As is pretty much always the case on the internet, the "Vs" in the title is a little bit misleading, especially when it comes to the GoPro. There are things I'm going to use the GoPro for that I wouldn't ever use the Sony for, and vice versa. Also, I don't know if I'm really a "Vlogger", but my videos do generally include at least some exposition in which I'm talking directly to a camera, so I'm gonna count it. 

Regardless, I bought a new camera! The Sony ZV-1:

The ZV-1 is supposed to be "For Vloggers". It has a flip out screen, allegedly better internal microphones, and an F1.8 lens in comparison to the RX100M7's F2.8 lens.

​Speaking of the RX100M7, that's my current camera for good video:

This was Sony's last attempt at a "Vlogger" camera, adding a mic jack and flip up screen to their already popular RX100 line. It's an excellent camera, but the screen that flips up instead of out is blocked by any external mic, and I wasn't super pleased with the low light performance, pretty much totally due to the F2.8 lens. Using an F2.8 lens that goes out to 200mm was a very strange choice for a vlogging camera. 

The last piece of the puzzle is the GoPro Hero 8 Black. 

Obviously a different camera with a different use case than either of the Sonys, the GoPro is actually pretty damn well suited to vlog style videos, especially if you pick up the MediaMod ( https://amzn.to/37mCXrB ) which adds two cold shoe mounts, an integrated shotgun mic, and a mic jack for external mics. 

It's small size and relatively rugged nature makes it easy to carry anywhere, and there are a literal mountain of accessories to mount it to anything you want in any manner you desire. It's very wide lens also makes it damn near impossible to NOT be in the shot if it's pointed in your general direction, so you don't even really need a screen to make sure you're totally in the shot. You just are. 

It's especially effective when I do car stuff. It can be stuck to the windshield to get good in-car footage, stuck to the back glass to show me installing stuff on the interior, stuck to the outside of the car to capture exhaust sounds, etc. Pretty damn handy.

Right now, I generally use the Hero 8 Black for "Vlog" style stuff and The Sony for the "good footage" that I talk over. I would like all of my footage to be good though, it sucks when I'm in a low light situation and the go pro's footage doesn't look great, but I also wanted something portable, so the ZV1 looked perfect. It's very similar to the RX100VII, but with a few features that make it better for video. 

First, they addressed that dark F2.8 lens with a much brighter F1.8 lens. This basically means that more light reaches the sensor. This makes low light photos and videos look a lot better. Also the screen flips out to the side instead of straight up, so it's not in your way if you use a mic mounted to the top. Speaking of mounting things, there's now a hot shoe on the top in place of the viewfinder, and the built-in mics have received a pretty solid upgrade. It's very slightly thicker than the RX100, and it's also lighter thanks to a body built in part with composite material for better heat dissipation. 

I won't bother running down all the specs here, I'm pretty sure you get the idea, and if not you can check out any one of the numerous ZV-1 reviews out there. This one from DPreview is very good. I did, however, want to shoot some test footage and see how the ZV-1 stacks up against my existing camera equipment, so I'm stop typing and let the video do the talking. 

For the videos, I kept both Sony cameras in "Intelligent Auto" mode, just to level the playing field. I put the GoPro in auto mode except for with the high bitrate on to give it at least a fighting chance in terms of image quality. All footage is in 4k 24fps at the highest available bit rate, which on the Sony cameras is 100mb. 

Affiliate links:
RX100VII: amzn.to/2AyVV2b
GoPro Hero 8 Black: amzn.to/2MVaaks
GoPro Media Mod: amzn.to/2XWTLlO
Sony ZV-1: amzn.to/3d1e71w

Because I am NOT going to stop poorly using cameras. In this episode, I use my RX100M7 again to capture some EXCEPTIONALLY boring footage. Speaking of the RX100M7, buy one!

Anyway, my motivation to get better at video comes from a combination of wanting to make my other website, recipereviewed.com, a better site, and the fact that I have a new camera on the way and I don't want the purchase to go to waste due to my lack of ability. I took a ton of mostly boring video and I think I'm kinda half ass getting better. In the next edition, I will learn how to use a mode other than auto! WoooOOoOOoOo! Anyway, here's a crappy video! You're welcome! 

