It should come as no surprise that navigating the Grand Canyon is a serious undertaking even in today’s GPS age. So before I embarked on a self-support kayak trip down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, I made sure I was prepared with the most up to date, accurate navigational data and tools. My […]
Garmin, gps, Grand Canyon
It began simply enough in early Spring of 2012 with a small gesture in a LASP conference room . But by the time the solid rocket fuel was ignited on November 19, 2013, I found myself inextricably tied to the success of its trajectory due to more than a decade’s worth of complex professional successes […]
LASP, ORS-3, STPSat-3, TCTE
After 4 months and over 50 flights with my Phantom quadcopter, I decided that my aerial photography needed an improvement and I finally made the plunge into the world of FPV (first person view). Among the many challenges of aerial photography and videography with the Phantom is the difficulty in aligning the GoPro camera at […]
FPV, Kumba Cam, Phantom
UPDATE 7/31/2013: I didn’t win the contest, but I had a lot of fun trying and really appreciate all the publicity I got for the video! Please help me win a video contest being put on by DJI, the makers of my Phantom quadcopter! Just click on the link below and press the Thumbs Up/Like […]
kayak, Phantom
It appears as a UFO to the uninitiated and it is only somewhat of this world—it is a Phantom. The Phantom quadcopter produced by DJI Innovations is the first high-quality, medium-cost consumer quadcopter to come to market. There have been other high-end multirotor aircraft available for the past 5 or so years, but with costs […]
DJI Phantom, drone, GoPro, Phantom, quadcopter, uav
With the launch of my new website, I thought it would be worth it to quickly describe which software tools I’m using to produce the content that I post on patrickbrown.org. This is an always changing topic, but given my transition to professional quality tools in the past year, I thought it would be worth […]
digital, web
Welcome to my new website that is built on the WordPress.org framework! I’ve spent the past two weeks migrating my old Blogger-based blog into a brand-new, from-the-bottom-up site built in WordPress. There are a multitude of reasons to use WordPress instead of Blogger that generally relate to powerful customization, but my primary reason for switching […]
digital, web
In May of 2011, I embarked on several projects to improve the functionality of my 1985 VW Vanagon Westfalia camper. After installing a Bostig turbo charger and designing & building an Arduino-based battery monitor, I designed and installed a solar panel system to keep my beer cold all summer long. But of course, just as […]
photos, van, video, Westfalia
While there are many unique aspects of the Antarctic environment, one of the most interesting that it shares with the northern pole is its preponderance of sunshine during the summer months. For the majority of people who have spent their entire lives in the mid-latitudes with its daily cycle of light and dark, it is […]
Antarctica, digital, photography, stories, video
Children are known for insatiable curiosity that manifests itself with endless questions of, “What is that?”, “How does that work”, and quite often the simple ponderance, “Why?” Although this behavior is most obvious in our developmental years, I can assure you that adults continue to ask these fundamental questions as I attempt to field responses […]
Antarctica