Technical Ramblings

There’s never enough bandwidth.

This is pretty much a maxim for anyone who is working with moving data from one place to another, I think: as soon as you have more bandwidth, you will use it, and as soon as you use it, you will want more of it.

That said, having just made the switch from DSL to Cable, I feel like I’ve taken a step in the right direction.

Cambridge, MA, despite being a major hub for technical innovation, has a relatively outdated set of options

In mid-March, I will be leaving my job at Nokia, and heading to work at Google.

I will be working on the YouTube team, working to measure and improve video streaming quality.

This is the first time I’ve really ever left a job as an adult; I’ve worked for MetaCarta/Nokia/HERE for the past 8 years. (Before that, I left wedü,

This morning, when there was less wind than there has been the last few days, I went out and flew my quadcopter. While out, I flew up about 100 feet, and did a 360 degree rotation while video recording.

I ended up spinning it a bit quick for the purposes of watching a video, but

As part of trying to get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t in aerial videography, I’ve been watching a lot of the videos from Team BlackSheep. (Although you may not have heard the name, if you’re interested in quadcopters at all, you’re probably aware of the recent FAA ruling on commercial videography; the case in question was against Team BlackSheep.)

A few things that I’ve learned from watching these videos:

1. The video that I’ve taken and uploaded isn’t particularly bad. Although it’s not going to win any awards any time soon, it’s very typical of early efforts, even for people who are much more on the ‘pro’ side of things than me.
2. Most quadcopter flight is boring. Cut out 75% of it, and you don’t lose much.

The United States National Park system is a terrific system designed to protect and preserve some of the most beautiful parts of this country. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved the NPS; from rangers putting together brilliant education programs to

One of the things that routinely surprises people is that I’m willing to fly my quadcopter over water. My answer is generally “If it falls

After months of agonizing over whether to wait for the GoPro Hero 4 to come out, I decided it was silly to continue to wait, and bought a

(Title ref: Megyn Kelly – Essentially Meme)