An Arizona trip highlights video

I'm in the middle of a two-week vacation, which has provided me some much-needed time to rest and recuperate. I can tell I really needed this time off; normally, after two days of rest I've recovered my creative spark, but this time it's taken nearly five days to start to feel like doing much of anything. I say this by way of explanation for why updates have been so sparse around here, and hopefully I'll be able to get around to a few of the many projects I've got tucked away in my brain in the remainder of the year.

For this post, have a little video with some drone footage from my trip to Arizona. I took a motley collection of clips from a variety of locations, and have interwoven them in what seemed like an interesting fashion.

One location that shows up a few times is Cochise Stronghold (named for a famous Apache chieftain who held out and was eventually buried in the area). It's a large rock formation in the Dragoon Mountains, with a hiking path going up to it.

Cochise Stronghold (taken from the air with my Mini 3 Pro).

Another thing which shows up in the video a few times is the migration stop (or overwintering site, I'm not sure which) for sandhill cranes. As seen, there were a lot of them there; they're quite common and not endangered (estimated population in North America in the hundreds of thousands), and didn't seem to be all that bothered by my drone beyond a little unease, so I felt comfortable flying fairly close. It was incredible seeing what must've been thousands together like that; we don't really see anything like that here in Hawaii (or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places!).

A tiny fraction of the sandhill cranes present. They're fairly large birds, think “flamingo-sized.”

Also appearing a few times is the town of Pearce where I stayed. It's intertwined with a golf course built around half a century ago, which ultimately didn't prove successful. (I can only imagine the water bill to keep it green during the summer!) The holes meandered about through the town, and traces of them can still be seen all over the place, including the water hazard now being used as a reservoir for the vineyard seen at about 1:20 in the video.

Anyway, that's all for this post. I still have a few locations where I took enough photos to get another post or two out, but I wanted to get this video out to show off some of the bits and bobs of footage I got. A hui hou!

Happy half-birthday, Halley's comet!

I'm typing this on my lunch break at work so this'll be short, but this week I learned that Halley's comet will reach aphelion, the farthest point in its orbit from the Sun, at 3 PM HST (when this post goes out). At that point it'll be momentarily traveling at its slowest speed (relative to the Sun), a mere 0.91 km/s, or 2,035 mph. After that, it begins the long accelerating fall back in towards the inner Solar System. And yes, aphelion is only a "half-birthday" if you count its "birthday" as being perihelion, but it's as good a time as any and makes for a catchy title, so I went with it.

Halley's comet (or 1P/Halley to give it its official designation, the "P" meaning "periodic" and the "1" meaning it's the first to be recognized as such) is currently far too faint to be observed from Earth with even the largest telescopes, having last been imaged twenty years ago in 2003. (It might be possible to observe with the Hubble or JWST, but no one is looking – there wouldn't be much to learn from it.) Presumably that means it'll take about another twenty years to be imaged again, so look forward to that sometime around 2043, unless the ELT decides to try for it earlier or something.

Having been born three years after its most recent perihelion in 1986 I've never seen Halley's comet myself, but this is a nice reminder that it's still out there, and on its way back in again. Hopefully I'll get to see it at its next perihelion in July 2061! A hui hou!

Uē ka lani, ola ka honua

I woke up this morning, and was initially confused as to why. It took my sleep-befuddled mind a few seconds to realize it was because my alarm was going off, because it was almost muffled by an equally loud, but initially unfamiliar sound: pouring rain.

This October was the driest October on record in Hawaii, with most of the state in moderate to severe drought and multiple rain gauges around the state breaking records for lowest recorded rainfall. Needless to say it's been quite dry the last several months, so it was with a sense of relief that I woke up to pouring rain this morning from the Kona low hanging out to the west of islands.

