[OT][Rant] Gig Economy Rant

I am getting a bit irritated by the bashing that the so-called gig economy is regularly taking in the media, where Uber, Grab, and Deliveroo bashing has become the sport of the day.

The main problem in my mind is not that the companies in question provide very little in terms of welfare for their workers compared to conventional companies, but that the gig economy is increasingly abused by people who work their gigs as full-time jobs ― the gig economy was never designed to do that!

The gig economy was created to allow people who need some extra cash to work and earn money quickly and without much hassle in terms of paperwork, or being tied down in contracts that do not suit their lifestyle.  Students come to mind, who want to earn some extra spending money in their time off, or people who do hold a full-time job but want to earn a few extra pounds in their spare time to finance a particular project or holiday.

Unfortunately, this initial purpose has been more or less overtaken by people who now use the gig economy as their sole and full-time income.  I guess their main motivation is the assumption that a period working in the gig economy in their CV still looks better than a period being unemployed.  These people probably were not even planning to work longterm in the gig economy, but have been struggling to find a full-time job, and so are stuck in a rot.

The resulting situation is now that the increasing number of people who abuse the gig economy as full-time employment now demand that it treats them as full-time employees.   Again, I sympathise with the sentiment, but they are asking for something the gig economy was never designed to provide.

The problem with all of this is that if we now redesign the gig economy to become full-time employment, by legislating to force the gig companies to provide the same level of welfare to their workers as normal employers, we effectively make the gig economy disappear;  which then in turn causes problems to those people who depend on the gig economy, as their current life circumstances do not allow them to hold a full-time job.  Most notably, we are depriving students of one of their main ways to finance their studies…

In my mind, what has to happen is the realisation that the gig economy is not there to provide full-time employment through the back door.  If you want a job that feeds your family and lasts a lifetime, then the gig economy is not for you;  and if you really think that you are so good at your gig that it should feed your family, then maybe you should take the plunge, go freelance, and start a business.

Maybe the real question we need to ask is why are there so many people who try to make a living through the gig economy, but the uneasy answer we will probably find down that route is that our record-low unemployment right now is not actually as low as the numbers suggest, or the politicians would like us to believe…

Update: Flight Planning Apps

I found out today that NATS ― the National Air Traffic Service, i.e. the organisation responsible for air traffic control in the United Kingdom ―  has released its own app to aid drone pilots in planning their flights, called NATS Drone Assist.

I have tried it out immediately ― being on the lookout for a new planning tool since the Hover disaster ― and found it to be excellent.  Not only are the VFR maps up to date and very interactive and include NOTAMs and future use indicators, but the app also warns of other hazards, including high-voltage lines and other drone users that are currently active.

NATS has also endorsed AirMap, the app I have been using since abandoning Hover.  So, I guess that if I use the app released by the air traffic control people and the app recommended by the air traffic control people, I hopefully will not go too badly wrong in the future.

 

 

Astro Park in Armagh

Tinker Bell‘s next adventure was going to be the Astro Park in Armagh.  This was actually my first commissioned work.  When Mel was over to see Northern Ireland, we did visit the Planetarium, but it was pouring down so heavily that we grudgingly decided to give the Astro Park a miss.  Mel hence requested that I get Tinks to make a nice video instead, so that she can look forward to her next visit when the weather will hopefully be better…

Pre-flight planning with SkyVector and Airmap. I do actually miss the “everything in one App approach” from Hover, but since it has proven unreliable, I do not really have a choice in the matter.

Video feed this time observed on my iPad rather than my iPhone, and indeed the feed was much more reliable and smoother, proving that my previous problems were not with the DJI Remote Controller, but with the limited memory and processing power of my iPhone.

Edited in iMovie on my MacBook Pro.

[OT] Sleep Tracker Reviews

Since I am travelling a lot ― for work as well as pleasure ― I also tend to suffer from jet lag a lot. Trying to get on top of that problem, I was first of all trying to find a way to reliably monitor and measure it ― once an engineer, always an engineer…

So I downloaded and installed a number of sleep tracker apps to see how good they were, and found the result to be shocking. The algorithm of the two I have tried so far was deeply flawed in a very similar manner. Below are the results of my ‘research’….

