In LA

I’m finding it fun to watch the Breaking News Map scroll around and display bits of world news over the appropriate spot on a world map. It gives a god-like top-down sense of place to each story.

I received my Panasonic DMC-LZ8, and shot a few test photos today. In summary, I’d give the camera an A- for optics, an A for features, a B for user-interface (I have to click how many times to manually set the ISO equivalent?), and a solid D for image processing.

Why that low grade? Because after the camera has responded to the user’s commands, the lens has focused and zoomed, the image has been focused on the sensor, and the sensor has captured an image, Panasonic’s Venus Engine IV software goes to work. It takes the raw image off the sensor, processes it, and writes a file to the memory card. The problem is in the processing — digital images contain some amount of noise, and this noise can be reduced by applying noise reduction algorithms. But there is a downside to noise reduction, as these algorithms reduce the level of detail in the image. Every manufacturer approaches this tradeoff in their own way, but Panasonic’s decision is very unfortunate.

The Panasonic DMC-LZ8 (and apparently most other Panasonic digital cameras) suffers from an overly aggressive style of noise reduction. The user can set the noise reduction to be reduced in one of the camera’s menus, but it can’t be reduced nearly enough, and can’t be disabled. It doesn’t appear to be possible to shoot a photo that is not visibly mangled by Panasonic’s digital noise reduction.

Panasonic’s noise reduction may be useful for photos shot in low-light conditions, as such photos can have enough noise to warrant some smearing of detail in order to make the noise less distracting. Photos shot in bright sunlight should have very little noise and thus require little to no noise reduction, yet the DMC-LZ8 attacks such images with its noise reduction algorithms and leaves them noiseless but also a bit impressionistic, as if they’d been painted with a tiny brush. Definition and fine details are lost in the process. I dialed the digital noise reduction down to its lowest setting and shot a few more sample photos, but the noise reduction was still very apparent.

The problem is not limited to the Panasonic DMC-LZ8, as is attested by this internet petition which asks Panasonic to release a firmware update for several other Panasonic cameras to allow users to choose to disable noise reduction. I would also prefer to disable the camera’s noise reduction feature, because it is easy to apply noise reduction in computer to shots that really need it, and 9 times out of 10 I prefer the organic look of the noise itself to the painterly look of noise reduction.

Gripes aside, the camera seems nice in all other aspects, and for $111 I’m happy with it. It’s small, fast, cheap, and the images are reasonably good (they’d be great if not for the problem noted above). If I’d paid the suggested retail price of $179 I’d probably already be in the process of returning the camera and replacing it with the Canon SD870IS, but at $111 I’m content. I don’t intend to use this as my primary camera. Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

I just took a little online quiz that attempted to determine which US accent I have based on my responses to a number of questions. The questions actually seem pretty clever, and the result matches up with what I’ve been told in the past. I guess my Minnesota accent has been destroyed by years of living on the West coast.

I tend not to go for online quizzes, but I was very curious what sort of written questions would be used to detect a spoken accent. Here’s my table of results:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   “You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The South
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Northeast
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

One of the free apps in Apple’s new “app store” for iPhone and iPod touch is “wordpress”. Looks like it is not only free, but nice.

Without me ever telling them my idea, they’ve set it up to post a mostly blank blog entry, and then snarf in the entry to extract the blog’s template. The app then uses the captured template to generate an accurate wysiwyg preview so you can evaluate your post before submitting. Nice.

I guess I don’t have to write my own iPhone blogging client now. This one will likely do.

If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch user who would like to be able to input Chinese characters using handwriting recognition, today is your lucky day:

A screenshot of me using the HWPen input method to write one of the more important Chinese phrases in my iPod Touch’s “Notes” application.

It would appear that someone has ported the excellent HanWang Chinese handwriting recognition engine to the iPhone. This software can also do English handwriting recognition, but that doesn’t work nearly as well as the Chinese recognition. Details on how to install and use the software can be found on Gizmodo.

I have this installed and living just fine side-by-side with a Chinese pinyin input method, and it’s very easy to switch between pinyin, handwriting recognition, and the standard English keyboard.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Chinese, Chinese IME, Chinese Language, IME, iPhone, iPod, OS X, software

A busy intersection in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. 5/2006

Yesterday I walked to lunch along a busy street in Hollywood, having a very difficult time hearing my friend on my cell phone as busses and trucks rattled past. I marveled at the amazing amount of noise I encounter on a daily basis, and thought of how peaceful the aural landscape of the future city will be if one day all internal combustion engines are replaced by electric equivalents.

There are a ton of Toyota Prios¹ zooming around the streets of LA fairly quietly using their electric motors, the first wave of the new sound of transportation. Sounds like progress to me.

So I’m hoping that a new piece of legislation introduced in the US House of Representatives, the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2008, doesn’t result in a mandatory minimum noise level for all vehicles. Here are the details on the Act, courtesy of its supporters at the National Federation of the Blind (NFB):

The bill requires the Secretary of Transportation, within ninety days of its enactment, to commence a two-year study to determine the best means to provide the blind and other pedestrians with information about the location, motion, speed, and direction of vehicles. Upon completion of the study, the Secretary will report the findings of the study to Congress and, within ninety days, establish a minimum vehicle safety standard for all new vehicles sold in the United States. Automobile manufacturers will have two years to comply with the vehicle safety standard.