With the sudden and steep onset of rain, I took an opportunity to drive up to Waiʻale Falls today. Just after midnight yesterday, the flow was about 12 cubic feet per second. It doubled to about 24 cfps from the first light showers from the approaching system yesterday, then this morning shot up to around 7,950 cfps when I got there to take this photo:

It's always pretty impressive to see the Wailuku in flood. This front also brought the first snow of the season to the mauna peaks, and will hopefully go some way to alleviating the drought. I'm still sorting through photos and videos from my Arizona trip, but I thought I'd celebrate the rains' return in a quick post. Oh, and the post title? It's an ancient Hawaiian proverb, “uē ka lani, ola ka honua”: the heavens weep, the earth lives. A hui hou!

Visiting Arizona: the Titan Missile Museum

It's been pretty quiet here on the ol’ blog this month, due to me spending the first two weeks in Arizona: first at the ADASS 2023 conference, then a week visiting my parents for an early Thanksgiving. Those were two rather packed weeks, so after a week to decompress I'm finally sifting through the many photos and videos I took at various places; enough for a few posts, at least.

The first place we visited, after I flew in overnight and a day before ADASS started, was the Titan Missile Museum, located twenty minutes' drive outside of Tucson. It's a real Titan II missile bunker, the only one not destroyed as a result of disarmament treaties (though rendered permanently inoperable), and contains a real Titan II missile in its launch silo (though sans warhead, of course). You can walk down a few floors to the underground command station, see the authentic computers still in place, and then walk down a long corridor to see the missile itself.

Here it is, though this is only about half of the it; the rest extends downward further below. You can see how the top of the shaft is half-blocked by the immense door covering it, ensuring this silo is truly disarmed and can't be used.

Remarkably, when I asked about whether there drone restrictions in place, it turned out there weren't. Which allowed me to get this great shot of the entire complex:

You can see the outside of the silo here (what little there is of it above ground), and the half-open door blocked by huge weights. When it was active, it could apparently fully open in just 58 seconds. The glass roof allows looking in at the missile, both for viewers on the ground and – no joke – spy satellites, to ensure the missile doesn't have a functional warhead.

Not sure how they can actually see in, though.

Overall it was a neat experience, one that can recommend. It was also a somewhat sobering experience to hear the guide dispassionately explaining just how quickly these missiles could be launched (58 seconds), with their 9 megaton-TNT-equivalent warheads (large enough to pretty much vaporize 30 square miles). Definitely worth checking out if you're in the Tucson area and enjoy a bit of history! A hui hou!

So I bought a kayak…

Yes, I've gone and done it, and added another to my already-far-too-long list of hobbies: kayaking!

My new kayak, fully assembled.

Much like with drone flying, I got somewhat interested in kayaking while cooped up indoors in lockdown over the (southern-hemisphere) winter of 2020. I'm not sure why; my family doesn't have a particular history of watersports (other than owning a swimming pool as I grew up), and I'm not especially comfortable being in large bodies of water I can't see through (a pool is fine, the ocean not so much). Nor have I traditionally been very attracted by physical exercise, and yet there I was, imagining myself kayaking. Of course, much like with drone flying, I was a poor graduate student at the time without a car or other way to transport a kayak even if I'd had one, so it had to wait a few years until I'd moved back to Hilo. But back in September I took a chance and found myself in possession of a new foldable kayak from a California company called Oru Kayak.

The “foldable” part is important, since this isn't your ordinary solid-body kayak. It's more like a piece of origami, folding into a suitcase-sized pack when not in use, which makes storing it in a small apartment and transporting it in the trunk of my car much easier. Once down at the beach, ten minutes' work transforms it into the watertight seaworthy vessel seen above (and a similar amount of effort converts it back into its conveniently-portable box form).

Anyway, for a variety of reasons (including a two-week stint of back pain) it took me several weeks to get it in the water, but I finally managed it last week! I set off from the beach in Reeds Bay, a small sheltered bay within the broader Hilo Bay where I'd previously had the chance to go kayaking a few times at various picnics or get-togethers. 

View from a little cove in the bay.

For a first outing it was very pleasant – the sun was behind clouds and there was a light breeze over the water that kept things from becoming too hot – until I capsized on my way back from a small trip down the coast (fortunately no more than ~10 meters away). This necessitated swimming my flooded kayak to a conveniently nearby sandy shore and emptying as much water as I could, before re-embarking and making my way back to where I'd launched (and parked the car…). At least the water was a lovely temperature for an impromptu swim! It turned out to be a great learning experience, for lessons like “don't forget your life jacket,” and “attach the dry bag with your car keys securely to something.” (As a side note I know the dry bags I bought work, considering they all spent a good ten minutes in the drink with me!)

