Hex, Quad, or Octo? Which is right for business? (Part Two)

Guest post from Douglas Spotted Eagle

Last week I posted an article identifying hex copters and octocopters being the appropriate stable/safe for the working UAS operator/pilot.

After a few emails from perturbed quad pilots, I was inspired to put my money where my pen is and it just so happened that Las Vegas was hit with record-breaking windsthat downed powerlines, blacked-out casinos, and closed roads.

It seemed perfect for UAS test flights (and a whole lot less expensive than a horizontal wind tunnel)!

With a companion, we put three UAS systems into the air; two very popular quads (one a professional model, the other a pro-sumer model), and one enterprise-grade vehicle.

The results of the “no-hands-on-ground-station” speak for themselves.

Feel free to share.

Yes, the camera was OK after its fall. 🙂

Slaves to ‘The Box’

I just read a post from a colleague that personally, I found a little sad. It certainly described the death of something, Not a person or even an animal or an ideal.

I am not even sure if there is a word for it to be frank.

What it described was the death of what appears to be the simple act of going anywhere to do anything unless there is a computer screen there of some description. In this case, the simple act of going to the footy, live. There was much rejoicing that the seat at this particular event had its own personal TV monitor built in so you could see the action while you – ah – watched it.

I mean, the whole thing can be seen in glorious 3D and panorama view 50 meters in front of you in a way that no bunch of wires, glass and pixels can ever mimic, so why.

In my opinion, if you need a TV screen at a live event, you may as well stay at home at watch it on Foxtel or Freeview. If you want to be able to see action replays and the like, then set the DVD recorder or PVR so you can watch those bits later when home from the match, race or whatever.

Surely you go to the live event to not just see it, but to soak up the atmosphere and be a part of the whole thing? Not to sit there and be glued to yet another screen, probably while tweeting the results of the match on a blow-by-blow basis.

It is truly sad when the artificial version of something is deemed to be more desirable than the real thing don’t you think?

Of supermarkets and meat trays

Meat Tray

If there’s one thing that I don’t understand its people at the meat fridge in the supermarket.

They stand there with their trolleys full of whatever else they bought and look over the meat trays to try and decide what they want. On occasion they will pick one up, study it intensely, turn it over, turn it back, have another look at it and then put back on the shelf.

And then grab another one of exactly the same cut, say forequarter chops, and perform the same ritual. In the meantime you are standing there patiently trying to get to the Lamb Shanks but can’t get through because there they’re usually with a couple of kids and a full trolley blocking off around 20 metres of the meat fridge.

So I ask, what exactly are they doing? Are they expecting it to suddenly grow four legs and go Baaa!? Or does it take extra time to ascertain the value for money of one package compared to another?

Or are they just simply trying to convince themselves to actually buy it?

Either way it’s a real pain. Maybe this is why butchers really exist? The meat there is better (usually) anyway.

Happy Holidays, American Culture and oddly spelt words.

Well it is Christmas Day 2012 and I am home alone. I am not complaining you understand; this is by choice.

But two things happened this morning which make me a little depressed, although that is not quite the right word. The first is that there has been another shooting in the US. Not a mass one thankfully (what is a “mass” anyway?) but one that is particularly nasty as two fire-fighters were lured to a fire to be deliberately shot. The gunman, like a coward, then topped himself.

The second is a little closer to home. A website I frequent in my capacity as a tech journalist and commentator – an Australian website I stress – has the headline “Happy Holidays”.

This one seemingly minor thing shows the cultural cringe we have en masse as Australians. “Oh, oh, the Americans say ‘Happy Holidays’ to make sure no one minority can be offended, so we had better follow suite’, seems to the mantra. When are we going to stop being hell bent on following the Americans into becoming a faux 52nd state?

I am not against the American people personally. I have some top US friends, but the overall culture is not something I aspire to. It is a lazy and scary culture in the main it appears to me.

Take for example the alternate spelling of words such as “tyre” and “aeroplane” to “tire” and “airplane” (God forbid the ABC actually used the word “airplane” the other day). Was the spelling changed simply as folk couldn’t get their head around using “weird letters”? Is the same reason the “u” has been dropped in “favour” and “behaviour” as well?

