VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Join me for a behind-the-scenes chat covering several days of travel vlogging life, tech struggles, and a very exciting mystery delivery!
EVENTS:
Welcome & Olympus OI Share App Rant (The Deal-Breaker)
Hotel Room Saga: Moving from Crossroads to Raja Boat
UPS Delivery Drama Begins – The Tracking Nightmare
My Pet Peeve: Incomprehensible Shipping Notifications
The Mystery Package Revealed – Who is it from?
Samsung Phone Mystery SOLVED: The “Notification Reminder” Fix
THE UNBOXING: GoPro Batteries, SSD, Memory Cards & More!
Tech Talk: Formatting the 2TB SSD (A 7.5-Hour Ordeal!)
Testing the New Gear & Touch ‘n Go Card Issues
Final Thoughts on New Gear & DJI Pocket 4 Rumors
In this episode, I deal with the frustrations of the Olympus OI Share app, move to a new hotel room in Kuala Lumpur, and navigate a nail-biting UPS delivery saga for a mystery package. The story culminates in an incredible unboxing of gifted gear from a generous Planet Doug subscriber—including life-saving GoPro Enduro batteries, a 2TB SSD drive, high-capacity memory cards, and more!
I also solve a years-long mystery of my Samsung phone’s constant beeping (spoiler: it was “Notification Reminder” in Accessibility settings) and share my final thoughts on carrying the Olympus camera as my main vlogging tool.
Got a tech horror story or a delivery nightmare? Share it in the comments below!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to the Planet Doug behind-the-scenes podcast for Thursday, January 22nd, 2026. I wasn’t going to record anything this morning. I’ve been talking a lot into this camera, telling behind-the-scenes stories lately, and I wasn’t going to do it this morning, but I just finished editing and exporting a behind-the-scenes podcast, and it is currently uploading over there off-screen on my laptop. Looks like it has another hour and 22 minutes to go to finish uploading. And I thought, well, I mean, while it’s busy uploading, I’ll make a cup of coffee. I’ll sip my cup of coffee, enjoy myself, and I don’t know, just tell some stories to bring people up to date if they’re curious what’s going on on Planet Doug.
And in the last video, I devoted a big chunk of time to testing and talking about the Olympus OI Share app, which I was hoping to use to control the Olympus camera because I have it set up on a tripod. It’s very far away from me and I can’t control it. I can’t do anything with the camera because I can’t reach it. And with the OI Share app, I can control it from my phone. And then I decided it was too much trouble because there were so many limitations. And then I ran into what I called a deal-breaker in that I discovered, which is absolutely insane to me, but it’s another example of how technology and technology companies just mystify me. How they release a product and design a product in a certain way and then they put it on the market and they just think, “Well, that works fine.” I mean, how do they not see all the problems that are so apparent to me? I see problem after problem and they’re just they’re right there. It’s not like they’re hiding. It’s like a major problem and yet they just, ah, it’ll be fine and they just release it anyway. I’m always fascinated by that, how that happens. But in this case, the deal-breaker was that I discovered that when the Olympus camera reaches its recording time limit and the camera turns off and stops recording, there’s no indication on the app that that has happened. On the app, it just says recording and everything looks fine. So, the camera is sitting over there doing nothing, but I don’t know about it. Just because I can’t see the LCD screen, the LCD screen turns off and I’m just referring to the app because I’m using the app to control the camera. So, I’m looking at it and everything looks absolutely fine and I could be sitting here talking for an hour and the entire time the camera isn’t even on. Right? So, I mean, to me, that seems like a big problem. And it’s not like it’s a hidden problem or anything, not a little glitch that nobody can possibly notice. It’s right there out in the open. But anyway, that’s just the way it works. But I’m using it again this morning. That’s that’s the point I’m getting around to, that even though I decided the other day that no, there are way too many limitations, way too many problems, it’s just not worth using. I don’t know. Since I went through all the research and all the testing the other morning to figure out how to do it, how to turn it on, how to set it up, I might as well do it again just for fun at least. So, as I remembered, the way it works is on the Olympus, you start with the camera. You turn on Wi-Fi on the camera by touching the Wi-Fi button on the LCD screen and that opens up a Wi-Fi screen on the LCD screen. And then on your phone, you turn on Wi-Fi and you launch the Olympus app and then it automatically connects and then you hit record and away you go. So the way it works is that your camera is operating as a Wi-Fi hotspot. That’s the key to the whole operation. Once you understand that, everything else becomes more comprehensible. So you turn on hotspot on your camera, you connect your phone’s Wi-Fi to that hotspot, and then you go from there. So now that I know that, I just want to do it a few times to get that knowledge baked into my brain so that if I do decide to do it again in the future, I’m not starting from scratch. I don’t want to lose all of this knowledge. So, and then while I was setting it up this morning, it went fairly well. I had a few issues because I was thinking I could sit here and then from the app I can adjust the exposure because in my testing the other day I realized that at the beginning I had it way overexposed, way too bright. And then later on I dialed it down I think, but I think it was still pretty bright and I wanted to make sure I get it right. So, I was using the app, but then when I changed the exposure setting, like dial in some exposure compensation, I couldn’t get it to register. I could change it, but then I’m hitting the button like go, go, go. Like nothing was changing. It wasn’t communicating with the camera very well. So, I don’t know. There’s more problems. But anyway, this is the exposure that I ended up with. And I’m in a new hotel room. I’m at the Hotel Raja Boat and there are two pretty good light bulbs up there and I’ve got the bathroom light on. It kind of bounces off that wall and sends more light. I don’t have a light bulb of my own. My Planet Doug light bulb is in storage with my bicycle in Port Dickson, but looking at this, it’s not super bright, but it’s not dark either, so I think it’s okay. So, yeah. So, what I’m going to do is make sure I monitor the recording time on the app. And when I get to 25 minutes, then I will just shut it off and restart. And then check that the camera is still recording because it has, like I said, 29 minutes 58 seconds, it turns off. And you have to monitor. Make sure you stop recording before you get to that point because it’s not going to tell you. You have to manually keep track of these things, which is a bit of a problem.
So, yeah. The other day, in my behind-the-scenes video, I talked about all of my issues at the Crossroads Hotel, particularly when it came to the yo-yoing room costs. I just needed to get out of that place. There were just too many issues with the room where I booked a single room because my standard queen, the prices went through the roof and I thought, “Yeah, I’m not going to pay that much.” And then I saw they had a single room available for about 45 ringgit per night. So I booked that single room for a couple of nights, but then when I went to try to extend that booking, the price went up to 100 ringgit per night. And I said, “Okay, that’s it. I’m out of this place.” And that’s when I went down to the front desk and I tried to upgrade. I decided I didn’t even want to move into the single room. I’ll pay the financial penalty just so I can stay in my current standard queen and I don’t have all this hassle because as soon as I moved into the single room, I’d be in there for two nights and then I’d have to move out again because that room became too expensive. So, I tried to arrange an upgrade and I eventually did, but it took the whole morning and dealing with two different hotel clerks to finally do it. And I just paid an extra 20 ringgit per night on top of my single room reservation in order to remain in my queen room, standard queen. And then I just booked a room here back at the Hotel Raja Boat because I got this room for something like 47 ringgit per night. And this is a standard queen. So it’s actually a much better deal than the Crossroads. The Crossroads room is bigger and nicer, but that’s only on the surface. When you get down into the details, this is actually a much better room at a much better price. The air conditioner is brand new in this room anyway. Very strong, brand new. The control works perfectly. Everything is still legible on the screen. Everything is new. And then the room actually has a kettle that works, its own electric kettle, which is new and in good condition. And it even has a hair dryer in the bathroom. The bathroom is one of these low-budget deals. It’s quite small and it’s impossible to move around in there. It’s like if you want to go over to the shower area, you go into the door, but then you have to jam yourself into the back corner and then take the door because the door opens into the shower area and then the water would just hit the door and then just fly out into the room. So you have to close the door and then so I get way but the you can’t close the door normally because your body is in the way. So you have to jam into the corner, suck in your stomach and then you pull the door and get it past your body and then you can get into the shower. But to get out of the shower now you got to do the reverse of that while you’re soaking wet and then you got to grab the door and just kind of put it back so you can get into the rest of the bathroom. It’s just it’s pretty crazy. And it takes forever for the water to reach this bathroom. At first, I thought I’d made a horrible mistake because I went in to take my first shower after I’d moved in and I was all hot and sweaty. So, then I turned on the tap and no water came out and I thought, “Oh boy.” It’s sort of like, what’s the word? Anyway, there’s an expression for leaving a bad situation and all you end up is in a new situation that’s just as bad but in different ways. So, had I traded the slightly higher prices and the weirdness of the Crossroads for a room here that doesn’t have any water. But then, just as I was coming to that conclusion, I heard some gurgling. So, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And then a little bit of water started coming out of the shower head. So, at least I did get water. And it does have a hot water heater that actually works. Yeah, my I usually like to shower at hyper speed. I don’t like wasting time with a shower. I get in and out as fast as possible. And to do that, I need a good water flow. So, it’s a little bit annoying that this water kind of trickles out and it slows down my shower routine. But still it’s I can handle it. So yeah, when I came over here I was very happy about that because as I talked about I know the hotel clerks here they’re much more this is not a luxury hotel. It’s not a fancy hotel but they do offer a higher level of customer service. They they usually focus on the guest and anticipate your needs. They’re just they they go the extra mile. Again, you’re not getting full service. This is not a Hilton or a Sheraton, but for a low-budget hotel, it’s leagues above the Crossroads. And then when I came, what I wanted to do yesterday was come here and then just touch base and let them know, okay, I’m coming back tomorrow and letting them know that I’m coming back to this hotel the next day. That gives them the chance to be nice to me if they want to be ’cause I’m going to be showing up at 5 after 12. I check out at noon. It’s a 5-minute walk to get here. And then if I get here and they know I’m coming, you know, chances are they’re going to get a room ready for me and then I can just get early check-in, right? But of course, if they don’t know I’m coming, maybe they won’t do that. So anyway, I wanted to come over here and make them know, let them know. And of course, their rooms are different. Even at like a standard queen, some of the rooms are better than others. Like one I know on this floor has a window, a little sliver of a window, and it’s bigger, a little bit more spacious, a little bit newer. And I was hoping to get one of those rooms. And if I tell them in advance I’m coming, maybe they can monitor their system and see, oh, let’s try to give Doug the best room we have and give him early check-in just to be nice. They don’t have to do that, you know. They don’t have to give me early check-in. Most hotels won’t. Crossroads absolutely will not and or they can’t because of the later turnover of their guests or something. Anyway, that you don’t get early check-in at the Crossroads. And then if you do get it, normally you have to pay extra for early check-in, late checkout. So, it’s it’s a it’s a benefit that they offer it here. And again, I’m a regular customer and we know each other. So anyway, I came to tell them and I was hoping that they would give me one of the good rooms or what I think of as one of the good rooms. And they show they when I showed up to check in. It was a different hotel clerk, but he knew I was coming. He was waiting for me. And he says, “Yeah, we have a room for you. We set it aside for you ’cause we knew you were coming early, but it’s not quite ready yet. So, 10 minutes, are you okay? Just wait a few minutes and your room will be ready.” I was like, “Oh, absolutely.” I got some fried bananas and I just sat in the lobby and I was watching a YouTube travel video from the American Hobo while I was sitting there and munching on my fried bananas. And then they gave me the key card, then the remote for room 309. So, I was in room 309. I am in room 309. And it’s not one of the good rooms, but it’s really fine. As I said, maybe the other room, the one that’s bigger and has the window, maybe it has a worse air conditioner and something other problem with it. Who knows? I can’t remember. But yeah, this room is absolutely fine. So, I’m in my room, my new room at the Raja Boat Hotel. Raja Boat Hotel.
Woohoo! I was just checking on my laptop and a parcel has been delivered. Oh. Oh, I’m so happy about that. I have I have another Planet Doug drama story to tell that involves deliveries and the parcel. I just got an email. I was sitting here talking to the camera and again one of the issues of using the OI Share app is that once you use it, it locks the phone to that screen. Like I can’t leave this screen. And this is my main phone. Maybe maybe I should make an adjustment. Yeah, I should switch OI Share over to another phone that I don’t use all the time. And then this one will still be free to check email, to answer the phone, to send messages, look for information because right now I can’t I can’t navigate away from this screen. If I navigate away, it turns off recording. So I was sitting here telling the story about moving to the Raja Boat and I heard a little bit of a one phone for some reason. I think this one makes a little click sound. I turn off all sound. I turn off all notifications. Drives me crazy if my phone is beeping all day. I I don’t know why I get so many notifications. Half the time this phone, if I have sound turned on, will beep loudly for no reason. Like normally when it beeps, it’s like, “Oh, there’s an email. Oh, there’s a WhatsApp message. Oh, there’s this. Oh, oh, oh, oh, now now I have a call.” Okay, so I answered that phone call because I thought it was connected to this package delivery drama. And it turns out I was right. But of course, now that I answered the phone call, it disconnected the app from the computer and again from the computer, from the camera. And that was like 20 minutes ago. And it took me the last 20 minutes of testing and experimenting and testing and retrying, retrying to finally get the app to connect to the camera again. So again, yeah, experiment number two is not going well. My camera actually froze. The whole camera was just locked and the only way I could get it unlocked was to pull the battery, put the battery back in and then restart the camera. And then the app would not connect and it, you know, gives you all the normal instructions like, oh, just turn off and on your device, turn Wi-Fi off and on, do this, reset that, turn them, and you go through all those steps and you don’t know what’s happening. And then eventually it said incorrect password which made no sense because I haven’t changed the password anywhere. But then suddenly it had no password. So I had to figure out what was the password I set for this hotspot Wi-Fi. Had to find it re-input on and on and on and on. Anyway, what a nightmare. This like the all the apps that control a camera from a distance. None of them work in my experience. Maybe the best. I for a long for a while I had a DJI Pocket 2 and the DJI Mimo app was very solid and very reliable. That was one thing I remember about the Pocket 2 that made it a useful camera, but there were there’s so many other problems with the Pocket 2. I eventually sold it and that chunk of money I got for that camera is what paid for one of my trips to Sumatra. So, it did end up being very useful to me, but I don’t have the Pocket 2 anymore. And then I thought maybe the audio was a bit too loud on that previous clip, so I dropped the audio on the RØDE microphone by a little bit. And I think I boosted the exposure just a touch to make it a bit brighter. But anyway, so I answered the phone call and it was UPS. And then by the time I was talking to the guy on UPS, I kind of figured out what was going on because I saw an email and the email said the package had been delivered. But when I looked at the photo, like there’s a tiny tiny grainy photo that looks like it was taken in the 18th century to show me where the package is, and it doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near the house. So, I had it sent to the house of a friend of mine, but I guess nobody’s home and the gate is locked. And you know, houses in Malaysia, all are like fortified castles. They’re all fortresses that have a big fence around them and a wall and a locked gate. They’re they’re expecting the zombie horde any minute here in Malaysia. So, delivery drivers can’t get to the house, so they can’t even leave the package on the front porch ’cause they can’t get onto the grounds. Or maybe UPS has a rule that if the gate is closed, they’re not allowed to go through it. Who knows? But anyway, I looked at the photo and it was like, “Ooh, okay. I see the package, but it looks like it’s on the fence by the street, you know, by the road where anybody could, you know, yoink, anybody could take it.” And it’s just sitting there. And I sent my friend a message saying the package has arrived, but I think it’s just sitting on your fence on, you know, goes around your property and but he hasn’t replied. So I I don’t think anybody’s home. I don’t know where he is. And that’s always the problem with these deliveries. Anyway, with the problems with the deliveries, I guess I can I can start that story now where I I told some of it the other day where a Planet Doug subscriber had been upgraded to the GoPro Hero 13. And the Hero 13, GoPro redesigned it so it uses a different type of battery. And he had a Hero, he had batteries, extra batteries that fit the Hero 9, 10, 11, and 12. And he’s like, “Well, what do I do with all my old batteries?” And then, you know, he probably heard me babbling endlessly about my problems with my GoPro batteries. Ah, Planet Doug. Poor poor Doug. He could use an extra battery. And so, he contacted me and said, “Yeah, I’ve got four of them.” Four. There’s three GoPro Enduro batteries with the white shell and then one regular one with the blue shell. And then also he’s sending me some other things that he doesn’t need anymore, doesn’t use. It was the Go Ulanzi G4 or G5 cage, an aluminum cage for the GoPro that holds the GoPro mic adapter. It needs a special place to put it. And then a two terabyte somewhat older SSD drive that he built himself like had an SSD drive two terabyte and he got an enclosure for it and put it in the enclosure and I think it’s one of the older ones it’s not like the super fast modern ones but according to the speeds that I know about these drives it’s faster than my USB ports are on my laptop so it’s fine I’m not using that SSD drive as a computer drive. I would just be using it for storage, for backup and storage. So, yeah, the high it’s high speed to me. So anyway, a whole bunch of GoPro goodies in this package and he was going to send it to me and he sent it from Singapore. He originally went to Singapore Post, right? Why wouldn’t you? You go to the post office to send a package to Malaysia. And he didn’t give me a lot of the details, but he wrote and said, “Yeah, I couldn’t figure that place out. It was just too complicated. I couldn’t understand what they were telling me. There were all these restrictions and rules and regulations about the package and whatever was going on.” He just said, “Yeah, no, that’s not I can’t figure this place out.” So, he gave up on Singapore Post. But near his hotel, there happened to be like a little office for a shipping company, fast delivery. And I don’t know whether it was an official UPS location or not, but anyway, he went there, showed them what he wanted to ship, and they gave him amazing service reading between the lines of his message that they understood instantly what he was trying to do. They said, “Oh yeah, we can do that for you. No problem.” and they actually repackaged everything for him into a better standard package for their system, helped them with all the labeling. And I’m assuming it cost a lot of money. I’m kind of hesitant to ask. I say, “How much did that cost?” You know, sometimes these days you ship something around the world. I think a lot of people have run into this. You know, you’ve got a niece in California, it’s her birthday, and you see this little doll that you think will be a nice present for her, and you buy it for $10, thinking, “Oh, I’ll just send my niece this little doll.” And then you get to the post office, it’s like, “Well, that’ll be $80 for delivery.” And you’re like, “Oh, yeah. Forgot about how expensive delivery is.” So, yeah, delivery through post offices is incredibly exorbitant. So expensive. And now if you’re upgrading to a premium delivery service like UPS, yeah, you’re going to be paying premium prices. So, thank you very much to my latest mystery benefactor solving my GoPro battery problem. So, anyway, he sent it from UPS and I asked a friend of mine, “Can I use your home address?” Because I don’t have anywhere to ship things to. I usually I ask local people that I know, you know, can I use your address? But I don’t want to bother the same people all the time. So, I kind of spread my requests out. And this friend, I hadn’t used his address before. So, I went to him instead of going to one of my regulars and I said this is KY, and I asked KY, “Hey, do you mind if I have a package if I use your mailing address?” And he said, “Yeah, absolutely. No problem.” and he sent me his address. I sent it to my mystery benefactor and he put that on the delivery. And right from the beginning, to be honest, I was a little bit concerned because the address that KY gave me was for a house, like a residential address, and it was a bit of an unusual address. It reminded me of like rural addresses in Canada. I spend a lot of time in quite rural areas in Canada and then you might get an address that doesn’t sound like an address like