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.
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 (!!!)
- I hauled 32 frozen turkeys in the Travelall to a local church on Jen’s behalf, which made me feel good for multiple reasons.
- Then I drove her all the way out to Reisterstown to pick up a vise for Brian, who’d won it in an auction. My top speed in the truck is 60MPH with the gears it has. The brakes were fine getting all the way out there, but somehow started locking up on the way home, so I’m not out of the woods yet.
- Then I loaded a bunch of broken concrete up into the Scout and hauled it all the way to the only County landfill—on the opposite side of the city—that will take it.
- Thankfully, the landfill is right down the highway from Dan’s house, and I stopped to look at one of the Scouts out in his backyard. The weather was gray but it wasn’t a bad day to be out there, and I didn’t pick up any ticks this time.
- Back at home I did some maintenance on the OG-V, the Travelall, and the Scout.
- Jen got back from Lexington Park late, so I ran out to get the fixings for White Russians and a bouquet of flowers. Mmmmm White Russians. I’ve pretty much cut beer out of my weekly diet, so it went right to my head.
- Sunday morning, Jen and I got a good 2-mile walk in with Hazel and caught up in the sunshine.
- I drove out to Brian H’s house to help him brace his floor with some Molly columns.
- Then, he, Bennett and I worked on removing the broken door on his Hudson.
- Back at home, I suddenly realized I could use the miles of legacy coax cable I’d run in 2006 to connect three TVs to a single digital antenna—one over my workbench in the basement, the one in the den, and one in the bedroom. Given that I only watch TV for football during the season, I was really trying to avoid spending money on this, but with a $8 splitter from Amazon I don’t need to keep messing with antennas in each room.
- I got a little welding done on the second version of my cupholder design for the red bus, and shot it with etching primer.
- Then Hazel and I scooched together on the couch in front of the Sunday night game while I cut video footage from the last two weeks.
This is the newest video in the Project Slowflake series. Publishing this one means I’m finally caught up, almost three weeks after we shot the last footage…!
On recommendation from Pitchfork, I tried out this album by a band called Quannic, which is a young guy making shoe gaze-adjacent guitar music on his own. I’m really enjoying most of this album, alhtough it gets a little weak towards the end. Apprently he toured with Slowdive, which sounds like it would be a great fit.