DemoCamp: Scannerfly

Brendan Wilson demos Scannerfly, a Flash component that turns any webcam into a barcode scanner. Presented at DemoCampVancouver05. For a recap of the meeting, go here.

DemoCamp: Twemes

Rochelle Grayson describes how to track Twitter memes with Twemes. Presented at DemoCampVancouver05. For a recap of the whole meeting, see this TechVibes post.

DemoCamp: Localiti

Jason Murphy demos Localiti, a new concept for a web/desktop application that promises to redefine communication and messaging.

From DemoCampVancouver05. Read the meeting recap here.

DemoCamp: pul.se

Weston Triemstra demos pulse, a Facebook application that helps you keep track of your favorite bands and makes recommendations. This recording is from DemoCampVancouver05. A recap of the meeting can be found on TechVibes.

Nonlinear Learning, or Why I Don't Read Books Anymore

I had the good fortune a while ago to have dinner with Don Tapscott, a writer/thinker whose work I quite like. There was an awkward moment when I confessed that not only had I not read his latest book, but I doubted that I ever would. Don's a good writer and the subject area is interesting to me, but I just don't read books anymore. More precisely, sometimes I start reading them but I rarely finish. (I've had about 50 pages to go in Cryptonomicon for several years now.) And I do dip into books frequently, especially electronic editions. But read a book? Uh, no.

The reason has something to do with the fact there are so many other information sources that command my attention. I wasn't able to articulate this very well at the time, and now I don't have to because Scott Karp has clarified it admirably. The crux of his argument is summed up by these questions:

What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?

What if the networked nature of content on the web has changed not just how I consume information but how I process it?

What if I no longer have the patience to read a book because it’s too…. linear.

Yup, that's it (almost).

We home-schooled our three kids for many years. One of the key advantages of unstructured home-schooling over scheduled learning in a classroom is that you can take advantage of the "learning moment". There comes a time when the child asks a question or otherwise lets you know that she is receptive to hearing some information about a specific topic, right now. The amount of learning you can pack into that moment is incomparably more than what gets absorbed from a steady stream of linear information going by.

Call me ADD if you want but I prefer to think of our digital age as enabling a rich variety of learning moments. Mommy isn't around to answer my questions, but Wikipedia is. So is Twitter, Google, the electronic editions of The Vancouver Sun and The New York Times, Safari books online, my social graph, etc. etc. Sure I hop around from topic to topic and can't follow the bread crumbs back to where I started sometimes, but on the whole I am getting more out of it than by following a linear track. Much more.

I disagree with Scott on one point. I don't believe his (or my) style of thinking has changed. Human thought processes are naturally nonlinear and hyperlinked. It's just that now we have information sources that match. Physical books that are read from beginning to end don't fit.

Mathematician Up For Grammy

This article tells the wonderful story of how a mathematician helped restore a bootleg recording of Woody Guthrie performing live. Until recently no such recordings were thought to exist, but in 2001 one appeared. The problem was, it was recorded on flimsy wire that was stretched and twisted. The restoration was so good that the recording has been nominated for a Grammy.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080209/mathtrek.asp

A Skeptical Mathematician Loses Weight by the Numbers

I am six feet tall. A few months ago I weighed 190 lb, which is at the 38th percentile of American males. In other words, 62% of males my height weighed more than me. Sounds good, but there's a problem. Says who? Says WHO, that's who. The World Health Organization (WHO) has this nasty thing called the Body Mass Index (BMI) and if you are six feet tall and 190 lb you have a BMI of 25.8 and are deemed to be moderately overweight. My doctor (who is skinny) thought I was moderately overweight too.

This is the story of my journey to figure out how to lose some weight.

For no good reason, I decided I should weigh 170 and it would be all right to take two years to get there. How to do it? We all "know" that diets don't work. (Actually, we don't know much of anything. See Good Calories, Bad Calories.) There is a school of thought that if you just practice intentional eating, or mindful eating, you will eat less. A quick read of Mindless Eating (and Influence) convinced me otherwise.

The more I looked into weight control, the more skeptical I became that anyone knows anything about it. The proliferation of zillions of fad diets seemed all too understandable: diet studies are hard to do with scientific rigor, no one does them right anyway, everyone has a vested interest, etc. etc. The state of the science for all this is depressingly poor. Sigh.

Everyone seems to agree that reducing calories will result in weight loss. That doesn't mean it's true, but everyone agrees. So I decided to count calories. Being a mathematician, I was getting interested now that it was becoming a numbers game. The standard wisdom is that you need a certain number of calories to maintain your weight and if you eat 500 calories a day less than that you will lose one pound in a week. Counting calories is pretty easy because nutritional info for generic food is readily available and (thanks to Ralph Nader apparently) there are calorie counts on pretty well all packaged foods.

