Life

I’ve spent way too much time and money over the past two or three weeks trying to get the Belabox and/or streaming setup to work. Not counting the actual Osmo Pocket 3 camera itself, which I bought long ago, all in all, I’ve probably spent a bit over $1,000 CAD between the Belabox, the Solis Edge, and various other accessories and cables to try to get everything to talk together reliably in the specific way that I want them to. At some point it would probably have been cheaper to just get the IRL Backpack (local) and use that instead. And I still might, in the long term for future trips, if this is something I want to do in the future. I could have spent all this money on an art tablet like I’ve wanted for some time though. I mean, I could do both too, but still.

But for now though, the main problem that I am trying to solve is that my preferred camera of choice is the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, partly because I already have it and partly because I like how unobtrusive it is. But it has some quirks due to some poor hardware and software engineering choices that make it not want to play ball nicely with everything else. Case in point, I set up the Belabox and all the web connections and have an RTMP server working and waiting for the connection, and the last step fails just because the stupid camera doesn’t support pushing out video over its USB-C port to a HDMI one, due to dirty output or something about the engineers just not caring about it. The camera also doesn’t properly go into USB Webcam mode if I plug it into the USB-C port of the Belabox because they do not negotiate the connection correctly. It goes into webcam mode perfectly fine if I plug it into, say, my PC though.

In addition, it also has direct wireless RTMP capabilities, but that has to be done through the DJI Mimo app, and doing that locks away the portion of the DJI Mimo app that lets me control the camera using the phone app instead of using the little buttons on the DJI camera. This is annoying, and maybe it’s just a small nice-to-have that I can skip, but it means that if I put my camera in my bag pocket or on a backpack strap or something then I lose any way of controlling it at all.

Anyway I’ve been playing around with various configurations, and spent money on this or that to try out solutions from an enthusiast point of view, so I don’t mind the cost, especially since even if it all fails in the end, I can repurpose the cables and wireless modems and even the Belabox itself into other uses. If I don’t care about the streaming aspect, for example, I can just bring the camera and its accessories and shoot videos on the fly. Or I can pivot the Radxa Rock 5B+ away from a Belabox into some other application of a Single-Board Computer. Although I did fry a small 64GB micro SD card by plugging in the Radxa because I apparently hadn’t seated the card properly first. There was smoke and the SD card itself ended up separated into two distinct parts once I pulled it out. Rest in pieces, I guess. I didn’t want to risk my larger and more expensive micro SD cards in that slot so I went to buy another 64 GB SD card for $20 as a guinea pig replacement. It hasn’t arrived yet for me to test it though.

Over the course of the journey, I’ve also picked up quite a bit of knowledge about how the IRL Streaming setup works, looked at different people’s gear and pipelines, and also picked up weird secondary knowledge about things like MHF4 antennas, which I had to (re)install on my Radxa Rock because I had no idea what they did when it first arrived and so I had pulled them out and stuck them in a bag, heh.

Anyway, I still have a couple of accessories and items coming in either this weekend or the very early part of next week, and if those don’t get the job done then I’m going to stop concentrating on the streaming aspect and instead focus on the trip itinerary. Also I accidentally put down the wrong apartment unit number on one of them, due to it being late at night, but as I understand it I should be able to change it on the DHL site after they create the actual waybill, which they haven’t yet as of time of writing… anyway it’s the same apartment building so I’ll get it one way or another. Probably.

I have my flights and stays planned out for the first two legs of my trip, 4 days in Sapporo and then 10 days in Singapore, but the price tag for Singapore to Taipei was far too expensive (and kind of contingent on me being able to enter Singapore) so I hadn’t booked anything further than that. I’m thinking I might detour to Kuala Lumpur for three days until the prices get more sane, and then pop over to Taiwan, which would save me something like $300 on the plane ticket, but we shall see.

Another intriguing option popped up because I hadn’t booked anything for the back half of my trip yet, and that’s that it is rumoured (local) that China might allow Canadians to have 30-day visa-free travel to China until the end of the year, although that is not yet a confirmed rumour (local). And even if it does happen, it might not happen in reasonable time for my trip.

It is kind of weird that I haven’t booked ANYTHING for the latter half of my trip though, but then I already have experience in just kind of winging it after my last Where the Wind Takes Me Asian trip. I am very tempted to travel into China, especially around the Lunar New Year period, even though that’s a very busy time of the year and stuff will also be closed here and there as people travel to visit their families. Kel and her boyfriend will also be out of the country for part of the festive period, apparently, so I might not even be able to meet her. I might instead aim to do a trip to China later on in the year, perhaps around October-November, instead.

Talking about trips, Kel was asking about information in regards to what to do to try to get compensation from Air Canada from a flight that went wrong, so I went to look up my old blog entries and emails about the Canadian Transportation Agency and how it all worked out in the end. I did get $600 on vouchers out of it, as reluctant compensation for their cancellation due to “safety related issues”, but then I saw this article (local) this week about a firm starting a class-action lawsuit against Air Canada for lying about safety-related cancellations, and my delayed flight was definitely within the time frames and impacted by that very same reason that I had immediately called them out for too, so I went to the lawyer firm’s site (local) and submitted my information there too. Regardless of whether I end up with anything personally, it is my hope that my submission (of my firsthand accounts and, if needed, email correspondence) will help curb this Air Canada malpractice. It was very much a blast from the past going back and digging through all this twice in one week though, especially two weeks before flying back to Asia again.

