Friday, October 19, 2018

Ann and Linda

Talking about the passing of Tom Feher, a member of the Left Banke, led to my revisiting Linda Ronstadt's cover of "Walk Away Renee," a hit in 1966 for the Left Banke. She performed this as a duet with Ann Savoy (who I was not familiar with) on her final album, "Adieu False Heart" (2006). Turns out that Ann is well known as a cajun music performer, author, photographer, producer, artist, mother of other musicians, etc. who has had several performing groups with family members.

Ann and Linda are articulate on the subject of music and musical families that perform, as this collaboration illustrates. It surprised me to realize how many well-known musicians are related and the impact it can have on their sound. This audio recording was a "pilot" if you will for a series that was not continued.

https://soundcloud.com/ben-manilla-productions/duet-musical-families-segment-one?in=ben-manilla-productions/sets/duet&utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=email


Monday, August 20, 2018

New (Used) Camera Time

The first time I purchased a DSLR, it was the Canon 20D (2005). That was intended to shoot ice skating and it served pretty well for that purpose. I wanted to update but not splurge, so I researched cameras which would have presence in the "previously owned" market and offer system options such as battery pack, specialty flashes, etc. My first serious film camera was an Olympus OM-1 which was purchased while I lived on Okinawa (1976-77 USAF tour). Later I found an OM-2 on closeout at a retail store. Olympus impressed with their light-weight bodies, thoughtful user interface and system approach so for this 2018 acquisition I focused on their digital offerings.

B & H Photo in NYC had a used Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mk1 (2013 model) that seemed to fit the bill. Their rating system and return policy is decent so I pulled the trigger and stuck one of my Rokinon video camera prime lenses on it this past weekend. These are Micro Four Thirds system lenses and I have 3, but all are fully manual and hefty to lug around. You have to set aperture and pull focus by hand. No biggie but the Olympus body is smart enough to give tons of control over auto focus, exposure, etc.

Check back as I update this Flickr album with (hopefully) more sophisticated shots. Due to the many features of this camera, my plan is to work through a tutorial as time permits.

Olympus OM-D Test Shots

[Update] Album shot with new (used) 12-40mm lens:

Train Gang

Friday, June 8, 2018

Long Day's Journey into 4K UHD Blu-ray

Growing up in the 1950's, we didn't watch films on television very often. In fact, I remember smallish black-and-white TV in the early '60s as a place for wrestling, news and series shows. The practice was for local stations to have a 16 mm film chain (played the movie image into a TV camera) which did not result in great image quality. Then there were 'scope or other wide-screen formats that sorta "squished" the actors into an "Academy ratio" rather than displaying at the correct aspect ratio.

For the true movie experience it was off to a local movie theater or drive-in. Even there we were not necessarily viewing a pristine, properly projected image and the sound was a huge variable as well. So-called "road shows" would come along for special films that were exhibited in an already dwindling number of cinema showcases. "Fantasia," "The Sound of Music," "The Robe." Intermissions, reserved seats, 4-channel sound. These were a hint of what was to come and what was technically possible given enough budget.

Short History of Home Media Distribution Formats (viewing experience dependent on quality of source materials, restoration, mastering and various other factors)

  1. 16 mm film (rich peeps, Hollywood types; adult film buffs)
  2. 8 mm film (film aficionados; cheapo adult film buffs)
  3. B&W TV
  4. Color TV
  5. VHS tape/beta (widescreen prints occasionally available; Dolby sound introduced)
  6. LaserDisc (again aficionados; limited Original Aspect Ration aka OAR; Dolby and Dolby Surround sound)
  7. DVD (mix of OAR, pan-and-scan; audio varied)
  8. Online streaming begins (dependent on broadband internet availability; frequent tampering with aspect ratio to zoom in or otherwise fill the screen)
  9. Blu-ray (mostly OAR, best sound to date based on distributor standards)
  10. 4K UHD (best visual and sound experience to date, several theater quality sound standards)

I skipped 8 mm video as it wasn't taken seriously in the U.S. market as a distribution medium. RCA did have a disc-based system (CED) but it disappeared more quickly than Circuit City DIVX. Everything #5 and later were opportunities for people to purchase their favorite movies over and over in hopes of reaching some nirvana of viewing pleasure. 3-D in several formats crept in and seems to be creeping out again as TV manufacturers like Samsung discontinue it in recent models. Never felt a real affinity for 3-D in the home but some people like it (looking at YOU James Cameron!).