Everything drying out after a good rinsing off.

So that was my first foray with my new kayak. Overall I quite enjoyed it, and I look forward to future expeditions (and learning to keep my balance better). I've love to get a video of the process of converting the kayak between its box and boat forms, and maybe bring my GoPro with my on the water. It's interesting finally having some outdoor hobbies, and especially one involving physical exertion and exercise. I could certainly use it, so hopefully I'll have plenty of opportunities to take my boat out into the bay. (Maybe even up the mouth of the Wailuku river? I've seen kayakers do that.) But that's all for this post. A hui hou!

Checking out the aftermath of the 2022 Mauna Loa eruption

Earlier this month I got up before the Sun and drove up the Mauna Loa access road to where the lava crossed it in its eruption last year to try to get some drone photos. I originally tried back in March when the access road was first re-opened, only to have the wind blowing so hard when I arrived that I had to brace myself with every gust to keep from falling over. Needless to say, no drone flying happened that day!

This particular day, however, had almost perfect conditions, with a mere gentle breeze blowing and crystal clear skies overhead. I got to the end of the road within fifteen minutes of the Sun making an appearance in order to get those long early morning shadows for contrast, as various guides to photography suggest you should do. In retrospect, I'm not sure this worked in my favor in this particular case; with the Sun still low in the sky it meant serious lens flare if I took a photo looking anywhere close to the east, and the vast lava fields didn't really have much in the way of notable topography when seen from afar to make interesting shadows. Still, it was a good learning experience!

Cars for scale.

Here you can see the road, the flow covering it, and where it continues past the flow. There are actually two places the flow crossed the road, and this is the smaller of the two. I flew out along the road further to where the main overflow happened, and I could barely see to the other side of that one; I'd estimate it's at least three times wider.

Here's another shot from upslope, looking across to Maunakea. You can see how the flow really doesn't continue very far below the road there. Also this perspective (and the extreme low angle of Hawaiian shield volcanoes) makes this view a bit misleading: it looks like it's basically flat across to Maunakea, but in reality this point is over 2,500 feet (750 m) above the saddle between them!

While I was there, I tried flying my drone up the slope as far as I could, to see if I could crest the ridge and look over towards Kīlauea. DJI drones have a 500 meter (1,640 ft) limit on how high you can fly above your take-off point, which is specifically for flying up mountains, since legally you can't fly higher than 120 m/400 ft above the ground. I flew as far as I could, but even at 500 m above where I took off the ridge was still higher! At least there was this neat-looking puʻu near where I had to stop, so I took a photo of it (one case where I think the low angle of illumination helped).

Finally, with my last battery, I tried flying down the slope instead. Coincidentally, where the lava crossed the road turns out to be almost directly mauka (upslope) of NASA's “HI-SEAS Analog Habitat,” a small shelter where people come out and stay for months on end simulating missions to Mars. (Interestingly, I know from an article I saw that the place is equipped with the exact same hydroponic garden set-up that I have.) It wasn't too far to reach, and I was able to get the photo above. It's the white dome nestled next to the cool rift vent system in the foreground. (But I couldn't resist getting Maunakea and Haleakalā in the background too! I couldn't get much lower down as I'd have had to fly below my local horizon.)

Overall it was a pretty fun experience, and I'm glad I finally got around to making the trip again (and the dawn chill reminded me to be thankful for the balmy temperatures in Hilo!). I got some video footage too, so I'll have to see if there's enough interesting material to make a video out of. At some point I expect the road will be re-built over (or through) the flows to regain access to the Mauna Loa Observatories where I used to work, at which point I'll probably come up again to check it out. But for now this will serve as a snapshot in time of when the road was closed. A hui hou!