So I just needed to know what my maintenance calories were and then eat less than that. The maintenance level is loosely known as the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Fortunately there are many Web sites that tell you how to calculate your BMR. Unfortunately, they all give wildly different answers. But fortunately, I live in a quasi-socialist society where they think the government is supposed to help people and they have a Dial-a-Dietitian service. Forget all the confusion on the Internet, I could ask a professional for the answer!

The dietitian was very nice but was very insistent that she wasn't going to tell me what my BMR might be. Why? "Diets don't work." Well, I'm not really planning to diet exactly, just practice a little portion control perhaps. "You'd have to keep track of your calories and no one does that effectively." I can! I can! "You should try to get more exercise instead." I will, I promise, but maybe I could combine that with a little calorie monitoring? No luck, resistance was futile.

So much for theory. I decided to just experiment on myself, eat a little less, count the calories I was eating and see what happened. Well, a funny thing happened. Counting calories made me aware of how many stupid calories I was taking in. I ended up eating even less than I had planned to and my weight fell faster than I had expected it would. The best part was I didn't feel like I was dieting or starving myself. Somewhere along the way I decided that my target weight should be 162 lb because that would give me a BMI of 21, right smack in the middle of the healthy range. That number was kind of arbitrary, but I liked the idea of performing a "random act of self-discipline" (as Bill Gates supposedly described his temporary adoption of vegetarianism).

The graph above shows the results. Before my little calorie-counting episode, my weight was slowly creeping up. Afterward it went steadily down. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine at what point in the graph the change happened. Just last week, I reached my target weight. I had lost 28 pounds in about five months. Yay!

What did I learn? Lots of things, but they may well apply only to me and no one else. Calories do make a difference. Fat, not so much. My normal diet is not particularly low-fat. Nor is it particularly low-carb. And exercise? Surprisingly, it seemed to have very little impact. For the first third of the five months I was exercising much more than usual. In the middle third, I exercised much less. In the final third, I've been back to normal for me, which is on the light side of moderate. None of this made any difference to my weight. (Ha! Take that, professional dietitian!) Basically I learned that 99.9% of everything you read about dieting, exercise, calories, carbs, fat and everything else is garbage. Evidence-based medicine is a good thing. But you'll be disappointed if you think there is much of that going on in the world of nutrition.

I know what you're thinking. Will he be able to keep it off? I'm actually more concerned about something else: how do I stop losing weight? I know how to lose weight. I don't know how to maintain my weight. I know what the theory says about my BMR. I can put all the data I have collected about myself into a first-order inhomogeneous differential equation and solve that to get my BMR at any given weight level. (Parents: your kids wonder why they should study math? There's your answer.)

But according to that calculation I would need to eat 700 more calories per day to maintain my weight. Um, that would be like a 47% increase. I don't believe it. So I'll experiment some more and explode some other theories in the process no doubt.

The new, new thing in Japan: write a novel on a mobile phone

You think BlackBerry users are weird because because they don't mind hammering out email messages with their thumbs? Well, in Japan a new generation of authors are writing entire novels on their mobile phones. This article relates that "half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed ... on the tiny handset of a mobile phone."

The writing style is characterized by "clipped one-liners, emoticons and spaces (used to show that a character is thinking), all of which can be read easily on a mobile phone interface."

One such novel is Moshimo Kimiga, written by a nursery school teacher on her mobile phone and originally distributed in installments to mobile phone readers. Now that it is available in hard cover, it has sold 420,000 copies since January.

I still can't decide if this is a wonderful example of making an art previously practiced by a relative few available to the many, or if it's just depressingly weird. You tell me!

Finally, my phone knows where I am

Google announced a new version of Google Maps for mobile phones almost a week ago. It uses cell tower location data to determine approximately where you are, without needing GPS. Now I know you're thinking, "triangulation!" but Google doesn't say that word anywhere.

This was just too cool to pass up so I've been trying valiantly for the last week to get it running on my BlackBerry Pearl 8100 (on the Rogers network in the Vancouver area). I am happy to report that after multiple permutations of installing, uninstalling, power cycling and battery pulling ... it works! It's in beta (what a surprise), and surely Google will figure out how to make it install more reliably soon.

What do I mean by "it works"? Instantly after firing up the application it showed my estimated location with a blue flashing dot and indicated that it was accurate to about 1700m. In fact, it was much closer, about five blocks. And that's indoors where GPS wouldn't work anyway.

For those us used to having GPS locate us to within the correct side of the street, not five blocks away, this may seem like it's not going to be good enough. But if you are as directionally challenged as I am, you'll take what you can get. And Google claims that it will get more accurate as it used more. (How the heck does that work??)

You can find out all about it here. It would be a good idea to check first if your phone is supported.

No more shaky pans?

