Paul's Perspective

Immersive Entertainment

A magazine reporter asked me:

> It appears the entertainment
> world took a shining to immersive imaging around 2000-2001, as in Sony's
> experiment with PlayStation and NBC's broadcast of NBA games... why did
> the technology fail to catch in these uses? Was it just too expensive?

My overly-long answer that was not used:

I would guess that it was both too expensive and too difficult.

In production, it would require new expensive complicated multi-lens devices. [It would also obsolete the already-purchased cameras any production company's business plan would have accounted for as a long-term amortization.]

Even worse, I am sure the logistics of filming a scene from multiple angles simultaneously proved to be a nightmare.
Blocking the action and moving one camera with one point of view is tough enough: trying to have multiple things going so that the viewer could pivot the POV while things were happening would be all-but impossible.

And there is the issue of a star's appearance and vanity that is also coming to light now with HD: stars look great... When shot at certain angles with exacting lighting and filters etc -- not when lighting and angles are haphazard.

Distribution would also be difficult: I don't know what the increased storage would be, but it could have been 6-12x or whatever number of lenses were shooting each scene, right? Each would have captured a separate video stream.

On playback, it must have required significant processing power, to either merge the separate videos into what would appear as one continuous environment -- or even if that "merging" was done on the production end, to decode and present that immersive environment on a player would be more taxing than just running a single-POV movie.

And most importantly: I'd bet the end result just was not compelling enough to warrant all those added costs and difficulties.

While I loved that GG Bridge demo I told you about, and would have paid for it, and more for a similar drive through SF, for example -- I would not want to watch a whole movie that way. The point of a movie director is that he directs your attention, after all, in a way to make the most involving, compelling entertainment. If every scene allowed/required me to look all around to maybe catch the important action, it would be like a game, or worse, it would be work, not fun. I might do it once, but not as often as I would just relax and watch a single-POV movie. This is the same argument against interactive TV: people *like* passive entertainment. Many if not most of us don't like video games, at least not often.

And as for the NBA thing -- I always thought that was flat out silly. When you watch just about any sport, you want to look at ONE spot -- where the action is -- follow that ball. Why would you want to pivot your view around? Maybe ONCE pre-game to take in the stadium or something. But how often during game play does someone in the audience look away from the ball to to scan the bleachers?

Geez, I've written a book here and I'm still eating breakfast!

Shooting wide, and the dual lens system

I received a Kodak V570 at CES last year. It quickly became my favorite camera due primarily to its key feature: the ultra wide lens.

The camera uses two lenses, coupled with two 5MP sensors, to provide an extremely useful focal range, while maintaining a conveniently thin form factor.

I’ve shot digital for ten years. I’ve always enjoyed the freedom of near-endless exposures, and the shot-guarantee of seeing the shot on the LCD as soon as you take it [instead of weeks later when you get a print].

But one bad aspect of consumer cameras that I got used to was the limited frame of view: the small sensors used in consumer cameras delivers the equivalent of a telephoto lens from a normal focal length lens.

A 35mm focal length is considered normal. Most cameras now have a 3x optical zoom that ranges from 35mm to 110mm or so -- normal to telephoto. Not wide.
[Those figures are “35mm equivalents” meaning they equate to lenses of such measurements on a 35mm film camera; the actual lenses differ, but the sensor is much smaller than film, and so… ]

The makers of consumer cameras have for the most part exasperated this by the increasing optical zooms from 3x to 10 or 12x lenses -- rarely going wider.

I’ve often shot multi-exposure panoramas -- pivoting as smoothly as I could, later painstakingly combining the shots into one wide image… useful, but not something I wanted to do regularly.

In 2001 or thereabouts, I shot a lot with a fish-eye lens adapter on a 1MP camera with a 3x optical lens: I zoomed in for the equivalent of an extreme wide angle. The shots were poorly exposed, distorted, and vignetted -- but I enjoyed the capability of capturing an entire scene in one exposure.

Then came the V570 and its 23mm lens. Ahh. that's the ticket.
Even 23mm does not let you capture as wide a field of view as you see: it does not come near to a 180-degree view [or whatever subset of that you can see]. But it is much more wide than most cameras, and I find it much more freeing to shoot with: I can photograph my whole family without all-but stepping out of the room; I can shoot my whole house while staying in my yard; even for landscapes, I love getting more of the overall environment into the shot.

My friend Dave Etchells has a good review -- with sample photos showing the wide angle difference -- on his Imaging Resource site.

You’ll note Dave’s reviewer does not rave about the photographic quality: it is not perfect by any means. But today “not perfect” can mean “plenty good enough.” I am more than satisfied with the V570’s shots. A colleague liked his so much that when he broke the first one, he bought another last month -- and he was a professional photographer and no stranger to judging image quality.

The camera is now available for a little over $200. I think it is well worth the money.

Some rezzed-down photos I took at a near-empty lake on Saturday:

After the jump:
An article profiling the Kodak engineer who came up with the idea for the dual-lens Retina system.
I wrote this for The Future Image Report [www/futureimage.com] in April this year.

A change of habits

Like most book buyers, my purchasing gets ahead of my reading, and I end up with dozens of new unread books on the shelves.
[Which is why I always tell family and friends not to buy me books as presents: not only are the odds against them choosing one that I personally want to read, but I already have many books that I have decided I want to read, to which I’ve commited my own money -- just not my own time.]

While I’ve gotten used to the unread books, and tapered off, somewhat, my new book buying in response, I’ve only started to realize that I am now doing the same with comics.
For example, I did not even read Scott Pilgrim v2 until v3 was out. [And I am glad, as they read very well together.]
And it is not just big expensive graphics novels: It's the same with $3 ‘pamphlets.’

Whereas I used to read most of a big weekly pile on the night I bought them, now I never read more than 2 a night. And I seem to be in no hurry to get to the latest issues of some sporadic titles: I took almost a month to read the latest “Desolation Jones” and “Casanova,” for example.
And it’s worse for new books: I still have not read the first issues of “Other Side” or “Criminal,” and now the second issues are out.
With those two in particular, I bought the titles for the creators but since realized I have little if no interest in the subject matters [Viet Nam and, well, a criminal] -- at least, not as subjects for ongoing comics. I get more than my dose of crime fiction from “The Wire” or the occasional movie such as “The Departed.” I'll still give the second issues a try...

And those are just the low-cost comics. On the pricier side, I have paid for but not read:
The Fate of the Artist
American born Chinese
Plastic Man on the Lam
Selina’s Big Score
Flight v2
Kickback [and I love David Lloyd’s art!]
The Originals [and I love David Gibbon’s art!]
30 Days of Night
Best American Comics 2006

That’s $100-200 at least in unread books!

I guess this new behavior is a combination of my tastes and interests changing with age, and a move from monthly serialized periodicals to stand-alone stories and collections.
[But I miss well-done serials that command my attention on a regular basis. That’s a subject for another post.]

This weeks book read, by the way: The Long Tail. We gave it away at our 6Sight conference. It is interesting, and a slick read, but very very very repetitive.

User-video Impacts U.S. election

It certainly sounds like hyperbole to say that YouTube decided the November 7 election and caused the control of Congress to change -- but that might not be all that much of an exaggeration...

