Autopilot kit for sale. Only $350, some assembly required. Jack Edwards, a mechanical, engineer, loom builder (yes as in weaving), and many other things in his professional career has built a functioning Ardunio based sail boat auto pilot system. The little Ardunios have piloted his aptly named boat the Wile E. Coyote over 400 miles this summer using both heading, and GPS track mode with cross track error correction. There are some chores left to complete such as wind instrument integration, but it's an impressive success with such a tiny capital outlay.
I'm feeling not so smart. By that I mean not as smart as a 16 year old kid. I know a lot, but it has become apparent that being intuitive in today's world takes some real effort. I barely survived the changes in Facebook, I do have a Twitter account, but have never tweeted. But today I am a winner, even though I only get a small red ribbon.
After mucking around I have finally gotten a video to work right. I kept reading about embedding videos, and with my tedious Blogger software, it just won't work. There is a little insert video button on my toolbar. But because my Internet connection is slow, it always opened with just a button that said upload video. Had I been a little more patient additional lines would have appeared say from You Tube? My You Tube? My Cam? Phone?...... As I said I should have asked a kid first. So here is belatedly the first appearance of a properly installed video on MIR.
This little piece is a rainy day experiment. I have been looking for old public domain archival materiels related to boating, with the idea It could be edited for some other more insidious purposes. It's harder that it looks. These excerpts are from a Navy navigation training film circa 1943 titled "Night Piloting.". Out of 17 minutes of excruciatingly tedious and pedantic film, I salvaged just about two minutes. I was intrigued because it dealt with navigation techniques that are now 70 years old, but still applicable today, sort of. It didn't turn out exactly like I thought it might, but this is often the way a lot of my projects end up. I had footage, I arranged it into an order, and then made up the dialog. It ended up being a oddly twisted version of a morality play. So no Oscar, but a lot of education in editing, and locating the material. Here is the link to the original "Night Piloting"
