OpenCL or Metal Sept. 2018 Update!

In January, 2016, I had just completed my 2nd video for Flarecorp Media. I had decided to use my MacBook Pro at the time to do the editing instead of my Desktop Windows computer. When exporting, I noticed I had several options for the Renderer in Adobe Media Encoder. I could use OpenCL GPU Acceleration, Metal GPU Acceleration or software only.

Not wanting to waste time in the future on which setting I should be using, I searched all over the internet and couldn’t find an answer anywhere. I decided it was up to me to figure out the answer and let the world know. The results at the time were to use OpenCL and not Metal.

Apparently I wasn’t the only person curious about which setting to use because over the next year, the video climbed week by week on the number of views. It’s success allowed me to become a YouTube preferred partner and start getting monetization (before they changed the rules in 2018). In a way, it was great to have a “hit” video early on in my YouTube career because it gave me a taste for success and showed me that any video could be popular. You never know what people are going to be interested in so all that maters is to just keep making them.

However, over the past 20 months, people have been asking for an update. Is my advice still true with modern hardware, the newer operating systems and new versions of Adobe Products. Well, I finally got access to some newer hardware and that allowed me to FINALLY make an updated video.

So here it is. Is OpenCL still the go to choice or has Metal finally caught up. Find out in the video below.

Warrior Dash Adventure

Last fall 2017, I was able to run a 5k in about 23 minutes which I thought was fairly good for me.  I signed up with my friends for the Warrior Dash this year, 2018, hoping it would motivate me to get out and train again after a very lazy winter. #SpoilerAlert. It did not.

But I showed up and ran it.  I was able to run the first mile and or so non-stop without having jogged more than 2-3 times the entire 6 months before.  Then I jogged and walked my way to the finish line with a time around 44 minutes.  For comparison, the best times were about 24 minutes and my friend Seth's time was about 34 minutes. It was fun though and I'd do it again. The obstacles were the best and with just a little training, the running parts would have been a lot easier.

Come along on the run with me in the video below. I cut the running parts down to mostly just the obstacles so you can enjoy the mud and fire as much as I did.

Drinking Lake Water - Life Straw

I like to camp and hike and kayak.  I would describe myself as a medium level roughing it type person. I will carry my tent on my back and eat dehydrated food, but I don't have a whole lot of extra gear to really survive far from my car.

The idea of having a lightweight, portable way to drink almost any water while out really interested me.  While browsing the Amazon Prime Day deals, I saw that the Life Straw was $5 off and only cost $9.99.  I figured for that price, it was worth picking one up.  Not only did I get myself one, but with every Life Straw you buy, they donate one to a school child in need.

I'm always on the look out for new ways to spice up my videos.  I thought a Kayak would be a very likely place to use one of these however cameras can shake so badly on there that they are unwatchable. Enter my 360 GoPro Fusion camera that I've been itching to find uses for.  The stabilization turned out really well.  And I figure, if someone gets tired of watching me, they can always look around at the lake.

You can support my channel by using this link to buy your own life straw: https://amzn.to/2LZJjVm

Repairs to a DJI Mavic Air Drone

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Old Water Damaged Drone

This story starts back in January 2018 when I fell through the ice.  I was carrying my old drone on my back when I went into the water. The batteries took on a lot of water and haven't worked exactly right ever since. 

I figured after 2 years with the old drone, given the crazy advancements in safety, size and performance and the fact that my Old 3DR Solo drone was no longer supported by the company and the software was getting buggier with every OS Release, it was time to make the switch to DJI.

I picked up a DJI Mavic Air and what a difference. It's so small.  The app is amazing, the sensors work great and it's quieter. Anyone who complains about drones now being "loud" haven't had a drone 2 years ago from a different company.

Well, I was out in South Dakota recently and was standing way up on top of one of the Needles in the Needles District. It was hard enough to keep my balance, let alone fly my drone.  The one thing I keep forgetting about my Mavic Air is that there are no sensors on the side of it. The front, back and bottom sensors work so well that I just assume it will be able to save itself from all of my bad flying.

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Flying the wrong direction

Well, due to my concetration on maintaining my balance, I wasn't able to "get into the direction" the drone was flying and pressed the stick the wrong way on several instances until I actually slammed it into a rock.  

The drone tried to save itself (it's done it before when I ran into a tree), but wasn't able to and it fell about 50 feet.  The damage was pretty extreme, breaking an entire leg in half.  Fortunately, I had sprung for the DJI Refresh Care insurance. 

With the Refresh Care, you get 2 claims in the first year paying $69 for the first claim and $99 for the second one.  After the second claim, you're out of luck. If you don't use both claims in the first year, you can pay to extend that claim one more year.

