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The youtube application on the N95

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

For those of you with good data packages an application that could be a lot of fun is youtube on the n95. I was out and about and decided to check the youtube site and I was given the option to download their beta. I managed to play vides but I had no sound.

What they offer are:

  • upload your videos from the phone

  • watch your friends’ videos

  • view relatd videos

  • view received videos

  • search for content.

In other words you can do everything you’d want to from the n95 that you’d do from a computer. It does look like an interesting application although unless you’ve got wifi this is a very expensive gimmick. It’s nice to try nonetheless. Let me know if you try it and tell me what you think of it.

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MicroBlogging and I
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MicroBlogging and I

Byrichard

Since 2006 I have thought of Twitter, Jaiku, Mastodon and Plurk as conversation channels, rather than microblogging. I go to these places and use them as chatroooms rather than microblogs. If I want to blog I have my full scale blog. This website, to keep me entertained.


I bring this up because at lunchtime today, the time at which I usually get tired with social media, two people frustrated me. One person asked for what reason Musk should have been stopped from buying twitter. The second said that without hashtags they wouldn’t be able to find content on Mastodon.


I might be argumentative on social media but that is not why I use social media. Ideally I want to use social media to have pleasant conversations that eventually lead to me wanting to meet people in person, or failing that, to collaborate online on projects. This lunchtime I found two arguments and my reaction was “I don’t want to invest hundreds or thousands of hours on a social network, like Mastodon, to have it be as big of a waste of time, as twitter, in recent years. I use social media to be social, not to argue.


Social media is an investment in time, attention and more. I stopped using Facebook and Instagram because I felt I was making money for others, without having any benefit of my own. The more posts you see, the more Instagram and Facebook earned. In the end I was tired of giving them a steady stream of cash. At the time I thought, If I took the time I spent on IG and FB and invested it on my own website then it would do better, and I’d get just as much engagement. This is tongue in cheek. If I am being ignored I might as well be ignored on my own website.


At the end of today I will have gone two days without tweeting. If I manage two weeks then I will have kicked the habit. I need to find a replacement. Blogging is one productive distraction.

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Digitalshadowcaster (TM)

Byrichard

As the rate of creation of content increases so does the challenge of following what was done by whom and that’s where digitalshadowcaster (TM). The idea is interesting to content producers. 

Thus, the life cycle of an object may “Cast” a “Digital Shadow” (DS) that captures real time key information events and actions.  A given DS allows for the ordered delivery of proprietary services managed over a predictable and transparent network of Object Based Representations in Object to Object (O2O) relationships derived form Actions and Events performed on the objects by agents with specified Roles.

In plain English they’re going to make it so that a central server keeps track of the changes you apply to media files are tracked and easier to deal with. It would track events, rights managment, object search, stats, billing and more.

The flow was described as Create, adapt, product, distribute. In other words this technology would be part of every step of the process and here’s an example of it’s implementation.

If you’re a content producer and you’re making a documentary your budget isn’t high therefore it would make sense that you want well established people to help you. As a result of a personality liking what you are up to they may give you access to some footage or music.

For this project it’s cheap but as your reputation grows so the managment of those rights and the relationship can change, both in billing and in terms of restrictions. It makes the use of media more flexible.

With more content appearing so the tracking issues become more complicated, hence the need for a new system of tracking to keep everything in order.

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Facebook, a personal rather than social network

Byrichard

Ten years ago if you met someone and they gave you their visit card you’d put it away somewhere and eventually you might have come back to it but the information would need updating. Over the years social networking tools on the web have evolved from simple mail clients to web forums and finally to Myspace and Facebook. With Facebook we find what I think of as an enhanced phonebook.

When you meet someone at a party today there’s a good chance that this individual has a facebook presence. As a result when you go home they may add you as a friend and in so doing you are brought into their lives. You can see where they’ve worked, for how long and what they were doing. you can see whom they associate with and how they tend to meet people. Facebook has become  a daily feature of contemporary life.

