Most people will likely tell you the Fountains of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino are easily the coolest thing in Las Vegas. I agree. They are spectacular. I have never seen excess put to better use — and let me tell you, a huge lake that shoots water hundreds of feet in the air, in the middle of the Nevada desert, where any water demands a high premium, is excessive. These fountains left me breathless, awestruck, every time I saw them, and we made sure to catch several shows while we were there.
This is one of those shows, filmed by me at night, from the Northeast corner of the lake, at the intersection of Las Vegas Blvd and Flamingo Rd. The fountains danced to a famous tune crooned by Frank Sinatra, called “Luck Be A Lady”. Enjoy!
A couple of weeks ago, we spent a beautiful afternoon at The Breakers hotel and resort in Palm Beach, Florida. This is a 720p HD video I filmed on the beach, with the Olympus PEN E-P2, a camera I am currently testing for an upcoming review.
It was windy, a bit chilly, the surf was good, and the afternoon sun added a beautiful golden hue to everything, particularly to the rocks placed on the beach. The texture of the sand at The Breakers is finer and darker than on other beaches in Florida. This complemented the blue waves quite nicely, as you’ll see below.
We’ve recently finished putting together a “severe weather” garden shed in our yard, made by a company called Arrow. We wanted a model that could withstand hurricane-force winds, since we live in South Florida, where hurricanes do occur from time to time. The particular model that we purchased was the Homestead 10′ x 8′ (HS108). We filmed our progress along the way (it took 1½ months from beginning to end), and you can see the video below.
The process of selecting and getting the garden shed approved and built highlighted several areas of concern when it comes to the manufacturing, retail and inspection aspects of this particular model. It all turned out to be more involved and more costly than we thought. It certainly was an adventure in do-it-yourself construction.
We looked for guidance from our city (Hollywood, FL) when we made the decision about what garden shed to get, but they were not helpful. All they told us was that many of the sheds sold at local building stores may not be approved for use and may not pass the inspections, and that we needed a product approval sheets for the shed.
We went to Home Depot looking for sheds, but we thought the pre-assembled ones they had on display were flimsy and might not withstand strong winds. Then we went to Lowe’s looking for a shed, found one made by a company called Arrow, only to be given the run-around when it came to the product approval sheets. The store clerk thought they were on the Lowe’s website. They weren’t. The management thought the Contractor Services department had them. Perhaps they did, though we couldn’t get them to help us. Then we tried the Arrow website, where they should have been listed alongside the shed specs. They weren’t.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), we did find a particular model on the Arrow website, called the Homestead, rated for “severe weather” and engineered for the Miami-Dade county building code, which is stricter than what we have in Broward county. That meant it was sure to be approved for use here, and would pass the inspections if assembled correctly. The price was much higher than we thought though (about $1,700) for a pre-fab, un-assembled shed that came in two flat boxes and was only 10 feet by 8 feet (80 sq ft). Still, I remembered seeing a Homestead model at Lowe’s, so we went back to check. To our surprise, it was on sale for a little under $500. We thought ourselves in luck, but the clearance price should have raised a red flag for us. We bought it, knowing we’d at least have no problems getting it approved with the city.
Sure enough, it was approved, and the time for the initial inspection came. The clerks at Lowe’s told us we’d need to pour a six-inch concrete slab. Fine, no problem. Wrong. According to the building inspector, the engineering plans for the shed (put together by Arrow to supposedly comply with the Miami-Dade building code) required a house-sized foundation, which meant digging a trench all around the edge of the foundation that was 1 foot wide by 1 foot deep, with a 45-60 degree slope on the inner lip, using re-bar around its perimeter, not just wire mesh, and naturally filling it all up with concrete. That more than quadrupled our original estimate of the amount of concrete that we needed to purchase. We thought 1 pallet would be enough for a 6-inch slab. We ended up buying over 4 pallets of concrete (almost 5) in the end.
Forget the clearance price! The ridiculous foundation requirements in effect raised the price of the shed to well over its original retail price once again!
I have to lay the blame for this squarely in Arrow’s lap. After all, they were the ones who hired an engineering firm to put together the plans for the shed, and to get them approved with Miami-Dade. I sincerely doubt there’s anything in the Miami-Dade building code that specifies one must have a house-sized foundation for a flimsy pre-fab shed. That makes no sense whatsoever. All other sheds on the market do just fine with a 4-6 inch concrete slab, yet this model, which is shorter and smaller than the rest, somehow needs a house-sized foundation? No way. Someone was careless or fearful when they drew up the plans, and the customers are now paying for it!
