http://crschmidt.net/blog Ramblings of a GIS Hacker Fri, 18 May 2018 11:58:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en While at the park flying the other day, one of the swarm of kids who came up to me was super interested in looking at the drone and asking how it worked. This isn't new: kids love the drones, though this kid was one of the hyper-enthusiastic bent rather than ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/750/what-makes-a-nerd-passion/ If you ever see a video, and you're like "Why is this watch next recommendation from YouTube so crappy?!", then you should fill out this form for bad watch next suggestions. If you ever see a video, and you're like "Holy crap, it's like I'm watching a dithered display from 2002 ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/747/some-youtube-related-forms/ So, I have a popular YouTube video. (It's not that popular anymore, but it was once.) YouTube recommended I watch a video: Drone Crash, Fail & Win Compilation 2015, Part 3/3 (watch in 1080p). So, I watched it, and was somewhat surprised to see a video I recognized in it: mine. Now, this ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/744/hawk-vs-drone-fair-use-and-copyright/ The FAA's ability to enforce civil penalties against safe flyers of UAV craft has not yet been tested in court, but don't take this to mean that flying drones commercially is without risks: even in cases where the FAA isn't assessing fines, handling the legal side of an FAA investigation ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/738/faa-enforcement-could-cost-you/ One kind of sad thing about learning new things about software while working for Google: It is unlikely anything that you learn about specific tools outside of Google will be relevant to the tools you use for work inside, and vice versa. In general, Google has a massive set of awesome ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/736/learning-new-things/ Today, I started playing WoW: Warlords of Draenor. After playing for two hours (just hitting level 91), I have to say that it certainly feels compelling: there was essentially no point in the story where I felt like the action stopped. I moved from task to task -- helping defeat a ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/734/initial-warlords-of-draenor-thoughts/ I recently read through a long series of comments on Net Neutrality between two people at different ends of the political spectrum -- most of them about traffic shaping, which is where a lot of the net neutrality debate has centered over the past year. I wrote a long response ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/729/net-neutrality-what-it-needs-to-be-about/ It seems like my 15 minutes of fame are mostly coming to a close. I'm still getting some 6000 hits/hour, but it's nowhere near what it was -- it peaked at over 130000 hits/hour right after the Daily Mail published their article. All of the other metrics have died down ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/725/hawk-attacks-drone-the-hype-dies-down/ This morning, while out flying, a hawk attacked my quadcopter, while flying along the Charles River, in Cambridge. You can see the video -- one of my most popular ever -- on YouTube: Of course, because it's popular, it also means you can see it in a lot of other places -- ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/722/hawk-attacks-quadcopter/ Like everyone on the internet, I've seen a lot about Ello in the last week or so. While I'm not convinced Ello is the next big thing, more recently, there have been articles about how Ello must be planning to sell you out, because their proposed business model can never ... http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/718/social-networks-and-business-plans/