Kite Aerial Photography - First Attempts

It took most of the summer to edit the approximately 1800 photos I took during my early summer trip to Ocracoke Island down to a more manageable 500. Why so many? Partially from my venture into Kite Aerial Photography, many attempts to capture the kids surfing for the first time, and accidentally leaving the camera on rapid fire when doing more composed shots.

We have started to traditionally take the long way to Ocracoke every summer by driving to the northern Outer Banks then down to Ocracoke. This is the way we arrived when we still lived in Vermont, and helps ease us into the full relaxation of island time. Our first stop is usually the Kitty Hawk Kites store in Nags Head, and depending on what we feel like we head north to explore Duck and Carolla, or just stat heading south to eventually catch the Ferry to Ocracoke. While we were at Kitty Hawk Kites I picked up a nice heavy lifting box kite thinking it would help with my plans for later in the week and some high strength kite line to go with it.

Once we got settled into the condo we had rented for the week I decided to assemble my new kite so I'd know how to put it together when we got to the beach. Fortunately I noticed one of the bars was broken and not repairable. We hit the beach the next morning, so I had to wait until evening to look for another kite. I found my way to the Kitty Hawk Kites store on Ocracoke where I was able to return the defective box kite. The store on Ocracoke is much smaller and did not have any of the same kites so I opted for another box kite of a different design.

The next day we hit the beach again and one I got tired of swimming I gave my new kite a try. Unfortunately the wind was light and the kite could hardly keep itself in the air, so I didn't even try attaching the camera rig. I had a small para-foil kite from previous trips to the beach so I gave that a try as well. In the light wind this kite flew great on its own, but was only able to lift the camera and rig a few feet off the ground. I wound up with about 50 close up shots of sand.

So, back to the kite shop I went. They were very helpful, and let me return my second kite without question, though I didn't exactly point out that I had flown it. This time my wife Kathie talked me into going with a power kite, which is basically a small parachute with two strings instead of one. Having two lines gives you the ability to steer the kite left and right, and perform basic stunts. Our thoughts were that it has a lot of pulling power and maybe we could modify it to a single line kite for my photography project. It turns out modifying the kite with the knowledge and tools we had at the time would not be easy. It did have a lot of pull when down low, but stalls when you send it up high. It is a lot of fun to fly though so we kept it. At one point it was actually pulling me forward, and I weigh a lot more than a small camera.

By now going to the kite shop is starting to get embarrassing, it's a small shop and the same guy was working every time I went in. Fortunately the service provided at Kitty Hawk Kites was great every time I went in. Sure, it would have been better if they had found me the kite I really needed the first time, but I had a hard time explaining exactly what I was doing. This time Kathie found a kite called a "Power Sled" which had packaging claiming to have lifting capabilities while being easy to fly. We had actually looked at this kite earlier in the week, but somehow missed that it actually said it had lifting capabilities.

This kite lifted the camera rig with ease and could quickly pull it up as high as I wanted it to go. For the first flight I had the camera pointed straight down, which may work well in other environments. At a beach as isolated as Ocracoke it led to a lot of boring photos of sand once it cleared the part of the beach we had claimed for ourselves for the day.

The next day we got to watch the kids surf, so we went to another part of the beach where the surf was better. Yes, that is an airstrip you can see in this photo. I probably shouldn't have been flying a kite so close to an airport, but it isn't very busy and I didn't go up high for very long.

Back at the condo I decided I really wanted to get a shot of the harbor and the wind was blowing the right direction. So I headed out to the end of the dock, got the kite out, and quickly tangled all the lines. After about 30 minutes with help from my dad and my wife I managed to get the kite in the air and sent the camera up. For some reason once I got the kite up in the air it kept diving to the right, one of the lines still wasn't quite right. I didn't want to drop my kite and camera on someone so I kept it relatively low before pulling it back down. The small isolated house right on the harbor we used to rent can be seen below the water tower in the photo.

As you can see the picavet hung almost level from the kite line. It would be level, but the center of gravity of the camera is not centered below the picavet. This design worked very well, but there is room for improvement. When in flight the camera would swing from side to side a lot. The lines for the picavet may have been too long, or attached to the kite string too close together.

Many of the photos were blurry once I saw them on the computer screen. Next time I'll be setting the camera to use a faster shutter speed and perhaps look into how to reduce vibration in the kite line. I also did all of my KAP flights during some of the worst lighting conditions of the day. I wasn't really thinking about lighting, but more about flying a kite when I felt like flying a kite. Next time I'll be trying to do more flights in the early morning and evening when the lighting is more interesting.

