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Aerial Photography – Canon SD500 – Trainer



I recently have been playing around with doing some R/C plane aerial photography.    I have an old .40 size trainer that I electrified a couple years ago.  It is fairly light for a big (60″ wingspan) trainer.  I have a AXI 2826 with a 3S 4400 battery that will push 700 watts into a 12 x 7 prop.   It will float around nicely, but I have enough watts to go vertical if needed.

I built a simple plywood mount for the Canon SD500, and mounted a servo above it so that I could control the shutter from a switch on my radio.  I am still working on getting all the bugs out, and I have recently installed CHDK to try and get a faster shutter speed.  I will post more about those experiments later.

This first shot is a picture after the plane made an unexpected landing in a soy-bean field.  Also shows the camera mount with servo nicely.

.40 Trainer with a AXI 2826 and camera mount

This is a shot of my house, I am also in this picture, but very small!

Lisbon, MD from the Air

A view of Mt Airy, MD, the water tower in the middle is about four miles away from where this was taken.
Mt Airy, MD from the Air

A view looking South-West, in this picture you can see SugerLoaf Mountain, and to the right the mountains past Frederick, MD.
Suger Loaf Mountain and beyond

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Picture of James Lee Outside Discovery Communications Building


Copy of his Rant

This picture was taken in 2008 outside Discovery Communications Building in 2008.

Police officers shot the suspect at about 4:50 p.m., Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger told reporters. All three hostages are safe and out of the building.

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James Lee – Savetheplanetprotest.com – Rant (Copy) – List of Demands


The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:

1. The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.

3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!

4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!

7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!

8. Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies! You’re the media, you can reach enough people. It’s your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!

9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.

10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC. Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements of Arms sales and development!

11. You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.

Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.

For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human’s lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!

It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It’s like a couple are having 30 babies even though it’s just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!

Also, war must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT, DAMN YOU!!

The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.

Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.

The humans? The planet does not need humans.

You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!

I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it.

These are the demands and sayings of Lee.

Picture of James Lee outside Discovery.

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Pictures from Above the Clouds


Last year I spent a lot of time flying between Baltimore and Tampa on Southwest Airlines. So much that I was an A-List member, which sadly I no longer am, although that is a different story…

I found myself often flying back from Tampa just as the sun was setting to the West, I saw some amazing sunsets, many through the broken clouds of a summer thunderstorm.  At some point, I started bringing my Canon SD870 IS along and snapping some pictures out the window.  Even with the Plexiglas, I was able to get some surprisingly good shots.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds
Above the Clouds

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
Pictures from an Airplane

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Dramatic Sunset above the clouds

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Cold Fire on The Discovery Channel, Put a Hex on You!


Wow, the second season of Pitchmen aired last night on the Discovery Channel®, without Billy Mays (RIP).  This year the show will be hosted by Andrew “Sully” Sullivan, and the first two main products that got the spotlight were Cold Fire® and Hex Light®.

Cold Fire™ is an environmentally friendly fire extinguishing agent that puts out ANY fire faster, safer, with less water, less damage to property, and less risk to firefighters. Cold Fire cools 21 times faster than water, and works to remove heat and the fuel sources from the fire tetrahedron, preventing re-ignition.  The Cold Fire fire extinguisher was used on Sully, after he lit himself on fire, and as expected, Cold Fire worked to put the fire out on Sullivan.

During test marketing the product sold nearly 1 million units according to Pitchmen, so it certainly seems that people are excited about Cold Fire.  As the show explained, this is not really a new product, it is  just being pitched in a new way.

HexLight was the second product featured, it is a LED flashlight that is worn around the wrist or forearm, so that both of your hands can be free.  What you end up with is a battery operated hands free flashlight that ingeniously beams a surprising strong burst of light in the direction the wearers hand is pointing.

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Return of Blue Meanie – HD Video on SmugMug


I have been a long-time user of SmugMug Photo service, they were the best when I first started to look for an online photo gallery, and they still are. For $40 a year, you get unlimited storage AND they store all of you original photos (no reduced image quality and resolution like free sites). A great new feature is their ability to store and play-back HD quality video. My wife and I bought a Sony HD camcorder a couple years back, and it is great to now be able to load them on to the Interwebs and have them viewable from anywhere. Here is a video we made of old Blue Meanie several years ago as he went after his dinner.

