Too busy to…

FreeviewHD has been broadcasting in our area for several months but since we almost never watch live television it seemed pointless to to buy a FreeviewHD (or DVB-T2 to use the technical name) receiver without some sort of recording capability. These have taken a surprisingly long time to reach the market but I noticed last weekend that the venerable John Lewis were selling a 500GB Digital Stream DHR8205U FreeviewHD hard-disk recorder and since the reviews on the web forums were broadly positive, made something of an impulse buy.

I quickly discovered that if the TV is not plugged in during boot then the box will flash “loading” at you forever but after that initial false start installation was smooth and the HD reception is an appreciable upgrade. The feature set appears comprehensive and although there is no option to repeat a recording daily or weekly, it can be instructed to record an entire series of programmes which is usually sufficient.

My biggest complaint is that the user interface is definitely quirky, which reminds you that this is definitely early-adopter territory. Most annoying is the remote control which has some of the most commonly used features (such as ‘pause’ and ‘library’) on tiny buttons which are laid out with no semblance of logical grouping. The listings guide is quite useable, although the ordering of the channel list is not customisable which means the three HD channels are 6 screens away from their non-HD equivalents. Pressing the large “OK” button during viewing brings up the list of channels with no programme information which seems redundant: on my previous PVR this button showed the current and next programmes. The screen showing the recorded programmes appears to have had so little attention that it might actually be an afterthought: recordings are laughably labelled simply as ProgrammeName_DDMMHHMM.trp. Fortunately there is at least a chance that the software issues might be fixed with the next software update scheduled for the end of June.

The user guide suffers from similar problems of poor readability including at least one circular reference (the effect of enabling “standby power-saving mode” is never explained). The packaging describes the product as “Manufactured in the UK” but DigitalStream itself seems to be a Korean company and the terminology used by the software is from a bizarre parallel universe: channels are called “services”, future recording “reservations” and the stored programmes library is “media”. Despite these foibles, so far I am a happy customer.

When I first switched to Mac from Linux I used fink to provide the simple software installation (and removal!) to which I had become addicted while using Debian. In addition to being command line compatible, fink also shipped the software as binaries which on the relatively slow CPUs of the day meant the software was able to be used much more immediately than if it had to be compiled.

About three years ago, I noticed that the fink binary distribution no longer had all the packages I wanted to use. The website would indicate the package was available but actually it would be only available in source code form and my aging laptop did not have the CPU or disk space available to compile not just the package but all its dependencies. When I upgraded that old laptop, and compiling everything from source seemed feasible, I decided that the MacPorts project had more community activity and jumped ship.

MacPorts worked very well. The initial install took time, and worked the fan of my MacBook quite hard, but once the base packages were compiled, subsequent software installs and updates were mostly painless. MacPorts also made it vary easy to tweak installs using its variants mechanism. However MacPorts’ downfall, in my opinion, is that it is not content to be just a way of augmenting the existing UNIX tools on my Mac but that it wants to be a self-contained operating system itself. For example, in order to install the git-svn tool MacPorts was going to download, compile and install not only an older version of Perl than is shipped with 10.6 but also a second version of the subversion tool that Apple have already provided. I am sure this is a good way to deliver a powerful and stable system, but it felt like MacPorts was taking over.

I am not the first to think this since someone has developed homebrew. It has the explicit goals of playing nicely with the OS defaults and programming language specific distribution systems such as RubyGems, CPAN and PyPi. I am pleased to be report that homebrew was very quick to setup and install the few remaining UNIX packages to which I remain addicted. The installer makes the assertion that every user on your system should be in the staff group,¹ but the script was very simple to modify and I have submitted my version back to the maintainer.

The one package where I do not find homebrew satisfactory is LaTeX. homebrew uses the TeX Live distribution rather than the tetex package I have used in the past. However TeX Live is a humungous 1GB download and some quick research showed that it was very much a kitchen sink package with many sub-packages that were completely unnecessary for me. Instead I highly recommend the 85MB download (234MB installed) BasicTeX package which has proved to be entirely adequate for my needs, even if it does have softie GUI installer!

1. I noticed that on a fresh install of 10.6 no one is a member of the staff group. It appears that all Administrator users are members of the admin group though, and since it seems to only allow admins to change the machine’s homebrew install, I forked this gist and replaced all the instances of staff with admin. [back]

My abiding memory of Yosemite will be the weather. It rained as we drove into the park so we expected the views to be hidden from us and were pleasantly surprised when the low cloud made our first view of the valley more dramatic and different to the clear blue vistas found on postcards.

