Morphing, 360

Cindy has been working diligently over the last couple weeks converting the unproductive orchard into a big landscape feature.  I made the suggestion to her that if we added some 4 x 4’s we could hang the sun sail that we have in the shed to provide some shade.  Cindy loved the idea.  On Saturday we bought the wood and cement.  After I got done mowing the grass I jumped right into working on getting the posts mounted.

While I was mowing Cindy had been busy at work with the post hole digger, creating four two foot deep holes to sink the 10 foot long 4×4’s into.  Her doing that made my part of the job much easier.  I hoisted the posts into the holes and then backfilled with dirt and then concrete while Cindy held the post level.  We left the posts set overnight so the concrete could settle.

On Sunday the plan continued to evolve.  To add stability I screwed the base of the posts into the wooden 2×6 border around the orchard.  We then talked about how it would be cool to add cross supports between the two posts on each side to create sort of a pergola look.  We headed back to Lowes for the second time in as many days to get some 2x6x12 lumber.

The weather all weekend was melt your face hot but we just kept plugging away as we both donned our wide brim hats to provide at least some minimal relief.  I got done with my portion of the project about 4:30 Sunday afternoon.  We screwed in some eye hooks and strung up the solar shade.  It looked cool and provided a significant temperature drop when hanging out under there.  I think Cindy may be able to finish up the project this week.

After a weekend full of labor going on an EUC ride isn’t a great idea, at least for me as I was already feeling beat up before stepping on the wheel.  Even small bumps in the road sent bolts of pain into my lower body and back, it honestly was not a fun experience.  The biggest reason I wanted to ride was to test out my new Insta360 camera which shoots everything in a 360 field of view.  I was curious how it would look and how tedious it may be to edit my videos using this style of camera.

The footage came out cool, having the ability to spin the perspective around in whatever direction you desire is very powerful.  Unfortunately that power comes with a price, editing time.  The 17 minute video I made consumed 2-3 hours of editing time.  I had to first load all of the clips into the 360 software to set my camera angles.  Then I had to export all 25 of these clips into flat video files and then reload them into my normal video editor where I combine everything into one video.  To be quite honest, it’s tedious as hell which is what I was afraid of.  I will be researching to see if there is something I can do to reduce that editing time because I just can not be spending that much time to construct a video.  Take a look at the 360 effect below.

The list did not get completely crossed off yet, there are a couple items I will hopefully get to during the week.