Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..
We did a video of my time on the Deepsea Challenger expedition for work.
You can view it from our main page here;
http://info.opto22.com/deepsea-challenger
I think that Paul (our video guy) did a fantastic job.
It is 5 years on March 23ed that Jim went on that historic dive.
Time flies. It was an amazing experience looking back on it.
A few months back we were sent by Opto to make what we call a ‘case study’ video of a company that uses our gear.
In this case, the company was in central California and they used it to monitor and control a wind turbine farm.
The case study is all wrapped up and you can see the results here;
http://info.opto22.com/scada-solutions-iot-case-study
My role was simply to interview the guy and take what we call B-Roll, that is video footage that gets edited into the interview to support what the guy is saying. I did not video much of it, we had my co-worker (Amy calls him my cell mate) up there with us.
Paul also edited the video, so if you like what you saw, it was all him…. He is a wizard with the video and photography side of things.
Anyway, this blog is more to show some of the stuff that we get up to for work, and give a small taste of what our product can be used to do.
[As an aside, we had to have two goes at getting this video, the first time we went up there was a massive storm and the freeway got shut down by a landslide. We were infact, in the hills above the freeway taking video footage of the storm and the turbines when it happen. Be sure and check out this link to see how bad it was.
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2015/10/19/massive-mudslide-engulfs-highway-58-near-the-tehachapi-mountains-california/
It was a very serious event, thankfully no one was hurt.
Because we were on the top of the hill that was getting washed away, we had no idea. We were so focused on doing our job of getting video footage to use, that we did not get many shots of us getting the shots.
Here is a few;
The storm is just starting to brew in this shot. We packed up and headed up into the hills just after this and that’s when things really got going.
Here is one of a bus that drove through some action. We took this the next day at a servo.
Here is a shot that explains really well why we did not know what was happening just below us on the freeway….
When you are getting stills and video footage like that… who cares about a bit of rain…..
Anyway, it was adventure and the next time we went up a few weeks later the weather was fine and we did the interview and got the job done.]
Hot on the heels of the last blog, comes a bit of a…. duh, you don’t say…
Turns out flying a drone (using a camera in the drone and a pair of goggles on your head) is hard.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/first-person-drone-racing-is-much-harder-than-i-expected/
FPV drone racing (also sometimes known as FPV quadcopter racing) is a new sport that has rapidly grown in popularity over the last couple of years. Usually when you pilot a drone—some kind of DJI Phantom thing, for example—you simply use line of sight or a video feed from an on-board camera displayed on your smartphone or tablet.
In FPV racing, however, a video feed from the drone is transmitted to a pair of goggles that you strap to your face.Now, I’m fairly good at stuff that requires hand-eye coordination. I’ve flown remote-control stuff before (a glow-plug RC plane!), and usually I’m quick at picking new things up. I also knew that this particular quadcopter had some fancy electronics and gyroscopes on-board to keep the craft level.
But alas, it was all for nought: flying an FPV quadcopter is really hard.
I’m not sure what the author was thinking? That somehow the computer was going to fly the thing for him?
It is the same with any skill in life, it takes time to learn.
I have not ventured back into the world of RC aircraft (or drones) because of this one single reason, I know it is going to take a solid time commitment to get ‘good’ at it again, and I am just not ready to give it that time. (Yet).
So, yeah, this blog is not about learning to race drones, it is about considering the true cost of any hobby or skill that you want to acquire.
If you are not prepared to put in the time, then perhaps you can consider writing articles about how hard it is instead.
And no, the video is not sped up, these things are fast!
It’s getting a fair bit of traction over here.
I think partly because (for the most part) it is held inside buildings.
Why does this make a difference?
Because America is armed and sue happy. A bunch of drones have been shot out of the sky and a bunch of drone pilots have been attacked and or sued for flying where they are perfectly legal, but someone has felt their privacy was invaded*.
Since drone racing takes place indoors, it can be fenced off from the public and televised pretty cheaply.
Here is their teaser video.
Personally, I think it would get real old real quick. There is only so much fun to be had from watching someone pilot a little drone around the same course…. But I don’t do much sports, so I am not the target audience.
*On the flip side a kizlion drone pilots have done the wrong thing and flown in National Parks, above crowds and in other totally inappropriate and dangerous places. News flash. Some people have no common sense so the law exists for them, not to stop them, but to sue them after the fact.
I did not blog about it, but wrote an offline ‘paper’ on it….
The Ashley Madison hack. You have probably heard about it, but just in case… It was an online ‘dating’ website. The twist was that it encouraged you to cheat on your spouse. Their motto was ‘life is short, have an affair’.
Ok, not very nice, moving on….. They got hacked. Big time. Millions of account names, passwords, addresses, GPS locations and chat history was leaked into the public interwebs.
A bunch of people got outed, there were some suicides, public shaming and well, the fall out still continues.
Now the physical blackmailing has begun.
It is not that long of a read, and I can not cut/paste the text from the letter since it is an image, but please follow the link and read the letter.
That is just a little bit scary.
Ok, that is very very scary.
Now, granted, most of us were not on the Ashley Madison website, so we are not going to get letters like this, also, most of us live lives that we are happy to tell our friends and spouses about….. But, what if our online lives lead to a letter like this?
Man, there are some seriously deranged people in the world.
