Had a recent and second interesting encounter, this time an osprey, which flew in for (our opinion) close examination of our river boat. Near identical circumstance as with our eagle encounter of a few weeks back. Both birds subsist in part on a regular fare of (regularly stocked) golden rainbow trout (aka palomino trout). Our yellow OC1 and the yellow-hued trout are pretty much a matching set. We're convinced that a distant first sight of the vibrant yellow boat, at least at first encounter, locked the birds into immediate predatory response mode.
We'd been out for a few hours doin' a bit of light play boating interspersed with a short session of casting for rainbows within a bit swift, river side-channel. Afterward, back at the boat launch, we spotted a familiar pair of ospreys. Both low circling the river gorge at near treetop level. Obviously fishing. Always a pair. Been sharing the river with 'em for quite a few years. Bet we've seen 'em a hundred times. Always long distance. Typically never venture nearer than a quarter mile. Maybe an occasional eighth mile.
As they passed one bird stayed high overhead. Its shadow crossed the ground a few feet away. The second bird remained treetop level, far bank. Once directly opposite shore line, the bird makes a swift turn our direction and comes in rapidly, swooping low to within maybe thirty feet before banking left to down river. Maybe ten feet above water level. It then makes a swift circling cross river return ascent and alights in a large sycamore tree opposite river bank. It sat there perched while rapidly calling for a following half to full minute. Appeared to be a bit agitated.
Yellow OC1. The osprey's subsequent perch location circled.
This is the best zoom image we could muster totin' a
compact camera. The osprey circled in image.
(Internet Image)
Osprey plumage
Earlier in the afternoon casting for rainbows. Hooked only one this
day, that appeared to be a native considering the size.
Caught 'em on some midge-looking dry fly.
We're stickin' with our yellow river boat theory. This in part after years of additionally observing a type of blue dragonfly (Blue Dasher?) constantly be attracted to each blue trimmed SUP we own. Both on river and lake. They land on and hang out or follow the blue trim craft for miles.
"God looked upon the world and called it good, but man was not content. He
looked for ways to make it better and built machines to do the work. But in vain
we build the world, unless the builder also grows."
- 'I, Robot', 'Outer Limits' S2E9, 1964
"Go on... to the gallows... run... to the gallows!"
- Samson Shillitoe (Sean Connery)
'A Fine Madness', 1966 (Film)
Let's just call 'em a "delivery man"...
Just over a brief rise and around a short curve in the narrow, a bit rugged, rocky, single lane dirt road. A few hundred feet ahead sets a parked van. Route blocking. No way around 'em. Just outside the drivers door stands the lone occupant for whatever reason. He spots us, quickly flicks his cigarette into the adjacent woods, and bee lines it back to his vehicle. He's got several hundred feet of reverse backtracking to a narrow pull off to let us pass. We have maybe a third of that distance to similar. He takes the initiative. Responding in kind, we give 'em a toot of the horn, shift to reverse and wave 'em on thru. In very tight passing he stops and offers his condolence for blocking the path...
"Sorry... I stopped to take a quick smoke break. Didn't expect anyone to be passing by this early. They [his company] have this !!##'n van so rigged with AI that I can't do anything. Follows me with GPS. Monitors speed, time and every stop I make. Has an interior headliner sensor that detects any smoke so ya' can't smoke inside. Even has an eye tracking sensor that monitors where you're lookin', your pupils and how often ya' blink. Along with an interior video camera. I guess that they think that we're out ridin' around party'n all day... so I gotta' stop and get out if I want a smoke!"
Early afternoon. A hot ninety-five degrees and humid. Typical summer water level - low. Tossed a rod in the boat and a small assortment of flies and accessories in the river bag. Usually reserve early morning or late afternoon thru evening for fishing the open river. Not bright, sunny midday. The primary objective was paddling. Our circuitous "river trail" route. Considering that we'd purchased our fishing license for the current season just a few days earlier, we figured that we'd hit up an en route and interesting looking, large rivers edge sandstone rock slab. If not decent fishing, at least a hangout spot as the flat surface of the sun baked boulder sported a one-shot natural log bench of driftwood sycamore.
The facing riverfront was shoal (darn near wet rocks) and a bit swift. A merger of shallow runs and micro pockets. Not our favorite angling waters. Gonna' be nothing but slack, short drifts. Seldom fished conditions for us. Repetitive, constant motion. But more work equals more fun we figure.
Although we knew better, first cast we let a small minnow streamer long drift to straight line and snag in the fissured rock river bottom. We switched to one of three wet flies we carried and similarly lost that and the one to follow before getting our act together. The next solid three-quarter hour of repetitious casting went by quick. Time flies when you're having fun. But we knew that we were merely dawdling in the hot sun.