To see the above content in pure HD glory, click on the full screen button on the bottom right, and then pick HD On.

Some more SmugMug highlights:

* – Integrated sharing on Facebook, Twitter, via email and a growing list of other services
* – Mobile Apps for iPad, iPhone and Android
* – No ads or promotions surrounding your photos
* – We keep original, full resolution photos, unlike other sites
* – Full-screen slideshows and HD Video playback
* – Real, knowledgeable & friendly humans to answer your emails quickly
* – Add photos from Lightroom, Aperture, iPhoto, Picasa, and other popular programs

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Eastern Box Turtle – Terrapene Carolina – Time to come out of your shell


Eastern Box Turtle - Terrapene Carolina

Eastern Box Turtle - Terrapene Carolina - Time to come out of your shell

Ever have one of those days when you just want to stay snuggled under your covers and in bed all day.  Looks like this fellow feels the same way.

As these guys wander around, please do not be tempted to bring it in as a pet.  These turtles do not like to live in captivity, and will likely not live very long.  Keep them out in the wild and enjoy them in their native environment.  If they look hurt, or their shell is cracked, again, leave them alone.  These turtles do have the ability to regenerate their shell.

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Using a Windows XServer to access the Gnome desktop on a Linux Server


I wanted to throw a shout-out to a software package called Xming X Server.  I have been using this nifty piece of software to access the Gnome desktop of our corporate Linux servers from the comfort of my Windows based laptop.  Xmind does this my running a XServer under Windows, and using a customized version of Putty to forward all the X packets across a SSH connection.  Even on Internet connection, the performance is very acceptable, and when on a local LAN, it approaches native speed.

A limited version of Xming has been released into the public domain, but throw Mr Colin Harrison £10 and he will send you an unencumbered version.  I am interested to hear from other folks who are using a Windows XServer to connect to a Linux or Mac.

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Toyota SDK8


I have a 1984 Toyota SDK8 that I bought a number of years ago.  It is a great skid loader, but because they are no longer imported into the US, it is a real pain to find any info.  I am going to start posting all of the information I have about it on this page, hopefully some other folks will add any information that they may have.  Right now I am focused on getting the starter turning over reliably, it usually only turns over about once every four or five tries.

My bucket attachment is also all mangled up, I am curious if anyone has replaced their’s with a BobCat Quick Tach attachment plate?

Repair manual which covers the inspection, adjustment and repair procedures for the overhaul of the engine, chassis and materials handling system of the Toyota Skid Steer Loader 2SGK6, 2SDK6, 2SDK7, and 2SDK8.

Fuel Filter Napa 3386

Oil Filter Napa 1521
Hydraulic Napa 51551

Fan Belt Mitsubishi 99523-11 52

Motor for SDK8 is a Toyota 2J diesel. Diesel Forklift truck CPCD80-2,80-2J,TOYOTA 2J ENGIN D B 4CY, 2.5 LTR

Pictures

Toyota SDK8
Not a BobCat
Toyota Bobcat Called SDK8
Toyota Skid Steer Loader

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MySQL – How to drop all Foreign Keys on a table


I recently was working with a 3rd party DB that was designed well and used lots of foreign keys to enforce referential integrity. Unfortunately, the application that used the DB structure was very poorly written and caused all sorts of problems when the foreign keys were applied. I had to quickly remove all the foreign keys from about 160 tables. The code below will quickly create a script that removes all Foreign Keys from a database.

select concat(‘alter table ‘,table_schema,’.',table_name,’ DROP FOREIGN KEY ‘,constraint_name,’;') from information_schema.table_constraints
where constraint_type=’FOREIGN KEY’;

You can limit by schema by adding the line : AND table_schema rlike ‘Schema Name’

Remember, Foreign keys are only valid when using Innodb, MyISAM does not support foreign keys.

Thanks to Prodromus for providing some of this information.  They have a great site that lists a ton of MySQL tips and tricks.  And, if you are a non-profit, they even perform pro-bono MySQL DBA work.  Look them up.

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