Pillow

This app would be absolutely brilliant, if not for the fact that its algorithm is deeply flawed. Instead of comparing your actual sleep against your goal, the sleep score is calculated by comparing the time you have been asleep against the time you have been in bed.

So, if I come home after a late night’s work and go to bed at 2300 hrs, then have to get up at 0500 hrs in the morning to go back to work, I get a very high sleep score, because I was asleep virtually the entire time I was in bed. Was this a good sleep, though…? Definitely not, at least two hours too short.

On the other hand, if I have a long lie-in on a Sunday, so was in bed from — say — 2200 hrs waking up around 0700 hrs and then snoozing until 1000 hrs, I get a very poor sleep score, because the time I was in bed vastly exceeds the time I was actually asleep.

Funny enough, the second type of sleep which gets the very low score is by far the one I’d prefer to always have!

If you don’t believe me, carry out the following experiment: Stop your alarm clock when you wake up, and take a note of your sleep score. Then switch the alarm back on: Pillow will offer you to continue your sleep or start a new session — choose ‘continue’. When you next wake up, or if you just lie in bed for another half an hour, you will notice that your sleep score has drastically reduced. Why? You already had a good night’s sleep according to your first score, so anything after that is a bonus, right…?

Since the sleep score is unreliable, therefore all the other little gadgets — most notably your ability to create unlimited numbers of notes, which allow you to then analyse a very complex set of circumstances — are useless. If the sleep score has no relation to how good my sleep was, then the notes will recommend the wrong thing, because they are trying to raise my sleep score. So, at the moment, going by my sleep notes, I should be working late, eat late and too much, never ever have any exercise, and drink lots of alcohol, because those are the nights that get the highest score.

Also, with all its cleverness, it never seems to have occurred to the programmers to take into account the one variable the app has always access to, and which probably has the largest impact on sleep quality, namely the time I went to bed. Believe it or not, your bedtime is completely ignored in the sleep quality analysis.

Sleep Better

The next tracker I tried was Adidas-sponsored “Sleep Better”, mainly due to being recommended by the Apple Health app.  Unfortunately, I quite quickly figured out that it suffered from exactly the same problem as “Pillow“, see above, with exactly the same flaw in the sleep score algorithm.

Additionally, it has much less features.  For example, unlike the unlimited and fully customisable notes provided by Pillow, there are only six preset notes, namely

  1. Worked out
  2. Stressful Day
  3. Not my Bed
  4. Ate late
  5. Caffeine, and
  6. Alcohol

“Not my bed” seems like a good idea, and applies to me quite often ― travelling a lot on business ― but then again is useless because I almost never will  have a socket close enough to the hotel bed to actually run a sleep-tracker overnight.  So, this is a note that I personally don’t need, and if I am limited to six notes only, where I would really rather track something else ― well, tough luck, take it or leave it, it’s not customisable…

Having said that, Sleep Better has two feature I like very much:  Dream Notes, which track the quality and quantity of dreams, and Insights, which tracks sleep quality against moon phases, which I consider an interesting experiment.

 

Conclusions

I grudgingly have returned to using Pillow for the time being, as Sleep Better‘s very limited note capability just was not up to the level of analysis I would like to perform to see what influences my jet lag.  I have left feedback on Pillow‘s app page, which received only a very non-committal reply from the developers

“Pillow’s sleep quality score takes into account a lot of different criteria including the time to sleep, time asleep, time spent on each sleep stage, any existing audio data and many more.“

No kidding!  Well, hopefully the reply was deliberately vague in order to not to have to admit that the algorithm is faulty.  With a bit of luck, they will now take a good look at their algorithm, and reconsider what they are actually trying to track.

I will update this post as and when new information becomes avaiable…  

 

Hover is not Reliable!

As usual, I did my preflight preps today with the Hover app, first at home ― my location was shown to be outside any controlled airspace ― and then again just before take-off.  Again, Hover  gave me the thumbs up and green light, and so unsuspectingly I commenced Tinks‘ take-off sequence.  It was only at that point that the drone itself gave me a “You are inside Zone D” warning.

