Trying to organise some of my old video footage recently, I came across a little demo I recorded of the AT&T Broadband Phone, a project we started in 1999 but which, sadly, died, along with the research lab that had created it, in 2002.
Looking back at it now, I notice how slow-paced it is compared to the typical YouTube video of today! So if you watch it, you might need a little patience! Nonetheless, it's quite fun to see some of the ideas we were considering back then, five or six years before the launch of the iPhone... things like the suggestion that streamed music "might be a service offered by a record company, where you pay a small amount for each track", for example...
(P.S. I had an idea I had written about this here before... and indeed discovered that I had... but not since 2008, about eighteen months after the iPhone was launched.)
I've always been a little bit of a Gore-Tex skeptic. While I have owned, and do currently own, several garments and shoes incorporating the fabric, I've always felt a little bit let-down by it.
"If this is both waterproof and breathable", I would ask myself as I ascended the hill in a slight drizzle, "then why are my shoulders getting rather wet?"
So I was interested to come across this rather fun video by a Canadian biking gear company, which talks about the history of Gore-Tex, how it works, what it can and can't do, and why even the manufacturer doesn't really use traditional Gore-Tex any more.
A quick summary is that it's waterproof OR breathable, but not both at the same time. Which is fairly predictable... and still gives it an advantage over something that is, say, purely waterproof... but do watch the video.
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This ties in with something I was told in a shop recently when buying a new jacket. I was complaining about my previous one not seeming to keep me dry for very long, and wondered if I was affecting the waterproofing by washing it too frequently.
Actually, they said, it might come from not washing it frequently enough. And that would tie in with the assertions in the video; it seems that the key to successful Gore-Tex use is to make sure the water beads up and runs off quickly, so it doesn't have to be simultaneously waterproof and breathable. To do this, you need to wash it in something that will top up the water-repellent coating.
So if you do decide to pay the Gore-Tex premium, be prepared for the Tech Wash premium in the years to follow.
My favourite jackets, by the way, have been made of Ventile, which is also not cheap, and doesn't claim to be completely waterproof, so it's not necessarily ideal if, say, you're heading for Wales! It's hardwearing and exceedingly comfortable, though, and popular amongst birdwatchers, because it doesn't rustle like most other fabrics and give away your location.
It's probably useful for secret agents too, for the same reason. I couldn't possibly comment. I pretend that I have mine for dog-walking.
I've come to the conclusion that it's very important to keep up to date with AI and 'deep fake' technologies, even if you're not interested in the technology itself. This is because we regularly need to recalibrate something that, for all its fallacy, is deeply embedded in human psyche: the idea that the camera never lies.
Being aware of just how easy it is to fake an Amazon review, or an email from your bank, is, I hope, a standard part of every child's education now, but the capabilities of all computer-generated content are a constantly-moving target and we all need to keep abreast of the state of the art to avoid being caught unawares.
In case you haven't seen it, here's a 1-minute message from Morgan Freeman that has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of weeks:
This is an actor impersonating Freeman's voice, and a computer-generated video of Freeman himself. I was then surprised to discover that it was actually created 18 months ago. The technology will, of course, have improved considerably since then. One user commented on the video, "How can this tech NOT be deployed in the 2024 election?"
It occurs to me that, soon, you'll only be able to trust the words of famous people if you actually see them in person (because it'll be a long time before robotics is as good as computer-generated imagery!) Perhaps this will herald a return of the popularity of theatre...
(It is, however, also very enlightening to read the sections of Dr Steven Novella's book talking about the thoroughly unreliable nature of eye-witness testimony, and of memory itself. It's not just the camera that's fallible!)
And when it comes to video, you'll soon have to trust only people who are not famous, because there will be insufficient training data available online for anyone to do a good fake of them.
I sometimes wonder whether my co-workers think I'm completely batty, and are just too kind to let me know.
Take yesterday, for instance. I was on a group call with half a dozen of them, and we were discussing Zoom videos, camera angles, background environments... all the normal casual chit-chat of today's conversations.
"But Quentin", said one of my colleagues, "what's your profile image like?" She was asking about the new prototype staff pages on the department's web site; a key topic of discussion at the moment.
I, however, was still in my own little world, thinking about camera angles, so I thought she was asking what I looked like from side-on! (Answer: no better than from the front, and probably even worse.) 'Profile', you see, has more than one meaning. So my response to her question about my account on the website was to turn sideways and talk about how sparsely my hair was distributed from any angle. It was only about 24 hours later that I realised what she must have meant, and collapsed in giggles. Everybody on the call was so nice that nobody said, "Eh? Have you completely lost your marbles?" The worrying question, though, is how often I've done this without realising my mistake afterwards...
