Alaskan Retrospective: Whales and Glaciers

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The Alaskan coast is a fantastic place to observe whales due to the abundant food supply, it apparently has more bald eagles than the lower 48 states and has some awe-inspiring scenery, including Glacier Bay National Park. The Pacific North-West is known for its unpredictable and rapidly changing climates so to have such superb weather in September was very lucky.

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A teen flick that’s actually good and something completely different

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When the inflight entertainment guide quoted Empire magazine as saying Easy A was the best teen comedy since Clueless, I decided that it was a low risk proposition to spend some of my 10 hour flight putting that claim to the test.

At first I was sceptical but after I caught myself laughing-out-loud during an early scene, I was hooked. An updated telling of The Scarlet Letter, it is a tongue-in-cheek and self-referential demonstration of how issues of image, the human need to belong, and hypocrisy within small communities (whether they be the old English village or the modern high school) remain timeless. It is not as ground-breaking as Clueless simply because Californian high school culture has been “done”, but it is nice to see an intelligent and (a bit too) clever central protagonist bringing a higher tone of humour to the genre.

In contrast Scott Pilgrim v The World feels like a teen flick but technically is not one (we are told the eponymous lead is 22 years of age). This was similarly highly billed as “witty, dazzling and highly original”, and it is certainly different but only going to make sense if you understand video game culture. The plot line is familiar: boy meets girl and must win her heart by overcoming his rivals and/or succeed at some task or competition. The twist is that the usual real-life scenarios are instead portrayed allegorically as a series of video game levels. It is agreeable watching, although sadly it is never explained what the central characters actually have in common to make their relationship plausible. But then many video game purists claim that storyline should be secondary to gameplay—entertainment—anyway, and it certainly has that.

A Short Survey of Music Retail

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On Wednesday I went to a fantastic gig by KT Tunstall. I had already listened to (and mostly liked) her new album via Spotify but the concert confirmed that this was music worth owning (such an outmoded concept!). Here is a short survey of a consumer’s music purchasing options as of this week:

  • The cheapest price for a physical CD was £8.49 at Amazon. Spotify means I have no requirement for the instant gratification afforded by downloads and a CD also provides the highest fidelity with no worry about digital loss, but there is a lifetime storage cost of such low density physical media.
  • Amazon will also sell me the same album in 256kbps MP3 format for £7.49.
  • 7digital are a competing digital download service and the price was £7.99. I was impressed with their “digital locker” feature which allows repeat downloads of your purchases, automatically providing an offsite backup. The files were also encoded at the higher rate of 320kbps and can be downloaded as a zipfile in your web browser, unlike Amazon which requires you to use a separate application.
  • For an iTunes user the iTunes store is arguably the most convenient method of buying music, and the price matches 7digital, £7.99. Like Amazon there is no option to re-download and the bitrate is the lower-but-probably-not-noticeable, 256kbps. The store is so popular I am assuming that in the long term there should be no significance attached to the files being in the AAC format instead of MP3.

Having enjoyed KT providing some context for the songs on the new album I also looked to see if any store would provide me with electronic sleeve notes. iTunes offers a digital version of the DVD (for the same price as Amazon charges for physical media) but no store offered any non-music extras.

Conclusion? I decided 7digital offered the best combination of convenience, durability, quality and price because physical storage space is at a premium in a flat, and good off-site backup is a significant cost.

The Aeroplane Film Review: The A-Team

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The problem with remakes, especially of nostalgically remembered classics, is that they often over-play the ingredients of the classic to the point where they dominate the modern version and the cake as a whole does not taste good. I recently caught an episode of the original TV series and it was preposterous—helicopter gun fights over an LA suburb resolved with the bad guys crashing into a cliff but somehow crawling intact from the burning wreckage—surely Hollywood would take this as a licence to produce the worst kind of implausible nonsense that is present in every big explosion action film?

Surprisingly they did not. The modern version retains but updates the humour and of course the action is thoroughly modern. It’s still ridiculous but entertainingly so, and actually more plausible than many straight-action capers and Liam Neeson is on wicked form as Hannibal. My only disappointment was the rousing theme tune made only a single appearance, but perhaps that was a fair price for them not overplaying the nostalgia.

BCS Magazines: All Gloss, No Substance

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I have been a member of British Computer Society (BCS) since undergraduate when the regular magazines from BCS gave me a glimpse into how working in IT might involve more than than the algorithms and computational theory being taught in lectures.

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]

Enjoying the outdoors in San Francisco

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San Francisco’s climate is ideal for outdoor-activities, warm and pleasant, not baking and burning. While the city itself is too busy and hilly to explore lazily by bike, the 17 mile ride from The Presidio to Tiburon is mostly flat, away from motor traffic and provides plenty of opportunities to enjoy the beautiful bay and bridge.

FreeviewHD PVR Review

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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.

A Personal History of UNIX Tool Management on OS X

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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]

Yosemite

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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.

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Sequoia National Park

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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

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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!

Off the Grid

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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!

On Motion Pictures

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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

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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]

Reviewing 2009

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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.