Overall attempting Kite Aerial Photography was a lot of fun. Having an entertaining project like this while on vacation was a lot of fun for a change. I should have bought a higher quality kite online before going on vacation, but half the fun was having an excuse to go back to the kite shop each day.

Kite Aerial Photography - Getting Started

I've been into photography for as far back as I can remember. I guess I've always been a bit of a gadget hound. As a kid growing up in the middle of nowhere an old camera was a pretty impressive gadget. I'm pretty sure it was several years before my parents decided to let me have any film to put in the camera, but that didn't stop me from taking photographs of all kinds of things. When I finally did get some real film for the camera I adopted the spray and pray technique of photography without realizing it. This technique is used in many other areas as well. In photography the basic idea is take a bunch of photos and hope something comes out good. My parents weren't as impressed with this technique as I was, so it was a while before I saw real film again.

Over the years I slowly developed my photographic skills as my interest in photography came and went. When I got my first digital camera I found myself reverting to spray and pray and had to force myself to carefully compose my shots. This happened again when I got my first digital SLR, and I'm still working on getting back to good technique again.

Several years ago I stumbled across an article about Kite Aerial Photography. Basically you hang a camera below a kite, fly it up nice and high, and take some photos. At the time my interest in photography as a hobby was high, but I didn't have a lot of free time, so I filed it for something to look into later. I eventually forgot about it, being busy with other things, but today everything came together for me to get started. My photography interest is pretty high right now and I've got a trip to the beach coming up soon, a great place for my first try. Adding to that, today was a nice rainy day so I was stuck indoors all day.

I knew I'd have to build some kind of rig to hang a camera below my kite, but really didn't know what it would involve. After doing a little research online I snuck down to the basement while my wife was busy doing something else. The part of the rig that keeps the camera level when attached to the kite string is called a picavet. I decided to go with a small wooden frame for my picavet due to the materials I had on hand. On top of the frame are four screw eyes, below there are three for suspending the camera mount. I used yellow mason's line for the line of the picavet, probably not the best choice, but it is what I had on hand.

Originally I was going to use rubber bands to attach my iPhone directly to the bottom of the picavet, but this would only allow me to take shots straight down. I added three screw eyes to the bottom of the picavet frame, two for the sides of the camera mount, and one for the rear. The camera mount I came up with is very simple, it is just a piece of plexi glass that I can mount an iPhone or a small digital camera to. There are holes in both of the top corners of the plexi glass to allow zip ties to attach it to the screw eyes below the picavet, forming a simple hinge. There is another hole at the bottom of the mount, halfway between each of the side holes. This hole is attached to the third screw eye at the bottom of the picavet with a short piece of mechanic's wire. The mechanic's wire allows me to adjust the angle that the camera hangs at from 0 to 90 degrees. It can be a bit of a pain to adjust, but it seems more rigid than zip ties or string.

Testing the Rig As you can see this is a pretty basic Kite Aerial Photography rig. The camera that I will be using has a built in interval timer so I will be going back to the spray and pray technique yet again with this adventure. I'll probably set it to take a photo every 30 seconds and pray that I get at least a few decent photos to share.

If this works out I'm sure I'll find myself building a bigger rig to support my digital SLR with a radio control trigger as well as pan, and tilt controls. Check back in a few weeks to find out how this project worked out.

New Look for Someone Special's Blog

I recently finished a new look for my wife's blog. She had been using one of the default blogger templates and the look didn't really fit her content. I enjoy amateur photography so when I needed some photos for the design I dug into my personal archive, found some we both liked and went from there. I'm sure a professional graphic designer would have done it differently, but we both like the way it turned out.

I really wish I had more time to put into it though. I haven't done a serious browser test to make sure it looks right in all the major web browsers, there is no print view, and it certainly won't pass HTML or CSS validation. The images aren't optimized either, so it can appear to load slowly some times. In other words, it is far from my best work, but it was fun. When things settle down and I have some free time I'll take the time to clean it up and make it work the way it really should.

Basic cPanel Server Hardening - Part 5

The last article in this series covered securing the /tmp directory, this article will go over adding some security specific to the root user. The root user is used for administration tasks and has access to everything on the server. If a hacker is able to gain access to the root account they can do anything they want to with your machine.

One of the easiest security enhancements you can make is to prevent the root user from logging in via SSH. Although some will disagree on how effective this is I believe it is still a good idea as I often see brute force attacks attempting to log in as root. You will still be able to log in as the root user, but you will have to sign in first as a regular user and then execute a special command to become the root user.