in a city it’s going to be you know 821 Oak Avenue, GE Ontario postal code and it’s very simple you find you go to that city you find Oak Avenue and then the houses have numbers on them and there’s 827, 829, 831 and the numbers are like right on the house on the mailbox. It’s a very simple, clear system, but then you go out into the countryside and it’s like rural route 12 next to the big oak tree and across the road from the cliff, you know, it’s like a little bit of more of a descriptive location. And KY’s address was a little bit like that. And I was reading it going, man, would okay, UPS delivery professionals. Sure, but is this address going to make any sense to them? I forget. There was like one line in it that was sort of like not a specific number or name. It was like across the road from something or near something. It was like ah and I thought I don’t know about that address. But anyway, wheels were in motion and time was of the essence. So I said, okay, we’ll just we’ll figure it out. I figured if this address is not suitable for deliveries, KY would tell me. He’s not going to say, “Oh, sure, sure, sure. Use my home address.” And if he knows it never works or that it’s a really complicated address and all his deliveries go missing, well, he’s not going to offer it to me, right? You got to trust some common sense. So, I just assumed if he’s willing to let me use his address, it must work for mail and deliveries. A local person will understand what this address is. But I was still a little bit worried about it. And then this package was moving at light speed and I’m not accustomed to that because I’ve had things shipped from Kuala Lumpur to a Kuala Lumpur address and because of delivery problems whatnot it can end up taking 10 days 2 weeks before it gets there and then you’re you know you’re you’re tracking it online and uh this is going to lead into a major pet peeve of mine but maybe I’ll set it aside for now. I’ll finish the UPS story. But anyway, you’re tracking the progress and it seems to take forever to get there because it has to go through so many distribution centers. But this package from Singapore just, you know, I was tracking it online. He dropped it off at the office and then I’m checking the tracking. Oh, it’s crossing the border now. Oh, it’s at customs. Oh, cleared customs. Oh, it’s out for delivery. I’m like, what? Like the next day it was out for delivery and they gave like a time period. It, you know, it’s out for delivery from noon until 4. So that’s where things were yesterday. And I gave KY a heads up that, yeah, okay, it’s out for delivery today already and it’s supposed to be there before 4:00. And then I got an update that said, “Well, it’s actually going to be before 7:25, but it’ll get there by end of day.” So, I was like, “Come on, come on, come on, package.” And then came the notification that I was dreading. And the notification was to a human being incomprehensible. It basically said, ah, here it is. It said rescheduled delivery requested. Like, well, what the heck does that mean? It’s basically saying that reschedule delivery requested and that’s the only information I got. So, the delivery failed and redelivery was requested, but by who? I didn’t request it. Did KY request it? Like, did they what? What does that mean? And this is where my pet peeve comes in. What I figured out with all of my recent delivery adventures is that you think it’s a good thing that we get all of these tracking notifications, but through careful study, what I’ve realized is those tracking notifications were not designed to be sent to customers. All they did was take all their internal messaging and make it public, right? So, they didn’t sit down and say, “Okay, let’s design a notification system that tells customers where their package is and what’s going on with it.” No, they didn’t do that. All they did was take all of their internal logistical messaging and turn it around and make it public. So this message is not meant for the customer. That message reschedule delivery requested was meant for their computers and for their internal messaging systems. It’s not meant to be read by the customer. And that’s the same thing when I’m talking about these Lazada deliveries. I remember getting so excited about these Lazada deliveries ’cause it seemed like they’re moving really fast. And it will say something like arriving at distribution center. And I’m like, “Yes, it’s at the distribution center. Next stage is going to be out for delivery, right? It’s at the distribution center.” So I get all excited and then the next notification like 12 hours later says, “Arrives at distribution center.” I’m like, “What the heck? It already was there.” And so, no, this is the next distribution center. I’m like, okay. Now, 12 hours later, I get a notification arrival at rerouting something something distribution location. And it’s like, and then the package goes from warehouse to warehouse to warehouse to warehouse. And me as the customer, I don’t need to know the specific technical name that you’ve given this routing distribution center. Like if you designed that information for a customer, you would say your package has arrived, you know, give me the name of the town or just say is on its way through our distribution network and it will arrive in 18 hours or it’s going to arrive tomorrow. Like just speak to me like you’re talking to a human being like it’s a phone call, right? Like a human being calls you. You answer the phone and he wants to give you tell you about your package. So, yeah, Doug. Yeah, this is Doug. Okay. Yo, that package you ordered, the GoPro batteries or whatever it is, the tripod. Yeah, it’s on its way. It’s going to go through a series of distribution warehouses, but it’s on the way to your location. Should get there in 2 days. Is that okay? Oh, thank you very much. You know, like speak to me like a human. So this message reschedule delivery requested that’s a technical internal message not it’s not meant to be customer-facing it’s an internal message so that that’s basically what drives me crazy what I need to know is okay it looks like the delivery failed that’s pretty clear but why did it fail like it says new delivery has been requested but why? Because you couldn’t find the address. There was nobody home or you you found it and people were there but none of them were allowed to sign for it that I have to sign for it because it’s my name on the package or did they get to the end of the day and the guy’s shift was over and he didn’t have time to get to my package so it’s been rescheduled for the next day for a new delivery procedure. Like there are so many different possibilities that can be associated with this cryptic message, but it doesn’t tell you what’s going on. But anyway, that’s the message I got. And I was so depressed yesterday, partially because the mystery benefactor’s being so kind to send me their gear. This person carried it in their luggage all the way from the United States to Singapore just to be able to mail it to me. And they went to Singapore Post. Then they went to a UPS delivery center. They paid for the delivery, communicated with me many, many times about getting the address, that kind of thing. I mean, it was a big commitment on their part. So, I don’t want the package to go missing. Sure, I want the batteries, but I don’t want this poor guy. I don’t want to send him a message saying like, you know, it’s been three weeks and I still don’t even have the package. Right. So, anyway, yeah. So, I was very annoyed last night because again, you feel quite helpless in these situations because there’s no one I can contact. It’s not like I can pick up the phone. Hey, Bill. Yeah, I got this weird message from UPS, from you guys. Reschedule delivery requested. What does that mean? And then they would explain it to me. Oh, yeah, we couldn’t find the house and it got dark, so we’re going to try again tomorrow. Oh, okay. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Bill. You know, there’s no one you can call. There’s nothing you can do. I mean, you can go into the system, which I did do because I got these emails from them, and the email said delivery schedule requested. And I’m like, I don’t know what that means. But there was a button there that said, what did the button say? The button said change delivery. And I thought, ah, maybe I can put in a new address, but I don’t even know if I want to put in a new address because I don’t know if the address was the problem. So, even if I could change the delivery address, maybe that’s a bad thing because maybe they didn’t deliver it just because they ran out of time. Like, I don’t even know what the problem is. But, it didn’t matter because when I clicked on the change delivery button, that took me to the UPS website and then it gave me a menu and the menu, I kid you not, was literally called ineligible options. So the change delivery button brought me to a menu that said all these options there. These are the ineligible options. You can’t do any of these things. It’s like well then why did you send me here? So, I click on the ineligible options drop-down menu and there were seven items and there were all items like common sense change delivery address but it’s in the ineligible and then it says it’s grayed out and it says this option is not available in Malaysia. It’s not it said this option is not available in your country where the package is being delivered. You know, Malaysia. It didn’t say Malaysia, but it said not available for the destination, postal code, whatever. So, couldn’t change the address. Number two was just keep the package at a collection point, which is what I wanted to do from the beginning, and then I could go pick it up. I was like, “Oh, man.” But that is one of the ineligible options. Says, “No, this option is not available for you because you’re in Malaysia.” Third one was like schedule a 2-hour window for delivery to make sure that somebody is home ineligible. There were seven options that they sent me to but the seven options were all in a menu called ineligible options. So I’m like it was like a a whole list of things you can’t do. And like well thank you for telling me everything I can’t do. Is there anything I can do? No, there was nothing I could do. So anyway, all I could do was just adjust to the new situation. I mentally switched to a different gear. Like, well, there’s nothing I can do, so we’ll just I have no control. It’s out of my hands. Just relax and just have faith that something is going to happen. It may take a week. It may take two weeks. Something is going to eventually happen. but don’t stress out about it. So, that’s what I did. And then I got a notification by email this morning saying out for delivery. We’re going to try again and it will be delivered from 8:45 between 8:45 and 12:45. So, I sent that information to KY and copy and took a screen I took screenshots of everything and I sent them to KY just to keep him up to date. And I don’t know whether KY saw any of those ’cause he didn’t reply back this morning. He’s a busy guy as well. And then yeah, it was getting closer and closer and closer to 12:45. And I was just assuming that nothing was going to happen. And then right when I was talking to you in this podcast, that’s when I got the email saying it had been delivered and I saw the photo of the package sitting on a pillar, a cement pillar on the fence. And then I got the phone call and the guy was like, “Uh, Douglas, Douglas.” I’m like, “Yeah, okay. UPS.” And I didn’t really understand him. I can’t understand anybody on the phone and English was clearly not his first language and it was very hard to figure out what he was saying, but he did say my name and then UPS package and pillar. He said pillar and then I looked at the photo. Oh, that’s what that is. That’s a cement pillar. Ah, he’s telling me that he put the package on top of the pillar and there it sits. So hopefully no port no pillar pirate. You