And now this spelling has started to creep into the Aussie Lingua Franca, due in part I am guessing to the prevalence of US TV, most of it unwatchable to me at least. Even the local TV stations are in on act with Channel 10 referring to “Truckers” in an Australian show about “truckies”. Every truck driver in Australia I have ever known has called himself / herself a “truckie”.

“It will give more appeal to the overseas markets” I am told. You mean America then? If so, why wasn’t Crocodile Dundee Called Alligator Dundee?

I have friends who complain their kids now refer to “frosting” not icing, “cookies” instead of “biscuits”, and “soda” for “soft/cool drink” and one even had to slap down – metaphorically – a tendency towards “Mom” from her toddler for goodness sake.

Sure language should evolve, but this is not evolution, it is simply slavishly being usurped and almost indoctrinated by a culture that seems hell bent on destroying itself.

Did you read today that in two days, more bullets were purchased by US citizens than they spent normally in 2 YEARS! This is a population that has police, state troopers, an army, navy, airforce, marines and National Guard. Not to mention the FBI and CIA and Navy Seals. And they STILL need protection?

Where did it all start? I am guessing, not being a specialist in US history, that it was the old romantic ideal of the Wild West. I remember reading a book as a kid where it was stated that if there really was the same number of people shot in the Wild West as seen in all the TV shows, movies and so on, there would be no-one left in the US!

It seems that the population is determined to make this happen though. I saw photos the other day courtesy of CNN where they interviewed “average” US folk and displayed their weapons. It was truly scary. As someone said if they opened the front door and saw that on the lounge room wall, they’d get back in the taxi and never come back.

It wasn’t just a revolver or two, but extreme weapons and lots of them in single households with Mom and Pop and two kids. Enough in some cases to take on a small European country all by themselves and their neighbours can come and do the mopping up. Even the kids of around 8 or 9 were wielding automatic high velocity weapons.

“Makes me feel safe”, they say. “Just protecting mah home”. And so on. Bloody hell, I can do all that with Budweiser the Dog. Of course the fear is the bad guy trying to break in or whatever has a bigger gun than you, hence they get bigger and more powerful weapons to counter this belief. The fact the poor sod probably is armed with a baseball bat and is just a petty thief never occurs so “Ka – boom’! Cop that sucker”.

There is no escaping it; think back on every US cop show whether it be one of the investigative ones or those at “street level”. There is ALWAYS at least one gun shot. I was watching the UK show “Hustle” the other night with the fantastic Robert Vaughan. Ostensibly the show is about con artists and the plots are brilliant in their detail. In this one, they are called on by the Met (London Police) to trap a bent copper which they do brilliantly. At the conclusion, the bent detective almost says admiringly, “I’m nicked”. In a US version I can almost see him whip out handgun and snarl “you’ll never take me alive and start blasting away before blowing his own head off”. Subtle, not.

As I said, it’s all in the culture.

Just look at the vehicle names of the new cars you can buy in the US. Crossfire, Avenger, Patriot, Avenger, Enclave, Nitro and so on. What does this tell you? It tells me that the Marketers and Advertising bods know exactly what the prevailing mood and hype is and is tapping in mercilessly.

It’s the same with films. How many bloody war films have to be made? Is it to keep the US public (and others similarly afflicted) on the verge of the paranoia “they are all out to get us”?”

In the US my research tells me, there were over 12,500 homicide deaths by gunshot wound (and frighteningly over 17,999 suicides by gunfire!) in 2007. Of course, that August body the NRA says that a) guns don’t kill, people do and b) the 2^nd amendment to the constitution gives us the right to bear arms. What about all the poor bastards who have been shot and wounded or killed? Don’t they have a higher right, the right to live?

I’ve been to the US twice taking in Las Vegas (forgettable and ugly), LA (forgettable and polluted) and Chicago which was bloody cold and frozen, but apart from the pointed out “no go” zones that I avoided, I quite enjoyed my three days there.

I am told by those in the know that these are probably the worst examples of the US and not to judge the country and the population based on these experiences.

