Monthly Archives: June 2019

Miscellaneous

Should have done this long ago

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Ever since living in hotels for the last six years and then moved into my apartment I have been using laptop computers. That was the easiest when living in hotels but I did not have to when living in the apartment.
I decided to purchase a desktop computer but still wanted it small so I ended up with a small footprint Dell computer. Last Friday I opened it up to see what it would take to update the computer to something I could actually use. I got one that was the bare minimum. This computer it turns out is one of the simplest to work on.
I immediately purchased 32gb of memory, keyboard, mouse and a 27 inch curved monitor. I got the monitor yesterday with the HDMI cable which I did not need because the monitor came with one. I purchased a extension cord and set everything up last night. My table now has plenty of room without all the cables laying around for all my external hard drives. Below is a picture of the new setup (I don’t have a before photo and I’m not going to create a before photo).

 

I love this set up. There is plenty of screen real-estate for working in Blender, After Effects, Photoshop and my next challenge Premier Pro for video editing. I have so many things I am trying to learn there is not enough time in the day.

I had stated previously that I had not heard from Angie in awhile but that turned out to be untrue. She calls asking for 200.00 for birthday presents for her granddaughter and mother, then asks for another hundred because she totaled her car and the insurance company needed that so she could get a rental.

Last week I purchased the Rode Wireless Go microphone set. Even though I hate the word ‘amazing’ I am going to use it when I talk about this mic. This mic is amazing. When pared with the H1n audio recorder It is one of the best purchases I have made (next to the monitor).

Using the Rode and H1n I recorded my first video with the a6400. I think it turned out rather good for my first attempt and will not bring both files (audio and video) into Premier Pro for post processing. I’ll continue to record videos at least every Sunday detailing the previous week for my blog posts here and at the same time continue to get used to being in front of the camera, seeing myself and hearing my voice.

Take care till next week!

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Weightloss

The weapon is now in use

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We will see what happens regarding the weight loss now. My secret weapon was to cut down alcohol consumption significantly and this weekend went very well. Much better than I had hoped. The only problem was I ate a bit too much. I’ll combat that this next weekend. I think I was just so happy to start and the cut back went much better than I had hoped.

I did some video shoots with the Osmo Action and my Lav mic but realized that when I did my sound check point by clicking my fingers I had forgotten to click my fingers in front of the camera so there will be no visual clue to use when I sync the audio. oops. Another try this weekend will need to be done. Additionally, I purchased a Rode Wireless GO microphone which should be here this week and will be much better than the wired lav mic. I look forward to this video shoot and the experience using Premier Pro for the first time. If Ken can do it, I can do it.

Hopefully my Robomaster S1 will ship soon, everyone else seems to be getting it. How come mine is taking so long to ship. I think some people were fibbing a bit when they said they ordered it as soon as it was announced. They got theirs in two days and I ordered mine at the same time and the website said it would ship 20 – 25 days after receipt of payment. Anyway it will be a fun project to put together on a Saturday afternoon when it finally arrives.

Weightloss, Writing

Secret Weapon Use starts this week

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We will now see how this secret weapon will do when it comes to my weight loss. It will be hard to use but I’m sure it will be worth it.

Had a great weekend again. I did not fly this weekend, the weather was to cooperating but I did figure out what kind of app to create for both the iOS and Android. A log book for Drone pilots. A log that will keep track of battery hours and cycles, store your flight logs from DJI. A check list and much more. Charge a couple of bucks and see where that would go.

After I create the App then I’ll use that as a step into instruction in Udemy. Teach people how I did created, put it on the iOS and Android stores and possibly include the Microsoft store with it.

After that, create a small book to publish about the same topic.

P.S. The Secret Weapon is a secret until I find how well it works. So you will have to wait and see.

Weightloss

Second half of year weight loss starts now

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Beginning now, the start of June I’m going to work on weight loss in earnest. Along with this I purchased the part 107 course from RemotePilot101.com for my part 107 UAS license. I continue to work on my journey learning chess and downloaded the new 2.8 version of Blender. I have high hopes of using at least some of these things to start earning some residual income for retirement, if nothing else it keeps me entertained.

Angie has not contacted me for some time now regarding money and that makes me quite happy. We did talk on Friday and she kept things very cordial and it was nice for a change.

My elbow, which I thought I had hyper extended seems to get worse if I don’t exercise which sounds funny but that seems to be what I need to do. So this in fact will help a lot for losing the weight I want as well.

The Osmo Action, yes I purchased on and am quite happy with it however, the YouTube fanboys of DJI don’t seem to want to talk about the things it is missing over the GoPro Hero 7 Black. The front facing screen is nice and helps a lot when vlogging but the camera does not have GPS in order to view G force, location or speed data which was really nice while it was using it on my trip to Seattle. It also will not stream video to YouTube like the GoPro will. There also seems to be some problem with condensation on the front screen as well but I have not seen that.

I was curious about the image stabilization and the motion when walking with either camera. The Osmo action seems to be a little bit better but I heard about some software that makes the Hero 7 black much better than the Osmo. I wonder if it will work with the Osmo Pocket and what kind of affect After Effects may have on the Z-axis when walking with that. Will need to check it out.

Dinner is ready now so time to sign off – TTYL, Mike