An Autumn walk at the foot of the Jura.
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An Autumn walk at the foot of the Jura. It was earlier today as I was doing the later shift.
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More Cowbell
Tomorrow I will be driving for twelve hours and I hope that I find it as relaxing as the last drive but I doubt that I will be that lucky. We will see how traffic and other conditions are.
I hope that I have a good two or three audiobooks to listen to, so that I may be entertained and focused. We will see.
My first Wehike Hike
Wehike is a website dedicated to find people with whom to hike. People can contribute hikes to wehike and then they or other people can organise events based on the hike information. This includes a GPX file and images. At the moment this site is in beta so they are looking for user feedback. At the moment they are based in Switzerland but they will be able to expand globally as people contribute hikes and other people participate in these hikes.
I liked yesterday’s hike because for once I was struggling to keep up with the group rather than the opposite. Usually I’m leading the group and stopping every so often to take pictures and because I’m not certain of which fork to take next. In this case they were waiting for me. This is in part due to the Via Ferrata de Saillon trip the day before. I’ll get back to being in front of the group and taking pictures soon.
This hike was interesting because winter is not over. Apparently twenty five centimetres of snow fell the day before. As a result one local recommended that we choose another route than the one we had planned on. We decided instead to see how the conditions were. As is the case when you go for hikes in Spring the damage from winter has not being cleared away. We found trees and branches on the paths and paths that would normally be clear to find required more instinct and orientation than average.
When you start heading up properly you walk straight up through a pasture and you get to a stone ruin. We stopped at the ruin for a snack/lunch. From this point you walk up steep paths near the field’s age with a river to your right until you get to a clearing. From the clearing you walk up some more and you get towards the vista below.
This is a view looking North at a steep climb up. If you continue to the Cap au Moine then you still have some climbing to do. Due to the deep snow and conditions this is the point at which we started heading back down. We walked along in 20-30 centimetre snow falling someone’s snowshoe traces and then headed down.
When the snow is deep and powdery like it was yesterday it’s really fun. You can run and jump down the hill. I would share the photos if I had the participants’ permission. Here’s a taste.
If you look at my GPS trace you will see how fast we were descending the slope. Eventually you get back to the grass and the tree line. When you get back down to the river you cross a stone bridge and to the right you see a waterfall pictured below.
I enjoyed this Wehike because we had the opportunity to navigate and find the route, we got to climb over trees and walk under branches. We also got to walk a steep hill in the snow and run and bound down a snowy slope without worrying. Snow is so much softer for the knees. I would like to redo the hike later in the season when the snow has gone.
Via Qik to Seesmic – Fire coverage
Fire coverage from Qik to Seesmic, interesting to see this particular video. It’s showing the power of the new media model.
The original footage.
The Insta360 Nano and Air – A climbing test
The Insta 360 Nano and Air are two affordable cameras. The first is designed to work with the new iPhone shape as well as a stand alone device. The Insta360 Air works only when it is plugged into an Android device. Both are good for specific uses.
Insta360 Air
The Insta360 Air requests a firmware update the first time you want to use it. This takes a few minutes and then the device uses the phone’s gyroscopes to keep the image stable. On the Via Ferrata I climbed this weekend I used the insta360 Air and Xperia Z5compact phone to take one or two landscape pictures. In these images you can look up at the cliff, look across at the landscape or look down at how far from the ground I am. This is a nice way of giving people a feel for what it is like to practice Via Ferrata. For the use of this system, it is good to have both hands free.
[vrview img=”https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/export_1496508048682-1.jpg” width=”500″ height=”500″ ]
Use the mouse/trackpad to rotate the image
Insta360 Nano
The Insta360 Nano is great because it has an SD card slot. It can be used as a stand-alone device. With the tripod mount and a selfie stick interesting images and video are possible. I tested it on a Tyrolean crossing. That’s where you attach your pulley to a cable and swing across over a waterfall. With a 360 camera you look anywhere you like. Image stabilisation for Tyrolean crossings is essential. When you transition from standing on firm ground to swinging across you move a lot. With image stabilisation this is avoided.
Post production
Post production with the Nano is quick and easy. Take the SD card, read it with your laptop and share. With the Insta360 Air you’re using the phone’s microSD card. You can batch edit and export to the insta360 community sites. I want to bulk export directly to Google photo from an Android device.
Conclusion
For the price of a Ricoh Theta S, you can have two 360 cameras. The Nano is ideal for monopod use and the Air is ideal for web streaming once you find the right phone mount for a professional monopod. With image stabilisation the camera keeps the image centred where the person with a VR headset looks. Without image stabilisation Nano footage would give people motion sickness.
A Homemade Electric Car – Youtube Video
On one side of the Channel, you have people like Colin Furze building fun machines that have the fatal flaw of having an internal combustion engine. On the other side of the Channel, you have people like Marc Gyver building an electric car with easily bought components. The video below shows the construction process without talking, and without music.
For about 2000 Euros, with bike parts, and the right skills, you can build your own cars. You have four powered bike wheels to power the car, two solar panels on the roof to generate 200W and a charge time of two and a half hours for a range of 20 kilometers and a top speed of 50 km/h. The range is perfect for when you need to do things within a short distance.
Within the video, you see quite a few shots of four people sitting in the car at once. I especially like this because it illustrates that young people are not limited to protests, skipping school and more. With the right skills, they build their own electric car to get around, even if it is on private property where it’s legal.
The project discussed above was uploaded seven months ago and since then he has made a car with a body, indicator lights, a windscreen and more. It looks like the cars you see in old films and cartoons. (Some of the cartoons are old). It is slowly getting closer to being road legal.
What I love about these homemade projects is that they show that self-driven cars still have a future. With electric cars, we can still do small journeys without ecologists being mad with us for combusting fossil fuels.
Electric Car Adventures
If we go off on a tangent of electric cars then you have electric cars like the one above. It’s designed so that you get the pleasure of driving a car, but without the internal combustion engine. There is an entirely new niche of projects to be thought up and programs like The Grand Tour and others could play with these devices.
For years I thought that Top Gear, Motortrend TV, and The Grand Tour were outdated and old fashioned, bound for the video archives of culture. With electric bike technology plenty of new opportunities are being created for electric cars, and in the process for our pleasure.
An interview with the creator.
I love this concept. I love the concept of young people, rather than owning conventional cars like my generation have used, owning or renting devices as we see in the video below. Too often we watch news and current affairs programs about environmentalists and the future and we think we’ll be trapped on trains and in buses with no scheduling freedom. With these machines we preserve the freedom that we’ve been used to for years, but with technology that is sustainable.
The future of exploration is on foot, by bike and for those who want to cover different distances by Swincar. Cycling and walking are great when you’re not in the middle of a heatwave like we’ve experienced for two or three summers. In a heatwave, vehicles like this are nicer. As you’re rolling over earth, grass or stones you’re cooler than if you were on the tarmac. Because you’re outside you have the breeze. I would like to play with one of these.
The Negative side
There are a few concerns with these machines. The first is that they still need to be parked somewhere and these take up as much space as a car. The second concern is that these vehicles can go anywhere but this doesn’t mean that they should. If they go on hiking paths, if they go on slopes, on skip pistes, and in other places then they’re going to come in conflict with other users of the same area.
We see a shot where these vehicles are beside horses, but if you have cycled near horses you’ll be told by the rider to make noise so that horses know you are there.
Off-Roading without the Carbon Footprint.
I enjoyed watching Dirt Every Day and programs like it but I never saw myself as ever trying offroading because of the carbon footprint. I’d rather hike, cycle or climb. I am tempted to play with the electric version. No need to worry about planting a forest after each outing.