Friday, March 4, 2016

The Wall Street Journal has a piece on Aubrey McClendon: How Aubrey McClendon Led Today’s Energy Revolution. The indicted natural-gas pioneer, who died in a car crash Wednesday, helped usher in the era of fracking. It begins:

Ten years ago, I first interviewed a brash up-and-comer in the energy business named Aubrey McClendon. The chief executive of Chesapeake Energy, he was smart and personable. His bold vision of the future of energy struck me—and made me a little skeptical.

McClendon said that there were lots of new places to drill; you just needed to lease vast tracts of land and begin fracking, a then-obscure method of cracking open rock to get at natural gas. This was about as far from the conventional wisdom as you could then get, but much of it turned out to be true.

This is for the archives. I won't read any more now. It will have to wait. I have the time to read it ; I don't have the "right" emotional state of mind to read it yet.

The Aubrey McClendon story, for me, is quite "sad." That's not the right word/best word, but his death has me pretty shook up when I think about it. I know nothing about those things with which he is charged, and I'll probably need some time before I dig too deeply.

I don't know where he resides on the continuum that stretches from Rockefeller to Harold Hamm.

A very sad chapter in the oil story.

My only brother died at about the same age from very dissimilar circumstances.  

Maybe I'll start by finishing The Frackers. 

****************************** 

My First GoPro Video

I've had the GoPro Hero 3+ for a couple of years but had "difficulty" figuring it out and put it away. I also do not wear a helmet while riding a bicycle so there was nowhere I would use it. But I thought it was clever, and was caught up in the fad. My wife suggested I buy it with the money we got when we took advantage of the Target offer to buy older versions of the iPad.

The GoPro sat in my room for quite some time. I had twiddled with is the day I bought it but it seemed "difficult." Certainly is was very small.

But after several months of help from our 19-month-old Sophia with technical devices, and with my wife in California, I decided to try it again. This time, no problems.

In retrospect, the GoPro is incredibly simple to use.

There are two components: the very, very compact camera (probably a KGB knock-off) and a very clever waterproof plastic case.

The case: Part of the reason for the confusion was the extra clear plastic "thing" that made no sense. It turns out the case comes in the "standard" waterproof version. However, the back to that case can be completely removed and replaced with a back that has slots in the back that allow better audio of the surrounding area that is being photographed. The company is smart to default to the waterproof version for first-time buyers. The case could not be simpler once one understands the reason for the extra clear plastic part. Reading the manual helps.

The camera: Part of the reason for the difficulty with the camera is the fact that one uses the "power" button and the "shoot" button to navigate through the various menus. There are only three buttons (the third is the wi-fi button which I am not addressing for now), and only two of them are used for everything: power on/off; going through the menu; and, taking the picture/video. Compared to a digital Canon it is remarkable. The Canon and all similar cameras have many, many buttons and dials. The GoPro has two buttons (forgetting about the third wi-fi button). In addition, the buttons are all the same size (when inside the case); that makes things confusing. Generally, the smaller the button, the less often it is used, or the less important it might be. But when buttons are all the same size, one assumes they are all equally important. In this case, that third button was confusing. It was as big as the other two and had only one function: to turn the wi-fi on and off; whereas, the other two buttons had a several functions.

It was also not intuitive for some of the functions, but reading the manual helped.

The other problem, of course, is the very, very tiny screen for the mode one is in. 

Having said all that, I'm thrilled with the GoPro. Perhaps the best thing about the camera -- especially from my wife's point of view -- is that I now wear a helmet (some of time). There is a bit of a risk while riding with the camera on video: one is aware that one is filming and if riding a bike in busy traffic one has to concentrate on biking and not on filming. Maybe that gets better with time. 

Transferring the GoPro video to the computer and then to YouTube was another learning process, something I can talk about at a later date.

My first GoPro /YouTube video with all its problems and shortcomings. It does have audio, so have your device muted until you are ready to listen.

This the country road outside our apartment complex that runs to Walmart about a mile away, I suppose. The area used to be all countryside but is now being developed. The original countryside was in "disrepair" -- it could have been a nice park but it was pretty wild, and a bit of litter. The creek was "sad." So the development will make things look nicer but at the end of the day, I would prefer a countryside in "disrepair" than the typical DFW housing development.

(With high speed internet, the resolution is incredible; with slow internet, it is abysmal.) 

Remember to mute if in a library.