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- Ralph Lauren Puts Out A Waterproof, Solar-Paneled Backpack
- AR Drone And Kinect, Enough Said
- Cessna To Create Advanced Aircraft Skin For NASA
- Clearer Shot Of The Alleged Buttonless iPod Touch Looks Nice, Is Fake
- Apple Is Working To Fix Verizon iPad 2 Issues
- Technicolor Teams Up With Canon For New Digital Cinema Tools
- DIY: Adjustable Mic Stand From An IKEA Lamp
- Frame Wars
- Maine School District Okays $200k Budget For Kindergarten iPads
- Sun Sniper Joins Blackrapid And C-Loop In Screw-In Camera Strap World
- 2008 World Information Consumption: 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes
- Kanedaaaa! Akira Bike Replica For Sale On Craigslist
- Weekend Giveaway: A Blackberry Playbook
- Mega Man Keychains, Part Deux
- Video: The Evolution Of Mobile, As Told Through A Fancy 3D Projection Setup
- Verizon LTE 16GB Xoom Could Drop For Under $500
- LEGO Mindstorms Project Sorts And Cleans Up Your Legos
- Minecraft Leaves Beta On November 11
- The Gentle Doug Aamoth Looks At The Giant Dual Screen Acer Iconia Notebook
- Crytek Confirms Crysis 2 DX11 Patch
| Ralph Lauren Puts Out A Waterproof, Solar-Paneled Backpack Posted: 08 Apr 2011 06:29 PM PDT
The solar panel produces a little over 3 watts, which isn’t a lot, but could be enough to put a little juice in your phone. It comes with a battery unit that you can charge up, so you don’t always have to have your device plugged directly in. Too bad it costs $800. Ah well! I’ll keep my bindle, I guess.
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| AR Drone And Kinect, Enough Said Posted: 08 Apr 2011 06:24 PM PDT Check out this Kinect-controlled Parrot AR Drone. The man operating the AR Drone shows that you’re never too old to pretend to be an airplane.
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| Cessna To Create Advanced Aircraft Skin For NASA Posted: 08 Apr 2011 06:01 PM PDT
NASA hopes a new aircraft skin called STAR-C2 (smoothing, thermal, absorbing, reflective, conductive, cosmetic) will makes planes safer. Cessna Aircraft Company, the creator of STAR-C2 technology, was recently awarded a $1.9 million contract to further develop the tech for future airplanes. The STAR-C2 skin is applied to an aircraft as different layers of energy-absorbing foam, covered with a conductive film — essentially creating an “active health monitoring system.” Cessna claims the skin will be able to protect airplanes from lightning, electromagnetic interference, temperature extremes, and impact damage. If any impacts occur during flight, the skin will react to give ground engineers a visual indicator of recent plane damage. Cessna’s original report about the future of aircraft tech said that “the technology could incorporate devices that include temperature sensors, humidity sensors, strain sensors, accelerometers and light or motion sensors.” As cool and practical as this is, don’t expect to see it anytime soon. The research being conducted is a part of NASA’s futurist research into 2030-2035 flight. [via Wired]
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| Clearer Shot Of The Alleged Buttonless iPod Touch Looks Nice, Is Fake Posted: 08 Apr 2011 05:51 PM PDT
First, you’ve got GIMP in the file origin (not to mention the picture is from the future). Sure, maybe Mr. Tipster just wanted to crop it a bit or remove some identifying details from the background. But after playing with the levels a bit, I noticed a little bit of a “divot” around the square.
Push the contrast and color a bit further, and:
Yes, those little smears and repeated patterns are evidence of our friend the clone stamp in action. Conclusion: either our tipster is a new guy trying to take us for a ride (nice try), or it’s the same guy and the earlier shots are ‘shopped, too. It’s hard to say with those because they’re lower resolution and the device is greasy as hell. I have to say, though, if you look past the fact that it’s fake, that slabby frontage is quite pretty. Not practical, but pretty.
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| Apple Is Working To Fix Verizon iPad 2 Issues Posted: 08 Apr 2011 04:25 PM PDT
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| Technicolor Teams Up With Canon For New Digital Cinema Tools Posted: 08 Apr 2011 04:00 PM PDT
It’s an acknowledged weakness in DSLR workflows, so it makes sense to get some high-level color help from perhaps the most recognized name in color. Technicolor is lending their name and expertise to a new setting called CineStyle, which through mechanisms unknown, retains more information for colorists and cinematographers to adjust. It’ll be shown off at NAB in a few days — perhaps more details will emerge then as to which cameras will be getting the new setting.
