The Daily Grind

Every now and then, I like to start a rumour that’s entirely fabricated, in the hopes that it will turn out to be legitimate after all. Thus:

I hear on the grapevine that Wolfram are looking at building out an iPhone version of Mathematica. The idea of something the size of a pocket calculator being able to do hard-core algebra is exciting enough, but there’s a kick in the tail here – apparently, the front-end on the iPhone can be made to talk to a back-end running on a Mac Pro or indeed any Mathematica grid. Wooohaa!

One significant problem is that the App Store isn’t currently configured for products costing in excess of £2,000.

I ended up doing a whole bunch of sessions at the BIG Event last week, but undoubtedly the most fun was a bunch of us pratting around with a range of demos outdoors. My bit, with Elin, involved dangling my mobile phone off a kite in a valiant attempt to take a group photo. We failed, but somehow that ends up being less important than the attempt.

Here’s the rig and first attempt, from the ground:

And the result of that:

So here’s the second attempt, in which we were shooting video:

Anyone still interested can see our very first kite video attempt, shot last year, on SciCast: here.

The thing that most impresses me about the trailer for the next Bond film?

The colouring. Flat-out amazing, in every shot. Beautiful.

Presumably pronounced ‘Zix’? Anyway, Kodak have a new camera coming out that’s making noises (more)(more) along the lines of it being a potential Flip-killer.

My worries:

• No mic jack. Again. Gaaah. Wired lapel mics are less than £35 and allow you to shoot basically anything. Strap ’em to a broom handle to make a cheapskate boom mic – background noise rejection and wind handling suck but everything else rocks. Without a mic jack you can shoot a single-person midshot only; anything else and the audio is pot luck.

• Shooting from the hip is often more pleasing than shooting from eye level. The Flip’s handling and vertical view angle preclude this. Looks like the Zi6 might have the same problems. Drat.

But here’s the biggie:

• low light performance?

The Flip excels here; my otherwise-brilliant Canon FS100 sucks in poor light. 720p from a device as small as the Zi6 implies very little sensor area per pixel, which in turn suggests rubbish low-light performance.

The genius of the Flip Ultra is surprisingly subtle. It doesn’t do anything brilliantly – it’s that it does things ‘well enough’, in a wide enough range of circumstances, that you don’t notice it and just get on and shoot video. The ‘wide range of circumstances’ includes, critically, low light conditions.

At the moment the only review of the Zi6 I can find is this largely content-free post at Crunchgear which says the quality is ‘pretty good.’ What does that mean? I’ve no idea.

I guess we’ll have to wait for Andy Ihnatko to review his unit, when it arrives.

I demoed this in my flashes-of-decent-stuff-but-mostly-it-was-crock webby-techy-stuff talk at the BIG Event last week: Oh My Science. (Follow them on Twitter, too).

Brilliant project. I was suggesting to the assembled (who mostly run science visitor centres) that they run this on massive screens behind their reception desks. Though I think to be really effective in that circumstance it’d need:

• Profanity filtering. Family audiences, folks.
• Scrolling view, à la Twistori.

…the latter because there’s something mesmeric about watching the world stream past you. Humbling, is what it is. Frightening, perhaps.

When College Humor get things right, they really nail it. Their Font Conference sketch is genius.

I’ve just heard Hamish Mykura, head of documentaries at Channel 4, on The World at One, discussing Ofcom’s findings following complaints about the film ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle.’ He was proclaiming that while Ofcom found the programme in breach of the Broadcasting Code with regards to reflecting a range of views, it did not find that it ‘materially misled’ the audience.

As Mykura well knows, that’s not how this game works. In fact, I’d suggest that it’s both misleading of him and a misrepresentation of Ofcom’s position to present its findings in those terms. To quote Ofcom directly:

Whilst Ofcom is required by the 2003 Act to set standards to ensure that news programmes are reported with “due accuracy” there is no such requirement for other types of programming, including factual programmes of this type.

That is: Ofcom haven’t ruled on the factual accuracy of the programme, since they don’t believe they have the power to. Which makes sense, actually – public service broadcasters have a responsibility (requirement, actually) to reflect the views of minority groups in society. Including anthropogenic climate change-denying scientists, I suppose.

The Code relating to misleading the audience is explained thus:

“Ofcom is required to guard against harmful or offensive material, and it is possible that actual or potential harm and/or offence may be the result of misleading material in relation to the representation of factual issues. This rule is therefore designed to deal with content which materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm or offence.”

To paraphrase: the test here is whether the film-maker was trying to offend the viewer. That’s a very high standard indeed.

It’s worth reading the Ofcom ruling in full, actually. It’s very subtle, and a lovely example of a regulator walking a tightrope between criticising broadcasters for being arses, and avoiding setting precedents that might have freedom of speech implications.

But their findings are not a vindication of the film, as Mykura appeared to be claiming. Ofcom did not find evidence that the film set out to cause harm or offence, but that’s all one can say.

My opinion remains that it was a nasty little film of twisted logic. Bad journalism; arguably good TV; wholly irrelevant to the wider global warming debate. I’m slightly surprised that so many people took it so seriously, particularly those who think it supports their position. What, they suddenly believe the rubbish they see on television?

That’s a bit selective of them, isn’t it?

This story reminds me why I left O2 in the first place, and went scurrying back to Orange. I’m far far far more keen on having an iPhone than whatever the current model of N95 is when my Orange contract is up in September, but I can’t begin to express how much I wish Apple had done the exclusive deal with anyone other than O2.

Ugh.

Bad: It’s larger than I’d expected. Dinky, but not truly pocketable. Performance in low light is poor to very poor; indoors during the evening, I’d wager on ‘dreadful.’ The lens is rather too long, so while the microphone actually isn’t too bad, by the time you’re standing far enough away for a pleasingly-framed shot it’ll be next to useless. There are also some bizarre quirks, like having to plug it into the mains while it’s connected via USB, and there being no way of telling it the USB connection has been broken.

However: it works rather nicely with iMovie’08 (it ‘just works’), it has a microphone input jack (wooohoo!), and the trick with pushing headphones not quite all the way into the AV-out socket seems to work, more-or-less.

So… actually, I quite like it. Yes, it’s limited. The picture quality is roughly on a par with a Flip Ultra – a little better in good light, I think, but on cursory inspection noise seems less well-controlled as the light drops off. It’s more flexible, however, having a microphone jack and a proper zoom lens.

My current camera picks, then, are:

• ~£100: Flip Ultra
• ~£200: Canon FS100
• £500-£700: Canon HF10, HG10, HV30

There are compromises associated with each of these. But so long as you know what they are, you can still make a perfectly decent film with any of them.

I’ll shoot a proper comparison review in the next couple of weeks, putting the Flip, Busbi, and FS100 against my old miniDV camera and a PD150.

Back when ranting about wannabe editors, I noted the Newtek Tricaster, and said:

“$8,000? This is going to get killed as soon as hardware catches up.”

Looks like that’s next month: BoinxTV.

Boinx rock. The Coding Monkeys rock. Three cameras, transitions, lower thirds, and the rest… on a MacBook?

Hell, yeah.