Cross-checking with SkyVector, it turns out that I was well within the Zone D Controlled Airspace of Belfast City Airport, and flying there would have been at the very least highly unprofessional, and depending on flight profile could possibly have been illegal.  Checking with Hover again, this zone was indeed neither shown on the map, nor picked up in the pre-flight checks.

This unfortunately leaves me with no choice but to abandon Hover, and in future do all my preflight planning with SkyVector ― which is a pity, because Hover was a nice one-stop solution for drone flight planning.  SkyVector on the other hand is a tool for private pilots’ flight planning, and as such is not geared towards drone flights, and lacks some functionality that drone apps usually have, like automatic location detection or weather forecast.  Since it is aimed at pilots, it also shows a lot of information that is irrelevant for drone pilots, and is hence a lot harder to read.

I shall keep looking, and see if there are other, more reliable apps out there for drone pilots.  However, after this incident I do not think that I will ever completely rely on any of those apps again, and will probably always check the VRF maps on SkyVector, just to be sure…

Update 14 June 2018:  I have now started to use AirMap, which seems more reliable than Hover, if maybe somewhat on the paranoid side of things, but that is better than not flagging up when I am inside a controlled airspace.

 

Dundrum Castle

Tinks next outing was a planned one. Looking for a strongly three-dimnensional object to celebrate Mel’s first visit to Northern Ireland, I was going through the list of ruined castles in the Province, and Dundrum Castle in County Down ― not to be mistaken for its namesake in County Dublin ― came up as a strong candidate.

After a short drive, we arrived to find the castle sitting beautifully overlooking Dundrum Bay and the Mourne Mountains. There were a few visitors, but enough space to fulfil the 30-meters-separation requirement for take-off and landing required by law, and the groundkeeper who was mowing the lawn had no objections to flying drones ― apparently it is done quite frequently there. So, with a clear conscience, Tinks took off and shot the following footage:

Dundrum Castle was constructed by John de Courcy, a Norman invader. The exact date is unknown, but he launched his invasion in 1177, and was ousted in 1204, so the castle must have been constructed between those two dates. It is thus closely related to Carrickfergus Castle, and must have been constructed shortly after the latter’s completion.

The castle withstood the siege of Hugh de Lacy during his struggle for dominance with John de Courcy, but was conquered by King John of England in 1210, who added the central round keep. The latter is unique in Northern Ireland, and is tactically and strategically superior to the square keeps other Irish castles featured at the time ― in 1210, it was cutting-edge defence technology. In all likelihood, Welsh masons had to be brought in ― presumably by King John ― to implement this in Ireland until-then unknown type of fortification.

The castle remained in English hands until the Parliamentarians withdrew from it in 1652 for reasons unknown. My best guess would be that with the Irish Confederate Army defeated, the Parliamentarians no longer saw a strategic requirement to hold the castle. With the war won, continuing to maintain the castle was presumably deemed unjustifiably expensive. The withdrawing Parliamentarian troops demolished the castle upon their departure, presumably to prevent Irish rebels from taking possession of the empty castle and turning it into one of their strongholds.

A mansion was later built sometime after 1660 to the South of the ruined castle, but anecdotal evidence has it that the owners overexerted themselves financially in the venture, and went bankrupt before the mansion could be completed. The mansion fell into disrepair and was ruined sometime between then and the early 19th century.

The movie was manually edited in iMovie again after I decided to abandon Quik. As a result, the movie is much longer than the previous two. In spite of annoying me in many ways, Quik did have the one advantage of forcing me to keep my videos short and concise. In future, I may try a mix-and-match approach, where I probably pre-edit the movie in iMovie, but then use Quik to shorten it.