Truth be known, I don’t want to really go back to find out. The prospect frightens me as in the Land of the Free that is exactly what I would not be, under constant examination as a) a foreigner and b) a journalist. I wouldn’t be surprised if this blog puts me on a black list, if forgetting to tell Customs and Immigration you are a journo for New Idea can get you deported for life! True, it has. (No not me).

Seriously it is easier to get through the same authorities in Dubai and feel much safer, un-X-rayed, and un-body searched and know that your luggage will be intact. And still feel safe.

I dread this part of the US culture leaks to Australia and beyond. With the recent shootings in Sydney and these become the norm as against the extraordinary I fear it has.

We fear the enemy but sadly, the enemy is us.

Have a safe and prosperous 2013! No really

Oh and if you want to know what I do day-by-day aside from posts like this, visit Auscam Online at www.auscamonline.com. Better still, subscribe to the magazine!

Why small magazines are dying

I have heard many excuses as to why the small publisher is not surviving in this all digital age. The majority will simply say they haven’t followed the times and realized that paper is dead and pixels are the way to go.

A recent survey conducted by Auscam magazine (which is my publication) showed that the split of people who like paper v digital is a 50-50 split; there is a proviso there though from many that they like digital for the convenience on a tablet but still enjoy sitting down to a good read with a paper magazine and a cup of coffee or glass of wine on a sunny afternoon. Other places they liked to read I’ll leave to the imagination.

I am of the opinion though, there are two other reasons that small (and even larger) publishers fail. The first is close to my heart in the sense that as well as being a journalist for a long, long time over a number of disciplines (tech, IT, motorsport, local newspaper, radio and TV) I also have a career in sales to fall back on whenever necessary. If I say so myself, I was rather successful at it. But today, it seems that where in the past people would boast they could sell iron bars to termites, today, I am sure most couldn’t give a crucifix to a nun. Let alone sell it.

It’s all too hard. The internet has spooked people. But that is a line I have spruiked before here so I’ll get onto the second.

And that is the way we are paid by the media buying agencies. I have today spent hours fighting one of these agencies to get paid for an advertising order placed in August and published in September. It is now nearly December and after being told solemnly that all was in hand two weeks ago, I was today told that they had no record of the invoice. Once that was resubmitted, they then queried the amount. I sent them a copy of THEIR order. They then queried their commission (which had never come up before as I don’t offer it). This was sorted. Then they queried the GST. Also sorted.

Now I am told I’ll be paid on or around December 15th.

So let me see.

• To get the business from MY client, I have to deal with a media buying agency
• I have to accept THEIR payment terms, even though I am the one offering credit. My terms don’t count. (Mine is 14 days theirs is 45 days AFTER end of month of publication)
• THEY lose the invoice
• THEY drag 10% off me despite I have the initial order from the client and did all the selling work
• THEIR accounting system screws up meaning I have to potentially wait another 30 days for payment

Now if this was a one off, I wouldn’t have too much room to complain. But it is a regular. And what this does is totally screw up cash flow. And means that you know, ordinary stuff cannot get paid. Like printers, car rego, insurance, rent, food bills, medical prescriptions and of course those that contract to the magazine as writers, designers and so forth.

Eventually, it all catches up and you simply cannot go on. I am not quite there yet, and don’t intend to be. But I am pissed off having to continually feed the problem down the line and tell my creditors “I can’t pay at the moment” all because some bloody multi national seems to take a perverse delight in screwing people like me to the wall.

No business can run on a 120 day cash flow cycle and nor should they have to.

For a small publisher, it’s almost death. And why that segment of the industry is collapsing. People still want magazines; its the periphery industry that is stopping them getting them. Not us.

Like Coca Cola? In larger doses there may be a problem as I found.

Yesterday when I awoke, I felt terrible. I had a headache, my stomach felt like a 44 gallon drum, I ached all over and even I am told, had the shakes a tad.

Aha, a hangover you say immediately with little or no sympathy.

Err. No. Not possible.

As the day wore on, I began to feel worse and worse, almost but not quite dry retching, my back, already sore from sciatica was on fire and I couldn’t trust my stomach to eat. I had taken my prescription reflux tablets, some stomach calming Buscopan (over the counter() and even a top up of an anti anxiety drug I have called Indorel but to little avail.

