Barney delivered it up to Belfast this morning (thanks boss…) and we gave it a wee test – it worked, which is a pleasant surprise! Very nice feel, good improvements on the PD-170 especially (disregarding the hi-def) the XLRs with independent volume controls on each channel; new 20x Zeiss lens which rivals the XL-H1 and lots of new buttons; chunkier and smoother iris/exposure wheel (it’s default setting is to automatically move from iris opening to positive gain increments when the iris is fully open; which is good unless you hate gain; but it appears that even +18dB gain is pretty clean, we’ll see how that looks in a low-light show setting on Friday night when we’re doing a gig for CEA. Something to do with Music Performance, so if you’re playing your Ukelele at the Waterfront Studio on Friday… See you there.

This is the toy that I’ll be bringing to America with me this summer; got a really pro looking (and feeling) PortaBrace bag to go with and then remembered it comes with a free Sony case; which really would have been up to the job but is a little bit bigger (unnecessarily for such a compact hdv) hopefully I’ll be able to get rid of on eBay unless someone sticks their paw up (unlikely?). In the States I’ll be back at Beaver Cross camp this year working on Media and leading Worship again (most likely, and sadly, without my Gibson), teaching kids some stuff about making movies (I imagine it’ll be a bit of basic theory – I’ll speak to you soon, Pete! – but mostly making stupid videos – pt1 pt2) as well as documenting the summer for PR/media purposes and being in charge of the photo collection and collation. Quite excited about all this, I suppose I should confirm to Chris and Tina that I’m coming! I’m not looking forward to my Thursday nights… A seven hour marathon was required to produce that video mentioned earlier but in my defence I guess it was my first real edit – Pete once again thank you for telling me about the Blade Tool/cmd+s or b or whatever it is thing.

No tripod as of yet, plenty around to beg, steal or borrow but if you’re in Upstate New York and fancy selling me a Vinten or Manfrotto for cheap let me know.

MacBook Air: Meh, looks good, but packing a bit too little as of yet. I imagine a writing journo or author loving it but without the optical or firewire or multiple usb ports it’s too restricted for the various things that I might want to do with it. First move into SSD laptops which is very cool, and maybe a model or two down the line the MacBook Pro will benefit and by then mine’ll have stopped whining and scraping and perhaps will die altogether (I fear… but hopefully it’ll do me through the summer with a couple of hours of video captured and edited every week).

Heading to the Giants tomorrow night to do a bit of capture, we’re not webcasting (so it should be nice and relaxed) because the big boys from TeleVideo on behalf of Sky Sports are in the house for the broadcast on Friday night, on Sky Sports 3 or Mix, I believe.

Adios.