Morning comes to Makiki -- almost

It happened again.  But I had learned from the errors that had previously tilted my world and sought to rectify things, or at least straighten them out a bit.  This counts as a fail, though.  It's only a one minute fail, and it's kinda fun...

I woke up from uneasy dreams around 5.30am -- before the sun -- and instead of immediately checking Facebook, I thought I would make the effort to attempt again a time lapse movie of the sun coming up over the neighborhood.  My previous attempt had been skewed because I had to kneel down on the concrete and couldn't level my iPhone correctly.  The solution was to elevate the rig a bit using my night stand so I could see what I was shooting.

Well, if you want to take a time lapse of the sun coming up, you have to make sure the sun actually comes up all the way.  This morning, it decided to sleep in and rain.

I thought that once I set the camera up, I could go back to sleep for a couple of hours, but no.  Worries of rain, or oversleeping and allowing the sun to cook my iPhone, or the rain to kill it, etc. prevented me from sleeping.  I actually put some clothes on in case I had to run out and save my camera from the elements.  You will note that my lanai is not at all private.

But I did learn one more thing:  Once imported into iMovie, I slowed it down yet again which makes the motion more jagged than it should be.  Next time I speed up on the camera side to one frame every five seconds, rather than one frame every 10 seconds.

I posted it 'cuz it's a kinda fun one minute.  Sorry if you want your minute back -- you blew it so don't put it on me.

One day, I'll get it right, but maybe it won't matter.  Here's a fun essay by Choire Sicha in Awl called, "Your beautiful pictures are stupid."  The funny thing is that there are some really nice time lapse videos accompanying the essay.  That's the kind of stupid I'm aiming for.

H. Doug Matsuoka 

Makiki, Honolulu

29 October 2010

Scale and Scalability -- a "review" of The Social Network

[Cross posted from Open Salon]

I'm not saying the movie The Social Network was "about" scale and scalability -- I don't think movies have to be "about" anything at all.  If a movie will take me up and down a bunch of peaks and valleys then deposit me right back where I started like an amusement park ride, I'm okay. But I think The Social Network used scale and scalability in novel ways as devices to tell the story and to keep us engaged.  It is through the characters' abilities and failures to recognize the scale and scalability of certain phenomena that the story unfolds.

Diane Sawyer and her chic minimalist rig caught last night...

Hey, is this old news?  I don't watch the ABC World News podcast often.  Anyway, I tuned in and saw her with a new desk rig: iPad (WiFi version) and Apple bluetooth keyboard.  

It's one step above the "guerilla writer's minimalist arsenal" I described earlier, but not by much.  Actually, it's a combo that I use often.  It's light, it's cheap, and it works. 

That is all.  Carry on...

Doug

Microsoft and Casio team up to produce an ebook device

Casio and Microsoft have teamed up to produce a digital reader with adjustable, flowing text and images, highlighting, notating, and even a built in dictionary.  As you can see, it features a backlit color screen that is larger than the iPhone's.  The font technology uses subpixel font rendering and user adjustable and scalable fonts specifically designed for effortless reading.  In addition to being a reader, the device is a true multi-purpose platform that can run various word processing, spreadsheet, and database apps.  Is this one of the new Windows Phone 7 devices?

In a failed experiment, daybreak comes to My Tilted World

I'm filing this under "learning."  I guess, generally speaking, one shouldn't post their failed experiments, but this one is only 42 seconds long and kinda cool.

So I got up this morning around 5.20am to take a leak.  It was still dark.  Nope, not summer any more.  So I thought I'd experiment with the Timelapse app on my iPhone and set it out on the lanai to catch the break of day.  You have to picture me kneeling on the lanai on the concrete so I could shoot under the railing and pushing the iPhone almost off the end of the lanai.  In the dark, you can't easily tell if the iPhone is level.  So my whole world turned out tilted.

But I decided to run the result through iMovie and add some sounds (and a title, which I had never done before).  The traffic and helicopter sounds are imported from Cupertino but are a close match for busy Makiki.  I'll have to record Makiki ambient noise on of these days.  It's densely polyphonic and quite entertaining on its own.

So this is kinda dumb, but it was fun.  I hope that's how we learn...

H. Doug Matsuoka
Makiki, Honolulu
7 October 2010

Timelapse test: Makiki day to night in 30 seconds

I haven't opened the Mac app iMovie since having a couple of beers and making The Hassinger Street Anomaly not too long ago.  So how did I manage to forget every single thing about how to take a very simple little snip of video and edit it into something I could mount on Youtube?  I will tell you that it's a hell of a thing to be of a certain age and look your white haired image in the mirror and ask it, "Is it true?  Is Google making you stupid?"  

Well obviously.  Boy, if I want to actually make videos I should make a commitment and live with iMovie (or whatever) for a while.  

Anyway, I got the Timelapse app for my iPhone (3GS) and have been trying various things.  I walked down the street with it.  That doesn't work 'cuz I can't point it uniformly enough.  I tried taping it to the windblocker in my car while I drove to Kokua Market and that almost worked.

So I did the cliché thing and set it out on my lanai (while I still have one).  Kinda fun.  Just sharing it here because it's only 30 seconds or so and kinda cool.  The traffic noise is completely fake and imported from Cupertino, but it sounds pretty close to Makiki if you ask me.

H. Doug Matsuoka

Makiki, Honolulu

6 October 2010

Why Blogger sucks (and why I'm packing my bags)

[Updated 1/19/11: Blogger doesn't suck as much as it used to.]

With all the smartphone internet traffic these days, Blogger would for sure have a mobile format available, right?  And Google owning Blogger means that your posts get googled quickly, no?  And Google is so huge (through high-tech efficiency) and so many people use Blogger that the support has got to be top of line, correct?

Wrong, wrong, and wrong!

DougNote iPhone screenshot

Compare that to the Wordpress mobile format: