Ray Ban Meta Cooking

So I got one of these things. The Ray Ban Meta AI glasses. When I first saw these, I was a bit skeptical. First of all, there wasn't any type of display. I felt that not having a display would make it useless (but it reduce the visual distractions and probably less risk of getting into accidents). I felt it was a glorified portable mic/speaker/camera. Amazon had the Echo Frames which was pretty much a hands free extension of Alexa using glasses (and it didn't have a camera). Those didn't catch on.

The Ray Ban Meta AI glasses was an improvent over the Echo Frames in that it has a 12MP camera built in. Although it records video on 1080p, the images are excellent. Paired with Meta AI, it opens up a lot of possibilities in functionality. I wasn't that interested until it went on sale, and I noticed that my Aunt was using it via her Facebook posts. I IM'ed my Aunt on how she liked it and she was raving about it. She went on with the convenience of hands free pictures and video, plus the speakers were great, which did away with the need of bringing separate headphones when listening to music. That seemed to tip the scale in getting it. The funny thing is that her daughter spilled the beans and said that my Aunt initially didn't want it and almost gave it away :D. I started reading up on the different functions, especially the AI side of it, and it was pretty compelling. It was on sale for a somewhat decent price, so I decided to go for it.

Since this isn't a Tech site, I'm not going to give a full on review, just some bullet points on my overall thoughts

• Image and sound quality are superb from something so compact

• Because of the extreme portability and ease of hands free use, I can see this taking some of GoPro's market for POV content

• Can live stream through the glasses

• The visual-based AI functionality is pretty neat. In addition to looking up information like Google, you can trigger Live AI and ask Meta AI to describe something you're looking at in detail. You can ask what type of bird or plant you're looking at. You may be able to hae it translate a sign for you. You can have it look at a page in a book and have it summarize for you. You can have it remember your parking space or hotel room number.

• You can trigger Live Language Translation. It will listen and translate languages in real-time. There's only 3 languages it can currently translate: Spanish, French, Italian. I'm sure more languages are coming (hopefully Japanese soon)

• It can do limited location-based AI functions, although I've found this lacking at the moment. It will sense where you are geographically (street name). What I'm hoping is that I can for directions to the nearest gas station while I'm driving and have it send the directions to my phone (or give turn-based directions). It currently cannot, but I'm sure Meta AI will get more robust.

Here's some sample pictures (non-cat) from the Ray Bans

The downside to these pictures and video, is the vertical aspect. I wish it was wide-screen.

So why is this here on a food/travel blog?

Not only does this make things more easier with the hands free aspect, but makes POV videos more easier. I think this will open up the opportunities to include POV videos in the food blog, especially the Cooking section. Doing the cooking content does benefit from hand-free POV video.

So I decided to do some "test" videos for POV cooking. These are just test run of making POV video content. If it works out well, I will do more "how to" cooking videos. Initially I planned to do voice narrations. Just like talking in from of large crowds of people (I get major anxiety and stutter a lot), I don't have better luck on video. Althought there's alot of great Vloggers like Mikey Chen and Mark Weins, I don't think I'd match the quality of those channels. My vision of video content would be more on the lines of Dancing Bacon. They don't talk at all in their videos, except for the cute squeaks from the wife when she is enjoying the food. They have a lot of good food content and I'm a big fan of the channel.

Here's the "test" videos. I chose the Blackstone as my canvas

Beef and Spicy Pork Bulgogi

I love the Blackstone. I initially purchased this when my kitchen was being remodel and I was going to be culinarily displaced. Even after the kitchen was done, it remained a fixture and I would still use from time to time and the large cooking surface is pretty conventient. Just remember to cover it during long period of non-use. I recently had to restore the cooking surface, which required power tools and time. The silicon mat was a nice investment for long non-use.

Anyway, this is the second attempt because the first attempt at Beef Bulgogi was a failure. I chose to slice the meat myself. Because I've conditioned myself to slice beef thin for other recipes like Chicago Italian Beef, it didn't work for Beef Bulgogi. I sliced it way too thin so it disintegrated while it was marinating. When I grilled it, it turned into the consistency of dog food. The voice narration was ok this that time but I was struggling on the second try so I decided captions from now on

For the Beef Bulgogi, I used a home made marinade but this time I used pre-sliced meat. I was going to try slicing again but I was laxy that day. The Spicy Pork Bulgogi, I just bought. the premarinated pork from the new Zion Market. Finally visited Zion a few weeks ago and new post about it coming up. The marinate meats at H-Mart is much better though.

Enjoy

Beef Birria

I've made this a few times and has always have come out excellent. The recipe I usually use if the one from the View On The Road YouTube Channel.

Recipe here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc_XH70lBs4

Usually I use chuck roast, but this time I decided to use brisket and short rib. I saw someone else make birria with brisket and he said it was the best meat he's used for it. I also used short rib to get some different textures (almost a slight tendony chew).

The video:

The beef birria came out really good (I used beef brisket and short rib this time). Plus the consome and bone marrow, Chef's Kiss.

The videos came out decent so I will keep tweaking the video content creation (video production isn't my forte' yet but I'm learning). Hopefully I can get more cooking content out soon. Bone Apple Tea

As for Ray Ban Meta AI glasses, do I recommend them? Right now, only if they're on sale. I think the price is currently at a premium and the AI funtionality isn't mature yet (they are only 2 years old). They are constantly updating and adding functionality so it will be more robust in the near future.

https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/ray-ban-meta-ai-glasses