Tag Archives: camera

One millimeter

Apple, Essay, Opinion, Rant, Review, Technology, , , , , ,

[begin rant]

One fucking millimeter. There I said it … millimeter … or if you prefer millimetre.

iPhone 6s   The only thing that’s changed is everything

No … not everything.

My old iPhone 5s died. OK so it didn’t really die, but the female charging port on the phone got damaged from accidentally ripping the charging cord out of the phone … one … too … many … times. Getting the phone to charge involved just the right amount of ceremonial incantations, fiddling with the Lightning connector, and careful positioning of the iPhone and cord. On the Monday before my birthday the phone died and would not charge. So I ordered a new iPhone 6s Plus, which as luck would have it arrived on said birthday. (Happy Birthday to me, etc., etc, etc.)

I love everything about it … except …

Sir Jonathan Paul Ive, can I call you Jony?

So Jony, the whole world knows how fucking brilliant you are. There, I did it again … brilliant. Yes, you … are … brilliant. You’ve even been knighted for brilliance, for Christ’s sake.

You are brilliant … and you are obsessed. Obsessed with industrial design. Obsessed with elegance. Obsessed with perfection. You are also obsessed with thinness. Obsessed.

But when does obsession cloud judgement? When does the obsession for thinness negate superb industrial design?


One fucking millimeter. If you had made the iPhone 6 series one millimeter thicker, the camera lens would be flush with the case … like the iPhone 5 … and EVERY other iPhone before it. No one … and I do mean no one … would have noticed or cared if the iPhone 6 series was one millimeter thicker.

What could you do with an extra one millimeter of thickness? Make the case a tad thicker and stronger. Make the battery thicker and add a few extra minutes of run time. Who knows? Who cares?

The important thing is that one millimeter is the difference between a smooth backside and one with an ugly zit that keeps the phone from laying solidly on on flat surface without rocking. One millimeter means not worrying about scratching fine old wooden finishes. One millimeter is the difference between obsession and … perfection.

Any chance of fixing this in the iPhone 7?

[end rant]

The Race – Backstory

Art, History, Music, Photography, Technology, Video, , , , , , ,

This is the story behind The Race …

 The Race (Radio Edit) 

 RML

RMLV 

 Christmas 2003, “Number One Son” gave me the very first Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1, that he had picked up while studying abroad in Japan. It had not yet been released in the states.


Image courtesy of Steves Digicams 

The specs were impressive for the day: 5 mega-pixel, 3.6″w x 2.4″h x 0.8″d (91mm x 60mm x 21mm), 6.3 oz. / 180g. Click on the camera image for a review and detailed specs. My cell phone in 2004 was the standard flip phone. I don’t even recall if it had camera. If it did, it was worthless.

This was the first camera I could carry in my pocket. I could take it everywhere. With the USB cable I could relatively easily transfer pictures from it to my computer. I had QuickTime Pro on my computer and realized that if the pictures were numbered sequentially QuickTime could turn them into a movie. I began to experiment with stop action animation and time lapse photography. The Race is one of my best.

I had to build a holder for the camera in order to mount it to a tripod. The actors were my sons’ Warhammer figures, Russian toy cars I had collected in the 90s while working there, other toy vehicles, a cat toy, and a robotic spider.

The entire video at 6fps (frames per second) is only 30 seconds long. I filmed the actual race first on the 19th of June and then decided to film the starting line sequence the next day to extend the length. I initially used the Beatles Birthday as the soundtrack. The final 30 second cut lived on my work computer for over a decade, copied over with all of my files each time I got a newer PC.

Last week I decided to try to get it onto my iPhone. I guess I could have done a USB iTunes to iPhone transfer, but that would have meant upgrading the decades old iTunes that I never use at work. So I emailed it to myself via Gmail.

It opened fine on my iPhone, but the sound would not play. I opened it in iMovie and then managed to add Birthday to the soundtrack. Here I digress. For reasons unknown iMovie would only recognize recently purchased songs on my iPhone. Here I digress again, I just discovered that you don’t get the iCloud download icon in Music if WiFi is turned off. I can’t find the setting in 8.1.2 to make it visible. Back up one digression, so I repurchased Birthday and used it.

However, when I attempted to save it back to my camera roll I got an error. After many hours of frustration I decided to look for video format converters on the Apple App Store. I ended up buying two: 

The Video Converter – Convert videos to and from file formats! by SmoothMobile, LLC https://appsto.re/us/rD2p1.i

MConverter Medias Converter by bill santiago  https://appsto.re/us/59UVL.i

I am not endorsing either of these … and there are many others to choose from.

The original version of The Race was in MOV format and needed to be converted to MP4 format. Once done, I could export it to the camera roll. Then I decided that Born To Be Wild would be a better fit. So I redid the 30s clip again.

Now to upload to Vimeo.



All for 30 seconds of audio. How do others get away with uploading entire songs, albums, music videos, movies?

Alas it is what it is. So I searched iTunes for Royalty Free Music, found 

Instrumentals for TV Productions, Podcasts, Movies, and Jingles by Royalty Free Music https://itun.es/us/MZVNv

and chose the first recording for the soundtrack. It was 99 cents.

I liked the song enough that I created the looped versions in order to be able to play the entire song

I don’t know anything about DRM (Digital Rights Management), but I have to assume that that 30s clip of  Born To Be Wild had a DRM tag that immediately told Vimeo “NO NO NO”. I suppose it could have checked a Shazam-like audio database, but how does that explain all the other entries the are longer and more blatant. I assume there is a way to strip off the DRM tag. I need to investigate this.

There has got to be an affordable way for individuals to license mainstream audio at an affordable price for use in homemade videos posted to the web. See my rant https://contrafactual.com/2014/12/14/21st-century-i-p-2/

Anyway back to the making of The Race. It was old-school “arrange the figures, take a photo, move the figures, take a photo, repeat” … 181 times. I couldn’t walk the next day – my thighs were in agony. 

Speaking of old-school, if you haven’t seen it check out the 1979 Wizard of Speed and Time by Mike Jittlov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLhLn9hVkE

http://www.wizworld.com

I’ll (click)

be (click)

seeing (click)

you (click)