That night was worse. I stayed up until 12:30am to watch Cadel Evans start the time trial and then literally crawled to the bedroom. It was very cold, but for five hours I tossed and turned, alternating between hot sweats and cold shivers before falling into the maddest sort of sleep I can ever remember.

It seemed to occur in 5 minute bursts; I distinctly remember dreaming of things being thrown at me in a sort of 3D mode, and twice it felt like I dropped onto the bed from a small height with a thud.

Every time I woke up I moved position to try and find a cold part of the sheet – bearing in mind it was probably about 3 degrees and raining outside. Over the the next 6 hours I had these mini dreams – hallucinations almost – varying from buying cans of “Dark” (whatever that is) to setting up a roasting spit in a servo. In one I renamed Black Caviar and in another raced o model car and I was the driver in the driver’s seat! And very tiny.

Finally I must have fallen into a deeper sleep as I woke at midday, feeling much, much better. Although decidely groggy from lack of sleep. And in that state, I realised what the problem had been. and since confirmed.

Before you ask, I have NEVER taken any sort of hallucinogenic drucg, smoked dope (can’t stand the smell) or come close to breaking the law in this regard.

I don’t have much sugar intake thoiugh with no sweet tooth and usually only one coffee a day in the morning. Over the previous 2 days, due to an inclusion in a home delivery pizza order, I had ingested nearly 3 litres of Coca Cola – the real stuff. I don’t drink Coke generally as I am not a fan, but it was there and saved buying anything else over a weekend such as dry ginger ale or lemon lime and bitters.

So all that sugar and caffeine had screwed up a metabolism that wasn’t ready for it it seems, and I can attest it was NOT pleasant. Hopefully a decent sleep tonight and lots of water will flush the stuff out of me.

OMG, I am sooooo excited I just wet my pants a little”

Twitter drives me nuts.

Oh yes I accept it has its place and is indeed useful (eg the Libyan and Egyptian riots), and ABCs Q&A works it beautifully,  but why do people think that inane information is of any interest to the masses.

And yes I do use Twitter to broadcast links to my Blogs, Websites and more. But not details of my life minute by minute.

Just today, I have seen a photo of a cup of tea that someone thought I needed to know she was having. Another just said ‘it’s bedtime’. Fine just go to bed. Not my business. And yet another advises me how many calories have been burned over the last 20 minutes.

Think about it. These people take the time to thumb this information into their mobile phones or iPads and send it, costing them time they’ll never get back, and telecom fees that are exorbitant. All for what? 1 second of fame?

Or are these people so shallow and insecure, they need us to know what they are doing every second of every day to get their jollies?

“I’m eating a hamburger. Nom Nom.”

“Time to get blonded”

“Must. Resist. Temptation”.

And these are just a few of the non-event comments thrown out daily. In most cases, the rest of us have NO frickin’ idea what the hell they are talking about!

Just sit down in your favourite shopping centre or mall (as in the proper term mall and not the US ‘shopping mall’ ) and watch passers-by. We have become a nation of head down, staring at a mobile phone and thumbing and reading constant streams of nonsense zombies as we shuffle around mindlessly.

And there are those that say “I’ll DIE without my iPhone”. Toughen up princess, you’d get over it. Or am I wrong here and some insidious disease has overtaken our young and not so young?

It’s perplexing. And what is even weirder is that the people I mainly interact with are youngish, urban professionals in either the journalist or PR industry who are paid to write and be lucid and fluid with words.

So a TWEET such as ‘OMG, I am sooooo excited I just wet my pants a little” simply mystifies me…. Especially as he/she has added their name to it. Media professionals have been fired or reprimanded for less. So is it these sorts of TWEETS are accepted now as part of the culture? From an industry who is supposed to, and is proud of, educating us?

ZOMG I. Hope. Not. LOL….

Are you wasting money on applications – phone and ‘net based? Reality check time.

I remember very vividly the early days of MSDOS and the final cohesion of a bunch of disparate operating systems (except for Apple) into a unified “standard”. The programs that had caused the explosion of the PC industry either died or survived based on their switch from whatever they were developed on, to this new OS.

