Drone

VIDEO: July 25-28 at the Lake – loads of drone beauty shots

Six cameras.  3 hours and 20 minutes of footage.  Edited down to 14 minutes of highlights, all to the music of Richie Kotzen.

Ducks, geese, seagulls, and one John Clauser cameo.

Enjoy.

REVIEW: Potensic ATOM SE GPS Drone

Disclaimer:  This review is from the perspective of a drone rookie.  I recently plunged into the hobby, and found it easy and inviting.  Here’s what I have learned in my three weeks as a drone pilot.

Buy the ATOM SE Drone on Amazon!

Potensic ATOM SE GPS Drone With 4K Single-Axis Camera

When I was a young kid, I would come to the beach and watch this older kid fly his remote control airplane over the lake.  He never landed it without crashing, with either major or minor damage.  I thought it would be cool to fly an RC plane like that, but it looked difficult and expensive.  Then, at some point decades later, my dad bought an indoor drone for me.  Just a toy.  Impossible to control, and it went flying off my wife’s head.  Nope, flying things isn’t the hobby for me.  Onto the next thing.

Then, one day after browsing Amazon, I decided to buy a real drone and see what difference it would make.  You only live once.  I chose the ATOM SE by Potensic, which came with two batteries, a remote, all the cables you need to charge and connect it, and a spare set of propellers (with the appropriate screwdriver).  It all came in a nice, padded travel case that holds everything.  It really is an all-in-one package.  You can buy accessories too, including spare batteries and a charger that can do three of them at once (plus the remote).  I also recommend picking up a landing pad, which helps keep your drone propellers out of the grass and/or sand.  The only thing you will need to provide separately is a micro SD card so you can record all that lovely 1080p video you’re going to capture.

My only complaint:  No paper manual.  All you get is a pdf file.  I gave it a read, but I learn by doing, so one Saturday morning when nobody was around, I took my drone over to the park.  Within minutes I was in the air.  (Of note:  This drone is light enough that it does not require a license, so you are good to go.)

It is intuitive and easy to fly.  You just plug your phone into the remote, to act as a screen.  Everything fits perfectly.  The camera is crisp and clear.  For those with a higher budget, the next model up has a 3-axis camera, but this one just moves up and down.  I found this plenty good enough.  The controller has two (removeable) joysticks (with a clever storage solution).  Everything is ergonomic.  The left stick controls altitude, and rotates the drone.  The right stick controls all movement forwards and backwards, and side to side.  It moves equally well in all four directions.

This drone is steady as a rock.  Even in a light breeze, it barely moves from where you want it.  I took it up to its maximum ceiling of 190 feet, and then right down again to land, and it had only moved about a foot.  There are automatic flying modes, such as one where it circles a waypoint (with camera always pointed at the center, a cool feature) and one where it follows you.  You can set a home point for it to automatically return to.  However, I am more comfortable being in control.  That shows you how easy this thing is to use, that I prefer manual controls to automatic.

It’s a fast little drone, and zips right over your head going over 13 mph.  It stops on a dime, and is extremely responsive.  It is also capable of beautiful, slow movements.  The resultant videos are always quality.

When I first bought this drone, a few people were asking me what the heck I would do with it?  Check out the videos below and tell me I’m not having fun!

This is an easy 5/5 stars and a solid gateway into a fun hobby.  You can get an ATOM SE Drone on Amazon.

Save at Capitol One Shopping, at this link.

VIDEO: Floating Like! Over the glassy waters of Lorne Beach (Lake Huron)

I finally had the courage to take the drone over the water. The sky was cloudy and the sunset invisible, but the blue-green waters shine brightly in this video. It’s really special and my best drone video to date.

Music: “Floating Like” by the Arkells, from the album Blink Twice.

Lake Huron at 190 feet! Lorne Beach in 4K – Kincardine/Tiverton Ontario – to the tune of “Billy Oxygen” by Helix

I’ve been out of action since Sunday, for reasons that will be shared soon. (The WordPress “community” didn’t even notice that I haven’t posted in four days for the first time since 2018, thanks guys, “community” is dead!)  Disasters and existential crises aside, the morning of Friday June 21 was perfect for flying a drone.  The drone was almost taken out by a seagull (1:20 of the video), all to the space-exploring soundtrack of “Billy Oxygen” by Helix.

While I try to get things back to “normal” here, enjoy the video.  I’ll be working on video editing all weekend.  The cottage video from last weekend will explain what happened.

 

PHOTO GALLERY: Vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and Cassettes! Mike and Aaron (and Aaron’s Dad) Return to Toronto 2024! (RST #1134-B)

RECORD STORE TALES #1134-B:  Vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and cassettes! Mike and Aaron (and Aaron’s Dad) Return to Toronto 2024!

 

To read about our Toronto trip, click here.

Here is the full photo gallery of every picture I took, hunting for records in Toronto.  For all our scores, you will have to watch the video at bottom.  Here are the still shots.  Enjoy!