When we woke the next morning the rain was still pattering down on the roof of our heated canvas tent-cabin. We were recommended the Mirror Lake trail as likely to be the nicer of the standard sights given the conditions and the rain stopped long enough for us to enjoy the walk, and see the granite rock formations appear and disappear from behind the foggy clouds. By lunchtime, the temperature had dropped and the drizzle had turned to proper rain but undeterred we set off for the large torrent of water known as Yosemite Falls, not realising that that the clouds hid a second higher stage which was even more impressive. The weather had worsened to the point that we did not feel like risking our cameras and as we headed away from the falls, rain turned to sleet and we decided a few hours in the visitor centre museum and Ansel Adams gallery were not going to cause us to miss very much.

Sleet turned to snow while we were in the museum and we were very grateful when the friendly people at Camp Curry upgraded our tent-cabin from just heated to heated <strong>and</strong> insulated since the forecast was for it freeze overnight. Fortunately we survived the night and the sun arrived the next morning when we were greeted by a glistening fairytale landscape of snow-covered trees and granite pinnacles. The strong sunshine meant the snow began to melt quite soon on the trees on the valley floor, but watching it drip from the branches was picturesque in itself.

After a morning walk taking in the glorious landscapes (albeit dodging the melting ice as it fell from the higher trees!), we had an early lunch and then paid another visit to Yosemite Falls. However as we approached the cloud closed in again and around the falls there was definitely some soft wet precipitation that seemed to be more than just spray from the snow-melt fuelled torrent of water cascading down from on high, so the photographs were still taken rather hastily! Fortunately the clouds only delivered a mild hail storm and we were able to exit the Park without any weather-related problems. It may not have been pleasant at times, but the weather definitely enhanced this visit.

After two and a half days admiring California’s coastal scenery, it was time to turn inland and the National Parks of the Sierra Nevada. After being sent on a small detour by some wilful mis-signposting in the town of Atascadero, we drove into Sequoia National Park at dusk, as the last rays of the sun coloured the rocks a wonderful ochre shade of orange. After about 10 miles (and several thousand feet of altitude), the roadside became deep snow banks and the dashboard told me the air temperature was 43°F (~6°C)—a complete contrast from the 26°C we had been experiencing a few hours earlier. Sadly there was no time for sunset pictures though as we had to reach our lodgings before the restaurant closed and I had to suffer a dinner-starved Rosie!

The next morning was bright and sunny which caused the snow to glisten and sparkle. We set off from Wuksachi Lodge in search of a good walk to rid us of the memory of yesterday’s many hours in the car, and started with the Giant Forest of Sequoia trees and the largest (by volume) living tree on Earth, General Sherman. At 275 feet (83m), this tree isn’t even the tallest, or oldest, but its trunk continues to expand outwards each year and it (he?) is a fine example of these majestic trees. Since the snow on the trail from the car park to General Sherman was entirely compacted, we set off on a trail which was described as paved and very easy. It was only a few tens of metres before we realised that the trail was not marked apart from the paving, and that was hidden below increasingly less compacted snow. After guessing the direction wrongly once and having to hike back through ankle-deep snow, we returned to the car and went in search of a visitor centre to find out what was recommended in these conditions!

Apparently snow shoes are recommended for the trails at the moment, but since we also wanted to visit the big granite “Morro Rock”, we set off to see that before committing ourselves to snow shoe rental. While the walking trail was under snow, the (closed to traffic) road was mostly passable in hiking shoes, although the signage was so poor we took two wrong turns just 100m from the rock! The signs warned against climbing the rock if there was any snow or ice on the stairway, but the strong afternoon sun ensured we had a thrilling 400 step ascent to the 2049m elevation summit for some stunning views of a mountain range on one side and the deeper than the Grand Canyon valley on the other. The best part was that we had the rock entirely to ourselves, something there would be no hope of when the access road was open to cars in the summer!

The Big Sur is an area of outstanding natural beauty south of Monterey, California. US Highway 1 whiles and wends a course between a rugged coastline pounded by huge Pacific surf to the West, and steeply sloping hills to the East. Along the way there are a number of well maintained state parks offering short hikes to get a closer glimpse of the waves thrashing into the rocky beaches and cliffs, or on the other side of the highway, forested canyons and pretty waterfalls.

Our first stop was Point Lomos State park which featured some easy and uncrowded hiking trails to give us our first glimpse of the raw power of the Pacific. A second stop in Pfeiffer State Park took us inland through shady pine groves and spring wildflower to a gentle waterfall.

Further south, marked only by a sign saying “Narrow Road” (thanks to the Lonely Planet for clueing us up to this one!) we were able to get down to sea level and the gorgeous but wind swept Pfeiffer Beach. Big waves splashed impressively against building sized rocks near the shore, and the sand had pretty purple patterns due to the manganese garnet deposits washed down from the surrounding hills. The sun was baking but the incredible wind made it feel about as warm as a Cornish beach!

