Drone Survey Boat on the Thames

Recently I spotted what looked like a drone vessel on the Thames (above). I wasn't entirely sure what it does but guessed those two pods on arms at the top were antennas for satellite navigation, hence it could be surveying.

A bit of googling later and came up links such as this to this product page for the HyDrone-RCV which as expected is a remote controlled drone boat for surveying purposes.

As a sense of scale, here is it being retrieved:

Very cool.

America's Cup and New Zealand

So alas the Brits aka Team Multinational Chemicals Company won't be competing in the America's Cup.

Bother!

However, to be honest, the Italian team aka fashion company did look more impressive.  But why?

These AC75s are incredibly advanced, including features that aren't on any yacht I've sailed, of which the foil is only the most visible. It can be hard to work out what is actually going on, where each team has an advantage, so I've been relying on those with more knowledge, in particular the Mozzy Sails YouTube channel.

Great analysis - thanks!

I'm looking forward to the America's Cup races starting - whenever. It was due to be next weekend but apparently its been delayed due to Covid.

Of course due to the time zones I won't be able to watch it live, which is a shame, though that is a double edged sword. During a telecon I was on last week I heard this plaintive comments from the New Zealand delegate: "Madam Chair, it is currently 3:40 in the morning here in New Zealand".

Ooch!

I'm ok with streaming it on YouTube: I can watch it over my morning coffee. 

London Boat Show 2017: Foils, 3D Printers and a Robot

This fancy cat caught my eye as its one of the new breed of foilers aimed at general sailors.

This is the foiling Whisper built here in the UK using the latest carbon fibre and 3D printing technology:

It looked very cool and wouldn't mind a trial sail on it.

Less authentic was this "robot" which roamed the ailes of the Boat Show. A little googling confirmed my suspicion that inside was an actor:

Time to say goodbye to Sitemeter?

I recently posted about strange sounds coming from my blog and have been continuing to look into the possible source.

I had a look at the underlying html (in Chrone its right click on the relevant component and then "Inspect element") and there was some unexpected links in the Sitemeter section, including something called vindicosuite.

I had a google of "Sitemeter" and "Vindicosuite" and found this blog post about how Sitemeter has been taken over by a more aggressive advertising company, and some of those sounds have been advertising like, e.g. Visit Jersey!

So I took out the Sitemeter link and touching wood haven't had the problem since.

In addition I have just heard it while visiting "Hear the Boat Sing" which also uses Sitemeter, and having checked its html there was a link to Vindicosuite there too.

Things change. Technorati has gone - should we say goodbye to Sitemeter too?

Facebook buys out Buff Enterprises!!

G'day all! Buff Staysail here! Buff by name and Buff by nature!!

Put the amber nectar on ice, the next rounds on Buff!! I knew that one day Buff's boat would come in and ma would be proved wrong!!

Cast your mind back to 2011 when your's truly came up with Buff's Brilliant Buoys (TM) - put a vending machine on a buoy so you can get a cold beer when ever you wanted it out on the water under the hot sun (not much danger of that in pom land of course).

There'd even be an offshore version with wifi to allow the likes of JP to download GRIBs (plus of course keep the wine cool).

Well it turns out that that tech giant Facebook is looking for a way to connect the world up to what ever it is it does (haven't got round to signing up yet though ma is always going on about it).

And they want to buy Buff Enterprises to cover the oceans!!!

This is huge. I must be loaded now or something - just look at What's Up? (Ed: you mean WhatsApp)

I'm off for a celebratory beer and you're all invited!!

This is Buff Staysail, zillionaire, over but most definitely not out!!




Updated: oh dear, I've just had a look at the email that Buff received and it was actually a spoof from his mum trying to trick him into joining Facebook so she can keep track of him.

Sorry Buff, better luck next year.

Sunshine and rain

I was going to post about the 3D printed kayak but Tillerman got there first so instead back to that old blighty favourite, the weather.

It was of course a rather wet January and there was so much water coming downriver from the flooded Thames valley that the barrier had to be raised day after day after day.

In fact it was raised a grand total of 50 times in just a few weeks - which is a problem as for maintenance reasons the maximum number of times the Thames Barrier is meant to be raised per year is 50.

Fortunately spring seems to have arrived more or less with last weekend being spectacularly sunny.

And in the good weather we can come out to play with our toys, printed or not. In the video above someone has a rather impressive toy helicopter equiped with a GoPro camera.

Nice.

Why aren't Android chartplotters as good as iPhone ones?

End of last year I moved from an iPhone 4 to a Nexus 5 and mostly the migration has gone fine. But I can't help but notice that the chartplotters on offer aren't quite as good.

On the iPhone I had both the iNavX application and also the Navionics application, and both could do more than just display charts.

In particular iNavX I used on the Arctic Sail could not just calculate VMG and COG but also download and show GRIBs. Navionics requires some add-ins to get the nav features which I haven't purchased, and maybe that's why I preferred the iNavX.

But on the Nexus 5 running Android the options are more limited. There is no iNavX app at all and the Navionics app is restricted, without the navigation options such as VMG.

It seems rather odd - after all Android is currently outselling iOS pretty much everywhere.

Hopefully in the future Android chartplotting apps will improve - but maybe I missed one of them?

How to get the Nexus 5 battery to last 3 to 4 days

I month or so ago I upgraded to a Nexus 5. While there is much to like about this phone there is one thing that is really bad - the battery life. Let's be honest, the Nexus 5 battery is too small.

Initially it struggled to survive a single day and it was only after a lot of Apollo 13 style "Shut it all down!" that I managed to get a more reasonable 3 to 4 days until reaching 15% left.

As part of this blog's public service tech support, here's how:

1. Turn the screen brightness down. The screen might be lovely but it eats a lot of juice so set the brightness at a minimum (Settings->Display)

2. Turn off Google Play updates. You don't need the latest app update immediately, and you don't even need to know that an update is available. So save yourself a lot of power and only update when you have both wifi and shore power (Google Play->Settings)

3. Switch off Google Now. I was preparing to leave to meet a friend for lunch when I got an alert saying it was time to go (which I obviously knew already). It was pretty smart and accurate but then I didn't need that message and to generate it there must have been all sorts of processing including requesting travel times off London Transport and location fixes which drains the battery. Clever but not worth risking an empty battery for

4. Switch off location services. GPS really does take a lot of power and you know where you are (its called "here"). If you are really lost (i.e. don't know where "here" is) then at that point switch in on but until then save the battery for when you really need it (Settings->Location)

5. Switch off Auto-Sync. Do you really need to know right now that an email is waiting for you? Surely its better to take control of your inbox and check it at a time that suits you rather than being a slave to the notification flashing light and save battery at the same time (Settings->Data Usage->Settings menu->Auto-Sync data)

6. Switch off various apps sync features such as, for example, Facebook updates. I'm pretty sure that photo of a baby with a cat can wait to be seen (Facebook->App->update)

7. Don't play graphics intensive games or watch videos. Yes I know the Nexus 5 can double up as a games console and video player but the battery simply isn't sized for those applications.

If you want the phone to still be working after a few days then "only" do the standard email / web / news / camera / photos / travel / weather / facebook / twitter / texts / phone calls / evernotes / ebooks (limited) / wikipedia / music player (downloaded not streaming) / alarm clock / solitaire / calculator / contacts / calendar etc.

You could also reboot to make sure all those settings are fixed and clear out any unwanted processes.

It probably helped that I live & work in areas with good LTE signal as the battery dropped a lot when I took the tube a couple of times. If you do that a lot it could be worth considering:

8. Switch airplane mode on when you go on the tube to stop it using a lot of power trying to keep the connection even when deep underground.

I don't think the answer is replaceable batteries as who wants to spent their time carrying spare batteries? The answer must for handset manufacturers to install larger batteries - at least 50% bigger than the one in the Nexus 5 and preferably twice the size.

The uses of duct tape

Duct tape is wonderful and one of the sailor's most versatile tools.

Tillerman is so keen on it he is thinking about making a boat with it and giving it (either the boat or just lots and lots of duct tape) to his granddaughter for her birthday.

It has also been holding together the back of my iPhone for a couple of months after I found out that dropping it while out for a run was a bad idea. But even duct tape will only last so long.

There really was a reason for upgrading to that Nexus 5 Chris! (*)




(*) Not that I'm saying that this was a good reason. I could have applied another coating of duct tape. But I was well past the upgrade time.

Best Camera Awards

So my awards are:

BEST CAMERA for PHOTOGRAPHERS: Canon 550D

BEST CAMERA for WATER SPORTS: Olympus Tough TG-1

BEST CAMERA for TRAVEL: Sony NEX-6

BEST CAMERA for SPONTANEITY: whatever you have with you, which for me is is most likely for me my iPhone Nexus 5

Rather spookily that's similar to what Tillerman was suggesting in his comments yesterday. But which is the best overall? Well even more spookily, that would be what O'Docker said.

I'm pretty convinced in terms of picture quality the order is:
1) Canon 550D
2) Sony Nex-6
3) Olympus Tough TG-1

However at the same time the order in terms of lightest to heaviest is:
1) Olympus Tough TG-1
2) Sony Nex-6
3) Canon 550D

In terms of weight the Olympus and Sony are close and in terms of picture quality the Canon 550 and Sony are close together.

So the Sony Nex-6 does seem to be a great balance between picture quality, features and weight.

My take away thought from this process is that the Sony Nex-6 should be able to do almost everything that the DSLR can, and there are features such as setting the exposure time, focus selection (as per O'Docker's comments) use of RAW images etc that I ought learn how to do without each time struggling with the UI.

As I posted yesterday, reading the instruction guide is a must for today's feature packed cameras, particularly if you want to do anything more than point and shoot.

Finally, to misquote Jane Eyre: reader, I bought the Sony Nex-6, and I'm very happy with it.

BEST CAMERA OVERALL: Sony NEX-6

(but read the manual)

What makes a good camera - and how to make yours better

In the last blog I posted three sets of pictures from three cameras, the Canon 550D, the Sony Nex-6 and the Olympus Tough TG-1, and Tillerman commented that in terms of blogging there didn't seem to be much of a difference.

It was a good point: there were some minor differences in that the resolution on the Canon (if you zoomed in) was a little better and it's colour was more accurate (the sky colour should say cold & November).

The problem was that none of the images challenged any of the cameras, so all were effectively ok.

But what about more difficult conditions? Alas I haven't more interesting scenes taken with all three but here's some examples of what I think they'd show.

Firstly above is Hammersmith Bridge at night taken from the Thames on the Olympus Tough TG-1. I had so many problems getting the camera to focus and zoom and was twirling round and round in the kayak struggling with settings and in the end it was out of focus and noisy.

Compare that to the scene below taken with the Sony Nex-6 in Geneva:

Despite being taken by hand on a whim it is sharp, in-focus and just as hoped.

This camera has a larger sensor than the Olympus and so there are more photons per pixel and better noise reduction - which means better night images.

So to take more challenging pictures you need a camera with more functions and abilities.

However there's no point having all those bells and whistles if it takes so long to configure each shot that by the time you are ready the moment has gone.

For the sailing photography course with Rick Tomlinson the key instructions were to set the exposure time to 1/1000th of a second and then watch, to be ready to pounce on the flighty image.

And the Canon 550D was ideal for that, as it was quick to zoom, focus and snap, capture the image:

I'm happy with this: the spray has been caught in mid-air, along with the action of the crew and foredecker reaching for the spinnaker pole.

At the other end of the time scale the Canon be set for exposures of 2.5 seconds and capture this celebration of the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes night:

So, yes, a basic camera will have no problem with most images but there's likely to be a time you'll reach its limits, while a more capable camera would have been able to take the shot.

But there's no point having the feature if it takes so long to activate that you miss out: user interfaces really do matter.

However, and this gets to the most important point, there's no point having a camera that can do fancy things if you don't know that it can.

My top tip is this: you can make your existing camera better without spending a dollar if you:

READ THE MANUAL!!!

Then of course go out there and play.

