Wireless IFB On The Cheap

The producer, director and a few others have the ability to break the flow and speak to you. It can be very helpful. It can be very confusing. I’ve heard both.

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Equipping my new studio sometimes gets frustrating. I want to make the right decision. Facts aren’t always available.

The best example is a wireless IFB system. IFB stands for “Interrupt Feedback” or “Interrupt Foldback.” It’s that earpiece TV people wear.

Your earpiece plays what’s on TV. The producer, director and a few others have the ability to break the flow and speak to you. It can be very helpful. It can be very confusing. I’ve heard both.

IFB systems are expensive. I didn’t like that idea. They’re also bulky. Clipped to your pants waistband an IFB receiver adds extra girth when wearing a suit.

I think I’ve found a solution. It’s a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver. Though both are made by the same manufacturer and look the same, they’re not normally marketed as a pair. They are reasonably cheap.

I might be able to create a wireless IFB for under $60. That’s hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars saved!

Even better the unit is tiny. The receiver at the top of this entry is 2.5″ long, 1″ wide and around .25″ thick. Other than coins there’s nothing in your pocket smaller.

It won’t work in a studio with more than one person. Bluetooth adds a slight but noticeable delay. A ‘live’ person would echo.

In my situation an extra 1/30 or 1/15 second wait to hear the ‘distant’ anchor is inconsequential.

This solution seems too good to be true. It very well might be, but a quick test tonight worked. Call me hopeful.

A Captioned World

IMAG1977The TV’s on. So is the captioning. For my dad it’s a godsend. He reads a lot better than he hears.

For me it’s a bit of a distraction. A worthy distraction, but a distraction.

Live captions follow live speech by five seconds or more. It removes the dialog from the action. You watch the touchdown and the replay before you read about it.

When it’s live, words are misspelled or a similarly sounding word is substituted for the correct on. Watching captions isn’t like listening. Context is missing.

The Tender Trap is on TCM at the moment. TCMs captions are great. Nicely formatted. In sync with the on-screen dialog. Out of the way at the very bottom of the screen.

When captions are on it’s hard not to look at them instead of the film. I find myself having to consciously move my eyes back to the actors.

All this is small peanuts. For my dad, for whom hearing is difficult, captions work.

My Opinion Has Changed

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A week or so ago I smiled mischievously as the hack against Sony was revealed. After a little more thought my opinion has changed. And, I guess I should add, I understand what happens when private emails go public.

For totally blameless Sony employees this has been a public undressing. Every detail of their personal life that crossed their work computer was laid bare.

Every number associated with their existence will have to be changed!

That’s a very 21st Century concept most of us don’t understand. Once something is in Google, forget it being forgotten!

Some of the Sony emails are brutal, but not unexpected. We all do a little of that with our friends (though probably not the Obama stuff–definitely not).

There’s no way Amy Pascal can survive. Amy: I said the same thing about Roger Goodell.

Sony’s lawyers are trying to quash the publication of any new details. God bless them if that works. Experience says it’s a fool’s errand.

The Future Of TV… Though Not Yet

Watching shows on the net today reminds me of watching UHF pre-cable. It was there, but a hassle. It’s more likely I’d watch on my PC where there’s a fuller multimedia presentation through your browser.

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When Amazon briefly marked its brand new Fire Stick down to $20, I bought one. It now joins my Roku and Chromecast as ancillary TV receivers. It’s TV over the Internet instead of over the air. Some ‘channels’ are linear others totally on demand.

Definitions are getting blurry. Are they channels? Is ComediansInCarsGettingCoffee a channel or show or both or neither? That’s still being decided.

cbsn-logoI downloaded an app to watch CBSN, the new all news offering from CBS.

It’s available only via the net.

It looked pro. They’ve gone for warmth with a tie-less anchor and brick walled studio. The production seemed a little thin. 24/7 is a lot of time with few additional bodies. TV can be done inexpensively. The product is almost as good.

It is well written and serious–CBS’ish.

Screenshot 2014-12-02 21.26.07They play an animated “We’ll be right back” bumper. Really? In 2014? These are early problems which will be solved.

I probably won’t watch CBSN much on the big TV in the loft. Too many steps. Using the big TV for shows on the net today reminds me of watching UHF pre-cable. It was there, but a hassle. It’s more likely I’d watch on my PC where there’s a fuller multimedia presentation through the browser.

