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Podcast listening and more

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Since I finished my dissertation my biggest time sink has been listening to podcasts. For some reason, I download the entire series of podcasts and work through them one at a time until there are no more. It’s a way of relaxing. It’s also a way of getting information quite easily.

In London, I hardly ever leave home without the iPod whilst in Switzerland due to my driving I can’t listen to podcasts when traveling by car. When it’s on foot however I can.

I found a loop that I do that’s about an hour’s walk and if I chose to I can make that loop last a shorter or longer amount of time depending on which paths through the fields I’ve chosen. Over the past few walks, the rain started falling onto me but it was warm enough and the rain so weak so as not to inconvenience me.

During this podcast listening, I’ve learned a lot about technology and the opinions of a team of people. I’ve seen the evolution in attitude between various podcasters. We see the evolution from being fairly new at certain podcast programs to being quite weathered in by the entire process. As a result, the content is more relaxed and feels more familiar. It’s more familiar to me as well. I know these individuals now, as they’ve talked over time. It’s not quite as remote anymore.

As I listen to podcasts I’ve started to think that they’re not that innovative. They’re doing what radio did years ago but rather than concentrate on music and other such topics they concentrate on technology and those behind the scenes. In so doing there’s been a shift from a celebrity culture of films and music to one of the bloggers, web developers, and more. We’re in a time when being online is so easy and so normal that everyone is there. Within the past 8 months, Facebook has gone from having two or three of my friends there to over 200. That’s quite a big shift, quite a change.

The online world is no longer the realm of the geek. In fact, it would seem that being online is no longer a geeky pastime.

I was also thinking about how social networking websites have become the new portals. Remember yahoo, Altavista and others attempting to become portals, the starting point for most people’s web experiences. Now Facebook, at least within my real-life circle of friends, seems to be the most important. Everyone seems to be there now, or almost. How long will Facebook remain popular?

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AI, Film, and Social Media

AI, Film, and Social Media

Byrichard

I like to experiment with Bard and chatGPT. I like to see what their limits are, but with time and effort I like to get beyond their limits and get them to do what I want, without failing too often.


DJI and other brands have had self-editing options for years now, so the idea that software would edit the footage taken by the brand’s devices is not new. What is new is the desire people have to let AI replace their own creativity, and inspiration, to give the AI’s creative vision rather than their own.


The lazy Editor


Film and television are art forms, as should social media, but the problem with social media is that it is made by amateurs with no background in film or television. They break plenty of rules, which is what creative people are meant to do, but not because they want to go against cultural movements. They break the rules out of ignorance, out of amateurism, and out of laziness. It isn’t that social media has democratised video content, but rather than social media has destroyed film and television. Now we’re stuck with what I like to call User Generated Crap, but we’re also left with YouTube being a shadow of its former self.


In the days when it was going to be sued for unauthorised use of copyrighted material it was interesting, because it was about creative people being creative, before the social frameworks were in place for that creativity to be legal. I filmed the LakeParade more than once, and then spent hours editing my footage. I posted it to YouTube and the sound was removed due to copyright violation.


Today people are doing absolute crap on TikTok with music, and yet it’s legal, because copyright rules have changed, but when it’s too late for conventional editors to bother. If we invest hours filming, and then more hours editing, then YouTube will just mute the videos.


Algorithms and the Feed


I would love to enjoy using YouTube but I don’t. I don’t enjoy YouTube because it’s focused on the lowest common denominator, rather than topics and themes. The videos that are promoted have sensationalist headings, that are clickbait, rather than solid content. The wrong content is being promoted. The wrong things are being valued.


The result is that even without adverts YouTube has become unusable for me. “But you can block and dislike what you don’t like”. Sure, but I’m fighting against a gaggle of people with different audiovisiual values. I will lose.


If I don’t pay for Premium, I need to watch awful ads, but if I pay for Premium I have to sort through a jumble of crap before getting to something interesting. More than once I have spent an hour looking for something to watch, and found nothing.


The Film Industry


Studios Quietly Go on Hiring Spree for AI Specialist Jobs Amid Picket Line Anxiety


Even AI Filmmakers Think Hollywood’s AI Proposal Is Dangerous


Around 2002 I lived in Weymouth and going to the cinema cost 2 GBP so I would go to the cinema, once or twice a week. In the process I saw at least 90 films, but in that same process I learned of the formulas the US film industry use, and I have never enjoyed American films since. The problem with the US film industry is that it’s based on formulas, rather than humanity. It’s based on set plot lines, where names and locations are changed, but the story is the same.


As I said a few years ago, I prefer to watch television series, to films, because television series are still creative. Each television series is different from the other, so we still want to know what happens. With films I lose interest within ten to fifteen minutes. if not sooner. I love the film medium, but I hate what Hollywood produces.


