A big difference being at a large university like MIT? There are all these cool (and relevant) seminars happening all the time here.

Duh.

Photo Credit: kevandotorg

Overhead Projector
oh no!

What did I do?

Focus it.

My work for the day is done, I can go home now. j/k

One step forward two steps back.

It looks like United has finally implemented a digital in-flight media system. From the mid-1990s through late-2008 they typically used a tape-based system (it looked like Hi8 or maybe some other 8mm format tape) that required manual operation by the flight attendants. The new system appears to work in a nearly automated fashion. The purser/flight attendant enters an access code, the duration of the flight, and the system takes over. I’ve wondered why, as other airlines have moved to on-demand systems and integration with new technologies such as USB ports at seats, the ability to play iPods via entertainment systems, why United has taken so long to adopt these “new fangle technologies”.

Things aren’t all peachy. The problems with fully automated systems…

Photo Credit: vividhsiddha

Well, at least it's open source

It’s more of a, “Push the button and hope for the best.”

“Restart” If the system needs to be restarted, it has to start over at the beginning. On a flight in June, someone noticed that the wrong movie was playing. Apparently the purser selected the wrong programming (they were going to show the westbound programming on an eastbound flight—which means I’d have to watch the same movie over again, it wasn’t that good the first time through). The purser reset the system, but we had to watch the lead in short feature before the movie, even though the prior programming was queued up to the movie.

“Commericals” The system automatically inserts commercials in the short features and movies. For TV shows, this isn’t so bad, they’re designed with commercials and are intended to have interruptions. For movies, the system seems to pick bad times to insert the commercials. The commercials don’t seem to be programmed in, but inserted randomly. So if there’s a dramatic moment, or a action sequence, expect a commercial to interrupt the flow of the movie. By contrast when movies are played on TV, the broadcasters usually do a much better job of breaking up the flow of the movie. Or perhaps United needs to pay someone more money to select better spots for its commercials. Now that I think about it, hey, what are “commercials” doing in the middle of a movie. that’s new too! =(

/sigh

A recent article by the BBC says…

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a “soliciting purr” to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Gill, Victoria. (2009, July 13). Cats exploit humans by purring.
Retrieved July 15, 2009 from BBC Web site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8147566.stm

There’s also some interesting reading in the comments on Slashdot. And you may enjoy these cats as well.

Photo Credit: firesign

Turn signal, use it!

1. Use them!
2. Use them!
3. Use them? Please?
4. Turn signals are there to communicate your intent. Please help others not hit you because you’re doing something that you can easily communicate.
5. Turn signals are not substitutes for your hazard lights. If you signal to pull over to the side of the road and then stop there, switch to your hazard lights. You’ve gone from “turning” to “stopping”, you have different controls to indicate that.
6. Use your turn signal before you start to brake for a turn. If you’re going to be considerate enough to use your turn signal, please do it before you start to brake for the turn. Otherwise others might think you’re doing something really dumb.
7. Heck, use your turn signals before you start to do that action, not after.
8. Just using a turn signal does not give you the right to turn left in front of on-coming traffic, especially after the light turns from red to green. This is more common than it should be in the Boston area. One of the things that prevents those idiots from getting hit is that drivers on oncoming traffic don’t want to damage their cars. It really is just rude.
9. It’s ok to turn your turn signal on even while you’re waiting stopped at a light. No, really.
10. Seems like there should be a 10 but I can’t think of any more right now.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Credit: Brandon using Shape Collage

Collage of Brandon's Movies

The nature of technology has reduced the cost of distribution from a few dollars (to press and package a movie on DVD) to nearly nothing (in bandwidth to distribute a movie over the Web).

(Ok that’s a gross over-simplification since DVD distribution includes storage, delivery, shelf space, etc. But that’s not really what I think I need to pay for. I’m not your average consumer, I buy what I want based on interest, knowledge of what’s been shown in theaters and maybe a little Web-research, not just what’s presented to me at a store or on a shelf. Having to go to a store and walk the aisle to browse for a movie (to rent or buy) is not something I really do–it’s rather arcane these days. In fact, it’s why companies like Blockbuster are having problems. Also I used what I perceive as the costs for DVD duplication and not Blu-Ray which has higher manufacturing costs for which I don’t have an order of magnitude estimate.)

So, how do I want to purchase/rent movies? It’s a little complicated. Maybe…

Here’s what I want:

• I want high-def movies. The quality is much better and can improve the watching experience, certainly for newer films.
• I want either:
  • physical media of both high-def and standard def versions, or
  • high-def physical media plus a standard-def digital copy.

  Until I have a fully connected living room where I have effectively unlimited storage of high-def movies* I still want to be able to watch the high-def from a Blu-Ray disc.

• I want digital copies, in high-def and standard-def versions. The high-def versions I can play on my laptop or computer, the standard-def versions I can play on my iPod. Or failing that, I want to be able to legally rip these digital versions from the physical media.

A couple articles came out recently that gave me the impetus to write this post.

Netflix recently announced they’d be charging more to rent high definition (Blu-Ray) movies. Say what? I’ve just proved you’re making money off me. I’m pretty sure you’re making money off most other people. I know that you’re not always renting standard off-the-shelf DVDs, you’re getting DVDs pressed custom for you so the argument that Blu-ray discs cost more than DVD is specious. Yes the media’s more expensive, but not as much as you’re considering raising rates. And you should be using access to a very, very high-quality picture as a differentiation point. You should be encouraging (or at least not discouraging) people to rent high-def movies on Blu-ray instead of the variable/questionable quality of movies streamed from cable or Apple. (Aside: Apple high-def TV Shows and movies are pretty darn good, but I’m also not watching them on a 42″+ TV where I’d think the picture quality would start to suffer.)

Also there was a discussion on Slate.com of how Netflix and Apple are limited in which movies they can stream to my HD-Tivo, how long they remain available for me to play, etc. I think it’s mostly greed by the movie studios (I suppose Netflix might be a little at fault) that has limited the user experience that Netflix users can have. The digital copy (bandwidth costs aside) is nearly zero. Why do I only have 24 hours to watch the movie once I start playing it? Why can’t I stream a video and watch it as many times as I want without having to re-rent it? Why isn’t the whole movie downloaded to my Tivo, if I have the space, so I have a more Tivo-like/DVD-like experience and I don’t have to wait for whole long restreams of the data if I go too far forward or back from the current play point?

And then there was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s the referenence: Peers, M. (2009, May 23-24). Hollywood Studios Need to Romance the Download. Retrieved May 25, 2009 from Wall Street Journal Online http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124301477914747859.html

Drawing from the article, studios are worried that more on-demand releases could cannibalize video sales. Video sales accounted for $8 Billion or 43% of movie sales (according to Adams Media Research cited in the article). Movie studios, it seems, have become overly-reliant on the video sales category, one that didn’t really have until the early 1990s. (Ok, I don’t have data on this, but it follows logically if you think back to the emergence of the VCR market when very few videos were available for purchase, and instead they were renting them out, and if you wanted to purchase them you’d have to spend $100 or more, instead of the $15-40 today (DVD vs. Blu-Ray). So that 43% of revenue didn’t exist say in 1993–so they transitioned once.

$8 Billion in revenue from sales compared to the $0.8 Billion in revenue from all forms of on-demand “sales”, presumably including iTunes, Netflix, etc.

Time to transition again.

* I already have Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players, that I used frequent flier miles to “purchase” so they were effectively free. Yes, I could use a XBox360 or Microsoft Media Center PC but I don’t want to maintain them, and it’s something on the order of an additional $200 investment plus I’d have to hide a medium tower case somewhere. Yes, I could use an AppleTV but they have very limited storage and no really user friendly way of managaing the number and size of digital files necessary to make this effective. Yes, I could use a MacMini with terabytes of storage, but that’s on the order of $800-1000 for a setup that would work for me.

Photo Credit: cocube

Which way queue?

Single line grocery store queues are more efficient than individual lines for each register (from Opitimization at Checkout). And also a NY Times article on A Long Line for a Shorter Wait at the Supermarket. You can do the math yourself, but I’m willing to be an experimentalist in this one. Though I have yet to visit a supermarket using this system.

Grocery store lines lead to me wondering about why the other lane always seems to move faster when driving in traffic. While I didn’t find a post on that…I did find another couple of interesting sites. Starting with this NPR story on Navigating The Science (And Sociology) Of ‘Traffic’ and the author’s website for the book. After reading the excerpt about merging “late”, I recalled hearing the same thing (from my friend Flora I think). So, this I’ve tried, and it does seem to work better, certainly for me individually. It “feels” that the author’s right a “zipper” would be more efficient–assuming drivers would let others merge, and folks didn’t try to game/beat the system. But then many things come down to that.

So, where I used to live in Providence, UT was something like 4,700 feet in elevation. Where I live now in Lexington, MA its like 250 feet.

One of the tricks I use with some leftovers is to use steam to heat them up, it keeps meat from getting too dried out when reheating things in the microwave. Can you see where this is going yet?

So yes, I expected the water to boil faster here, but I didn’t realize how much faster it would actually be. What used to take 5-10 minutes to boil was like 1 minute now. (The heat was ostensibly set to the same amount.) Hrm, I’m going to have to pay more attention (or resist the urge to use “medium” heat) more now.

Thankfully I really couldn’t set off the smoke detectors with steam…

There’s a reason I titled this site…Rocket Science.

(Update: I found a reversed Я to use in the post from Wikipedia – Faux Cyrillic.)