know they in the United States you see all these amusing or sad to be honest. Porch pirate videos all these thieves that see Amazon packages on porches and they all run up and grab them and hop in their car. You know the porch pirates. And here I don’t know do they have porch pirates in Malaysia? In this case, it would have to be a pillar pirate because as far as I can tell, the package never even got close to the porch. Nowhere near the door. And I am curious why that is that in Malaysia are the rules stricter and you’re not allowed to just open the the driveway ’cause I don’t think here they don’t have driveway gates and then people gates which is very which are very common in Canada or the US. If you have a gated property, there’s going to be two doors, one for vehicles and one for people. And then you can kind of open the little gate and then go in, put your package on the porch, close it behind you, get attacked by the local Doberman or whatever, and jump over the fence. But here, I think people tend to have just one big gate for the vehicle and there isn’t a separate person gate. So anyway, why he didn’t put the package near the front door? Something like that. I guess they’re not allowed to enter the property. I don’t know. Or it’s possible he put it on the pillar because it actually gives the street address number on the pillar. And when he took the photo, you can see the house in the background, a little bit of it, and then the street address. And I can see, okay, that matches the address. It’s in the right place. And then maybe he took that picture and then he moved it to the front door. I don’t know. I’m assuming we’ll find out all of this eventually. But anyway, package has been delivered which is pretty exciting and yeah, I’ll meet up with KY at some point and he can hand it over to me. So I think that’s the end of my UPS story. I don’t know if there’s any other Oh, I just got a thumbs up from KY. He saw my notification that the package is sitting on a pillar. And yeah. All right. I think that is it for now. I didn’t have any other stories to tell this morning. One other problem I just realized when it comes to using the OI Share app is that I mean I thought I could sit here and talk to you while the video is uploading, but what I’ve just realized is that now that I’ve turned on OI Share and connected it to my camera’s hotspot, I’ve not connected to the internet anymore. So, all this time, my video hasn’t even been uploading because I’m not connected to the internet anymore. Like, ah, yeah, I totally forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah, it’s made no progress at all since I started. I thought I could record this video while this video is uploading, but it turns out recording this video stopped the video upload. Yeah, technology. But this is a problem I can solve because I can put OI Share onto this phone and then I can keep using this one for uploading. Yep. Anyway, that’s not an insurmountable problem. So, that’s it. Shutting down for now. And yeah, I’ll just add more stories to this behind-the-scenes podcast as the days go by. I’ll see you in the next story.
Okay, I’ve jumped ahead in time. It’s now the next morning. This is Friday, January 23rd. I always have to think. Friday, January 23rd, 2026. And the big news is the package found its way to me. So, I’m going to do an unboxing.
So exciting. GoPro goodies, mainly GoPro batteries, which I’m really happy about because I was yeah, when I fired up I was I’m going to be using my GoPro a little bit this morning. So, of course, I had to check on the battery and memory card and the battery was dead. So, I had to pull out the battery and replace it with a fully charged one. And that just reminded me of how what bad condition my batteries are in because I have this piece of thread that is inserted inside the GoPro ’cause I need that thread as like a harness in order to pull the battery out. And it I had a heck of a time getting that battery out because as I’ve talked about, they’re all swollen. All of my GoPro batteries have swelled up badly. And then because they’ve swollen, they get stuck inside the camera. But on top of that, when you try to pull them out using the tab, the normal way you remove the battery, I mean, the tab just tears off or the whole top of the of the battery comes off. And so you basically Yeah, I tried to super glue the lid back onto the battery. And then these batteries have like a plastic heavy-duty wrapper around them. And when the battery swells, this wrapper gets pushed out beyond the edges. So now when you try to pull the battery out, you’re fighting against the fact that they’re swollen, but then the edge of this wrapper now jams against the edge of the battery door and then it’s just locked in there. Like you cannot get them out no matter how much force you apply because the wrapper itself, which is a very very stiff material, has been pushed beyond the edge of the top lid and it jams against the opening in the GoPro. And so then you got to get a like a Swiss Army knife, like a thin blade, and you got to put it in there and then push the wrapper to the side and then pull on the thread. So anyway, it is it is a hassle. I did finally get the battery out and I put the new one in and and doing that in the comfort of your hotel room is not such a big deal. But of course, when you’re out in the real world in a busy market, you’re riding your bike and you’re sweating and you pull over to the side of the road with traffic roaring past you and now you’re trying to change the battery in your GoPro and you’re dealing with all of that. So, some new GoPro batteries are going to be very welcome. I’m going to be unboxing that in just a minute. A couple other stories before I get there. Technology, of course. One is I’m not using the Olympus OI Share app. I think I’m done with that. It’s just way too much trouble. I tried to set it up for this recording session and I couldn’t get them to connect. The the Wi-Fi connection just wouldn’t go through and then you you fight with it for so long that it’s just a waste of time. So, I pretty much given up on that. And yeah, I’m hap I’m fine with that. It’s not like it’s such a big deal for me to get up from Planet Doug’s studio, my hotel bed, and then walk over to the camera and hit the record button to save the recording and then restart it. It’s I have to get up from time to time anyway, so it’s no big deal. And the biggest problem, as I’ve said, is that the app continues to look like it’s recording even when the camera shuts down. And the camera can shut down for any number of reasons. Memory card is full, battery is empty, reach the recording limit. Those are three that I can think of off the top of my head. and then the camera just stops working, but the app isn’t aware of it. So, I’m looking at the app and it looks like everything’s fine and it looks like it’s still recording. So, that is the major deal-breaker in terms of using the app. So, no more. I’m just running it and I think it’s better. I can see the screen. I can if I squint, I can just barely make out the little REC, the red letters that tells me it’s recording. If I lean way over here, I can see the battery indicator is flashing. And perhaps most important, I can see the audio levels. Well, I can’t I can’t really see the levels, but I can see the audio signal going up and down, back and forth. And that’s another failure of the app on my phone, the OI Share app. It does not even show you that it’s recording audio. So, this is a complete failure when it comes to recording video through the app. It’s just completely useless. Maybe it’s gotten better like with a brand new Olympus, one of the new OM-5 models, maybe everything has improved, but with my older model and this version of the app, complete waste of time. So, I’m done with that. And the other technology story is really quite funny. I’ve been talking about this a little bit off and on for I don’t know it feels like it’s been 2 years I’ve been dealing with this where my phone just beeps all the time just constantly day and night beep beep beep beep and then every time I look you know a beeping is a notification you got a WhatsApp message someone’s sent you an email so I have certain apps the most important ones to me and then I have them set up to give me a notification. But this this stupid phone, it’s a Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus. It would just beep all day, all night, and then I’d look and there’s no notification. So, I’m like, what? Why did you beep? What are you trying to tell me? And I’ve I’ve done research into this over and over and over constantly. And you get all the usual instructions like well these are like ghost notifications. It’s like a UI system notification. Could be battery level indicator and some and then it gives you instructions. Well, go to notifications. Click on this. Click on that. Look for categories. Make sure in the categories sound is turned off. And I’ve gone through that system through those troubleshooting methods over and over and over. And I’ve turned off all the apps notifications I don’t want. I’ve made sure that sound is turned off everywhere where I don’t want it. And yet the phone would just keep beeping and beeping and beeping. So eventually I just turned off sound altogether. That was the only thing I could do. So most of the time I have sound on my phone, the master switch, I just set it to silent all the time. And I actually like that because if you don’t have your phone set to silent, the phone really controls your attention. And I’ve noticed that when you’re hanging out with other people and you’re having a conversation over coffee, I mean, every 15 minutes they have to refer to their phone because their phone has beeped or vibrated and then Yeah, you can’t help it. It’s such an addicting an addictive behavior that you know the phone’s in your pocket and you hear it beep. You know, you know they’re talking to me, but oh, what what was that? Well, you know, they have to pull out their phone and then they’re still talking to you. They’re making they’re being polite, but at the same time, you know, you’ve now got 30% of their attention because they’re scrolling. Oh, what’s that note? Oh, yeah. Oh, really? Interesting, Doug. That’s what you did in Sumatra. Oh, tell me more about that story about, you know, your latest technological problem. Oh, yeah. Interesting. And they’re looking at their phone. And I like the fact that I set my phone to silent, no vibration. I don’t want to hear from it at all. I choose when I look. And occasionally it got me in trouble because I might be in the middle of needing to meet up with someone or we’re exchanging important time-sensitive information and they phone they call me on the phone but I don’t even hear it ring so I often miss phone calls which I’m kind of happy about to be honest ’cause I I don’t like talking on the phone but anyway it has gotten me in trouble where I’ve missed important phone calls, missed important messages like somebody on WhatsApp is asking me for information that’s really important to them and they need it right now, but I don’t get a notification. So, like an hour later, I just happen to look at my phone. Oh, let’s see what’s happening. And then I scroll and I see, oh, someone sent me a message on WhatsApp. Then I go to WhatsApp and look. And that all started because I could not stop my phone from beeping. And yesterday finally I figured out why ’cause because of this package actually because this package was coming towards me. I needed to be in contact with people. I needed to hear from UPS in case they phoned me or or sent me an emergency email or notification and from my friend KY because the package is being shipped to his house. So, I needed to be in communication in real time. So, I turned audio and everything on on my phone. So, for the last couple of days where I’ve been anticipating this package, my phone has been driving me nuts. Just beeping and