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.
Damn. Brent Hinds, founding lead guitarist of Mastodon, left the band this March for unknown reasons, and all parties were initially quiet about the reasons. More recently he started posting angry tweets about being kicked out of the band, and things got uglier. Yesterday he was killed in a motorcycle accident, when a woman turned left without signaling in front of him.
It sounds like he had a lot of stuff to work out, and like any band breakup, I always have hope they can sort their differences and work together again; I do hope the band can continue making excellent music. Several of their albums have been inspired by personal tragedy, but this just seems cruel.
Last week I rented a drone kit for work in the hopes that I could save some money by avoiding commercial B-roll. Pricing for video clips has gone up recently, and my total costs for a 4-minute video have gone past $1500/ea, which is a lot of money for an NGO. I typically scour my limited stock of company-owned footage before I go to the online services, but I have to be careful I’m not recycling too much, and I really don’t have a lot to begin with.
I picked out a DJI Avata 2 with a set of FPV goggles mainly for the price: about $300 for 7 days’ usage. As usual, LensRentals sent it in a sturdy box which contained a custom Pelican with all of the components. I watched a couple of videos online and then took it out for a spin.
This drone is about six generations beyond my old Phantom 2, so it’s probably 1/6 the size, in a compact little package, designed for acrobatics and not stability. The blades are completely enclosed and the camera is on a 1-axis gimbal, so any tracking needs to be done by moving the drone itself. This is achieved by using the goggles and a handheld controller, which is a huge leap beyond the joystick/cellphone system my old Phantom employed. It took some time to understand the control setup but once I committed that to muscle memory, it got much easier to use. I took the Scout over to an empty parking lot and used it as a target, burning through each battery in about 15 minutes. I very much enjoyed the goggles and I think I would make them mandatory for any kit I was going to buy—they make flying so much easier than squinting into an iPad in the sunlight. The video is crisp and stabilized, and the drone performance is impressive, but this is not the model I’d consider purchasing to shoot stabilized aerial footage.
I’ve been hunting through terabytes of historical files for a project at work for the past month, trying to dig any kind of footage or photos I can use to tell the stories of three of our biggest initiatives. I’ve got a legacy Mac Pro tower under my desk here with the majority of those files, and as I dig deeper into the folders I’ve found stuff that was hiding from me for years. I opened up one file the other day and was shocked to see the guy looking back at me:
This dates back to January 2016, when I had more hair on my head and was experimenting with a full beard. We were doing some tests for a video series so there’s about two minutes of me looking into camera while we adjusted for light and focus. In retrospect I’m glad I ditched those glasses; they were too angular for my face and accentuated my crooked nose.
I had a shooting date with my neighbor the Marine last night. He’s had a ton of experience at the range and I respect his judgement, and he loves to practice so it wasn’t hard to convince him to go. His favorite range is one I’ve been to before under a different name, but the basic rules are always the same. We signed in, put our ear protection on (I used Dad’s green headset) and set up in a lane.
My first goal was to put rounds through the Glock, and I ran through two magazines with limited success. My neighbor gave me some advice and I adjusted some things, but still found my shots placing off to the left of center. He asked me if I was right-eye dominant and I realized I was still sighting with the wrong eye, and I explained what the instructor had talked about when I qualified. I reloaded, switched eyes, and immediately found improvement although my placement was still dispersed.
I then switched over to the 1911. I brought one magazine and a box of Dad’s ACP rounds dated from 1974, and lined up in the lane. I’m not going to lie, I was nervous with this one, because I figured the kick was going to be double that of the Glock. What I found surprised me, though: as a much heavier frame, it was smoother to shoot, and my placement was much tighter—after I’d run through the second magazine and we reviewed the target, he laughed and told me this was clearly the gun I was meant to use. It feels solid in my hands, and there’s much less kick than the polymer Glock. The trigger pull is much lighter, and that took some getting used to. I dislike the sights on it though—they’re aftermarket add-ons from decades ago, and the sight picture is very small. That would be something to look at upgrading in the future.
We cleared our brass up, packed things away, and went out for a beer afterwards to catch up, which was a great way to wind up the evening.
I need to drill myself on range safety: slowing down, keeping the muzzle pointed downrange, and trigger discipline at all times. But I very much enjoyed the experience, as nervous as I was, and I intend to keep practicing.
The weather this last week has been mercifully cool and dry, and I’ve tried to take as much advantage of it as possible. Saturday morning I got the girls up and moving, supplied them with fresh pastry, and drove us over to Patapsco State Park for a 4-mile hike through the woods. This is the trail Rob and I used to bomb down on mountain bikes back in the day, and apart from a section at the bottom being closed and re-routed, I remember almost all of the obstacles along the way. Hazel was happy to chug along at the head of the pack and probably did about 3/4 of the work getting me up the hills.
