Off to Melbourne today for a weekend of bikes & beer - the bike is nicely tucked up inside its bag, has been checked in and hopefully will make it there intact...
Friday, June 21, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Getting rid of the shakes...
What do you think of the two videos below? The first one is the drone video from yesterday as directly recorded by the tablet
The next one has been processed with 'Videopad Pro', a free (for home use) video editor with an anti-shake feature.
Can you tell the difference? And if so which do you prefer?
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Droning on
I've got a new toy, a Parrot AR 2 drone, and it is awesome
It's a remote-controlled quadcopter, which is cool enough in its own right, but the technology behind it is really innovative. For a start it has a wireless router on-board, so you connect to it and control it via an app that you download to a tablet or smart phone.
There are a few different control options for the drone - you can control it via a virtual joystick by pushing your thumbs around on the surface of the tablet. But you can also choose to control it by tilting the tablet - the drone will then tilt and move in the direction to match. And you can choose relative or absolute control - in absolute control the drone will move in the direction that is indicated regardless of its orientation. In other words if you want it to go left you direct it to move left, and this works whether the drone is facing towards you or away from you.
The control is also a little different to a standard remote controlled toy because if you aren't steering it it will attempt to hold position, so it will try to correct itself when its being blown around by the wind. It also uses downward-directed ultrasonic sensors to hold the set altitude above ground level, so if you fly 'up' a slope it will gain height to maintain the same above-ground altitude. Not sure how that works if you fly 'off' something like a bridge, I'll need to find out.
All of the photos are taken with it wearing its 'inside' shell, which helps protect the propellers when it flies into something (which it seems to do fairly regularly with me on the controls). That also makes it very susceptible to wind, and in my trial runs it was pretty gusty and rough. You can see this in the attached film, recorded on the tablet via the inbuilt internal HD camera which is streamed in real time directly to the screen. How cool is that??
The video quality is a bit poor so I'm looking at an alternative recording option (watch this space!). Once I get the controls sorted I want to try filming people on dirt jumps from the air or chasing someone down singletrack. Any other ideas?
All of the photos are taken with it wearing its 'inside' shell, which helps protect the propellers when it flies into something (which it seems to do fairly regularly with me on the controls). That also makes it very susceptible to wind, and in my trial runs it was pretty gusty and rough. You can see this in the attached film, recorded on the tablet via the inbuilt internal HD camera which is streamed in real time directly to the screen. How cool is that??
Friday, June 14, 2013
Stone Monkey
I've been down in Sydney again this week, and after conversations over the weekend and during a quiet evening I started thinking about some of the climbing videos that we used to watch - badly worn VHS copies of copies that were taken arond from party to party and always played to death. Yup, climbers are obsessive like that. One of the all-time great was 'Stone Monkey' featuring Johnny Dawes back in 1986 which heralded a new waves of gritstone climbing in the magnificent Peak District. Here's an edited copy that condenses down some of the best bits - stick with the slightly dodgy dream sequence, it gets a lot more serious later on. Enjoy!
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Can you do more?
One of the funny things about juggling is that however good the tricks you can pull out with three balls, someone always asks if you can do four. I can't, but apparently if you can then people will ask if you can do five. And so on. You can imagine someone watching this and immediately asking 'can you do 13?'
In some ways it's the same with homebrew. One of the most common questions is 'do you distill as well?', and in my case the answer is no. I'm sometimes tempted to investigate the joys of whiskey making but, apart from it being illegal, there's always the chance of this happening. With a batch of homebrew beer the smell of a dodgy brew is usually enough to convince you not to drink it, although this also happens with some of my more experimental beers. And no-ones ever died from a hop overdose. Yet.....
In some ways it's the same with homebrew. One of the most common questions is 'do you distill as well?', and in my case the answer is no. I'm sometimes tempted to investigate the joys of whiskey making but, apart from it being illegal, there's always the chance of this happening. With a batch of homebrew beer the smell of a dodgy brew is usually enough to convince you not to drink it, although this also happens with some of my more experimental beers. And no-ones ever died from a hop overdose. Yet.....
The perfect pub garden?
I miss the UK style pub gardens, and our new house gave us the opportunity to recreate one overlaid with our own themes. So last weekend we had a small gathering, luckily on the only dry day of the long weekend. Come Sunday afternoon the seating was prepared
The bar & beer pump was ready to go, pulling a homebrewed English-style session ale
The doily looks very delicate, but underneath it was a bowl of beer-candied bacon. It didn't that it was that good, but it was fun to greet people with 'hello, thanks for coming - want some bacon?'
The hand pump (thanks Clinton) was a winner
and as the afternoon progressed the toys came out
before it was time for a snacks - slow cooked smoked ribs
As evening fell it was time to pull out the firetoys - there are a few videos around but I can't embed them, hopefully this will work as a link though. Thanks to Fly for editing out the bits where I drop stuff or burn myself...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaeKfNkK95o
Thanks to all for coming, it was a truly fun afternoon and I had a ball. Liz lost me during the clean-up, and later found me asleep in the hammock clutching a half eaten chicken leg and smiling to myself. Time to start planning the next one...
and the tables were laid with bike books, magazines and the odd 'wierd tales' publication
Thanks to all for coming, it was a truly fun afternoon and I had a ball. Liz lost me during the clean-up, and later found me asleep in the hammock clutching a half eaten chicken leg and smiling to myself. Time to start planning the next one...
Friday, June 7, 2013
Half Man Half Biscuit
It's easy to write off HMHB as a 'comedy band' but over the last 30 years and 13 albums they've proved themselves to be something far far better. Their music has progressed from post-punk through to blues & folk via classic 90's indie jangle and can probably best be described as 'Urban Folk'. And the lyrics are a strange blend that mix current affairs, petty urban-dwelling angst, arcane music references, popular television and football They pillory the memes of the day in a way that requires at least three listens and generally a couple of google searches before you understand all of the references and realise that one of the people he's taking the piss out of is you.
There don't release videos, but there's plenty of uploaded tunes on Youtube along with compilation videos put together by fans. Here's a few to be going on with -
There don't release videos, but there's plenty of uploaded tunes on Youtube along with compilation videos put together by fans. Here's a few to be going on with -
(CAMRA is the Campaign for Real Ale)
Also worth listening all the way to the end to hear the late great John Peel speak
One that always makes me think of Marin, and I reckon you could make a good bike-based cover
I found this when I was looking for the other links - hadn't heard it before and it's awesome for the intensity, the guitar work, the sing-along chorus and of course the opening lyrics...another album to add to the 'Need to Buy' list
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