A tip for amateur moviemakers: Record everything!

Dave Farquhar Video ,

Today was our first snow of the year. It started at 6 this morning and was supposed to be flurries with accumulation of a fraction of an inch. It’s still snowing right now and I suspect there’s a good two inches on the ground. But the long commute isn’t bothering me. Scraping snow isn’t bothering me.
I got called in to work early and didn’t have a chance to record any of the snowfall. That’s what’s bothering me.

You see, I’ve got this idea festering in my head. It’s a story that’ll make a great three-minute video, and it involves snowfall. A few snippets filmed today would have worked just fine.

I’m home now and I’ve got time to set up the camera, but the daylight is long gone. My opportunity passed me by. But it reminded me of a principle: Record everything. EVERYTHING. You never know when you’ll need it.

So the next time there’s a beautiful sunny day without a cloud in the sky, get out the camera and record a couple of minutes of it. Capture the birds singing and the full trees swaying in the wind. When autumn comes and the trees are changing their colors, film a couple of minutes of it. Record a couple of minutes of a thunderstorm. And record a snowfall.

If you’re going on a trip, take the camera. Record something distinctive about the place you’re going. Record anything you come across that’s safe and legal and halfway interesting. Define “interesting” as something your next-door neighbor doesn’t see every day.

Example: While driving around in downtown Kansas City last week, while stopped at a stoplight, there was an obvious drug deal going on in a gas station parking lot to the right. That’s something my next-door neighbor doesn’t see every day. Legally I was entitled to record it too–I was observing from public property. Now was it safe for me to be recording it? Good question.

Another example: We were walking around in Crown Center, an indoor shopping mall known for exotic stuff. Lots of interesting things to see there. Also something my neighbor doesn’t see every day. Perfectly safe. But illegal to record–Crown Center is private property. There were news cameras set up outside. They could record what was going on outside the building, from the public street.

Sometimes you can’t take a video camera where you’re going. So take a still camera. Digital is better for video purposes, of course, but take what you have. A ’70s-style Polaroid is better than nothing. A still shot (or series of still shots) of that drug deal going on might have been safer to shoot than a minute of video, and just as dramatic, if not more. And a still shot of something that doesn’t move is just as good as video of something that moves. You can pan and zoom on a still shot to make it move, or take a series of still shots from different angles.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that Gatermann’s just as likely to have a camera with him as he is shoes. And he gets a lot of really good stuff in the most unlikely of places. One of the pictures of me at the top of this page was taken in a restaurant, and the other was taken onboard Metrolink, which is St. Louis’ mass-transit train.

Also remember that mixing media works. It doesn’t really matter too much if some of your material is digital video, some of it’s analog video, some of it’s single stills, and some of it’s a series of stills. Nor does it matter if some of it is color and some of it black and white. Contrast can have a dramatic effect too. If all your stuff’s the same, figure out how to make it work. If all of it’s different, figure out how to make that work. Just remember that differences will naturally call attention to themselves, so figure out how to take advantage of that when it’s a good thing and to downplay it when it’s not.

Record things even if you don’t have an immediate use in mind for them. Sometimes creativity is having an idea in mind and then going and getting the parts for what you want to make. And sometimes creativity is looking at the parts you have and figuring out what you can make out of it. But usually it’s a little bit of both.

News flash: Windows is cheaper than Linux!

Dave Farquhar Windows , , ,

Lots of people asked me today what I thought about the IDC study that says Windows is cheaper than Linux. I yawned.
Consider the source. Microsoft paid for the thing. You think IDC was going to come back and say Linux is cheaper all around if Microsoft was paying the bill?

Yes, sometimes it’s cheaper. If all your sysadmins know NT and don’t know Unix well, then yes, Windows is going to be cheaper.

But I can think of some times when it’s not. Like if downtime means anything to you at all. My clients scream when I have to reboot an NT server. But I can count on having to reboot a busy NT server once a year due to a lockup or general server stupidity. And virtually every security update is going to require a reboot. I can slipstream a Linux security update almost every time without a reboot–unless it’s a patch to the kernel, which is rare. With the right distribution, I can even upgrade distributions without a reboot. Try that when going from Windows NT or 2000 to something else.

I saw a story on DebianPlanet today about someone bragging he’d done a server migration in 3 hours. You’ll never do that with Windows. But you can do a migration even faster than that–copy everything over somehow to the new server, either through a tape backup or disk cloning, then adjust /etc/fstab as necessary, plop down a generic kernel straight from a distribution, configure the NIC if it’s not a close relative of the old one, and reboot. If you want to get fancy, compile a custom kernel tuned to the new server’s hardware. You can do it all in an hour. We dread the day any of our Windows servers is destroyed by some kind of accident and we can’t find an identical replacement. It’ll take us a minimum of 5 hours to install and update the OS and re-install whatever apps are on it and re-create whatever shares are on it, because that’s how long it takes us to set up a new one out of the box.

And maybe you’ve got picky clients like some of mine. One of them decided out of the blue that they didn’t like how their network shares were named. Never mind that everyone just calls it “the O drive.” Yes, they’re anal-retentive morons, but the client is always right. So one of my coworkers spent a thrilling Saturday un-sharing folders and re-sharing them with new names. On a Samba server, you can just load a text file, change some names, and restart the daemon. Done. The job that took 6 hours and was full of potential for human error is reduced to a few minutes. There’s still potential for human error, but it’s much less because the job isn’t as tedious and boring. And it’s much quicker to fix.

And don’t even get me started on tracking server licenses and CALs. Many organizations, when faced with a Microsoft audit, find it cheaper to just re-buy all of them than to spend the time tracking down the documentation that proves they’re honest. With Linux and open source, there’s no danger of having to pay for something twice, not counting the upgrades. (Those are free too, if you want them.)

Phillies’ signing of Thome is about confidence, not wins

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , ,

The Phillies just signed the most popular slugger in Cleveland Indians’ history, inking a 6-year, $87 million deal.
Analysts note that with Thome in the lineup instead of Travis Lee, the Phillies would have scored about 70 more runs last season. They still would have been fourth in the league, even with those extra 70 runs. That’s not enough to guarantee you’ll be the fourth team in the playoffs.

Analysts also noted that for the past few years, Thome has spent a good deal of time as the DH rather than playing in the field, and they doubt Thome will be capable of playing first base for the last year or even two years of his contract.

Also, last week, Philadelphia signed David Bell to play third base, replacing Placido Polanco. Bell’s a better hitter than Polanco, but not by much. Bell’s a better fielder than Polanco (at least at third), but not by very much.

But this trend isn’t about fielding. It’s not so much even about scoring runs. I’m not even convinced it’s about winning ball games. This is about confidence.

You see, a year ago, the Phillies had the best third baseman in baseball and the second-best third baseman in their team’s history (second only to Mike Schmidt, who is one of the three best third basemen who ever lived). The Phillies offered Scott Rolen a pile of money to sign a long-term contract. But Scott Rolen wasn’t convinced the Phillies wanted to win badly enough. He refused a couple of offers, slumped, got into some arguments with manager Larry Bowa, and eventually was traded to the Cardinals for whatever they could manage to get for him, preferring that to losing him to free agency.

It wasn’t that long ago that Philadelphia lost Curt Schilling, one of the best pitchers in the game today, pretty much the same way.

Rolen rediscovered his swing, and helped the Cardinals get to the postseason. Schilling dueled Randy Johnson for the Cy Young Award two years straight, and along with Johnson was the hero of the 2001 World Series, and was practically unbeatable up until the 2002 postseason.

Meanwhile, the Phillies looked like they’d given up and entered a rebuilding phase as they got ready to open an expensive new ballpark. And Philadelphia fans are notoriously unforgiving. We’re talking fans who’ll boo Santa Claus.

And the Phillies have lots of young, exciting players whose contracts are running out.

Signing David Bell and Jim Thome proves the Phillies are willing to spend some money. This will make unhappy players play better (witness Scott Rolen’s performance after coming to St. Louis versus his so-so performance in Philadelphia last year). Bell has become one of those players who always seems to find himself playing for a winner. Young players need that influence. Bell, at least theoretically, brings value beyond the numbers he puts up. If it were about numbers, the Phillies would have acquired Joe Randa, who makes much less money, and the Phillies could have had Joe Randa for a bag of baseballs and a vial of dirt scraped off one of Mike Schmidt’s spikes. But Joe Randa’s never played for a winner.

And Jim Thome’s a big, burly, buff guy who hits monsterous home runs by the truckload and excites fans. The Phillies haven’t had a truly great power hitter since Mike Schmidt. In his best year, Schmidt hit 48 home runs and batted .286. Jim Thome hit 52 home runs and batted .304 last year.

In 1997, the St. Louis Cardinals were missing something. They had the opportunity to trade for Mark McGwire. McGwire hit a bunch of towering home runs and captured the fans’ imagination and helped the Cardinals lure some other great players, most notably center fielder Jim Edmonds, to St. Louis.

The Phillies want Jim Thome to come in and be Mark McGwire.

The Phillies covet former Braves pitcher Tom Glavine. Glavine’s been one of the best left-handed pitchers in the National League for the past decade. The Braves and Mets are also interested in Glavine. But the Braves made him a half-hearted offer and seem to be more interested in unloading salary than in making another playoff run. The Mets are coming off a last-place finish and they’re trying to find someone willing to take Jeromy Burnitz and Mo Vaughn’s contracts. Meanwhile, the Phillies have just signed two of the most coveted players in the free agent market. The Phillies’ offer is comparable to the Mets’ offer. Glavine wants money, of course, but he also wants to win another World Series before he retires. Who do you think he’s most interested in pitching for now?

David Bell alone doesn’t make the Phillies a better team. Jim Thome alone makes the Phillies a marginally better team. David Bell plus Jim Thome plus Tom Glavine signal a commitment to win, at least for the next few years, which will draw out the best in the players they have and make other players interested, as well as draw fans, which creates revenue, which can be used to pursue other quality players.

Those are the ingredients of a dynasty.

Now the Phillies just have to figure out how to mix them properly.

My first lengthy exposure to digital photography

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

Well, I took the plunge. I’ve entered the world of digital photography.
Panasonic lowered the retail price of its Lumix DMC-LC20 digital camera to $249. That, along with a promotion that threw in some memory cards, made me bite.

It’s a 2.1-megapixel unit (2 megapixel usable, according to the sticker on the front of the camera–kudos for truth in advertising) and its main selling point is its Leica lens. Leica, for those who aren’t hard-core into photography, is a German camera maker known for its high-quality and very expensive lenses.

I’ve been playing with it a little, and here’s what I’ve found (besides my need to practice some more).

You’ll probably have to take precautions for the included single set of charged AA NiMH 1600mAh batteries to have enough juice to take more than 16 meg worth of pictures. That’s not a lot. They aren’t the bottom-line batteries available (an awful lot of people seem to be selling 1400mAh batteries), but you can get 1800mAh or even 2000mAh batteries. The 1800s are a proven, mature technology. Buy at least two pair of 1800s, charge them up and take them with you. This thing munches ’em fast.

The included 8-meg SM card doesn’t hold a lot of images. Of course, people go ga-ga over the Sony Mavica cameras that use floppies, and a floppy is less than 1.5 megs. Be glad that Panasonic is throwing in a couple of bigger cards.

USB transfers from the camera’s SM cards are quick and easy, which really makes me wonder what the big deal is about Mavicas.

Image quality is very good. I’ll share some images once I’m not posting over dialup.

Professional photographers aren’t too keen on consumer-grade digital cameras, because a 1600×1200-resolution image is only enough to print a 4×5 print with acceptable quality (and it’ll look better smaller). But the only way to get good at taking pictures is to take a lot of them. An inexperienced photographer is going to take a lot of bad images. With digital, you don’t have to pay to process and print all the bad images. And digital gives you instant feedback. You’ll find youself compensating immediately for the effects of lighting.

The downsides of printing your own photographs are the cost of the prints (no less than the individual cost of a print off film, by the time you figure the cost of the ink cartridges and the special paper), and the longevity, or lack thereof. Inkjets aren’t known for producing long-lasting images. Inexpensive color laser printers will eventually give great strides in the right direction towards solving both problems, but right now “inexpensive” means $1,000. It’ll be a year or two before they hit the magical $499 mark.

But if you figure $1 per print, it won’t take long for a digital camera’s savings to pay for itself and for that printer.

It’s very easy to increase the Lumix’s exposure time for taking night shots, and I got some good ones. But I was missing my tripod. My hands aren’t steady enough to take sharp images without one once you lengthen the exposure time.

I’m not feeling any tinges of buyer’s remorse over this thing. Especially not after a night on the town with it. (Kansas City on the night after Thanksgiving offers lots of interesting subjects.)

Transferring VHS movies to VCD or DVD

Dave Farquhar Video , , , , , , , ,

Mail from Maurie Reed about VHS home movie transfers to digital formats.
MR: Dave, I’ve read all of your threads on video editing with interest. I’m not claiming to have understood everything but I’m less in the dark than I was before ( a 20 watt bulb as compared to a 10?).

DF: Remember, there are people who get 4-year degrees in this stuff. And graduate degrees after that.

MR: My question is: does the Pinnacle DV500 work in conjunction with a regular AGP video card or is it the sole video device in the system?

DF: It works in conjunction with another card. The DV500 does the heavy lifting and then sends its display over to the other card. So if you’ve got a DV500, any video card on the market today will be way more than enough. I used an S3 Savage4 card for a long time, and it was fine.

MR: Maybe better yet, what I’d lke to do is take the VHS tapes that we have made of the family over the years and transfer them to DVD. The first reason is to archive them for safety. After that’s done I’d like to edit them for quality, i.e., clean up, lighten,etc.

DF: PC Magazine’s Lance Ulanoff has done some columns on that. His approach, using Sonic MyDVD 4.0 (though Dazzle DVD Complete gets better reviews), is simpler than mine and eliminates the DV500, though you’ll still need some way to get the analog video into your PC. An ATI All-In-Wonder card would be good for that. I know Newegg has the less-expensive All-in-Wonders sometimes but they tend to sell out quickly so you’ll probably have to use their notify feature. Then you can spend the money you’d spend on a DV500 on a DVD writer instead (I suggest one of the Sony drives that can do DVD+R/+RW and DVD-R/-RW, that way if one format works better in your DVD player, you’re not stuck.

Keep in mind that Ulanoff used Firewire to get his video in, but that’s because he used Hi8 as his source, and those tapes will work in a Digital8 camera. If you’re using VHS, you’re limited to using analog inputs.

What you gain in simplicity you lose in power, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

MR: Toward this end I’ve been slowly building up a new machine: P4-2.4, Asus P4-533E, 512M PC-2700 RAM, 120G WD HD (SCSI’s not quite in the budget right now although I do have some Adaptec 2940 cards). I’m running an old S3 8M video card in it right now to test components (all from newegg…thanks for thesuggestion!) and I have no DVD-ROM drive or DVD burner yet (I do have a LiteOn CDRW). I thought I’d work on the video first. I’m sure at some point down the road we would like to do more video but never anything professional (read – making money at it). It would probably be my wife and daughters working with it anyway as I’m more of an audio person then video.

DF: You’re off to a great start. Add a DVD burner and an All-In-Wonder card (or a similar nVidia card with analog inputs–if your camera or VCR supports S-Video, use that, since its picture quality is noticeably better) and you’re ready to go. You might want to grab a smallish drive to hold your OS and apps so you can dedicate the WD drive just to video. Watch the post-Thanksgiving sales. For VHS-to-DVD transfers, IDE is sufficient.

Since you do have a CD burner, if you want to get started right away, get the All-In-Wonder and the software and start making VCDs, then get the DVD burner later.

As for being an audio person rather than a video person, I come at it from a magazine/newspaper background. I think it’s a shorter step from audio to video than it is from print to video! (And you knowing what it takes to make the video sound good is a very good thing. The audio quality on some of my projects has been positively awful.)

MR: I understand you’re very busy and NOT in the free advice business so I’ll understand if you decline to comment.

Thanks (no matter what the answer) in advance and have a great Thanksgiving!

DF: Thanks for the good questions. You have a great Thanksgiving too.

Increase the speed of your Web pages

Dave Farquhar Design , , , , ,

There are commercial utilities that will optimize your HTML and your images, cutting the size down so your stuff loads faster and you save bandwidth. But I like free.
I found free.

Back in the day, I told you about two programs, one for Windows and one for Unix, that will crunch down your JPEGs by eliminating metadata that’s useless to Web browsers. The Unix program will also optimize the Huffman tables and optionally resample the JPEG into a lossier image, which can net you tremendous savings but might also lower image quality unacceptably.

Yesterday I stumbled across a program on Freshmeat that strips out extraneous whitespace from HTML and XML files called htmlcrunch. Optionally, it will also remove comments. The program works in DOS–including under a command prompt in Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, and it knows how to handle long filenames–or Unix.

It’s not advertised as such, but I suspect it ought to also work on PHP and ASP files.

How much it will save you depends on your coding style, of course. If you tend to put each tag on one line with lots of pretty indentation like they teach in computer science classes, it will probably save you a ton. If you code HTML like me, it’ll save you somewhat less. If you use a WYSIWYG editor, it’ll probably save you a fair bit.

It works well in conjunction with other tools. If you use a WYSIWYG editor, I suggest you first run the code through HTML Tidy first. HTML Tidy, unlike htmlcrunch, actually interprets the HTML and removes some troublesome information. But in some cases, HTML Tidy will add characters, but this is usually a good thing–its changes improve browser compatibility. If you feed HTML Tidy a bunch of broken HTML, it’ll fix it for you.

You can further optimize your HTML with the help of a pair of Unix commands. But you run Windows? No sweat. You can grab native Windows command-line versions of a whole slew of Unix tools in one big Zip file here.

I’ve found that these HTML tools sometimes leave spaces between HTML elements under some circumstances. Whether this is intentional or a bug in the code, who knows. But it’s easy to fix with the Unix tr command:

tr "> indexopt.html

Some people believe that Web browsers parse 255-character lines faster than any other line length. I’ve never seen this demonstrated. And in my experience, any Web browser parses straight-up HTML plenty fast no matter what, unless you’re running a seriously, seriously underpowered machine, in which case optimizing the HTML isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. Also in my experience, every browser I’ve looked at parses CSS entirely too slow. It takes most browsers longer to render this page than it takes for my server to send it over my pokey DSL line. I’ve tried mashing my stylesheets down and multiple 255-character lines versus no linebreaks whatsoever made little, if any, difference.

But if you want to try it yourself, pass your now-optimized HTML file(s) through the standard Unix fmt command, like so:

fmt -w 255 index.html > index255.html

Optimizing your HTML files to the extreme will take a little time, but it’s probably something you only have to do once, and your page visitors will thank you for it.

Got tech skills? Here’s a Christmas idea

Dave Farquhar Hardware

One of my coworkers ran out of ideas for Christmas presents for his sisters one year.
So instead of buying them jewelry they probably wouldn’t want, or clothes that wouldn’t fit or they just wouldn’t like so they’d have to take them back, he bought a bunch of computer parts. Then he upgraded their systems. The next year, he did the same thing. And again the next. Within a couple of years, they had really nice systems. And the systems stayed nice, since most people can stay really happy with a computer that gets $100 worth of hardware upgrades every year.

This year, he got married. And his wife didn’t like that idea. They needed to buy something, well, gift-y for his family. So she made her intentions known.

His sisters wasn’t very happy with the idea. It turns out they like it when he upgrades their computers for them.

So there’s an idea to float. Not everyone will love it, but probably a lot of people will. And you can get a lot of nice upgrades for not a lot of money, especially if you know where to shop. Some hints: It’s hard to beat Newegg.com for new stuff. And it’s hard to beat Compgeeks.com for closeout stuff. And let’s face it, unless someone’s ripping DVD movies, there’s little noticeable difference between a 12X DVD-ROM on closeout and a 16X DVD-ROM from a retail joint. And while an enthusiast will look down on a 20X or 24X CD-RW drive, they cost half as much (or less) than the current state-of-the-art, they’re more than half as fast, and to someone used to dubbing from CD to cassette, burning a 74-minute music CD in less than 10 minutes seems really fast.

For me, the magic number is somewhere around $100. For you it might be more like $50. Even if it is $50, there’s a fair bit you can do. You’ll never run out of ideas.

CD-RW drives. I recently paid $30something for a Yamaha 20/10/40 drive. With Nero software. I love it. CD-RW drives are commodities now; look for a drive with some kind of buffer underrun protection and Nero software. Other than that, buy on price.

DVD drives. A bare DVD drive can cost as little as $30. I believe you can even get by without buying a drive with bundled decoder software–n.player ought to do the job for them. I need to build up a bare Windows box, pop in my DVD drive, and try n.player out to know for sure. If you want to be safe, you can get a decent drive with WinDVD bundled for $40.

Memory. Memory’s cheap. It doesn’t seem like anybody ever has enough. No-brainer.

Video card. My sister doesn’t need a fire-breathing video card and yours probably doesn’t either. But a lot of systems have really underpowered cards, way worse than the $25 specials you’ll find on Newegg. If you get one with TV-outs, you gain the option to take the PC into the living room to show slideshows on the TV’s bigger screen, or watch movies on DVD.

Motherboard. A motherboard swap can be hairier, but if the computer already has lots of cool gadgets, that would make a nice upgrade. You could grab something like a Shuttle AK32L that can take a cheap Duron CPU and works with either SDRAM or DDR memory. That would allow you to re-use the existing memory, and slide in under the $100 mark. Then next year’s upgrade could be DDR memory and a really fast Athlon XP CPU, which will be dirt cheap by then.

Scanners. Everyone wants a scanner, and it’s easy to find a decent scanner for $50. Look for color depth over resolution–what’s the point in having a scanner with higher resolution than your printer? Besides, a lot of scans will be e-mailed. The resolution of your monitor is 75 dpi. High color depth gives you better color accuracy, and thus, better scans.

Digital cameras. Cheap sub-megapixel, fixed-focus digital cameras–the Polaroids of the early aughts–start in the $50 price range too. They’re no good for serious shots, but they’re fun, and for family snapshots you’ll be e-mailing around, they’re fine.

And if you’re really careful, you can get a decent digital camera–one with more than a megapixel of resolution and a zoom–for a little over $100. Next year for $100-$125, you may be able to get a 3-megapixel digital camera.

DVD burners. They’re way too expensive now, but at some point DVD burners will hit the $100 mark. Work on stuff lower on this list. Within two years, the confusion over formats will most likely have worked itself out, and pricing should be along the lines of what CD-RW drives cost now. Remember, two years ago a $50 CD-RW was unimaginable. Today it makes you yawn.

Hard drives. There’s always the potential hard drive upgrade. Today, $100 buys what was an unbelievable amount of disk space a year ago. Next year, $100 will buy what’s an unbelievable amount of disk space today. Keep your relatives on a three-year upgrade cycle on their hard drives to minimize the probability of data loss, and to keep the computer running briskly. Mark my words: Changing hard drives will soon become the computerized equivalent of an oil change.

I told you you wouldn’t run out of ideas. You’ll have to repeat some steps earlier in the cycle long before you complete it.

Watch your favorite blogs, effortlessly

Dave Farquhar General

If you’ve got a ton of blogs and news sites you like to monitor for new content and you’d like a better way than visiting them all (maybe there are too many of them, or maybe they don’t update as frequently as you’d like), check out Amphetadesk.
Amphetadesk is an open-source news aggregator. It runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, among others, and it already knows how to talk to thousands of sites. Add a site to Amphetadesk’s list, and it’ll check every so often (the default is every three hours–you can set it to every hour if some of the sites you monitor update a lot) and display headlines your Web browser.

If Amphetadesk doesn’t know about a site you want to monitor, don’t fret. Most sites that offer an RDF or RSS newsfeed aren’t shy about talking about it. If the site doesn’t have an orange XML icon on its navigation bar (a usual tell-tale sign), search the site, either with Google or with its own internal search engine, for the words RDF, RSS, and newsfeed. Then plug the URL you find (mine is at https://dfarq.homeip.net/b2rss.xml if you want a quick example) into Amphetadesk and you’re set.

It’s an unobtrusive, simple program. In Windows, installation is dirt simple: Unzip it and run it. No installation. No Registry mess. No files in weird places. If you decide you don’t like it, delete it. If you decide it’s great and want to share it with friends, Zip up the directory and hand the file over. (Friends can always download it themselves, but didn’t you always want this option?) Very nice. I assume the procedure is the same or very similar for any other OS.

Give it a whirl for yourself. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.