Wrapping this up for now, but one comment on the latest sound innovation(s) for film in the home -- Dolby ATMOS and DTS:X. Depending on how they are used by filmmakers and associated sound designers, these up the game dramatically in your listening space. Dogs will think there really are aliens crawling around outside the house. Get someone to help you hang the height speakers and you are good to go.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Willis, Tony and Me

These guys Willis Nowell and Tony Barther were hanging around on a forum at Shannondale.TV in the early 2000's when I first ran into them online.  This was before Shannondale & Beyond existed. My employer at the time had a server which I offered as a location to host the first S&B forum and thus I was the de facto system support person. This arrangement was fine when the server was in a colocation (run from Greenbelt, Md. by Allen Hoffman) but when it was moved to a residence, access to S&B from the internet became tenuous and Tony found paid hosting elsewhere.

(L to R) Wills, Katherine, Tony
What Willis and Tony tried to do was moderate the forum discussions with a fairly high degree of granularity. They and the other moderators, myself included at some times, developed categorizations for the forum areas that characterized the potential for reader upset. These ranged from "General," which would be suitable for all readers to "Thunderdome," containing inflammatory content. I contributed the thunderdome moniker which was suggested by the Mel Gibson film of the same name.

Willis also was a patron of exploration by air, in our case over Jefferson County, WV. I flew three times at his behest as photographer, with one of the forum members as pilot. Here are some photos taken on the first trip and made into a video with music: Willis Fly By Air

Later in my tenure as S&B advisor, I helped shepherd a survey which was sent to past and present members. To my eye the results showed that many would appreciate less intervention by moderators which was perceived as censorship. Tony in particular did not agree with lessening the control. There had been a few examples of forum disagreements or feuds extending into Real Life wherein an upset reader would appear and confront another individual.  Since many people on the mountain own firearms, the concern by management was that someone would be injured or worse. Political topics usually were the worst although I eventually left the forum over its support of aerial spraying for gypsy moths, a potential health risk to area residents. One of my critiques of the practice was deleted by another moderator and when I complained to the Shannondale & Beyond Board of Directors, nothing of substance was done to remedy the situation.

If you are interested in seeing the information I presented, it is available for download on my file site: Foray 48B files.

Tony died around June 2014.  I have not been able to locate an online obituary and Willis went on Tuesday, January 3, 2017. They lived in the area of Shannondale on the Blue Ridge Mountain where Foray 48B spraying was done several times and while two deaths isn't proof, it is a coincidence that concerns me. Read the files and see if you agree that more investigation by public health is in order.

Monday, April 23, 2018

Routers In the News

[Breaking news: FBI tells router users to reboot ... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/fbi-tells-router-users-to-reboot-now-to-kill-malware-infecting-500k-devices/ ]

Here at the Country Bunker high atop the Blue Ridge Mountains, we take our router responsibilities very seriously. Anyone reading this blog is undoubtedly doing so through one or more routers at the local level and then many more across their ISP's network, the upstream internet provider and so on. Modern, sophisticated routers make the worldwide web and internet possible. We are not talking about the kind of router that cuts wood, plastic or laminates, but rather this: Router (computing).

You may be thinking, "I don't need to read about no stinkin' routers." And "Doesn't my internet provider send a reliable, secure router when the service is installed?" Unfortunately, this is rarely the case as these companies are motivated by profitability and the bottom line. Robust security is expensive to maintain and technology moves at a rapid pace as does the potential threat environment. Companies usually provide equipment or agree to support a bring-your-own device that they can support for years and years; they are familiar with the "firmware" (software that runs the router) at a specific revision level and unauthorized updates in their eyes are unsupported when it comes time to troubleshoot a problem with your internet connection or voice-over-IP phone system. Some of them refuse to reveal the root user or administrative password to the end user and maintain control of settings and firmware level in that fashion.

Here we turn to the recent revelations concerning security breaches on hundreds of thousands of commercial routers across the internet, apparently perpetrated to demonstrate flaws in the router software. These are industrial-strength devices so imagine what has, can and could be done to the inexpensive garden variety ones used in most homes. Like most people, I had purchased a home router from the lowest cost source I could find, set it up quickly and then (mostly) forgot about it. I did think to change the default administrative password and name the wifi network something obscure. I disabled the guest network too. Every so often I would check for a firmware update but there hasn't been one from Netgear for this model in years, a common failing of mass market products. More recently I had trouble getting a networked music server to work and thought about upgrading to a router with business features and advanced configurations. Highly publicized router exploits were a strong motivation to upgrade as well. The one I settled on is manufactured by a company that specializes in wireless equipment, a Pepwave Surf SOHO purchased online from 3gstore.com.


