If you were flicking around their satellite or cable channels during the US election count last week, or surfing online and reading reports of the coverage, you’ll have come across CNN’s gimmick of the night.The BBC’s Jeremy Vine had a green screen studio and stabbed his invisible touch screen. ITV had Jon Culshaw to mimic any guests they were unable to get in front of a camera. But CNN projected their Chicago reporter Jessica Yellin into their New York election centre studio by hologram! (Worth remembering that CNN was being broadcast in high def.) It was CNN senior vice president David Bohrman’s idea, and much of the technical nous came from Vizrt and SportVU.Take 1 green screen tent (called “Casper” after the friendly ghost), 35 HD cameras in a 220 degree arc, telemetry...
Every now and again there’s a big change in the kind of electronic devices that businesses and consumers want to buy. Usually a firm markets something that breaks the mould, or reshapes an existing product to allow it to fit previously unseen situations. Laptops have been around for a long time. The first ones were more luggable than portable. Closer to fitting a handle to a normal desktop unit! I remember taking a laptop home from work to provide remote support over a weekend. If you’d put a 1999 Toshiba Tecra into a plastic bag, it would have fallen through the bottom of the bag as soon as you lifted it!When Asus launched the Eee PC this time last year, there was a sudden demand for their cut down handbag-sized subnotebook or netbook. Out of the blue, it was acceptable to use a...
Lord Timothy of Belmont has been blogging about his recent conversion to Freesat, allowing him to abandon his old Freesat-from-Sky satellite package.Also throws in a useful recommendation for Adrian from Ultrabeam Aerials.The PVR (hard drive recording) Freesat set top boxes didn’t arrive over the summer as originally announced when Freessat launched. But Humax have now confirmed that their High Definition PVR box - FOXSAT-HDR - will be on sale in November to hit thre Christmas market.Lord Belmont went for the mammoth (22.5kg) integrated Panasonic LCD television (TX-37LZD81) that comes with Freeview and Freesat tuners built in. No need for a separate set top box, unless you want to add a hard drive recorder ... or when Freeview switches from DVB-T1 and MPEG2 to DVB-T2 and MPEG4 as it...
“Customer service desks follow-the-sun while IT operations follow-the-moon like Richmond (behind the Red Door) in The IT Crowd!” (Alan in Belfast!)In a world that never rests, global companies with global customers are starting to run help desks spaced out at eight hour intervals across the globe, providing their customers with support no matter where they are or what time it is, as well as minimising the need for overtime payments and crazy shift patterns. It’s referred to as follow-the-sun. But last night’s report on global warming by computer from Newsnight’s science editor Susan Watts introduced a variant on that phrase - follow-the-moon.It’s a method of minimising data centre power requirements (and costs) by always running the applications and servers that support...
Travis Ruse is one of my heroes and I’m so glad to have found him again. This guy pretty much single handidly inpsired me to start my photoblog, and subsequently this text blog. Through the photoblog a wave of obsessiveness over photography in general. I have a lot of respect for him and the photographs he took for 2 (or was it 3 years) in the New York subway.
He works as the Photo Editor at Inc. Magazine, where he has worked for the last 5 years.
My rediscovery of Travis came as I noticed the video he shot of Kevin Rose’s photo shoot for the magazine and article. Kevin Rose is the Founder of Digg.com, which I have never really used much, though have been using a little more lately as I have now become hooked on the weekly show, Diggnation, that he does with Alex Albrecht....
I still can’t believe that I use a Mac sometimes. Even after owning one for 6 months. I was something I never, ever, thought I would do. I Always hated Macs.
I’ll start off by saying that, yes, it has crashed a few times, the occasional Kernel Panic, the odd application crash etc. However, these are rare, and have in no way dampened my new computing experience.
My last few months with windows were not great; repeating hard drive failures, regular almost-data-loses, monthly reinstalls, generally slow running speed resulting in nothing getting done quickly.
I had considered myself a bit of an expert on Windows, and as such it did take me about 3-4 weeks to fully adjust to the Mac. Starting with registering and customising preferences. Finding the applications - and discovering...
My first experience of an unconference was BarcampBelfast in June followed by CreativecampBelfast in September. Each one has been fun, informative.
For those unaware, an unconference is a “participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.”
One such event is Barcamp, which had its first Irish event in Cork in 2006, the follow-up to which is being held on Saturday 1st November at Webworks: Barcamp Cork II.
I’m very pleased to be attending, to meet people, enjoy the talks, take photographs and maybe learn a thing or two. Depending on interest,...
I've long had a Google alert set for news about the cube houses that grew out of a student project set by Prof Richard Holden at the Technical University Munich.Known as micro compact homes (m-ch) they're basically teeny weeny white cubes - 2.66m x 2.66m x 2.66m, with a ceiling height of 1.98m, and weighing 2.2 tonnes. With a timber frame shell and clad with anodised aluminium (which may or may not look like the new Mac laptops due to be announced on Tuesday evening) they are easy to heat and easy to cool. Everything within easy reach. Not designed for cat swinging, though house gymnastics would be a cinch.Despite their compact and bijou interior, the minimal space can support two "compact" double beds, storage space, a sliding table allowing five people to dine, a TV (flat screen!), a...
There is a traditional Danish proverb that says:"When you have a clock in your house, you know the time. Once you get two clocks you are no longer certain."(ITIL Service Transition...
Shopping for books on Amazon (what I normally give up for Lent) must be one of the seven joys of the modern world. And if a book is even vaguely notable or popular, Amazon will often knock 10–20% off the cover price. But just occasionally, an Amazon Marketplace trader (basically another retailer listing their wares on Amazon’s website) will undercut Amazon’s price for a new version.What’s very sickening is when a week later, this kind of email arrives from The Book Depository:Subject: Order Cancelled; Xxxxx Xxxx Xxxx by Xxxx, XxxI am terribly sorry, We have had a problem fulfilling your order as we have run out of stock.Xxxxx Xxxx Xxxx by Xxxx, Xxx736-5655240-9999999We have tried to find other copies, but alas we can't locate one even from the publisher's agents currently.We sell...
Google has been celebrating its tenth birthday. They restored the oldest search index that they have archived ... from 2001 when the web was a tad more bijou and compact! So no mention of alaninbelfast back then! And while Blogger was up and running - certainly not the only blogging platform back then - it occupied a more modest corner of the internet. Google's historic search index links where possible into the Internet Archive's excellent Wayback Machine - so you can see some of the sites as they looked all those years...
I've been meaning to play with Wordle for a few months. And tonight while watching a Tivoed episode of NUMB3RS - a show that UTV always seems to schedule for insomniacs who can only fall asleep counting sheep - I finally ran AiB through it.Image from...
OK. So I said the post about the Large Hadron Collider rap would be the last on the subject of CERN for a while. But then I read Virtual Methodist’s post from Saturday.The Methodist Church is noted for the practical way it approaches the world and its pattern of social engagement. It’s also noted for its rich heritage of Charles Wesley’s hymns. Virtual Methodist explains:“We sing our theology... It is the hymns of Charles Wesley that should be noted as a statement of normative Methodist belief rather than John Wesley's 44 Sermons... When was the last time you heard someone whistling a sermon?”So it should be no surprise that the British Methodist Church website is offering new, contemporary hymns that congregations can use as part of their services of worship. And they’re not...
The Northern Irish blogosphere is going to get tedious for a while, with the twitterati all turning up for the opening of the Belfast Apple Store in Victoria Square.The first hardy souls started the queue before 11pm last night. Matthew, Michael, Stuart, Wayne and Karl. Another few arrived after midnight (better prepared with camp seats!). And then it was early morning – 5am-ish – when the rest of the queue started to form.Belfast’s not known for queuing – unless it’s for Returns in Marks and Spencer after Christmas – so there was a decent crowd to witness the opening of the brushed aluminium shrine to consumerism!An ability to cheer and welcome seems must be high up the list of skills the interviewers were looking for when they staffed the Belfast store.The usual Apple...
One last post about the scientific wonders down at CERN in the Switzerland/France border. Not sure how I missed Kate McAlpine's Large Hadron Rap last week ... but here it is now for your delight. CERN approved the filming in their underground caverns and the lyrical science checks out ok...
I don't normally listen to the Today programme on Radio 4. But their coverage of the Large Hadron Collider switch-on at CERN was too promising to miss.I pulled into the work car park on Wednesday morning about 8.24, just as the half eight news had been brought forward. The sports announcer couldn't help himself from cracking an "if they lose it won't be the end of the world" joke, and then John Humphrys managed to squeeze another one in before handing over to Andrew Marr in the CERN control room. And so I stayed sitting in the car for the next ten minutes listening to events unfold.It's not too often that a positive science makes it to the top of the news agenda. Health scares and environmental issues normally squeeze out physics. The previous day's interview with Stephen Hawking stood...
While I mentioned it back in March, the traditional media and the blogosphere have probably made quite enough comments on Wednesday’s forthcoming events at CERN.There has been a definite outbreak of science in the airwaves, with BBC Four showing programmes trailing the grand switch on of the Large Hadron Collider and half of Radio 4’s schedule coming from a bunker near Geneva tomorrow.One highlight for the science-fiction fans (folk who imagine about science but mostly don’t actually do experiments) is Radio 4’s Afternoon Play is a Torchwood special, with a familiar cast, music by Murray Gold, and even takes place outside Cardiff!Afternoon PlayBig Bang Day: Torchwood - Lost SoulsBy Joseph Lidster.The Torchwood team go to Geneva, where former time-traveller Martha Jones is now...
The Belfast tech community got together on Saturday for another one of the increasingly frequent local tech events. Of course this one was open to all creative-types, being called CreativeCamp gives that away a little, unfortunately though, there is still some work to be done to show the other creative industries how useful open events such as this can be.
Music, film, crafts, design, photography, fashion, performance etc etc. That’s not to say that what did take place was not good. Each of the talks that I listened in on were very interesting, such as Davymac’s talk on GTD (Getting Things Done), and David Braziel’s talk on employing creative people and being creative in the workplace.
Of course the weekend actually started with a pre-creativecamp drinks on Friday night...
You’ve heard of Deep Blue? Well this afternoon, Techdigest publishes a report on Deep Green, a Pool-playing robot “developed by a team of Queen's University egg-heads” (their words, not mine).Unfortunately, not Queen’s University of Belfast, but in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Mounted on a gantry above the table (hint: shift the table before you rack up the balls at the start!) the system features overhead cameras and a robotic wrist that holds the cue and tries not to rip the baize. It made it to the cover story of the IEEE’s Computer Magazine where you can read about the contraption in more...
Next time some tells you not to play with your food ... think about the fun you could have with Tetris cookies.There's a recipe to follow (via...
This morning I pottered across town to Creative Camp Belfast. An un-conference, held in the Blick Shared Studios on the Malone Road. A conference in that a load of people pile round to the one location, sit and listen to talks, ask questions, muse over tea and mini-muffins, and catch up with old and new friends. An un-conference in the sense that the speakers are the attendees, everyone has the opportunity to pitch in with what they know and volunteer a session, and the agenda isn’t finalised until everyone has arrived.I only managed to stay for the morning sessions, but we’d a real range of thought-provoking topics.David Braziel took an honest look at Employing Creativity and how to encourage creativity at work and still get stuff done. A lot of us resonated with the traits of...
Clearing out some old junk stuff in work, I came across a fifty year calendar. With one of these and an empty notebook, you could make yourself a diary!You simply match the month up to the year at the top, and then the days of the week will correspond to the dates below. And by the time you’ve done that, you’ll have launched Outlook, done a Ctrl-Shift-A to make a new appointment, typed in the date, and it’ll have come back with the day...
Having been away over the weekend, I've just got around to watching through some bits of the Olympic closing ceremony. The over-riding impression I was left with as I watched was the sheer organisation and discipline of the Chinese organisers.Huge numbers of performers, working in low light, with few cues. Beyond military timing. But close to perfect.And taking chances with high wire jinks and acrobatics, light wheels (gyro-cycles) and synchronised fireworks.Fireworks that can spell out numbers. That can be fired by cannon into the air. That make the coloured Olympic rings.With no way of practising the closing ceremony in the stadium after the sporting events had started, there was no opportunity for a last minute dress rehearsal. (Maybe explains why the camera work around the London...
The Newsletter's front page of seems to be having problems this afternoon. Links to the underlying subject areas look to be ok. Update - it's...
I will admit that it is important, although the chaos that resulted after Gmail went down for an hour or so (for some, longer) last night was quite surreal. Thousands of tweets, widespread panic, and even an article to mark the occasion.
“productivity up of 20 million people” - Techcrunch
Though for many people, this quote is completely untrue. So many of us rely on Gmail. What do we do when it goes down? Should this make us think about having backups of our backups?
We all assume Google’s servers are safe for hundreds of years, but are they? Maybe they are, but sometimes things go wrong, even just for a short period of time. They tell us that although something has gone wrong, all our stuff is still safe - reassuring, but what if it wasn’t.
There wouldn’t be...
It's been a busy couple of days.The Tech Campers took to stop/go animation like naturals. In fact, like naturals with a good smattering of talent. The campers' first attempts to make a short and simple animation in order to rehearse the steps were more creative than we'd hoped, and they then continued to keep their heads down throughout the afternoon, cutting out coloured card, making 3D scenery (jumping from 2D to 3D of their own volition), moulding Play-Doh figures and recording voiceovers. (All this despite the promise of a games afternoon on the Xbox!)You can catch some of the results over on Youtube. And some the week's best photos are over on a Tumblr blog.After yesterday's time lapse plasticine-fest, today was an accumulation of visits.Up to see Ian at Whitewell Metropolitan...
So day one of Tech Camp is over. A morning thinking about voxpopping, editing some video in iMovie (which is a completely novel experience to all but one of the campers).There’s a kind of Mac vs PC war of attrition building up, with the majority unfamiliar with the peculiar layout of Apple keyboards and the UI. But there’s a general agreement, that while iMovie occasionally crashes, it’s no where near as unstable as Pinnacle’s Studio products.Foodie blogger Ruth is not only in charge, but looking after our (spiritual and calorie) food intake. Only one brush with a Daring Baker challenge ... a yummy chocolate cake that went down well with a blob of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream!This afternoon’s photo scavenger hunt (email me if you'd like a copy of the clues to reuse with a...
It was a morning of frantic, yet choreographed activity. The car changeover day. Leaving one back to Mallusk, picking the other up on the Boucher Road, and collecting kit for next week’s Tech Camp, and a supply of coloured card from Play Resource Warehouse over off Duncairn Gardens.It started well, getting the diminutive Smart Roadster back to the Fleet workshop. It took a while to get the paperwork completed – they give the car a good inspection for wear and tear before accepting it back – and discovering that the bottle of magic run-flat tyre fluid hadn’t been returned by the last driver when I got the vehicle in January.We stocked up with paper in the Aladdin’s cave, and headed south to Charles Hurst’s Toyota dealership. That was where the wheel’s (metaphorically) came...
About ten years ago, you could have found me sitting behind the sound desk at the back of a church, where recordings of services were made available on tapes for those housebound (or just unable to make it out that morning).Getting a decent master tape to duplicate was a bit of an art. No point including three minutes of ambient coughing while the collection is taken, or the entire minute of banging and shuffling while the kids go out to Junior Church half way through the service. So a bit of careful pausing and (when remembered) un-pausing.The end of side 1 of the C95 cassettes we used always seemed to coincide with some crucial bit of the sermon (as opposed to a throw away line) and if you misjudged the little dance of hitting Stop-Eject-turn the tape-Rec-Play - there was no...
The last of a series of posts looking at the results in this year’s Ofcom Nations & Regions Communications Market Report for Northern Ireland.In general, broadband availability is highest in urban areas. And the highest speeds will be achieved by the more densely populated built-up areas where people live a lot closer to their exchange than in rural populations.Yet broadband take-up is highest in Northern Ireland’s rural communities! Could that be the long dark evenings with only the village pub open for entertainment. (I stereotype ridiculously.) Could it be that fewer folk in rural areas have access to high speed internet as part of their day jobs, so have to rely on it at home? (Though rural commuters are pretty common.) Or as mobile networks become slower and less reliable...