I also have decided to play completely by the rules now, and only use royalty-free background music ― on this occasion “Evil Twin” by Movie Theatre. While I personally think that current copyrights are too harsh on people who use for non-commercial purposes a copy of a song they have legally acquired and paid for, the bottom line is that whether I agree with it or not, it is against the rules…

Tullaghoge Fort

Tinks‘ next adventure was another chance discovery. Because no appointment was available at my local MOT centre for weeks to come, I grudgingly presented my car at the Cookstown DVTA Centre. On the long way back I came across a signpost to Tullaghoge Fort. Hoping to prevent the drive from being a complete loss, I stopped for a nosy. I instantly realised that this site was right up my alley, and so I returned shortly thereafter with Tinks to have a proper look.

The site is not so much of strategic but cultural significance, having been the inauguration site for chieftains since ancient times. It is not known when the site was created, and historical records only prove that the chieftains of the O’Neill clan were inaugurated here, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the site has been in use much longer than that.

The last known inauguration to take place here was that of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in 1595. Claims that Felim O’Neill of Kinard was crowned here in 1641 are disputed. The site fell into disrepair after the Flight of the Earls in 1607, and very few features of the once substantial and culturally important site remain. Particularly, the missing inauguration stone, Leac na Rí, has been shrouded in mystery ever since.

The superficial similarity to a defensive rath has been dismissed by archaeologists as coincidence, and current academic thinking is that the arrangement of the ditches and earthen walls was unsuitable to be used as fortifications, and were of a ceremonial purpose only.

I used Quik again as the editing tool, followed by polishing in iMovie on my MacBook Pro. However, on this occasion I am much less happy with the outcome. The individual clips are much too short in my mind, and make for a unnerving viewing experience. Essentially, one never has a chance to properly take in any scene, before Quik already cuts to the next. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be settings to make Quik less hyperactive: The result is of the ‘take it or leave it’ variety.

I have therefore subsequently abandoned Quik again, and returned to doing my own editing using iMovie. Unfortunately, the raw material got corrupted and lost in most peculiar circumstances, so I am no longer able to re-edit the Tullaghoge movie above into something more to my liking…

Roughan Fort

Tinker Bell‘s next flight was going to be a wildcard. Having heard only recently and by pure chance about Roughan Fort, and being unable to find out anything about it, not even its exact location, I decided to go hunting for it equipped with GPS and Tinks. My good old friend Mary ― who has learned to live with my outbursts of geekiness ― tagged along as an extra pair of eyes, as I found in the past that as the driver, concentrating on the road, it is easy to miss hints or even something as obvious as a sign.

After several hours of cruising the countryside in the neighbourhood where I knew the castle was, we finally found it. Still, it took us two full circles around the castle and associated lough before we found what we think was the official access to it ― I am still not entirely sure that we did, but nobody challenged us on crossing this farmer’s field…

Very little is known about the castle other than that it was built in 1618 by Andrew Stewart, and that Sir Felim O’Neill of Kinard hid here from 1652 to 1653 to escape the English, who were looking for him because his involvement in the Irish rebellion of 1641. Accounts vary, but Sir Felim O’Neill was eventually betrayed and arrested in 1653 either in the castle, or on the nearby crannog. He was subsequently taken to Dublin, and hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor.

We know that the castle was still used in 1662, which is the last time it is mentioned in official documents, at least as far as we know of. Sometime afterwards the castle was abandoned, fell into disrepair, and is now ruined.

I brought Tinks with me on the off-chance that it would be worth my while, but was glad that I did. The ruin has been made safe, but not much has been done to allow access, so without Tinks we would have seen very little of it.

I chose to have the editing done automatically by GoPro Quik this time, and have to say that I was quite impressed with the result. For this particular motif and chosen background music, it did a very decent job. Finished off with some polishing using iMovie on my MacBook Pro.

Tinker Bell’s Adventures

Following an impulse buy that nearly led to the first argument between my then-girlfriend ― now fiancee ― and a day of holiday sacrificed running around Quezon City on the Philippines, I am now the proud owner of a DJI Spark drone.  Due to its small size compared to other drones, we decided to call her Tinker Bell.

This blog has been created to follow the unfolding adventures of our curious little fairy, and maybe make contact with other drone pilots… my main interest is in historic monuments and landscapes, so if you are after death-defying stunts captured by drones flown at the very limit of their capabilities, then this site is probably not for you….