Tuesday 6 December 2016

JayyMedia How-To: Connecting your DSLR to an AC power supply

DSLR cameras are great for shooting professional looking video at a fraction of the cost of professional camcorders.

However one of the drawbacks of using DSLRs for shooting video is that the cameras have a short battery life. This means that for a long shoot, one has to carry along multiple batteries which will require constant changing.

One way of dealing with this drawback is to connect the camera directly to a power supply using some kind of adapter.

The adapter I use with my Canon EOS Rebel T3i (600D) is the PowEver ACK-E8 Replacement AC Power Adapter (a link to which is in the description).

Basically the adapter allows the camera to run on power supply from any socket and one can record for as long as they want (only limited by storage capacity).

Of course the major drawback is that one has to have access to a socket and therefore mobility is limited. But for interviews, presentations, conferences, vlogs, tutorials etc where one does not have to move around, it is quite helpful.

ADAPTER:
PowEver ACK-E8 Replacement AC Power Adapter https://www.amazon.com/PowEver-ACK-E8-Replacement-Adapter-Supply/dp/B019RIQND8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480921390&sr=8-1&keywords=powever+ack-e8

ORDERED VIA:
I ordered it through www.ugunlocked.com based in Kampala.

Monday 9 November 2015

Graphic journalist Christian Mafigiri talks about telling stories through graphic novels



Christian Mafigiri is a Ugandan artist who grew up reading American comic books (and graphic novels).  His love for these comic books led him to develop a love for the kind of art he found in them.

Though Mafigiri later trained as a journalist his love for art remained strong and he continued to do work in graphic design and drawing (both as a hobby and a job). He soon found ways of combining his skills in journalism and art to tell stories through different forms of graphic story-telling.

Mafigiri has recently collaborated on a multimedia project with Scottish photo-journalist Marc Ellison that tells the stories of 6 former child soldiers who were abducted by the LRA and their struggles to integrate into society, while trying to deal with their own trauma.

Mafigiri has also produced graphic novels for sell which use the style of the comic books he loved as a child to tell stories that resonate with Ugandans.He hopes that one day his graphic novels and comics will give Ugandan readers, especially children, the sort of entertainment he got from reading American comic books like Superman and Batman.


Thursday 8 October 2015

Experiences of the matooke trade from a small Mbarara town



Matooke (bananas and/or plantains to the rest of the English speaking world) is a staple food for most people in Central, Southern and Western Uganda, which also means it makes business sense to grow and sell it.

However, despite the assured market for matooke, the matooke business is rife with many harships for both farmers and traders. These range from diseases decimating entire crops or dipping prices and profits brought on by oversupply at certain times of the year or during certain seasons.

Edrai Kagombe is a matooke farmer in Nyakayoojo in Mbarara district while Medi Kimera and Deus Mwijuka are traders that buy matooke from Mbarara to sell in markets in Kampala.

These three people have different but often intersecting stories of the kind of hardships they face in the process of growing, buying and selling the bananas from which they get their livelihood.

Wednesday 7 October 2015

The Interview: Bernard Sabiti, Author of UgLish: A Dictionary of Ugandan English


English has become an international language to the extent that it now has many different varieties of which the most well known are the British and American varieties.

However, because English has been adopted as an official, or second, language in many countries, the language has developed as many flavours as there are communities that speak it.

In this regard Uganda is no exception in that a variety of English that is flavoured by the peculiarities of Uganda's cultures and languages has emerged over the past few decades.

Ugandan English, or Uglish as it has come to be known in some quarters, has hardly been studied and, as such, there is very little written about it.

It is this lack of literature on the subject of Ugandan English that motivated Bernard Sabiti to write a a book on the history and nature of this variety of English. The result of Sabiti's work is the little book "Uglish: A dictionary of Ugandan English".

This book attempts to give a bit of an academic treatment to Ugandan English while not taking itself too seriously. The result is a fun read for people interested in Ugandan English or Uglish.

I had a chat with Bernard Sabiti about his book, and Uglish in general, and this video is a summation of his thoughts on the subject of Ugandan English and the discoveries he made while writing his book.