Well, it looks like I got my drone at exactly the right time. The US Government banned all new foreign-made drones in the U.S., essentially shutting DJI out of the domestic market as of yesterday.
Elon Musk got his name from a 1949 science-fiction novel, Project Mars, by Nazi-turned-American-rocket-scientist Wernher von Braun. In the book, “the Elon” is the Martian leader. (Wikipedia)
From Nancy Friedman’s 52 things I learned in 2025, via Kottke
I was excited to bring my drone on the Scout 800 recovery trip last weekend in order to shoot some B-roll of the operation. I’ve flown enough drones now to know how they operate and what to look out for, so I wasn’t feeling stress about that, but knowing I was asking all of my friends to help me with this project and to give me ten minutes to shoot video made me feel rushed. Right before we winched the truck onto the trailer I unpacked the drone and got some good location shots, flying it back and forth over the entire field of trucks until I had it hovering over the Scout. Then I brought it down lower for some more dramatic shots, and promptly flew it into a tree. When I picked it up the rear left leg flopped over in my hand: a combination of the fall and the bitter cold had snapped the plastic in two at the body.
Doing a little digging around the internet, I found some helpful videos that walked through disassembling the drone, removing the old parts, and replacing them with new units. This involved carefully prying the body apart and soldering three tiny 22ga. wires to connect the motor back up to the control unit. At this point, having disassembled and fixed cameras, laptops, stereos, iPods, iPhones, car radios, power tools, and appliances, I’m used to fiddling with small finicky bits to get things working again. Within a half an hour I had the new leg in place, wires soldered, and covered in heatshrink tubing. I took it for a test flight before buttoning the case back up, and used it this afternoon for some more cinematic shots of the truck.
Clearly I’ve got to be more careful about the drone’s proximity to ther objects. This one only has detection in the front, where the Pro model has all sides covered. Having looked through the footage I did get, I’m really impressed with the quality I got, and I’m still very happy with my purchase.
I posted a new video on the YouTube channel on Sunday along with a vertical short featuring the part where I attemped to column-shift David’s truck into second gear, which I failed at. I thought it was funny, and figured other people might think so too. Soon after posting, these two comments showed up in the feed:
I’ve posted about 80 videos over the last three years. Most of them are truck-related and they average about 500 views each. The outlier is a video I posted of Bennett’s Hudson, which is at almost 20,000 views. To this point the comments I’ve gotten are supportive, and through them I’ve met a bunch of excellent new people. This is the first time I’ve had trolls, and it bothered me for a few minutes. I did a little looking to see what the recommended course of action is: do I delete them? do I hide them? The answers are pretty mixed and they all have an effect on THE ALGORITHM.
I’m not in this to be to become famous or get advertising deals. I do it because it’s fun, I enjoy shooting and editing video, and I’ve met a bunch of people who have been able to use my videos to fix their trucks, but I’m not going to claim trolls don’t bother me. I guess I just don’t understand what would possess somebody to be a dick. It’s never crossed my mind to sit behind a keyboard and slag on people for no reason, but this is the age we live in I guess. If you put something out in the world, you’re gonna be faced with assholes, especially in this day and age when it’s easier to be anonymous. I’m not going to stop doing what I’m doing.
Once upon a time, CBS News was the gold standard for TV journalism.
The Internet Archive has the full 60 Minutes segment about the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador, which was supposed to run on December 22, 2025 but spiked by CBS news editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
This week’s earworm: another oldie, this time from an electroclash group called Ladytron, called Destroy Everything You Touch. I found this on an MP3blog back in the day and loved it; for some reason it snuck into my brain and has been on repeat ever since. I don’t know if Ladytron ever had another hit after this, but they’re still around.
I went down to Gaithersburg last night to pick up a used drone from a nice man who spoke very little English. Thankfully the concepts of photography are pretty universal, so we were able to communicate well enough for me to feel comfortable with the purchase. It’s a DJI Mini 3, which is a small consumer level drone released in 2022. For the money, I got the drone, a controller, a battery, and a three-slot charger. The drone is in good shape and connected to my phone easily after he unpaired it from his account; I had it working with mine in less than five minutes. A quick test with an SD card confirmed the camera was working and recording, and a test flight in his living room proved it was working.
It’s good enough at this point for what I’ll be doing: stabilized 4K drone shots of projects and events, which is something I’ve been wanting to practice. I plugged my old iPhone SE2 into it and was pleased to find that DJI offers an older version of their Fly software that will run on it, which means I’ve got a dedicated video screen to work with.
Tomorrow I’ll take it out and do some test runs in the sunshine, and we’ll see how the whole package works.
I just spent an hour and a half shoveling both cars off, clearing the driveway and front walk, and running up the Scout. Apart from my fingertips being painfully cold, I was warm and comfortable (because I was moving around and also wearing Under Armour Cold Gear), the sun was shining, and I had a great podcast playing in my ears.
I’m now eating lunch in front of the Cincinnati/Baltimore game with a snoring dog at my feet. They’re showing clips of the stands in Ohio, where fans are layered in winter clothing, huddled together in snowy seats, and I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather not be.
This morning there’s about an inch of snow on the ground, which fell overnight. The house is quiet while the girls are still asleep, and Hazel is snoring in her bed at my feet. We hosted our friend Christopher yesterday, and were fortunate enough to take in the Amy Sherald exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at an art museum, and her show was inspiring and challenging—just what good art should be.
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This evening I’m going to run down to Gaithersburg to hopefully pick up a DJI Mini 3 drone from a guy on Marketplace. The Mini 3 is a midrange consumer model that’s small and portable enough to sneak under the FAA size limit but large enough to carry a 4K camera, and I’d like to pick one up to work with next year for video projects. There is a possible ban on DJI coming up on December 23, which could mean that they will be unable to sell new drones in the US, so I figure it might be a good time to grab something before used prices spike upwards.
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The IT folks at work were super cool and gave me a decomissioned PC laptop this summer so that I could run the PC-only Sniper software for the red truck. With the Sniper project on hold, it’s been sitting on my shelf, but I dusted it off this week to load a free copy of the presentation software we use for our yearly looking-forward event. It always takes us a full day to get things loaded on the display machine at the filming venue, and I figured I’d try to set it up ahead of time to speed up the process. I got the program running, went to plug it in to an external monitor via HDMI cable—and it sparked as it touched the side of the laptop. The screen went dead, and I could not get the laptop to power back on.
I’ve never seen or heard of this happening before. I talked to the IT folks and they said they’d never heard of it either, but they’re going to hook me up with another decommissioned unit next week. PCs are weird, man.
I’ve mentioned here ad nauseum over the years how much the Smashing Pumpkins and Living Colour both had an effect on my musical growth and appreciation, so I was pleased to learn Billy Corgan hosted a podcast with Vernon Reid where they talk about the genesis of Living Colour out of the jazz/art/club scene in New York City in the middle 80’s, their shared understanding of the music business, the profits and pitfalls of success, and where they are today.
Mr. Corgan is still a divisive personality (he does own up to saying many, many dumb things over the years) but Vernon Reid just sounds like such a down-to-earth, wise, and personable guy. I could sit and listen to these guys talk for hours.
I’m back at home after a great visit with family; projects at work are ramping up and I haven’t felt much like writing here. This photo of a mercury dime is 20 years old (!!!)