2022 (Public)

Details: Published: March 06, 2022; Hits: 1975

2022

February 2022 showed itself from the best side with many warm and sunny days. They offered the perfect excuse to go to the beach, take a swim or just fly the drone.

One of the more interesting beaches is Half Moon Bay where in 1924 the HMAS Cerberus having been in service since 1871 was sunk. Since then it served as protection from the waves, as a diving site and, until 1993, people would have picnics on its deck.

Some pictures from this month with a wide variety of themes ranging from beaches, to parks and our church.

Details: Published: March 06, 2022; Hits: 5664

We celebrated Sydney's 16th Birthday with a small party to which she invited a few friend from church. Based on her preference, Christy found a location that offered flying foxes, balancing and overcoming obstacles. The group was working their way though several obstacle course high up in the trees of the Dandenong Ranges.

We were lucky enough to have dry weather for the duration of the activity. Immediately afterwards, the rain moved in, but we were already happily eating pizza at that time.

(click on individual pictures to get a downloadable, large version of a picture)

Unfortunately the tree canopy was too dense and there were too many people around to be able to safely fly my drone. For this reason I used the Canon camera for both, pictures and a few movies. (I will have to work on getting these more stable and also, in some cases sharper.)

Details: Published: January 15, 2022; Hits: 704

We took the opportunity to go snorkeling at the Captain Cook monument. The Captain Cook monument stands on a small plot of British land in Hawaii. It overlooks a marine preserve. Access to the bay is limited and hence the fishes are tame and plentiful. We often use the Fair-Wind organization (https://www.fair-wind.com/) to go there on their boat named Fairwind.

We had Natalie and Niah with us and saw the usual fish as well as an octopus (no picture) and two baby sharks (white-tip sharks?) resting in a rock cave.

It was just great to be out there and to snorkel around.

Details: Published: January 15, 2022; Hits: 2458

The first month of the year has come and already gone by. It seems, time is passing this year as fast as it had during the last year.

The beginning of the year saw us as a family in Hawaii. (See At Captain Cooks Again and Happily back in Hawaii for details from that trip.) We made it home and have since started work (or finished the vacation in Sydney's case.) The regular rhythm has is back.

Thomas has been using his stabilized drone, a DJI Air Mini 2 and took it along as he waited for Sydney to get out of her karate training. This gave him plenty of time to shoot videos. Some of them are reflected below.

This flick of the Oakleigh Pioneer Memorial Park is interesting for two reasons. First, the audio is entirely computer generated using artificial intelligence algorithms. Thomas merely modified the sound a little but not the melody. Secondly the movie shows the real benefit of video stabilization; it allows flying the drone in windy environments while generating smooth, cinematic pictures.