beeping and beeping. And every time I look, there’s nothing. And because I’m worried about the package, I have to look every single time now. So, beep beep beep and there’s nothing. Why are you beeping at me? You know, I put the phone down. A few minutes later, beep beep. It’s like, what? What do you want driving me up the wall? So, yesterday I went back into it. I went to AI and and and laid my problem at the feet of my my helpful AI buddies and said, I mean, can you help me fix this? And here, actually, the AI systems, they all failed me. I figured it out on my own. But in a way, they led me to the solution because the AI just told me all the normal things. Oh, go to notifications, go to history, go to categories, turn this off, turn that off. And then they gave me all these things while sometimes Android gets mixed up and this and they’re explaining why this might happen. But I wasn’t able to stop the phone from beeping. But while I was following the instructions of the AI, go to this menu, go to this menu, go to that menu, scroll down, click on this, I stumbled across something that was hidden. And that’s the key to my problem. This setting was hidden under accessibility advanced settings. It’s a notifications setting, but Android or yeah, Samsung’s Android skin, whatever they use, it doesn’t put this notification setting under notifications. It’s a special setting for accessibility and they put it in accessibility under advanced settings and it is called notification reminder. So, if you’re out there suffering because your phone never stops beeping at you for no reason, I’m telling you now, if it’s an Android phone, it’s probably because under accessibility notification reminder has been turned on. And what this does is just keep reminding you that there are notifications in your notification tray that you haven’t clicked on and dismissed yet. And you it has a timer on it. So you can get a notification reminder every 5 minutes, every I I guess every every minute, every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes, but the maximum is 15 minutes. So for example in my case like right now I have a notification on my phone from Touch ‘n Go and you know if I scroll down I can see it and I haven’t clicked on it so it is sitting there in my notifications tray and with notification reminder turned on my phone beeps every 15 minutes to remind me of this notification I already saw I mean, hour, you know, days ago, I got this notification. I just haven’t dismissed it for whatever reason. It’s there. And every 15 minutes, the phone beeps at me to remind me that this notification is there. That’s what has been going on for years. And I was talking with AI about this. I went back to the AI. I treat them like my friends. And I said, “Yeah, oh, I found the solution.” And it’s something that you missed. I mean, you gave me all this advice telling me why my phone might be beeping all the time. But the real reason is notification reminder. And this often happens with AI where especially with technology, they miss the absolute obvious thing completely. But the really annoying thing about AI is they never admit it. They’re not programmed that way. They don’t say, “Oh, oh, you’re right. Oh, I never thought of that. Sorry, I missed that.” ‘Cause like when I said to the AI, “Oh, I found the problem. It’s because I have notification reminder turned on.” And then the AI said basically said, “You know, notification reminder is this setting under accessibility. And if you turn it on, your phone will beep at you every few minutes.” And it’s like telling me what I was telling it. You know, it’s like it it suddenly pretends it knew this all along. Like, well, that’s obvious, dude. How come you didn’t know? I was You didn’t know either. You know, you didn’t tell me about it. I had to find it on my own. But then the AI just kind of handwaves it away and pretends it knew all the time, which it did know, but it never said anything about it. And then the mystery to me is I’m 100% positive I never turned it on. I never knew it existed. I had never heard of this feature before. At no point in my life have I ever gone into accessibility advanced settings and then said, “Oh, notification reminder every 15 minutes. Yeah, let’s turn that on.” I never did that. Never knew about this setting. Never knew about this feature. But I think what happened is whenever I got like an app update, you know, they force you to update to the newest version all the time. I’m pretty sure there would be a message at some point saying something like, “Would you like to turn like don’t miss important notifications? Turn notification reminder on.” And then at some point I probably looked at that message and thought, “Well, yeah, I want notifications from WhatsApp.” I think the message is saying, “Would you like to turn on notifications?” And I think, “Well, yeah, of course I want that.” So, I click on that. But what I’m actually clicking on is notification reminder. And so I turned on that feature at some point without realizing that I was turning it on. Anyway, I have since turned it off and now I can I can even leave the you know sound on my phone turned on. It actually just beeped at me right there. Very quiet beep. Because there are certain apps where I do want to be notified and I don’t mind getting a sound once every 4 hours give me a little beep. Oh, I got a new email. Oh, new WhatsApp message. That’s fine with me. So, I don’t mind the sounds, but not every 15 minutes. But finally, I figured out the problem and I turned it off. So, that is the end of my technology rant for this morning. No more no more Olympus OI Share to control the camera. Done with that and no more notification reminders. So, now let’s move on to the unboxing.
I’ve doubled my camera technology for the unboxing. I’ve got the Olympus over there recording audio and I’ve got the GoPro here because the GoPro aims down at the package, you know, right in front of me. One thing that occurred to me though, another little bit of a technology tangent is how in most systems in the world, there’s now kind of a tension between the old and the new, where the old system now starts to feel very clunky and traditional and kind of unwieldy. And then the new system is just fast and efficient. But the so many of the older systems are still hanging in there. And I was thinking of that because this package was shipped from Singapore to here and it uses the old traditional methods like mail hasn’t caught up with modern technology yet. Not even fancy UPS or something like that or fancy expensive UPS because they still use street addresses, right? You actually have to write down the name and the number, all the little details. And then I noticed on the packaging, it’s really hard to read. I mean, if I were a delivery guy, I’d be like, “Good grief, can you make the letters any tinier?” And they’re jammed together, so it’s really hard to read the address on the package. I would like it to have big clear letters. But if you’re ordering food like I did when I was in Bandung, I got into using Gojek to order food to the hotel. It’s all done by GPS, right? The guy isn’t thinking about the street and the number and the name. He just knows the physical location. I mean, he can see the name of the hotel and the address and all that kind of stuff. It’s the information is there, but he’s just on his motorcycle looking at a screen on his phone with a GPS and he just goes to that GPS location and there I am waiting for him. And I’ve always been a big fan of this program called What3Words. And I’m always I’m surprised it hasn’t taken over the world. I think it’s such a useful and powerful thing where this company that created this app have taken the entire planet, the surface of the entire world and divided it into little 1-meter squares. And every 1 m square has a three-word label attached to it, a unique three-word combination identifying that square. So, if you haven’t heard about this before, you know, I’ll talk about it a little bit. Like where I’m sitting right now on this bed, this is where I am on the planet and I’m sitting inside a 1 m square. This square has a precise three-word label in this app. What three words? So, you can pick very precise points anywhere in the world. And then if you’re delivering a package, you could use that where instead of worrying about, okay, where is this street? Is it down here? Do I turn left? Do I, you know, worrying about the name of the street and the street number and looking for addresses. All you do is supply a what three what three words location for the driveway of that house or the living room of that house or the front door of that house. And you just give that to the delivery company package, send it to this door, this one meter square, and then they can just call it up on their phone and just go right there and then beep beep beep, you know, X marks the spot. This is where you put the package and here’s the house. So instead of relying on the street name and the number and all that kind of stuff, you’re just following a GPS coordinate and and that seems so powerful to me, but delivery services for post offices, they still use the old clunky traditional service. And you see that everywhere, right? Banking is a very good example for me because I’ve I’ve done a deep dive into e-wallets and if a friend of mine is there and I want to send that friend $10, I just open up my phone, scan a QR code, beep, there you go, $10 goes from my account to his account and he has it. Now, say I want to send $10 into my friend’s bank account back in Canada. Oh my, you know how much like to do a bank-to-bank transfer the old ways. I’ve done it a number of times in my life. I mean, it is so complicated and and it’s it’s deeply embedded in the banking system though to do a wire transfer, right? A wire transfer is so complex and so old-fashioned, but they still use wire transfers because it’s baked into the financial world. So there is this new modern fast technology out there. But a lot of our institutions, banking, you know, mail delivery, government stuff is all still using the old traditional systems that feel so clunky and so slow at the same time. And another reason that occurred to me is ’cause every time I’ve had a package delivered to me, I feel like I must be some kind of an incredibly important government official or powerful businessman or diplomat because of the amount of paperwork that comes with it. You know, I guess I can’t show you all the paperwork because it has all this, you know, personal information on it, but check this out. You know, there’s like page after page, like three pages here of data and information. All kinds of numbers and signatures and dates and listings. It’s just incredible how much information. That’s just three pages. And then another page here with all kinds of information. And then another page here with all I mean five pages just on one side of this package to be sent to me. I mean that just feels like overkill, right? And then yeah, you go into it, there’s just label after label after label. So anyway, I’m going to grab my paper scissors, open up this box,
and then once I do that, all of the paperwork and labels with all the personal information of my mystery benefactor, I can get rid of that. And now I can just show the box. I’m surprised it rattles so much. You’d think UPS would just stuff it full of peanut foam and and and and stuff, you know, so it isn’t bouncing around quite as much. So anyway, I’ve got my let’s switch over to the the GoPro here. And my mystery benefactor did send me a spare SSD drive. So in terms of the content, you can see it says on the very top spare HDDs. It’s actually an SSD. But now let’s open the box and let’s see what’s inside. So, it’s a little bit of paper. You know, they they kind of put some paper, but it it didn’t do a lot in terms of keeping the stuff from rattling around. So, exciting. So, yeah, let’s start with how this all began. GoPro batteries.
