So I spent a couple of days flying around in a plane for no reason (don’t ask). The not-to-be named airline which ferries Dutch troops back and forth to Kandahar go out of their way to spend pretty much all their time handing out food (2 meals in a 6-hour flight, and 2 each in two 4-hour flights), and they also give out portable digital movie players which are normally reserved only in Comfort Class (for their paying customers). But frankly you come to a point when you’ve had enough food, you’ve seen all the movies, and you’ve read the free newspaper and the in-flight magazine. Now what?
Fortunately, I happened to be carrying a couple of my favorite gadgets (I like gadgets) in my gray-digital-camouflage work clothes, which my Uncle (Sam) graciously equips with lots and lots of pockets for just that sort of thing. And as we began to dip toward the clouds that blanketed the area around Eindhoven, the Netherlands I realized I was in the prime seat for catching a good view of the setting sun. I positioned my Flip Camera as best I could against the window, and as we descended through what must have been five or six separate layers of clouds, each with gaps that allowed various shades of sunlight to spill through in odd patterns, I got the working parts of a pretty cool (I think) video:
It’s pretty wobbly at times, and the scratches and dust on the window are at times distracting, but I still think it’s pretty cool. You don’t see sights like that too often – in the early parts where the top third of the video is dark, that’s actually the top layer of clouds, but it almost looks like it’s filmed from much higher. And I asked the flight crew to PLEEEEEASE make the plane stop shaking – and for Pete’s sake could SOMEone please clean the windown – but no dice.
When I got home I stitched the most interesting parts together, sped up roughly double their original speed, and added a piece of music which, coincidentally, I had also dreamed up and “composed” on my Playstation Portable during the same flight (I told you I was bored). [See my previous post for more about music on the PSP] Actually, I redid the music on the Yamaha after I got home because the sound that is used for melody (it’s supposed to represent a saxophone) gets pretty grating after awhile on the original version. So we end up with something like a mariachi band bumping into Yanni in an elevator and collaborating on location-appropriate music, but I kind of like how it fits with the images. I hope you enjoy it.
Oh, and if you’re really bored, you can compare with the PSP-generated version:
