So, I drove home alone today. I have my temporary paper ID card with me at all times now, until my real license comes in the mail. I went up Five Mile, which is a 2 way street so packed together you can see passengers tighten up, thinking were about to hit or swap paint with someone going the other way.
And the entire time, C., Zack and I were talking. And I JUST got this GoPro camera for Christmas, and it shoots in full HD (1280x1080, or 2K for those with a technical mindset) either 60 FPS (think Call of Duty) or 30 FPS (Gears of War, Mass Effect, really any game, actually) for up to 2 hours.
So then came the ingenious idea: What if I film us talking? We have a Dissociative disorder! We barley remember yesterday, let alone what happened today! There is always a giant blank spot in our memory for each day. We can remember Act 3, Scene 1 of Hamlet or the entire catalog of Network speeches by Peter Finch, but if we want to remember where we were yesterday, were at a loss! Why not have a digital companion remember for us, to fill in the pieces?
The first issue is space. If 2 hours of 60 FPS footage at 720p resolution eats up 4GB, then that means I could eat up 2,000 GB of data just saved about me talking! That seems like a big waste, considering how we don't really like to watch ourselves or listen to ourselves on videotape anyhow. We'd only save the best moments, compile them, and sell it as a documentary on mental illness!...or something like that. Probably not that, I'm just saying, for a personal matter, its great. The problem is that once I have that basic information knowing what I was doing, who was in front (as a DID-er for 10+years, you come to know who's up front just by seeing images of "you"), and what time it was, what the hell do I do with it?
So I think having a journal kept at 60 FPS on 720p at 1.5GB a day (roughly 45 minutes), we may have just found a viable way to fix our memory lapse problem. And don't worry about the batteries, they last 14+ hours on a single charge. This thing is awesome!
-NicS