“One of the founding fathers of the internet has predicted the end of traditional television” writes the Telegraph.

Not quite yet, but it’s getting there. When the majority of people get high-speed DSL and a BitTorrent-like engine is built on Adobe Flash (just like Joost does to share the bandwidth among users, because the TCP/IP protocol is not ideal for 1:1 streaming), there is absolutely no reason why traditional TV should exist. The reason why “TV programmes” are in a sequential order with special timetables it’s because traditional TV does not have an OnDemand system. People must sit down in front of a TV at a specific time to watch their favorite show, and failing that they must record it and watch it later. But there is no reason to do that with true OnDemand TV. You visit the web site you want (or an HD version of YouTube, or a future AppleTV’s internet channel) and just like with Joost, you pick to watch the latest episode of your favorite show either on a computer screen, or on your big internet-ready TV set.

Joost is the first company to “get it”, although I have my doubts about how it will play with Comcast’s ISP net neutrality policies overtime, plus I don’t find anything interesting to watch there, and quality is pretty low compared to very nice quality of ABC’s new HD availability.

Oh well, we are getting there. Transition will happen. And those networks that won’t make it, they will die a slow death.

“Apple Inc. is facing yet another class-action lawsuit over its iPhone, this time from a New York State resident who claims the company failed to adequately disclose to consumers that the handset is locked to AT&T’s network and that using the device internationally would result in substantial data roaming charges” writes AppleInsider.

I don’t think that Apple failed to adequately disclose to consumers that the handset is locked to AT&T’s network. You can’t even buy an iPhone without getting an AT&T contract, let alone that the relationship between the two companies was known from the beginning. This lawsuit does not hold ground in my opinion.

However, I hate locked phones as much as the next guy. I never buy or agree to review locked phones. I guess, that’s my own version of “software freedom”.

I also read recently that AT&T lawyers stopped the release of unlocked iPhones, which is sad. They should not have the right to do that. The DMCA was modified a few years back to allow these kinds of hacks, although of course nothing is black and white. Hopefully, the hacks would at least be released as software patches so users can decide themselves to unlock an iPhone or not. BusinessWeek wrote an article too.

I like Google’s perspective, if this rumor is true: open spectrum, open devices, open software.

And so I moved my blog to the following address, please bookmark the new location:

http://eugenia.queru.com/

Special thanks to Adam Scheinberg for doing all this hard work fetching and moving over the data to WordPress v2.22, and to David Adams & Jon Jensen for letting me use their servers. I am very happy with the result. The only things that doesn’t work on my new blog is the Referrers support that WordPress 1.5.1 used to have (for some reason they removed it in the 2.x version), and during the moving process I “lost” about 250 comments out of 3700. Actually, all comments are in the DB, it’s just that 250 of them are not “attached” to the proper blog post (long, technical story, I can elaborate if you want). So, if you need to comment in the recent stories, please do so in the new server.

The reason I am moving over to a more “manageable” server is because Blogsome started deleting some blogs lately on a whim and they offer no standard export support. I am grateful for their service so far, but I need more assurances because as you know, I write *a lot*.

I hope the Blogsome admins don’t delete this blog immediately, as it gets over 1000 page views daily. I have added their ad code so hopefully it will give something back to them for a few more months.

Update: Comments will be awaiting moderation before they go live. There is a bug on WordPress 2.2.x and PHP5 that no matter how wordpress is configured, it will send comments to moderation. God damn it, I hate software. 🙁

Update 2: Comments are fixed. Found a workaround.

Did you ever play Guitar Hero on the PS2? If yes, chances are that you played Drist’s songs then. Drist is an amazingly talented alternative rock indie band here in the Bay Area and both myself and JBQ are becoming big fans – fast. Listen at their songs at their page on MySpace. I love their cover of Depeche Mode’s “Stripped” too, I believe that it’s much better than the original. But their new stuff sound even better.

I met the band on Saturday and we shot an interview about their new upcoming album. They were very kind to also let me include parts of 3 of their brand new songs in the video.

This is my first “as professional as it can be” video I have ever shot. However, there were hurdles on the way. You will see some washed out footage during the picture slide-show, a bug either belonging to my video editor or to the Huffyuv codec or the x264 encoder (I will have to investigate this further — edit: fixed). Also, I need to find a way to transform the recorded audio from mono to stereo (I have very little experience with audio as I always remove it from my videos). I used an external clip-on-shirt mic in order to make the interview parts more professionally-audible, but most such mics are mono… (edit: fixed)

I would really, REALLY, appreciate it if you check it out and leave a comment. This is my first serious video work I’ve done, so I’d love some feedback. Thanks.

Here is a better quality version of the video, iPhone/PSP-sized (75 MBs).

My JBQ is working way too hard again. I hope things will get better soon. He’s so absorbed into work that sometimes I feel that I have access only to his RSS and not the whole content… I am worried about him.

We watched the “Some kind of Monster” Metallica documentary on Friday night. The 5 people “starring” in it just reminded me of us, our team of tech journalists at OSNews.

The singer James is Adam. Always taking life easy, being a bit liberal on ideas too.
Guitarist Kirk’s Thom. He doesn’t talk a lot, he just does the job he has to do and he is easy going.
Phil, the therapist, is David. He’s there to make sure everything goes as planned, and cleverly takes everyone’s place in internal disputes. 😉
Bob, the audio console/producer guy is our admin Jon. He’s there when you need him, administrating everything.

