Status-Q

Today, for the first time ever, I've been wearing contact lenses. As a new user, I have to say, they're a jolly impressive technology!

These are multifocal ones, which I hope may save me from the routine of putting on my reading glasses, taking them off, dropping them, picking them up, losing them, finding them, cleaning them etc, which I currently do several times an hour. We'll see how well they work overall, but you know what was the very first benefit I noticed in the optician's office? I could read my Apple Watch!

Such a cruel mistress is Fate, that the very moment that I was able to purchase this miracle of technology and strap it to my wrist was the same moment my eyesight deteriorated to the point where only things further away than the end of my arm could be viewed unaided. Since then, yes, I've been able to read big digits and press pause buttons, but most of the more detailed displays on the watch have had me reaching for my glasses, which does somewhat tarnish the high-tech coolness of it all. Sigh. Old computer-graphics geeks don't die, they just lose their resolution.

Another problem I'd like to solve is that of seeing both my SatNav and the road. I don't need glasses for driving. I do need them to read the dashboard. When I put them on, I can't see the road. Ça, c'est un problême.

So is needing a spare hand for specs when I'm taking photos. I can use my camera's viewfinder, which has a diopter correction, or the rear screen, which doesn't. I often want to switch between these to get the best shot, but by the time I'm ready, the eagle has flown.

In a way, it would be easier if I needed to wear glasses all the time, rather then half the time. But my distance vision isn't at all bad, and I tried varifocal glasses and they didn't agree with me. So I hope these prove to be a success. My total contact-lens-wearing experience currently runs to about 6 hours, so it's too early to say.

But they have at least allowed me to write this post without difficulty, and, perhaps more importantly, they have solved that problem whose critical importance for humans was first identified by Arthur Dent on a spaceship in the late seventies, and encountered by me in central Cambridge in 2015: "How am I going to operate my digital watch now?"

My friend Richard has done a lovely blog post showing some of his recent experiments with a spherical ('360-degree') camera. (Hint - you may need to pick your browser to make all of these work well, and the YouTube videos are best viewed in the YouTube app on a mobile device. Try dragging the view around with your mouse/finger.)

One clip that I particularly liked was this one, from the top of a punt pole.

Now, I had played with this new art of punt-pole photography some time ago, as a way of getting shots that would otherwise be tricky. (Remember, this was back in the days when, if you talked about drones, you were probably referring to bees.) And I've since played quite a bit with a spherical camera.

But I hadn't thought of combining the two. Which is why it always pays to have friends who are smarter than you are...

The 360 camera I used for a while was on loan from the Computer Lab, and I've since returned it. But Richard's post is definitely making me miss it... I may need to get another...

Update, many years on: I made the mistake of depending on a cloud service offered by Ricoh, which was then discontinued, and only much later was I able to recreate these images using Pannellum.

We're just back from a trip to France and Switzerland. You should see a picture from Paris above, and be able to drag the image around and zoom in and out. You might be able to see the Eiffel Tower if you look in the right direction! If things don't work, try another browser.

Here I am inside the Musée d'Orsay, for example.

Also, here's a short bit of 360 video, from the ski slopes of Saas-Fee, Switzerland, last week, where we also found a nice spot for lunch.

In October 1999, I was interviewed by Leo Laporte on ZDTV's 'Call for Help' programme. Yes, this is just another interview about the Trojan Room Coffee Pot, but it's interesting to me for several reasons.

Firstly because, even though it's nearly 20 years ago, I've only just seen it! They kindly sent me a VHS tape of the episode at the time, but (no doubt with good intentions) they encoded it with a rather unusual 50Hz variety of NTSC, and I've never been able to play it. It was only last week that, before throwing it out, I went to the trouble of tracking down somebody who was able to tell me that, yes, indeed, there was actually something on the tape...

Secondly, it was quite a challenge to do the recording. They sent me a camera in advance, and I had a slightly older PC which didn't have the brand new USB ports that were just starting to appear, so I had to dismantle it, install an ISA card, and then repartition my hard disk and install Windows 95, because neither the Linux nor the Windows NT operating systems I had on there were supported by 3Com's software.

But chiefly, it's a nice nostalgic snapshot of tech life not too long ago. The rest of the episode provides helpful hints like: you're probably used to installing hardware in your machine before inserting the CDROM or floppy with the drivers, but with USB it's a good idea to install the drivers first. Files you download over your modem may be compressed and you'll need a thing called WinZip to see what's inside them. And Chris Breen (later an editor at MacWorld), comes on to explain that if you're trying to play DVDs on your computer and they keep skipping, it may be because you're connected to a network that does something called DHCP. The PC can't do that and play back smoothly at the same time, so it may be worth disabling DHCP before you start watching. Oh, and there's also a section about how, if you have a laptop, you may find it a pain to be tethered to your modem, but there are some wireless networking options becoming available, and the one that looks most promising for the future is this thing called 802.11...