(There’s one awesome photo of Aaron as the 9th Bosstone that he will not let me post!)

Thank you Aaron & Wayne for this awesome trip.

VIDEO: Vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and Cassettes! Mike and Aaron (and Aaron’s Dad) Return to Toronto 2024! (RST #1134)

RECORD STORE TALES #1134:  Vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and cassettes! Mike and Aaron (and Aaron’s Dad) Return to Toronto 2024!

 

For the first time since 2018, we returned to Toronto.

Aaron and his dad picked me up in Kitchener around 10:00 AM.  Of course, I made them pose for a drone photo before we left!  BMV in Toronto opened at noon, so we had plenty of time, and conversation was good.  The weather was cool, breezy and sunny.  It was the perfect day.  In fact it may have been the most perfect weather we ever had for a Toronto excursion.

I gifted Aaron a copy of Tim Durling’s Y&T book, Down For the Count, and Aaron gifted me two T-shirts, two CDs, and one Hot Wheels.  You will see these in the video that I spent the day filming.

“I’ve never seen somebody so excited for video editing!” remarked Aaron.  Of course!  When you had a day like we had, you can’t help but be eager to show it to the world!  I spent 2.5 editing it on Monday night.  The video tells the whole story.  We strolled the streets of Kensington Market, and we sifted through the aisles and aisles of CDs.  We only planned on hitting two stores:  our regulars, BMV and Sonic Boom.  We had a bonus stop at Paradisc Bound (first visit since 2012).  We scored at every single store!

“We’re going to do best at BMV,” predicted Aaron, who was correct, but we didn’t do poorly anywhere.  BMV won for prices and used CD selection.  Sonic Boom, unfortunately, has started pricing certain discs according to Discogs highs.  An old copy of Iron Maiden’s No Prayer for the Dying was jacked up because the cover art changed on the remastered editions.  An out of print Helix Get Up! EP was going for a ridiculous $40 on CD, even though all the songs are duplicated on the Power of Rock and Roll album.  Used cassettes, the kind that people used to dump in Thunder Bay landfills, were sometimes $10 each — same as they sold for when they were brand new.  A Razor album was $200 on used CD.  These are things they never jacked up back in 2018 when I was last there.  Something has changed, and it wasn’t cool.  Ultimately I did pay a lot of money for two used CDs at Sonic Boom.  Ultimately I decided I wanted them, even though I was paying way too much.

BMV was just awesome.  I scored eleven CDs and four records there, for a total of $107.  Some were things I was trying for the first time, others were albums I needed to help complete some collections of certain bands.  (One record was a gift that shall not be appearing here, for obvious reasons.)  We lost track of time easily.  I have no idea how long we were in BMV, but long enough to find what we wanted and then some.  Of note:  Their old 3-for$10 bin has changed.  It is now simple $2.99 each.  Perfect!

Aaron’s dad was exploring Toronto on his own, but was waiting for us when we met up for lunch at Pauper’s Pub.  There are so many great places to eat in our little area of Toronto, but we hit the Pauper’s Pub every single year.  That’s an endorsement.  Service was great and so was the food.  I had some blackened salmon, and unlike many places, it wasn’t dry and tasteless.  It was tender and loaded with flavourful roasted veggies.

We made our way through the sights and smells of Kensington on our way to Sonic Boom.  There, a giant Arkells display took up the front window.  The band played there two weeks prior, selling copies of their new 7″ single “Big Feelings”, which was sold out in one day and not in stock.  In fact they only had one Arkells left in stock, period.

We did well enough at Sonic Boom, though the store is becoming more…corporate?  “Like a bigger Sunrise Records,” said Aaron.  Lots of Reaction figures, Funko Pops, socks, and other assorted accessories.  We were not there for those things.  Reaction figures are $30 a pop now and prohibitively expensive, even though they had Phil Lynott, Cliff Burton, Lemmy, the Beastie Boys and more.  When we come to Toronto, we focus on the real deal:  the music.  I bought two “holy grail” items albeit overpriced, that I was hoping to find in Toronto but didn’t expect to.

I grabbed a Mango Pepsi to wet the whistle as we walked back to the car, meeting up with Aaron’s dad along the way.  He was a little bit behind so we had to kill 15 minutes.  Paradisc Bound was right there, and they had a record that I had been wanting since I first started in music retail back in 1994.  It was right there in front of me.  It was meant to be!  For $15, I added one final score to my tally.  The funny thing was, I had just been talking about this record with Jex Russell last week…and there it was.  Elvis truly is everywhere.  (That’s a clue, though you will see the record in the video.)

The drive home was a little stoppy-starty, as Toronto traffic is.  It took us one hour to get back up to Highway 401, and another hour back to Kitchener.  Aaron and his dad drove two more hours back to Owen Sound…and they wouldn’t let me pay for lunch!  Nice guys, those two.  Aaron had to work Monday morning, too!

If you want to see every single thing we scored, check out the video.  Can’t wait to return!