Facebook does not limit your interactions to the people you’ve met during your time at parties, events and more. It also allows you to join groups, some are based on occupation, others on passions and yet some more on soemthing that may be relevant to only ten to twenty people. As these groups multiply so you decide to associate through these people through forums and the likes.

For a time I was part of the Lecture napping appreciation society whilst others were part of the “curse of the N18” amongst other groups. Today a friend joined a group which I would never join for the simple and good reason (simple et bonne raison) that reflects the views for which I avoid the place. I’m living between London, a city of up to twelve million (depending on the demographics you chose) and a village of no more than 2000. I love the contrast between the two and as a result feel no need to visit the place that the group boasts about.

The point is that as a medium becomes more commonplace and as more people feel comfortable with the technology so their personalities are reflected in a variety of ways which give a great wealth and diversity of character to the medium they are using. It is precisely because of those differences in interests that we gain as a social group. We, the international internet users, have a great wealth of opinions and views available within a few keystrokes and we should constantly aim to promote those interests that most effectively reflect our character, things that friends may take years to notice but that can be made obvious online. Facebook, in my opinion, is a personal, rather than social network where you promote the interaction between friends you’ve had for years and friends you’ve only just met. There are other networks that are great for making new online friends but Facebook should be kept for those people whom you have met face to face.

Decline of an Apple Watch Series Four

Decline of an Apple Watch Series Four

Byrichard

I have had my Apple Watch Series Four for four or five years now and it has been warn almost every day of those for years. In that time I have exceeded my move goal by 400% six times, by 300 percent 21 times, and by 200% 194 times. I have my longest move streak lasting 76 days, and perfect weeks one hundred times. I have reached my move goal 1602 times over the years. I completed 36 monthly challenges. I had 7-workout weeks 253 times. I also have 27 limited edition challenges badges.


I really enjoyed working on these challenges at one time. Every time I had a monthly challenge I wanted to beat it. Every time my move goal recommendation was increased I would accept. That’s why, in 2020 I walked five and a half million steps. In the end I had to walk three or four hours a day to reach the move goal. I eventually stopped allowing Apple to dictate how much I had to burn, because it took four hours per day, and I became fatigued.


The issue with the watch is that the battery is old. It has been working since the 1st of November 2018 almost noon stop. It has been through charge cycles every day during that time. I need to charge the watch two times a day sometimes. Once during the night, or before I sleep, and a second before I go for a walk, run, or other. it has died during my walks at least twice now.


The cost to replace the battery is 95 CHF and in 8 days it will no longer be possible to have the watch battery replaced. It’s about to become obsolete, according to Apple.


Recently when playing with apps I noticed that Sports Tracker and the apple Watch play very well together and this has revived my interest in the Apple Watch. I have been using the Sports Tracker app for decades, so good integration with my favourite tracker is welcome.


The Apple watch is mediocre compared to Garmin and Suunto when it comes to sports tracking. The battery dies every day if we don’t charge it. It is fragile compared to its two key competitors. I see the Apple Watch as a Sports Tracker, not a smart watch. The smart features are hard to use on a small screen.


I like that it tracks walking asymmetry, walking steadiness and other health trends. It is all this health data that keeps me on the device. If it accepted this data from Suunto or Garmin then I would happily wear just one watch, rather than hesitate between three of them. For as long as I am healthy this data is just out of geeky curiousity, rather than important health information.


To replace the Apple watch will cost at least 249 CHF for the lowest spec version and the highest spec version would cost 1200 CHF. I don’t want to spend 249 CHF, let alone 1200 on another Apple Watch. The issue I have now is that after the Apple watch crashed and rebooted while I was trying to save yesterday’s walk. The result is that I no longer trust it to track my daily activities.


We have two wrists, and wearing two watches is eccentric. If I wear two watches, and one of these watches fails to track an activity then I look eccentric for nothing. In this case it makes sense for me to stop wearing the unreliable watch, and wear the one(s) that is(are) reliable.