Some folk over at treehugger.com wonder if such concern is overkill, asking How Many Blind People Have Been Hit By A Prius? One answer can be found in an LA times article on the bill, “While the organization is not aware of people being struck by cars they couldn’t hear, NFB President Marc Maurer has said he fears it’s only a matter of time.”

I’d like to think that the desire for a quiet environment and the desire for blind people to be able to freely and safely navigate the streets don’t have to be at odds. Hopefully if the bill passes, the required study will show that tire and electric engine noise alone will suffice to warn pedestrians (especially given that as more and more hybrids take to the streets the total level of road noise will go down, so that the sound of approaching electric vehicles will be less masked by the din). Or maybe someone can develop a wristwatch for the vision-impaired which would use sonar or transponders built into every car to notify them of approaching traffic?

I’d prefer any solution to one that results in a future of roads filled with chirping, whistling, or beeping cars.

Technorati Tags: accessibility, ambient sound, Legislature, safety, sound pollution

1. the plural of Prius if treated as a 2nd declension Latin noun [↩]

In this example, column G is determining a timecode value, 10:45:46:2 based on the frame number in B, 0929906. That timecode value should end in :02, and will once I figure a good way to add leading zeros in an Excel formula.

The other day I was presented with an Excel spreadsheet listing a bunch of clips by frame number, and I needed to find the scene and shot numbers for each clip from an EDL¹ which listed the clips by timecode.

Rather than spend a lot of time with a timecode calculator converting each frame number to 24fps non-drop SMPTE timecode, I came up with a formula that would automatically generate and display the timecode for a given frame number. I didn’t spend the time to figure out how to coerce excel into adding leading zeros where necessary, so it doesn’t always generate timecodes that are formatted properly, but it was good enough for my purposes. I’m posting the formula here in case any other filmmakers find it useful, and if you happen to know how to modify this formula so that it does add leading zeros, please consider posting your code as a comment here. We’re all in this together. On that note, on to the formula.

For a given frame number in column 2, row B, the following formula will convert that frame number to timecode (24p, ND):

CONCATENATE( ROUNDDOWN(B2/86400,0),":", ROUNDDOWN(MOD(B2,86400)/1440,0), ":", ROUNDDOWN(MOD(MOD(B2,86400),1440)/24,0), ":", MOD(MOD(B2,1440),24))

–Update: A tip from Ken Case led to the solution. The finished formula, which produces properly formatted smpte 24p non-drop timecodes, is the following:

CONCATENATE( TEXT(ROUNDDOWN(B2/86400,0),"00"),":", TEXT(ROUNDDOWN(MOD(B2,86400)/1440,0),"00"), ":", TEXT(ROUNDDOWN(MOD(MOD(B2,86400),1440)/24,0),"00"), ":", TEXT(MOD(MOD(B2,1440),24),"00"))

1. acronym for Edit Decision List [↩]

Aesthetically, this clone of an Apple iPod Touch, advertised on Facebook’s China network, looks like the closest match yet, though its dimensions are not listed so it’d be tough to say for sure.

Other notable iPod Touch clones are the Optimus Touch, the Tsinghua Tongfang PMC-V560 (apparently only costs $52), the Portronics/Onda VX858, and the Meizu M7.

Of course, these are all just lookalikes, I’d expect they lack the features that make the iPod Touch so appealing –great multitouch interface, high resolution, robust Unix OS, great email application, great web browser, etc. But it’s amusing to me to watch the number of Chinese iPod Touch clones increase.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, OS X

At the extremes, those who think online filesharing helps artists¹ may see this story as logical and evidence for their beliefs, and those who assume illegal downloads of movies and music always hurts content creators may see this as a joke (funny or not), but I think it’s pretty cool that a little independent film has generated a lot of positive buzz through word-of-mouth reviews from people who illegally downloaded the film –and the producer of The Man From Earth has officially thanked these movie “pirates”. To wit:

“Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded “The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!”

All’s well that ends well.

Technorati Tags: film

1. I know I’ve discovered more artists and purchased more music due to the existence of p2p technologies, from napster to gnutella. [↩]

There’s a great new trailer online for The Forbidden Kingdom, and it’s awesome. It is available as flash video embedded within a page and also available in HD Quicktime. To see it, go to Yahoo’s “The Forbidden Kingdom” page, look for the “Exclusive Trailer”, and click the button for the resolution of your choice (the 1080p version looks amazing, but if you don’t have the fastest computer or net connection I’d recommend the 720p), or click the “Click to play” button to see a reasonably ok looking embedded flash version (looks better than the trailer on youtube, but much worse than the HD QuickTimes).

Unlike the “Teaser Trailer”, this trailer concerns itself less with introducing the story and is more focused on imparting the feel of the film. There are tons of beautiful shots of scenery, action, Jackie Chan fighting Jet Li, Li Bing Bing being all hot and evil, Collin Chou looking devious, and Michael Angarano getting beaten up by just about everyone. In my opinion it’s more exciting than the teaser trailer, and given the amount of action in the film, a better representation of the film as well.

Yahoo’s “The Forbidden Kingdom” page also includes a countdown clock to the release date of the film. Right now it says 65 days, 21 hours, 15 minutes, and 55 seconds to go. Aiiiyaa!¹ How freaky to actually see how little time is left until release. I’m going to see that countdown clock in my fitful sleep tonight².

1. that’s Mandarin for “oy vey” [↩]
2. unless I can manage to disable my brain’s javascript interpreter [↩]