I’m currently writing several features for Allaboutsymbian again, and the first of them was published there last night. Here’s a link.
A while ago, I noticed that photos taken on my Nokia E55, with its LED flash, were casting the people in an unnatural blue tint. One day I couldn’t take it any more and fired up The GIMP to see what I could do to tweak these colours. I was so stunned at the results I obtained with such little effort that I had to write about it.
Originally, I was going to post here, but then it struck me that the only people with this problem are people taking photos on camera phones, so since I was already contributing to AllAboutSymbian it seemed logical to publish there instead.
While writing, I realised it was going to be a super-dry read, and that a screen-cast video would be a much more appropriate choice of medium. So, this was my first experience of capturing and rendering a hi-def screen capture. I had a few hiccups along the way, the most problematic was sound. I don’t have a proper microphone, and so was stuck using the laptop mic, which would have been fine, but my laptop’s fan is super noisy. So, I had to apply some noise reduction in Audacity, which worked, but did leave me sounding kind of tinny and muted, at least to my ears.
It also pushed my four year old laptop to the limits, scrubbing along in Kdenlive made it choke a little, and actually completing a two-pass render took around 90 minutes (for a 6 minute video!). I really lamented having to buy a laptop when I did, because I only missed getting the first dual core CPU’s by three to four months
Anyway, I’m pleased with the overall result, and it’s another article to add to my publication list!
I’ve been thinking about what sort of electronics I’d want if I were setting up my own home (i.e. living alone). I know I watch virtually no TV series any more. What few things I do watch, I could easily watch on the internet (via such things as the BBC iPlayer).
As time has gone on, much more of the video content I watch is only available on-line, via podcasts. I also just watch less content, I read more, either e-books or websites. I interact with people more and generally try to get more useful things done around the house.
Although, I know that if you’re watching with someone else, watching things from a computer screen is not the best viewing experience. One solution would be to have a projector to plug into the computer as and when needed, but this is an expensive option. Some people also have games consoles (and I might do this in the future since gaming on Linux still comes with a certain amount of pain), which need some sort of screen too.
So I’ve ended up at the uncomfortable conclusion that 99% of the time, I would not need or want a TV, but I’d probably still end up begrudgingly buying one, for the purpose of entertaining guests.
What do you think about this? I have set up a twtPoll about this, which you can vote on.
This is a video podcast that will appeal to those who fit the following. You are an extreme geek who is interested in following the tech news, and you have a tendency towards cynicism and grumpiness. Great, I’ve just traced out a stereotype, but watch an episode of this, you’ll see what I mean!
John C. Dvorak at the helm of Cranky Geeks.
This is a weekly podcast, about 30 minutes long. Every week it is hosted by the infamous John C. Dvorak along with “co-crank” Sebastian Rupley as a permanent panel member, in addition to two guest panel members every week.
If you are familiar with the “This Week in Tech” podcast, then you’ll like Cranky Geeks. In fact, I find Cranky Geeks a good substitute for TWiT simply because it packs in as much debate in half the time.
Also, Cranky Geeks is supplied in a range of formats, which I may as well give you the links to now:
My next favourite video podcast, has to be “Tekzilla“. I have been watching this show from the first episode in September 2007.
Tekzilla's Patrick & Veronica
I try to watch things that are going to show me or teach me things I don’t already know. Tekzilla is one of those shows which offers a huge breadth of advice and features on things you would find genuinely useful to do. As the show has gone on, it has focused more and more on viewer submitted questions to the point now where that is their exclusive content. I would say that most of the tips are neither quite beginner level tips, nor are in-depth super geek power user type tips either.
Tekzilla episodes vary from anything to 30 minutes to an hour, lately closer to the former. They come out weekly, although in addition there is a 1 minute daily show (Monday to Friday) were one of the presenters give you really useful tips for getting the most out of your every day computing experience.
The show is also provided in a great variety of video formats, including hi-def. There are RSS feeds for each of the formats, as well as a choice of subscribing either separately to the weekly and daily shows, or both as a single feed, for each video fomat.
Given that there are so many RSS feeds, I won’t link to them all here. I’ll just wrap up by saying that if Tekzilla sounds like a show for you, then visit them at this link – http://revision3.com/tekzilla/
As a taster, here is their Christmas 2008 episode, a cut down 16 minute episode showing their top 10 tips of the year.