Ah, there they are. Oh. Riches for a YouTuber, man. The this the this is this is wealth. Look at that. Even a nice little battery case. Wow. Wow. I haven’t seen batteries in this condition for years. Look at that. Perfectly thin. No swelling at all. None of none of the plastic wrapping has come loose. Nothing to jam. Still has the little plastic tabs on them. So, these will just slide right into the GoPro without any problem. And then you just have to grab this little tab, then pull it out again. So, those are two like essentially brand new GoPro Enduro batteries. Like, yeah, I don’t see any swelling, nothing. These are in perfect condition. And it even comes in a nice little case. It’s very, very nice. I like cases to keep track of things. And then a third one, exactly the same condition. This one’s even in better condition ’cause even the little tab on the top hasn’t even been bent. Yeah. perfectly thin and and like brand new GoPro Enduro batteries. Three of them. And then one more which is also like no swelling at all. I’m guessing that this is the battery maybe that came with the camera, the original GoPro when he bought it and then he bought extra Enduros ’cause this is the the older battery I think like with the blue. So, it has a slightly lower power rating. And I think they designed the Enduro so they have bragging rights because these continue operating in extreme cold and then the older batteries couldn’t function as well in extreme cold. But yeah, give me a second. I’m just curious about the difference in power. So, but I can’t read this. I have to use my phone to zoom in. And I want to see just how much more is in the Enduro compared to the original. That’s interesting. They they have the same 1720 milliamp hours and 1720 milliamp hours. I I thought I thought there was a difference between them, but I must be thinking of something else. But so yeah, there you go. Four batteries, brand new ones. Each of them high powered 1720 milliamp hours. So, I’m very very excited about that. Yeah, I think I can get rid of maybe what I’ll do I have another like a GoPro a GoPro Hero 9 that I don’t use as often as my Hero 12. And maybe I can take one of my older batteries, the ones that swelled up, stuff it in the nine and just leave it there. Like never take it out again because you can charge the battery through a USB-C cable. So, I can just leave the battery in the GoPro Hero 9 and just charge it up by plugging in the whole camera and I don’t have to, you know, take the battery out all the time and then reserve these ones for my Hero 12, which is my workhorse camera for Planet Doug. So, yeah. So, there are the batteries. Wow, that’s amazing. And an and a charger, which is always nice to have. Two battery charger came with them. Amazing.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about those. Oh, this is exciting. Oh, look at that. Oh, so this is different. I’ve never actually seen something like this. So, this would be the SSD drive. And I guess this is the case, but I was expecting like a solid case, you know, you can’t see inside. But so when I first saw this one being plastic, I thought, “Oh, now I have to open the case and take it out.” But that’s not how it works. This is the case. And there’s some tape here. So I’m assuming Oh, no. Maybe not. Oh, that’s just holding it closed. Okay. So there it is. There’s the USB-C port. So that’s it. This is the whole thing. And then you just plug in the USB-C cable right here. Did it come? Yeah. So this would be the cable for it. And then all you do is plug that into there. And then that can go into the USB-A port on your laptop. And that’s yeah 2.5 inch SSD 2 terabyte. What’s the company name? Team Group AX2. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, yeah, talk about l talk about wealth for a YouTuber, you know, batteries. You feel so rich, so wealthy when you have a couple of extra batteries. And then to have more memory then you really really feel wealthy. What I’ve been using for the last year maybe year and a half I upgraded myself to an SSD drive one of these SanDisk models. And this has no exaggeration transformed my life. I was talking the other day that people overuse game-changer, you know, they they use it for things that really aren’t important enough to be called game changers. But when I switched from HDD drives to this SSD drive, that was a game-changer. But these are very expensive. And this is a 1 terabyte SSD drive. And I keep running into memory limitations where this is full and everything I need on everything I have on here is important as a backup. I can’t delete anything and then I still run out of memory. But now so it’s bigger of course than you know one of these SanDisks but 2 terabyte but it’s much smaller, thinner, lighter than an HDD drive and very cool. I like that it’s transparent. So that that’s quite interesting. So now I’ve got three terabytes of fast SSD drive. So that’s that’s very exciting. It’s a trifecta of YouTuber wealth. We’ve got battery power, memory in, you know, storage and memory cards. I remember now he did me I’d forgotten about it. He mentioned he had some extra memory cards that he could put into the box for me. And I wasn’t expecting this at all. This is also a bit of a game changer. This one 512 gigabytes, a 512 GB. I’ve never had a memory card like that. I keep running out of memory and I got to keep changing the memory cards because yeah, they’re expensive and yeah, never had one this big before. So, that ought to be something of a game changer. 512 gigabyte. And it looks different. I’ve never seen this labeling. It’s a SanDisk. SanDisk 512, but I’m not sure what the uh I don’t think it’s ever been out of its package. I was just wondering what’s going on with this weird packaging, but it’s because yeah, it’s never been opened, so it’s brand new. But I can’t I can’t make out what type it is. So I I have to take a picture again. I was just saying I hadn’t heard of ImageMate Pro cards from SanDisk before. I’ve never used one, but it is a V30 A2. You know the little numbers on the card. And as far as I can tell, yeah, should be perfectly fine. I was just looking it up online like is it fast enough for 4K and it says yeah. I mean the Extreme Pro from SanDisk is faster than the ImageMate but it can handle 4K no problem. And these days I’m not even shooting in 4K anyway because my GoPro just overheats and shuts down when I do. So I I I shoot at 2.7K on my GoPro anyway. So this yeah 512 GB of memory that’s going to make yeah game-changer because I do get so annoyed when I’m constantly changing memory cards and a 512 will give me a lot more time that I can record before I have to change. And there’s a second card I haven’t looked at it yet. So, this is an Insta360 256 gigabyte pro card. Also, I believe V30, but I the lettering is so small I can’t make it out. So, I have to take a picture of it as well to make sure I know what kind of card it is. Photo time. So, I just looked up this card as well, the Insta360 256 GB Pro, also V30. I mean, yeah, perfectly capable of handling 4K video. So, yeah, so much memory. That’s amazing. So, yeah, thank you very much to my mystery benefactor for that. That is going to make a big difference. I wish I’d had these cards a long time ago. Would have made my life a lot easier. I’ve been cycling through 64 gigabyte cards. And when you’re shooting in 4K or 2.7K, those 64 gigabyte cards just fill up and you’re constantly changing them. And when I was in Vietnam, I splurged in my world. I splurged and I bought one 256 gigabyte memory card from I forget the brand name but a very good brand name very expensive to buy memory like this and yeah just having 256 gigabytes was really nice but even that one would fill up and I wish I had another 256 GB or a 512 GB. So yeah, these these are going into rotation right away. These are going to be my main cards along with my other 256. So that’s yeah, that’s going to be a huge amount of memory that I can work with. And let’s jump out of the tech out of the camera gear. Yeah, I forgot about this as well until I saw them in the card. Check that out. And my mystery benefactor mentioned that on a recent not recent but on a couple of years ago he was in Malaysia on a trip and they were going to drive and in order to drive on the highways in Malaysia you needed value on these cards to get through the toll gates on the superhighways. So he loaded up these cards with value but then somehow they got onto the road. I forget the story now, but when they went through the first toll, they they used something else by accident or something or when they got to the end and they had to beep out. Something went wrong. They couldn’t use the card. They used something else. So, all the money that they put on these MyRapid transit cards. They never used the money. And he couldn’t remember how much value might be left on each card. But so I get I have the fun of finding out. But I get to go out into the MRT and beep in with one of these cards and then I can see how much how much value is on each one. But yeah, three of them. That’s very very exciting. And then a couple of fascinating camera cases. This is a standard one for a GoPro. just a rubber case, you know, and a and a nice lanyard, which is quite nice protected. But the one that is more interesting is this one, and it’s a Ulanzi C95. So, this is an aluminum premium case for GoPros. And the the the reason you would use one of these is because here at the bottom, let me switch to my GoPro for this. Here at the bottom, you can see an opening and that’s where the GoPro mic adapter fits. So, it goes in there. And then your GoPro goes in here, of course. And I was using the plastic version of this for a while and the plastic is a lot lighter, but it’s not nearly as fancy as this one. So yeah, I don’t even know how to use it. I think you Okay. So I think the the the big difference is that the battery door comes right off. So like it doesn’t have a hinge. You just Yeah. You just pull it down and it comes off. I figured it out. I was half right. It does slide, but it slides up. So, this metal door comes off. So, now that you’ve removed the door and the battery door, now your camera can go inside. I’m using my 12 right now, so I can’t use it, but it’s the same size as the Hero 9, so I can demonstrate it with a Hero 9. So, you