Depending on which linux distribution you are using it may already be disabled but you should always check to be sure. To do this open the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config in a text editor and confirm that PermitRootLogin is set to no. If it is set to yes change it to no and restart the SSH daemon with the command

/etc/init.d/sshd restart 

Now that you have made this change you will need to run a special command each time you want to work as the root user. To sign in as root first sign in as a regular user and then execute the command

su -

Another way that hackers attempt to gain access to the root account is by using a root kit. A root kit is basically just a collection of scripts installed on the server using a regular user account that run various exploits as that user to gain root access. Since this would be a very bad thing you want to be alerted if someone does manage to break in and start installing rootkits.

There are a few options for keeping an eye out for root kits, but I like rkhunter. Install with the command

yum install  rkhunter

and then execute it for the first time with the command

rkhunter --checkall

Once the initial execution is done set up a crontab to run it once a day with the command

/usr/bin/rkhunter  --checkall --cronjob

Once a day it will email you a report of its findings. If you prefer a smaller report you can add --reportmode to the command. I actually prefer my cron jobs have no output unless there is something that needs my attention, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

If someone does manage to install a root kit on your server it is time to consider re-installing the operating system and starting the hardening process over again. This article concludes the operating system level hardening that I will be covering, the next article will start going into hardening cPanel itself.

Hacking the Wii

I recently decided to hack my Wii console so that I can play games from a USB back up drive. I won't go into details of how I accomplished the hack as you can find many very well written tutorials using Google. Instead I will be going into why I chose to hack my Wii. 

Convenience is the main reason that I did this. Now that it is hacked I only have to put a disc into the Wii when I first bring a new game home from the store. After a simple installation process the game is copied to an external USB hard drive and can be loaded using a special Wii channel added during the hacking process. The USB channel displays a list of all of my games with thumbnails of the game covers that I can scroll through and launch with a simple click of the Wii controller.

In addition to convenience I also chose to do this for security. Discs get damaged and lost over time, especially with kids using them regularly. With the game discs stored somewhere safe I will be able to re-install them if my console ever malfunctions or is stolen.

The app store for the iPhone and iPod Touch already takes this a step further. When you purchase an application in the app store it is added to the list of applications you have purchased. You are able to download the application and install it, as well as copy it to other compatible devices in your household. When you get a new device the applications are automatically copied over to the new device without having to re-purchase them.

Although many who choose to hack their Wii do it so they can copy games they have not purchased I have chosen to copy only games I have actually purchased. I develop software for a living and believe that the game developers deserve to be paid for their work.

Hacking the Wii was a quick and easy process that allows me much more convenience and security than the Wii did before. Hopefully more vendors will go the route Apple did with the app store and in the future the no one will need to worry about losing or damaging an application disc.

Basic cPanel Server Hardening - Part 4

So far this series of articles has covered protecting your server with a firewall and defending against brute force attacks, this article will cover securing the /tmp directory. The /tmp directory is used by applications for temporary storage while they are running. By default any user can create and execute files in /tmp, making it an easy stepping stone for exploits. The following changes will prevent these files from being executed, helping to limit what a hacker can do.

Execute these commands to create and mount a secured /tmp filesystem:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/tmpDSK bs=1024 count=500000 # create file to hold new /tmp directory
/sbin/mke2fs /dev/tmpDSK # make file system for new /tmp
cp -R /tmp /tmp_backup # make back up of existing /tmp directory
mount -o loop,noexec,nosuid,rw /dev/tmpMnt /tmp #mount new /tmp with noexec
chmod 1777 /tmp # set permissions for new /tmp
cp -R /tmp_backup/* /tmp/ # copy backup of /tmp into new /tmp
rm -rf /tmp_backup   # remove backup of /tmp

Next you need to edit the file /etc/fstab and add this line to the end so that the new /tmp will be mounted when the server reboots.

/dev/tmpDSK    /tmp    ext2    loop,noexec,nosuid,rw  0 

The server I set up actually had most of this work already done, but the noexec parameter had not been added to /etc/fstab for /tmp. To correct this all I had to do was edit /etc/fstab to add noexec to the parameter list and then execute the command:

/bin/mount -o remount /tmp

You now have a /tmp directory that does not allow files to be executed. This step reduces the options available for hackers attempting to attack and exploit your system. In the next part I will go over disabling root login to tighten security even more.