Seven Days Out & Counting

Making sure that all of the digital assistants and tools are current. Pull out the laptop and make sure the OS and programs have all done their updates. Make sure that it’s all synched up with Dropbox. My digital life travels with me.

Ditto for the iPhone and iPad. Do the iOS 10.3.3 upgrade on the phone. (Already running the beta version of iOS 11 on the iPad – living on the edge, but liking some of the new features.) Dump off onto the desktop any data I don’t necessarily need, free up space for video, pictures, and stuff I’ll need on the road.

Make sure I know where those solar eclipse glasses are.

Got a new, heavy-duty tripod and a self-timer/auto-trigger gadget for one of the good DSLRs. Ran into Woodland Hills Camera to get them – a fantastic place to get your camera gear and the best place in the country to get your telescope gear. Talk about a crowd up to their eyeballs in busy right now!

If anything goes according to plan, I’ll have one camera with the wide angle lens on that timer and a tripod, starting a couple minutes before totality, shooting constantly until a couple minutes after totality ends, while I’ll be shooting with the other camera and the telephoto lens. Plus the video cameras, which I’ll just have running, one looking at the sky, one zoomed in on the sun, and one at the surroundings and crowd. Plus my iPhone. Plus the forehead-mounted GoPro. (Super gluing it my head is easy – removing it is harder.)

Watching the weather, looking for trends. Still too far out to be too definite, we’ll wait for about Friday for that to start settling down. But today’s seven-day forecast for KC was much worse than yesterday’s eight-day forecast for KC. It will be what it will be – we’ll be mobile.

Seven days out and counting…