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| DIY: Adjustable Mic Stand From An IKEA Lamp Posted: 08 Apr 2011 03:30 PM PDT
Having an adjustable mic stand is essential for home recording or podcasting. Those mics are so sensitive that you really have to place them in the right position. Unfortunately, decent articulating mic stands can be expensive. But, if you’re close enough to an IKEA store to buy a IKEA TERTIAL lamp, then you can make your own. It’s as easy as removing the bulb and head of the lamp and attaching a microphone to the end with a microphone mount. Head over to IKEA Hackers for the how to. [via Lifehacker]
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| Posted: 08 Apr 2011 03:00 PM PDT
Framerate standards sound like a rather dry topic to begin with, but it’s amazing what difference is created by even a minor shift on such supposedly technical grounds. Understanding why framerates are the way they are, and how they are changing, is fundamental to modern media production, and really is a major part of a number of multi-billion-dollar businesses. It’s powerful information, and more importantly, it’s interesting. Let’s take a look at the psychology and history that have created a worldwide standard for moving images, and examine why this standard is under revision. First, as with 3D technology, a brief course in neuroanatomy is required: How we see Not enough is known about how we see to simply say “here, this is the way we should make movies,” if that were even possible. But a little knowledge about the visual system helps to understand why some things look the way they do.
Light that hits your retina is collected and collated by a number of cell classes (whose technical names I forgo for the sake of clarity), some pulling data from various groups of rods and cones, getting aggregate readings, individual readings, and so on. These mediator cells (like many in the nervous system) actually act as a sort of analog-to-digital converter, sending signals at a rate corresponding to how much light their selected rods and cones are receiving. It’s very, very complicated and I’m really simplifying it, but the end result is that these cells tend to have a maximum regular “firing rate” of around 30 per second, sometimes more, sometimes less. This seems to be the source for the common misconception that we see at 30 frames per second, or that anything beyond that is imperceptible. People can perceive small numbers of photons and can identify images shown for only a few milliseconds. What is conveniently ignored is that while individual cells may fire at that rate, they are not linked to each other via some light-speed network that tells them to fire all exactly in sync. There’s some synchronization, yes, but it happens downstream, as these raw signals from the eye are made into something intelligible to the higher-level visual system. So while the 30fps mark is an important one, it’s not that important — not like at 35 or 40fps, everything suddenly becomes perfectly smooth and life-like. Yet there’s a limit to how many “frames” you can perceive; try flapping your hand in front of your face. Why is it blurry if there are billions of photons bouncing onto a progressive and constant polling of high-frequency photodetectors? Later in the visual system flow, there are some very high-level functions that affect perception. Some optical illusions have been made that show how your mind “fills in the gap” when a piece of an image is missing, and how cartoons animated at extremely low framerates still appear to generate natural motion despite having huge gaps between sequential positions of objects. This process of predictive perception is your brain wanting to make a complete and consistent image out of incomplete and contradictory data. It’s a skill you learned throughout your babyhood and youth, and it’s going on all the time.
The set of rules for predictive perception is as extensive and varied as are our personalities. The catalog of shortcuts and refinements the brain makes to visual data would be nearly impossible to make. But I have digressed too far in this direction; the point here is that there are rules to perception, but they are not hard and fast, nor are they authoritatively listed, whatever some may say. History
The early days of cinema were a crazy world of inconsistent standards, analog and hand-cranked exposures, and to top things off, both audience and filmmakers were completely new to the art. Early silent films were cranked as consistently as possible, and projected at 16fps. This was established as the absolute floor framerate under which people would be bothered by the flicker when the shutter interrupts the light source. The question of persistence of vision (mentioned above) was answered around 1912, and though the myth persists today, early film pioneers took note. Edison actually recommended 46 frames per second, saying “anything less will strain the eye.” Of course, his stock and exposures were inadequate for this standard, and slower frame rates were necessitated by minimum exposure values. Eventually a happy medium of 24 frames per second was established as larger studios began standardizing and patenting film techniques and technologies — it was visually appealing and compatible with existing two-bladed 48Hz projectors. It might have been 23, it might have been 25 (more on 25 later); it certainly could not have been 16 or 40. So 24 was chosen neither arbitrarily or scientifically. It’s also worth noting that the way film was (and is) displayed is not the way we see things on computer screens and LCD TVs now. The image on screen would be shown for a set time (say a 48th of a second) then the shutter wheel would block the image, leaving the screen dark for an equal time. There’s variation here depending on blade count and so on, but the end result is that there is an image, then darkness, then a new image. Today, images follow one another instantly, since there is no need for a shutter to hide the movement of film. This is important. Television threw a wrench into the proceedings. The display technology at the time prohibited displaying an entire frame all at once, so a compromise was made between film’s 24fps, the fields per second cathode ray tubes were capable of at the time, and the 60Hz alternating current frequency used by the US, producing the familiar interlaced image seen still seen on many analog TVs today. The effect (simulated below) can still be seen today; interlaced recording is still an option, indeed the default, on many cameras.