While the U.S is almost always portrayed as harshly polarized into 'red' and 'blue' states, the truth is that the country is 'purple:' elections [especially the last two presidential ones] are close calls in most states: the coasts and the South are not Democratic strongholds, nor is everyone in the Midwest or the 'heartland' a staunch Republican.

This near 50/50 mix means that media is more important than ever in swaying middle-ground and undecided voters to cast a ballot one way or the other.

But while TV has long been a major [and expensive] factor in political campaigns, now the power of video is in the hands of just about everyone -- affordably.

This last election was particularly close: but while the long-out-of-power Democrats won a decisive majority in the House of Representatives, the race to control the Senate was too close to call for days after the polls closed.

Finally it came down to the undecided Senate race in Virginia, and the office held by U.S. Sen. George Allen... the man most famous of late for calling a campaign worker for his opponent a "Macaca" -- while that man was video-taping him.
How many people watched the video on YouTube? Nearly 400,000, reports the Boston Herald.
Of course those weren't all Virginians -- but the Senator lost his office to Democrat Jim Webb by about 7,000 votes, out more than 2.3 million ballots. [Webb is a former Republican and Navy secretary under President Reagan, showing again how closely the country is divided...]

The Republicans made use of YouTube as well, of course: the Herald reports that more than 1 million viewers downloaded well-produced clips of Sen. John Kerry's infamous botched "joke."

Another example of the growth of User video is the group-blog company Pajamas Media, which outfitted its contributors covering the election with 8MP Canon PowerShot A630s [$256 on Amazon], using the still camera's video capabilities to capture dozens of clips that were then streamed via YouTube.

We've long promoted the importance of non-professional video captured with ubiquitous camcorders, cameras, and phones -- and now that the capture is coupled with Web-based distribution and access, it is really a paradigm change [pardon the now-trite phrase].
Most recently at our 6Sight conference we hosted the session on "The Global Video Revolution."
The saying "the revolution will be televised" has become a cliché; but in this case web-based video was a prime factor in a "revolution" wherein leadership over the House and Senate shifted from the party in power for 12 years to it opponents.

That such dramatic change is done peacefully is the strength of democracy -- and now video is an even stronger influence on how the voters in that democracy exercise their franchise.
--From my Future Image Weekly Briefing

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

On Saturday I went to our tiny “public cinema” Indy movie house in Mariposa and saw “The Devil and Daniel Johnston,” a fascinating documentary about a semi-famous manic-depressive musician/cartoonist.

For some reason the producer of the movie had come to this showing in our small town, and so after the film the 30 of us [the theater seats less than 60] got to spend more than an hour asking more about Johnston as an artist, and the difficulties of film production.

While I thought the subject of a crazy, screeching out-of-tune singer getting some fame [an MTV appearance, etc] must have struck this award-winning movie maker as an interesting film topic, it turns out that no, he is actually a sincere fan of the guy’s music, first and foremost. [And by the end of the film, I was left thinking that hey, there might be something there I could appreciate too…]

Also interesting is that he and the director were going to make a standard interview-based documentary -- and then only when they had started production did they find that Johnston had made psychologically revealing movies from the time he was a teenager, and had recorded an audio cassette of observations ever day of his life, even a tape of getting arrested for vandalizing the Statue of Liberty with Christian fish symbols -- and so there was an overwhelming wealth of material to work with.

Which proved doubly beneficial as weeks and weeks spent with the crazy artist himself resulted in not one minute of useful footage…[only 30 seconds of a magnificently loony dance that plays over the closing credits].

The movie just came out on DVD. A highly recommended study of insanity and creativity.

Democratization of Video: Pre-Revolution

This is a post I first wrote for our company blog at livefrom6sight.com:

The most powerful communication technology -- video -- has not been accessible to most people.

Most people could not easily or affordably capture or express something on video and then share it with a wide audience -- even with affordable camcorders and PC-based digital video editing.

But now, thanks to web-based sharing sites as exemplified by YouTube, that is changing:
Anyone can post a short clip, and thousands if not millions of people may watch it.

In 1999, I was over-enthusiastic about the possibilities of digital video for both production and distribution:
With my friends and family, I started to create my own 12-hour TV serial.

But dreams of being a mini-mogul faded after many months of trying to coordinate everyone’s volunteer time into a production schedule. It was like herding cats.

Also, many of my projections were wildly optimistic: developments I thought were a few years away have yet to arrive.

Nonetheless, it was the most fun I’ve ever had -- and I think most of what I foresaw in 1999 will still come to pass eventually.

After the jump: my still-very-lengthy business summary from the previous millennium, with some names changed to protect the guilty.
[Such as the show’s name is changed to just “the show.”]

24 finale and cliff hangers

Another nihilistic ending.

24 is a silly, over-adrenalized adventure -- I loved it for precisely that reason. It was a fun roller coaster of a TV show.

But if you know a roller coaster ride will end in a crash, will you get on?

Like millions of others, I was caught up in Jack Bauer’s quest to stop the nerve gas attacks and expose the conspiracies behind them. Hell, like many, I wanted him to personally imprison if not cold-bloodedly execute the whimpering excuse for a president, Logan.

Instead we see that after hours and hours of pain and struggle, after saving hundreds if not thousands, yes, Jack’ s plan to expose Logan works - -but he doesn’t get to see it happen.

Instead, as reward for his efforts, he is drugged, beaten, and kidnapped by the Chinese -- still angry over the consulate killed in a mission Jack led [although who actually pulled the trigger is a mystery lingering from last season].

I don’t like it. I want to see my heroes struggles, yes, otherwise there is no drama -- but I don’t want to see them endlessly tortured.

From an entertainment/art side, I think this cliffhanger ending is needless and wrong. A season should tell a story, and a hero who struggles should be rewarded with at least a few days peace and happiness before going off to war again. Otherwise it is not entertainment, it is tedium.

From a business angle, this cliff hanger in no way makes me, or those like me, more likely to watch again next season. After all. It is not as if I really worry about the safety of this fictional character and need to tune in next time to see if he will escape….

I would watch next season if, when it starts, I feel like watching that much more TV, if I have the time -- and if I want to take this ride again. I can’t predict the first two factors, but I can guess at the third one now:

Nine months from today the adrenaline will be long gone, the roller coaster will have stopped. And before boarding again, I will try to recall enough about the ride to decide if I want to get on once more.
And if my prime recollection is "Oh yeah: this is the series that tortures its hero nonstop, that never lets up, that does not in any way reward the characters or the viewers" -- then I more than likely won’t set the DVR for 24 next year.

[Now that I think about it, this is why I did not watch the 2nd or 3rd seasons: after really getting into the first season, after caring about a man’s struggle to save his wife and daughter, I just hated the ending that had that wife killed in cold blood, out of the blue, as its last moment. That hateful nihilism lost me then and there. I never watched the show again because of that; until I tuned in last season because I was bored.... Next year I’ll take up a hobby instead of bathing in negativity again.]

"Invasion" finale

One line from another’s review exemplifies the problem I continually had with this show:
"It quickly becomes clear that there's only one way to keep Larkin alive.
Tom brings her to the shore... and sends her off into the water!"

That would NOT keep her alive.
He was [delusionally, perhaps] KILLING HER.
Just as he KILLED his wife when he led her to the water in the first or second episode.
Remember, they found the real Mariel’s body mid-season. The thing walking around looking and talking like her is NOT her.

