Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

For his business blog, visit http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

Travel

My Travels

Shooting Immersive Videos

Vin

Join my wife and I in a video experiment: I’ve lately begun creating ‘immersive videos.’ For example, this one from aboard a tourist cruise on the Bosporus. After being trained in still photography 50 years ago (i.e., 1973-1976 at the Rochester Institute of Technology, back then sometimes known as ‘Kodak’s Photo School’, I mostly switched to videography two years ago. Moreover, I’ve now begun experimenting with immersive videos, what some people call ‘360 video’ but (to describe it more accurately) shoot video 360-degrees in all directions. For example, if you’re viewing this 31-minute video, you’ll probably be able to experience what I mean by immersive. This technology was initially created for viewing in Virtual Reality googles. However, it can also be used with goggle the way this video demonstrates: My wife and I had some spare time during October while in Istanbul, so we boarded a tourist cruise boat on the Bosporus shortly before sunset (scroll the video ahead until its last quarter.) My first experience with this cutting-edge of video actually began nine years ago when while teaching postgraduate New Media Business I purchase a Samsung Gear 360 camera. Resembling a white tennis ball atop a tiny tripod, the Gear 360 camera could capture immersive still photos and immersive video. Unfortunately, its videos and still photos were only in HD resolution (1920×1080 pixels) and viewable only via Samsung’s special software. By contrast, this 4K-resolution (3840 x 2160) video was shot with a pole-mounted DJI Osmo 360 camera which is the size and shape of a cigarette pack. (If the quality of this video isn’t 4K when you view it, click the YouTube ‘gear’ icon and switch to a higher resolution version.) What I like about shooting immersive video is that had I missed something interesting that occurred behind, atop, or under me after I finished shooting the video, I can later edit the video as if I had intended to capture that occurrence. I also like immersive videos because these allow the viewer the ability to anything and everything that occurs around the camera. While in Istanbul, I also shot immersive videos while walking through that city’s famous bazaars. I also shot some inside mosques in Istanbul and later Cairo. I post some of those here in the coming weeks.

Click Singing in Xhosa

Vin

Yesterday, I posted the Ndlovu Youth Choir of the Republic of South Africa singing Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody in the Isizulu language, and I noted that language’s click consonants which are common to Bantu languages but virtually unknown in Indo-European or East Asia languages. Enjoy this six-minute video of South African singer Siki Jo-Ann singing in Xhosa language of South Africa, the second most popular native language in that nation, a wonderful language in which clicking is most prominent. It starts with a two-minute humorous skit between a white South African and a black South African joking about those clicks. Siki Jo-Ann enters at the two and one-half minute mark, singing the clicks of Xhosa.

Zulu Queen

Vin

And why not Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody sung in Isizulu by the Ndlovu Youth Choir of the Republic of South Africa? isiZulu (note the lower-case initial i) is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in, and indigenous to, Southern Africa. It’s one of the Republic of South Africa’s official language, spoken by a quarter of that nation’s population, and was the native language of Nelson Mandela. I first heard it during 2009 while working at Rhodes University in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. You’ll hear in it some of the click consonants common to Bantu languages, a common sound unheard of in Indo-European or the languages of East Asia. (Tomorrow, I think that I’ll post a video clip of Siki Jo-Ann who sings in the Xhosa language of South Africa, the second most popular native language in the nation, a wonderful language in which clicking is most prominent.)

Find a Great Deal via GulagAdvisor!

Vin

Perhaps it will be like the ‘Hotel California’ in that eponymous song by the Eagles: ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” North Korean murderous dictator Kim Jong-Un and his family open his nation’s Wonsan-Kalma seaside tourist resort town. Where might tourism come from to fill the resort town’s 20,000 hotel beds? Russia seems to be the likely answer. Western economic sanctions against Russia for its disastrous invasion of the Ukraine has greatly limited the nations in which Russians can vacation (Egypt, Dubai, and Thailand are among the nations that still allow them). Frequent flyer Ben Schlappig offers some thoughts at Wonsan-Kalma.

My Favorite Beach in the World

Vin

I’ve swum in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans and the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas. I’ve trod the beaches of numerous American, Mexican, Brazilian, Hawaiian, Caribbean, South African, Balinese, and Persian Gulf beaches. Yet my favorite beach in the world, where I’ve lately been staying, is this one on my wife’s native island. It is superb, always sunny year-round, and free to use. See why in this six-minute video.

All But Tut (Tutankhamun, That Is)

Vin

The long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), originally scheduled to open in 2013 and house more than 100,00 artifacts from Ancient Egypt, including the complete collection from the tomb of Pharoah Tutankhamun, finally opened on October 16th — except for the complete Tutankhamun collection. That, for the time being, remains at the old Egyptian Museum downtown at Cairo’s Tahir Square. Last year at this time, Emma and I and our Saudi friend Tariq, who resides in Cairo, were given a private tour of the GEM’s central atrium, a tour that the GEM operated as a trial run before its grand opening. It was wonderful, whetted our desire to see the GEM’s thousands of artifacts. With 81,000 square meters (872,000 square feet) of floor space, GEM is the world’s largest archeological museum and is located adjacent to the Great Pyramids of Giza. So, Emma and I have now decided to return to Egypt next month and see it. We’ll invite our friend Tariq. We’ve now renewed our visas. This will be our fourth trip to Egypt since 2022. We are gradually becoming old Cairo hands.