The UK and other countries with a 50Hz AC standard adopted a slightly slower field refresh rate with a slightly higher resolution. This is the beginning of the PAL/NTSC framerate conflict that has plagued motion picture production for half a century. I do want to say here that the 25/50 standard was much more logical than our 24/30/60 one then, and it still is now. I pass over a great period of time during which things mostly stayed the same. A great number of techniques were created for converting analog to digital and back to analog, speeding up or slowing down framerates, deinterlacing, conversion pulldowns, and so on. Although these things are interesting to the video professional, they constitute a sort of dark age from which we are only recently emerging — and this emergence is the reason we are having this discussion. As cinema, TV, and home video migrate to an all-digital, all-progressive frame format, we are ridding ourselves of the hated interlacing (my eternal enemy), of insane microscopic frame differences to allow for analog synchronization (23.976, 29.97, etc, though Jackson is filming at 47.96, not straight 48), and of standards established by the guys who were designing the first light bulbs. It’s a glorious time to be a filmmaker, and it’s only natural that adventurous types like Cameron and Jackson would want to stretch their legs. There’s still some work to be done standardizing brightness and framerates in digital projectors (there are patents and other nonsense involved), but a world where you can shoot at virtually any framerate and have it displayed flawlessly at the same rate, essentially reproducing exactly what the director and production team produce, is a wonderful thing we should not take for granted. Yet we should also not assume that because things like 24 are old, that they are no longer relevant. Look Today, moving images are generally shot and viewed at one of several refresh rates: 24p, 25p, 30p, 50i, or 60i. There are more, of course, but these are the end products. Sometimes they’re converted to each other, which is a destructive process that will soon, thankfully, be obsolete. The trouble is with the notion that higher framerates are necessarily better. We’ve written before about the plague of frame-interpolating 120Hz and 240Hz (and more) HDTVs that give an unreal, slippery look to things. This isn’t an illusion, or, to be precise, it isn’t any more of an “illusion” than anything else you see. What it’s doing is adding information that simply isn’t there.
Let’s look at an example. When Bruce Lee punches that guy in Enter The Dragon, you barely see his fist move. The entire punch takes up maybe five frames of film, and even a short exposure would have trouble capturing it clearly at beginning, halfway, three-quarters there, etc. — plus there would be no guarantee of capturing the exact moment it connected with the guy’s face. Yet with interpolation, a frame must be “created” for all these states. Less extreme, but still relevant: imagine a lamp pole moving in the background of a panning shot. In film projection, it is here, and then it is black (empty frame), and then it is there. How do you know how it got from here to there? Remember predictive perception? Your mind fills in the blank and you don’t even notice that the pole, on its trip between points A and C, never existed at point B. You fill in the gap so effectively that it isn’t even noticeable. Again, interpolation attempts to fill in this gap — a gap your mind has already filled admirably, and for which (despite sophisticated motion tracking algorithms) there really is very little data. The result is a strange visual effect that is repulsive to the sensitive, though to be sure many people don’t even notice. Of course, people don’t notice lots of things. But that’s just these trendy TV makers who need another big number to put on their sets. The real debate is when established filmmakers like Cameron and Jackson say they’ll be using 48fps for their next films, Avatar 2 and The Hobbit (Cameron may actually shoot at 60, it’s undecided, but 48 makes more sense). Many seem to have overlooked the fact that these are both 3D films. This isn’t an insignificant detail. There are complications with 3D display methods on existing projectors, using this or that style of glasses, encoding, and so on. A common complaint was strobing or flickering. Judder is another common effect when 24p content isn’t shot or shown properly, especially in 3D. Filming and displaying at 48fps alleviates many of these issues, as long as you have a suitably bright projector. Cameron and Jackson are making a technical decision here, that enables their films to be shown the way they should be seen. But what about the artistic decision? This is a touchy subject, and we must be careful not to be sentimental. We don’t shoot on hand cranks any more, for good reason. Is 24 similarly something that needs to be left behind? I personally don’t think so. But is it something that needs to be rigidly adhered to? Again, I don’t think so. Directors, cinematographers, editors, colorists, all have immense artistic latitude in their modification of the raw footage — look at a scene before and after post production if you need any convincing on this point. What is the framerate but one more aspect to tweak? At the same time, no real filmmaker tweaks something just to tweak it.
