Category Archives: Video

Inbound To CMA

A thousand thanks to the fellow CAF SoCal Staff member who took me up for a bit of flying today!!! (I generally don’t ID people without their permission if they’re not public figures, so we’ll leave him unnamed for now out of respect for his privacy.)

It had been a while since I had been up in a small plane and the day was just about perfect for a trip around Ventura County.

In this brief clip we’re inbound to CMA (Camarillo Airport) runway 26, over Thousand Oaks and just coming over the Canejo Grade on the 101 Freeway (lower left). You can see the coast off in the distance, with a number of the Channel Islands offshore in the haze. Most of the bright patches out in the distance aren’t lakes or other bodies of water – they’re fields covered in plastic.

The wavering black band in the middle is the propeller. This is a common effect seen in cell phone videos and propeller aircraft, the “bending” effect of the prop coming from the image on the cell phone’s camera CCD being recorded as a series of horizontal scans while the propeller is moving at high speed, being in a slightly different position as each line is scanned.

The runway is there in the haze almost directly in the center of the picture, to the left of the freeway winding through Camarillo, just beyond that somewhat “L-shaped” silver patch of strawberry fields.

After a long, hard week (one of way too many) it was wonderful to get out of the office and up in the air!

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Video

No Context For You – March 10th

No – it’s not the number of traffic accidents tomorrow which are caused as a side effect of Daylight Saving Time going into effect over most of the United States.

But that’s a good guess!

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Video

Cloud Activity

I absolutely love the time lapse photography functions built into the iPhone. Add it to a rare day in LA where there’s a bit of weather moving through…

Now if I could just figure out how to get ride of the reflections off the inside of the windows. (There’s a “bar” across the top of the image about a fifth of the way down – that’s the top of the file cabinet the camera was tilted up against.)

Still, nice clouds. Next maybe some lightning? Please?

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Filed under Video, Weather

No Context For You – February 26th

Still here. Well, not here, but here.

Has anyone ever worked as a lifeguard? I’m seeing a meme going around on Twitter and FaceBook which says that a key rule (the first rule?) of being a lifeguard is to always remember that you have to save yourself in order to save anyone else.

It sounds kitschy and cliched, but it has enough of a ring of truth to it to make me wonder.

Any past or present Wendy Peffercorn types who can either confirm or deny?

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Filed under Photography, Video

Noisy Visitor (Video)

Yesterday we had a Navy/Marine T-45 visiting. I mentioned it was noisy. Mind you, some of our WWII planes can get a bit loud, but this is a whole new level.

I set my phone on the ground about twenty feet behind the jet. Note the spray of debris at the 0:30 mark.

Five minutes or so later the jet was waiting for clearance to take off. While they were waiting, someone in a Cessna 172 pulled up behind them to wait their turn next, a position that I thought might be ill advised. You’ll see after the cut, about four minutes later in real time (there were a lot of other planes landing), someone in the tower must have suggested a different course of action.

I love the sound of Jet-A being turned into noise!

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Video

No Context For You – February 20th

Still here.

Three of the Labours of Hercules complete (more or less). More to start working on tomorrow.

The problem, unlike running a marathon, is that I’m not sure where the finish line is, how far away, or even if there *IS* a finish line.

That makes it all a bit more…challenging.

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Filed under CAF, Photography, Video

No Context For You – February 15th (Video)

Shadows

And Haydn’s Piano Concerton In D Major, apparently.

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Filed under Music, Video

Howling – The Video

Mondays are high on suckage. This morning, due a power outage overnight caused by the winds, the parking garage gate at work was working sporadically.

Of course, one of the sporads happened when I pulled up. Card was read, successful beep sound heard, reflexively started to pull forward – only to quickly realize that the gate hadn’t gone up. Stop, but now have to back up a couple of feet to reach the card reader again. Scan card again. Still no working gate. Punch the button to take a ticket. Nothing. Cars starting to honk behind me. (Only one gate into the stupid garage – lousy design!) Try the card again. Nada. Try the ticket thing again. Zippo. Now have probably a dozen cars behind me, impatient. One of the attendants sticks his head out to see what the honking’s about, pushes a button, the gate lifts. I stomp on the gas.

STILL IN REVERSE!

I still have good reflexes, apparently. No damage, but it was close.

With that disaster narrowly averted, here’s the video of yesterday’s winds that wouldn’t upload to save my life yesterday. (I’ve got a YouTube channel, let’s use it!)

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Filed under Los Angeles, Video, Weather

Howling

As I said last night –

[this is where the video would go if it weren’t taking over ten minutes to load tonight when I really need to get to sleep]

A good day to invest in wind chimes and debris cleanup companies.

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Filed under Video, Weather

Do Yourself A Big Favor Today

Watch this video:

I do so dearly love Disturbed version of this song, and I’ve raved about their original video, which is spectacular. But their music and the accompanying video of our planet from space – I could just wallow in that combination of sounds and sights for hours.

Thank you, NASA Johnson! And Disturbed! And Paul Simon!

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Filed under Music, Space, Video