I spent all of my time last week shooting interviews for a project at work, and used the experience to dial in a setup for the new camera system. I bought us a matching pair of Sony A7siii rigs after COVID and have been learning the ins and outs of their operation, which has taken some time, but I’ve got a system for shooting video and audio that’s much less complicated than the one I inherited ten years ago. I’ve been experimenting with S-Log settings for color grading and I’ve got a good workflow for that now, and using an audio limiter in Final Cut to balance out the sound. It’s almost like I’m a professional.
I also rented a DJI Avata 2 drone for the week with a set of FPV goggles, figuring I’d use it to shoot B-roll at some of the locations I was on, but it took time to set up and understand its operation. It’s a small unit with enclosed blades and a 4K stabilized camera, and takes about one minute to power up and initialize. From there, you get about 15 minutes of flight time per battery, depending on how hard you fly it. I spent a couple of hours flying it around a parking lot on Sunday, using the Scout as a subject, and I came away (mostly) impressed. The first trial run was thwarted by a controller that wouldn’t calibrate properly, which meant the joystick control only worked in 3 axes. And the SD card I was using wasn’t fast enough, so it only captured 2 minutes of footage before crapping out.
I used that time to familiarize myself with the system and went back out at dusk after charging the batteries again, and had more success with a better card. I think there are a few more settings I need to learn—there’s a way to fly it and use your head to independently move the camera that I need to figure out.
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For Jen’s birthday, I got her a bird feeder with an integrated camera like the ones my Mom and sister have. I bought her a birdhouse with a camera mounted inside last Christmas, and we finally watched a family of sparrows hatch a clutch of eggs early this summer, but the camera isn’t as clear as I was hoping for. This one is much crisper. I mounted it on the post outside our back door and filled it with seed; the birds haven’t found it yet, but I’m hoping they’ll catch on soon.
I was talking with the girls last night at dinner about a cabaret I used to go to when I was in college, which held drag performances, musical reviews, and other avant-garde events that I can’t even describe. Typically my friends and I would pregame a little bit and then walk downtown to the show, get hammered and have fun, then wander home. In Baltimore, in 1990, which was sort of like walking through Beirut in 1983. Anyway, the name of the show suddenly came to me and I looked it up online when I got home: the 14Karat Cabaret. I found a post about it and a ton of memories flooded back; the Baltimore City Paper, the Haus of Frau… Man, I miss those days.
Huh, I must be on some kind of Soundgarden/grunge kick these past couple of weeks. The excellent Hands All Over is currently stuck in my head, and I’m not complaining.
As I mentioned earlier, I bought Louder Than Love in ’89 right after was released and it was on heavy rotation for the next couple of months. This was a welcome antidote to the heavy diet of hair metal I’d been exposed to in high school, and was one of several I bought at the same time: Nothing’s Shocking, Gish, and Pretty Hate Machine, which were definitely not being spun on local radio. Sadly, at that time Baltimore was not a regular stop on the concert circuit for most of these bands, so it was difficult to see them without going to D.C., which was difficult as a broke college freshman without a car.
Finn’s recollection of her time at camp typically begins with “I didn’t like it and I wanted to come home,” which makes me feel really good about the whole experience. She’ll go into exhaustive detail about what she didn’t like, starting with two annoying girls she was stuck with the whole week, and then list the mosquitoes, the food, the lousy mattresses, the snoring, and the cold.
Writing for the weekly mailbag at Defector, Albert Burnenko answered a reader question about this phenomena which put it into better perspective for me:
The funny thing here, Pete, is that the kids are enjoying themselves. Your daughter and nephew had a great time. They will remember that trip to Michigan for the rest of their lives. In their adulthood they will spend money and time trying to organize vacations that they will hope can replicate the simple and unspoiled joy that will be all they remember of that trip to Michigan. If you are lucky, you will hear them talking about it, and you will smile a private little smile at your memory of how they complained the entire time, and if you are wise and merciful you will know not to spoil their memory by reminding them of this.
Speaking in an episode of the conservative “Ruthless” podcast released on Tuesday, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said the move was “basically driving a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion”.
The US is poised to gut its current carbon emissions standards as part of Project 2025, which is terrible, terrible news for our country, our children, and our environment. This clown referring to “Climate change religion” is telling; another way to weaponize words along the fascist playbook. Personally, I’m happy to belong to this religion instead of “soulless corporate greed fuck-you billionaire religion”.