24 is a look, one which engages the audience by implying movement and allowing the viewer’s brain to interpret it. Would Bruce Lee’s punch look faster if it was filmed and displayed at 60fps? I sincerely doubt it; in fact, I believe it would look slower. The implication of speed and movement is a stronger statement — just as in other media, like writing, where the most literal description may not be the best. Just as five words may tell more than a hundred, as fans of Hemingway have it, five frames of Lee’s blurred fist may not adequately document the punch, but they transmit the punch to the audience more effectively than a more high fidelity form of capture. Yet for all this, 24 is not some magical number that cannot be improved, or that’s perfect for every shot or situation. Douglas Trumbull is the most famous talking point referred to by high-framerate evangelists like Roger Ebert. His 65mm, 60fps Showscan format amazed audiences with its unique look in the 80s, yet never caught on. Why? The same reason Edison couldn’t shoot 46fps in 1912. Too expensive, the film industry didn’t (and couldn’t) support it, and audiences, while finding it novel and compelling, likely were even more put off then by its totally different look. If you’ve never seen native 48, 50, or 60fps media, it’s worth noting that it’s actually unnerving, and you really can’t say why. Some people say “too smooth,” but isn’t life smooth? It may simply be that our mind is revolting against the impossibility of a “magic window” showing something so lifelike that is clearly not reality. Even people who have worked in cinema for their whole lives find it difficult to express this very experiential and qualitative difference.
The negative reaction to high framerates is also associational. For decades we’ve watched cheaply-produced TV shows shot on video tape or transmitted live at an end framerate of 60i. Flat lighting, bad production in general, and small screens have for our entire lives associated high framerates with low quality. So it’s understandable when objectors to 48 and up say they don’t want their movies looking like soap operas. But if TV had been transmitted at 24p, what would these objectors’ reactions to increased framerates be? Likely they would be lauding the powerful immersive quality of the new format, and writing blog posts consigning 24 to the pit. We have to cast off this learned sentimentality and embrace advances for themselves, but also avoid reckless neophilia by acknowledging their limitations. High framerates, divested of their soap opera associations, simply provide more visual information, and that makes for a superior representation in some situations — most notably, situations when you want to show an image as close as possible to the object actually being present. Nature documentaries, sports, news reports, home videos, these things will look amazing at 48, 50, 60, or more. Feature films and television as well, as long as the director chooses the framerate for a reason germane to the concept or production — as Cameron and Jackson clearly have. But “cinematic” isn’t an anachronism, and our love of the “film look” isn’t a case of Filmstockholm Syndrome, if you will. We like it because it looks good — in its right place. And soon, we’ll like 48, 60, and other framerates because they too look good — in their right places. Until we’ve all experienced what these new and powerful changes to visual media have to offer, it’s premature to dismiss or embrace any of them exclusively. I look forward to seeing what these talented and pioneering filmmakers have to offer, but at the same time I want to reserve judgment until the data are in. Cinema is an experiential medium, yet it is also a process, and no one can argue against improving how it is produced. I believe that the current “advances” in 3D, resolution, and frame rates are simply more tools to be employed by the skilful filmmaker, more latitude for production, more power to capture and display. We’ll know soon; until then, patience is the word. Wait and see. [image sources: film; retina; Biokam]
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| Maine School District Okays $200k Budget For Kindergarten iPads Posted: 08 Apr 2011 02:30 PM PDT
Well, first of all, there are cost concerns. Why are they paying full price, for instance? Why not buy iPad 1s refurb or used? Yet even buying almost 300 brand new iPads leaves plenty of space in the budget, as Doug points out at Techland. I guess the other $50,000 will go towards “administrative fees.” But I wouldn’t worry too much. The video above (note to production team: check your aspect ratio) shows how the kids actually are engaging with things on the iPads, and if the teachers think it’s a good use of money, then as far as I’m concerned, that’s that. Now who wants to start a pool for when this school gets its three hundred iPads ripped off?
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| Sun Sniper Joins Blackrapid And C-Loop In Screw-In Camera Strap World Posted: 08 Apr 2011 02:00 PM PDT
The Sun Sniper series has been in Europe for a while and is just now getting US distribution. It’s more like the C-Loop in that it allows for independent spinning at the fastening point, but the Sun Sniper system also includes a steel-strengthened strap (protects against snatchers) and apparently a “shock absorber,” though I see no evidence of one.
