Category: learning curve

Galactic editing

Posted on

After I posted a photo I took over the weekend, long-suffering reader and all-round top ‘tog Chris J Wormwell (you may remember him from such posts as Chris’ PoA sky & lighthouse p0rn and The photo that I wanted to share yesterday but couldn’t because the dog ate the internet) got in touch with some sage advice:

This was a huge help and step forward for me recently: https://www.lonelyspeck.com/how-to-process-milky-way-astrophotography-in-adobe-lightroom/

I clicked through, and was rewarded with a step-by-step guide to making this photo:

look better:

And it only took me ten minutes or so.

Some points from my experience:
I think the photo looks much better.
Note that all that stuff was there in the original – you just couldn’t see it.
If I can do it, so can you.
The guide was really helpful.
I now know that I will need to take a better photo next time if I want to make it even better.
But also, I now know how to do that.
There are loads of other ideas for night photography on that site that I haven’t had chance to look at yet.

A(nother) new door has been opened. Thanks, Chris.

WSW

Posted on

And so, without any more ado, and not ever so much fanfare, here’s one of the photos I took over the weekend. It’s quite dark (hey, it was night time), and so it looks MUCH better on black, but to look at it like that you’ll have to click through to Flickr here.

This was a 30 second exposure looking WSW (240.99º to be exact) from Suiderstrand bay. Next stop heading straight out from here is Necochea, Argentina, 6819.62 km across the South Atlantic.

But I didn’t go there. I wandered the 100m or so back up to the cottage and had a brandy.

Four photos from the weekend: here.

Rollback

Posted on

I solved my problem yesterday by using the System Restore tool to travel back in time to a point when I didn’t have the catchily-named

Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool for Windows 8, 8.1, 10 and Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016 x64 Edition – November 2017 (KB890830)

on my laptop.

My laptop didn’t seem to like something about that particular update, but all seems to be running smoothly now. And yes, I realise that I will have to reinstall that update at some point, but at least if things go awry again, I’ll know why it is and I can deal with it a bit more quickly than I did this time around.

All of that meant that I could finally get some photos uploaded from the weekend, and that means that you will be able to see them shortly.

Watch this space.

Don’t crash

Posted on

I’m hoping to get some flight time in today. The weather forecast is looking good (I’m writing this ahead of time so that I have time to get some flight time in today) and I’m hoping to have much of the local coastline to myself in the traditional pre-December tourism lull in Cape Agulhas.

I got an email from DJI today (this today, not that today, as mentioned above). DJI is the company that made Florence the Mavic, so they know what they’re talking about when it comes to drones.

The email was divided up into four different sections: each with a link to a relevant webpage on their site:

DJI Go 4 Manual: The Pilot’s Handbook
Not sure what all those buttons do in DJI Go 4? Dive into our DJI 4 manual to learn ins and outs of DJI’s powerful, multi-purpose companion app.

Helpful advice for what is (necessarily) a rather complicated app.

5 Great Third-Party Mavic Pro Accessories
Looking for new add-ons to make your Mavic even more powerful? Read this article to discover five great Mavic accessories. 

An attempt to sell you more very cool, but very expensive, toys.

How to Make the Best of Your Drone Photo
Struggling to take good-looking drone photos? Check out this article and get one step closer to becoming a master of aerial photography.

You know from reading this blog that this is a never-ending learning experience and any help is good.

And then… this:

How to NOT Crash Your Drone in 15 Easy Steps
Even the bravest drone users worry about crashing. Here’s an article that can help you prevent accidents.

I like the emphasis on the NOT, as if you were considering any other options. And look, it’s a good idea for an article (albeit that it is written about the Phantom Pro, rather than the Mavic), but are there really fifteen separate steps you need to take to avoid the fiery demise of your drone?

Of course, it turns out that many of them refer simply to following the rules and using common sense (which you were doing anyway, right?).

Presumably, this means that if you follow the rules and use common sense, you’ll be fine. So that’s what I’ll do today.

Faster wifi on planes

Posted on

The future is now.

To be honest, the future was actually already then, when I was on a flight over Turkey, tracking my flight over Turkey en route to nearly kill my Mum by walking into her kitchen while she thought I was 6000 miles… away.

Wi-fi on planes is incredible. Not just because it’s useful as a communication, productivity and time-passing tool, but also because of the way it works. From your device to the on-board router, then pinged from the top of the plane moving at close on 1,000kph to a satellite about 35,786km up (which itself is moving at 18,000kph) and then down to earth and then – obviously – back again.

Like, I said: Incredible.

In fact, the only issue with the wi-fi on planes is that it’s not very fast. So sending photos or anything larger than a Whatsapp message takes ages or doesn’t really work at all. Especially just after dinner.

But now it’s about to get better:

Emirates has partnered with Thales to bring 50Mbps connectivity to its Boeing 777X fleet in 2020.

That’s five times faster than I get at home. Five.

And look, I know I’m very lucky to have a generally stable internet connection at home. But my house stays where it is and is attached by a long cable to the place where the internet comes from (which also stays where it is). It’s relatively simple to get internet to go back and forth along that cable. But they still can’t do it at more than 10Mbps.

I think the potential solutions here are fairly obvious: move my house to an Emirates 777 (clearly not an option), or park an Emirates 777 in my back garden (it could be a contemporary sculpture).

The neighbours might not be happy, but at least they’d have really speedy internet.