I’ve seen it happen so many times, and I always feel bad when it does. Have you ever had a picture of a person where the background is in focus and the person is all blurry? There is a solution, and it’s called focal lock. It’s something that anyone who ever takes a picture with a camera should know about and how to do properly. It’s not a hard thing, but there are still many many people who don’t know about it. I hope the suffering in the world might be lessened by this post.
Category: Annoyances
What do you suppose is the hardest thing to reproduce on the big screen or in a TV show? Is it space scenes? I doubt it. They look pretty good to me for the most part except for the sound and the fact that you can’t really see a laser unless it is hitting something (think laser pointers… all you see is a dot). Is it water? Well, it’s challenging, but it usually looks believable. No, I’d have to say that, based solely on the observation of the final product, it would have to be: the personal computer.
You would think that it wouldn’t be too hard to make a computer look and act like a computer on screen. I don’t know about you, but when I bring up a webpage my computer doesn’t make any high-pitched jittery noises. Almost every show I see has the computer make a weird chirping noise every time the screen’s contents change. I think the sound guy just gets jealous or something that he has nothing to do when the computer screen is the only thing in the frame. He looks at it and thinks, “I could make this part so much cooler with this super high-speed cricket noise every time the screen’s contents change!”
My number two complaint is computer technology that doesn’t exists. The worst offender for this sort of thing is the classic blowing up and “enhancement” of a digital image. It gets blown up, the pixels get huge, and then someone says “let me enhance it” or something similar, and the picture magically becomes so clear that what was a giant 4 inch by 4 inch single colored block turns into a license plate with letters that are an eighth of an inch high and perfectly legible. It just creates this detail data out of nowhere. It makes no sense. It happens at least once in almost every crime show.
When will Hollywood realize that everyone uses computers every day and we can see that the computers in their shows don’t act anything like the computers on our desks. It really makes it hard to stay focused and suspend my disbelief when the computers are such horrible actors.
So I have been slowly learning how to do things the “Arch Linux Way” these past couple of days. I am really impressed with the way it is set up. I still haven’t run into a package that I want that isn’t already in the repositories, so I haven’t had occasion to compile my own software or make any packages yet under Arch. I hope that process is as smooth as everything else so far.
My brand new Nova Tech mini PCI card arrived today, and I was really excited to try it out. I got the kernel module installed and gave it a go. It couldn’t see anything. So I started doing some research. It turns out that the Dell Latitude c600 requires an additional tiny little hirose u.fl cable. You’d think a thin little 4-inch long cable would cost maybe between $3 and $5, but that’s not the case. Dell seems to have forgotten that people might actually need this part and have kindly removed any mention of it from their website. Reports I read stated that calling tech support results in stupefied silence. The item has become a wonderful specialty part that some companies are selling for as much as $40! I found one on eBay for $7.77 plus $3 for shipping. I was hoping to just pop into Fry’s and grab one, but now I have to wait another week for one to come in from Rhode Island.
Speaking of Fry’s, I wanted to check out their prices on 256MB sticks of PC100 SODIMM RAM. So I poured over their confusing grid of memory prices until an associate finally acknowledged me. I asked him what the cheapest price for the RAM I needed was. He punched i up into the computer and then called someone else. I couldn’t hear the conversation. Then he turned back around and said they didn’t have any! I thought he might tell me that all the good priced RAM was gone, but not that I couldn’t get it at all! I only have 64MB right now and I get programs dying for lack of RAM.
One last thing… I was all set to get this ultra-portable laptop ready to go today because all I needed was the proprietary Dell IDE connector that arrived in the mail today. I had to preload the OS onto the hard drive because the laptop I was installing it into has no drives but the single hard drive. I got everything set up to the point where I could connect it to the network and transfer the rest of the files onto it that way. I went to install it and it was too thick! I hadn’t even considered that that old laptop would use the slim form factored hard drives found in current systems. So all that work was for nothing. Now I’m looking for another hard drive.