Opposite shore line, maybe a football field length distance, we spot a soaring raptor rapidly making his way down river, skirting the tree tops. As we spot him he apparently spots us. He makes an abrupt ninety degree turn and is now flying directly toward our position. Can't quite make 'em out. Appears to be a hawk. He's pretty dark in plumage. Looks to be a lot bigger. Possible Osprey. As quick as we can clear another thought he's coming in fast and low. Practically water level. And directly toward us. We're ready to duck cover. About head level and twenty feet out he makes an aerobatic sixty degree roll back to river north and we get an excellent view of 'em. Wings full splay. At least six foot tip-to-tip. Almost slow motion in his control. Poetry in motion as they say. Could have probably counted the tail feathers. It's a juvenile bald eagle. And gripped in his talons he's carrying an aerodynamic aligned mid-afternoon lunch of golden rainbow trout (aka palomino trout). Pretty good size, too. We know that in the recent stocking the palominos were all on the order of a girthy ten inches plus. At closest range we probably could have reached out and tapped 'em with the tip of our eight foot six inch five weight. Totally silent in his glide until his flapping acceleration once past and return to his downstream heading.
(Internet Image)
Bald Eagle plumage
That's exactly our close range perspective of his soaring turn, with palomino in talon
(Internet Image)
Golden Rainbow Trout (aka Palomino Trout)
We're pretty definite that the young eagle was attracted to our yellow colored OC1. Probably thought that he was locked on to a whale of a palomino. Or, considering the coverage of the whitewash on the rock, maybe we were intruding upon his dinner table. We're stickin' with the former.
Don't be fooled by the gentle appearing upgrade as depicted in the image.
Two miles over a bit rugged terrain was a persistent tug. Midway becoming a slog. Any further beyond our destination we imagine a full blown tug-of-war. Given a fairly level track supporting a paved and compacted crushed gravel surface, such as a hike-bike trail, we could have run the distance. We opted for our standard, unimproved, combination side-hill cut mountain trail and heavy-ballasted railroad grade. Rocks, ruts, mud, puddles, mud puddles, fly ash, bottom ash, slag, crushed small gravel, medium gravel, large gravel... and more gravel. Outside temps in the mid 90's. Potential for hidden, snapping vipers. Minus any serious grade (other than a short steep downhill of several hundred feet) we'll give it a 3 out of 5 on the difficulty scale (at said distance), so it could have been worse. To be honest, given a following day of a bit of rest and recovery, and we're ready to go again.
And we had an end to our toil
Titian's 1548-1549 Renaissance masterpiece as re-imagined thru the wonder of Photoshop by our modern, resident classical master, the mononymous "vonRay".
Sisyphus' tale is actually pretty good...
(YouTube Video)
Some decent AI - although, we see opportunity for some great stop motion animation.
(We'd like to get a pair of Zeus' electric shades at 4:40)
Standard greeting that we first heard probably forty+ years ago when we bumped into a fella' in the local hardware store. He apparently recognized us right off the bat. Waved and made his way right over to say hello. Bit of a smaller guy. Impish looking. Friendly as heck. Problem was, we had no recollection of the man. In between casual bantering centered upon the lower Yough river and the current weather and river conditions, we're rackin' our brain trying to place 'em. He was such an amiable fellow and came across as an old friend that we hesitated to ask his name. This scenario played out multiple times throughout the years to follow, either in the hardware or local grocery store. We talked the river a lot with 'em but never once asked his name. He always wore a ball cap embroidered with the logo of a local Ohiopyle rafting outfitter. Once he sported a cap emblazoned with the Mountain River Boat Works logo, at the time a small paddling shop we'd visited out of Scenery Hill, PA (as we recall). Another clue but still no recollect.
A few years back we came across an on-line obituary and memorial concerning the passing of the inventor of the now legendary Shredderinflatable river boats; 100% manufactured right here in the USA in SWPA along the Yough river in Ohiopyle. We take a look at the photo accompanying the article of the late inventor himself, Tom Love.
Damned if it ain't our baffling buddy...
(Internet Image/Airtight Inflatables)
Wayback image of Love river testing an early Shredder
We never got around to it, and know several paddlers who own 'em, but unfortunately have never paddled a Shredder. It grieves us to say being settled right here locally.
Coincidentally we'd spoken to him once over the phone years back when trying to track down a few replacement inflatable thwart tubes for an old Campways/Riken river raft. We'd been given his number by Campways out in Los Angeles, CA. Shortly thereafter we blew out a seamed three foot section of the hull of the boat, so wound up not needing the tubes.Still had not (knowingly) ever met him in person.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Love's brilliant river boat.
A big step since the days of negative cutting 16mm film...
