I decided to watch a movie tonight. I pulled up Netflix and looked at my queue, and it struck me how ridiculously few items from my queue were available for streaming. So few that I decided to count them. I have 257 items in my Netflix queue (counting multi-season and multi-disc entries as a single item). Of those 257, only 28 are available for streaming. That’s just 11% coverage. In addition, 12 aren’t available for streaming or on disc, leaving 217 to rent as discs.
On December 23rd, my MacBook Pro died. The screen started flickering, and the entire graphical layer died. The underlying Unix system was still responsive, and I could SSH in, but that was it. Rebooting the machine, it would run for a while, then die with the same fault. I used rsync to create a full backup–I already had a Time Machine backup, but better safe than sorry. After a couple more reboot cycles it stopped booting entirely.
The first video camera I ever used was the Sony HVC-2000P, with its “outstanding” 6X zoom lens. It weighed a “lightweight” 2.5kg, so you had to brace it on your shoulder and peer into the monochrome viewfinder. That was just the camera. To actually record something, you needed the SL-3000 portable Betamax VCR. That was the size of a small suitcase, and weighed an additional 9.1kg. You wore it on a shoulder strap, on the shoulder that wasn’t supporting the camera.
YouTube has started offering HD video. I’m not sure it’s really HD, but it’s way better than the crappy pixelated video they used to offer. I re-encoded the video of our new parakeet meeting Chester for the first time. I’ve uploaded it in HD. The result is much clearer. Now to re-do all my other movies… For anyone else hoping to do the same, the magic settings for QuickTime / iMovie are: 1280×720 progressive, MPEG-4 H.
Eeyore’s Birthday Party Yeah, I’ve edited last year’s just in time for this year’s. I had a sudden outbreak of weddings to deal with.
The New York Times reports that most people have decided to sit out the HD format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I’m one of them. I remember DCC vs MiniDisc. MiniDisc won, if by ‘won’ you mean ‘lingered for a few years longer’. I also remember SACD vs DVD-Audio. Both of those lost, in that even people who have DVD players capable of playing DVD Audio (like me) typically don’t bother to hook them up to support it (like me).
How would you like a digital video camera that records 15fps video in 3GP format (QuickTime-compatible) direct to flash drive, is small enough to fit in a pack of gum, and has 33 hour capacity? It’s currently $295. In less than 10 years cameras like this will be so cheap anyone will be able to afford one. Phones will be able to upload their video live to the Internet, in case of confiscation.
While we were in England, we got the train from Bournemouth to visit London. London was an important part of my life as soon as I was old enough to be allowed to travel there without adult supervision. Some people are naturally country folk, some people are city people; even though I grew up in small villages and quaint towns, that was never where I really wanted to be. I was curious to see how London had changed since I last saw it, nearly 10 years ago.
I’m not sure why Google video always seems to hose the first few seconds of the video.
The first one shown is Blacktip, who we haven’t seen in months. Maybe this time he’s gone for good. He never did learn to leap at the corn.