While we were in Australia we were busy creating this new online travel website offering advice and experiences from a community of “global nomads”. So far the business has grown at a surprising rate and we’ve got loads of new features and offers to bring to our visitors in the coming months. It’s a very exciting time!

So head on over to our online travel community and check out all our old travel blogs there plus tonnes of new content from our latest travels.

Now that Mattanddebz.com is back online we’ll occasional put updates on here about where we are, what we’re doing and all non travelwithamate.com wafflings.

Sea-read – Matt Preston 2009

Monday Morning….9AM

All comments welcome.

So after spending weeks reading reviews on as many cameras and sites as possible I decided to go for the Sony HDR-SR10E. 

I’ve now had the camera nearly 6 months so thought it would be a good time to review it for anybody else considering purchasing an HD video camera.

Hard Disc Vs Tape

Firstly the biggest difference to my old video camera is the 40GB hard disc. I was fed up with using tapes. As much as people say even HD on tapes is better quality than what’s recorded onto hard disc video cameras, you can’t beat it for convenience. 40GB of storage gives you 15 hours of high definition. That’s a lot of tapes!

Image stabilisation

One major problem with quick candid shots taken with hand held video cameras is the shake you get. Even when trying to hold it as still as possible there will be shake. It’s even more noticable in HD. So image stabilisation is a must and this camera has the best. A lot of reviews agreed it was very impressive and gets more so the more you zoom in. Its definitely one of the first things you notice about the video. So much less wobble means so much more usable footage.

HD quality

There’s a lot of conflicting reports about what offers the best HD quality from video cameras. Lots of arm chair experts. The truth of the matter is that the biggest influence will always be the lens in front of the image sensor. This video camera has a pretty good one but all compact video cameras have small lenses with tiny apertures so you’re never going to get oscar winning footage out of it. Never the less the Sony HDR-SR10 produces pretty amazing 1080i HD video. Good enough to impress anyone that has to watch one your home movies. Ok it’s not 1080p but you really wont notice the difference. 

The price of the camera is pretty reasonable too. Sony products are notorious for being more expensive than similar spec rivals but that seems to be changing. Both Sony’s DSLRs and video cameras are often cheaper than their competitors and you definitely get good build quality.

So all in all i’m very happy with our sony HD video camera. It’s very compact, packs one hell of a punch and was a great price. It also works seamlessly with a mac or a PC which is handy!

Other cool features

• Takes pictures at the same time as recording video. No need to change to a different mode
• Flash for stills
• 4 megapixel stills camera which takes remarkably good quality images
• Large touch screen display
• Night mode that uses infrared pretty effectively
• Fast focussing
• Very bright colours, partly thanks to it being high definition
• The ability to record in SD, almost doubling the storage capacity.
• 5.1 surround sound that actually seems to work!

For more reviews check out the reviews section on Amazon.

Often the prices are a bit high though, considering it’s a transfer on a cheap t-shirt. So in the past couple of years I’ve taken to shopping online for T-shirt art.

I came across what is easily the best online t-shirt store in the world for one simple reason, it’s all about the fans. Threadless.com.

They’re a t-shirt shop based in Chicago but their online store is where the magic really happens. Instead of having a very basic e-commerce where you can purchase their designs they have the most amazing Social networking site!

Anyone can submit designs they’ve done, have them commented and voted upon. If enough people like them Threadless.com will produce t-shirts of them, paying the artist for every t-shirt sold. They have a great community of regular users, artists and purchasers, all working together to get great art on t-shirts. It’s an inspired idea that clearly makes a big difference to the quality and enjoyment of owning one of their t-shirts.

I must have owned at least 15 of their t-shirts so far and i definitely plan to buy more. The great thing is the prices are very cheap even considering the exchange rate with the UK. I often find it’s best to order 4 or 5 as it’s one delivery cost so each t-shirt gets cheaper the more you order.

Also the rate at which they produce new t-shirts is astounding. I’ve never seen so many prints available. They even keep an archive so that you can vote to get old designs re-printed. 

It’s well worth signing up and saying hello. They’re a great bunch and you soon get hooked on the site. You can even submit photos of yourself to earn credit towards more t-shirts!

It’s a brilliant idea offering so much more than just t-shirts. Check them out!

It was none other than a copy of the Hir@gana Times. “Japan here and now”. A tourist magazine of sorts.

The odd thing is we went to Japan in September 2006 so I have no idea why I should now suddenly be receiving this. 

It has some fascinating articles in it. Most notably the three below. Japan’s “suicide crisis”, a comic revealing the reason some women wear masks when they’re not ill and a great article on how Origami can be used to help communicate with others.

Considering i have no real idea why I’ve been sent it or why it was ever created i feel quite privileged to have been sent a copy all the way from Japan. I look forward to my next thrilling installment from Hir@gana Times! 

Good to know that when your stairs break down, your lift still works.