Over on Windtraverler Brittany has been having some fun with the Dramatic settings on her Olympus camera. Apparently mine has that too - who knew? Well I guess if I'd read the manual I would have.

And if I'd read the Sony Nex-6 manual I would have known how to set the focus to manual when in the helicopter in Greenland.

Doh!

But yes, some cameras really are better than others.

So, drum roll please, the JP's best camera awards go to.....

TO BE CONTINUED...

Image comparison Canon 550D vs. Sony NEX 6 vs. Olympus Tough TG-1

So here are three photos from Putney with each of the Canon 550D, Sony Nex 6 and Olympus Tough TG-1

Canon 550D:

Sony NEX 6:

Olympus Tough TG-1

Camera Review: Olympus Tough TG-1

This camera is marketed as being both waterproof and shockproof and in Greenland I was to test both of these and it passed with flying colours.

This really is a camera you can take when out on the water and not worry about what would happen should you go swimming, either intentionally or unintentionally, let alone the odd wave or spay.

It's a compact unit which you can stuff into a small pocket and not notice the weight or mass.

But you won't be surprised to learn that the picture quality suffers accordingly. Detail is blurred, either out of focus or noisy, and low light images are particularly bad. There's also a ring around the lens which keeps popping off which is apparently to allow attachments (e.g. a zoom lens or fish eye) but is all too likely to fall off at just  the wrong time.

Zooming in and out is via two buttons which feels slow compared to a DSLR's quick lens twist.

It's basically a fun camera for the beach, one you can take what ever sport you do and be sure that it will take ok photos, particularly in bright sunlight.

The battery was the weakest of the three, and on several kayak trips it reported battery flat somewhere on the return leg.

Camera Review: Sony NEX-6

I took two cameras to Greenland, and one of the them was the Sony NEX-6.

The idea behind the NEX-6 is to have all the power of a DSLR built around a similar large sensor but in a smaller, lighter package.

There's no mirror which means no optical viewfinder, but instead it includes an electronic viewfinder, which worked well enough. Even in bright sunlight when the screen on the back was all washed out I could still frame the scene, though often I had to shield my eyes a bit.

However there were downsides, mostly from the user interface. In the helicopter from Tasiilaq to Kusulak the auto-focus kept locking on the control panel inside rather than the landscape outside. I wanted to switch to manual focus but spent ages mucking around without success.

As it happened it had been pre-set so that the Fn button had been mapped to the focus options, but even then you have to hit Fn, scroll to the option you want on the screen, then hit select. It's just a bit more a palaver to do anything - and its the same for setting the flash to be on / off / auto / fill / slow-sync etc.

Changing ISO is only sometimes possible and the manual options are slightly less flexible. Colour reproduction was a bit off compared to the DLSR.

But overall in terms of features & photo quality versus weight it was pretty good. Battery life wasn't quite as good as the Canon 550D, which could be because the capacity was smaller or the electronics were trying to do more (e.g. keep that screen lit up).

Two problems were my own fault: firstly I purchased it just before leaving so didn't really know my way around and rule #1 for new owners of a camera should be to spend time learning how to use it.

Secondly I only bought the one lens which was ok for landscapes but its zoom end was really limited and the moment I saw that polar bear I knew I'd made a mistake. With hindsight I should have ordered the twin lens kit with the beautiful 200 mm lens (above).

But in general I was pretty pleased and I can see how it won the T3 camera of year award.

Camera Review: Canon EOS 550D

I love this camera. It feels great in your hand: rock solid with controls just where they should be and the pictures are gems.

You want to switch from auto to manual focus? The switch is on the lens.

You want to change the ISO? There's a button labelled ISO.

You want to set the exposure to 1/1000 of a second but get the camera to do the rest? One flick of the top dial to TV.

You want to set all the settings manually? Select M-mode and play away.

You want to zoom? Its a quick and intuitive twist of the lens

Battery that lasts several days, vast range of lenses to chose from, optical viewfinder, quick focusing, good colour reproduction.... the benefits go on and on.

DSLRs just are the best tools for the photographer.