Talking of ambiguity, there was a scene I always liked, which I think was from one of Steve Coogan's films, though I can't now find the source. Anyway, he was having a medical check-up, and it went something like this:
A friend of mine, who hails from Ontario originally, has lived in many cities around the world. I haven't seen him for some years, so I didn't know that he had moved to Amsterdam, but I also didn't know that he's started a YouTube channel about why, having lived in London, Toronto, Taipei, San Francisco and numerous other places, they liked Amsterdam the best, and asking the question what makes a city great?
It's called Not Just Bikes, and I think he does a really nice job, which explains why he has also amassed a significant following.
Here are some lovely examples of what can be achieved with a combination of technological prowess and human patience. Denis Shiryaev takes old, noisy, shaky black and white videos, and adds stabilisation, resolution enhancement, facial feature enhancement and some light colourisation. Then he adds sound. This is far from a fully-automatic process: he takes weeks over each one, but without the help of neural networks, it would take months or years if it were even possible.
Here's a collection of old Lumière Brothers' films that have had his treatment. Even though, by modern YouTube standards, almost nothing happens in them, I found them surprisingly compelling, yet also calming.
Oh, and this, though less convincing, is also fun:
Christmas breakfast on the edge of the Cairngorms, 2019
Hello Everybody, and Happy New Year! I've been doing something very foolish in 2020, and now I've stopped.
Let me explain...
This time last year, over the Christmas and New Year period, Rose was visiting her family in the States, so after dropping her at Heathrow, I turned our little campervan around, and headed north, accompanied by my cocker spaniel. The only thing I knew at the time was that we were spending the first night in the Lakes, and that we were probably heading for Scotland. The rest would be decided en route, mostly based on the weather forecast. I'm not sure if the Dark Sky app is often used as a route planner...
Anyway, I recorded quite a large chunk of our journey with my GoPro, and came back with a ridiculous amount of video footage, some of which had technical issues to overcome, and I discovered I had a mammoth editing task on my hands. I feared it could be well into the spring before I was able to share any of it. And then we had a spring unlike any other. So then I hoped that lockdown would give me more time to work on projects like this, but actually 2020 has been really quite a busy year for me, and it was only once we got back towards Christmas again that I was actually able to devote any time to it.
"At least", I said to myself, "I have to finish it before the end of the year." And I did! I clicked 'upload' on the final episodes just before midnight last night. :-)
Now, let's be clear here: You'll note I say 'episodes' above. There are, in fact, nine of them, and that's after I'd edited out enough material for at least four more! This is perhaps the most extreme let-me-bore-you-with-my-holiday-snaps variant one can come up with, and I don't expect the average Status-Q reader to be interested in watching one, let alone nine of these little narratives.
An AirBnB for New Year's Eve, December 2019 The van is visible in the bottom right. Click for a larger version.
Amazingly, though, there are people who will enjoy my holiday snaps! Some are watching already.
Those longing for the open road amidst Covid restrictions, or those planning their next motorhome trip in more normal times, do like to get ideas for their next adventure, or relive the memories of journeys past, and road trip videos are very popular on YouTube. I've watched a lot of them, and some were partly responsible for me buying the van in the first place.
That's before you get into the experiences, hints and tips of the full-time motorhomers: try searching YouTube for 'van life' if you want to enter another world.
But, even though producing this has, in some ways, been a burden that I wanted to get off my shoulders for a whole year, it's also been a joy. Rewatching my holiday several times over means that some of the best bits are burned into my memory; there are sites, sounds and places that I would otherwise have forgotten in a month, and that I'll now remember for ever.
And, in the unlikely event that you want to experience any of it too, there's a YouTube playlist, and the journey begins here:
One of the big challenges facing lecturers in the University here is that, for at least the next term and probably the whole academic year, all of the lectures need to be recorded. Most of the small-group teaching, practical sessions, and so forth will be going ahead -- with extensive Covid-prevention measures in place -- but there's no way we can pack big lecture halls full of people in the way we've become accustomed to over the last few centuries, so lectures will all be delivered online this year.
One aspect of my University job recently has been to find and evaluate some of the kit people might want to use for recording, either at home, or in the meeting rooms in the department that we're equipping for this purpose. (At home, the sitting room has been converted into a recording studio for the 21 lectures Rose needs to get on disk!)
I've been making videos of some of my tests and experiments, mostly for internal use, but some of them might be helpful to others. If you should be considering purchasing a USB desk-standing microphone, for example, you might be interested in one of my recordings from yesterday:
I've been gathering some of these into a YouTube playlist as well:
New toy! I bought an Instamic: a tiny voice recorder that I wanted to use in situations where conventional microphones might be difficult or a nuisance, especially when I'm recording with my GoPro Max, which has no facility to take an external mic input.
Here's my quick first test on yesterday's dog-walk, in case it's of interest!