Most of the inland sections of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park were closed following extensive recent fire damage. However it does contain the rare sight of the pretty McWay Falls which cascades 80 feet directly onto a pristine unoccupied sandy beach (no public access to the beach was a condition of the legacy which gifted the park to the State). Many people turned around after seeing the falls, but the same trail led to a lookout point with a beautiful 270 degree vista of the coast.

We also stopped at Salmon Creek Falls, a more conventional three level drop within a forest canyon, but with a supreme location at the apex of a hairpin bend in one of the twistier sections of the road. This set of hairpins takes the road down to the coast again and follows the shoreline rather sedately, albeit with some fantastic views. The highlight of this section is undoubtedly the colony of Elephant Seals basking on the beach near Piedras Blancas: the beach is less than 50m from the highway, so viewing them is as easy as pulling into one of the spacious car parks and finding a good vantage point away from the other tourists!

There was no mobile reception at the place we stayed over the weekend but they did have a (slow) Internet connection!

In other news: I ate my own body weight in cheese for lunch at “Taco Temple”: green chillis stuffed with two types of cheese, deep fried with a side of beans, rice and more cheese…. Very tasty!

I have a fairly sizeable collection of video clips from our trip to New Zealand, which one day I hope to assemble into something which might be worthy of the term film.

My first observation is that while holiday photographs need a nominal amount of sorting and post-processing before being displayed, video is much more demanding of time, effort, and computing power. Having struggled to get to grips with previous incarnations, Apple’s iMovie 09 has been fantastic: arranging clips through drag and drop is very natural and when a “drop” is ambiguous it pops up a short menu of options. Cropping, rotating and reversing clips is simple and speedy (admittedly this is a borrowed MacBook Pro rather than my own wimpier and older MacBook). At first I was wary of the themes but the strong visual style makes it easy to decorate the film in an attractive way.

My second observation is that next time we capture videos there are some basic rules we can follow to make the post-processing a lot easier!

• Set the scene with a strong opening shot. For example, when capturing a ferry crossing, start the clip with the shot of the ferry’s funnel instead of panning onto it at the end (the aforementioned “reverse clip” feature has rescued at least one such clip which ended where it should have started).
• Keep the panoramas to a minimum: the vista may be beautiful but try to capture something a photograph cannot, such as the motion of waves lapping/pounding a shoreline.
• Leading on from the previous point, sound is important. The camera records audio as well as video, so even if there is little or no action the sound can bring interest to a clip.

To thank you for reading this far, while I have not finished my masterpiece film of our entire three week trip, I did make a short trailer featuring just the footage from our dolphin encounter in Kaikoura.

Bermondsey Street runs south from the always busy¹ “More London” riverside but (fortunately!) few tourists seem keen to venture under the imposing railway bridge to visit. Consequently it normally has a quiet village-like atmosphere, there’s even a little park half way down which might be the Village Green.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon it was bustling (for a village!) with friends and families heading to the gastro pubs and other brunch places (including a genuine greasy spoon!).

1. even on Christmas Day! [back]

While end of year retrospectives may seem like a good way for journalists to fill column inches during a period traditionally bereft of good new source material, I think it is healthy to be reminded of the recent past, to re-evaluate events within a wider context and a little bit of hindsight, and also marvel at how things which now seem so distant were actually recent (for example the day that London turned white).

Highlights for me in 2009 have undoubtedly been changing job, getting married and buying a flat—2010 is going to have a hard time living up to that! Holiday destinations in 2009 included San Francisco (including an amazing day of ski-ing in the sunshine in Tahoe), Gdansk and Sussex.

The three events mentioned in highlights did not leave me very much time to write about these trips here, or in fact write very much at all. There was also less need for me to write here to draw people’s attention to something: if I publish my photographs to Picasa Web then they are automatically pulled into Facebook and my friends are notified through in their new feed. The biggest change in web publishing in 2009 was not actually about the publication but consumption: twitter and the aforementioned Facebook news stream have provided non-techies with an interface to a facility geeks have had for years with a feed reader.

Traditionally, at this point, a review article should turn towards predictions for the new year. I do not have a prediction but a hope, that having to register individually for websites will become to be regarded as outmoded and unfashionable as blinking text. Not for important (or even semi-important) websites, but for “disposable” logins of low importance, privacy and security, I should really like to avoid having to generate a user/password combination and go through the rigamarole of “verification”. Do I ask too much?

Happy New Year.

The sheer convenience of being able to upload directly from iPhoto means that many of my photographs from 2009 have gone to Picasa web albums instead of this website. However during a recent upload I noticed that during the process the photographs were being overly sharpened which had the effect of creating ugly artefacts on buildings with intricate decoration (e.g. churches). The odd thing is that if you upload jpgs one at a time via the web interface, this did not happen.