Some made it and many, many did not. One of my favourites was filePro16 that started on the Tandy TRSDOS and Xenix platforms; it was ported to MSDOS and did quite well and the UNIX version still exists. For some reason, The Small Computer Computer never felt the need to go Windows or Mac, much to I consider their loss. I loved this program as I could use it’s 4GL language ‘behind the scenes’ to develop almost any standalone application I wanted. I once even did a Lotto predict system based on past number occurrences, and it printed graphs on an NEC Pinwriter dot matrix printer using CHR$ codes for graphics blocks!

dBase II -> III – IV survived too – for a while – until others usurped including KnowledgeMan (which I also liked), Borland Paradox, Lotus Approach and ultimately Microsft Access while the  original Visicalc spreadsheet was overtaken first by Lotus 1-2-3 and then Multiplan. Microsoft Word wiped out Multimate, WordPerfect, Lotus AMI Pro and of course Wordstar. The excellent and easy to use PFS series was never to be seen again and the same fate applied many other brilliant tools that simply couldn’t match the Microsoft marketing dollar, and the stroke of genius employed by Australia’s own Daniel Petre that was Microsoft Office.

What did fascinate me at the time was the birth of the ‘integrated package’ in the guise of Lotus Symphony, Open Access, Framework and Visi-On (for starters). They promised a single application that allowed all the major functionality of at least word processor, spreadsheet and database, but added the mouth-watering ability of sharing data without the need to export and import information between applications.

While the idea was sheer genius, and I had huge fun playing with and reviewing these applications for PCUser mag back in the 80s – I became a bit of a specialist – the concept never really took off. Some interactions needed knowledge of macro processing (also huge fun) and despite the eye candy of the graphing and charting capabilities (anyone remember Boeing Graph? That was a CRACKER that integrated with filePro and Scripsit WP), eventually the introduction of Windows sent these applications to the scrap heap.

I don’t know if Ashton-Tate (dbase and Framework) even exists anymore. Lotus is an IBM company that seems to be sulking behind a door somewhere despite still having the very best personal info manager in ‘Organiser’ – yes it still exists – and Borland? Who knows? I must check one day.

Where am I going with this?

The internet has spawned a similar situation in an odd sort of way, except that integrated applications are now developed by independent vendors that share an API – a programming interface allowing data to be exchanged and shared between them. Think Facebook and Twitter talking to each other, or Outlook and Evernote for starters.

Social media seems to be the catalyst for this; in many ways I think it is a top idea, but I do have reservations about a) security of this shared data and b) the frustration many may get as it is not always as easy as it seems to make all these apps work together.

More importantly though, when the original integrated applications came out such as Lotus Symphony, they had price tags of over A$1000 – a lot of money in the 80s. Today many are free (there is a warning about security there alone so check the User Agreements) or around the $30 – $50 mark.

So the question arises. Do you really need it? I wonder how many tens of thousands of applications in this price range have been installed and discarded over the last 18 months.

And let’s not ask the same question of phones!

‘Hey Dad’. Funny Aussie TV show. ‘Hey Mom’. American inflitration?

I have noticed something of late and I am curious.

As journalists/writers/commentators, I consider we are at the frontline of those of us considering ourselves wordsmiths. To a large degree, therefore, I believe, this makes us sort of custodians of the English language – as per the Oxford Dictionary and the Macquarie equivalent. I do accept that we are also, at times, the harbinger of change as well as the reporters of it. Watergate is the best example I can think of and since that particularly nasty little situation, every journalist at some time or another has probably labelled something “blah-gate”.

Sad but true.

But what concerns me is the influence into the lexicon of American-isms. Just lately I have seen references in journo’s writings to ‘humor’ as against ‘humour’, ‘favorite’ versus ‘favourite’. And even ‘tire’ instead of ‘’tyre’.

(Interestingly, I had an email from a US journo the other night that used the word ‘favor’ in it, and he had actually placed ‘favour’ in parentheses directly after this as if I needed a translation!)

