4,003 words, in memoriam

So long, Roscoe.

R.I.P. Roscoe Q. Copter

    Alas the beloved Toy went down in the river. I am told that if I could find it, it could be rehabilitated, but I don't have a frogman suit and would rather spend the money to buy another than risk my life trying to rescue the toy. But what a run we had. Here's the story.
    This morning, my friend Lee texted from Winston-Salem asking if I wanted a visit and I replied enthusiastically. So he was here shortly after noon. I wanted to try inventing pico de gallo lentil pancakes; as he's vegetarian, I correctly guessed that he would be into it, too. They were really good! I'll have to figure out a recipe one day.
    We took Toy to the soccer practice field at the university. Some South Asian guys were playing cricket (ok, so it was the cricket field), which isn't an everyday site in this area, the weather was great and I got one last brilliant video. Then we went to Granby Park, but the light wasn't right for what I wanted (train trestle shots) so the flying was good but the filming wasn't. Also, Toy flew out of range and didn't fly back automatically. I did the walk toward it trick, and then it came home. THEN we took it to West Columbia Riverwalk and immediately got in trouble.
    I had found yesterday that although I could get very good video and pictures, the works of man are not only tiny from space, they're pretty piddling from 400, 300, or even 60 feet. Gervais Street Bridge is wondrous large compared to a person and very impressive but from just twice its height, it looks pretty unimpressive. So I was trying to get down to bridge height. And I assumed that I knew I was out over the river. I could have used the gimbal to rotate the camera to look straight down to make sure; I had done this yesterday and even today. But I got overconfident. So I flew into a tree and it crashed into the river. As I say, I have been told that I could revive it if I could find it. But that's a cold river, usually shallow and slow but these days deep, fast and powerful. And I'd rather spend hundreds than court hypothermia. Assuming that I could find it and could rehabilitate it, neither exactly a certainty.
    On the other hand, yesterday was so phenomenally perfect, I had great doubts that I could ever top it or even match it. This is not to say that I didn't want to fly Toy anymore, nor that I don't regret its loss. Let's just say that I celebrate even more how much fun I had with it. And hope that I learned something and will be much more careful next time. Bye Roscoe. You were a good Toy.

Converts

    This morning dawned beautiful and also promised a warm day, so I was pretty excited about flying prospects. I figured that south of town looking north would give me the best light, so I went to Barney Jordan Landing. (Yes, I did take off from a landing. Quit interrupting.) That's quite nearby, much the nearest access to the river, but surrounded by warehouses, stadium parking facilities and quarries and quarry traffic. So the river is pretty but nothing nearby is very. It was crazy cool flying and I learned something important. If Toy REALLY loses signal, it flies back home by itself. Then I learned something else equally important: if it's about to land in the wrong place (on your car, say), you can interrupt the automatic landing process to move it somewhere safer and then it will continue to land itself. Two good things.
    The place I really wanted to go was West Columbia Riverwalk, because it's adjacent to the Gervais Street bridge, much the prettiest of the spans over the Congaree. I took some insane video basically chasing a car over the bridge (from 100 feet in the air, of course). Toy is pretty fast! Then when I figured I'd gone far enough, I told it to come home, and found that Toy had fans. A couple were very, very, very interested, and the gentleman was particularly keen to get his own. I showed them the video and then demonstrated a hover and how high Toy could go and then flew it off for some more keen video. I also took a series of pictures that formed a beautiful complete 360 panorama. (More in a second.) They thanked me enthusiastically and I went off home to review my haul.
    The 360 could not be turned into a panorama using my software. Half of it turned out OK, although I had to do some manipulation. The automatic stitching software lost Uptown Columbia somehow. It'll be funny when I go out to buy a new laptop just to be able to make better panoramas. The one from Barney Jordan Landing was cooler, to be honest, if a little industrial. Suffice it to say that the day was big fun and I hardly feel guilty about still not signing up for Obamacare. Was guiltily proud of coining Fauxbamacare for an outfit that charges you $20 per month to certify that you're insured for purposes of beating the penalty. Didn't sign up for that either, though. Tick tick tick.