I might have been more lenient in my overall view of the shed, had it proven sturdier during the assembly and in the final review. But it’s just as flimsy and cheaply made as the rest of the pre-fab garden sheds on the market, many of which come pre-assembled and cost a third of this shed’s original retail price. There’s nothing to set it apart for me from the rest, other than the presence of extra wall beams at waist height, and the lack of a need to use hurricane anchors to strap it to the ground once it’s assembled. The sheet metal used for its walls and doors is just as cheap and easily bent or dented, the doors open and close just as badly as on other pre-fab sheds, and to top it all off, it’s so darn short I bang my head on the lintel every time I go in and out!
Oh, and lest I forget, let me mention that Arrow forgot to provide the sufficient number of bolts and nuts needed to assemble the shed properly. We were delayed by a day during the assembly process because we needed to make a trip to the store to get some more hardware, which should have been included with the shed to begin with. On the bright side, they did include the Hilti anchors needed to anchor the shed to the concrete foundation, though I expected to need to get those myself.
Yes, the shed is now fully assembled, approved, and we’re using it. But it proved to be much more expensive in the end than it should have been, it took much more time and effort to get the project completed, and in my eyes at least, it wasn’t really worth all that. Imagine how those people who bought this shed at its original retail price felt! They must have felt they were ripped off royally. Thank goodness we at least got it at clearance price.
The City of Hollywood could also have been more helpful when I called them asking for guidance on garden sheds. Instead of dismissing me with some generic advice, they could have said, hey, here’s one of our building inspectors, talk to him and he can recommend sheds that he knows will get approved, cost less, and take less time to put together. While I understand that a government employee can’t recommend specific brands and models, at least I could have gotten helpful advice that could have saved us money, time and effort. Instead, the City of Hollywood was the only city in Broward County to raise property taxes this year, during a big recession, making me wonder exactly what we’re paying for, if they’re not helpful to us, its residents.
All I can say is this shed better hold up when the next hurricane comes, or Arrow will hear from me again.
One of the videos I uploaded to YouTube recently was identified as using copyrighted music. I’d used a song from the 50s, thinking that after 60 years, no one would give a hoot whether that song was being used as a track in a YouTube video. Still, it was identified by YouTube’s content ID program and pointed out to me.
Leaving aside the discussion of music copyrights in the US, which is absolutely insane, given that even 70-year old songs still aren’t public domain, I’d like to propose a model for revenue sharing among YouTube users and music publishers. It’s quite simple, and allows for easy licensing and monetization of music tracks. If implemented, I dare say it would also increase the revenues of music publishers quite a bit.
Here’s how it would work:
Music publishers use YouTube’s content ID program to identify potential matches between their catalogs and YouTube videos, same as they’re already doing.
Potential copyright issues will continue to be identified, same as they are right now.
Videos won’t be restricted, as they are now, but will continue to play in all geographical locations, for every YouTube user, accumulating views.
If the videos are successful and accumulate over 10,000 views, they will be invited into YouTube’s revenue sharing program.
Once they start making money through that program, a portion of that money will go to the music publishers who own the licensing rights for that particular song or piece of music. I wouldn’t mind paying up to 25% of the profits from a video to a music publisher if I chose a particular song I loved for my video, and my video was successful. Besides, I wouldn’t have to actually “pay” myself. YouTube would automatically distribute the revenues accordingly.
The best part of this is that the process is fair, doesn’t punish anyone, and benefits all involved. If a video is successful, then it pays, and if it only gets a few hundred views, who cares if uses a song that should be licensed? If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Does it matter?
Prosecuting individuals in this day and age, when the practice of adding songs to videos is so widespread, is terribly inefficient, and fosters ill-will. Why not use existing technology and platforms to add value, make money and foster goodwill?
The two areas where I see some tweaking will be needed are in the correct identification of music tracks, where the dispute/review process will need to be made easier and faster, and in the use of a sliding scale to calculate the percentage due to the publishers for the user of their songs, based on the song’s popularity and relevance. But those are minor things given the immense potential of this model to revolutionize the way we look at music copyright disputes on YouTube.
We were in the yard a few days ago, when we saw two lovely monarch butterflies engaged in a courtship ritual, on the grass. I recorded a video which you can see below.
According to science, what I filmed is the ground phase of their mating, and is preceded by an aerial phase, where the male will pursue and nudge the female, until she lands on the ground. He then lands on top of her and flits his wings wildly while he aligns himself alongside her body. Once he does that, he grabs her, and flies with her to a perching spot, where they sit end to end for about 30 minutes, while a spermatophore from the male transfers to the female.
The mating of the monarch butterflies occurs just prior to their re-migration back north. The eggs are not laid by the female until she reaches a suitable location there with plenty of food sources, such as milkweed.
As I write this, I remember that I’ve witnessed another stage of the monarch butterflies’ life when camping in the Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia, in September of 2006. It was there that I saw the caterpillars building their pupa, or chrysalis, and took photos of that.
Raoul Pop 