All the characters seem to be in denial about this FACT of their situation.
The "hybrids" are not a changed person: they are a new life form that uses human genetic material to make a duplicate.

This is exemplified when the kid says, paraphrased, "She is different, but she is still my mommy."
No kid, she is not -- she is the thing that KILLED your mother -- that drowned her in the water, gobbled up her DNA, and then tried to take her place in a new body.

I think the show took a major wrong turn early on when it did clearly show the real Mariel’s body, and tried to get us to empathize with the "new Mariel." At first, she was a nice-acting ‘woman’ who was confused at the ‘changes’ in her body… but it then became clear that she was in fact the thing that killed the character with whom we were supposed to be identifying.

Clearly, the way the hybrids worked was thought out before the show was in production [at least I hope it was] ---
-- but during the first few episodes I was under the impression that post-hurricane, we were seeing actual humans *who were changing* in ways they did not understand -- and that Sheriff Tom was just the guy who understood and liked what had changed in him.
I thought the "invasion" was of each character’s body -- and THAT could have been some cool drama, as real people we could empathize with went through changes they could not control -- slowly, over the course of a season… all the while finding out more about Tom and how happy he was at his own change.

Instead, it was simply "body snatchers in the swamp" -- and no one changed: they were simply killed and replaced.

[And that is why I could not sympathize with Sheriff Tom: he knowingly killed his wife; then he knowingly killed his deputy. The fact that his victims were replaced with identical ‘hybrid’ clones does not alleviate his crimes.]

I would still like to see a show that dealt with what I thought this one had set up: new life forms that are changing our characters -- not killing and replacing them.

Maybe *I* will write that one...

KODAK STANDS OUT AT CES

It's déjà vu all over again: just like last year, the most impressive innovations we saw at CES -- imaging or otherwise -- came from Kodak.

[Other top draws at the show include Sanyo's low-cost hi-res camcorder, and a see-in-the-dark sensor from Korea. Details are all in this week's Briefing.]

More than 150,000 attendees from 110 countries walked 1.67 million square feet of exhibit space to see the wares of more than 2,500 companies at the 2006 CES. The Consumer Electronics Association predicts that industry sales will climb from $125.9 billion last year to $135.4 billion this year.

All told, the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada was once again a huge exposition, filled this year with even more huge screens -- LCD, plasma, rear-projection, and, shown for the first time at a major public venue, the likely winner in the TV toss-up: SED, the CRT-like display technology jointly developed by Toshiba and Canon.

The opening night keynote from Microsoft chairman Bill Gates really debuted -- nothing. Mostly, he just gave a very long demonstration of Vista, the next version of Windows that is now promised for the end of 2006. [Vista's photo browser will have photo editing built in, and video clips will work in photo slideshows. Not much else caught our eye. Even Justin Timberlake looked bored during his walk-on.]

Robin Williams was quite funny at Google's announcement of its video website -- but despite the "Google helmet" he initially wore as a joke, we don't quite see how the speech by Google's co-founder rated a keynote position at a consumer electronics showcase...

Comics aren’t mainstream

I think there are two different issues at the core of this, and American comics lose on both accounts:

Value:

As everyone knows/has said, comics are a very expensive medium, in terms of dollars per time entertained. An average comic is about a dollar every 1-3 minutes, if you read at a standard pace.
I'd base the standard for entertainment value today on the DVD, and that's about a dollar for five minutes of high-production value entertainment. [And I buy a DVD knowing that at least a half-dozen of my friends and family will also enjoy it -- boosting its value even more... which is never true of comics.]

What's changed this year?
Manga and trades now offer improved value: $10-20 for a half-hour to two-hour read. That about equals the value of a DVD. [Except that, even as a comics lover, I'd be hard pressed to argue that minute by minute the entertainment value of a movie is only equal to that of even the best comic.]

Monthly comics value declined. And worse, the TV-equivalent of the boost in ad pages would be like being forced to watch a 30-second spot... every thirty seconds. Who would watch TV at that rate?

Content

It always amazes me when any comic reader says that today's content is at all diverse. Yes, there are one or two books in almost whatever niche you can name -- but most comics are distinctly well within a niche genre: heroics and horror, widely speaking.

What's always even more amazing to me is when independent creators complain of limited sales -- when what they are offering is of such narrow interest that even if the subject matter was presented as a free TV show on a major network with great production values -- it would be canceled due to low ratings.

[Think about how many "genre" TV shows are canceled -- especially this season, where, in the wake of "Lost" everyone thought there was a large "mainstream" audience ready to accept more stories of aliens, ghosts, or spaceships.]

[Let alone the fact that most indie comics are poorly written and drawn by any standard of professional entertainment.]

Read through a monthly list of new titles -- and I mean just that, the titles, the names of the comics -- and just by the titles alone anyone can see that the books appeal to an extremely narrow [if not non-existent] audience.

This perception is enforced even by most comic news that is covered in the mainstream press.
Look at the art and the title of the series that is the first to be distributed through iTunes: doesn't that just scream "aimed only at superhero comic readers?"

In any event:
What is mainstream?
An earlier writer used the Grisham example of a mainstream book. Aside from the fact that most adults don't read books at all, let alone suspense books about heroic lawyers, Grisham's sales would meet many people's definition of "mainstream" entertainment -- but by that sales meter, so would books and movies about teenage wizards and fightin' elves.
So does mainstream mean mass-market sales figures, or does it mean "non-geeky" subject matter?
In the latter, there are very few comics out there that could be grouped with such stories as Grisham based on story content alone: an identifiable protagonist, in the real world: no powers or magic.

A lot of Warren Ellis’ recent work fits the bill of non-fantasy action -- Down, Red, Fell, Cross. [Jones skirts into sci-fi.]
Apart from serialization [a whole 'nother issue with pros and cons] -- Do these stories appeal to a widespread readership?
Are the trades a good entertainment value?
I'd say yes to both -- which leaves the question of why aren't they mass-market successes?
Is it too soon to call on these experimental comics?
Is it just distribution?
Is it public perception of "comics" and what that always implies about story content?
Or is it the most basic factor: arguments about newspaper comic strips aside, most people don't like the comics medium -- at least for "long form" stories of more than a few panels.

Many seem to define all manga as "mainstream" just because it is outselling superhero comics... Even though 99.9 percent of American adults wouldn’t read manga because of its primarily fantasy story elements -- or the simple fact that it’s comics. Let alone the exaggerated art style.

The content of American comics is a narrow niche -- but I'd argue that the medium, whatever stories it is telling, will also always be a niche. Never mainstream.

Apart from implying that no comic creator will ever be as wealthy as Grisham -- what's wrong with that?

PRIVACY -- PAST TENSE

PRIVACY -- PAST TENSE

The ramifications of surveillance and image recognition are quite serious, and bode massive changes in society -- especially when coupled with image capture in ever-smaller devices, greater storage and computational capabilities, and wireless transmission.

A potential future we have long been discussing now appears to be quite possible -- and even probable:
In a few years, most public spaces will be under video surveillance. Within a decade it will just be accepted that if you are not in your private home, then you are on candid camera.

And what is even more important: all that video footage will be transmitted, stored, and analyzed -- and you will be identified.