Life lived in one place

As of today it's been about two years since I moved back to Hawaii from Australia. Together with the nine years I spent in Hawaii before, I've now lived a little over eleven years here. That's now finally (and definitively) longer than the previous longest span of time I lived somewhere, in California (which was about nine and a half years). I was going to write about this last year when I surpassed that record, but I have once again managed to get off-by-one-year in my reckoning of anniversaries. (I suppose summer trips back home during college would've added several months to the California total, so waiting another year is playing it safe.) We'll see if I can manage to beat my record for continuously living in one place someday…though given past events I'll almost certainly remember it a year late if I do.

Anyway, that's about it for this post, just a little rumination on life. My family moved multiple times during my early childhood, so while I've lived in quite a number of places, I've only spent more than five years in just two, California and Hawaii. Hopefully, I'm finally at a point in life where I can minimize the number of future moves I have to make, as after experiencing multiple different climates in my life, I've discovered that “tropical island” suits me juuuust fine. We shall see what the future holds, I suppose. A hui hou!

A new drone!

So this post is actually several months late, for reasons I'll explain shortly. You see, back in May I got a new drone: the DJI Avata. I got it right before taking a trip to visit my family in California, and was excited to start sharing footage from it. One small problem: the video editor I use (KDEnlive) crashed every time I imported a clip into it. Not clips from my Mini 3 Pro, or GoPro 9, mind you, only the Avata.

I considered trying a different editor – maybe learning how to use Blender for video editing – but I'm busy, and lazy, and didn't get around to it. Fortunately, when I upgraded my computer from Debian 11 to 12 last month, something in amongst all the upgrades seems to have fixed the problem, allowing me to continue using what I know to make videos with Avata footage. Huzzah! And now that I can, have not just one, but two new videos!

Before that, though, a quick digression on types of drones, of which there are essentially two nowadays. They don't exactly have defined names (and all categories are blurry to some extent), but I've seen the name “flying cameras” to describe drones like my first one, the Mini 3 Pro. These are drones which are meant (generally speaking) for eye-in-the-sky photos or smooth cinematic video clips, up in air away from obstacles, since they're generally pretty delicate and a collision with almost anything will knock them out of the sky due to their unprotected propellers.

The other type is first-person view drones (or FPV). FPV drones project their camera feed directly on a headset instead of a controller, giving a pilot a more immersive experience which makes it somewhat easier to judge a drone's position and distance from obstacles. FPV drones generally focus on video rather than photos, and often from much closer to objects than the other type of drone. They're generally pretty hearty and damage resistant, and some (like the Avata) have propeller guards, allowing them to fly in close proximity to people and even potentially bounce off obstacles without getting knocked out of the air. (Though there are also ones without propeller guards.)

Since the Avata is so tough (as plenty of reviews on YouTube will attest), I wasn't too worried about letting my family fly it. There were some crashes, as expected (the Avata is good at getting you to take risks while flying it), and I thought splicing some of the resulting footage together could make for an amusing video. In this video, all the footage is from when my two brothers were flying (but while the crashing is amusing, lest you think they're terrible pilots I also included some non-crash footage to balance it out).

And to reassure that my drone is, indeed, still fine after those crashes, I have a second video. The footage for this was taken just a few weeks ago after discovering I could use it in my editor. This video was taken at Waiale Falls on the Wailuku river, not too far from where I live. The river's pretty low right now, so I thought I'd try flying up and down over the falls.

I wasn't originally planning to make a video out of this footage (hence why it's two clips put together rather than one long one), as my original motivation for taking it was trying out Gyroflow. Gyroflow is a program which can take GPS data embedded in a video file to stabilize it after it was taken, and a lot of people swear by it for video stabilization. It requires turning off any electronic image stabilization (such as I had on in the first video), and running the footage through Gyroflow after taking it, but I was impressed enough with the results that I decided to turn a few clips into the video above, and I can see why people speak so highly of it.

Anyway, I hope to be able to make and share some new types of videos with my Avata in future! One drawback it does have is that it's seriously loud. That's just par for the course for FPV drones since they need a lot of power, but it's not helped by the fact that it generally gets better footage when flown closer to the ground rather than up in the sky like my Mini 3 Pro. I dislike flying it around people, but it's a big island, so I'm sure I can find some nice secluded places to go flying.