Making web pages used to be fun. I started back in the old days around 1996 with my first attempts to learn HTML. It wasn’t complicated. There weren’t very many tags. There was no such thing as CSS. You just made invisible tables to position everything. Life was good. You didn’t have anything so complicated that it “looked wrong” in another browser. Then things started to change. People started using Microsoft Internet Explorer and making their web pages with it as their rendering tester. After their designs were finished they would start getting complaints about how their site was all messed up in Netscape Navigator (that’s what the web browser was called back then). So instead of trying to make their site work right in all browsers (which is still hard today) they just slapped a little image on their site that said “This page best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer Version X.”
There has been a push for web standards in the hope that pages might render the same on all browsers. No browser implements all of the standards correctly, unfortunately, but some didn’t even try. Internet Explorer has historically been the most popular among web users, but at the same time the worst when it came to standard compliance. The biggest problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer, though, has been that it had been years since it was updated with any new features. New technologies have emerged that were simply unsupported in the most widely used browser in the world. It appears that IE7 seeks to change that. I still don’t recommend that people use it over Firefox, but at least with the world shifting to a more feature-rich browser web designers can finally start using the advanced technologies that have been supported by Firefox, Opera, Safari, and others for years now.
Maybe Microsoft Internet Explorer’s best contribution to the Internet will be that it makes web design fun again. Let’s home it doesn’t end up like IE6 in a couple of years: ignored and outdated.
I wish Dell wouldn’t use weird connectors for their laptop hard drives. I opened up an HP laptop and there was no unusual connector, it was straight IDE. Two of the laptops I have gotten from Krissy’s dad are missing the converter from IDE to some proprietary thing. Now I get to troll around on eBay and bid ninety-nine cents and pay six dollars in shipping on these things. I can’t wait for the UPS ground to get from Florida to California. Let’s see how long it takes.
Those most likely to pirate music are between the ages of 13 and 17. That same age group shares something else in common. They can’t get a credit card on their own. Why is this important? You need a credit card to purchase music online. You can’t buy MP3s at the music store. Kids don’t want to buy CDs. I think if there were an easy way for kids to buy music online then they would do it, but only if it were easy to buy individual tracks. This won’t stop music piracy, but if they could get a song easier and faster by buying it and they already knew they liked it, then they would buy it. I think kids just want to try out music without getting burned. Everyone has bought at least one CD that you thought you would like and after trying it twice you just couldn’t stand it. Is there a solution to this problem?
Digital Restrictions Management, or DRM, forces people to buy the same sond over and over again or be forced to do things the way that others dictate. Click on the link to find out more!
The law goes into effect in 2008 forcing anyone wishing to use a cellular phone while driving in California to purchase a hands-free device, such as a headset, or face a fine. Headset manufacturers and resellers rejoice statewide. It is interesting to note that a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that although using a cell phone while driving is hazardous, “units that allowed the hands to be free offered no safety advantage over hand-held units.”
When radios were first installed in cars there was serious concern that they would be too distracting to the driver. They would make accidents much more common and put everyone in jeopardy.
I don’t think that people are better drivers with a brick plastered to the side of their head, but I do have a problem when scientific evidence shows something and laws are passed based on unscientific ideas to the contrary. Either let everyone use cell phones when they drive or ban their use outright. Maybe it is a question of enforcement. I can imagine that it would be trivial to disguise the use of a hands-free device. “I was practicing a speech I have to give, officer!” Or perhaps, “I was just singing along to my favorite song that came on the radio.” Maybe even, “Well, I know there is no one else in the car. I’d like to be on my way now… filthy hobbitses! They took the Preciousss, but we will show them!” Anything to avoid the ticket, right?
So there you have it. A useless law that will only take away more of our freedom. While we’re at it we should make it illegal to drive if you have kids in your car. Now there’s a distraction just screaming “serious collision.”