The funny thing is, then sent me a different drone that had the opposite side repaired on it.  I damaged the left side and they sent me a drone with repair stickers on the right side on the same parts. Funny coincidence I guess. 

Check out the video for the crash and a test montage video at the end.

Apex Cargo Bar Review

A  year ago I took up kayaking.  I've been using the 29 dollar foam pads and straps that you can buy at most places that sell kayaks, but they've left my car roof really scratched, they take a long time to put on and they're loud.

So I figured it was finally time to buy some proper mounts for the luggage rack of my 2010 Hyundai Elantra Touring. The only problem is, I didn't have any Cross Bars on my luggage rack.

So I decided to try the Apex Universal Aluminum Locking Roof Cargo Bars available on Amazon.  I picked these over the best sellers because they were narrower and would fit the folding Kayak J-bars I ordered.

They were really easy to install once I figured out that "Locked" meant you could spin the knob infinitely and "Unlocked" meant the knobs would tighten.

I was able to strap my Kayak right to them with no issues while waiting for the J-bars to come in. They have a bit of a rubberized texture on the top that helped hold everything in place. They feel very sturdy and I don't see them moving around at all.  They also look really nice on the top of my car.

• They support 150 pounds (I'm not sure if that's together or individually).
• They fit a span of 50" between side rails.
• The side rails must be 1"-1.75" wide and no more than 1.5" tall with a 2" clearance from the bottom of the rail to the top of the car.
• Dimensions: 53.4 Long x 1 Tall x 1.5 Wide inches

Overall, I'm very happy with the purchase (I did purchase these myself) and would recommend them to anyone interested in luggage bars whose car meets these specs. You can support the channel by using this link if you decide to purchase them: https://amzn.to/2NHO4Rt

Universal Aluminum Locking Roof Cargo Bars - Fits Roof Side Rails Up To 50" Apart

The Treasury Pillars History

In the middle of Pioneers Park, nestled away at the southwestern corner of Lincoln Nebraska are a set of four stone pillars calling to be visited.  Surrounded by a pond, these ancient looking stone works are one of the highlights of the park.

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Commemorative Plaque cast from metal recovered from the sunken ship the USS Maine.

A popular photography location and wedding setting, they've inspired countless visitors, but where did they come from?  A commemorative plaque nearby only tells part of the story. 

With this video I'd like to introduce a new series to Flarecorp Media called 'Historical Threads' where we will follow the thread of something backwards in time as we unravel its journey through the web of history. 

Watch below for the whole journey of these columns from the 1800s in Washington D.C. to their current resting place.

Here's a link to download the free history of the Treasury Building ebook mentioned in the video.

The Treasury Building: A National Historical Landmark:

• ePub version

• PDF version

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Here is a list of my sources:

• https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pioneers-park-pillars

• https://www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/edu_fact-sheets_building_history.aspx

• https://journalstar.com/blogs/photofiles/photofiles-pioneers-park-s-legacy-to-lincoln/collection_97e32587-3acf-5c2a-b1ed-e9142c6c1150.html#20

• https://books.google.com/books/about/Fortress_of_Finance.html?id=iVC-YgEACAAJ

• https://www.treasury.gov/about/history/Documents/web%20version%20Architectural%20History%20Treasury%20Building.pdf

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasury_Building_(Washington,_D.C.)

• https://www.treasury.gov/about/history/Pages/the-treasury-building.aspx

• https://www.treasury.gov/about/history/collections/Pages/West_Wing.aspx

• http://intowner.com/2012/10/11/4371/#

• http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DC-01-WH04

Swiss Alps Ride

I visited Switzerland in 2012 for the 2nd time in my life. I was there for nearly a month which really gave me a feel for the local culture, especially since I wasn't in the most Touristy of areas.

During my stay, I traveled between the bigger valley city of Sion and a small village in the mountains called Suen.  There was an amazing road that we had to drive on to get between the places and me, coming from flat Nebraska in the U.S. was enamored by the Swiss Alps. 

I really wanted to share it with others and record it for my memories so I sat in the passenger's seat and recorded the ride.

I've published it into a video for you to enjoy. Along the way I give you a bunch of facts about Switzerland and tell you about some of my memories.

If you enjoy this and want some more videos or photos from my time there, let me know in the comments below and please feel free to share this on social media.

Computer Bench Build

I moved and I'm no longer renting so that means I can finally put down some roots and set up my office to meet my needs instead of doing whatever I can to get by until the next time I move.

So to start, I decided it was time to build a proper computer bench instead of using a random mix of plastic tables and an old oak writing desk.  The only problem is, I haven't built anything since shop class in 1997.

So, with that in mind, off we go into designing and building a corner computer bench for my office.