What happens to the incumbents–newspapers and local TV news outfits as more and more services set out to the Internet? They adapt or perish.

Some adapt, still perish.

Have you read a newspaper with a hyphenated name? The Journal-Courier, Courier-Journal, Star-Ledger, Times-Picayune, Times-Herald-Record, Post-Gazette, Post-Dispatch? Consolidations and shakeouts happen.

When I was a kid, New York City had seven citywide English language newspapers with additional dailies in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens. Not anymore.

This market, Orange County, is greatly under-served. Maybe some clever video news provider will shake-in? Alas, the bigger trend is in the other direction.

Addendum: I am considering sending the Fire Stick back. It is unstable or unusable on the two sets I’d like to use it on. I believe the problem has to do with DHCP, a method of digital rights management and these individual sets. Will Amazon fix the problem? It’s stopping me from using their product.

News At The Speed Of Internet

On Twitter itself I saw someone complain Fox News and CNN had dropped the ball. I guess he was expecting them to have crews standing by in Tallahassee in case anything ever happened at midnight.

There’s a new boss in breaking news.

CNN is on with news from Tallahassee. People have been shot in the FSU library.

CNN didn’t break this story. I first got the news on Twitter. That’s becoming more rule than exception.

FSUShootingInternal640Florida State’s original tweet about a DANGEROUS SITUATION caught fire! News like this explodes through social media. It becomes unavoidable.

Meanwhile, it’s still the traditional news sources we turn to once we get the tipoff. That’s why the TV went on. But their resources pale in comparison to crowd sourcing. Right now it’s social media CNN is relying on!

I saw someone complain Fox News and CNN had dropped the ball. I guess he was expecting them to have crews standing by in Tallahassee in case anything ever happened at midnight.

There’s a new boss in breaking news.

This Was Handled Poorly

The difference between a good company and a bad company is how they handle a situation like mine. This was handled poorly.

Last month I wrote about the hassle of proving I was the original and rightful owner of my refrigerator. In the end LG Electronics agreed refrigerators shouldn’t break at 13 months and sent a technician my way on their tab.

IMAG1385He was here last week. I showed him a photo of Stef holding a chunk of ice from under the freezer tray. I pulled out my phone to play the sound the fan sometimes made, but he stopped me.

“I know what it is,” he said.

We needed a totally new assembly for the rear of the freezer compartment. It would have to be ordered.

IMAG1437The photo on the left is what I’m about to throw out. It’s not physically broken. This wasn’t a part gone bad. This was a system poorly designed. This was a ‘soft recall.’

Why did LG make me jump through all those hoops? Were they looking for a way to avoid responsibility? They know problems on my model’s freezer are common.

Why didn’t LG or Lowe’s, where we bought it, reach out to their customers first? There are probably loads of owners who see their 12 month guarantee is up and hope for the best. They end up swallowing LG’s mistake.

Engineering is complex. There will always be design flaws. I understand that part.

The difference between a good company and a bad company is how they handle a situation like this. LG handled it poorly.

I Know You Didn’t Ask, But I’ve Got Some Photo Advice

People say I’m a pretty good photographer. There’s a lot of study and experience necessary to make a camera work for you. There are also a few very easy tips which will make a huge difference in your cell pics or any pics.

The three shots here were all taken on my phone, a first generation HTC One. Your camera’s as good, maybe better.

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Hold the camera steady. I know. Sounds too easy. I see your shots flash by and stalk your pages while you’re not looking. This is your biggest problem.

When a camera is starved for light (like if you’re shooting at the bowling alley) its shutter stays open longer. Your photo is now susceptible to the slightest motion.

Relax. Take a breath. Bend your elbows and hold the camera/phone in front of your chest. Lean against something if you can.

Seriously, holding steady will fix most of the problems I see online.

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Shooter closer. There’s an old photographer’s expression that says get as close as you can, then take another step in.

Family members complain getting close makes them look heavy. No. Usually showing a person from the chest up is a more flattering view.

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Hold your camera so the longest edge is horizontal. It’s referred to as landscape mode. That’s the way the human eye sees, more wide than tall.