When I saw that the Apple Watch was feeding Sports Tracker, and Sports Tracker was feeding the Suunto app it made my decision easier. For now I’m going to continue using a Suunto watch, that syncs with the Suunto App, which syncs with the Sports Tracker app, to keep the legacy going. Sports Tracker has 3419 workouts of mine, from decades of use.


I sent a message to Apple where I said that I want them to provide better access to the Apple Fitness app from Garmin, Suunto and Casio devices. It frustrates me that if I stop using an Apple device I lose the telemetry data that the fitness app processes and displays. I don’t want to be locked in to Garmin, or Suunto, or Apple or Casio. I want all of them to talk to each other seamlessly so that it is easy to slide between the four.

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Re-tweeting demonstrates that twitter is broken, here’s why

Byrichard

Having used Friendfeed intensly for the last two days and through reading this post I believe that twitter is on it’s way out for early adopters for one fundamental reason. The re-tweet.

Twitter is over simplified for anything but IRC like conversation and as a result of this for passionate users such as myself we bounce from the walls of twitter without an opportunity to escape it. We see links but know nothing about them. We see retweets but don’t understand them. We get replies of which conversation they were part of and in general twitter is a two message medium.

The two message medium is the way I think best illustrates how people use twitter most of the time. Too many people worry about productivity and wasting time and because they feel guilty for having a conversation on twitter they cut it off after two messages on average. As a result the twitter user often feels that they have wasted time.

In Friendfeed however you write a message, link to an article and if people like it you see how many people, including you liked the article and you can see the comments. As an effect of seeing their comments you may exchange more messages with them. It doesn’t matter when you join the conversation because the flow is still there.

This saves so much time and technology that I am really thinking of moving away from twitter to Friendfeed because it has finally come of age and is more reflective of the way people disseminate and share information for at least a few more weeks.

Anyone else feel the same? Let me know.

Waiting For Progress Bars To Be Full

Waiting For Progress Bars To Be Full

Byrichard

There was a time when I spent eight hours a day transferring footage from Beta SP, DV, DVcam, DVCpro and other tape formats to a digital format to be part of a media asset management system. A 63 minute tape would take at least 63 minutes to digitise. Back in those days we moved video files in real time.

When streamling live content I would wait for several hours for the program to end. I would watch basketball, curling and bobsledding, biathlon, but also NATO press conferences and more. You had to be there, ready to react if there was a problem. This was before YouTube streaming standardised things. I would set the akamai end points and start the encoders and recording, and then wait.

At the same time I would often have to wait for files to be transferred from the local computer to an FTP account. Sometimes this would add an hour or two to the shift.

Later on it was waiting for data to move from one drive to another. When I left for my walk today it said that I had about four hours left. Now it tells me that I have about two hours left. On a mac two hours means less than three hours and four hours means less than five. You add one hour to get a better estimate of time remaining.

On a mac there is a way to get a more granular view of how fast files are moving between drives. Right click and chose get info for the source, and the destination folders. You can then watch as data is moved between the two. When the transfer is finished you can check whether the byte number from Folder A is the same as for Folder B. If it is then you can assume that the transfer was a success. If it isn’t you can spend time finding why there is a difference. In this scenario I am not deleting anything so I will check later.

What I am doing now is time consuming but once I finish moving data from this drive it will be much faster. It’s slow because there are no duplicates yet. Once there are this process will go much faster. That’s the stage I am impatient for.

And Finally

Digitising footage or moving data from one drive to another is sometimes time consuming and boring, as is the case at the moment, but it’s because most of the work was done over the last two weeks. Now it’s about backing up that work. Tomorrow or Sunday I will start consolidating all that data and that will require me to be attentive again.

When I duplicate the eight terabyte drive I will use a Pi 4 for the task. I will set it to run and check it when it’s done.

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