Isn't it annoying how difficult it is to get a smooth pan or tilt even when using a tripod? You go to all that work to get a rock steady picture, but then discover it is almost impossible to avoid shaking the camera a little when your hands grab the handle to start the movement. A better tripod head might help, but the idea of a motorized device to do the camera moves is pretty attractive.

This sounds like a problem that money could solve and indeed there are many options if you are willing to spend $5,000 and up. But if that's not in your budget, you might want to take a look at the Bescor MP-101 ($120 at B&H). It is a battery-operated (an AC adapter is optional) motorized pan head. I couldn't find reviews or user comments about this unit anywhere, so I took a chance and bought one.

Installation and use is simple. You attach it to your tripod head and then attach the camera to it. The remote is simple and easy to operate. You set the pan speed with a slide control and then press the arrow in the direction you want to move the camera. It will also tilt, at a fixed speed.

There is also has an automatic mode which will continuously pan the camera back and forth between the angles of your choice. Maybe this is good for a security application? I can't think of any time I would use it.

I've made a few sample videos with my Canon XH A1 to show you the results. The first shows a pan of a forest scene at the fastest speed, using a wide angle. Frankly it doesn't look very good but that's not the fault of the Bescor. For reasons I don't fully understand (but which are discussed here), panning doesn't look good with this setup. At the slow speed though it looks great. Fortunately the tilt speed is slow, so that works. Unless you are zoomed in which case it's too fast. Sigh.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Quiet
• Pretty smooth
• Easy to use
• Good range of travel

Cons

• Motion starts and ends abruptly
• Slowest speed is still too fast (especially on zoom)
• Occasional hesitations during travel
• Some minor glitching when reversing directions
• The wire to the remote control is not very long (but an extension is available)

Summary

If you need an inexpensive motorized pan and tilt head, the Bescor MP-101 could be the one for you. It does a good job within its limitations. For my purposes, the jury is still out as to whether it will be useful. Look at the sample video (about 50MB) and judge for yourself. I bought mine at B&H Photo/Video.

Cherry blossoms in HD

This picture is one frame from an HD movie taken with the XH A1 in 1080i mode. Click on the image to get the full size view. It looks better than most of the images I take with my still camera.

Should I pay 4x for HDV tapes?

Crikey. I've just learned that although you can use regular mini-DV tapes in an HDV camcorder, maybe you shouldn't. According to wikipedia (today, at least): "Because HDV uses the same tape form factor as DV, users should be able to use any high quality MiniDV tape in their HDV camcorder. However, because HDV has a lower tolerance for drop-outs because of its long-GOP compression, many HDV users purchase either 'master' quality Mini-DV tapes or specially formulated HDV tapes."

But tapes advertised as being for HDV cost four times as much as regular mini-DV tapes. Surely this is a rip-off, comparable to the hugely-inflated prices of Monster cables? Please someone tell me that regular tapes from a reputable manufacturer are good enough!

Canon XH A1: Big and Wonderful

As promised in my last post, I bought a Canon XH A1 from Beach Camera. As usual with Beach, the transaction was smooth and the shipping was quick.

I am on a journey that I suspect is common to a lot of semi-serious videographers out there: the first step from a decent SD camcorder to HD. I have had great service from a pair of Panasonic PV-GS400 camcorders for the last couple of years. The PV-GS400 was hands down the best camcorder in its price class and it is very sad that Panasonic no longer produces it and instead has chosen to dumb down its product line.

But it was time to think about HD anyway. The choice was to take a small step up to a consumer HD camera or take a big step up into a prosumer camera. I had gotten used to the nice manual controls on the PV-GS400 and didn't want to give any of that up. So I made the big step forward. The XH A1 is about (gulp) three times the price of the PV-GS400.

The first thing you notice is that the XH A1 is a lot bigger than the PV-GS400. (See picture.) But it is much sexier looking. I mean, come on, look at it!

It's heavier too, weighing in at about 5-1/2 pounds. The little pipsqueak Panasonic is only 1-1/2 pounds. I thought the weight would kill me, but I walked around for about an hour with it, taking pictures of random things, and it wasn't too bad.

The second thing you notice is the quality of the pictures. Oh my! This baby is worth every penny. More on the picture quality in my next post.

Canon offers $250 rebate on XH A1

I've been ready to make the switch to an HD camcorder for a little while now. But it's been hard to choose. The consumer camcorders are amazing for the price, but too dumbed down for the serious hobbyist. And the professional ones are ferociously expensive unless you're, well, a professional.

Based on the not-quite-astronomical price and several rave reviews, I have settled on getting the Canon XH A1. Today I started scouring the Web for the best price from a reputable dealer. (What is it about camera equipment that attracts so many vendors with shady selling practices?) I soon tumbled on to the fact that Canon is offering a $250 rebate for cameras purchased between March and June of 2007. Hooray!