So yeah, I'm kinda trying to suck less at video. I have some ideas that I think are viable, but my lack of video skills are holding me back. I figure I should work on that, so I'm going to post a lot of (probably crappy) video in the next few weeks. Today's episode features me drinking margaritas and making standard ass mid-western white people tacos. This was shot on my RX100M7, which is actually going to be replaced in the next week or so by a SECRET CAMERA!!!!! In the meantime, buy an RX100M7 on Amazon. 

Computer
​
For years I've been using a 2015 iMac 5k. I recently decided that I needed something 1.) Newer and 2.) Portable. Just in the off case that "going places" is a thing again. 

I initially picked up a 2020 MacBook Air (https://amzn.to/2U4K1DC)  The i5/8gb/512gb model. I liked it a lot overall, but when I started doing anything even remotely processor intensive, like simply installing Xcode, it sounded like it was going to take flight. The cooling was clearly not up to snuff for any heavy-duty work. I returned the MacBook Air for a 2020 MacBook Pro (https://amzn.to/3gN46bp). I'm much happier with the Pro. It's noticeably faster, especially under sustained loads. It uses the same updated keyboard as the 2020 Air, which is to say they've finally killed off my arch-nemesis, the butterfly switch keyboard, and brought back the good scissor switches. The cooling system is hands-down better on the Pro. You damn near never hear the fans unless you're doing something that's REALLY pushing the processor. 

If you're on the fence between the Air and Pro, my advice is this:

If you think you can get away with the base model Air with the i3 and 8GB of ram, go ahead and do that. It's a perfectly legit option if you never do processor intensive stuff, and it's a very nice overall package. 

However, if you feel like. you need to bump the processor and RAM, just go ahead and buy the $1799 Pro. You're gonna get close to the price of the Pro pretty quickly if you upgrade storage, RAM, and processor on the Air, and the Pro will handle your heavier workloads much better. 

Yeah not a whole lot to report for obvious reasons. I sent back the 2020 Macbook Air and ordered a 2020 Macbook Pro...but it's not here yet. My work on Python continues, currently working on learning Flask so I can build web apps. I'd like to try to find something at least a little bit car related to do, I'm passively considering learning Swift next so I can make Mac/iOS apps, but I have a lot left to do before I feel like I have a good enough grasp of Python to move on to something else. 

I did order a new camera. I'm gonna let that one be a surprise, but it should be pretty rad. That's about it. I'm ready to get back to building cars, but not ready enough to get the 'Rona, so I guess I'm still in a holding pattern with that. As soon as I'm back at work I'm thinking it's megasquirt time to get the Miata ready for some boost. 

Also have a couple of other projects in mind, but I'm not even going to mention them until I've made a lot more progress on the Miata in an effort to combat my severe car ADD. 

As an amazon affiliate I may earn a small commission for items bought through links on my site. 

It all started with some downtime at home (Thanks worldwide pandemic!) and a reddit post by Al Swiegart, author of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python saying his Udemy course was free. I went ahead and "Purchased" it, and got started. It's a pretty solid course, but it's really more geared toward "I want to automate this office task" than "I want to learn to code and build things". I went in search of another course and landed on Andrei Neagoie's "Complete Python in 2020: Zero to Mastery", also on Udemy, and went for it. 

I seriously cannot recommend it enough, Andrei is an excellent instructor and really does cover damn near every part of Python, at least to the degree that you will know what to google and how to find information (which I'm quickly learning is basically the gist of programming). 

I decided to use my new found Python knowledge for a practical application; a maintenance tracker for the rental fleet. It only took me a day or so to build out a working CLI version. Command line isn't super intuitive though, so I decided I needed a GUI. I looked around and the most straightforward way seemed to be using the PySimpleGUI Library. It took a hell of a lot more time, but after a week or so of tinkering and sometimes lots of cussing, I did manage to get a working GUI version. 

