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GoPro: Pushing Boundaries With Oracle Team USA

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

I was disappointed by the way this video was cut. You don’t really see what’s going on. It’s just a jumble of shots.

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IBC, the N96 and DVB-h

Byrichard

One of the advantages of going to IBC is that you get to play with toys like the N96. I did this at the Nokia Ovi stand. They were demonstrating the possibilities of OVI as well as DVB-H. DVB-H is one method of getting live television broadcasts to the phone using a different part of spectrum than usual GSM.

The number of channels is limited to BBC HD, CNN and a few more channels. The video plays well and the accelerometers know whether the phone is held vertical or horizontal.

In Switzerland we saw a push for DVB-H phones during the Euro 2008, hoping that this event would encourage people to use the technology.

We’ll see how long it takes for other countries to use DVB-H for their celluar phones.

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Overcast And Rainy

Byrichard

The problem with living in two countries is that the climate between the two homes may be very different. Whilst the weather in Switzerland is warm and sunny in England it’s cold and dreary. It’s gray. I was hoping that the weather in Switzerland would break the day I flew back to London so that the transition would not feel as bad but it backfired. What I had wanted is a cooler rainy day that would be enough to make me indifferent to the trip. This backfired as severe storms delayed quite a few of the flights.

As a result of these two or three flights were delayed and waiting in the terminal and everyone was sitting where they could. I found a comfortable place against a wall. At first, I saw that 6 out of 12 flights were delayed due to météo/weather and then 5 of 12. Finally, my flight was delayed by 40 minutes which is not that bad when you’re as used to travel as I am.

It’s amusing to watch people as they wait to travel. Young children are tired, falling asleep whilst others are complaining about the delay. Yet more got up and stood for over fourty minutes queuing for a plane that had not even arrived in the gate yet. I was living in luxury though. Two mobile phones, a charged iPhone, and my MacBook pro with over 4hrs of battery life. I twittered jokingly that it’s a 40-minute delay with four hours of entertainment.

It was an opportunity to work on the showreel. One of the beauties of the machine I use is the battery life. I’ve been doing some testing whilst at home and I’m quite happy with the results. I’ll go into more detail in another section of the website.

Having the level of familiarity I have with Geneva airport I’m more observant, knowing the procedures from months spent there. As I felt that people could start boarding I got up and was by the second cashier. Whilst everyone queued at one deck I saw the second one so of course, I took advantage of this, being the first one to go through although I had been one of the people who had not been standing anxiously. That’s an advantage of frequent flying.

Aboard the plane, I started to wonder something. Is it worse to be stuck with children who can talk or babies that cry? I think that talking children are worse. Some of them are not very articulate and others play with words and songs. It wasn’t that bad luckily.

Stewardesses are amusing because sometimes you see them get anxious. One of them saw some gormless passengers blocking the aisle and sounded stressed as she asked them to move in so that others could board the plane due to the short flight slot the aircraft had been allocated. In the end, we took off without much delay and the rest of the flight went well.

Had to take the Stansted express to seven sisters and from there caught a bus to get home due to the tube lines closing, no problem though.

Now it’s back to London life and getting on with my career.

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As featured on Operator 11

Byrichard

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.

Twitter Vox featured

Human – A Yann Arthus-Bertrand documentary

Byrichard

The French have an interesting history of documentary film. Jean Rouch explored social questions with his film Chronique d’un été, a revolutionary film at the time because of the tech that they used. The Cinéma Eclair and crystal sound sync. A few decades later Yann Arthus-Bertrand is following in Jean Rouch’s footsteps with a net cast far wider. Instead of Paris and France we see interviews with people from around the world.

The documentary is split in to volumes and each volume is divided in to sections. At the beginning of each section you have footage showing the diversity of landscapes in which people live as well as the people themselves. You see images of a caravan on a dune, images of a river delta, a fishing boat being unloaded.

People are answering questions about love, abuse, work and more. You feel compassion for these people because they stare straight in to the camera and they are speaking to us, who are in the audience. We feel compassion for these people, we are moved to laughter by some and to tears by others. There are some beautiful images created by what the people say.

One person speaks about buying things. He says that we don’t buy things with money but that we buy them with time. That is a beautiful and more accurate image than we are used to. I love gadgets and sports so I often think of how long an investment will take to offset. I used to think “in a week” I will have covered the expense.

Another image painted by words that I like is that of wealth and comfort. When you are poor the river is empty and so every stone is a challenge. With wealth you do not need to worry about the stones because the river is full.

This is an observational documentary, typical of the cinéma verité movement and the French and German school of documentary. We are not told what to feel or think. We are presented with evidence and we are to draw our own conclusions. It can be perceived as slow and dull by some and beautiful by others.