Just as important, a photo shot landscape matches your screen’s shape. A landscape mode shot fills more screen than portrait mode.

There’s hardly ever a reason to shoot vertically.

These tips work for video too, especially the hold steady part.

Panning on a camera is disorienting, especially when it’s done as fast as a human head turns. Go slow. Be graceful. Fluid motions.

Here’s a bonus selfie tip. When you’re ready to take your shot look at the cameras lens in the mirror, not your screen.

Sunset At Laguna Beach

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It was a pretty good night for photography at Laguna Beach. I packed my gear and arrived around an hour before sunset. Heisler Park was crowded. There were three others with sophisticated cameras. It’s easy to understand why.

I’m starting to think more about very slow shutter speeds for shots like these. Having the iris open a long time smooths the water surface. It also means using a tripod. Neutral density filters arrive tomorrow to allow these shots in full sun.

There are still some HDR shots to process. A few more timelapse movies too.

The first photo is going over our bed.

Staring At The GPS

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Helaine and I took a drive this afternoon. Bad traffic while transitioning from the 91 to the 5 (as we Californians say). I slowed down and stared at the GPS.

Seriously?

UPDATE

Now that I’ve had Google show it to me from the air I understand. This state was built for cars.

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Google Maps

Technology Moving Too Quickly

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Helaine is driving to Santa Monica this weekend. That posed a problem. The power outlet in her car, what in less enlightened times was the cigarette lighter, stopped working. Using her iPhone for navigation would be fine but somewhere along the way she’d run out of juice!

Time to fix the outlet. It wasn’t too hard. An old plug must have shed parts in the outlet, shorting it. A pair of needle nose pliers to pluck the old pieces and a spare fuse fixed it.

While doing my stint as tech support I cleared out the car’s center console and came across a Garmin Nuvi 260W standalone GPS receiver. It’s at least five years old, maybe older.

There are two roads within a mile or two of here which might appear on the GPS. Everything else is newer.

It’s possible to buy new maps, I suppose. But why? What this box did is now done faster, cheaper and better by Helaine’s phone.

I guess I should throw it out, but it kills me. Five years, that’s it.

A Couple Of Afternoon Timelapses

You see physics in action as you look at the clouds interacting with the rest of the atmosphere at this much faster pace. Everything that happens is dictated by the laws of physics. Nothing is random.

So many things look different when seen at an alternate time scale. Nature is pretty damn cool.

0880I’ve taken a few time lapse videos today. The camera is mounted with a suction cup to the outside of my office window.

It’s a GoPro, one of the biggest breakthroughs in video technology, ever. It’s a cheap, tiny, waterproof, indestructible, high definition video camera that also shoots stills.

Every two seconds it snaps another frame. One hour of real time equals one minute of video. In editing it can be sped up even more.

The GoPro’s secret is its super wide lens–the opposite of a telephoto. Being wide reduces shake and makes aiming shots much less critical. It’s great for things very close or very large–like the sky.

The whole stills-to-video process is a pain. Nothing difficult. Just lots of steps.

You see physics in action as you look at the clouds interacting with the rest of the atmosphere at this much faster pace. Everything that happens is dictated by the laws of physics. Nothing is random.

So many things look different when seen at an alternate time scale. Nature is pretty damn cool.

Hello Hummingbirds

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One of the biggest surprises in SoCal living has been my hummingbird feeder. It was a spur-of-the-moment purchase, now suctioned to a window from our family room. The birds hit my feeder dozens of times a day, year round.

Photographing hummingbirds is tough. Their wings flap rapidly. Very high shutter speeds must be used.

High shutter speed means less light gets in the lens. Even in bright daylight my camera, a Canon 7D, is being pushed near its limit.

Everything happens quickly. No time for autofocus. My lens is open to f/8 and pre-focused where the birds are most likely to light.

Sometimes that works. Most times it doesn’t. Over 300 photos for the six you see here!

Magic Lantern software loaded into my camera controls when the photo is shot. It looks for changes in the frame, then shoots three times.

There are lots of out-of-focus snaps and plenty where the bird is partially out-of-frame. Sometimes a puff of wind will rock the feeder and… click, click, click. It’s expected most shots will be deleted.

