Author: Jonathan Sanderson

Remember Palin’s resignation speech, as edited by Vanity Fair? Here’s the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien getting William Shatner to deliver it as poetry:

Genius.

Oh. My. Heavens.

I’ll have more to say about Bang Goes The Theory – short version: I rather enjoyed it – but this little film of Jem enthusing about his magnificent vortex cannon is well worth a look:

Damn. Wish I’d seen that.

Incidentally, I’m rather surprised this isn’t on Boing Boing yet. Tsk, tsk.

Update Friday 30th: Gizmodo have it, via Makezine, though both seem to overlook that this is a supersonic shock-induced vortex, not merely whacking a bit of flappy fabric.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the longer item and Jem’s wonderful explanatory piece, above, are available only on iPlayer, within the UK. If they were on YouTube…

Flossie and I toddled up the coast to St. Mary’s Island, where we admired turnstones and waves and… the Red Arrows. They looped around the island before cutting inland, Red 10 dropping back while the display aircraft assumed the classic diamond 9 formation. Somewhere off to our North-West they performed a loop and break.

Whatever they were up to isn’t in their public schedule. First time I’ve seen them for years.

This is wonderful: Vanity Fair have given Sarah Palin’s resignation speech the editorial once-over, and published their red-pen scribblings. Wonderful to pick through and work out their reasoning.

Remember, though: this is simply getting the facts and form right. The harder part is taking the tight draft and thinking through the flow, the emotional arc, the overall shape of the thing. When the writing’s this bad it’s hard to see the structure, but getting the structure right is crucial.

Sticking with the automotive theme briefly: I think I know what I’m going to trade my Audi towards. And no, it’s not a Lotus, sorry.

Honda have announced that they’re going to put their CR-Z concept car – or something broadly like it – into production, as early as next year.

A funky little coupé thing, the CR-Z should be:

• light
• fairly nippy
• petrol-sipping
• a giggle to drive
• at least marginally practical, and
• affordable. Though sources vary on what ‘inexpensive’ means, in this context.

So far, so Smart Roadster Coupé, but with any luck the CR-Z won’t ship with the impressive water features of that model (if you owned one, you’ll know to what I’m referring). It’s also not being sold by Mercedes, which is a huge win, and it has rear seats, which is probably a marketing joke but we’ll run with it for the moment. And it’s a hybrid.

[cough] what? A hybrid, you say? Oh, drat.

It’s not that I have much against hybrids per se; I think they make a deal of sense for commuting and local trips. However, I don’t commute, nor do I make many local trips. On the open road, I’d just be hefting around a few hundred kilos of energy-intensive-to-make batteries, the main purpose of which is to increase rolling resistance and take up valuable luggage space.

But hey, we’ll see what set of compromises Honda goes with for the CR-Z. At least in principle, it should be possible to fit a fizzy little petrol engine and back it up with some electric torque to deliver fun performance without the weight and thirst of a big engine and gearbox. Perhaps the hybrid thing will make sense after all.

Or perhaps they’ll decide they have to build an Audi TT-competitor and will saddle the poor thing with a huge engine and a £25,000+ price tag. Personally, I think slow sports cars are the way of the future, but what do I know?

More details at Honda’s official site; lots of pictures around; yes, it does look like they saw spy shots of the back of the Volvo C30, assumed the front looked just as radical, and hence copied something that didn’t exist in the first place. I kinda like it.

Last week I was doing a workshop in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and my chum Gareth turned up in a multifuel-capable Exige demonstrator he’d blagged off Lotus. By the time we’d driven it around some back lanes (to make sure it worked, you understand) we didn’t have time to wash it, wait for decent light, or do any of the things you’re supposed to do when taking arty pictures of exotic cars.

Still, I’m pretty pleased with the resulting shots. The combination of the Sigma 10-20mm ƒ/4-5.6 ultra-wide zoom and a 50mm ƒ/1.4 prime gives lots of options forcing for detail via perspective and depth of field. I wish I’d had longer to play, though if I had I’d probably have spent it driving instead.

See the full set on Flickr here.

I’m on a train heading to the World Conference of Science Journalists, but I’m following the ‘New Media, New Journalism?’ plenary via Twitter. Obviously. A couple of people ( @franknorman, @emmapotter ) have mentioned that the National Science Foundation is planning to distribute a large number of Flip cameras to scientists in the US.

This piqued my interest, partly because I’m hoping to do something vaguely similar in the UK, but also because I think Flips are so so close… but ultimately not quite there. Distributing them this year might, I think, set a difficult precedent for the recipients, and steer us into making a whole load of wrong-headed video.

Ideally I’d show you what I think is wrong in a video, but people might start getting angsty if I haul out the three cameras I’m carrying (including a Flip Ultra), and start demonstrating on the train. So:

Let me be clear – Flips remain the cameras I recommend to people starting out with SciCast, and my colleague Alom seems to be handing them out like sweets to labs involved in the pilot of a project we’re developing. Flips are terrific because they get lots of things right:

• Decently wide-angle lens, which places the camera (and hence microphone) closer than with most similar cameras. This is also why I prefer the Ultra to the smaller (but longer-lensed) Mino.
• Low-light sensitivity is far better than the competition. This is critical.
• AA batteries (in the Ultra).
• Surprisingly effective auto exposure and white balance. Mostly, it ‘just works,’ again in contrast to most of the competition.

