More GoPro Time Lapses.

I got the suction cup mount in the mail this week, so here are a few new perspectives.

Old family story.

I saw this on Facebook today:

and I had to laugh.  I don’t know if it’s made up or not, but I tend to believe it’s true.  And, like I said on Facebook, if my Grandma Ida were alive today, it could have been her.

Why do I say that?  Because of an old family story that I know is true.  My mother wouldn’t lie to me, and if you knew my Grandma Ida, you’d believe it too.

My mom grew up in Harlem, NYC, in the 40’s.  One day my grandmother came home to their apartment building and saw an elderly man berating an 8 year-old girl because she was playing with a black boy in the lobby.  He was appalled that she had let “that boy” in their building.

My grandmother, who was a lot of things, but shy and demure were not two of them.  She told him to shut the hell up and leave those kids alone.  An argument ensued in which they “debated” the benefits and problems with inter-racial friendships.  Finally the man got fed up with arguing and told her “You wouldn’t think that if that was your daughter!”

My grandmother pulled herself up to her  full 5’2” and told him “That is my daughter.”

If there had been a fly swatter in her hand, I have no doubt she would have hit him with it right then.

Snorting chocolate milk.

I made a 9^th grader shoot milk out his nose today.  He was sitting with a student that was absent yesterday.  When I asked him where he was yesterday the 9^th grader said he was in Juvenile Detention, for robbing a bank, in a Taco Bell.  I told him that I have never seen a bank in a Taco Bell and asked him where it was.  He said it was in the bathroom (junior high kids can go from 0 to absurd in milliseconds).

Without thinking I came out with “I don’t think I’d want to swipe my ATM card in a toilet.”   That’s when he laughed so hard milk came out his nose.

When this picture came up as one of my background pictures on my school computer, a student told us that his mom doesn’t want a tombstone over her grave.  She wants her family to put up a parking meter.  Good thing I didn’t have a mouth full of chocolate milk.

Being a Hero

Over the break, I went out and bought myself a GoPro Hero.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s a really small camera that takes videos, photos and time-lapse photos.  It’s specifically designed for active photography.

What I mean by active photography is that it’s small and solid, comes with a water-proof case it films out of and two mounts.  Mine are already attached to the front bumper and side of the Jeep.  You can also order all kinds of other mounts: chest, wrist, suction cup (I ordered one), helmet, bicycle bar and (I also ordered one of these) a mount specifically made for vehicle roll bars.

It also has it’s own built in wifi, and an app that allows me to control the camera from my iPad.  I can watch it, change from video to photo to time-lapse and back, and start & stop capturing from inside the Jeep when it’s on it’s mount outside.

Here are a couple of time-lapse videos I made this week.  The first one is me driving from Smith’s to the local car wash.  I set the time-lapse at one picture every half a second, and the video at 1/10 second per picture, so it only 48 seconds long and moves 5 times normal speed.

Driving along 2100 South in Sugarhouse.

The second one was produced the same way, but it’s about 4 minutes long.

Driving up Emigration Canyon

I can’t wait to go 4-wheeling now.

Small storm cleared out the inversion.

Saturday I woke up to about an inch of snow on the yard.  No big deal, except it was a big deal that it cleared out the inversion.  Ahhhhh, clean air, so nice.

You’ll recognize two of these pictures from this post, when we went up to Park City to get out of the gunk.  I added a couple pictures to show how the same areas look without the inversion.  Enjoy, ‘cause I’m enjoying it, and the forcast I just saw has a couple small storms coming through the region this week, just enough to keep the valley scrubbed clean.