I always enjoy seeing the creations of eccentric folk who have an idea, and just get on and build it, despite what everyone else, and common sense, might tell them.

Yesterday, I visited a perfect example. Jósef Antos retired after a career as a locksmith and decided that he would build a wind turbine in his back yard. It was created to his own design, standing 56m high and using 280 blades, rather than the usual three.

25 years, five and a half thousand tons of concrete and more that 1 million złoty later, the turbine was finished. Unfortunately, a design flaw in the 1:1 drive he used to power the generator directly from the blades meant that the structure never actually produced an electricity.

Mr. Antos died in 2009 and his creation was abandoned to rust on the plains of northern Silesia…

The video at the top of the page was the first that I made using a new DJI Neo drone. It’s ability to follow the user while they’re doing other stuff makes it a great tool for this sort of thing, but also more useful work such as instructional videos. There’s a danger that instead, every Instagrammer will have a drone following their every move…