That means that whatever you do, wherever you are -- will be a matter of record.

The above is a foregone conclusion, I believe: the combination of speeding technological capabilities and security fears all but guarantee it.

The only question is who will have access to this information:

Everyone, or just the government?

I believe it has to be "everyone," because anything less than that will translate, practically speaking, into "only those with power and money" having access.
[Or those with great hacking skills.]

But this will mean that everyone will be able to find out almost everything about the public behavior of anyone else:

Crowd in line at DisneyWorld? Everyone you know will see it.
Get in a bar fight last week [or ever]? Your job interviewer will know.
Where was your spouse last night -- really? Check and see.

WHAT IS PRIVATE?
WHAT IS ANNONYMOUS?
To many people, this sounds like some nightmare scenario -- a complete elimination of "privacy."

But I put the quotes around that word for a reason: the notions we have today of what "privacy" means are not long-held values -- they are very recent developments.

After all, just a few hundred years ago everyone lived in small, close-knit areas from which they rarely traveled -- and so everything anybody did outside their homes was seen -- or at least, possibly discussed -- by almost everyone they knew.

Thus the importance of shame in curbing antisocial behavior in the past -- and the weakness of the social fabric today.
Our ancestors would be unable to comprehend the virtual anonymity we all take for granted now: we can do almost anything with the assurance that [unless, say, we are arrested] no one close to us will ever know our actions.

Many arguments against surveillance that hold "privacy" sacred can come off as merely protesting that one should be able to engage in any activity without embarrassment.
I would agree with that core notion -- but I’d add that it does not require one be able to act without identification, responsibility, admission, or acknowledgement.
Stand up for what you do.
Don’t do what you can’t stand up for.

I don’t want to beat the drum for increased surveillance, government control, and societal restrictions.
But I acknowledge that -- barring some unlikely social upheaval -- increased surveillance is going to happen.
And now is the time to debate and determine what else occurs.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Years back I outlined a screenplay around this idea of what changes will happen in society. The basic plot covers the shift from only the government having access to the omnipresent omniscient surveillance to -- by revolution -- everyone having it.]

Detailed camera specs?

I know of no source for easily comparing *detailed* specs for high-end cameras. Some sites such as Imaging Resource provide detailed comparisons but only two at a time -- of one camera to another.

I started putting together a spreadsheet for another project, but left it out of the total report rather than complete it... Not only do few manufacturers provide all the details, but the measurements used are often apples and oranges, especially in such criteria as shutter lag and shot to shot.

It seems to me that completion might be a good group project for the many camera aficionados who will be checking out this carnival...

But I have no idea how to manage such a project... Here is the link to the Excel table
.. Let's see where this goes.

Blogging and post order

Two notes on all that follows:

1. Yes, I did write most of it by candlelight. But no, I did not post it online with the power out.

I write first in Word, and copy and paste into Typepad.

I often read short posts on other blogs saying "I had written a long post but blogger/ my Web browser/ my online connection failed and I lost it."

Why would anyone write in anything but a word processor?

2. I did not copy and paste this in "blogging" reverse order.

As one post often builds on another, I paste them in the order I want them read.

I believe that new "sections" should be top-posted, but not each and every individual post.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy my blog.

Flight troubles

My flight from Fresno to Las Vegas was scheduled to leave at 7 am. I planned on an hour to get ready, an hour to drive, and arriving an hour early. A good plan. Unfortunately, a plan with little bearing on reality.

As I have stupidly done before, when I awake early and see that I am "on schedule" I relax into my normal every-day leisurely morning routines: coffee, cereal, reading the news online... and I got out of the shower to see that according to my schedule, I should have been getting into my car!

I was another ten or 15 minutes at least getting dressed, packed [!] and out the door. I set the alarm and locked the house -- and then had to come back in for a flash light as it was completely black out, and I didn't want to slip in mud on the way to the detached garage.

The drive took exactly an hour, as it always does. That is, the drive to Fresno took an hour. It was another ten minutes once off the freeway to get to the airport. Stupidly enough, I had not accounted for that.

I parked, grabbed my bag, and ran to the check-in counter -- where there were three clerks, and nine people in front of me.

I debated whether to loudly say "Excuse me, my flight leaves in 25 minutes! Can I go first?!" [I appreciate it at bigger airports when a clerk walks the line calling out numbers of flights departing soon and moves those people up]. But I said nothing, wimping out.

I started talking to the guy behind me, a tall man in his early 60s.

I noticed a very small sign on the counter: All passengers must be checked in 30 minutes before departure.

Oh crap.

I told the man I was beginning to panic. That sign wasn't there the last time I flew from this small airport, in April.

The line was not moving, as of course two of the clerks had troublesome passengers to deal with at great length... and so everyone else was being helped by the remaining counter person.

I got to counter at 20 minutes till my plane's scheduled departure -- and sure enough, it was too late.

I knew I was *mostly* at fault for getting there later than I'd planned... but I pointed out to the clerk that the sign was not up last time... that when I bought the ticket online there was no such warning/restriction. I pulled out my email confirmation /ticket information print, and showed that nowhere there did it say anything either.

She spoke to me as if was mentally slow, saying that of course all flights require long check in times now. She did not say "9-11," but she spoke with the heavy implication that I was a chowder head for not taking that into consideration. That ticked me off a bit... I pointed out that last time I hadn't had to be that early for a flight from this airport -- that when I flew internationally, as I did just a few months ago, I got to the airport hours early...but this was a 40 minute flight!

She once again just said that it had always been this way.

[The man behind me later said he had flown just four months ago -- and the sign had not been up, and no such hard-and-fast rule was in place.]

As there was not another Fresno-to-Vegas flight until the evening, I was booked through Los Angeles.

And I was charged another $100.

She added that it can take 20 minutes to get through security and down to the gate...

I got through security in one minute. The walk to the gate took two minutes.

I waited 30 minutes for the LA flight. The man I'd spoken with turned out to be on it as well, and we spoke at the gate as we waited. Turns out he is an engineer, specializing in water plans... and he'd had plenty of experience with the slow bureaucracy and political /economical power plays in the two small towns nearest my house.

We got in the 20-seat plane.. and waited for ten minutes. And then the co-pilot came on the radio to say that we couldn't take off as a luggage been would not latch. I was about to suggest my solves-all tool, duck tape... but he said a mechanic was on his way from across the airport. Ten minutes later the mechanic arrived... ten minutes later he left to get the latch part... Eventually we took off.

In LA I got a shuttle bus from one terminal to another.

I had an hour still for my connection, so I took advantage of the complementary shoe shine. I had a good talk with Manuel the shiner; I yammered on about digital cameras and camera-phones and such, as he seemed interested. He laughed as he recalled that he was a passenger when his cousin was in an small car accident, and that afterward the cousin was saying he wished he'd had a camera -- and Manual pointed out to him that he did have one, on his phone.

People will be awhile getting used to camera-phones, but soon enough everyone will have them. It will change photography.

I told him about my projections for ubiquitous security cameras, and that bothered him a bit.

Back at the gate, the flight was delayed an hour as mechanics had to do something. I realized that this trip was cursed.

Whatever it was, they fixed it well enough that the flight itself was uneventful.

I landed at noon. My original flight time had been 8:20.

