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  • June4th

    1 Comment

    toLearn day 96: VHS FTW

    Posted in: Geek, Technology, toLearn

    Alright kiddos, let’s take you back to the old days and celebrate: the day VHS made it’s way to America.

    This is long before the Blu-ray and DVD debates, and back when it was VHS vs. Betamax (SAY WHAT?!).

    The VHS videocassette was introduced in North America at a press conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.

    VHS, or Video Home System (clever, right?), was based on an open standard developed by JVC in 1976. The format allowed longer playtime and faster rewinding and fast-forwarding. JVC showed a two-hour tape that was so compact, Popular Science called it “smaller, in fact, than some audio cassette decks.”

    The original system used to play VHS tapes cost $1,280 (about $4,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars). Blank tapes were $20 ($72 adjusted).

    Although Betamax debuted by Sony earlier than VHS, there were some big differences that ultimately led to VHS winning out. The VHS could record for two hours — enough to record a full-length movie — while Betamax had a recording capability of only an hour. VHS-based players were cheaper than their Betamax counterparts.

    In just its first year, the VHS format took 40 percent of the business away from Sony. By 1987, about 90 percent of the $5.25 billion market of VCRs sold in the United States were based on the VHS format.

    JVC introduced VHS HQ (for High Quality) in 1985. It promised greater noise reduction and improved sharpness in picture quality. Two years later, Super VHS made its debut. By then Betamax had started to fade.

    I know, this is SUPER interesting, right?

    The VHS VCR’s decline started as tape-based systems were replaced by hard-drive–based digital video recorders such as TiVo. The DVD format changed the game for prerecorded movies in March 1997 and ended up entirely replacing VHS.

    Hollywood studios stopped offering movies on VHS. The VCR, though, refused to die quickly. As of 2005, some 94.5 million Americans still owned VHS-format VCRs. (I do! And my family has a TON of VHS tapes still. If they get rid of them I will have a problem… yes, family, I’m speaking to you.)

    The last standalone JVC VHS VCR was produced Oct. 28, 2008. The company still makes combo DVD-VCR units.

    Stay tuned for the death of the DVD, coming you way over this next decade.

  • June3rd

    1 Comment

    toLearn day 95: AP Stylebook Socialized

    Posted in: Geek, Journalism, News, Technology, toLearn

    When I was in high school and into college I was into journalism. I was an editor, a writer/reporter, and I loved it. One of the books always in my bag was in the AP Stylebook. Yes, I was a different kind of geek then, but I had that book pretty well read over and I could tell you the right usage of most terms. (Nowadays…no way.)

    For those who don’t know, the AP Stylebook is like the journalist’s bible. (Oooh, I bet that I’m supposed to capitalize “bible”!) Everything has to be written a certain way in the journalism world — it’s quite intense!

    So when I read this week about some of the additions they’ve added to the AP Stylebook I had to laugh.

    One big change was it’s no longer “Web site”, but instead “website.” Altogether there are 41 new and changed definitions, use cases and rules for journalists to follow.

    Among the more interesting changes are separating out “smart phone” as two words, hyphenating “e-reader,” and allowing fan, friend and follow to be used both as nouns and verbs.

    AP has also decided to recognize a number of acronyms that are commonly used in texting and instant messaging. Most of them are fairly well-known to regular web and mobile phone users (ROFL, BRB and G2G among them), along with the odd “POS“. (Sorry folks, it’s not that POS.)

    According to the AP, POS stands for “parent over shoulder” and is used by “teens and children to indicate, in an IM conversation, that a parent is approaching.”

    Other terms making the cut include “trending,” “retweet” and “unfriend” (“defriend” is also acceptable, though the AP concludes it’s less common).

    Finally, the AP also offers some basic rules of thumb for how social media should and shouldn’t be used by journalists, with a focus on making sure they continue to confirm sources and information they find on blogs, tweets and other forms of social media.

    Really, how reliable is information found on tweets and Facebook? Blogs, but of course. I will say that the journalist in me has been dying knowing that I’ve been writing without sourcing most of what I write!

  • June2nd

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    toLearn day 94: youTube X1000

    Posted in: Geek, Technology, toLearn

    So here’s something random for the day: a guy decided to test the image and sound degradation that happens when you upload a video to YouTube, download it from YouTube, upload it again to YouTube, and on and on. And here’s the kicker: he did it 1,000 times.

    Even more odd is the psychadelic (oh yes, I just used that word…) result:

    Crazy, right?

    A lot of sites have been explaining it in detail, which I’ll sum up, but it seems to me the best explanation is by Michael Keaton in Multiplicity. You remember that movie, right? He makes copies of himself and the copies progressively become less intelligent. (Pizza Steve!)

    What really happens is that every time you upload a video to YouTube it gets encoded again by their servers. (Yes AMers, much like your work each week is encoded on the site!) When a video is encoded it gets compressed which takes out small details from the image and audio, leaving behind some artifacts. Done again, the missing details and added artifacts become a bit more noticeable.

    This works for us as viewers as our brains are great at filling in the missing parts — so much so that we don’t notice most of the time. So compressing a video once is fine as our brain makes up for the missing pieces.

    The problem you run into is when you continue to strip the video of details and continue to add artifacts. However one may argue that the end result is more interesting to watch than the original:

  • May30th

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    toLearn day 91: Darth Vader

    Posted in: Film, Geek, Star Wars, toLearn

    A random tidbit: In 1983’s Return of the Jedi, three different actors portrayed Darth Vader. The man in the costume was David Prowse, the voice was that of James Earl Jones, and the revealed face was that of Sebastian Shaw.

  • May30th

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    toLearn Roundup: days 84-90

    Posted in: Geek, Technology, toLearn

    toLearn updates for this week!