More CGI Than Story


One of the weaknesses of almost new hollywood films is that they forget that they are a story telling medium. They forget that we go to the cinema to be told a story, not to see computer graphics. As I have said more than once, if I want to see computer graphics I can watch gamers play GTA V and other games on YouTube. If I watch films it’s because I want to be told a story that has depth and value.


BrotherHood – A Korean Film


One of the films that most impressed me when I was going to the cinema two or more times a week was Brotherhood because it had a real story, about real people in a real situation where we felt real emotions about the situation. Of course I mean a genuine story, rather than real. It’s a fictional film on what could have been real. It’s a powerful film, without too much CG, just good story telling.


AI and Special Effects


In one of the articles I shared I read about how they want AI to replace all extras. In the other article they show how kitsch is simplified by AI. In the scenarios described by those articles AI would be used to replace humans by AI, replace locations by AI, and replace everything else. Just one actor, acting by himself, surrounded by virtual people.


AI, Media Asset Management and Restoration


I do think that AI has a place in film, for media asset management, for film restoration and for tasks that are time consuming and boring for humans, but good for machines. I enjoy Media Asset management but I believe that as a person works through digital assets machine learning tools should pay attention and learn from humans. Rather than transcribing by hand, AI can transcribe and then humans double check the accuracy of what was transcribed, as with Project Gutenberg.


And Finally


From factories to film sets, AI has a simple goal: Making things cheaper


Although the title of the article quoted about is to make things cheaper, it isn’t. It’s about cutting corners to maximise profit. It isn’t about making films cheaper to see at the cinema. It isn’t about making films more cost effective. It’s about not paying human beings because AI is “good enough”. It’s about dehumanising the film industry and making it even more uninteresting than it is. If you replace humans with AI, then you lose that humanity, that makes humans relevant.


if you over-use CG and forget about story, then you might as well be making computer games rather than films, because, at the end, a lot of modern films are just computer games, that you watch as films.


I lost interest in Hollywood decades ago, so AI doesn’t change the unlikeliness of me watching Hollywood films. It just confirms the reasons for which I lost interest in the first place. The story being told isn’t interesting, and AI driven CG are a distraction, rather than justified.


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On twestival

Byrichard

The first tweetup I went to saw a crowd of no more than sixty people. The twestival had many more. Enough to fill the Doon club. So many new faces but not many new people to follow. It’s fun to see how big the London twitter community has become.

The usual people were there, sizemore, loudmouthman, documentally, danacea weaverluke and a few new faces like digitalmaverick, amandita, Poppyd and a few more people. Some video was shot of the event but I’m not sure by when they’ll go up. There was no wifi so no opportunity to do some live streaming.

At the same time I’m thinking it’s time for a plurk up of the same scale, since for the moment there are so few people.

Now it’s time for Tuttle.

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The year the Internet lost the cloak of anonimity.

Byrichard

This has to be the year where I have met the most people online before meeting them in person, which is quite amusing. It’s also the year that warzabidul as a nickname became a person in the physical world to more than two or three people. It’s the year an online person become a nickname for a real person.

It’s the year where, at least for early adopters, Twitter and Seesmic both helped create opportunities for people to meet and get to know each other online before taking it back into the physical world. It’s the year I went to a Podcamp, some tweetups and some seesm’up. It’s the year many of us stopped hiding behind avatars and nicknames and moved towards creating a brand or identity, depending on whether your point of view is that of marketing or personal fun.

I’ve enjoyed learning about the “social media” and all the new possibilities. I look forward to 2008 when many more such networks and events will be organised. It’s been a fun year to be introduced to the “Social Media” and I’m happy to have met so many people.

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Life Cycle by Northcube AB

Byrichard

Life Cycle by NorthCube AB is a life tracking application available on iphone. It allows you to keep track of your sports activities, time spent at work, sleeping, shopping, socialising and more. At first it knows nothing about it. It learns of your home location, your work location, where you go climbing and do other activities and then automatically logs the time spent doing various activities.

At the end of the day you can see how much time you spent at work, at home and running errands. If you go for a walk, a bike ride or a run it detects the difference in cadence and will log that sport. I did get false positives when riding the scooter. It logged this as cycling.

It also keeps track of the time you spend in transportation as well as the time you spend commuting to and from work. They are separated so that you can see how much of your day is devoted to commuting as opposed to travelling between locations for other activities.

If you practice sports such as swimming or climbing you can tell it that at this location you practice that sport. From this moment on every time you go to this location it will log it as being for that sport. This is valid for socialising, coffee, the cinema and more.

At the end of the day you can see a summary of how long you spent doing each activity. At the end of the week you can see how much time you spent on each activity. The bigger the donut slice the more time you spent on an activity. Assessing whether you spend too much time commuting, at work or socialising is simpler. As a freelancer working in a number of locations you could mark the locations where you worked and at the end of the week log your hours to double check that they are correct.

