A video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

An aerial view of where I’m camped right now: off the grid in southwest Arizona and relying on solar panels for Power, a 2 year old MacBook Pro for video editing, and my Verizon “4G” (LOL) connection for Internet access.

I’m camped here for a while with my friend Janet and our dogs. Camp includes our art workspaces: she paints and I make jewelry. I’m living in the truck camper with the awning out and she’s living in the shorter travel trailer. We have inflatable boats in the water. I described life in camp in this blog post, if you’re interested: https://aneclecticmind.com/2020/12/19/snowbirding-2021-life-at-the-backwaters-camp/

The footage was shot with an original DJI Mavic Pro. This drone works great for me and I haven’t needed an upgrade. (Thank heaven; these damn things cost a fortune.) I piloted the first half and used the POI feature for the second half, which I also sped up by 150%.

The music is from YouTube’s free music for Creators, “Auld Lang Syne (Instrumental)” by Jingle Punks. I liked this piece because it’s traditional holiday fare for the end of the year. This version seems (to me) as if it hits a few bad notes along the way, which is perfect for the end of a really crappy year for so many of us.

I’m uploading this as I type on a connection that’s less than 1 Mbps and it’s taking forever. This also explains why I haven’t uploaded anything better for a while. My current computer setup is a MacBook Pro that can’t run DaVinci Resolve (my preferred video editing app) so I’m stuck with Screenflow, which has limited capabilities. I am able to create 1080 video, however, so that’s what I made. 50 MB for just over 2 minutes of video takes a very long time to upload at these dismal access speeds. (Total was about 30 minutes, actually, which wasn’t CRAZY bad. I just kept wondering if I’d lose the connection in the middle somewhere. I didn’t.)

I hope everyone has a great holiday. Wear a mask, stay healthy, get vaccinated as soon as you can. Be nice to others. Don’t hate. 2021 is going to be a GREAT year — if we make it that way!