Right now the standings are: Blackrapid is the cheapest and simplest, C-Loop is best if you already have a strap you can use with it, and Sun Sniper Pro is the full solution if you don’t mind paying for it. The Pro costs 69 euros, which works out to about $100. You can order it online or check for a dealer near you who might have it on sale.
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| 2008 World Information Consumption: 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes Posted: 08 Apr 2011 01:30 PM PDT
Back in 2008, the world consumed 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information. If all that digital information were to be printed and stacked up one-by-one, it would easily stretch from Earth to Neptune and back about 20 times. According to research conducted at UC San Diego, 27 million computer servers processed 9.57 zettabytes of information back in 2008 – it’s safe to assume that today’s consumption is far greater than 9.57 zettabytes since growth is estimated to continue doubling every two years. By 2024, the amount of information processed, if printed, will extend more than 4.37 light-years away from Earth reaching Alpha Centauri. Although that number is just an estimate, the researchers compiled the estimate with data from extensive interviews, sales figures, industry reports and other sources. While the researchers think the estimate is valid, they also admit that it isn’t complete because they didn’t include data from large companies like Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft.
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| Kanedaaaa! Akira Bike Replica For Sale On Craigslist Posted: 08 Apr 2011 01:00 PM PDT
[via SlashFilm and Nerd Approved]
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| Weekend Giveaway: A Blackberry Playbook Posted: 08 Apr 2011 12:53 PM PDT
I was originally going to write something like “Weekend Giveaway: An iPod Classic Case Plus Something Else” and then make you guys read the whole post to find out that I was going to include a Blackberry Playbook in the prize and then you’d be angry and come to my house and stuff and nobody wanted that. So here goes: we’re going to give you one lucky reader a Blackberry Playbook. It won’t ship until the official release date – April 19 – but it will be one of the first Playbooks to roll off the assembly lines. Entering, as you probably know by now, is simple.
All you have to do is comment. Comment once and only once. Include your email in the proper Disqus field (not in the body of the comment.) I’ll pick one winner at random on Monday at noon Eastern. Special thanks to the folks at Office Depot for supplying the Playbook. They’ll be carrying the thing on April 19 if you want to line up now.
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| Posted: 08 Apr 2011 12:30 PM PDT
You have to buy the whole $36 set, and there are some mystery ones. [via GameSwag and Go Nintendo]
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| Video: The Evolution Of Mobile, As Told Through A Fancy 3D Projection Setup Posted: 08 Apr 2011 12:14 PM PDT
What happens when you take a couple of talented dudes, a bunch of projectors, and a handful of phones spray-painted white to act as a canvas? This video. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
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| Verizon LTE 16GB Xoom Could Drop For Under $500 Posted: 08 Apr 2011 12:09 PM PDT
With the rise of devices like the A500 and similar Honecomb-powered tablets, the Xoom has a very short window of opportunity to cash in on any potential sales. To remedy that, it seems that Verizon will be pushing out an LTE 4G 16GB Xoom tablet for what we can only assume will be considerably less than the $600 the 32GB Xoom costs currently.
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| LEGO Mindstorms Project Sorts And Cleans Up Your Legos Posted: 08 Apr 2011 12:00 PM PDT Coin sorting machines are cool, but they can’t put away your Legos like this. Using a laser and a scale, this NXT project is able to visualize and weigh Lego pieces to determine how to sort them. At the end of the conveyor belt, the pieces are placed into corresponding parts bins for safe keeping. I think it’s safe to say all parents would love one of these for their kids. [via Hackaday]
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| Minecraft Leaves Beta On November 11 Posted: 08 Apr 2011 11:30 AM PDT
Minecraft will leave beta on November 11 of this year. That is to say it will be released on 11/11/11. Look at all those ones. Of course, given the nature of the game its creator says people shouldn’t expect a big release as such. It’s not as if they’re flipping a switch and all of a sudden it will be different. Incidentally, expect all sorts of nonsense that day (#111111 on Twitter, anyone?), November 11, because, you know, seeing a bunch of ones in a commercial or on a posters is totally radical.
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| The Gentle Doug Aamoth Looks At The Giant Dual Screen Acer Iconia Notebook Posted: 08 Apr 2011 11:00 AM PDT
Hi Doug! Our old buddy takes a look at the wacky dual screen Acer Iconia notebook. Conclusion? Just watch the two minute video. It’s after the break. [Pic source. That was a good day.]
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| Crytek Confirms Crysis 2 DX11 Patch Posted: 08 Apr 2011 10:30 AM PDT |
The material isn’t specified, and I can’t really identify it, but they say it’s water-resistant. I doubt you can go diving in it, but it should handle rain, spray, and maybe a quick dip with ease.
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