This is a technique thing. If you know how to do it and spend enough time, you’ll get the shot. Otherwise, shooting hummingbirds is nearly impossible.

Math, Doppler And The Missing Jetliner

mh370-tracksI just finished reading some technical data from Inmarsat and Ministry of Transport Malaysia concerning the analysis of satellite data transmissions from MH370. It’s this data that’s shifted the searchers from MH370’s planned route to a tract in the Southern Indian Ocean well west of Australia–nearly the opposite direction expected!

It is a brilliantly concocted method to get usable information from what should have been meaningless housekeeping transmissions.

Radio signals travel at the speed of light. If we know how long those signals take to go satellite-to-plane (or vice versa) we can start doing calculations and find the distance between the two.

Inmarsat was then able to calculate the range of the aircraft from the satellite, and the time it took the signal to be sent and received, to generate two arcs of possible positions – a northern and a southern corridor.

mh370 doppler shiftAs you probably know the northern track was thrown out. But why? That’s where the plane should have been flying. It was the most logical direction.

Enter Doppler!

Because the satellite and plane were both moving, their radio waves were subject to Doppler shift. This is an expected part of satellite work and equipment to compensate for it is built into the system.

The Inmarsat technique analysed the difference between the frequency that the ground station expected to receive and the one actually measured, known as the Burst Frequency Offset.

mh370 data versus tracksBecause the satellite wasn’t at the midpoint of the two project tracks, the expected northbound offset or shift was different than the southbound shift. What was actually seen only matched the southern track.

Depending on the plane’s speed the same Doppler shift could indicate slightly different positions. Unfortunately, that’s an unknown. It’s a good guess to estimate 400-450 knots. That’s why the area now being searched isn’t a single point, but a larger area.

Obviously, the plane hasn’t been found, there’s still no real explanation for what went wrong. However, this clever use of math helps bring those looking one step closer.

I know this is somewhat complex. I’m not 100% sure my explanation will be clear to everyone. Questions are welcome.

What’s Left Unsaid With MH370

Malaysia_Airlines_Boeing_777-2H6ER;_9M-MRG@ZRH;07.08.1998_(4794758296)Today’s news concerning Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 is sad, but expected. The plane’s course and probable last location have been narrowed further by Inmarsat and the British equivalent of the NTSB using “groundbreaking maths.” This means the passengers are dead and the plane might someday be found in the vast expanse of the Southern Indian Ocean.

Like I said, sad but expected.

However, there is a new tantalizing thread being dangled today. The Guardian quotes Chris McLaughlin, an Inmarsat senior vice president.

Ships have to log in every six hours; with aircraft travelling at 500 knots they would have to log in every 15 minutes. That could be done tomorrow but the mandate is not there globally.”

The operative word is, “tomorrow.” McLaughlin seems to be verifying a piece of this puzzle I suspected right away.

Let’s say you buy a new car. Today, most come with a satellite radio. If you don’t pay for a subscription the satellite radio won’t work.

I think it’s similar with this Malaysian Airlines 777. It came equipped with terrestrial (ground based) and satellite ACARS. Malaysian Airlines didn’t buy the satellite ACARS package.

Once an hour the plane would tell Inmarsat, “Hey, I’ve got data.” Inmarsat would answer back, “You’re not a subscriber,” and the conversation would end. It was logged and noted, but assumed to be worthless.

This is why in the first days of this tragedy when satellite reception of MH 370’s signal was mentioned Malaysian officials seemed surprised. They had no idea this unused, unpurchased functionality was even in the plane.

If I understand correctly, what McLaughlin’s saying is, why isn’t this data link required to be active as a matter of course? Even if only GPS coordinates were sent it would mean a lot.

There are a few ‘big rig’ pilots who read my blog. I hope you’ll take a moment to correct me where I’m wrong.

Meanwhile, will this data spigot be turned on tomorrow for planes still flying? I hope so. I fear not.

It’s Not Lint!

I woke up this morning to a totally discharged phone, though it was on the charge. Obviously my HTC One problem isn’t lint.

I went online and looked for a solution. I tried a battery recalibration, though I’m not sure what that is or what it does!

The phone is taking a charge now, but how long?

I’ve initiated a backup. If (when?) it stops charging again I’ll be in a better position to seamlessly swap phones.

Frustrating.