Macgyver Battery… my battery creation is causing buzz in the audio which has forced me to keep looking for a battery solution (just found one this morning on TaoBao (China’s Ebay). It just came out which means Chinese guys have reverse engineered the Panasonic batteries!)

Camera Crew – Here is the video I took of our crew the other evening (shot with the little Kodak Playsport waterproof cam) Irene is the Assistant Producer, couldn’t be doing this without her.

Random Chinese Greatness – This picture was taken on Saturday by Irene as we were moving Long Qing into her new house. I’m guessing these 3 elderly ladies didn’t have enough money for a cab. The lady on the end must be using some kind of Chinese Kung Fu to hang on.

We don't need no stinking taxi...

China is a great place to buy batteries for electronic equipment. They reverse engineer everything so batteries for anything are easy to find and cheap. Our main camera for the documentary is made by Panasonic and I checked before I bought it in the States to make sure I could get a battery for it here in Kunming.

I went yesterday to buy a battery, put it in the camera and fired it up. It came on all pretty and then said “This battery cannot be used” and promptly shut down. Panasonic has started putting a chip in their batteries and won’t let you use 3rd party (code word for Chinese) ones.

So I got desperate and decided to enlist some help…

Welcome to Macgyver – China Edition. With a motorcycle battery, power inverter, Panasonic original power supply and some good ol’ fashioned soldering by my buddies in the picture I now have a backpack battery that will last for 8 hours. It’s a bit heavy but will do the job. Take that Panasonic!