A few weeks back we received a limited offer to try out for free an AI video generator, VideoAI. Text to video. Sounded simple enough. (On-line) ya' type in a basic but graphic description of the shot or short scene ya' want to produce (a "prompt" in the vernacular), hit the "generate" button, wait a few minutes, then voilà , you're presented with an AI generated rendering of your concept - character, set/location, audio effects - the works. Ok. In our trial run we kept it simple enough - "twilight, a flying saucer landing in a rural cow pasture, the flying saucer emitting a high pitched humming sound, the sound of a cow bellowing" - pretty much our prompt word-for-word. Was mighty impressed with the result.
For the past year we'd been working on and off (when inspired) on a new stop motion short. Part experimental, part venture, always fun. We'd adapted a brief script from an old comic book anthology. We'd had most of the props constructed. We'd photographed a few test shots. Out of curiosity we did a second VideoAI trial using a shot description, pretty much word-for-word, from a scene within our script. Again, was more than impressed with the results.
From script, prompt for initial VideoAI test of creature
We'll leave reveal of the AI generated creature for the video viewing below
So impressed that we decided to abandon the stop motion premise and (further attempt to) complete the short utilizing VideoAI. Not without a few anticipated hitches, however. The main hitch being that each generation (shot) would be stand alone. Meaning that there is no continuity between generations. Matching shots, and primarily the creature shot-to-shot, could be a major problem. Second (but not really) was that generations maxed at a total length of eight seconds. We hint at not really, as we very seldom extend a shot beyond an average of six seconds. We could (typically) extend any longer shots with a transition insert. In turn, that sounded like fun, harkening back to the old analog film days of maybe 17 seconds of footage on a spring-wind camera. Would take a bit more planning with concern to maximum shooting ratio (under 1.25:1) and budget, as each generation costs $5. Peanuts for a short, under ten minute film. But a bucks a buck. And PBR's are currently up to $25/case.
The completed video:
Nano X (2026)
(Running Time: 5:36)
Comments:
AI Generator: Google Veo 3
A final shooting ratio of around 1.2:1
Not too bad. We figured out a few tricks to (somewhat) maintain continuity. Re-generating a shot for new and re-editing the prompt while maintaining the creature description, or cutting/pasting a prompt to a new generation then re-editing seemed to work well for keeping the creature consistent. Any resulting glitches were minor. There were some noticeable differences with the coverage of the creatures fur here and there. One close shot included black pupils in specified solid yellow irises. We re-edited subsequent prompts to specify pupil-less. One generation added two large saber-tooth fangs to the creature, without prompting that addition. Was pretty cool looking but up to that point it was too late to change its appearance. We worked around it by clipping the shot. And we're not crazy about the un-prompted huffs of AI added dust-like breath. And a few times the generator added a music cue which was a somewhat minor annoyance in post-editing as the cue and sound effects are single track.
Figuring that (at least Google) AI is this unified consciousness, another trick was to compose a prompt then paste it into the Google search bar, asking Google AI to describe the described. We would then re-edit our prompt if and/or where we felt it necessary to satisfy AI's interpretation.
Prompting shots as wide angle gave us the added option of scaling and cropping the shots in post-edit for re-use as alternate perspective close to medium shots or transitions, tripling the use of a generation or two.
Other than the end shot AI generated "microbe", the entire final "lab" sequence was all physical props and computer-keyed background plates. The "Test Results Interpretation" are six Mac/Pages software generated screenshots scaled and cropped in post-edit. The microscope lighting we illuminated in Photoshop.
Music and sound FX obtained from Pond 5.
All told the current AI generated text-to-video technology is pretty cool. Although we don't follow the trend, it's a bet that we probably experienced the absolute basics of what has been so far developed. If not already existent, we're sure that rapid improvements, from generation to generation continuity, to being able to interact with the AI generator just as a director interacts with a production crew (minus the crew and expense) are forthcoming. Actors will exist in computer files. We can see why Hollywood would be a bit nervous. Envision an industry of only screenwriters and digital filmmakers and designers and IT engineers and technicians.
One thing pretty cool will be the ability to seamlessly bring back actors of old. A few films we'd like to see:
How about John Wayne battling Predator in the late 1800's American southwest. Someone mentioned to us that they read about that a while back. Sounds as stupid and ridiculous as it does fun.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Twelve Labors Of Hercules, as dictated by Apollodorus. We can envision Arnie on a mountaintop high over Lake Stymphalia chucking arrows at swooping flocks of metallic feathered, man eating Stymphalian birds.Gotta' be Arnold, though, or we ain't watchin'.
A Sean Connery Bond remake of Dr. No and Moonraker. Both as literal novel adaptations. Would look forward to the ventilation system obstacle course (with spiders) as well as the giant squid encounter of Dr. No. And, Honey Rider sans bikini.
Disclaimer to the above: Informative content for on-line/private viewing only. No monetary compensation is involved.
