A temptation to go diving.
It makes me want to go diving again. Now that summer is over the lakes should be better. Visibility should have improved.
For those who are interested in community video French operator Free is providing one of the most interesting services around at the moment. They are offering you a user generated television channel and the technology to broadcast content live from the comfort of you own home. All you need is a subscription to ADSL 2 and the Freebox HD box.
The idea behind this service is to bring community video straight to the user. Youtube gives people the chance to upload poorly produced content so that the masses may view them. Current TV provides a website where users submit content and hope that it works it’s way up to being broadcast. Blogtv allows people to chat and is interesting for live events. Operator 11 is currently my little favourite thanks to it’s ability to switch from one webcam to another with participants from around the world. It’s great and offers you the ability to plug in a dv camera but is let down by picture quality.
Free are revolutionising the process. They are providing the user with break out boxes that take the video content, either via s-video or another method and encode the content within the box. From this point on there are two options. The first of these is to provide the content live at a lesser quality level or share it differed, in other words once the data has been transferred from one point to another. According to SVM the compressed video is around 1,4 gigabytes for an hour. Normal DV streams would be 12 gigabytes per hour but with the correct encoding they’ve saved on space.
If you want to find out more about this service then the SVM article can be found here. It includes a video. The content is only in French though.
This morning I was listening to podcasts with the Apple Watch I have. I like that I can listen to podcasts that play straight from the watch because more often than not I have the watch on my wrist almost all the time. This means that I no longer need to keep the phone in the same room as I am in but it also means that I can leave the phone to charge in one room while roaming around.
I liked the move from wired to wireless earphones because it meant that I could finally stop getting the wired cables caught on door handles or other objects. It meant that I could leave the phone on a surface while walking around.
I would often step out of
Now that the Apple watch plays podcasts, and theoretically audiobooks, I can play them straight from the watch and stop worrying about moving the phone to the place where it covers the greatest area. It means that I can leave the phone to charge.
It also means that when hiking or doing other sports I can keep my phone in a bag and control podcasts from my wrist. I can choose which podcast to listen to, adjust the volume and skip the tabloid parts. This is especially relevant now that Apple wants to make phones that are as big as paperbacks, phones that no longer fit in pockets, phones that are so fragile that the less you handle them, the more likely they are not to have a smashed front or rear screen. I have yet to smash a screen because I was listening to a podcast or audiobook so that point is moot. 😉
Here is my daily good morning message from the ISP:
Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions. This type of activity could have a detrimental affect on our network
unfortunately be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days.
I download over a gig a day when I’m at home on average, that’s 30 gigs a months or more.
Detrimental effect on our network: What about every time you cut me off for no reason, what about the interruption of service when I get beyond the number of hours allocated p0er month. What about the fact I have over 20 gigs of data transfer but can’t use it?
Limit to 56K, It’s already limited to that speed.
If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account.
So interruption of service for no reason isn’t an interruption of service?
For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following:
Why not stop whining about this and block those services rather than destroy the rest of the services
Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly.
Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your usage could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed.
One gig a day is nothing. Two nights ago I downloaded over two gigs of podcasts within an hour without any problems suffered by the University infrastructure therefore why can’t these people cope. If they’re going to block internet access from my machine then that’s a Denial of servic although not an attack. Just sub standard.
Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services
Context and analysis
Diggnation is 120 megabytes per program and Nouvo by the TSR is around 80-120 megs as well. The BBC’s daily news is around 20 megabytes. This week in tech, this week in media and others are around 20 megabytes each.
Diggnation =1/5 of my daily allowance, nouvo = 1/5 as well. Twim etc are a little less but quickly saturate the amount allocated per day.
What’s more interesting is that they currently have at least 7 fibres for 100 people. If the Cern were using those fibers it would be the equivalent of at least 3.6 gigabits per second, as was tested at the 2003 Telecom world event.
7 fibers = 7 gigabits per second, at least theoretically. For 640 users that would be 10 megabits per second. compare that to the 50KB/s and you see why I’m dissatisfied with the service.
Today I went exploring the French Jura in the hope of capturing some of the Autumnal colours. I drove an hour into the Jura and arrived at this place. They say that it’s a one hour walk but it took me less than that to cover. There is information along the path for children to learn about features of Gorges and how they’re formed.
What I found more interesting was a sign for the Tram Jurasienne railway line. In June there is a race along the path where the railway line once passed. Like Julia Bradbury in her British Railway walks I walked over a viaduct and along some lines until I arrived at a tunnel. I enjoyed that documentary series and as a result I would like to follow the line further.
It will require some research. So far I see that it was the first Jurassic tram. I also know that the race with the same name is 29 km long. What I don’t know is where it starts and where it ends. I also don’t know how much of the path is walkable. That is part of the time.
More information
Some more information
Aerial view of the line
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157628003227616″]
As I was experimenting with a Pi zero 2W I came across Paperless NG which is a simple to install app that allows you to catalogue paperwork automatically on a local machine rather than in the Tech Giant Clouds like Google, Amazon, Apple et al. It didn’t like being installed on the Pi Zero so I installed it on the Pi5 and it works well.
The aim of the app Paperless is simple. Every time you get a letter or document you can upload a photo of it, a PDF, or other form of files, and it will run OCR to read the content, establish who the correspondent is, and help to automatically catalogue your correspondences over time. In this way you get a letter, scan it, feed it to paperless, and it will keep an organised record of correspondences from this moment on.
The advantage of this app over projects like Nextcloud is that it has a specific purpose so you can use it to deal specifically with documents. The more you use it, the more intelligent it becomes, and the more practical it becomes. If you’re lazy a photo is good enough for OCR to work, and if you’re more meticulous you can scan documents and have them automatically catalogued.
At the best of times paperwork can be boring, and at the worst of times it can be stressful. With a solution such as this you can scan documents in seconds, and OCR will take care of the rest. When it comes time to fill in tax documents everything is ready and waiting. Instead of taking hours to find bits of paper, everything is a keyword away.