Illness – Science and Industry – Project List Update – Recent Gallery – Verticals Plug
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Housekeeping
Illness.
Another week ill. I was extremely ill through the weekend and got back on the horse on Sunday. I woke up today without needing half a box of tissue.
Keyframe example and set-up reel
Here is a video of using automated keyframe with attitude, along with a coda of weird contemporary events in low resolution. The recording is from a translation of a weird text message I received in Chinese. I dubbed it into the video. I also received a call from Poland recently.
1970s Doomcore Sci-Fi
I watched “Silent Running” with Bruce Dern. The anti-hero carries out his plan of saving a biodome attached to a giant spaceship from the insane operations managers of the American Airlines Space Freighter, at all costs. He has just killed the other three crew members who have been tasked with nuking the last few biodomes. The idea was to reforest the Earth when it is possible again, sometime in the future. The mission was abandoned as a cost-cutting measure. Insane. Hellbent on his mission, “Lowell Freeman” played by Dern and staged an “emergency” to cover up his crimes. He inadvertently runs over Huey, as in Huey, Dewey and Louis Duck, one of the three programmable drones on the ship. He is unable to repair Huey completely. Guilt and remorse overcome him.
My favorite scene is when Dern wordlessly communicates the horror of knowing that his rash actions have permanently doomed him to life off world in a synthetic environment, trapped behind the shadow of Saturn in an artificial forest, in a biodome, with time running out before his forest is nuked as a matter of some vague company policy. He made his own hellish prison real. Without a word, you can see this realization just overwhelm him. It was an unexpectedly poignant moment. Luckily, there’s poker.
Basically, all 1970s horror is Rappaccini’s Daughter. Long on polemic, short on adaptation. People are bad, and these are their spoils. Dern gets all the juicy lines. Dewey floats away on the biodome in the end, an effective mechanical deity of the world adrift. That’s spicy. Discuss.
Weirdness Afoot
I have to say last week was one of the weirdest and wildest in memory. Beyonce announced a world tour. A comet last seen by prehistoric humans hung in the sky NNE to NE through the week. Jupiter has 92 moons and counting?! We are 72 light years from a same-sized rocky planet. The Earth’s core has stopped rotating. These are strange things, indeed.
ChatGPT began to eat the world. I asked it to examine some methods for solving Navier-Stokes equations, write poetry. Now there are rivals to ChatGPT. How will AI transform society?
Old school
I listen to rap. I have since I was a little kid. I hear raps about not having resources, about having to do for themselves what the community cannot or will not be moved to do: open community centers, I expand mental health services, provide for working families in crisis. Yes, they rap about having fun, too, but the point is that without proper resources, the journey to “success” is dangerous and unreliable without community. What is community? Discuss.
I have a chance to build curriculum. I will gain some constructive criticism, to put it gently. I am a “all data is good data” sort of person. I explore. One student dubbed me ‘Substitutti Bigbooty’ a couple of weeks ago. Then he ran out of the room when I turned to the board. I remember when I started subbing in schools in 2021, a 4th grader called me ‘Red Lobster’ because I wore a red sweater. The nicknames are like gadgets. I learn about a person from the labels they offer me.
Science and Industry
Blue Strobe Lights
Oh, Bother
China? Why? That’s not a green comet. That’s not the Moon. That’s a big spy balloon. One balloon drifted over the US. One drifted over Columbia. Looks like it exited through the Research Triangle in the Carolinas. Relations could be better. Now that they have my shoo fly pie recipe, what can I do to survive?
Toiroidal propellers
We need the ones shaped like a trefoil, three-ringed. The design distributes the vortex evenly across the entire surface, not just at the wingtip. Genius. The end of the wing is like a whip that transfers force to an abrupt end. The trefoil design would provide a more stable gyre? I wonder if it provides extra stability. It would probably be more stable hovering closely to an irregular surface., in any case, because the vortices are not expelling with such turgid force at the wingtips.
Projects Update
- Matlab – Working on this again today, all other projects on hold.
- TFT, thermal camera, Pis on hold
- ADS-B gadget on hold.
I was just too ill to do much this week. It tore through our home and laid most of us out. My focus has been on preparing to teach in a new school. I am in the process of learning about trauma reporting and tracking for the district. I am studying the difference in approaches to social media and technology management i.e., phones in the school. I want to see methods and results, cause and effect of general differences in approaches to juvenile technology management. Just hoping my car doesn’t end up on Kia Boys social media on the platform that cannot be named nor used yet still manages to place cookies on my browser.