Thankful that I had no checked luggage [just a change of clothes in a small bag], I rushed out to get a taxi --

-- And saw the longest cab line ever.

It was literally six times as long as any other I'd seen -- as it looped back and forth six times.

I started talking with the couple behind me. While the wife kept count of how long we were waiting, he and I talked about a class action suit against the city for the cab snafu -- he was a lawyer. At the least, I suggested, he should write to the Powers That Be in the city and complain that here he was, a rich gambler, wasting one hour in a cab line in what was supposed to be a modern, efficient city -- an hour when he could have been gambling or shopping. That lack of revenue should make the PTB take notice, and fix the cab situation...

The power has gone out

Here's a powerful example of spooky ironic timing:

It's been raining all day. I had not stepped outside except to lean out the front door in the morning to feed the outdoor kitties.*

So at 2:30 I slipped on my slippers, and stepped onto the porch. I stood "outside," nicely dry under the roof overhang, watching the rain come down hard and the wind blow through the pines... for less than a minute, and then I was freezing.

I was wearing only pj bottoms and a t-shirt, after all.

I closed the door behind me, thinking that the outdoor cats had it rough but they were stupid to never rest in the wood planter box in which I laid blankets for them, and that man I was glad my house is nice and warm, and...

And the power shut off.

Jeez -- Talk about failing to knock wood!

*BTW -- Neither indoor nor outdoor cats care for the Alpo beef dinner I tried for the first time. Yes, a big cheap can of dog food. While I expected the ridiculously finicky indoor cats to turn up their noses at it, the outdoor cats had previously inhaled anything I set before them. They ate the Alpo, but only after walking away at first, and glaring at me a long time to ensure that nothing better was coming.

Checking in at CES

The night before I had put everything work-related that I needed all in my bag: voice recorder, note pad, charged cameras, cel phone, print out of meeting locations and hotel info... All set, I thought...

Then I realized I did not know where my press pass was.

I eventually found the email confirming my online registration -- which concluded with the note that they were mailing my hard-copy credentials.

I had no idea where that mail was. It could have been sent to the company's Bay Area office, instead of my home. The office manager had sent me two packages since with forwarded mail, but...

In my office were three piles of paper... and SIX boxes filled with what had been stacks of paper on my desk.

No, I am not organized...

I went through it all three times. And through my file cabinet. And my office drawers. And my luggage. And my briefcase.

Nothing.

Oh well, I was sure I could get re-issue credentials. But I had wasted more than an hour looking...

At the show, I got out of the cab, split the fare with the salesman I'd shared a ride with, and walked into the packed chaos of the South Hall.

A cute girl -- the first of hundreds at this exposition -- tried to hand me a trade magazine, but instead I got directions from her to the press room. Up the packed escalator, through two swarming hallways, and then a security guard asked for my credentials as I entered the press room. That's what I'm after, I told him. An older man pointed me to the proper line, where I found that apparently no one had got their press badge in the mail. Many of us had the same message.

At the counter I handed a woman my email print out with my registration number, and in a few seconds she handed me my credentials. "I wish they were all this easy," she sighed. I turned to the guy next to me to see that yep, he was a troublemaker trying to get the passes for multiple people, even though you have to show picture ID... and the two guys on the other side spoke only a foreign language and were indignant the clerk did not [no, they weren't French; I did not recognize the language].

In the press package was a ticket for a tote bag. Last year we had all received a backpack that had a built-in roller base and extending handle. This year's wasn't quite so cool, but it was a more than decent bag, and quite large. The woman who gave it to me in exchange for the ticket was a short, wide woman with a big smile. "I have to ask if that is really your name." I pointed to her name tag: Killings. She chuckled, and said that it was. "Sometimes I point it out to people when I need to get something done," she laughed.

I asked where the coat check was. As most journalists have tons of computers and supplies and magazines and press kits with them, the huge press room / lounge would have been a swell place for one... but nope, the nearest was in a business center that was all but on the other side of the convention center.

So I entered the swarm, making my way upstream [as most people were heading out from the keynote speech at which Bill Gates was embarrassed when three demos failed...]

It was $2 per item, so I stuffed my clothes bag and my leather jacket into the new press tote bag. I gave the guy $3, and he was apparently unprepared for the tip as he pointed out the price to me again.

So, I was finally checked in and unencumbered... and ready for the show.

CES - The show floor

I exited the business center coat check, turned a corner --and was in the Intel booth. Across from it was the Microsoft section.

Together they were half the hall. Admittedly it was one of the smaller halls, but...

I really did not see anything new in their sections. Just version ten of last year's version 9, that kind of thing. Microsoft was pushing portable Windows media players, Tablet PCs, Media Centers, and more, including an oven that was controlled through windows... [Okay, in Microsoft's defense it was one of the smaller companies at the third party booths in Microsoft's section.]

A guy from Alias gave me a demo of the Sketch drawing application for the Tablet PC. I want a Tablet PC -- and now I want Sketch as well.

Then the woman at Microsoft's own Tablet PC area started to also demonstrate Sketch -- or so I thought. Instead it was a free program that had a near-identical interface -- but which also offered paint simulation, which Sketch did not.

In the Intel booth it was a lot of "All media is digital and will be routed to you wherever you are -- and PCs are the most flexible tool to work with all this." It was interesting how often an Intel sales pitch made note of the Linux tools available, as if the company were sticking its tongue out at Microsoft across the narrow isle...

Coming out of the Microsoft booth -- I got lost. I would like to think I have a good sense of direction and orientation, but...

Non-electric heat

As I was writing this my brother in law Doug called, as his power is out as well and he wanted to know about mine. I told him about my coincidental timing, and he concluded that the power outage is my fault.

I am surprised only in that, yes, the rain is heavy -- but otherwise the weather is mild. Last night there was plenty of lighting, and no outage. Earlier this winter we've had bad winds, hail, even a touch of snow -- and only little brown outs and wink-outs -- never anything lasting. Just enough to make me have to reset the clocks is all.

Doug said he called PG&E and there are quite a few outages, and they have no estimate of when the power will come back on.

I am debating going out to the detached garage to get the inverter from the car to be able to switch the laptop to the back-up battery if need be...

And also I should get the propane space heater and lantern from the garage store room before it gets dark out there.

Man -- I only have the electric floor board heaters, and a little space heater.

All the firewood -- cut, stacked, and some split -- is uncovered, and as a result is so soaked from the weeks of rain that it would be futile to try to light a fire.

Besides which I never replaced the wood stove I tore out of the office this summer, and the fireplace doesn't do so great a job heating the house -- especially with the eclectic-powered blower disabled...

I really don't like wood fires. They are pretty, sure -- but I get a headache and feel nauseous when I burn wood in this house.

Not that has ever happened elsewhere. The fireplace and the stove here must both have leaky chimneys, letting smoke into the room. I never have a problem at Doug and Terri's when they have a fire in their wood stove.

I need to buy an air-tight insert stove to put in my fireplace, and have the installer ensure the chimney is well-sealed.

Snow in Vegas!

Thursday was a clear and sunny day.

The coolest thing I saw -- in a money-to-burn-for-attention kind of way -- was Motorola's outdoor snow-covered mountain. It was one of those big slides, four stories tall or so, but with a jump added three-fourths of the way down, and a couple of snow-machines blowing snow up and down the run. Snowboarders careened down the slide, and did trick jumps off the ramp.

