It was the perfect day for flying, clear skies overhead, light winds, and plenty of fuel in the old Cessna 172. Here’s an abridged video of a flight from Brandywine Airport (KOQN) to Bay Bridge (W29). Check out the fall foliage and the upper part of the Chesapeake Bay.
Made it back in a timely fashion, too, with a little bit of a tailwind. The leaves will probably be past their peak by the time I fly again. I’m happy to have seen them this year.
James Ellroy is one of my favorite novelists and his book, The Big Nowhere is near the top of the list when it comes to detective/crime fiction. Here’s a brief video review.
If you’re looking to read one the great stories of the past century, look into Ellroy’s “LA Quartet” as it has come to be know. It begins with The Black Dahlia, moves on to The Big Nowhere, continues with LA Confidential, and wraps up with White Jazz. I’ll be reviewing the other books soon here at the video blog.
It’s been too long since I last posted about John’s Roast Pork. And it’s been a much longer time since I first stopped in here with my friend, the captain. He was the one who took me from our side of South Philadelphia to the other side for a roast pork sandwich that became my gold standard. That was 20 years ago this month. I’ve been plugging my arteries ever since. Here’s a video review of the place.
I hope to interview John himself one of these days and also his mother, Vonda, who with her husband John, started this institution back in the 1930’s. Seriously, if you want a cheesesteak or a roast pork sandwich, go nowhere else. Go to John’s.
A video review of the Allen & Heath ZED 10FX mixer follows this paragraph of blather. Please allow me to introduce a new category to The Bent Page, and that category is BLOG CASTING. Soon I’ll be posting video blogs here on WordPress and YouTube. A separate streaming channel is also in the works but not finalized. Let’s look at that video review first. Another paragraph of explanation follows.
Over the past several months, I’ve been doing my homework in preparation for putting together a video blog casting studio. (The first order of business was to clean out my old office, which was chock full of nothing useful.) Naturally, the computers were updated. Next comes the audio component. To mix and feed audio into the digital recorder in my computer, I chose the Allen & Heath ZED 10FX mixer. At first glance it may seem like a bit of overkill, but my requirements and consultation with friends in the music world led me to this unit. I needed at least 3 microphone inputs with power supplies. The ZED 10FX has 4. I also wanted the ability to plug in some musical instruments because a few of those friends from the music world will (at least they said they would) participate in some of the productions coming out of here. Instead of having them lug all their gear, they can plug into this unit. There is also the ability to have studio monitors (speakers) connected through the ZED, a separate headphone output with the ability to isolate the feed to the phones. The onboard effects were less important but for the price, why not? Without going crazy on the technical side, each channel has the ability to be sent to the “RECORD” bus separately, so if those pals are playing away and I want to record each channel independently, this can be done. In other words lots of flexibility.
Now that the audio is piped into the system, I’ll be tweaking the video in a few different ways. Most import are the lights, which are on the way. More on this issue soon.
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