And finally, while I know I've picked up two drones in less than a year since I started flying, I don't have plans to amass a large fleet or anything. I've got a representative of each of the two main categories of drone now, and while it's possible I might upgrade to newer models in future, they're both quite capable enough already that I don't see a big need to do so for a while. A hui hou!

Fun with drones in the California countryside

Back in May I took a short trip over Memorial Day weekend to visit family back in California. This was the first time I'd been back since I starting drone flying last July, so I was looking forward to seeing some familiar places from the air. My brother Joel also has a drone (in fact he started flying before I did), so together with my other brother Jonathan we had some fun going drone flying together. After a session out in the countryside, as we were getting ready to come home I had the idea of following our car from the air (while driving slowly, on a deserted country road, with multiple people for extra situational awareness).

I've never operated from a moving vehicle before, and it was a fun experience practicing my cinematic moves trying to track the car while also riding in it. The full video was a bit too long to be interesting, but I extracted a few nice shots and put them together into the shorter version below. I'm especially proud of the bit near the end where, as we went under I-505, I managed to transition on the fly (literally!) from following mostly behind the car to instead tracking it from straight above. (I even left the ugly jerky animation bits in there which I've cut out from the rest of the video, just to show how it worked.)

Anyway, just a calm video of a relaxing drive through the countryside. (I've left out the parts where I almost ran into power lines…twice. It was fine.) And thanks to some recent system updates, I might have something new in a similar vein to show off pretty soon. A hui hou!

Rereading Sherlock Holmes

Recently I reread the entire series of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, after I discovered they're all freely available online. My father read them to us as bedtime stories when I was growing up, and I still remembered various bits and pieces, but I'd forgotten enough in the meantime to enjoy them again.

Coming back to them with the experience of the intervening years has also been interesting in various ways. The best example I can think of comes from the short story “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” a murder mystery where the murdered man's dying words, according to his son who was the only witness, were something nonsensical about “a rat.” Elsewhere in the story it was mentioned that the victim made his money in Australia, and since I read the story over a few days I was standing there brushing my teeth one night when I suddenly thought, “Hang on, it's not going to turn out to be a reference to Ballarat, is it?”

Ballarat is a town in Victoria, a few hours west of Melbourne up in slightly rolling hills, and was a major location in the Victorian gold rush which began in 1851 and lasted around twenty years. I visited it twice while I was living in Melbourne, once as part of a graduate student workshop prior to the 2018 Astronomical Society of Australia meeting, and once with my family when they visited in 2019. Both times we visited a tourist attraction called Sovereign Hill, which has a period-accurate gold mining town with various sights and activities. I thought I'd written about it before, but apparently not; for whatever reason I didn't take many photos either time I was there there. This is one of the better ones, showing a panoramic view of the center of the area.

Sovereign Hill, from up on a mining-derrick-turned-viewing-platform.

It's a more interesting attraction than my lack of photos might make it seem; there are lots of buildings with things like authentic black-smithing exhibits, a tour underground through an old mine shaft, a sort of 19th-century offshoot (precursor?) of bowling that you can still play, and perhaps my personal favorite, a demonstration by a metallurgist where the presenter melted a bit of gold and poured it into an ingot while talking though the process. (The indoor lighting and brilliance of the molten gold combined to render my photo attempts not worth sharing, unfortunately, but it was pretty neat to watch.)

Anyway, I've got a bit off topic; I thought of Ballarat in conjunction with the story, and wouldn't you know it, it did turn out be a reference to the town (though I won't spoil the ending). Overall I found the stories to be as engaging as they were growing up, even apart from a few cases of Science Marches On in the century-plus in between. (One major case is in the plot of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” [regarded by fans and Doyle himself as one of the best stories, if not the best], which involves a snake; what it supposedly does makes no sense at all from the perspective of snake biology, though it undeniably remains a good story outside that.) It's nice to discover the stories are free to all to read, and if you haven't read them, I can recommend them; it's easy to see why they've enjoyed continuous popularity since they were first penned. A hui hou!