I prefer to live my life swaddled in a blanket of security, protected from the horrors of everyday life by layers of imaginary armour. Living with she who must be obeyed provides me with all the danger and conflict I require in my declining years. But today I found myself outside my comfort zone; twice.
First of all, I deleted Pattaya Days. I have been having some problems with the admin part of the site for some months; with 404 errors popping up when it should have reported “done that, my master”. Various attempts were made to resolve the problem; but I was eventually left with only one option; delete everything and re-install. The trick with Wordpress is that some of the files represent the design of the site; and other are for the generic Wordpress installation; so you have to save the design part; delete and re-install the rest, and then put back the design part. For someone of my limited (non-existent) technical skills, the opportunities for a massive fuck-up are wide ranging.
Still, I backed up all my Wordpress files onto my computer, pulled off a back-up of my SQL files from my service provider; and then initiated a delete of Pattaya Days. It felt cathartic I can tell you. And by cathartic, I mean I was shitting myself.
While the big delete thing was going on I decided to fly my Phantom drone from the roof of my condo; just to ratchet up the excitement. The air was fairly still and I thought it would be fun to photograph some surrounding buildings from a height. Started up the drone and received a message that the compass needed calibrating. I have had this before when attempting to launch from large areas of concrete, the compass is not sure what is going on, even though it is calibrated OK. You can’t recalibrate on a concrete roof, and you can’t fly without a functioning compass; so that was that. Then the message disappeared, ten satellites were acquired, and the flashing lights indicated the drone was happy; so off we went.
Flew a wide arc over the Gulf and was lining up to take some photos, when I received a message that I was losing wi-fi contact. No idea why this happened, maybe a concrete roof covered in satellite dishes is not the best place to send out signals. Anyway, time to abandon the flight, so I flicked the Home switch and pulled back on the stick to bring the drone home. It flew further away…
I assume that the compass was still screwed, and although it wanted to come home to me; it had no idea which direction to go. So I couldn’t bring it back using the Home function, and I couldn’t see in which direction it was pointing because there was no display on my phone. And by now it was a small dot in the sky. Oh shit.
After a minute or so of blind panic, I squinted into the distance and rotated the drone a little, and then moved it forward. Then again, all in an attempt to work out which direction it was pointing. I finally managed to get it heading back towards me and eventually landed it back on the roof, with shaky hands and a huge feeling of relief. I am never flying from there again.
Back in my condo, the delete was complete and I reinstalled Wordpress, then added back the bits I thought I should add back; and here we are. My problems are gone and the site seems to be functioning OK; let me know if you find that it isn’t and I will have no idea how to fix it.
Very happy to end the day with both a blog and a drone.