It brings us to the “All Seeing Eye” that Vertov discussed at the very birth of the documentary genre. His ideal was to have cameras that would film and document “life unawares” as they went about their daily lives. In so doing the cinema was an observer, without interacting. Of course these are just interviews so there is some interaction between the camera operator and the talent on screen. They are meant to speak from the heart, without censor. They were meant to give us an honest representation of who they are and how they feel. It gives us a serious glimpse in to the lives of others.

it makes me think of the interviews I have listened to, of the stories I have heard told when I was logging and transcribing footage for a video archive. Some of the things people speak about are timeless and others are contemporary. With this documentary record of people’s thoughts and emotions so a moment in time is preserved. I have yet to watch the next volumes and will do so in the evenings. I recommend you take the time to watch at least part of these documentaries.

Andrew Keen And The Scarcity of Choice
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Andrew Keen And The Scarcity of Choice

Byrichard

I recently noticed that I had Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur book as an audiobook on Apple Books. I have had the book for at least a decade but have only got around to reading it recently. Over the last week I have listened to him speak about the closing of Tower Records and it encouraged me to write more about the scarcity of choice, that comes with online browsing and shopping.
When I lived in Weymouth I would go to WHSmith and look for new books, and then when I lived in London a few years later I would look for books at Waterstones. I spent hours in that book shop and often wanted to buy plenty of books but resisted temptation. The beauty of book shops is that you can look within a section and quickly see hundreds, or even thousands of books.


Scarcity of Choice With Books


Compare this to book browsing today. Book shops are rare, and supermarkets have a very limited choice. It does get worse. When you shop for books online you get plenty of the top selling books recommended, but it’s hard to find the least popular titles. It’s hard to find the long tail of books. it’s hard to browse through niche interests and topics because algorithms force us to see the top selling books, rather than browse.


Lending Libraries


That’s why the lending box in Eysins, Borex, Crassier, Founex, several in Nyon and other places are so good. They do have niche books, and they do have niche books. In the age of unlimited choice our actual options are limited to what algorithms think we want to read, rathre than what we would stumble upon in a physical book shop. Today we need to know what we’re looking for, rather than exploring, and finding it.


YouTube and Content Creators


He discussed YouTube and content creators that are creating content for free on YouTube, rather than being paid to generate it. What he didn’t explore so much, related to YouTube and amateurs trying to be professional about content production, a decade and a half later, is that broadcasters and independent companies are cutting costs and reducing their output thus reducing the number of jobs available for media professionals in mainstream media and more.


Coming of Age At the Right Time


I often wish that I had come to YouTube half a decade later than I did, maybe even later than that. When I wanted to break into the media the model was still focused on mainstream media. Now it has flipped around and the opportunity, and challenge, is to think of content that would attract people to view content. If YouTube had been what it is today, when I was 18 then I would have studied the same thing, but I would have pivoted towards independent content production much sooner. I have books on the topic, but independent at the time meant finding investors to pay for ideas. Today the barriers are inspiration and motivation.
Paradoxically, despite the barrier to entry being very low, to post content on YouTube or other video sharing platforms. there is a wall. The wall of tabloid sensationalism. I watched one content creator until I noticed the clickbait nature of the headlines. In another case I stopped watching several content creators for going on and on about their million plus subscribers. The barrier to entry is the same as the barrier to watching the content.


Getting Beyond The Noise


The patience to sort through the tabloid and sensationalist crap, before getting to content worth watching. On YouTube there is a scarcity of choice, because to please the algorithms you need to be a tabloid sensationalist to appear in search results and to be recommended. Failing this you are invisible. Failing this you need to drive traffic via blog posts or other means.


On Books And Video


I speak about the challenge of finding books despite having a backlog of hundreds of books. As I have often said, finding a book you want to read takes seconds, but actually reading it takes hours. Some books require thirty hours of reading. Usually they require seven hours or so. Books require an investment of time.
My real challenge is with video content. That’s where I struggle to find what I want to watch. In the past we would watch TV and see “What’s coming next” or we would read about new shows. Now we don’t, so we just have to browse until we find something. This isn’t a new problem. I had it when looking for films in video rental shops. In another lifetime finding something to watch was easy. Go to Discovery Channel and find documentaries to watch. Problem solved.


And Finally


As I read The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen I thought that it should be updated for the 21st century. Instead of doing this he just wrote a few new books, one in 2018 and the second in 2020. I would purchase them but I might as well finish the book I am reading now, before getting yet another book. The Cult of the Amateur is an interesting look into what was perceived around 2007. The new books would reflect more modern visions.