In recent times I find it is rare that the BCS’s increasingly glossy publication, IT Now, contains anything of interest. Too often an article appears to be a modified version of a corporate marketing piece with the specifics of the company’s product removed so as to maintain the illusion of being editorial rather than advertorial. The result is even worse than an actual sales pitch since all substance is lost!

A recent special issue on open source software was especially disappointing. The articles were not the usual marketing speak, but they were still vague and anecdotal rather than informative and analytical. For example, an article entitled “Cracking the Desktop” fails to mention Firefox, one of the most successful open source desktop applications.¹ A case study of the challenges faced when deploying this faster and more secure alternative to older versions of IE to corporate desktops would have been informative, yet the article looks at the cost benefits of switching to OpenOffice, an obsolete technology compared to online office tools such as Google Docs.

“Can Open Source Be Secure?” also exemplified the lack of editorial rigour in IT Now. The phrase “Experts do not agree” should not be allowed without referencing at least two sources (i.e. the “experts” on either side of the argument) yet the article contains no citations at all. The label ‘Journalist hiding their own opinions…’ from http://www.tomscott.com/warnings/ should perhaps be applied here.

I have renewed my BCS membership for another year on the basis that my local branch and Specialist Groups provide some value. The new Academy of Computing project should be given a chance to demonstrate that it can be the UK’s Learned Society of Computer Science, but the chance of another copy of IT Now not going directly to my recycling bin is slim.

BCS members can participate in a discussion about the future of IT Now.

1. As of today, Mozilla reports 127 million downloads since 21st January 2010 versus 48 million OpenOffice.org download since 11th February 2010. [back]

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.

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]

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqe0y9pyng4

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]