Day Three of ORCA in Switzerland

Byrichard

On Day Three of ORCA in Switzerland, I have decided to deactivate my account. In the last three days, I have been bullied by two people, a third tried to discredit me and a fourth reported a link for spam. As a result of these unpleasant experiences, I have deactivated my Facebook account.


Facebook used to be a network for connecting us to university friends as students, and professional colleagues in the world of work. Ever since Zynga games were allowed Facebook has been decreasingly about connecting with people, and more about compulsively checking for updates from friends that never come.


In theory, now is the time to be more active on Facebook, and I was until a few minutes ago. When I got that notification I finally had the motivation to deactivate, not delete my Facebook account.


During COVID19 the most important thing for us is to keep our mental health. As Facebook is not contributing to me feeling happier it is worth taking a step back.


“Oh, but your friends won’t be able to keep up to date with what you’re doing without facebook.”


I am still on Twitter, Linkedin, Telegram, Whatsapp and other platforms. Facebook is only a drop in the ocean. If people miss my presence on Facebook they can find me on other platforms.


We will see how long I stay away from Facebook. It might be half a day.


[Update 6:30pm PT: Facebook also warned that due to it sending its moderators home and relying more on artificial intelligence to screen for abuse, it could make “more mistakes”. At roughly 4pm today, a bug in Facebook’s spam filter caused a wide array of innocent links, including some about coronavirus, to be blocked from the News Feed. That led some to wrongly assume Facebook was purposefully censoring their posts. Facebook tells TechCrunch it’s investigating the problem.”]


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Day Two of ORCA in Switzerland

Day Two of ORCA in Switzerland

Byrichard

We are in ORCA day two in Switzerland and I crashed the drone. I also avoided the shops because of the behaviour I witnessed yesterday.


The weather is excellent at the moment. Sunny, warm, and without wind. These are perfect conditions for drone flying so I thought I’d take advantage. I forgot to put an SD card in the drone so instead of flying and trying to get video I put it in sports mode. I played in the field, flying forwards, backwards, going up, down and more. Eventually, I flew towards the trees and decided that I would get the drone to fly in between trees as I have done in the past.


Previously I put the drone back into normal mode and this time I forgot so the drone hit something and “bounced”. I’ve seen this type of bounce before so I decided to put full throttle upwards. Instead of flying up and clearing the branches it got unstuck and fell to the ground. I thought that it would fall through and hit a few branches and land in the mud. The issue is that the drone was further forward than I thought and it fell through the branches and hit an asphalt road. This broke the rear right arm and loosened that motor. Other than that the battery fell off.


Some people fly their drone and crash during their first flight, or after ten flights. It took 166 flights before I had a serious crash with this drone. Before this crash, I had knicked the propellers on branches or other branches but nothing serious. If it had been above the forest floor it would have been fine. The fall was slowed down the whole way. Mud would have saved the drone.


The break is clean so I can try fixing it with the right kind of glue. I also need to find a way to get the affected motor back into its housing. The second option is to buy the plastic component that houses all the engines.


We will see if I find a way to resolve this issue.