Has this phenomenon been caused by a need to shorten words due to SMS or Twitter? Do journalists have their word processor dictionaries set to ‘US English’ instead of ‘Australian English’ or ‘UK English’? If so why? Or has it been decided that the ‘American way’ is the way forward? I would hate to lose Australian journalistic identity based on what amounts to US TV and movie influence.

Many examples abound with liberal sprinklings of ‘cookie’, ‘trunk’, ‘hood’, ‘gas’, ‘sidewalk’ and ‘crosswalk’ immediately springing to mind.

What I find interesting is that we are fast (seemingly) to let Americanisms infiltrate our language/linguistics/lexicon as are many other countries, but the US population doesn’t reciprocate to my knowledge. I have been to the US a number of times and while I have been pressed to say ‘G’day’ to hoots of laughter or ‘You call that a knife?’ for instant amusement, (making me feel like some parrot on display in a zoo), I don’t think I have ever heard a US person say ‘bonzer’, ‘ripper’, ‘bewdy’, ‘sanger’, ‘boozer’, ‘bloke’ or even ‘mate’ as part of normal language – other than to attempt to be “in” at the time.

I wonder why?

I remember many years ago watching an episode of Disney on TV (it was always on a Sunday at 6:30pm) that was from one of the “worlds” and it entailed the story of Tom Sawyer (or it may have been Huckleberry Finn, this was 45 years ago or so). In the dialogue (there’s two more, ‘dialog and analog’), Tom, or it may be Huck, say to an unknown person, “Do you speak American?” My Dad almost went apoplectic.

He wasn’t anti-American – well no more than WW II may have affected UK soldiers in certain areas. He in fact loved things such as Westside Story, South Pacific, the Boston Pops and more, but like me, felt that self-identity was important and shouldn’t be usurped.

So I ask? Are we over influenced and are heading down this path?

I did hear a kiddliewink (about 8 yo) the other day in a broad what would be called ‘Westies accent’ in Sydney, refer to ‘his Mom’ to a friend. I have yet to hear a ‘Pop’ thankfully, other than referencing a grandfather.

How individuals discuss, enunciate, talk or argue is their business of course. But should we as journalists/writers/commentators push any influence on to our readers? Or are we just being lazy, accepting what our WP spellchecker is saying or falling into the SMS/TXTing trap to minimise the number of characters we use?

Or is it simply progress? I’d value and love your opinion on this.

Are journalism photography standards slipping?

Something of late has been disturbing me. As an ex-photojournalist my Dad would turn in his grave if he knew.

It’s the smartphone.

Not the fact of the phone itself; I admit I own one and my current Motorola does all I want of it – well mostly – and it does its primary focus quite happily. Making and taking calls. I can count the photos I have taken with one hand.

No I mean the overuse of the smartphone for photography, and in particular, photography used to illustrate pieces bashed out by journalists for public consumption via websites. They look awful, often have the shakes, lousy depth of field, shocking low light capability, inferior colour and are often out of focus.

Well yes I know that pretty much sums up the quality of imagery of any smartphone ever made (barring the Nokia N8 which is really a camera with a phone attached) but what I question is why anyone would allow their name to be placed on a photo taken by one for professional use? Is this the very best they can do? If they are “on assignment”, isn’t there a decent camera in the office bought for this very purpose they can grab, or don’t they possess their own?

I just don’t understand how anyone can allow second rate work to be published. Or even how editors allow it. I certainly wouldn’t, and I don’t know of any newspapers or magazine that would either, unless it was the only shot in existence of a particularly newsworthy event. So why is it OK for the web? Is it supposed to be in some way connected to the gritty almost underground way of the web? If so, it doesn’t work for me. I’d like to be able to see the detail of any pictures.

Or are there not the skills to operate a decent camera? If that is the case, surely this means a person doesn’t have all the tools they need to do the job. Somewhat like a carpenter that can’t measure or a truck driver with only a moped licence.

The only other explanation I can think of is that striving for the best is no longer the aim or the ambition, and “it’ll do” is just fine thank you very much. Hey they are getting it free so why should I stress?

If that’s the case, it is a very sad pointer to the state of our industry, so I really hope it’s not true.