This app is simple and intuitive to use. Unlike Foursquare/Swarm and other apps it requires minimal interaction. This app is a natural progression from apps such as Google Latitude.

 

 

Electric Cars and Charge Anxiety

Electric Cars and Charge Anxiety

Byrichard

Many years ago I used an old Beta SP camera with batteries that lasted just ten minutes per charge. I didn’t know if they would last long enough to get the entirety of what I was filming so I needed quite a few batteries. Since then I have used laptops, video cameras with 7hr long batteries, diving flash lights where I swapped new batteries in for each dive and more.


Dealing with batteries is an old habit that I have had for almost my entire life. I don’t worry about the range for electric cars because I always live by the rule of thirds. One third to drive out, one third to drive home, and one third in case of problems.


I know that in warm weather I can use about 15 percent of the battery to drive from where I charge the battery to home, and 15 percent to drive back. I know that in winter it can go as high as 20 percent to drive from A to B, so 40 percent. This means that I want to have at least 30 percent of the battery to drive back to where I charge the car.


My anxiety doesn’t come from driving range but charge time and charge price. I have seen that the price goes from the price of electricity in the home to 25 centimes at some charge points, right up to 65 centimes in the neighbouring village. This means that it makes sense to charge where it’s “free”. It’s not free, it’s within the apartment’s electricity bill, but at a lower rate than it would be from charge points.


The battery is now at 50 percent. If I drive to do something tomorrow I will use about 5-10 percent, and in so doing I will be down to 40 percent charge. At this point I am less likely to have the range to get back to the charge point, and so I will pay a premium for power, and be stuck at the charger for from 2hrs in the best case scenario to 20hrs if I discharge the battery completely.


For two to three years I would dive every week, sometimes two to three times a day. In these situations I had 230 bars of air. We had one third to dive out, one third, to return, and one third spare. Diving is about knowing you have a limited amount of air. If you run out you drown. If you’re comfortable with having a limited amount of air during a dive, then car range isn’t that big a concern. Worst case scenario you have to stop in the middle of the road and call an emergency charging solution. I don’t know if they exist.


If I had my own electric car I would, at the very least get an electric socket installed by my parking space but I would also seriously consider using a jackery battery type solution. I could charge the battery in the cave, and then carry it to the car, to charge it, before using the car.


In theory I could even get some jackery solar panels and charge the jackery batteries from sunrise until about 1300. After that the sun disappears. I could then have home generated solar power for the car. Electric car charge points cost from 700-900 CHF in Switzerland, and solar panels and jackery power packs come to the same price, or cheaper. Jackery officially say that you can’t do that. I still think you could, if you have the entire night to charge. Most people do.


Remember, this is a thought experiment. I have not spent hours studying the feasibility of the idea. Jackery have watt hours of power and cars have kilowatt hours of power so at best you could top up the battery after a trip to the shops and back, if it uses one or two percent of power, but no more.


Source of Charge Deficit


Usually I use fourty percent of the charge and then I charge the car for eight hours. A week or two ago I had to change from summer to winter tyres. This trip took thirty percent of the battery charge. I returned home and the next time I did the same trip I was down to fourty percent of the battery. I stuck around for over eight hours to recharge the car on another day but got it to eighty percent. I now had a twenty percent deficit, which is four hours of charging. This means that going from where I charge to where I live takes another thirty percent.


Although I am now at fifty percent taking it to recharge will deplete it to 20-30 percent, and that means sixteen hours of charging. My issue is with the time that I would have to hang around before the car is fully charged. In this scenario it makes sense to leave the car to charge overnight, and use the petrol car in the mean time.


That’s why I experience charge anxiety, rather than range anxiety.


Different Cards and Apps


The charge situation is currently chaotic. You need an app for each provider, and a card for each provider. The prices are chaotic, ranging from 25 centimes, to 89 Centimes per watt. Some charge parking time, as well as charge time, and some charge 19 CHF for the card. For some reason the app on the phone isn’t enough. They want you to use a card as well. If you had a card and app for each option you would have half a dozen cards, and apps. Charging needs to be regulated.


And Finally


Every five percent of battery I use means an extra hour of charging. Going to the shops takes two percent, so 24 minutes of charging. This means that if I could plug in after shopping I’d be at one hundred percent within 24 minutes. If I go to the book lending place in Founex and back I might use 10 percent. I need to charge for two hours. The trip to the charger takes 30 percent, which usually means a six hour wait.


With a power socket in my garage I wouldn’t notice charge time. It wouldn’t dictate how long I hang around.


All cars should be electric and all garages should, as a minimum, have slow charging. That they do not limits how enjoyable electric car use is.

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