Kasblah

If you look at early film and television it’s primarily studio-based. Secondary shots were captured on location but primary shots with actors were mainly filmed in a controlled studio environment, with a combination of props, staging, projections, etc used to recreate the exterior location. Early audiences were ok with this but today we scoff at the sometimes crude look of these productions.

Over time directors also took their productions outside, facilitated by innovations in technology. More flexible equipment with higher reliability allowed productions to move outside the studio while still maintaining a large degree of control of the process. Audiences also became accustomed to believing what they saw on the screen. Clearly if the location was fantastical (say the planet Pandora ) this doesn’t apply, but if the character is walking down the street of a typical US neighborhood you kind of expect they filmed in some typical US neighborhood… or…?

Enter technology again. For years our visits to places like the planet Pandora have been made possible by big budgets and pioneering visual trickery on a large scale: greenscreens, motion tracking, and CG all have played parts. But this technology has now trickled down to a level where it’s being used to replace the mundane. Enter Ugly Betty, a sitcom about a New York network assistant. I’ve never actually watched the show but apparently they prefer to film it in California because it’s cheaper. Watch the clip below:

The producers of this video market their services as a “Virtual Backlot”. This is an interesting name because the backlot was (and still is) the halfway-house for productions, a controlled outside environment in the backyard of the studio. But the backlot is a physical structure and it cannot be reconstructed for every production, and it is limited in size/scale/scope. The “Virtual Backlot” however opens up the world, the production can travel to any location immediately, and multiple productions can share the same studio because a new backlot can be “loaded up” at any time. The cost savings are substantial, and the technology will only get better, more carefully matching the athmosphere of the original location with the “set”.

So it appears everything we see on television or film anymore, no matter how normal or mundane, is potentially shot in a big green studio somewhere. The production industry is coming full circle, on-location realism is now available in the controlled environment of the studio.

I’ve had a PVR for almost 2 years now and after mostly sitting idle, taping a rare late night movie (which we still haven’t watched), it’s all if sudden being used all the time! What happened? For one we are parents now, and bedtime is not what it used to be anymore,

Strange boat visiting Bergen this week, named simply “A” it is pure russian ogliarch gone mad.

Saw this strange device in Trondheim today, it’s apparently the only one in the world! Invented by local inventor/mad scientist, it pulls the tired and weary Trondheim cyclist up a particularly wicked incline.

My brother recently forwarded me the picture above, the mighty Casio MT-70, also my first keyboard. I had actually forgotten I ever owned this plastic wonder so it prompted me to take stock of the gear I’ve used over the years. I still have a keyboard but it gets little attention these days, so much else going on. It waits patiently for my return. Anyway on to the list:

Casio MT-70: tiny keys, limited polyphony, and cheesy sounds. But it was still pretty amazing. Drum beats and comp, real ompa band. And a limited monophonic sequencer, with lights above the keys telling you where to play. It even had a barcode reader and a booklet of songs that could be “scanned” in, teaching music and preparing for a career in retail all at the same time! Ca 1985, cost unknown, not sure what happened to it!

Roland Alpha Juno 1: bought this from a kid in school, my very first programmable synthesizer. A real bend knob for those cool leads. Real size keys but plastic feel, no touch-sensitivity. Cool input wheel though, useful for tweaking the envelopes and filters but with a 16-line display still a chore. Had a special audio jack in the back that could be used to store preset data on a regular casette deck. 1987, 4000kr, traded for D-10.

Roland D-10: bought this at now-defunct Flatøy Musikk in Bergen, a favorite after-school hang-out for many years. When they got the first D-50′s there was a huge buzz surrounding the synth/sample technology, and the D-50 did sound awesome. Unfortunately it was way out of my price range so I settled for the “little brother” D-10 which arrived a year later. The sound was still good although a bit thinner, but it made up for it by having drums and being multi-timbral: it could play up to 8 different instruments when used with a sequencer. Or you could play the internal demo songs which I must have done a million times. 1988, 9000kr, currently in storage.

Yamaha TG-33, Ensoniq SQ-R: once I started using a sequencer on my trusty Amiga the need for more/new sounds was inevitable. Unlike today when the smallest iMac ships with GarageBand and a gazillion samples, in the old days you had to buy new hardware. The TG was a cheapo version of the Korg Wavestation which was the hot thing at that time, the concept was to “morph” your 4 soundgenerators with a joystick, either in realtime or as a part of the finished sound. It was good for synth-type sounds that pulsated or blended in and out over time. Otherwise the 12-bit samples were pretty cruddy for real-world sounds. The SQ-R however was a very clean sounding module with mostly sample playback, which made for great piano, guitar, etc. 1991-92, $500,$800, currently in the rack.