Looking back to some photographs from earlier in the year you can see this else where. For example compare this photo of Rosie at the top of a cold and windy church tower to the Picasa version below.

Rosie at the top of the Rye Church tower.

Rye from the church tower (Picasa version)

Picasa was convenient but perhaps it is time to return to hosting my own photographs?

India Knight wrote in today’s Sunday Times that she could not understand the modern penchant for recording and posting one’s life to YouTube. Tomorrow’s children, she claims, will have an all pervasive collection of images (currently still but increasingly moving à la Harry Potter) of their parents’ lives whereas she has just a single photograph of her parents together.

After reading two earlier stories based on research into archived correspondence—one on the forthcoming Official Biography of The Queen Mother which used correspondence as the main source material, and a second about how actress Vanessa Redgrave’s life almost took a very different path—it struck me that this notion of having a record of life is perhaps not so new after all, although the medium has changed from prose to digital visuals which makes for a very different kind of record. Our descendants will know much more about how things looked but how will they learn the story behind the photograph?

Fortunately letter writing has already made something of a comeback thanks to the convenience of email and combined with the ubiquity of digital cameras, a future generation of biographers should have a very rich library of material to draw upon. The weak spot is there are many threats to digital collections: corporate email retention policies which automatically expunge emails after a certain period of time, hard drive failure and theft are some of the most common, yet in many cases the (incomprehensible to those of us that value privacy) desire to publish this material can produce a useful safety net against digital loss.

This website moved tonight, seemingly without any disruption thanks to the awesome people at Retrosnub who are my new hosting provider. If you spot any problems, please let me know in usual way, or leave a comment below.

After receiving some ‘bad’ luck in being on the rota to work the wet and miserable Easter weekend, on Easter Monday we headed down to the South Coast for a belated long weekend in the pretty Medieval port of Rye. Last year our Easter day trip to the South Coast was blighted by a shower of snow so we packed warmly and consequently boiled in the hot sunshine!

Rye is a small, cobble-streeted village which must have more tea shops per square mile than Rome has churches. When we arrived early Monday afternoon the place was overrun with out-of-towners but since they were patronising the tea shops, the surrounding countryside provided a pleasantly tranquil amble and by the time we returned the tea shops were all closed and the streets empty. A lovely place (if you like tea and cake), but best avoided on a bank holiday I think!

The following day was spent in Hastings, featured in at least one recent travel supplement as an ‘up-and-coming’ weekend getaway destination. The sea-front is very similar to Brighton, but less tacky, and while some bits were in the process of being renovated there was plenty that looked rather run down. After a morning of walking along the beach and feeling rather uninspired we started back towards the town to find some lunch. By chance we wandered into a lane to look at the menu for a café only to realise that it led to a whole street of smart(ish) cappuccino lounges and artisan shops that had been entirely invisible from the beach! We also spent a wondrous hour browsing the memorabilia and photographs in the Old Town Hall museum which gave us a flavour of how Hastings and the Cinq Ports have been the first line of England’s defences for over 1000 years. In the same street there is an organic bakery from which I purchased a very fine eccles cake for afternoon tea.

Hastings was too grey and overcast for good photos, but Rye was quaintly photogenic.

It was a lovely sunny day and there were some nice lilies in the flat:

Yesterday I upgraded my Ubuntu machine directly from Hardy Heron to Jaunty Jackalope (release candidate 1), in defiance of the release notes. I could not find any specific problems indicating what would happen if I broke the rules so I went ahead anyway and it worked fine—fortunately there is no Change Management Board in this flat!

Upon first boot it is not immediately obvious what is new in this release, although the new ‘Dust’ theme is so polished it feels like my desktop has received a heavy application of windolene, and it was nice to see that my widescreen monitor was now recognised automatically rather than requiring the installation of an additional package. Moving to Jaunty also brought an upgrade of my entire application set, including the latest version of Gnome Do which features an OS X-style dock.

Rarely is an upgrade without issues but this was a pretty good one:

• The Gnome desktop sharing service (vino-server) now causes X to consume 60% of CPU time even when no one is connected. The only workaround is to turn off desktop sharing.
• The new human-theme package conflicts with the Blubuntu theme packages. I just left this un-upgraded since I really like the blue theme.
• Not so much an issue, but after three years of successive upgrades there was some junk that needed to be removed manually: php5 and emacs22 are now default/production (and you still need emacs-snapshot for anti-aliased fonts) so I removed all the php4 and emacs21 packages. There were also half a dozen old kernels that were too out of date to be any use.