Recent Gallery
Verticals Community Learning Center
Drone Cinematography Classes!
So, everyone who attempted the test passed and earned an FAA TRUST certificate. We tested through a site administered by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University because I support their UAV technology courses.
The three days I participated as a volunteer instructor at Verticals were as follows: April 28th, May 5th and May 12th, 2022. I guided students through the process of learning how to safely fly drones in uncontrolled airspace. Two students flew my professional drone over the nearby Monongahela River, by an old truss bridge. One landed the professional drone, wow! On the first day! We planned a video with storyboards and a huddle on production elements. They brainstormed, scheduled shots, got gear, and produced the footage. One the last day, students edited and shared footage.
I basically hustled parts, minor repairs, battery charging, and network connections to and from supply to the production locations. I answered questions. One team was outside the building, another inside. I invited students to explore their own styles. They had fun. The teams erupted with creativity and effort. I had hoped to use the course module in a creative writing lesson or a programming lesson. The presentation that I use sort of serves as a class rubric, but I supply the students with worksheets to plan their productions step-by-step.
I learned some crucial limitations and opportunities for the next session. The most valuable thing is to have a report formatted to assign communication channels, teams, roles, and work schedules. Safety issues were routinely handled successfully. All craft and pilots, tablets and other parts of the Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) made it back in the box, so to speak. All inventory recovered, repairs and orders made, all data shared in the cloud, students back in their districts, rooms ready for the next class.
Verticals Plug
Verticals is a local community development center that gives kids a choice of after-school programs that enrich young lives and provide a sense of pride in community. A link to the group is provided. Some school districts, like Monessen and Brownsville, pony up transportation. It makes a huge difference to the kids, and I am grateful to meet the van drivers. They like the class, too!
- How to fly recreational drones with basic and advanced maneuvers.
- How to plan flights for capturing media.
- Get the soon-to-be mandatory – and EASILY OBTAINED – TRUST flyer certificate from the FAA, online for free.
- How to film, edit, and share a video you make with drone footage and apps.
- How to fly a drone with Scratch Python block code.
- Provide information about industrial drone applications and jobs.
Local Resource in Action
Community groups will have some authority to determine the nature of its flight operations in local airspace come this fall 2022. As long as a responsible pilot is connected to the group, the area can develop flight operations that best suits the needs of the group. A FRIA is basically an area supported by a Part 107 drone pilot or more qualified pilots. The FAA determines the location and quality of FRIAs.
I can see a drone academy being a part of an 21st-century community, so I am studying what we need to do to qualify to become a FRIA. I have a break from school in a month, and I like to read legislation. One of the problems is that it’s not 1986 anymore. These rules were written before the Internet absolutely debased the concept of community. It used to involve, at the very least, physical mail for remote correspondence, on land lines, even. Brick and mortar have given way to ones and zeros. The architecture is in an electric field instead of a dirt lot. “Model aviation” was a concept that existed before FPV, before streaming, before smart phones, before laptops. Ridiculous changes continue to occur and need to occur more quickly because of climate change.
- (1) is described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986;
- (2) is exempt from tax under section 501(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986;
- (3) the mission of which is demonstrably the furtherance of model aviation;
- (4) provides a comprehensive set of safety guidelines for all aspects of model aviation addressing the assembly and operation of model aircraft and that emphasize safe aeromodelling operations within the national airspace system and the protection and safety of individuals and property on the ground, and may provide a comprehensive set of safety rules and programming for the operation of unmanned aircraft that have the advanced flight capabilities enabling active, sustained, and controlled navigation of the aircraft beyond visual line of sight of the operator;
- (5) provides programming and support for any local charter organizations, affiliates, or clubs; and
- (6) provides assistance and support in the development and operation of locally designated model aircraft flying sites.
Topics in the Verticals Youth Empowerment program include artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, drones, digital fabrication, coding, media production, design studio, blockchain, and crypto. Courses in the topics are presented alongside fitness and wellness resources. The center director is retired NFL pro-football player William James, who stepped off the gridiron and into a new life arena. William has an amazing base of supporters, collaborators, volunteers, and stakeholders who help make this happen. Very grateful.
Verticals Youth Empowerment Center is designed to stimulate young minds, give parents an inclusive environment in which to socialize, and to offer youth a sense of pride in themselves and their community. There are other facilities in the works.
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I became a drone technology service integration researcher in 2017 while in university. I have a passion for drones. Contact me for information about services.
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