just slide that in from the back. So, your GoPro is nestled inside. And then you slide the battery door back into place. And then the rear door. I was trying to put it in, but I had it flipped over. So, it only fits in in one direction. Yeah, I can feel it now. This is how it goes in. And then it just clicks into place. So, now your GoPro is very secure inside here. And it has a cold shoe mount on the top, which is very handy. And a cold shoe mount on the side. And then it has a pass through door here to plug in the USB-C cord. That’s for the the mic adapter. And then this little gizmo sits on top because sometimes if you use like a a certain type of microphone and you put the microphone on top, it actually ends up bending down and ending up in the video. So this little adapter raises it up higher and yeah, so that allows you to lift the microphone. And then it has a filter thread here. So if you want to apply a polarizing filter or an ND filter, it has the thread here. Has an opening for easy access to the record button over here for the power button. And one big advantage over this, like this GoPro, I have it inside the GoPro media mod, and it has a 3.5 mm audio jack built into it, which is the main reason you would use it. But it’s really hard to get the GoPro out. Like you had to in order to change the battery or change the memory card, you have to disassemble this entire case, you know, take it off the mount and then once it’s removed from the mount, then you have to open it, pull the GoPro out, then you can change the battery. Then you got to reassemble the whole thing. The advantage to one of these using the mic adapter is in order to change the battery. There it is. So now the battery you can just pull it out, put it back in, and then the the battery door just goes back into place. That’s it. So changing the battery on the fly inside one of these is a lot easier. And that’s the case with my plastic version as well. The one dis I mean the main thing about this one is that it is heavy-duty and made of aluminum. So your GoPro is like in a tank basically. It’s so well protected. And I heard that because it’s aluminum it dissipates heat. So it could prevent my Hero 12 from overheating. So that would be a big advantage. So, I’m going to test it with my Hero 12 shooting in 4K and then maybe it will dissipate the heat better and it won’t overheat as much and then I can shoot in 4K. But the disadvantage of course is it’s quite heavy once you put your GoPro inside this aluminum case. You you feel the weight. It it’s a significant increase in the weight and that might be a reason where you you might not use one of these just because of that added added weight. And it has a tripod threaded mount on the bottom. And I believe the original version comes with a like GoPro fingers that you can screw on here. So, you could also use it with the regular GoPro mount. So, it probably came with that originally, but this doesn’t have that attached. It only has the the tripod thread. So, I can use this on a tripod mount without using the GoPro fingers. So, yeah, that brings us to the end end of the box. I have an empty box there. Yeah, that’s very very cool. A lot of game changers in that box. Very excited about that. Yeah, the batteries are amazing. The SSD drive is amazing. Yeah, the memory cards, those are really amazing. And then a lot of fun to get the MyRapid cards. I just shot a whole video talking about these cards. I posted that while I was in Indonesia. And then yeah, the fancy aluminum tank, the cage for the GoPro. All right, that’s it. Unboxing is done. Now I’m going to make a cup of coffee and format all of these drives and and get them up to speed and integrate them into the Planet Doug systems.
I’ve jumped ahead again. It’s now Saturday, January 24th, and I don’t have a lot of stories to tell. I just fired up the Olympus camera just so I can wind up this podcast and do a little bit of an epilogue for the box of GoPro goodies that a Planet Doug subscriber, mystery benefactor, sent to me. because I I opened up the box on camera yesterday and went over all of the stuff that was in the box and then in the rest of the day and then today I got to use some of that gear and I thought I could talk about my experiences with it and then with that story kind of wind up this this particular podcast. The biggest adventure that I had and the item that came with the biggest learning curve is this external SSD drive. Yeah, I guess it’s just a lack of experience on my part. But I mean when you have a new memory card, new new a drive of any kind, you usually format it, right? You format it, wipe it clean, and then you start fresh. But with drives, of course, there are two levels of formatting. You can do a quick format. And essentially, like the quick format doesn’t delete or overwrite anything that was on the drive before. All it really does is remove the index of the files and then start with a blank slate. So, it’s a little bit like if you do a quick format, it’s like removing the chapters of a book and putting in new chapters. So, you basically remove the chapter listings and now when you look at the contents of the drive, it looks like there’s nothing there. It’s empty. And then you can fill this is a two terabyte drive. So after you do a quick format and you say how much available memory is there? Well, there is approximately 2 terabytes of available memory because you’ve formatted it. But being a dummy, I thought, well, I know there’s a deeper layer of formatting where it actually wipes out all of the old content. And I I don’t know the real history of this drive. I’m not worried about it in any way, but I thought, well, why not do a complete wipe it clean format out of the gate, just and when you do a like a deep format, it also looks for errors on the disc, I think, things like that. I’m not a technical expert. I don’t know about these things, but anyway. So, I I plugged this into my laptop, and the cable that came with it was a USB-C to USB-A. So, I used that cable. I thought, well, maybe that cable is specific to this drive. I don’t know. So, I plugged it into a USB USB-A port on my laptop and then I just opened up the drive. Looked absolutely fine. There was like 2 terabyte of memory available. I copied some huge video files to it just to test it and yeah, it it worked fine. And then I deleted those video files. Everything seemed good. And then I thought, well, let’s just do a format. And that’s when I, you know, I opened up the the format window and I noticed that quick format, that quick format box had been ticked. And that’s what got me thinking about, oh, should I do a quick format or a full format? And I thought, well, why not? Why don’t we just untick that box and do a complete format and wipe out? And I to be honest, I didn’t even know what that meant, what the difference is between a quick format and a real formatting. But I thought, oh, let’s do a a deeper formatting and start super super fresh. So I unchecked the box and then I said format. And then I had to wait. I think by the time the formatting was done, when it was about 10:30 at night, it finally finished and I had started the format, I think around somewhere between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, maybe closer to 3:00. I don’t I wasn’t paying attention to the exact time, but it was somewhere around 3, and it didn’t finish until 10:30 at night. I had no idea it would take that long. And when it was taking so long, the progress bar was like not moving at all. So I thought maybe it it had been frozen or something. So now I’m going online and I’m doing searches into information about formatting trying to find out like, well, is this normal? And I thought maybe I had made a mistake because I plugged it into a USB-A drive or port on my laptop and the USB-A port I believe is slower. My laptop has two USB-C and one of them is like super super super mega mega high-speed and that’s probably the one I should have used. So, I was curious, did I make a mistake by plugging it into the slower USB-A drive? Like, does that slow down the formatting? And I wanted to find out, is this normal? Like, is there something wrong or does format formatting always take this long? And the information I received was, yeah, true formatting of a two terabyte SSD drive can take hours. Like they were talking about five hours as kind of a baseline and if you had a really slow system this that and the other you know it could be 15 hours to finish formatting and I I didn’t know that. I’d never run into that before in my life ’cause everything I’ve ever formatted even like a deep format just takes a few minutes. I mean that’s my memory. But anyway, when I said, “Okay, format this two terabyte SSD drive.” Yeah. It took Yeah. 7 7 and 1/2 hours before it finally finished. That was absolutely crazy. And partway through this long process, after a couple of hours, I thought maybe it I’d be better off cancelling the formatting and then plugging it into the faster USB-C drive or the USB-C port and then restarting it. But I had a feeling, nah, once you’ve started the formatting, just let it go. If you unplug it mid formatting, I think you’re just asking for trouble. So now that I had started it, I decided to just let it go and let it go and let it go and let it go. But then finally, as I said, at about 10:30 at night, I finally got a message on my laptop. You know, it didn’t beep, it didn’t ding, it didn’t there was no trumpet sounds or anything. I just saw there was no sound at all. And I just saw a little popup window that said formatting complete. It was very anticlimactic, I thought. Again, I think that was a failure on Windows part. The Windows UI. I think if you start a process and it’s going to take seven and a half hours, Windows should warn you, right? I mean, it should be smart enough to know how long it’s going to take. And if I click on, you know, deep format, Windows should give me a warning and say, “Oh, are you sure doing a deep format on this drive could take 5 hours or more? Do you really want to do this?” And then I I would have a chance to say yes or no. I probably would have said no. I’m not sure. But anyway, I didn’t know how long it would take and I said yes. And then the the drive was eventually fully formatted. And I’ve experimented with it a few times since