At least, I assume they did... while I stood and ate a sandwich, they also stood around.

Friday morning it was raining - and the snow run was unmanned.

Two hours later it was snowing!

But I don't think the snow boarders came back out for another show...

Candles in the storm

It's almost 4PM, and rainy, and so it is getting dark throughout the house.

Fortunately my ex-wife left plenty of candles.

The first butane lighter I picked out the drawer is empty. I recall that it has been empty for months if not years. I haven't thrown it out because I don't know if you are supposed to recycle them or not or what can be done with them. I hate disposable products. But I need to at least put it were I won't always be trying it again when I need to light something.

The second lighter worked fine. I lit up the dark kitchen, and my bedroom's bathroom.

I walked back out into the living room and was surprised at how bright it was: even though this room faces east, its big windows let in so much more light than anywhere else in the house.

My cat Socks is now sniffing at the candles on the kitchen stove island counter. I can't recall if he has ever seen candles before [he's two]. The candle's light really brings out his orange and white coloring. That would make a good picture.

Hopefully he is smart enough not to get burned.

My main CES observations

I have now been going to CES for about 15 years. No, I haven't had to go every year, thank God... but enough to make some generalizations.

At previous years the show was a smorgasbord of weird and wacky items. Each hall, each section, offered a bevy of strange new products in categories I had not heard of, let alone had to cover.

This year, convergence has taken hold -- and that means most products have a lot of overlap with others. Phones are cameras. Cameras are WiFi displays. Picture displays are video players. And everything plays MP3s.

This also means that all the big companies are making these products. There simply is not an untapped niche to exploit, no technology with which a small or start-up company can get its feet in the door. If someone does come up with a new spin, it will get quickly engulfed within the arm's length feature list of these digital convergence devices.

Mostly obviously there are far too many companies making far too many only-slightly-differing big screens.

Samsung's booth in itself showed why the field is too crowded -- and why you should hold off buying for at least a few years. The company's bragging point was its 102-inch display, the world's largest -- this month. But it also showed a wide variety of big flat screens, LCDs and plasmas, projectors, and more. And around the corner from all of this month's models it showed a new-fangled screen with a much higher resolution and some other bells and whistles -- and a nice little chart showed why it was so much better and wave-of-the-future than anything else out now. So why buy anything today?

Across the aisle from Samsung was a very large booth [okay, about a tenth the size of Samsung's, but still bigger than my house -- hardly a "booth"] from a company I'd never heard of before, What were they showing? Lots of big screen TVs. I wanted to grab the CEO and demand to know what drugs he was taking. Can he not see Samsung? Does he think he can undercut the price of one of the world's most profitable companies? One with its own factories? Does he think he can out-innovate a conglomerate with a huge R&D budget? Out market a company with some of the most ubiquitous [and snazzy] advertising? I just don't get it.

Speaking of blind optimism, I stopped to talk with a very cute young woman about the many cameras at her company's [reasonably sized] booth. There were a lot of 3MP/3x optical zoom units -- commodities. Did they make anything distinctive? No. Were they a manufacturer that could undercut current market pricing? They were looking for distributors, she answered, seeming to indicate yes. But actually it was no -- they were simply another wanna-be brand buying surplus from Taiwanese manufacturers, and this company thought it could step in and be another middleman. They apparently don't know there is no middle to be had. In this low-spec range of commodity product, the manufacturers are selling each unit at a loss to companies like HP -- and doing so both to keep their assembly lines running, and to keep clients happy for bigger budget products.

My other main observation is that each product I saw narrowly misses being a must-buy item -- in fact many new products were placed side-by-side with another product that showed just why you should not buy either model today. The best example I saw of this was, again, at the Samsung booth. They had a very snazzy camcorder, incredibly teeny yet comfortable to grip and use, with an impressive 10x optical zoom lens. Like all new camcorders, it could also capture stills -- but this new camcorder could only take video-resolution stills, which means not even one megapixel. That was true of digital camcorders five years ago! This year many camcorders take 3MP or greater resolution still photos.

And what was the nearby product that proved just how silly video-resolution still capture was in any product? Why, the next unit over was a mobile phone that captured FIVE megapixel stills! If a PHONE can take 5MP photos, there is no excuse for a digital camcorder to take VGA resolution pictures...

[That's all I can say about cameras, as covering photography is my actual job. My boss paid for my trip to CES, and I have to do my camera coverage for our company publications... But I will say Kodak had the coolest products at the show -- and in all my years at high-tech journalism, that is the first time I have ever typed those words!]

...but these Samsung cameras [phone and camcorder] merely exemplify the bigger trend I noted above: almost every product was just not ready for prime time. I held up one fancy gadget after another -- and with each I said to myself that yeah, if money was no object I would enjoy buying this -- but money is an object, and I can tell how this thousand dollar device will disappoint me within days, as its shortcomings are obvious.

The high tech consumer electronics business is overreaching itself right now, coming out with a flood of products none of which deliver everything they promise.

Heater if needed

The rain has slowed a bit. Of course, as I went out to the storeroom to get the propane heater the downpour was torrential...

Mr. Heater Buddy -- who named this thing? Who calls their buddies "Mister?"

I haven't used this heater in years.

And, well, propane scares me.

It has ever since I was 8 and a propane sales woman told my dad and me about the explosion that killed her husband.

She spoke of propane like it was a devil, an insidious gas that flows downhill and that would find an open flame or spark no matter how well guarded.. and yet she continued to sell propane and propane accessories, as my buddy Mr. Hank Hill would say.

Fortunately the heater directions are printed on the back. I turned the dial, clicked on the pilot lighter... Nothing. Tried again. Nothing.,

The propane tank was empty.

Thankfully, I had a spare, and had even brought it with me out of the store room, so I did not have to bundle up and get wet again.

I put the new tank in, and reread the directions and saw I had done it wrong previously... I was supposed to hold the gas on for 30 seconds. This time it worked. The pilot lit. I held the gas on for another 30 seconds as instructed, and then turned it to high. Heat! I wouldn't freeze tonight!

Of course this thing is designed for outdoor use only... But that is because of venting issues.. meaning you can't leave it running as it will burn through your oxygen. But if the house gets freezing, I can turn it on for five minutes or so to take the bite out of the air without suffocating.

I am glad I put in all that new insulation this summer...

Irony and Auxiliary power

The irony of writing about the Consumer Electronics show while being without electricity does not escape me... but while I do literally have candles burning, I also have a battery powered computer, and two back-up battery power supplies, and three huge battery-powered lanterns.

I apparently have four hours of power left on this iBook; fortunately I plugged it in last night and so it is fully charged.

Power is back on, TV viewing is assured...

So I have the candles lit, chopped wood drying, propane heater set, battery back ups and inverter ready to go...

...And the electricity comes back on.

I seem to recall this happened once before, a year or so past, only that time I had gone so far as to light a fire or two.

The Replay is spinning back up. At least I won't miss the new season opener of Carnivale.

I'll leave some candles lit as it is still storming out there, and the power can go out again at any time.