As a sidenote, Amazon was offering another timely free 30 day trial for Amazon Prime while I was buying all those things above for my trip, so I signed up for that again, with the intention of cancelling before I leave. This also jogged a faint memory of other companies doing weird time-based promotions, and I eventually remembered one that I had almost missed — Edo Japan’s promotion back in November 2025 where I got a buy one get one free coupon… that could only be used in January 2026, two months later. I had forgotten about it and almost let it lapse. Not anymore! We have an in-person team meeting next week, on Friday, and I’ll bring it for then, since I was with them when I initially got the coupon too. They’ll get a kick out of it.

On Monday, I went to pick up the Welcards that I bought last week, which involved a slippery walk out into the middle of nowhere — WELCA, the Whitemud Equine Learning Centre Association, is in one of the large park areas bordering the river that cuts through the middle of Edmonton, near where we had our team’s picnic lunches the year before, and not only is public transportation to that area not great, especially in the middle of winter, but I had to walk for about 10 minutes along a narrow and slippery road to reach the equine centre from the nearest bus stop. At least the road had a great name: Horse Lovers Lane!

That name isn’t on Google Maps, it must be a local special. Despite it being winter, and there being snow as far as the eye could see in all directions, I also did quite enjoy the view:

There were even horses!

Oh, sorry, not that one.

I’m pretty sure that dashing white horse was named Winter, fittingly enough, according to the Welcards that I picked up from the large building at the end of the road. I also took some pictures of some information exhibits inside the really small lobby leading to the office/classroom area itself as I thawed out from the cold:

Cool! Local history!

I probably won’t get around to scanning the cards for a while, but here’s a snapshot of the set too:

I then rewarded myself with a jaunt downtown and a visit to that restaurant by Quarters LRT Station, Double Greeting Wonton House, where I got the Shanghai Noodles dish that I had fallen in love with on a previous visit. Mmm. I very seldom visit the same restaurant more than once, never mind order the same dish when I do, but this was just so good. This was my fourth trip there, counting one where I just went to pick up a takeout order, and next trip back I’ll order something else again to spice things up though. And as before, they do cash only and no tip. I love those Shanghai Noodles, but that No Tip policy has made it much easier for me to justify going back there and giving them repeat business.

On the not so nice side of Chinese goods, I’m very fed up with the Queen Art granite-coating pan that I bought a little bit over a year ago. Now, I’ve been using it probably on average a little over once a day, between my potpourri soup for dinners and my two ham slices plus two eggs breakfasts, and it’s served me well for a year for being only $20 (and endured a couple of meals being burnt — though that’s very rare!), but still, it now looks like this:

I need to go source up a replacement from the Buy It For Life subreddit or something.

I also bugged the rental apartment folks again this week as they failed to keep their word to arrange to send someone to my apartment to remove the insect traps after the annual home (fire alarm) inspection last week. This time, after putting in an annoyed ticket, they contacted me the next day and scheduled a.. bug technician? to come in the following day after that, which happened to be the coldest day of the week. Anyway, that visit was short, as I told him that the poisonous syrup seems to have worked, and he removed five sticky traps that the previous tech had laid down. Most of them were empty, but the one behind the stove in particular had caught quite a few ants. Apparently there was a well-used trail behind there and that explained why I sometimes saw them up on my back counter even though I don’t use that counter for food prep or storage. I think they’re all gone now though, at least for the season.

My new food of the week was again from Safeway, and was a tin of Jordanian oriental pistachio cookies called Barazeq Super, from a brand named Aghati. This was very nice, though very nutty, but the tin lasted a long time because each individual cookie was very small. I felt that it was very worth it for $14.29 (it was on sale — usual price $15.99).

I also have a couple of other minor new things that I didn’t get around to trying this week, so I’ll leave them for next week instead.

Also, I noticed that the boarded up area of the food court that I first noticed near the end of November 2025 was now unboarded, and it turned out that they boarded it up not because it was a crime scene or something, but because they were renovating it. It now is a food waste station: I’m not sure if it’s always tended to by a food court attendant, or what the process for members of the public using it is supposed to be, but I do like that they have a nice sink there too.

To round this section out, I have plenty of sky pictures from my balcony to share this week!

Firstly, from 5:49 pm on Sun Jan 18, we have this nicely gradiented sky:

Followed up by this pretty one from Mon Jan 19 at 4:53 pm:

The next two are from later that evening, Tue Jan 20 at 2:19 am, as the skies were very bright due to the low clouds that gleamed white despite it being so late at night:

I was hoping for there to be aurorae that night, as there apparently were solar storms going on, but no dice. However, we were not to be disappointed the following night, although they started dim at first — here’s the skies on Wed Jan 21 at 12:59 am:

That turned into some aurorae that I could not see with my naked eye (except for a thin, white wispiness) due to light pollution, but could photograph using my camera’s night mode. 1:14 am:

Then suddenly, the sky exploded into a green that I could see from my balcony, even through all the light pollution. This was the first time that I had witnessed this with camera-unaided eyes from my balcony here, and although it was not as good as some pictures posted by other people in darker areas of the city, it was pretty great that I could see them even despite all the lights below. This sort of thing makes me want to ask my apartment people if they’re sure that I’m only paying them $1,330 or so to live here every month. (Things like ants, noisy neighbours, and a lift that’s always under maintenance do counterbalance that, though. And $1,330 is not that cheap.)

1:18 am:

1:18 am:

1:19 am:

1:22 am:

Super neat. Nothing could top that for the rest of the week at that point, although I did take this one the next afternoon as well, Wed Jan 21 at 5:16 pm:

And this wall of clouds lining the horizon picture on Sat Jan 24 at 5:08 pm: