Back to Solitude
Playing with your sense of time and logic.
One guy was going around IBC on a segway that was modified for steadycam work. Rising from the platform was a rest where you could put your legs to keep upright whilst to the side the steadycam mount was free to move for steady shots.
That’s just one of the contraptions. Simple automated camera heads could be found at Sony’s stand, JVC and other companies. Each one had a remote control which would allow you to select between up to 18 cameras depending on the cofiguration. One system in particular allowed you to preset shots before a shoot whilst providing a touch screen. Press the thumbnail and the camera head will go to that shot automatically. Press another shot and it reframes to that one. Adjust the speed and everything is automated.
There were some jibs automated of which the most impressive was a noiseless machine that could be programmed to within a millimeter of where you wanted the camera to be at different times. What made that one most impressive is that it’s plugged into a virtual studio. As the camera moves around it moves in accordance with the virtual elements so the presenter can use screens, props and more to illustrate the story. That’s not all though. If the camera turns beyond a certain point then you see nothing. The camera points right at the crowd but you see the virtual studio. It’s fun.
Pedestals are also remotely operated so there’s no need for more than one camera operator per studio. It’s all about reducing costs and making broadcast of a high quality more affordable. The positive side is that for less interesting and creative shoots you don’t need to tie up a camera operator as he stands around waiting for things to happen. Once it’s programmed the machine runs.
The question is what this means for the future. How will the remotes be improved to make controlling the cameras easier? Most of the remotes are not as easy to control as standing at the pedestal and operating the camera yourself. They require a level of experience and speed that is not there quite yet but it will come. Will this mean that camera men will have more fun assignments like documentary shoots, festivals and other types of events to cover? There’s the vision mixing to take into consideration but that’s another post topic.
A few months ago I filmed the Silent Disco in Paddington station, one of London’s main train stations. As a result of the coverage of the event many people were happy to see it. With the footage I have recently filmed of the events that took place on the 6th of October I am once again getting a lot of that appreciation through facebook comments.
It feels good and I need to find more events to cover that will get this type of response.
update:–
I’m also really looking forward to watching the trends on tubemogul as I see whether it will increase over a period of hours or a period of days. It’s always fun to watch how many views you get over a period of weeks and months.
It’s taken no more than a few days from the time I first saw Fred2baro on seesmic to our first meeting with Deek in London for the first Seesmeetup… so called. In fact it was both Sizemore that had the first meeting although more private in nature.
One of the questions that one of Fred2baro’s relatives asked was why would you want to be part of Seesmic? Aren’t people pretend and fake? Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?
My answer was the following: When you go to a bar or you meet people face to face rather than via twitter or Seesmic you’re quite often in a bar under the influence of a drink or two. As a result you’re not as genuine as you’d be if you met in another place. In other words Seesmic and twitter are a way of getting to know people before you meet them in the physical world.
What this means is that you can generate some great friendships, some strong ones. It’s also a new contemporary method of networking than the bar. We’ve got too many distractions at home. Whether it’s from the computer, the phone or the television to feel the absolute need to go out to bars where we’d sit and be bored anyway.
The point is the following. To me the social media, especially twitter and seesmic are a great way of creating new friendships in the physical world where limitations of time and travel distances are cancelled out. If’ we’re part of an international society why not meet people online and bring it to the physical world rather than the other way around. How many times have you been sad to see a friendship disintegrate because of distance?
I have, many times. Time to enjoy these new toys.
I used to really like YouTube. It was a place where normal people could share videos of their normal lives, for normal people to enjoy, and to discover organically. Today YouTube is a way of forcing people to watch adverts before watching content that has been seen half a million to a million times by people with a million subscribers who keep saying “i have a million subscribers” and showing off. This makes most YouTube content unpleasant.
Don’t boast about your audience, or about your community. Give me good quality video content that I want to keep watching. Give me content, not boasting about how you got awards, got a big audience etc. I am not on YouTube to flatter your ego. I am on YouTube to watch content that is interesting as I eat dinner. If you don’t fill this niche then I can slide towards another content creator, or video network.
Content viewing, at this point in the pandemic has become hard. If the content is about friends and family then this is a long distant memory, in the middle of the pandemic, with no hope of an end.
Documentaries would be fun, if they weren’t edited by a hyperactive bumblebee. If I watch a documentary, speak, give me information, and don’t sensationalise it. If you do I will tune out within minutes, or even seconds in some cases.
I would watch films but either modern story writing makes them so dull that I lose interest within a few minutes, or they make me long for pre-pandemic, or post pandemic life.
Content is not made for single people living in solitude during a pandemic but it should. Good documentaries, good films, good series.
I enjoyed watching people play computer games for a while, but then eventually I grew tired of the content. I felt that at least one or two people were playing towards a stereotype, rather than being genuine, Eventually I stopped watching.
I often listen to audible books as I cook. Recently I thought about listening to audiobooks as I ate, or even in the evening, rather than watch video content. The beauty of audio books is that they’re 3-20hours long. Find a good book and you will be entertained for a week to 20 days.
Recently I have been listening to Louis L’amour books and I find them fun. They’re not the genre I used to listen to. I am in the right frame of mind. I like these books because they’re light, easy reading. They’re not like Gulag, or other books. It’s a trip back in time to frontier America, when bison were plentiful, land was being taken away by the Whites, and more.
As I read Louis L’Amour I know that some topics may anger or frustrate people who feel that the writing is from another age, and it is. Listening to such books is a cultural trip to see what life was hypothetically like, and to explore a different genre. I usually read factual books.
After a long but great day of work I came home to do The Twitter Vox show with Loudmouthman and two guests. We were joined by Goldie Katsu and Malburns. We discussed what it’s like to reach 3000 tweets and the conversation moved towards the advantages of using twitter when part of global communities like Second Life. We had some interesting insights and the conversation progressed well. It’s a good show and can be found here.
additionaly the show was featured on the front page of operator 11.
Marie Kondo’s rule that you should only keep thirty books, that you should only keep those that you personally want to read or enjoy is a silly rule because it encourages people to limit their scope and perspective on the world.
One memory of my childhood is being surrounded by books and being able to look through hundreds of books, whether at home, in libraries or even
I bought books and only read a few chapters. Books are not like bread or shoes. They don’t have a best before
A home or house benefits from having a wide selection of books because life is not linear. We want to learn about multiple topics at once. One day we want to read about the Vietnam war and the next day we want to read about climbing the Eiger. On the third
Such a book charts the history of writing from oral traditions of storytelling to cuneiforms, the library of Alexandria, the role of literature in the forming of national identities and cultures but also about what an important role the development of paper had.
When you needed to breed sheep to make parchment the process would take months or even years. With the development of paper the process was cheaper. It took time for paper to be cheap enough for use with printing processes. It took several iterations before they had developed the right type of paper to work with Guthenburg’s press.
It would take several more centuries, and the industrial revolution to get writing from an elite skill to one that most people would learn. With increased
One of the great things about physical libraries is that they train your mind to think spatially. If you have hundreds of books spread across several rooms on multiple floors you need a good memory to remember which book is where. Your subconscious takes note of where things are constantly. If you have 30 books, your brain would never develop that skill.
Having more than 30 books doesn’t mean that you will even read the physical book. I have seen books when visiting friends and I’ve bought the e-book version rather than the physical one.
The idea of limiting yourself to 30 books bothers me because it’s a limitation on the diversity and creative directions that a person can take. To limit yourself to 30 books means that you can have a maximum of thirty topics. That’s one book a day for a medium month. That’s one book a year if you’re 30 years old. That’s a tragic way of looking at things.
I can remember reading 191 books, am currently reading 60 and want to read 196 books. That’s 447 books in total and several weeks worth of reading if I read non-stop. That’s excluding the reading of newspapers, magazines, comic books, blogs, reports and other forms of content.
I started to go through and catalogue physical books that were in my bedroom. This information is no longer correct. This provides intellectual flexibility. This does not constitute clutter.
Despite my love for physical books I buy virtual ones these days. I have 144 kindle books, 273 Audible books and 95 Kobo books. In theory I could take Marie Kondo’s idea of having 30 physical books down to 0 physical books and have 30 Kobo or Kindle devices instead. I could also have two or three mp3 players with my entire audible collection. That would take much less space.
In the 21st century the need for physical books is gone. With a mobile phone you can read from multiple libraries at a time. With a single Kobo, Kindle or other e-book reader you can gain access to hundreds of books. The drawback is that you are not moving in space. By having a physical library of books across several rooms you need to get up and move. You need to develop your spatial awareness and you train your memory to remember where things are in the physical world. By limiting yourself to 30 books you are limiting the diversity of topics that you can spontaneously read about. I believe that to have a wide diversity of books promotes intellectual well being.