Sunday, January 9, 2005

Old school and a Leaky door

I had a towel -- a huge new yellow one that I had never used -- rolled up against the base of my deck door to prevent drafts coming in through the spot that needs to be sealed better. I had seen a draft-sealer at a Home store while Christmas shopping -- basically a long tubular bean bag. The towel seemed to do the job as well, even if it didn't look quite so snazzy.

When I came home from CES, I checked the towel -- and it was soaked through with rain water. I picked it up, and moved the new door mat as well -- and thankfully nothing had seeped through to damage the floor. I remembered now that I once came home to a sizeable puddle in here, which made the seams swell up in the fake wood flooring

Soaking up the water is not something that fancy draft-blocking bean bag would have done near so well -- so score one for cheapness!

But speaking of being cheap -- and lazy -- I really need to refurbish and reseal those deck doors. They were lovely looking, all stained wood and floor-to-ceiling glass -- but now the outside looks like weathered plywood used to patch an aged trailer home...

Sunday, January 9, 2005

The journey home

My flight back was scheduled for 7 p.m. I did not want to miss it. My co-worker Tony and I talked that morning [having missed each other throughout the first day] and planned to leave at 4:30.

Then the weather turned bad, with rain and snow. Despite my cel phone's failing power and the fact that there were probably more cel phones in use per square foot at CES that day than any where else in the world, Tony and I were able to get hold of each other. The cab line is going to be a monster we agreed -- let's leave an hour earlier. We'll meet at the baggage check [where we both had our luggage].

At 3:30 we walked to the cab line. It was hellaciusly long -- longer than I'd ever seen it at either CES or Comdex [but shorter than the cab line at the airport the day before]. We prepared ourselves for a long wait...

... when a woman in a yellow vest came by, shouting "Airport!? Go to the front of the line!"

So after just a minute in line, we were on our way.

There was a huge line at the airport check in.

For the first time. I tried the self serve kiosk. It did not work -- after the second step, it rebooted. Three times.

I tried another kiosk.

In less than a minute I had my ticket.

The line at security was very long. But it only took ten minutes.

I had been worried about missing my flight. I got to my gate more than three hours early.

And then my flight was delayed two hours.

Because the plane was grounded in Fresno, because of the reportedly bad weather in Vegas.

I looked out the window. No rain. No wind.

I eventually got home at 12:30am.

And now I have to get my CES news report done for a Monday edition of my Weekly briefing [part of my company's executive news service for the photography industry].

Sunday, January 9, 2005

Oh, my aching Back

My recurring back problem is acting up again the last few days. I don't know why. I am in the best shape I have ever been -- muscles where I didn't even know you can grow muscles -- especially in my midsection/torso. No fat anywhere. If that doesn't stop my hip from popping out, what the hell can?

And I wish a doctor or chiropractor could clearly explain exactly what the problem is. I mean, it is my back "area" but it is not a spinal problem - it is my hips. But while it feels like my hip is "out," clearly the actual thigh joint is not out of the ball socket or I would be screaming in agony.

It's just an "off" feeling, and it can make crackling noises, and if I swivel my hips or flex forward, things move and pop in a way that I am guessing is not good. What is actually out? What is moving and popping? Tendons and ligaments? If so, how can I stop it from happening? How can I easily fix it when it does? Lying on blocks or books doesn't seem to do the trick anymore -- it sometimes even makes it worse. I just stretch a lot, which kind of relieves the overall tension -- but it doesn't make it 'pop' back into place.

At least the tension hasn't spread up my back as it often does. That is what is really crippling, and really painful. When that happens I can only hobble about like a wizened old man, and every movement hurt badly. Right now I just have a strong "uncomfortable" feeling that doesn't stop me from exercising.

I just hope it doesn't get worse while I am walking the show floor at CES later this week.

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Room positioning and Chairs

I am writing this on my iBook, placed on the dining table, typing on the wireless keyboard [which I love very much].

My dining/living room is the most attractive room in the house -- much better than my 'office,' which is certainly a nice room itself. But this room has big, tall windows staring out at the mountain view, letting in lots of natural light. The brick fireplace in this room adds contrast and character to the room, while the brick corner for the wood stove in the office seems to darken and shrink that room.

The problem here is where to sit. In the chair I'm in now, my back is to the front drive way area, even though the actual front door is just on my left -- and having no line-of-sight to where cars might drive up makes me paranoid. In the main dining chair [the one with armrests] I have my back to the windows, meaning no view, and worse yet, too much glare in the laptop screen.

The far corner recliner has the best position: it faces both the front door and the view windows. The padded chair is comfortable... for watching television. Typing in it is not as comfortable, or at least, not as efficient, as sitting here at the table.

Besides, sitting too long in recliners is what throws my lower back out. I think.

Since I'm not going to move my dining table and chairs to the corner of my living room, I guess I will stay here...

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Stalking the Perfect Chair

While I am on the subject -- at least somewhat -- can anyone recommend a Really Great chair? A chair that rolls, swivels, reclines, pivots, etc.?

I have tried:

o An old leather and wood office chair that rolls and swivels, but with a firm non-pivoting seat and back; well-positioned armrests.

o A newer office chair on which everything moved: the seat, back, and armrests all independently raised, lowered, and pivoted/angled.

o An old naughahyde recliner that rocks, or tilts back into a slight recline, or all the way into an almost completely horizontal position.

o A fancy outdoor lounge chair that had a lockable tilt, from an upright to a near-horizontal position, with good armrests and a head pad.

o And now, my dining chair -- on which nothing moves, but everything is level, square, and firm.

None of them are ideal. The old office chair has a less-than-comfortable seat; the new office chair does not, I think, sit level: its seat wobbles on its base, and so aggravates my back, or at least makes me constantly aware that I may not be level, and so worry that the crookedness will aggravate my back... the old recliner has a slightly sprung seat: while it is generally really comfortable, after a few hours in it -- even on a cushion - my butt hurts... The outdoor lounge chair was surprisingly comfortable for many months; it still may be the best option.

Can anyone whole-heartedly endorse a chair, without reservation?

I would say price is no object, but I hesitate to spend >$500 on an Aeron when it doesn't seem that much better than a $200 chair...

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

My Replay DVR

My Replay digital video recorder just spun up and started recording a TV show. I think it's an episode of "Anatomy of a Scene," the interesting Sundance channel show that examines movie production.

I'll write about that show later. Right now I want to give praise to the wonder that is the DVR.

I bought my Replay TV when it first hit the market. I forget how much I paid for it -- but it was enough to make my then-wife try to talk me out of it.

How much have I used it since then? Well -- I have worn out the remote control. That's right -- And I don't just mean that I have worn away the lettering. I mean the primary buttons no longer function.

Fortunately I was able to program a universal remote to control the Replay.

I don't know what to say here that you don't either already know, as, hey, you are the type of person who reads random things on the Web and therefore odds are you are also a gadget fiend and have a DVR yourself -- or at the least, you have read many descriptions of Tivos and Replays [and Media Center PCs and new-fangled cable boxes and...]

But in a nuthsell: if you have NOT bought one -- do so now! I know we DVR users can sound like cult members -- but using one really can change your life.

That is, if your life consists of an unhealthy amount of TV viewing, as mine does...