About time I paid my dues to one of my favourite computer applications, besides my web browser. Miro is a free and open source HD video player and it is also a podcast management system. This means that Miro will not only download all the video (and audio) you’ve subscribed to, but it will play it for you too.
I have been using Miro for almost a year now. In fact, I gave it some small coverage on the CNET UK Forums, although I forget which version number it was back then. However, I am pleased to say that the major niggles I had with it back then have now been fixed with the 2.0 version. Not least, the ability to skip back and forth within a Adobe Flash video files (.flv), the VLC project has recently overcome the same hurdle.
Before I continue, I am going to let the Miro people tell you in their own words what this is all about:
The new user interface is a big improvement. The Windows version of the 1.x branch had a sexy-black design, which I miss, although it is more than made up by the increased responsiveness. Also, Miro used to be a terrible memory hog, not anymore, the application loads up in a small amount of time and I no longer feel as if I’m going to have the perform the Heimlich Maneuver on my laptop!
Miro 2.0 in action
Another nice new feature is that the video pane will detach from the main Window so that you can still browse within Miro while playing a video. This was something of a problem before verison 2.0, as I did sometimes wish I could do other things in Miro while I had a video playing in the background.
Miro is based on the same core of code that the Firefox web browser is (that core of code is known as “Gecko“), which enables one of Miro’s nicest features, the Miro Guide, to appear within the application itself. This is the easiest way to browse content and subscribe. If you want to subscribe to things the old-school way, you will go to the web site of the show you want to follow, get it’s RSS feed copied to your clipboard, then go to Miro and hit Ctrl-N where it will pick up the URL you have in the clipboard. So yes, Miro Guide is good. However, there is an alternative method if you use Firefox 3. Firefox 3 has “Podcast detection“, which means that when you click on the RSS feed of something Firefox can recognise as a podcast, it will not only ask you if you want to subscribe to the feed, but also ask you if you want to choose a podcasting application. Well, if you use Miro, you select it. From then on, whenever you click on a podcast’s RSS feed Firefox will automatically enter the feed into your Mrio subscriptions, nothing more for you to do!
Also, another nice little feature for content creators who can’t afford the bandwidth of serving their shows, is that Miro seamlessly supports the Bittorrent protocol. This means that you can subscribe to a feed that only serves out the .torrent file, then you’ll download your content from other people who are also downloading the same material. This helps content creators, and you don’t notice any difference in how you get your content.
The Miro Guide, in Miro
As well as adding internet video to Miro, you can also tell it to watch folders on your hard drive so that you can watch content you already have saved. This combined with Miro’s search box, turns Miro into a pretty competent video library management application. It isn’t meant to do this, so there’s no metadata for videos you already have. Still though, as long as you use helpful file names, it’s almost as good.
Lots of talk about video, although Miro is just as happy getting audio podcasts and playing them. One of the listed “features” of Miro 2.0 was better audio podcast support. All I can actually see that they’ve done with this is create an “Audio Feeds” heading in the sidebar. Personally, I find this pretty useless, I prefer to organise my feeds within folders on the sidebar. So as you’ll see from my screen shots, I already had a folder for audio feeds. However, while you can just about use Miro as a video library manager, it is by no means an audio jukebox, I would not recommend Miro for handling your music collection. For that I would recommend another Gecko based free and open source application, Songbird.
For me, Miro is the centre of my multimedia life. Most of the content Miro downloads for me, I watch on my mobile phone. Although, since I let Miro take care of the downloading, I just have a batch script which synchronises Miro’s downloads with my phone’s memory card.
Talking of my mobile phone, I also use the Nokia Podcasting application, which can import feeds from OPML files. Well, another benefit of Miro being free and open source, is that it works on open standards like, OPML, which it can import and export. This means that whenever my phone and I are going to be away from my computer and I want to download podcasts directly, I can simply export my feeds from Miro, and put that file on my phone. Being able to import and export OPML files also helps you if you’re setting up a new computer or Operating System (OS), and you want to carry across your feeds to your new installation of Miro. Simply export on the old computer/OS, and import on the new computer/OS.
Phew, I’ve said all I have to say. I seriously recommend Miro to everyone. Television is moving to the internet, and scheduled broadcasting is being replaced by content on demand. Miro is a great way to find lots of fantastic and expertly made content away from all the mainstream networks and corporations.
Just to finish off, I thought I’d include another review of Miro, this time in video, by @ChirsLAS:
Related links
For another review, @Rarst has just written a new first impressions review on his blog.
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