    Sunday, May 23rd – Day 84: RAW – RAW is the new JPG

    Monday, May 24th – Day 85: Brain Rewiring – How the Internet is rewiring our brains

    Tuesday, May 25th – Day 86: What motivates us – An interesting way to discuss motivation

    Wednesday, May 26th – Day 87: Influence Objects – Maya geekery

    Thursday, May 27th – Day 88: World of Color – A new show coming to Disneyland!

    Friday, May 28th – Day 89: Human Computer Virus – A real Weekly World News story

    Saturday, May 29th – Day 90: Creative Minds & Schizophrenia –

  • May15th

    1 Comment

    toLearn day 76: Geek Chic

    Posted in: Geek, toLearn

    No explanation needed:

    I’ve been trying to explain this to my family for years. Apparently “geek” is a combination of “intelligence” and “obsession” — sounds good to me. =)

  • May13th

    1 Comment

    toLearn day 74: Qapla’

    Posted in: Geek, toLearn

    I’m no Trekkie, but Klingon fans brace yourselves: our beloved Wikipedia has dropped Klingon from their logo:

    What can we learn from this? Well, looking for a Klingon translator for the title (Qapla’ meaning Goodbye, I think), I realized just how many hardcore Trekkies there are. Of course I’m not sure they like to be called Trekkies. And there are even people that try and speak in Klingon, complete with pronunciation guides and arguments why you can’t translate between Klingon and English.

    All I have to say is heaven help us if Klingon becomes the new language of choice. =)

  • May10th

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    toLearn day 71: a Virtual Worldwide Choir

    Posted in: Geek, Music, Random Fun, Technology, toLearn

    So how cool is this: Eric Whitacre is a composer whose choir is full of amazing vocalists from around the world, with 12 countries represented. The coolest part is that his choir actually never performs together in the same space as it’s a virtual choir. The choir performances are captured on youtube and then all tied together.

    So what’s toLearn about all of this? Well, I didn’t know you could pull of such a stunning a performance through the magical but seemingly limited youtube. I tell ya, this technology thing is pretty spiffy!

    The Choir performs Eric Whitacre’s original composition ‘Lux Aurumque’:

    To add to the coolness factor, you can watch each singer’s individual performance on youtube:

  • April18th

    1 Comment

    toLearn day 49: Going Chrome

    Posted in: Chrome, Geek, Technology, toLearn

    I finally have switched to Google’s Chrome.

    What is Chrome? It’s an internet browser made by Google, similar to Firefox or Internet Explorer (can anyone really justify using IE anymore?).

    I initially downloaded it when it was first released but back then it was pretty dang limited it seemed. But, I’m happy to report that it’s pretty freaking awesome.

    So now, I present to you the top 5 reasons you should make the switch too. =)

    Speed

    Chrome was designed specifically for speed and that’s one thing Google boasts about. A lot of speed tests have been done featuring Google Chrome versus other web browsers and each time, Chrome comes out the winner. It starts faster, loads pages faster and runs web applications faster.

    Stability

    The tabs in Google Chrome are designed to work independently of each other. This ensures that an error in one tab does not affect other tabs or the entire browser. Even plug-ins and JavaScript run separately. This is unlike other internet browsers where an error in a single tab can cause the entire browser to shut down. I LOVE THIS. If a tab freezes, it pops up a window asking if you’d like to kill that tab instead of crashing everything. Brilliant.

    Security and Safety

    Google Chrome makes use of a technique called Sandboxing where the browser is prevented from being able to modify or read information from your computer. Therefore, if a hacker is able to exploit your browser it would be useless to him/her. Malware is prevented from installing itself on your computer through your browser because Chrome cannot write files to your computer. Google Chrome is also regularly updated with a list of suspected malware and phishing sites. Whenever you are about to visit one of these websites, a warning appears on your screen telling you that the site may damage your computer.

    Control

    Chrome provides a Task Manager – like the one in your computer’s operating system – that allows you to see what is happening inside your browser. On the task manager, you can see the amount of memory and network used by each tab. Thus, you can tell which tab is hogging resources and making your connection or computer slow. You can then close the tab or even end its process right there in the task manager. If a page is loading too slowly, you can check to see if it is using the network. If there is no network activity for the tab, you can choose to refresh it. These are just some of the things you may do with the task manager.

    Multilingual Web Surfing

    Google Chrome is now the only browser that lets you make use of any website regardless of its language. It does this by allowing you to translate the website. This new “polyglot” feature makes use of the Google Translate tool. Your browser is automatically updated to use this feature and you do not have to download any extensions or add-ons. It does not require the website to have language versions.

    Instead, it automatically detects if the website is not rendered in your preferred language and displays an option bar that asks if you would like to translate it. With this new ability, an English speaker can visit and use Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and French websites and so many others.

    Now go get Chrome!

  • April13th

    No Comments

    toLearn day 44: Mac tip – quick renaming

    Posted in: Geek, Mac, toLearn

    Working with hundreds of photos, I finally figured out a quick way on my mac to rename them just how I want them and quickly. This is especially useful when using background images in Maya and need the images named a certain way. And who knew there were so many already built in scripts in AppleScript.

    To turn on the script menu go into your Application folder > AppleScript > AppleScript Utility. Select the check box for Show Script Menu in menu bar. You should now see the script menu in your menu bar.

    For quick renaming, you can use the “Replace Text in Item Names” script which takes a group of files or folders and performs a find and replace on their names.

    1. Find the location of the files or folders that you want to rename.
    2. Go to the script menu and into Finder Scripts.


    3. Select “Replace Text in Item Names”.
    4. You will be prompted to select File Name or Folder Name. Select which ever you would like to change.
    5. Enter the text that you would like to replace.
    6. Enter the new text.
    7. You will receive a confirmation notice. Select Ok, and you are done.

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