BUT - there is a reason I didn't take it to Greenland, for there is one unavoidable downside: the weight.

The camera body plus two lenses (above) weighs 1.9 kg, and after lugging that collection around Australia and China I'd had enough. It had to stay behind.

So what did I take to Greenland and why?

Which Camera?

I own three cameras as shown in the photo above (which was taken by my new Nexus 5, so to be accurate I really have four). But which is best?

Of course that depends upon the criteria, so lets do three reviews and then compare their strengths and weaknesses.

Note that I'm more interested in photographs than taking video so the reviews will focus on images even though all are able to record in HD.

First up the Canon 550D, then the Sony Nex-6 and finally the Olympus Tough TG-1.

A message to laptop manufacturers

You have failed.

I want to buy a new Windows laptop and have a good budget but am really struggling with what is on the market today. I don't think my requirements are excessive but, well, lets go through them:

Screen: I don't need anything more than HD but when you have installed Windows 8 you do need a touch screen, so why aren't they on top end Samsungs? BTW higher than HD is IMHO a waste of effort - there are other things to fix

Keyboard: this is pretty essential and has to be good. Other manufacturers: go look at Samsung - theirs are very nice. Acer yours are too thin and Sony a bit 1980s calculator

Trackpads: again, must just work.

Wifi: absolutely has to work. I tried a Sony for a bit but it stopped all other devices accessing my home network and had a low through-put half of the time, dropped lots of connections and generally made me go aarrrhhh! It failed to play a Vimeo video my Chromebook, which is a fifth the price of the Sony, did without sweat

Fans: hate them. One of the joys of the Chromebook is its quiet

Hard disk: my old Samsung's crashed taking all my stuff with it so I was going to invest in SSD but guys 128 gb is pointless. My photos take over 120 gb and the system typically takes 24 gb or so just for restore. You do the maths

Width and weight: Ultrabooks are thin enough and light enough: don't spend time of this, fix the other stuff. Indeed too light and you get keyboard flex and increased danger of screen damage, hence another fail

Speed: i3s too slow, 4 GB RAM not really enough

Crapware: really really don't want any of this. See comment on lack of space in SSDs above.

McAfee: why is this soaking up 67% of CPU when I'm trying to do something useful?

Stupid buttons: the Sony has a button called Assist that opens a user guide which tells you absolutely nothing worth knowing.

Battery life: seems ok now. Didn't keep the Sony long enough to try that out to be honest.


Maybe I missed one - if I have let me know!

What would a pirate who had to configure a new laptop running Windows 8 say?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR !!!!!!!!!



Yes, its that day again. And no, my laptop isn't even close to being ready yet.

How to Watch a Tower Bridge Lift

Still struggling with the new laptop so another quick post, this time about how to watch Tower Bridge lift up  (or indeed come down afterwards) to let some boat through, in this case the Thames Barge Lady Daphne.

Firstly have a check here for the lift times - often there are several each day.

Then go to the webcam that looks over Tower Bridge at the allotted time and hey presto get to see it all from the comfort of your own screen.

Alternatively you could go down there in person, or even better, actually be on the boat as in this photo from an earlier trip I did on the very same Thames Barge Lady Daphne:

Sometimes this interwebby thing is quite good.

Welcome to London

Welcome to London - A Short Hyperlapse Film from Mattia Bicchi Photography on Vimeo.

Finally my new laptop has been delivered which means the next few evenings will be spent restoring data, deleting the crap-ware pre-loaded by Sony, installing the programs I actually want to use and occasionally going arr!!! when Windows 8's complexity and bloody mindedness gets too painful.

It's a shame as have a bit of a backlog of posts including some of Greenland and photos from the Great River Race, plus was at the Southampton Boat Show over the weekend where heard a talk by Skip Novak on Cape Horn, but they will have to wait.

In the mean time here's a pretty time-lapse (or hyper-lapse as they call it) of London.


Update: hmm... that video's gone password protected. A version of it can be found on YouTube here.

Update 2: and its baaaaack! This time with a different sound track, the old Coldplay one having been replaced, which might also be a clue as to what the issue was