Roland XP-60: this one was kind of an impulse buy, I was looking for an upgrade to the D-10, and also something with a built-in sequencer to simplify recording. I had spent some days playing with a friends Korg M1 and enjoyed the ease of creating music without the computer. But the M1 was getting old at that time and the massive built-in sound library of the XP was a big draw. Unfortunately the XP sequencer is not made to be used by humans, it is cryptic and a pain. So I continued with the computer. It’s still a nice keyboard, good keys with after-touch sensitivity, a massive display, 6 sliders for real-time tweaking of sound parameters, which combined with the arpeggiator makes for loads of fun. 1997, $1200, still playing.

Alesis QS-8: big, heavy monster of a keyboard, 88-keys fully weighted, great piano and organ sounds. Bought it primarily to play with the department band, it also had a lot of good synthy sounds. It was a good looking keyboard, with polished wood ends. 1998, $1400, sold on eBay.

I posted last months video in Flash format, using the new Flash Video Player plugin for WordPress. It seems to work pretty well now, unlike last time I tried it a few versions ago. I really like the ease of embedding the files, including the simple way it handles preview images. With QuickTime this was a pain and the code pretty obnoxious. With Flash all you need is this:

flashvideo file=http://www.kasparius.com/videos/liv11months.f4v image=http://www.kasparius.com/videos/liv11months.jpg /

It’s also a lot easier on visitors, with no preloading until you choose a video to play. On the downside the preview image loading seems mildly flaky but I can live with it.

So the site has undergone an update to the more recent videos moving them over to Flash format. In many cases I wasn’t able to code them from the original Final Cut project which leads to some quality loss, but the overall result is good and all new videos will be coded directly to Flash.

So how much energy does the average person use every day? Swiss scientists worked the numbers and came up with a model for each country’s total energy consumption back in 1998 and divided it by the number of citizens. The result showed that as a planet we average about 2000 watts continuously (17,520 kilowatt-hours per year). That’s equivalent to leaving the hairdryer on 24/7!

Of course, the model didn’t just include electric use, but rather all energy use translated into watts. So our 2000 watts include all the energy used to make our lives go round: the energy used to produce and deliver our food, our gadgets, the fuels used to run our vehicles, etc, they even included the energy used to run sewage plants and other “invisible” things that make our everyday what it is.

So the 24/7 hairdryer doesn’t seem a lot for all this after all? Unfortunately 2000 watts was the planet average. 2004 figures estimate the average European uses three times the average (6000 watts) and the average American twice that again (12,000 watts). Norwegians weigh in at a hefty 8,000 watts.

Not surprisingly the model paints a world of energy haves and have nots, but more alarmingly gives us a reminder how energy use will grow in the future as nations like China and India continue their rapid development. And unfortunately most of the energy we use today comes from limited, non-renewable, carbon-emitting sources. In addition to the impact on global climate there is the risk of conflict as resources grow scarcer.

Along with the model came a vision of a 2000-watt society. A world where most people limit their energy use to 2000 watts. The model aims to more evenly redistribute energy as well as establish a sustainable level of energy usage for the future. Technological advances play a major role in reaching this goal, such as passive house design, zero-energy buildings, low-emission vehicles, etc.

Seems everyone has a post on April Fools, so here’s mine:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/betamaxhd.html

Video geeks will enjoy the irony of this one…

I’ve had a hankering for a good racing game to play on my PC, and after some reading I saw that the new DiRT game is supposed to be the best looking car game ever. Then I read the system specs… my PC doesn’t even meet the minimum specs. Ouch! I knew it wasn’t top dog anymore but it’s barely 2 years since I upgraded it with mid-range components. Hell, it plays that former graphicscardbuster Half-Life 2 just fine!

Disappointed I loitered around Steam for awhile looking for something my dinosaur could handle, and came across a game called TrackMania. A wacky sort of racing game where the cars drive on impossible tracks and jump 10 miles off cliffs, etc Lots of fun. Plus trackbuilder software and a buzzing online community where people compete on each others tracks.

I think the whole Apple iPhone show is fun to watch. Apple releases a phone “for the rest of us”, and predictably every grumpy nerd is complaining about this and that feature missing. Meanwhile a million people have bought the phone since it was launched last week, not bad at all. Apple stock is up 10%.

So is this a flicker for Apple or will the iPhone become a mobile juggernaut along the lines of the iPod? Like the iPhone the iPod was fairly basic when it arrived in stores, other more “features-heavy” MP3 players were already around. But fairly quickly through its combination of style and user-friendliness (and later the successful iTunes store) the iPod came to dominate the MP3 player market. Can the iPhone manage a similar feat? Will it spread beyond the Mac faithful? I think this quote from Business 2.0 is right on when it comes to where this may be headed:

Some prognosticators are predicting that demand will slow down once all of the Apple enthusiasts have bought their iPhone.

I think just the opposite. Apple now has perhaps 500,000 or 1,000,000 additional sales people added to their sales force at no cost to them. IPhone owners are so enthusiastic, and everyone else is so curious, that there will be millions of iPhone demonstrations being conducted today and every day for the next few months. That will sell a lot more iPhones.