Author Archives: Maria Langer

Snow on the Mountains

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As seen from Wickenburg.

Wickenburg is in the northern Sonoran desert, at an elevation of around 2000-2400 feet. It’s cooler here than in Phoenix, but not nearly as cold as it is in higher elevations.

Once in a while, in the winter, a wet cold front will come through. It’ll be cloudy, with low clouds that make the distant mountains impossible to see. It might rain on us or maybe even snow a tiny bit. But it’s rarely cold enough for any snow to accumulate or even stick.

What’s magic, though, is when the clouds lift or clear and the mountains to the north are covered with snow.

Snow on the MountainsThat’s what this photo, which was taken from Wickenburg Airport, shows. The snow-covered mountains are the Weaver Mountains, about 15 miles north. Although I can’t remember exactly when I took this photo, I do remember that the snow remained up there for us to see for a few days. Mike and I even drove up to Yarnell, in the mountains there, to see it close hand. It had been plowed to the middle of the road — an odd thing they do in Arizona small towns. Mike made a snowball and threw it at the truck.

I miss snow — but only a tiny bit. I’m looking forward to seeing it firsthand this winter at our Howard Mesa camp. But I’ll rest easy with the thought that all it takes is a drive back down to Wickenburg to return to mild winters.

Come Fly with Us! Has 7 Subscribers

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Already! Cool!

Come Fly with Us!, the video podcast I whipped up for Flying M Air the other day, already has 7 subscribers. I think that’s pretty cool.

I checked the iTunes Music Store and found that it was listed there. Oddly enough, only two subscribers are checking in with iTunes. The others are using MyYahoo, Jakarta Commons, and a Java-based reader. I’m wondering if they’re all seeing the video that goes with the podcast. I hope so, since that’s all there really is.

I wrote an article about how to publish a video podcast using WordPress and submitted it to InformIt for possible publication on their site. If they take it, I’ll link to it when it’s published. If they don’t, it’ll appear on this site and on our WordPress VQS support site.

I created the second release for Come Fly with Us! on Tuesday. It’ll be released next Monday. I’ve decided to create the episodes in advance and release them on Mondays. It’s pretty easy to do with WordPress — just date the entries in the future and they won’t appear online until that date and time rolls around. I sometimes do that with entries on this site — like the About the Photos entries that were appearing quite regularly for a while. I wrote all of those in August and set them to release weekly for the next four months. (Time do do more, too.)

Next Monday’s release will show the Swansea Town Site ghost town. Those photos were taken on the ground. Some of them are a few years old. I think I’ll do a release on Wickenburg for the following week. Got some pictures today when I was out flying with my friend Kathy. Then possibly Sedona, from the air and on the ground.

Now if only I could get this ambitious with my personal podcast. I haven’t recorded an entry for a few months now.

Flying M Air Video Podcast Now Online

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It took me a while to figure it out.

Come Fly with UsI spent about 4 hours yesterday morning and another hour this morning publishing a video podcast for Flying M Air. Why so long? Because I couldn’t find a single how-to guide online to explain how to do it the way I wanted to get it done.

On Friday, I got back from a 3-1/2 day trip around the southwest with photographer Richard Noll. Rick and I took tons of pictures and video — much of which was from the air — of the places we visited. The goal of our trip was not only to perform a final check on travel, hotel, and tour arrangements for the Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure, but to gather images I could use to market Flying M Air’s tours and excursions. I now have over 1,000 still images and 4+ hours of video to go through.

iMovie HD 6 and iDVD 6: Visual QuickStart GuideI spent some time early Saturday morning with iMovie and Jeff Carlson‘s excellent book, iMovie HD 6 and iDVD 6: Visual QuickStart Guide. The book has everything you need to know to create a great looking movie in iMovie HD, from choosing a video camera to building the movie with titles, transitions, and effects. It then goes on to discuss IDVD (which I’m not ready for yet). I learned a lot of things, including that I can reverse and slow down video clips — two effects I’ll need for my final project: a 20-minute promotional DVD.

Yesterday’s starter project was to build a slide show of images taken in the Phoenix area. The slide show would make good use of the Ken Burns effect to add motion to still images. I’d also included opening and closing titles, transitions, and music. It was a very simple project, and with Jeff’s guidance, I was able to knock it off in about an hour with about 15 slides. The final video is about 2-1/2 minutes long.

Although Jeff’s book discusses publishing a video podcast with iMovie and iWeb, I was not interested in using iWeb. It might be a great tool for Web publishing newbies, but it lacks the control features I need. (This might sound strange, but the software is so easy that it’s hard for an experienced user to use.) I wanted to publish a video podcast of this and future Flying M Air movies right on the blog-based Flying M Air Web site. This way, the videos would be available immediately to site visitors as well as by podcast to subscribers. I knew this was possible, but I couldn’t find any clear guidance on things like format (Was the export to iPod format the right one?), linking (Was it as easy as just including a link to the file?), and server settings (Did I have to modify .htaccess?).