No one legit seems to be offering a better price than Beach Camera, and I've had good experiences with them in the past, so that's where I'll go to buy it.

GPS Text-to-Speech Feature a Must-Have

I have an absolutely atrocious sense of direction, but I have been fortunate enough to be born in an era when the miracle cure is available: GPS.

I am on my second GPS receiver now and have used several in friends' cars and rentals. My latest is a Garmin C340. It's a wonderful little unit that I like the best of any I've used. But it has one feature that really wins the prize for me: text-to-speech.

This feature means that actual names are used in the driving directions instead of generic descriptions. For example, instead of, "In 200 feet, turn right," you are told, "In 200 feet, turn right onto Alameda Parkway." Makes a huge difference.

Now you might expect it would be difficult for a little guy like the C340 to do this perfectly, and you'd be right. It's actually amazingly good, but there are the odd amusing glitches. Examples:

• "Marine Dr" -> "Marine Doctor"
  
• "Granville St S" -> "Granville Saint South"
• And my favorite... Just for laughs I changed the voice to Australian. I was surprised when it then interpreted "WA 451", which should have been "Washington 451", as "Western Australia 451". Switch back to the American voice and it comes out correctly. Ha ha.

The C340 is very easy to use and small enough to throw into your carry-on luggage when you're traveling and can't count on the rental car having GPS. The display is not bright enough on sunny days and the voice could be a little louder, but other than that everything works great. Highly recommended for the directionally-challenged.

Canadians: The usual retail outlets don't carry this model, preferring the C330 for some reason. But the C330 doesn't have text-to-speech. Don't buy it! Order the C340 over the Web or buy it retail in the US.

Note: I have no affiliation with Garmin and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to get affiliate $ from anyone.

Slides from Moose Camp available

My talk, "Great Podcast Sound for Cheap," at Moose Camp went well. Lots of questions and not nearly enough time to answer them all! I've posted the slides here and hope to expand on the topics covered there in subsequent blog posts.

See You at Moose Camp

I'm going to be at Moose Camp this Friday (February 10) where I will give a talk on how to achieve great audio quality in podcasts. I'll share everything I've learned from my work with IT Conversations and will demonstrate several tools that we have developed to make it all painless, technically and financially.

The 28 Hour Day

I have just learned of this interesting variation on the 25 Hour Day concept I advocate here. (And which gives this blog its name.)

The author gets many of the benefits right, but the 25 hour day is more biologically oriented.

read more | digg story

Smoke from Burns Bog fire

Sun obscured by smoke from the Burns Bog fire. Burns Bog is a large ecologically sensitive area. True to its name, it is also highly flammable and thanks to a considerable depth of peat moss, a fire that gets started there can burn for weeks. There has been a huge conflagration there in the last few days. We are just a few miles from it, but fortunately the winds have mostly kept the smoke away. On this morning though, last Tuesday, the smoke settled in during the still morning air, leading to this view of the sunrise. Beautiful, sad and distrubing at the same time.

Adventures in Podcasting

I am a volunteer audio engineer for IT Conversations, a popular podcasting site that (among other things) makes available presentations from conferences like the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, BlogHer, Pop!Tech and MeshForum.

What does it mean to be an audio engineer? It means that I get the original audio recordings, edit them in various ways, add all the audio chrome at the beginning and end, and encode them to podcast and archival formats. It's all good fun and a weirdly relaxing hobby.

But I'm also a software guy and once I'd done a few shows I couldn't resist the urge to create some tools to make the whole process easier and to achieve consistently high quality. I'll be writing about them in subsequent entries in this blog. I hope to help the whole podcasting community by making these tools available for free. You can find them on my Web site which is a PostNuke horror story at the moment. But that is a discussion for another day.

One of the great things about working with Doug Kaye (the founder of IT Conversations) is his high standards for the shows. Both the audio quality and the substance of the presentations are top-notch, which is why ITC is so highly regarded. Editing each show is a unique adventure. My personal goal is to make the final podcast a better experience than being there live. Well, at least in the sense that the coughs and sneezes are gone, the dead air while waiting for PowerPoint to come to life is trimmed, and the questions can actually be heard. When you start on a show you never know what you are going to run into. I'll be sharing some of these stories too.

It is intriguing to watch the podcast phenomonen develop. I live in Vancouver and walk by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on the way to work every day. They are on strike now and as I see the picketers I can't help but think that whatever battle they are fighting now, it's going to be a completely different discussion soon. I used to be a big fan of the CBC. Now I walk past their big grey building with my MP3 player, the size of a pack of gum, plugged in and listening not to the radio but to a collection of really interesting podcasts hand-picked by me to suit my tastes and interests. I haven't tuned in to the CBC for ... months?