A new enthusiasm

    I lucked into a 25 cent cassette tape featuring the music from the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater from Hanoi, this specific tape from 1993. I dig it immensely. The only shortcoming is that it comes short; it's only about twenty minutes long, if that. The music isn't incredibly exotic if you've ever eaten in a Southeast Asian restaurant, but it crazy mad cool. The troupe is on YouTube complete with water puppets. You should definitely check it out.
    I was of course going to post something intelligent about how I seek out any distraction possible to avoid taking up my grown-up life, but I just did, didn't I?
    PS: Apparently that's Ha Noi. Never too late to learn!

This crazy new feature called control

    I'm still getting used to having a flying camera that I can actually control. The very specific example was a picture I took several times with the old toys taking off from nearby Pacific Park. It was of interesting Olympia buildings, but also always included the top of the neighboring gas station. And while I am very fond of that gas station because somebody had the brilliant idea to call it Shiv Mart (and to open at least two more Shiv Marts around town), it's roof isn't too appealing from above. And I was looking at my display and thinking "This again," and then realized I could just turn the drone and cut the gas station out. The resulting picture wasn't that electrifying either, but that was just the result of the gloomy day.
    I'm getting better at guessing how far away I can fly without losing contact with Toy. I could wish that the display would show the distance more clearly or better yet that there would be a "You're about to lose it, stupid!" warning. But since I can just walk toward the direction Toy flew in, I'm pretty confident I'll be able to bring it home. (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!) Slightly distressing was that each time it flew home today, it set down ten or twenty feet from the start point. This is ok if I start from a baseball field, like today, but not so good if I'm in the middle of woods. Still, I can abort Fly Home at any point and I can point the camera straight down to see obstructions. I can fly it home by hand if I have to. It's just more relaxing using the Look Ma No Hands method. (The crazy new feature called not needing control.)

I'm going to get the diabeetus

    The longer version was I'm going to get the diabeetus from my less stressful lifestyle. Back when I had to ferry Dad to dialysis and to doctor's appointments, I had to deal with enough frustrations that I had to walk every day just to keep from wanting to punch somebody. These days, frustrations are few and well spaced out and it's easy to skip going walking.
    Then again, floods are frequent and have taken away, seemingly permanently, one of my favorite walking places (Canal Park). A short portion of the Cayce Riverwalk reopened the other day and a much longer portion tied in with Timmerman Trail was open today. This has happened a lot since September; it's like a homecoming every time and surprisingly emotionally draining every time. So if we can just quit flooding for a little while, maybe I can keep diabeetus at bay. Fond as I am of walking in my own neighborhood, it's a lot easier to do this daily when there's a little more variety. Partly to catch up but mostly because I like it, I walked the whole circuit of the Riverwalk Battlefield Connector, Timmerman Trail and the 12,000 Year Historical Park Trail. It took maybe an hour and a half, so not exactly climbing Everest, but it was very pleasant. Take that, Wilford Brimley.

I love it when a plan comes together

    Full version: I love it when a plan comes together by sheer luck and completely out of line with what the actual plan was. I mentioned that I am now freezing some of my food so I will be less overwhelmed with leftovers in the fridge and able to feel more spontaneous about dining out options. That is, I no longer will feel like I can't go out or the leftovers will go bad. I always meant to do this, but life intervened.
    This means that I never learned how long it takes to defrost a pre-cooked frozen meal, and had no clear ideas. I planned to put the dinnercicle in a pot at low heat for 17 minutes, then at medium heat for 10. But muscle memory misled me and I wound up putting it at medium for 17. This turned out to be just right. I let it sit and think about it on no heat for the other ten minutes and it turned out rather well. Not as good as fresh from the pot in the first place, but at least as good as after sitting in the fridge for three days.
    I had to re-login just to look at my stats this morning in order to receive the message that Google is putting a warning pursuant to EU rules on every blog now. So if you see that, that's why. If you don't see that, I'm in biiiiig trouble with the EU.