The Cactus Trip Diaries

The Plan
It’s good to have a plan! If only to suggest what needs to be done when what is planned does not happen.

Today, Eunice Thompson: ‘Looking for Cacti and Succulents by drone’ was the planned program. Like Jonathan’s ‘Cacti in 3D’, this too has some technical challenges to overcome. The things we like about Webinars is that they allow us to share information with a large audiences (the BCSS Tuesday evening meetings now regularly attract audiences of 300 plus people from all over the world). Brian Bates from Sucre, Bolivia is a regular attendant (has he actually missed any Zoom meetings?) and we’ve enjoyed meetings where the speaker delivers the presentation from his home in Madagascar to our living rooms in Europe (including the UK), the US with clusters in Brazil, in fact anywhere in the world where people with internet access and a computer and a hunger for information about Succulent plants, including cacti, are motivated to switch on their computer at the right time.

We learned that things that work fine on a laptop in a hall with a digital projector and a screen (or sometimes just on a painted wall), can look less impressive when shared with a large audience over a great distance: movement!

This can be a dashcam video of Al driving down Cerro Perales in Chile, through fields of Copiapoa and Eulychnia, or it can be the subtle shift of the camera’s view to create the sensation of movement and depth in Jonathan’s 3D presentation. Eunice and I developed an interest in looking at our plants of interest from a different angle by using footage shot by a camera mounted on a drone. Again, it is the movement that can be tricky to share in a webinar.

Eunice has asked me to postpone her presentation while she installs and tests a new fast hard drive in her computer. Fine! So I’ll fill the gap this week by sharing with you how Jonathan and I opened the box and set up my first drone (in Jonathan’s kitchen) in 2015, flew it through a series of short test flight in the UK and then eventually for real in Chile. Once it got safely back home, my youngest son ‘borrowed’ it to help with his photographic work. It has never been seen again! I have since bought two more drones that had overcome the space and weight issues of my #1 drone. Health issues (my own and now COVID 19) and my location on Salisbury Plain, much of which is MOD owned, which means that much of it is a ‘no fly’ zone.

Fingers crossed that Eunice can show us her footage next week.

Today’s session is on Sunday 16 August 2020 at 7:30 pm (BST) Just click on the link below at the right time.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82942872588?pwd=SjVTK3Y4L1Rzc3RWMzVHWDFSYkFVQT09
Meeting ID: 829 4287 2588
Password: Bellflower

Next week:
Eunice Thompson: ‘Looking for Cacti and Succulents by drone’
Date and time: Sunday 23 August 2020 at 7:30 pm (BST)
Meeting ID: to be announced
Password: DJIdrones

Tephrocactus Study Group – Speaker and subject to be announced
Date and time: Sunday 30 August 2020 at 7:30 pm (BST)
Meeting ID: to be announced
Password: WhoTCSG

Alain Buffel:

Date and time: Sunday 6 September 2020 at 7:30 pm (BST)
Meeting ID: to be announced
Password: BuffelRoo