
  • I did an experiment, using my latest video 1920 x 1080 50 fps 9.4GB, uploaded directly to Bitchute, waited for their processing to finish, then downloaded the video. VLC reports the following file information for this video 786 x 432 24fps 739.3MB.
The quality of the direct upload to BitChute is immensely better than sending the video via YouTube.

YouTube: viewer chooses viewing quality 480p 720p 1080p 4k
BitChute: 480p? only; if you directly upload it is better than YouTubes 480p

VLC Capture 786x432

VLC Capture 1920x1080
 Am I happy with this lower quality, because as the content creator I need to be comfortable with this, and does this still get my message across ?

I feel I need to get some feedback, and what a great way to add a POLL to my Blog. I'll set this up for my next BitChute Exclusive video. :-)

Friday 9 March 2018

Bike The Trail 2018


The best annual family cycle ride event in Lower Hutt. This is my 4th time and today the weather was perfect, not too cold and windy, not too hot!

As with all the previous years, the start is crazy, everyone wants to be in the group that gets released 1st.


It's pretty hard to get the feel of a ride if you have never been on it. So I've created this 30min video down from a 1hr 40min ride and hopefully you get an idea of what to expect should you give this ride a go next year 2019.

At the finish I got told there was close to 1800 cyclists that participated, well done!

I really admired the number of young ones who gave it a go, especially those that made it all the way to Hikoikoi Reserve, Petone.

Wednesday 7 March 2018

My Nieces Wedding


 I didn't take many video clips at the wedding, was trying not to be too intrusive.

Every part of the day turned out beautiful, she couldn't have done any better, especially up there in Hastings where the heat drives people indoors (or at least to the beaches).

Most of my clips were actually taken while traveling to and from this even, put the action camera on the end of a selfie stick then feeding it out the car window.

Make sure your watch all my videos in 1080p50, really does make a difference.

Riding with USO


As I've been a bit busy lately, this ride occurred on the 24th, the date on the thumbnail shows when I edited the video.

I asked Iha (USO Leader) if I could accompany him on one of his Cycle Groups rides. This is the bottom tier of the Group, the Fresh cyclist, those new to cycling and learning the ropes.


This ride was from Porirua to Johnsonville. I can't believe I got a rear tire puncture quarter of the way through this ride, still you got to expect these things to happen, it's inevitable. What is important was how hazards are identified and communicated down (and back up to the front as required) through the riders.


And here we have another small timelapse, because the next day, I got another flat on the rear tire. Actually on the last bike service I got done at Giant Lower Hutt shop, I was advised to change the actual tire due to a long gash. Did I listen, heh no! Well it's now changed with a new 700x28 Kendra tire.

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USO Fresh Ride Eastbourne

Another enjoyable ride, I'm well used to going down this route. There are some places where the road doesn't allow a car and a cyc...