Overall, they’re very well set-up for going from somebody talking to you, to YouTube, as smoothly as possible.

Trouble is, people making short science films don’t want to be limited to filming a person talking. They want to film close-ups of an experiment, or a wide shot that still features reasonable sound. Here, the Flip fails – the minimum focus is about 60cm, and the screen is too small to see when it goes soft. The screen also doesn’t swivel, so it’s hard to shoot from the hip or a low angle. Finally, there’s no microphone input, so audio is unfixable if the built-in mic isn’t enough. It’s good for somebody speaking at arm’s length, but anything else is inevitably troublesome bordering on useless.

I hear the same complaints about Flips time and again, from people who love them but have run into their limitations. I steer some of them towards the Canon FS100/200, but the low-light quality isn’t anywhere near and they’re now clearly overpriced at £280. However, I’m not aware of anything else below about £500. Crazy.

I think there’s a clear market for a Flip Pro. Something like:

• Same sensor as the UltraHD.
• Perhaps a higher bitrate recording option?
• Autofocus lens. I’d be happy without a zoom, note: ‘zoom with your feet’ is a reasonable mantra. Or, fit a little screwthread on the front and let people make accessory lenses.
• 3.5mm jack mic input.
• Fold-out & swivel screen.
• I’d be willing to forego an SDHC card slot, but that’s a tough call.

The hard bit here is, I suspect, the lens… and then the knock-on effects to battery life. But I’d love to see Pure Digital try something like this. With their current products they already make more appropriate/enlightened compromises than do Canon or Sony. Now I want to see them push the boundaries a bit.

Who am I kidding, though? The hard part, obviously, is working out how to sell such a product. The original flip sold into an obvious (in retrospect) target market that had a clear precedent – mobile phone video was rubbish, but lots of people did it anyway. Surely they’d prefer to make films you could, you know, watch?

A Flip Pro would be breaking new ground, and that’s an order of magnitude more risky. Are people ready for it?

Flossie’s gran turned a hundred last week, and the following day there was a big family party. She’s a wonderful woman, who brought the house down as she heckled her eldest son in the middle of his speech, for going on and on. He wasn’t, but that’s not the point.

Here she is, playing with some of her great grandchildren. Say hello to Mrs. Persis James, known universally as ‘Nain.’ She rocks.

Monks. On Segways. With fire on their heads. Playing Philip Glass.
Genius, if not just a little bit odd.

via – where else? – Metafilter, where one comment describes the performance as ‘debilitatingly epic.’

Glenn Murphy’s article in the Guardian this morning points to the Science Museum as an exemplar of science engagement, asserting that their learning teams are “internationally renowned masters of inspiration and discovery-based learning.” Are they?

Frankly, it’s hard to say. I grew up in the North of England, so I’ve no particular affection for the Science Museum. They have a terrific collection which I enjoy exploring, but here we’re talking about their engagement and outreach work, not their museum/collections work. I came to the wider STEM engagement world after a decade or so in science broadcasting. In the years since I moved across, the impact of the Science Museum on my thinking has been, well, minimal.

Most of the big science centres have hosted my workshops or employed my services, which isn’t necessarily a mark of anything other than gullibility on their part, but at least means I have a working relationship with them. I know their staff, and talk industry politics, policy, and practice with them on a regular basis. We share knowledge and experience through the mailing list of the British Interactive Group, on which all major national centres are active… with the exception, notably, of the Science Museum. I count three messages from them in the last two years; compare with 80+ for Techniquest, 100+ for the Centre for Life, and 70+ from commercial provider Science Made Simple (and… er… 230 from me and even more from Ian Russell. Oops).

These same contributors are notable by their active part organising sessions at the practitioners’ conference, the BIG Event – a glance through the programme will show much participation from the likes of Thinktank and Glasgow Science Centre also. Science Oxford, meanwhile, seems to have a deliberate policy of aiming for the most memorable sessions in any given year.

Traditionally, the Science Museum don’t much engage with this community. They do their own thing, but they don’t talk to us. Part of this is undoubtedly down to a cliquiness – perceived or actual – of the BIG regulars, but it’s a few years since the Science Museum re-engaged with BIG, and their level of participation is starting to look odd. It’s not just a BIG thing, either, as they’re not noticeably involved with next week’s British Science Association Science Communication Conference.

Hence: the Science Museum are not, one would have to say, significant behind-the-scenes contributors to the STEM engagement community, at least within the UK. I could have learned about some of their projects if I’d been willing to trek to Milan for the ECSITE conference the other week, but the Science Museum’s participation in the UK scene appears to be minimal.

Surprised? Me too.

I’m delighted, therefore, that they’re delivering one of their shows at the BIG Event this year. It’s high time we saw them engage with their peers and fellow practitioners, discuss approaches and insights, and contribute to the advancement of the sector.

In particular, there’s a standard conception in STEM engagement that ‘it would all be OK if only we were properly funded.’ This is, I believe, dangerously lazy thinking, and the Science Museum could contribute significantly by showing that even with core funding, centres must continue to grapple with quality and development issues.

They’re also one of the few centres to dip their toes into the murky waters of online media, but there’s little sign they’re willing to share any lessons they may have learned or challenges they may be facing with the wider sector. Business imperative, or missed opportunity?

I’m not sure we’d trust the Science Museum to lead the community – those of us outside the capital are fed up of London-centric management – but let’s go for participation, shall we? We can haggle about leadership later, once we’ve established who leads at what.