then, copying backup folders to it, big video files, things like that. And yeah, works fine. It’s just as fast as my other one. Like my SanDisk, I think, is a much newer drive. And you’d think, well, it’s going to be a lot faster. But they’re the same speed because I think they’re also limited by the USB port speed. So even if your drive can handle, you know, much faster speeds, you’re still limited by the USB port that you’re using, what is the limit there? And I think the limit on the the standard port for me is about 300 megabytes per second. And it just tops off there. And that’s as fast as it’s ever going to go. But no, I think one of them goes up to 600, 6 or 700. It anyway, it’s all over the place. But for my purposes, what I what I’m going to use this drive for. Yeah, it’s fine. It’s very, very fast. More than fast enough. And the formatting I chose, of course, exFAT, which means you can copy big files to it, like a four or five gigabyte video file, is no problem. You can copy the whole thing onto the drive. So, yeah, very very pleased with that even though it took seven and a half hours to finish the formatting. And speaking of formatting, I also of course reformatted the two new memory cards, a 256 and a 512, and I put them into the GoPro. Of course, I think the standard procedure is you should format them with the device you’re going to use them in. And I’m going to be using these in my Hero 12. So, I put them into my Hero 12 and I formatted them from the GoPro. Worked fine. And then I shot some 4K video and it was saved to the cards. No problem at all. So, both of these cards are great. So, yeah, one of them, as I said, is an Insta360 Pro and the other one is a SanDisk ImageMate Pro. The ImageMate Pro one is the 512 and I think the Insta360 is a 256. So, anyway, I tested both of those. They worked great. Of course, I dove into all of my brand new GoPro batteries, and my mystery benefactor is a man after my own heart, because when I put them into my charger or into the charger that he sent with them to to charge up the batteries, all of them were fully charged. So that that’s why I say he’s a man after my own heart because before he sent them to me, he charged them all up just as a just to be nice so that when I got the batteries, they would be fully charged and ready to go. And I labeled them. So I put a label on like with a black magic marker, which I hope will not wipe away. Yeah, I put a little label on each of the four new batteries so that I I tell myself I can just tell at a glance, oh, I can tell because how what good condition they’re in, that they’re not swollen. But when you have all of your batteries, you know, stuffed inside your little battery bag and you need a new GoPro battery and you’re sort of flipping through here, oh, this is one of the new ones, you know, it’s like, oh, there’s a new one. And then if I see one of the old ones, I can tell because they’re so badly swollen. But then I wrote old on all of my old ones so that when they’re all mixed up here in my battery bag, I can tell at a glance, oh, that’s a new one. Oh, that’s one of the old ones. And I can decide which one I want to use. And I don’t want to take one of the old ones and stuff it into my GoPro without like if I you I can still use the old ones, but if I ever insert this into a GoPro, I have to make sure I put a harness a thread harness underneath it so that I’m able to pull it out again. ‘Cause if I think this old one is a new one, I’m moving fast and I’m not thinking and I jam it into the GoPro, it’s going to be stuck in there forever. It’s going to be so hard to get them out if I don’t have a harness. So, so I labeled all the batteries nice and neatly. And oh, the last thing that I checked, I’m not completely informed about them yet are these three Touch ‘n Go MyRapid cards. And I took them into the MRT with me as I was out running errands, moving around KL. So I went into the MRT, but none of them would work. And then I brought them over to the window in in the MRT system and said, you know, can you guys check these cards for me? Is there any value left on the cards and how much is on each card? But they told me they they put them on their scanner and they says, “Well, it’s been over a year since any of these cards were used.” And after one year, they go dormant. They go blocked. So, I can’t use them as they are. And even at the in the MRT system, they can’t check them. They said, “I have to take them to an actual Touch ‘n Go office and then go to the Touch ‘n Go central office and then they will be able to reactivate the cards and then after they’re reactivated, they can see if there’s any value left on them.” So, I still don’t know. Tomorrow perhaps I can zip over to the Touch ‘n Go office and I can find out how much money is on each of these cards or if they if they can even be reactivated. I don’t even know whether they can be or not. I believe they last for 7 years and then I believe the money on the card is good for 3 years. So, if there was money left on these, should still be there, but I have to get them reactivated before I can find out. So, yeah, that’s the main story. 7 and 1/2 hours of formatting. Quick formatting for the memory cards and they work very well. And batteries are nicely charged up and labeled and ready to go. And then these cards I still have to figure out whether they will work or not. And then of course I have the the new GoPro case which will be very handy for using the GoPro mic adapter. And yeah, that’s about it. Thanks again to my mystery benefactor sending me all of this stuff. It’s going to make my life so much easier for shooting video for Planet Doug. The batteries are amazing. Yeah. New backup storage in a lightweight SSD drive. That’s amazing. Yeah. And memory cards. So, yeah, everything’s great.
And with that, I think I will wind down. Yeah, that’s the end of the podcast for today. I have other stories I could tell, but I think I’ve babbled on long enough. I just wanted to do an epilogue about all of this new gear that has entered my life. Yeah, I’ve actually added to my load significantly in this visit to KL. We’ll see how this works out ’cause as I well the Olympus camera is the biggest one. I really want to keep it with me from now on going into the future. that’s just going to make all of my bags that much bigger and heavier. And I’m not exactly excited about that. But yeah, I I just love the c love having a camera like this so much that I I just want to have it with me from now on. So going to give it a chance. I’m going to try to carry it around with me all the time and then have access to it when I want to use it. I mean it would be nice to have an alternative like one of the smaller Sony vlogging cameras. You know, if you if you had, you know, if you had the money to spend, you could go out into the market and buy a camera that’s better for video than this one and smaller and lighter, etc., etc. But yeah, you got to use the camera you have, and this is the camera I have, and it doesn’t do me any good when I leave it in storage. So, I might as well just take it with me. The one of like the the DJI Pocket series, they are really good cameras for some of the work that I’m thinking of. Even doing this, for example, the I remember I had the DJI Pocket 2 and it ended up not really working because of the battery limitations. It just the battery didn’t last long enough and you weren’t able with the Pocket two that I had, you couldn’t run it on USB-C power. So, you could plug it in and charge the battery from, you know, a wall socket. That’s how you do it. But when you do that, you can’t film with the camera at the same time. At least you couldn’t do that with the Pocket 2. So, I was really unable to use it for shooting a podcast or long form content because the battery just didn’t last long enough. The camera would shut down and then I’d have to go back to my GoPro anyway. And at least with the GoPro, it does have the advantage. You can plug in a USB-C cable and just run it on wall power, like adapter power, and it can record at the same time directly from power. But, the DJI Pocket 2 couldn’t. And speaking of the DJI Pocket, I just saw today that there’s been a big leak online about the Pocket 4 ’cause everybody’s getting excited about the new one. The the current model, of course, is the DJI Pocket 3, a truly amazing camera. Everybody loves the Pocket 3, but this year DJI is releasing the Pocket 4. And the release the the the leak today was the packaging for the Pocket 4, the standard one. And I guess everybody could see the specs for it. And as far as I can tell, there’s not much difference between the three and the four. I mean, if you go down all the specs, and if you made a chart, you’d probably have Pocket three and it lists stabilization. And on the Pocket 4, they’ll say improved stabilization, right? Everything is going to be like, “Oh, this feature is a little bit better.” You know, the battery lasts a little bit longer. It’s a little bit better in low light. It’s a little Everything is like a little bit better. But there is, as far as I can tell, there’s no huge headline feature like brand new on the Pocket 4. Look at this amazing new feature. As far as I know, there isn’t anything like that. But as far as I can tell, there’s also going to be a Pocket 4 Pro. So, they’re actually for the first time going to release a standard version and a pro version. And I don’t know much about the Pro version, but I think the headline feature there is it’s going to have multiple lenses. Why? I have no idea. Like I said, I haven’t done any research into this. I don’t know why the pocket design of camera would require multiple lenses. I don’t even know where the multiple lenses would go because the lens sits on the gimbal. So, how do you have how can you choose between two different lenses? Are they both mounted on the same gimbal and aiming at the same sensor? I I have no idea what that’s all about, but I’m pretty sure there is going to be the Pocket 4 and then the Pocket 4 Pro and that one is going to have the new features, the headline stuff, but I think they’re going to release the standard Pocket 4 first and then ’cause the Pocket 4 Pro apparently isn’t ready for release yet. But that’s all I’ve heard about that. And so that’s it. Shutting down and I’ll see you in the next video.