While waiting for a music copyright flag to get cleared, I realized I missed a part of the video and decided to just add that part and re-upload the video. The offending song was from a GoPro Quik movie. GoPro pays for licenses for the songs, but Facebook and YouTube still flag them as copyright infringement so you have to file a dispute.  Despite keeping the original song and adding another song from GoPro, this time Part 2 went up without any Copyright issues at all. Weird. Anyway, enjoy the final part below!

We Burned a House Down

See the video at the bottom of the page

I was invited to join the Malcolm, NE fire and rescue crew by my friend Jared Ritze to film some fire training during a controlled burn of a house. This was a video that took a very long time to finish, just over one year in fact. It took so long because it was just so much material and I was doing it for more than just myself. I was doing it for the Fire and Rescue Crew as well. 

It was only the 4th video I'd recorded since starting Flarecorp Media and I had never done anything so big before.  I didn't want to put out a sub-par video so I waited until I had developed my skills enough to be able to handle it.

I started out the day planning to just do a time lapse, take some pictures a bit of video as well, but I started to record more and more until I had over an hour and a half of footage between 5 cameras.  It was also the first time I'd used my Nikon A900 (which died in the lake last month. See it here)

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I decided to come out of my shell and ask some of the firemen if I could record them while they talked about equipment or what they were doing.  All of them were more than willing to explain it to me, but didn't want to be on camera except for the brave Mark Stevens who gave me a tour of their Medium Duty Rescue vehicle. Big thanks Mark!

In the end, I had gotten much more footage than I'd hoped and my biggest problem editing was trying to decide what I wanted to cut out because all of it was good to me, but I set a goal of under 30 minutes and once I turned a lot of the slow motion into a montage, the way forward became pretty easy.

Below is a GoPro time lapse from start to finish. I had to move the camera midway through the burn (as you’ll hear in the main video) because it got directly in the line of heat due to a wind shift.

Thank you to the Malcolm, NE Fire and Rescue Crew https://malcolmfirerescue.org/ for inviting me out and to the Garland, NE Fire and Rescue Crew for showing me around.  Also thank you to the property owners for letting me record.

I Fell Through The Ice

See the Video at the bottom of this page.

This started out with a weekend around Branched Oak Lake, NE.  There were a few bald eagles in the area so I went out for a photography outing. 

Once out there, I was amazed by the awe inspiring expanse of ice and had a compelling urge to go out on it and explore.  

I've never been on a frozen lake before, but there were a number of people ice fishing and even an ATV on the ice so I figured with that many people, it must be safe to just walk on.

I came back out the following day and decided to walk out on to the ice from here. This is where I normally launch my kayak from in warmer months. You can barely see the crack in the ice. I had investigated it the day before and found it was quite thick where the ice had bulged up.

So I set out with a drone, 2 cameras, a GoPro and a various assortment of batteries, tripods and a monopod with the intent of walking close to the shore to stay safe. Haha.

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Ice Bulge

I came upon a crack and heard a small creaking noise. I assumed that the ice was the same thickness here, just with water getting splashed up from below due to the overlapping pressure. I thought it'd make for a cool video shot to record the noises of the ice groans. I tried to encourage more while recording by stomping my foot on the crack.  Next thing I knew, my foot plunged through and I was in the water.

The moment I realized I was in the water, I thought I'd do like I would when swimming. I'd sink a ways and then push myself off the bottom really hard and climb out.  When the water was up to my neck I realized it was too deep to find the bottom here and I was going to have to swim out.

As I said in the video, I tossed the cameras I was holding on the the ice and proceeded to start kicking. With giant sized snow boots, jeans, a coat weighed down by batteries and other equipment and a drone on my back, it was really hard.  I tried several times to lift my leg onto the ice, but couldn't get it up so I realized I had to swim harder and faster.

Finally I got enough grip with  my arms on the ice to get a leg up and pull myself onto solid ice. I immediately went to my car and started pulling batteries out of my equipment.  I grabbed my water resistant Pixel XL 2 phone to go record the hole because I figured, hell, if I had just ruined several thousand dollars worth of gear, I was at least going to get a video of it.

  I was really hopeful that the camera I was recording on when I fell in would have saved its video, hoping that a few thousand YouTube views would help offset the loss, but unfortunately the file didn't get saved even partially. I went home and continued drying everything out.

Over the next 2 days my legs began hurting really bad and I noticed this big bruise on the inside of my knee. The bruise came from hitting the ice ledge when I fell. I can only assume my legs were hurting due to breaking the ice while I was kicking and the strain caused from swimming with heavy boots and clothes on.

The final equipment tally ended up being

• 1 $400 Nikon A900
• 2 $50 3DR Solo Drone Batteries

So, fortunately, it didn't end up being as bad as I feared in the video.  See all the action below.