It wasn’t always clear who was chasing whom!
The Owl and the…Puppy Dog
January 13th, 2012
Lady WoofWoof – Bark This Way
January 12th, 2012
I made a silly movie. Starring my dog. Yes, another one. My excuse is that it’s mostly for the benefit of distant friends and family.
Then, to compound my folly, I made a movie about how I’d made the movie, which is probably more interesting for most people!
Update: Thanks to Richard Morrison for pointing me at these instructions for making your own camera stabiliser – very nice!
Fotoshop, by Adobé
January 12th, 2012
Lady of the Rings
January 11th, 2012
A portrait of The Artist
January 10th, 2012
Well, my faith in cinema is gradually being restored. About three weeks ago we saw Hugo, one of the few 3D movies worth watching, and one of the even fewer that would still be a splendid film in 2D. Then last week we saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; not quite in the same league but still jolly good fun. And tonight it was The Artist, which is quite fabulous.
For those who’ve missed the publicity and the reports of the plentiful standing ovations at Cannes, The Artist is a story set around the time when silent movies are being replaced by talkies. That’s hardly novel: so was Singing in the Rain. But what makes this different is that it is itself a silent movie. It looks at the transition from the ‘before’ side rather than from the ‘after’, as it were. And when was the last time you went to the release of a new silent movie?
So the sheer novelty value is a large part of what gets the bums on the seats. But very few of those bums’ owners will be disappointed once they get there, I think. I was delighted even before the film began: as the adverts drew to a close, the curtains on either side of the screen moved inwards, because this is shot in traditional 4:3 ratio, not widescreen.
The genius of The Actor is partly down to the bravery of those who had the nerve to try such a thing, and partly down to the skill of the execution. But what struck me as we walked home is that it’s unique. Nobody will be able to do this again. So I think it has found a place in the cinematic history books from which it is unlikely ever to be displaced.
And it’s also a great night out.
Mounting phone costs…
January 3rd, 2012
…not very much!
I’ve just received one of my cheapest eBay purchases in a while and was pleasantly surprised.
It gives your iPhone or HTC a standard 1/4″ tripod mount socket. Not the most robust construction, but not as plasticky as I’d expected, either. It ships from Hong Kong, so takes a little while to arrive, but here’s why it’s worthwhile…
The price is about £1.40 (about $US 2.20). Including postage.
Portrait
January 1st, 2012
My brother, Simon.
iTunes Match getting stuck…
January 1st, 2012
Warning: geeky Mac post
I had a problem with the iTunes Match process on my Mac – it would get stuck sometimes at the stage of ‘Gathering information about your iTunes library…’. It turned out to be one or two dodgy tracks that were confusing it, but how to find out which they were?
I found the solution on tmksnyder’s post in this thread. He suggested using Activity Monitor, selecting the iTunes process, and clicking the ‘Inspect’ button, which I confess I’d never previously noticed. Here you can find a tab named ‘Open Files and Ports’, which tells you which files (& ports!) the app is currently using. Potentially useful for all sorts of things. (It’s roughly the inverse of the command-line ‘fuser’ utility, which tells which apps have a particular file or mount-point open.)
The window updates dynamically, so if you expand it to a good size and watch it carefully, you can see the filenames of tracks being opened and closed, and, in my case, a couple on which it hiccupped and kept trying to re-open. Deleting and re-downloading those sorted it out.
Grace Hopper on Letterman
December 31st, 2011
This dates from back in 1986. But it’s wonderful. Grace was definitely not your average Computer Scientist. Thanks to Jon Crowcroft for the link
Parliamentary Observer
December 24th, 2011
Some rather fine owls have taken up residence for the winter in one of my regular dog-walking spots. They’re quite beautiful, and totally silent, unlike the pheasants that Tilly usually flushes out from the undergrowth!
I normally only see them in the evenings, when there isn’t enough light for photos. This morning, though, this chap popped up and I had a camera with me.
I didn’t have a very long lens, though, so even these are drastically cropped from the originals. Sometimes, a significant number of megapixels does make a difference!
There are at least three owls here – Short-eared owls, I think. I’ve seen three of them at once before, though other passers-by have told me they think there are five or more. Obviously a sociable set.
Tunnel of Quentins
December 23rd, 2011
What a scary concept!
Can you work out how I did it?
iTunes Match – upgrading your songs
December 21st, 2011
I’m in the process of upgrading a lot of my earlier AAC/MP3 files to 256kbps AAC. The ones I ripped some years ago tend to be lower quality than that, but it’s been too much hassle to go back to the CDs and update them.
Now, of course, everything is much easier.
I’ve subscribed to iTunes Match, which, for those who have missed it, is a new 22-quid-a-year service from Apple. Basically, it means that if you have a track on any of your machines, you can listen to it on all of them. It looks at what’s in your iTunes Library, and attempts to match it with what they have online. If it finds a match, wherever you got the original from, then you can get a high-quality 256kbps version from the cloud…. straight onto your iPhone or Apple TV, for example.
However, as far as I can see, there isn’t a way to make it automatically replace the songs in your iTunes library with the higher-bitrate versions. It needs a little encouragement – basically, once the match process has completed for your library, you need to delete each low-bandwidth track from your local machine and download it again. Don’t worry, it’ll preserve your ratings, playlists etc.
Just select the track(s) in your iTunes and press Option-Backspace. (Cmd-Backspace will also work in the main library, but not in playlists).
You’ll get a prompt:
and note that you’re given the option of deleting it from iCloud; don’t select that!
Then you’re asked whether you want to keep the old files or move them to the Trash.
I don’t want too many versions hanging around, so I shift them to the Trash, relying on Time Machine in case something goes wrong.
At this point you should see the entry still in iTunes, but with a little cloud icon indicating that it’s not on your local machine. If you were to start playing it, it would download automatically, but you can also right-click on it and select Download. And there you are, you’ve upgraded your fidelity!
However…
This isn’t too convenient for bulk operations of many tracks at once, and you want to be a bit cautious about tracks for which iTunes didn’t find a match. It’s quite easy to delete them and find that download isn’t an option!
So I created some smart playlists to help with this. I wanted to upgrade my favourite tracks first, so the first one shows music that I’ve rated with more than one star, which is available in the cloud, and which is currently less than 190kbps. I call it ‘Low-bandwidth favourites’:
With this, I can browse my highest priorities, select a bunch of them, and delete them easily.
When you do this, iTunes will say, “Aha, I have these in the cloud, where they’re 256kbps”, so after a short pause, they’ll vanish from the less-than-190kbps list. Sometimes this happens before I get a chance to download them, so I have another smart playlist called ‘iCloud not downloaded” where I can go to find them:
Other systems may work better for you – recommendations welcome – but I hope this is a useful starting point!
One thing you should note about iTunes Match, particularly if you are squeamish or have any nefarious purposes in mind: the high-quality AAC files you download will contain your name and Apple ID.
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