Nothing is easy.

We’re now halfway through the Congress, and still difficulties rear their ugly heads to keep me in the edit room until 11 or 12 at night.  Today it was some software glitch keeping us from ingesting XD footage from a Sony EX3… and 90% of my stuff for that piece was coming from EX3.  It was four hours before we did our first edit.

But that report (number three) is done, and is being loaded to the ftp site.  I’ll share it with you tomorrow.  We’re getting good reports from stations and networks around the world who are using our stories.  Here’s the report on the opening of the Congress. For those of you who don’t have access to the broadcast media ftp site, simply click here to watch it.

Tomorrow is a day off.  Praise God!  I’m planning on hiring a cab and touring the scenery with my 7d.  This place is beautiful.  I wouldn’t mind spending a year or so here.

Please pray.  I sense there is strong spiritual warfare going on.  Everyday, the tech guys need to create new solutions and workarounds to keep things going smoothly.  Many stories to tell — after this is over.

According to my Delta SkyMiles account, that’s how many miles I’ve flown in the past 30 days.  (That’s almost twice the distance around the earth.)  Oh, and I flew yesterday on Frontier, and I drove from Michigan to Seattle, so you can add a few thousand more miles onto that total.  That’s a lot of traveling in one month.  And it’s about to start again!  I’m home for a few days and on Tuesday I fly to Cape Town for the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (where I’m volunteering with the broadcast team).

Here then is my list of “must have” gadgets based on my travel usage over the past month (in random order and not an exhaustive list):

• netbook computer – I have the Toshiba NB205. The battery lasts forever; the integrated webcam makes Skype calls home very enjoyable; it weighs next to nothing; and it’s perfect for email and writing. (I used to think I’d actually edit video on the plane ride home – ha!)
• iPod – Driving on the sorry excuse for roads in Southern Sudan in a Land Cruiser with no shocks, whilst the speakers self destructed due to the local techno-pop music/crap blaring at 11 on the volume knob had me thanking God (and Steve Jobs) for my iPod.  My collection of Eva Cassidy, Hillsong, James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma got me through this last trip with my sanity still intact.
• fountain pen by Lamy – Many of you know I enjoy writing with Montblanc fountain pens, but I just can’t bring myself to traveling with one of them in my pocket.  In Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport I purchased a Lamy fountain pen for 16 Euros – I love it.  It has a very pleasurable writing feel but I wouldn’t go into a depression if it turned up missing.  If you write a lot (as I do) find something to make it pleasurable.
• unlocked, dual-sim, quad-band cell phone – Now I have a US phone number that I can answer just about anywhere for only pennies per minute.  Plus, I can add a sim card for a local number. Sweet!  I talked to my wife from the hinterlands of Southern Sudan when my associate couldn’t get through to the office on our iridium sat phone (but I’m not sure how hard he was really trying!).
• neosporin and cipro – not really gadgets, but lifesavers. Get a cut in the Third Word, clean it and then grab the neosporin and fill up the cut with its healing goodness.  Trust me, out there, you don’t want an infection.  And cipro?  It fixes the digestive tract – if you know what I mean.
• canon 7d – full 1080p high def video… sorry I’ve talked enough about that in other posts!

I recently joined the DSLR video revolution (see my post: “converted in vegas”) and have been shooting full 1080p HD video on a Canon 7d. I’m loving the images and I’m putting up with the funky workarounds. (Note: these cameras were not designed for shooting video. Yes, they make great pictures, but there’s a bit of voodoo needed to make this technological alchemy work.)

When I called this a revolution, I wasn’t overstating the case. These relatively cheap “stills” cameras are attacking the establishment’s traditional video cameras and blowing them away with incredible results. Kinda like a video tea party.  You gotta love a good revolution, but I’m warning you, there’s a dark side and I’m here – as a lone voice crying out in this unmapped territory – to at least warn of the very real danger lurking seductively in the shadows.   Don’t blame me. You’ve been warned. [Read more →]

I’ve been in the market for a new HD video camera for some time now.  That’s why I played around with my schedule and bailed on a couple of days of billable work to go to Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters convention (NAB).  For those who have never gone to this annual toy-fest there’s really no way to describe it.  It’s the entire LV Convention Center (and the surrounding parking lots) filled with the latest TV and radio technical toys. It’s a porn show for geeks.  It’s the last place you’d expect a conversion to take place (unless of course we’re talking about converting a H.264 video file to an editable MOV file… but I digress).  Nevertheless, I was converted in Vegas, and when something of that magnitude happens, it can’t just stay in Vegas. [Read more →]