The installation took a couple of hours and nearly everything is back. That one hinky system has always been hard to configure so I will have to dig into the manual and figure it out. Used a Pepwave installation checklist with my own "secret sauce." Stay tuned for the gory details!

Friday, March 30, 2018

Fun With Vintage Audio Cassettes

At one time the lowly audio cassette was the cat's pajamas for home recording. This was after the 8-track but before the compact disc. People even recorded their own music and that of friends, and naively assumed that these treasured recordings would be around forever and ever.

Fast forward (heh) thirty years and guess what! The specter of excessive friction has entered the scene, wherein those tiny hubs inside the audio cassette will not turn and no amount of jockeying, rock-and-rolling or fast forwarding will remediate the situation. One could cry out in anger and hurl the apparently useless time capsules into a nearby yard for the dogs to have their way with ... or possibly, just maybe, a glimmer of hope exists in the C-Zero cassette.

What, you have never heard of the C-Zero cassette? There is no reason that you would have unless you are a tape duplicator or consumer of such arcane services. These are the empty plastic shells that purveyors of tape duplication services stuff with various lengths of audio tape. One can reportedly take the non-playing tapes and transfer them to new, low friction C-Zero cassettes and, voila!, problem solved. I will test this hypothesis and report back here when the truth of the matter has been established.
CD burner (top) and JVC audio cassette deck (bottom)

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Farewell to Facebook After A Decade

After pulling the plug on Facebook this morning, I ran across this article. Food for thought, I guess.

The cult of Facebook: You can log out any time but you can never leave

From my perspective, there are more reasons to leave Facebook behind than to continue a presence on the service. I have been on or around the internet since 1988 when I had an account as a contractor at David Taylor Research Center in Carderock, Md. This was prior to web browsers, multimedia, and even the domain name service (DNS) which was released on the DTRC network around the time I worked there.

I had been using dial-up bulletin board systems (BBS) and eventually building computers to host them and designing or at least configuring ones based on Wildcat or The Bread Board System (TBBS) software. These companies rapidly disappeared or changed their product lineup when web servers emerged in the mid-90s. Along the way I had user accounts on the following dial-up services:

  • The Well
  • GenNIE
  • Prodigy
  • AOL
  • CompuServe
  • MySpace

and was a regular reader of USENET postings via various news readers. I was also a member of a user-driven service called FidoNet that had postings from around the world.

Needless to say, I am accustomed to leaving one service behind and waiting until the Next Big Thing happens. Facebook has broken trust with its users, an act that is magnitudes worse than the censorship of Prodigy or the outrageous unsolicited propositions on MySpace. For the present I am content with local community sites and the Nextdoor system which tries to be local. You can find my videos on Vimeo, photos on Flickr and there is a podcast site which I will talk more about when there is something to download from there. [slide on over to the Media page on this blog for a compendium of links!]

Keep your eyes on the road and encryption strong!

Chip
[and here is the confirmation that the account is scheduled for deletion "within 14 days:"]
[another link ... this is even better and harkens from way back in 2014:] https://www.alternet.org/culture/8-ways-facebook-cult-just-scientology

Monday, March 26, 2018

Become A Citizen News Reporter

I have been learning to use an app called "Filmic Pro" on an iPhone lately. Also available to Android devices, this handy program turns your smart phone into a smart camera as well. Various features to control the look of the video are placed at your fingertips and it even helps control any unwanted movements, i.e., shakiness that may result from lack of a tripod.

A 2nd program is made by the same people to remote control the phone from a tablet if you like. Purchase both the apps as a bundle for $20 at the appropriate online store. More details and info on related accessories at http://www.filmicpro.com/.

This is a short video captured using an iPhone 7 and Filmic Pro. It was edited on an iMac with Final Cut Pro, an Apple editing suite but similar results can be had with a variety of tools on Windows or Apple computers.

Later I will post an interview-style video using miking placed directly on the "talent" (person being interviewed). To my ears it improves intelligibility to place the mike closer this way but you need some other components to get the audio onto the phone.

Have fun capturing the news! And stay tuned for suggested ways to share your news. Many do not even require a Facebook account!