With the Replay [or any DVR] you actually spend less time watching TV -- because you skip the ads, and so a half-hour show takes 20 minutes, an hour drama less than 50... Not only does this save time, it adds immeasurably to your overall entertainment experience. Any show worth watching is better without interruption. [And yes, I am fanatical about not answering the phone or anything else when enjoying a show... when I am watching TV, *I am watching TV!* ]

[Although often I do exercise when watching TV. Exercising does not detract from a lot of the non-fiction shows l like (no, not "reality TV") and the shows make the exercise more enjoyable.]

The second advantage of a DVR is that when you do want to watch TV, you don't have to settle for what is airing at that moment: you always have hours of shows you have pre-selected to watch. So your TV watching time is always better spent. [Although personally I have never watched TV just to watch TV -- I never understood people who turned it on without knowing exactly what they were going to watch.]

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Slush

I wish it would snow.

I live in the mountains near Yosemite. I am just above the 3000 foot snow line. But while there is plenty of snow in the higher Sierras, all I've had here is a mild "dusting" of snow that quickly washed away in the following rains. For a few hours yesterday thick snow came down in big flakes... but while it was pretty to watch it fall, nothing stayed on the ground.

I never get a heavy snow here -- what I always call a decorative amount, a few inches at most. It looks nice -- clean and peaceful -- but is not an obstacle for driving or even hiking.

Actually, it did snow a few feet here once -- but I was in Florida that week. My cousin was house sitting -- he had come to California to avoid the cold British winter. I called him and he lamented that it was freezing, the power was out [and I have electric heating, not gas -- and he was too lazy to start a wood fire] and he couldn't drive out in the snow and he was hungry... I told him I was sitting out by the pool getting some sun... and that I was sure he'd still be alive when I was home in two days.

Tuesday, January 2, 2005

WiFi and getting the latest computers and OS

I need to put a WiFi transceiver in my main desktop [or floor sitting, anyway] Mac.

I know, I know, I am hopelessly behind the times.

I don't have a home network, wired or wireless.

To get files from my laptop to my PowerMac, I use good old sneaker-net -- I copy files to a CF card in a USB be card reader, and move that reader from one computer to the other.

[I gave away my second card reader... I should buy a few more at least; they're only $30 or so. I wish they were built in to the computers.]

But WiFi in my main Mac, letting me copy files from it to the laptop -- which as an Airport card -- and back, would make a lot more sense.

Most people install WiFi to share a fast Net connection amongst multiple computers. As I only have dial-up Internet access, that was never a motivation for me. [Although it would be nice to not have to plug a phone line into the laptop when I use it throughout the house... nice, but hardly a big deal.]

However, I will have to track down an old base station. Why? Because Apple does not support OS 9 in its current products.

That's right, I still use OS 9, a five-year-old operating system built on an creaky ancient hacked-together code base.

I have OS X. Why haven't I upgraded?

Because I do not need to. And because doing so would be very costly in dollars and time -- and comfort.

I use Microsoft Word 98 every day -- and I do not want to upgrade. I have tried newer versions, and I do not like them. I would have to run Word in an OS 9 session if I moved to OS X.

I also use Photoshop 7 and Quark 3 at least once a month. I do not need the features in later versions -- nor do I want to pay hundreds of dollars for unneeded new versions of software I do not use that often. The versions I own will not work in OS X.

Because I am a cutting edge guy -- or at least, I used to be -- I tried an early version of OS X. Hated it. I can understand that Apple needed to change to stable code-base for its OS core. That does not explain all the willy-nilly interface changes that in effect make an OS X computer as different from an OS 9 Macintosh as a Win XP PC. Apple cold have easily offered an interface choice -- the GUI was hardly the issue, nor would it have been a make-or-break factor in OS stability. No, the execs there [Jobs] just wanted change for changes sake. [Okay, for the sake of making it look like NextStep]. And that is where Apple lost me as a regular paying customer.

I like learning new programs. But I saw no reason to relearn everything I do on my computer everyday, simply to run an OS that was slower.

Maybe if I had all the instability problems that critics of older OS's always go on about... But except for crashes caused by my old Web browser hitting a site that is crammed with whiz-bangy Java and Flash, I don't have any problems.

My PowerMac is a dual 400MHz G4 with 1GB of RAM. That is hardly a speed demon by today's standards, although it was the fastest available when I bought it. However, it is plenty fast for everything I want to do on it --even enhancing photos and cutting video. Yes, rendering out a final video project is slow, but it's not like I do that everyday... Overall, this computer does everything I want, and does it well.

My G3 iBook is plenty fast for my word processing, email, and web browsing. That is all I want to do on it. That is, it's plenty fast in OS 9. I tried OS X on it, and everything slowed to a crawl. Why would I spend $1,000 on a new portable computer just to run an operating system I do not like -- when what I have in hand does most everything I want?

BUT... sticking with OS 9 now means my choices for peripherals are limited.

And new software is out of the question, as no one develops for the older operating system now. No, I do not blame these companies -- with one exception:

It boggles my brain that Apple would abandon its OS 9 installed base. I believe less than half of all Mac users have switched to OS X. After, what, 3-4 years, that should tell the company something. Okay, maybe it tells them that some old customers will never spend another dime and you can't pay attention to them... But really, how hard can it be to make the new WiFi base station run on OS 9 -- when the previous, very similar product did so?

Even more amazing, and more galling, is that OS 9 users cannot even use a new iPod -- and Windows XP users can! No, I am not ignoring the math -- of course it made sense for Apple to make Windows XP versions of iTunes and the iPod driver software. But it also makes *no* sense to not make OS 9 versions -- especially when there were already OS 9 versions ready for upgrading. Yes, the first iPods worked fine with OS 9. Now, for absolutely no good reason, the new ones do not. Even though the iPods work with Windows XP!

I run iTunes on both my Macs all the time -- but I can't run the version that connects to the website from which I could buy music. Hey Apple -- I spent many thousands at Amazon.com -- how much of that music money would have gone your way if you hadn't shut me out? Me, a guy who had been a regular customer for a decade? Oh wait - TWO decades.[God, I am old.]

Like all computer companies, Apple faces the challenge of an installed base that has little reason to buy new computers. Almost any 3-5 year old computer is more than powerful enough for writing, web browsing, emailing, and even for storing, editing, and printing photos. That is all most people will ever want or need to do on a computer.

Unlike almost all the other computer companies, Apple has other products: great software [like iTunes and GargeBand]; peripheral hardware like iPods; and services/retail sales through the iTunes website.

All of these either are, or, in the case of the software, could be, big revenue generators.

It is amazing to me that Apple has *chosen* to not sell iPods or songs to the *majority* of its customers. And the company refuses to even sell to its OS 9 users the software it gives OS X users for free.

Look, Apple -- you can't convince, conduce, or blackmail the rest of us to switch if we haven't already. The computer I bought from you just three years ago for more than $3,000 is still all I need, hardware-wise. I think it is despicable that you have decided I cannot buy and enjoy the other products you have developed since -- products that were in essence developed with the money that me, and others like me, paid for the high-priced hardware over the years...

Huh... I ended up getting more steamed about the topic as I wrote than I thought I was initially...

Wait a minute... I *can* run iTunes and hook up an iPod!

How?

Simple. I also have a Windows XP computer...

[Hey! - I need it for work; I have to look at all photo imaging software, most of which is Windows-only.]

That doesn't help me with my WiFi problem, however...

Tuesday, January 2, 2005