The clip I've uploaded shows the interview from the studio in California, with me in Cambridge, and we're joined by Don Lekei from Canada a bit later. It's hard now to remember just how rare it was at the time to see people on TV live from remote locations. That normally needed satellite linkups, or very costly kit attached to extremely expensive international ISDN calls. For Don and I to talk casually from the comfort of our own homes on opposite sides of the world was enough to get the hosts of a tech show pretty excited. You'll note that we both use telephones as well, though, because there wasn't any suitable audio channel...

Anyway, Leo is now the head of the substantial TWiT netcasting network, so I guess networked video worked out well for him too :-)

Just before Christmas, Tilly (my spaniel) and I went to the Dordogne and back in our campervan. I made a video about it, which, while it may be of interest only to travel vlog and 'van life' enthusiasts, does have a bit of novelty value, because I filmed it on a spherical (360-degree) camera.

This means that after you've watched it, you can go back and watch it again from a completely different angle and see what was happening behind you!

I'll put the link here, rather than embedding it, because this is something you want to watch on the YouTube site. Or, better still, in the YouTube app on your tablet, or phone, or VR headset...

You can find the video here.

If I had had more time, I would have made it shorter :-)

This was really just an experiment for me, and I learned a great deal about the challenges and opportunities of filming and editing this particular medium, which I may write about in due course.

Over lunch yesterday, my friend Richard was expanding my limited knowledge of spherical cameras: cameras which can take an all-round image - or even video - of the world; an immersive view which you can then explore in a VR headset, or by holding up your phone and moving it around, or (suboptimally) in a regular browser window by dragging around with your mouse, StreetView-style.

Richard's done a nice blog post about this, from which I'm shamelessly cribbing! Thanks, Richard!

The normal way to get high-resolution all-round footage is to use a special rig like this one:

These are actually not that expensive... assuming that you already have ten GoPro cameras lying around ready to go in them. If not... it's a different story.

But there are now more compact and affordable options if you don't mind sacrificing some resolution - things like the Ricoh Theta V. For more information about how it works, Richard pointed me at this great video:

Now, we all know that you can get interesting feedback effects when, say, standing in a lift or changing room with mirrors on opposite walls, or by pointing live cameras at their own output.

What happens when you explore the same ideas in a spherical world? Cool things:

Oh, and if you're like me, the next question is, "Can you do this kind of thing with live footage?" And the answer is yes. Here's... ahem... a recording... to prove it...

A final thought.

In the old days, some comedy shows would emphasise that they were "recorded in front of a live audience", so that you knew that the laugh track wasn't canned. Soon, we'll be able to recreate the effect of a live audience so realistically that it won't be sufficient to persuade you that the recording was actually done in front of real people. Even if you have multiple spherical recordings.

So here's a challenge to ponder over the weekend: How could you prove that a YouTube video of an event was originally a real event, shown to real people?

As someone who has watched a few Star Trek episodes recently... well, OK, I admit it... a few dozen Star Trek episodes recently, I must express my concern about the quality of hardware engineers employed in the construction of Federation starships.

Why is it, that after several generations, they still build ships with computer consoles that explode at the slightest hint of enemy phaser fire? Perhaps Samsung had a watertight long-term supplier contract and the Federation couldn't get out of it, but still, it does seem like a serious design flaw, especially on the bridge.

If you search the web, of course, you'll find that I'm not the only person to have noticed this, indeed, there are many long discussions which might provide an answer if you're a bit more interested than I was. If you're considering a career as a Starfleet officer, however, it might be worth your while doing some more extensive research.

Perhaps the consoles are more robust than they might appear, though. Others have pointed out that a surprising number of them do seem to keep working after having exploded.

So the basic underlying manufacturing is sound. Like so many computer consoles, though, more work is needed to improve the user experience.

This is a lovely idea - the Mixergy hot water tank.

A standard UK hot water tank heats the water from the bottom, either using electricity or water heated by a gas boiler. This means that when you want to heat up your water, you need to heat the whole thing.

Mixergy, instead, put the heating at the top, so you can warm up smaller amounts of water, and then make intelligent use of pumps to circulate it as required if you need to heat larger amounts of water. Not only is this more energy-efficient, but it means you get hot water again more quickly after you've used it up.

There's a more detailed discussion on a recent episode of Fully Charged.

Fancy some fast, green, silent, smooth, aquatic transport? Me too. So the approach taken by SeaBubbles is really attractive.

They're making electric hydrofoils which, once you get above about 6 knots, rise up and lose 60% of their drag.

They're about the same size as a car, and the battery has the same capacity as my BMW i3. This would give you enough range, on their figures, to get you across the English Channel.

Here's some nice footage of their tests on the Seine; they're keen to promote them as water taxis. As they point out, many waterways have speed restrictions that wouldn't allow you to get the most out of your SeaBubble...

They haven't announced pricing yet, but I fear they'd be well beyond my reach, especially since I'd also need to buy a cottage by the side of a fjord to appreciate it fully.

But I hope I get a chance to ride in one!

On Wednesdays, there's an interesting group of catering vans that collect at the far end of the West Cambridge campus, and I like to go there for lunch.

But it's a bit of a distance, and the weather today was bad, so it was important to find the most appropriate method of transportation...