Great article on KOMO’s website about the response Reardon is getting to his budget plan.
This quote sums it up nicely:
But Roe says voters won’t gain anything if the tax passes. He says Reardon’s scenario would cut public safety budgets and then replenish those cuts with money from the sales tax.
“I don’t think that’s being honest with the public,” Roe said.
A few weeks ago I was contacted by Darren with Good Times Productions asking about my XP2 Quadcopter, he was curious if it would be possible to use it to get some aerial footage of an upcoming wedding he was shooting in Snohomish. Yesterday was the wedding, and I put it to the test, the results were pretty good, despite the 10-15 mph winds, I was able to get some pretty cool shots of this outdoor wedding. I had it up for probably a dozen or so flights, here is the best footage:
Tagged aerial footage, aerial video, outdoor wedding, snohomish, wa, xp2 quadcopter
As I mentioned a few days ago, I decided to move my blog from squarespace to wordpress. Since I have about 3 years worth of content on my blog and several hundred posts this was going to be a pain. I read up on various tips on how to do it, almost figured I could do it myself but then I decided to contract the project out through elance.
I hired a web design service to work through the process of moving all my posts over while maintaining the directory structure so my old google links and search results would be preserved. It is 90% there.
The old posts are all here now, some of the pictures don’t show on some posts since they were linked to a gallery I had on Squarespace. And audio files from pursuits are not displaying correctly. I’ll fix those things as time allows.
If for some reason you have the desire to take one last look at my “old” site, you can still see it for a while at http://multipleshotsfired.squarespace.com/
Posted in blog
Shortly after 11am this morning I heard Arlington responding to a report of a 2 year old that was struck by a vehicle. They requested airlift for transport, and I was coming through the area so I waited for Airlift NW to show up. No details on the nature of the injuries, after airlift landed the airlift nurse hopped in the medic rig and they took off for 10-15 minutes. When they came back they put the patient in the helicopter and it headed south.
Update 5:30pm-KIRO ended up using some of my footage on the 5pm news:
Back in 2009 when I started this site I decided to go with Squarespace as the publishing/content provider. At the time it made sense, it was pretty easy, fairly inexpensive and seemed like a good way to get online.
I played around with wordpress to set up another website and really liked the way it worked. The iphone/ipad apps are much better than what Squarespace has, and the ability to tweak things and the endless plugins for it make it a better option for me at this point.
So I’m working on moving everything over to wordpress. It could be a while before I get it all sorted out, but I’ll do my best to bring all the blog posts over there. I will change the look of the site, it’s overdue for a facelift.
Here is the location of my new site- www.billgillam.com, I will probably forward www.multipleshotsfired.com over there when I get things all sorted out.
Posted in blog
A few years ago I set up my blog/website on squarespace. At the time it seemed like a good idea, simple, fast setup, no HTML skills needed, and supposedly it would optimize the SEO for you.
It’s been fine for basic blog work, but the iPad/iPhone app for updating it is really weak. I’ve been less than impressed with their SEO work as well.
I recently wanted to start up a new website and started looking into options. I could add a second squarespace account just for that site, but it would be another $16.00 a month and I would be locked into the squarespace app for editing on the fly.
So I looked into WordPress options. I ended up doing my site on WordPress, hosted on Dreamhost for $7.95 a month. My current deal with squarespace is $12.95 a month (I signed up for it with some discount code)
After working with wordpress for just a few days I became convinced I should just move my blog to it as well. While squrespace makes it easy to import existing blogs/websites to squarespace, it has very little support for exporting it.
I’ll work on bringing all my content here in the next few days. Wish me luck.
;)
Draganflyer, a company that has be doing a nice business selling it’s drones to police agencies through homeland security grants (their units range from 30,000 to over $40,000 each) just announced their newest UAV. While they have some impressive specifications they are still very small, short run time devices that are ridiculously overpriced in my opinion.
I guess grabbing tax dollars is getting old for Draganflyer, they are now offering a new unit, the X4-P, with the commercial/industrial customer in mind. I guess since this market actually has to maintain a budget and does not have “free” homeland security cash to throw around they decided to make it less expensive. “Less expensive” in Draganflyer speak is probably $8,000-$14,000. I’ll stick with my $2,000 XP2.
Here is a link to the Draganflyer press release, naturally price is never mentioned.
;)
SCSO Deputies wait for tow truck to haul off Sheriff’s Motorcycle that went down.Two weeks after a Snohomish County Sheriff Traffic motorcycle was involved in a single vehicle accident on I-5 the county has declared May “Motorcycle Safety Month”.
This time of the year it seems like we see an uptick in motorcycle accidents around here. Hopefully the program will help prevent accidents like this one that resulted in a Deputy being transported to the hospital.
;)
Here is a link to the county’s announcement.
Posted in current events
Marysville police engaged a reported car prowler in a pursuit that began just after midnight on April 19th. A fairly short pursuit ended when the suspect hit a power pole near Highway 9 and Soper Hill Road. The suspect was ejected and power lines went down in the area. Here is the audio of the chase and the resulting chaos afterwards:
Posted in news
I’ve been looking for a quadcopter or helicopter to shoot decent HD video for a while. I had some success using an HD Camera on an AR Drone, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired and the lifting performance is simply not there. I thought about a Trex 700, Gual x7, and the X650 from Xaircraft as well as several other options available on the internet. Then I stumbled on the XP2 from Xproheli. These guys are right here in the US (Bend, OR), and they are film makers who have obviously spent hundreds of hours trying to come up with a solution to shooting stable HD video from the air. Before I bought my XP2 I called Xproheli’s owner, Hans Skjersaa, to learn more about the device and what to expect. Hans is pretty pumped about this quad and it comes across quickly. He is willing to walk you through any questions or concerns. I immediately felt more comfortable buying the XP2 knowing I could get support from local guys rather than trying to email someone in China.
;)
So I went for it and bought the RTF XP2 from them. It arrived on my porch the next afternoon, totally complete with radio, 4 batteries and charger (you supply the camera). Hans told me to give him a call before I tried to fly it for the first time, he walked me through what to expect and offered some good tips. After a couple rainy days I had it up flying- the power of this thing blew me away- it has tons of reserve power, carrying a Gopro is not an issue at all for the XP2. You can put this thing several hundred feet in the air in a matter of seconds. Unlike the AR Drone and some helicopters, this quad has no “stable” or auto leveling feature- if you do a control input it stays in that orientation until you counter that input. So, if you bank to the right, it will stay in that bank until you roll out of it yourself. At first this is a little hard to learn, but the results are the video will be very smooth. I’m thinking I’ll be installing a FPV video system next to allow for better control at altitude or distance.
;)
I’ve got dozens of trouble free flights on it so far (about 2.5 hours of actual flight time) and I really love the way this thing flies. It’s durable- being made of aluminum it’s very light, and unlike so many of the other quads out there, if you land hard or have an accident you can bend the aluminum back into alignment rather than have broken carbon fiber or plastic pieces to deal with.
I hope these guys keep pushing the design to allow for larger cameras, and maybe add features like GPS, altitude hold and other options to make it even more versatile.
Here is a video review I made showing the XP2 in the air, as well as some video and photos I’ve taken with it:
Yeah it’s expensive, but these guys have worked hard to come up with a great quadcopter that is unlike anything else out there and I think it produces video that rivals pro-grade RC helicopters that cost thousands more.
If you are interested in one go to www.xproheli.com and see what they have, you won’t be disappointed.
Posted in blog, photography, technology
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