U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch says sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an “illegitimate business.” According to a CBC article, Matsch ordered CleanFlicks and three other similar companies, to immediately stop producing, creating, and renting out edited films. I had heard before that they got around the issue by legally framing it in such a way that individuals were really buying movies and then requesting CleanFlicks remove the content on their behalf. Apparently this method of circumventing current copyright laws doesn’t hold water anymore.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) should really step in here. It would be a great way to get politicians and religious groups on their side for once. Copyright holders have been granted far too much power recently. One of the goals of the EFF is to rollback the legislation that has made copyright in the United States a losing proposition for both consumers and the culture in general. These directors, including Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, and Martin Scorsese, are arguing the same thing. According to a DGA press release about the ruling, Michael Apted, the president of the Directors Guild of America, had the following to say:
As creators of films, we oppose giving anyone the ability to alter in any way they choose, for any purpose, and for profit, the content of a film that we have made, often after many years of work. Directors put their skill, craft and often years of hard work into the creation of a film. These films carry our name and reflect on our reputations. No matter how many disclaimers are put on the film, it still carries the director’s name. So we have great passion about protecting our work, which is our signature and brand identification, against unauthorized editing.
Is this fair use? According to Judge Matsch it is not. I can’t see any reason why this is not covered by fair use. The discs are bought by the company, so the directors and everybody else involved in the film industry get their money and people who are willing to pay for this service get to watch movies they would never see otherwise. No one is hurt. Everybody wins. But that’s not good enough for the directors. They want everyone to watch the movie theirway. Next thing you know they will make it so you can’t watch the movie unless you have 5.1 stereo surround sound, since that’s the way they intended the film to be viewed. What about locking out black and white TVs, or TVs that aren’t big enough? Does this sound absurd to you?
Think back to the days when all rented and purchased movies were on VHS tapes. Imagine there had been advertisements for other movies placed before the actual movie you wanted to watch, which was often the case on rented tapes. Now imagine that the fast-forward button didn’t work while playing that portion of the tape. Sounds pretty absurd doesn’t it? Well, DVDs have been doing this for years.
The directors hail this as a boon for them and their creative talent. They claim that this editing is unauthorized and that the films will now be viewed the way the director intended. Well, what about those movies that are released later labeled as the director’s cut? Does this mean *gasp* that the original version of the film was not the director’s original vision? You mean sometimes the movie we watch has been edited in ways the director did not intend? This is often done after focus groups watch the movies and respond unfavorably to certain aspects of the film. So this means that the movie studios can edit the films in ways that don’t represent the director’s vision. So producers and executives can alter the films for commercial gain, but individuals can’t pay a third party to edit a movie to their specifications?
I think people should have the right to fair use. I think this use falls into that category. This use is especially “fair” because the movie industry gets more sales from this activity than they otherwise would. I know a number of people who own copies of “scrubbed” movies that they would never own uncut version of.
Where does all this leave CleanFlicks then? I don’t know. This ruling was only made on July 7th 2006 and no mention of it has yet been made on the CleanFlicks website. They are still taking new signups, so maybe this somehow doesn’t affect all of their business model. I just hope that they make it through this.
Last week we received a letter from the power company that there would be a scheduled power outage tonight starting at 11:00pm. Well, I put it on my calendar and promptly forgot about it. Krissy was already asleep when it happened, but I was listening to the FLOSS Weekly podcast when all the lights went out as far as I could see out the window. The electric company had brought their own lights to see what they were working on, and that was the only light around. Shortly after the lights went out I went on the balcony with a flashlight. I was not the only one who had this idea, however.
When I started flashing the flashlight onto the field across the way I saw another beam of light originating from another balcony in my building. When I moved my light, the other light followed. No matter where I went the other light tried to “catch” mine. I tried all sorts of silly little things. I spun the flashlight over my head like I was a lighthouse. That really seemed to confuse them. Just when they thought they knew what to expect, I started going the other direction. It all sounds so silly now, but when everyone in a neighborhood all experiences boredom simultaneously it’s like everyone’s a kid again.
You aren’t having fun? Make up a game!
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