In the process, I've totally fallen in love with programming, so I'm already looking around for the next thing I want to do, either with Python or maybe with another language. Daisy bought me a Pi Zero W for my birthday, so I think my immediate project is going to be to port the FleetManager app to flask/webapp so I can run it on a local server and access it from any computer on the network. Sounds like a good idea right? Anyway, here's a short little demo for the GUI version of the fleet maintenance app. Feel free to check me out on GitHub too. 

So as I mentioned yesterday, I picked up a 2020 MacBook Air from Amazon. This means it's time for my iMac to go. It's a 2015 5k with a 27" screen. It has a 3.3ghz quad core i5 and 16gb of ram. 2TB fusion drive. Comes with magic keyboard and trackpad, unless you don't want them, then I'll knock $100 off or something. They seem to be going for around $900 right now, so I guess $900 OBO? 

Email me if you are interested. 

I’ve been wanting to go back to a laptop for a long ass time, but I’m been put off by the fact that I absolutely hate Windows and Apple’s laptop keyboards have been pure, unadulterated AIDS since the introduction of the butterfly keyboard in the 2015 MacBook 12”.  Well Apple have finally woken up and decided to go back to a scissor switch keyboard on their laptops, starting with the 16” Pro a few months ago. 

So, I've always been a fan of the revlimiter gauge faces for the Miatas. I've had them in basically every Miata I've owned. For the NB, I went with the Warbird Gauges and had them customized with a red tach and red hash marks on the speedometer. Overall the installation was pretty easy if you’re handy.

LED headlights get a lot of hate, but I love them. The hate stems from people putting LED's in projector housings that were never made for LEDs. This leads to having effectively no pattern or cutoff to the light and just blasting everyone's eye holes out. 

Done correctly, LED headlights have the same cutoff as the halogen bulbs they replace while being brighter, using less power, and lasting much longer. 

So yeah, after weeks of chasing a very persistent misfire on cylinder 4 (P0304), I think I have FINALLY figured it out. My map sensor wasn’t getting a vacuum signal due to incorrect vacuum line routing. I honestly don’t know why it would cause a single cylinder misfire, as there was no vacuum leak, but fixing that seems to have fixed my problem. I’m cautiously moving forward with doing some fun stuff. I went ahead and ordered some LED headlight bulbs from superbrightLEDS and a bodywork suction cup to try and pull out a dent in the quarter panel, and I think I’m going to go ahead and order some new gauge faces from revlimiter.net in the next couple of days. Also have some top leak issues to fix, and then I think I’ll do megasquirt. Unless of course the misfire of doom returns. Fingers crossed.

I have been absolutely spoiled by having CarPlay head units. You get navigation with live traffic data, all your music/podcasts, phone calls, and text messages/whatsapp messages sent straight to your car's stereo with Siri integration. I went with the Pioneer 1400NEX ( https://amzn.to/2US8yNx ), which I also had in my beater Honda Fit before it was replaced with a Prius. 

So it looks like I was wrong about the new motor having a blown head gasket. It looks like through a series of almost unbelievable coincidences, I actually just had THREE bad #4 spark plug wires, and the exhaust will still full of dried-on coolant from the original motor that legitimately DID have a blown head gasket. The plug wire caused the misfire, and the dried on coolant billowing from the exhaust made me obviously think "This thing is burning coolant, must have a blown head gasket".  It looks like I was wrong. 

I'm going to cautiously go about fixing things on the car while I slowly build up to about 500 gentle miles on it to break the clutch in, then I'll drive it like I stole it for a bit to make sure it's going to hold up, then it's time for boost. 

Here's a video of me saying the same thing with words instead of letters on a screen. 

So, basically my “new” motor has a blown head gasket. I’m debating between just replacing the head gasket and trying to get my motor replaced. I’ll update this post later when I feel like typing more.

In my last vlog I mentioned my clutch problems. Basically it's like the clutch was never engaging. Trying to put it in any gear when running was basically like trying to put it in gear without using the clutch.