Phoenix Tour ThumbnailI got the answers to all of these questions through Web research and trial-and-error. I got it working at about 5:30 AM this morning and was pleased to see the new podcast file being downloaded into iTunes. I then spent another hour tweaking the settings for Flying M Air’s WordPress theme files so instructions would appear onscreen when a site visitor checked the contents of the new Video & Slide Shows category.

Interested in seeing my first effort? You can download the m4v file (which can be viewed in iTunes or QuickTime) or subscribe to the podcast.

And if you’d like to read a how-to article that provides step-by-step instructions for publishing an iMovie project as a podcast with WordPress (rather than iWeb), keep checking in. I’ll write it up today, but Informit.com has first dibs. After all, I do like to be paid for my work.

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Southwest Circle in a Blur

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That’s what happens when you compress a 6-day trip into 3-1/2 days.

Just got back from a 3-1/2 day version of Flying M Air‘s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I won’t do that again. A photographer and I rushed around from Tuesday morning until Friday at noon, trying to visit and photograph or video all of the destinations and the flights in between. I’m talking about Sedona, Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Flagstaff. In 3-1/2 days. Should make your head spin just thinking about it.

I have some stories to tell about the trip, as well as photos and video taken by me and by my companion for the trip, Richard Noll. If you’re a Bigfoot follower, you may know of Rick — he’s done documentaries about monster hunting for Discovery Channel and cable networks.

Rick’s job was to take photos and videos while we were in flight — which is something I can’t do — as well as on the ground where permitted. He left me with about 3 hours of video and close to 900 12-megapixel digital photos. My job, over the next few months, is to turn our raw footage into slideshows, video podcasts, and a DVD to show people some of the things they’ll see on the excursion.

But they’ll be lucky. They’ll be able to see it over 6 days, which is far more reasonable.

Flying in PhoenixRick took the photo you see here as I was flying into Phoenix yesterday at around noon. As helicopters enter the Phoenix Class B airspace, they’re instructed to stay below 2,000 feet (Sky Harbor is at around 1,200 feet, I believe) and normally approach the airport by flying down the west side of Central Avenue. That’s what you see here out the front windows. The red thing on the left (that’s reflecting on my window) is one of the back doors. We took a door off each day so Rick could take glare-free videos and photos. This photo will probably be the opening shot of the first video podcast I put together.

More later. Got a bunch of stuff to do this morning.

Easy Travel Reservations

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I’m not sure how Travel Agents can continue to exist.

We’ve been thinking about making a Thanksgiving trip out to Florida to visit some friends and my parents. We did some research online and discovered that the tickets would cost anywhere from $600 to $1200 per person depending on travel dates. The low end was about our budget for the trip, so we weren’t thinking too hard about it.

But we both have frequently flyer miles. Mike has them from his many, many flights between Phoenix and Newark on Continental. I have them through my many, many years of charging up a storm on my American Express card. This morning, I told Mike I wanted to make a decision. Yes or no — were we going to go? It would all hinge on whether we could use miles for travel during that holiday week.

We already had a printout of the dates and flights we wanted from our Web research on CheapTickets.com (Mike’s preferred travel booking company). We picked the combination that was best for us and I called Continental’s OnePass service center to see if we could use miles for those dates. We could — but it would take 50,000 miles for each of us. We had plenty to spare — heck we seem to earn them but not spend them. So while Mike reserved our tickets and used his miles to pay for his flights, I got online with American Express and put in the point to miles transfer request for the number of miles I needed in my OnePass account (45,000). I paid $18 for this privilege and was told it would take 1 to 5 days. I did all of this while Mike was still on the phone. We got the Continental reservation number and instructions for me to call back when my miles were in the OnePass account.

That turned out to be about 30 minutes later. I logged into my OnePass account and the miles were there. I called Continental, gave them my OnePass number, and the person on the phone pushed the necessary keys to apply miles to the flight. She took a credit card number for $10. Then switched me over to Budget so I could reserve a car. Within 3 minutes, that was done, too.

So we booked two tickets from Phoenix to Ft. Myers one day with a return flight from Jacksonville to Phoenix 8 days later and got a rental car for the one-way drive. It took less than an hour to do all this and it cost us a total of about $300 and 100,000 miles.

(Since my miles are based on dollars spent and I transfered 45,000 of them, I’ll be sure to tell my Mom that my plane ticket cost $45,000.)

The trip is now officially on the calendar. That makes all the difference in the world in our household. If it’son the calendar, it’s a commitment. Until then, it’s just wishful thinking.

And with so many travel tools available on the Web and by simply calling the airlines and car rental places directly, how is it that the travel agent business survives?

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