And I am Lars, the drummer. Perfectionist. Getting pissed off very easily and asks too much from the rest. A real prick.

I didn’t like Lars.

“CSI:Miami” is not a super cop TV series, but it’s definitely the most good-looking one. It looks fabulous in HD. Online, there are a number of videographers who have expressed the question as to how this look is achieved. And the answer is that it is done via various ways:

1. Apply a warm look in-camera (if supported).
2. Apply saturation in-camera (if supported).
3. Saturate and boost gamma in post.
4. Boost contrast in post. (example: 1)
5. Use gradient filters while shooting (example: 1, 2).
6. Boost primarily the orange and yellow colors and use similarly colored lights to shoot: (example: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
7. For indoors scenes, always use a well-lit colored pattern as a background that you can later boost its colors in post.
8. Use a 35mm adapter if available for your camera, and the appropriate lens each time. You need a large sensor.
9. Shoot in 1/48th shutter speed and 24fps. If your camera has a “cine mode” like the Canon HV20 does, use that.
10. Selectively boost colors in post depending on the scene (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

Navigate the episodes here and check the indoor scenes. You will notice that the vast majority of them have specific pattern backgrounds that are lit from the floor with big lights. Then, the pattern color(s) (which they make sure that the actors don’t wear clothes with the same colors) are boosted in post.

Because lighting is one of the most mysterious arts in film making and because most people can’t afford these lights, this tutorial will show how to achieve a similar look for your outdoor scenes. You will need Sony Vegas to follow the small guide.

0. When appropriate, shoot with a gradient orange-sun filter.
1. Boost contrast by 15 to 20% depending on the scene (filter: “brightness and contrast”).
2. Boost saturation 20% and gamma 30%, tint the highlights knob towards “yellow” (filter: color correction).
3. Download the free Aav6cc filter and install it. In it, boost the yellow color (you can increase/decrease lightness of that color depending on the scene).
4. Using the Aav6cc filter again, increase the rest of the colors if they are predominant in the scene. E.g. boost blue for sea/sky shots and decrease or increase its lightness depending on the scene. Do the same for the other colors but with less intensity compared to the primary color(s).
5. Vegas Movie Studio comes with some NewBlue filters. Use the “Dream Glow” to give your scene a somewhat soft look if you shot it on video without cinemode. Settings: Blur: 10, Glow: 20.

Here’s my 720/30p video (62 MBs) with before and after live shots. And here’s another video of mine, put to practice (HD version available here):

And another one of mine (HD version available here):

I found out just a month ago, out of complete luck from the *US* consulate website, that my Greek passport that was issued just 2 years ago is invalid. I had no freaking idea about this. Apparently the Greek government issued a law last year that all passports issued prior to 2006 will be invalid after Jan 1 2007 because they wanted to move to biometric passports. I never knew about this Greek law. I don’t live in Greece anymore, and I don’t read Greek news too often. I have no Greek friends here in USA. The only people I speak on the phone in Greek is my mother and brother who just don’t don’t know about that stuff. In all truth, I had heard that Greece would move to biometric passports at some point, but I never thought, not in my wildest dreams that they would invalidate VALID passports. In fact, this is the only European country that has done this the last 30 years! The EU law that mandated the move to biometric passports specifically said that there is no reason to invalidate the older passports — but the Greek government was the ONLY EU country that did.

I am not holding accountable the Greek government about this as much though, but the Greek consulate in San Francisco. You see, THEY were the ones who issued my previous passport. Instead of sending a letter to the registered addresses of each Greek citizen who issued a passport with them in the last 4-5 years in SF, they kept mum. I don’t expect the Greek government to send letters about this to the Greek citizens, but I definitely expect the Consulates doing so, because this passport change can create a LOT of mess to citizens that live in a country other than Greece. It is their job to keep us informed about such important things. Important enough things that can end you up like Tom Hanks in the “Terminal”: stuck in international grounds of an airport, unable to enter or leave a country.

To get the new passport, it takes a month of waiting. Because I didn’t know about all this, I had already purchased a ticket to go to Greece in the end of August. This fiasco cost me $1100 as the ticket was non-refundable.

We had some good time at Ukiah, in northern California, this weekend. The place felt like being pretty “hippy” in nature and we liked it so much that we even thought of buying a house there. There was also a local band competition on the weekend and so we got our dose of live rock music too. This guy was amazing btw and I am going to be interviewing him soon.

On the not so bright points, we had no AT&T signal at all. Apparently AT&T has no cells in there and so they are leasing bandwidth from the local Edge Wireless company. Problem is that GPRS won’t work, pre-paid users are denied access to the antenna, and contract users will have to always dial the area code before they can use the network.

While we were coming back, I lost a unique opportunity to capture one of the best shots one could have of the Golden Gate bridge. While driving on it, we should have removed our Camaro’s top window so I can hold the camera outside of the car, looking upwards. And then shoot the actual towers: one was in the sun, and the other one was completely into fog and looked very otherwordly. We live close to the bridge, but we don’t go to the San Francisco City a lot, much less driving on the bridge. And we usually use our Ford Focus too which doesn’t have a top window to remove.

Anyways, I shot this video of the Golden Gate bridge with clouds fast passing by. Right-click to download the 8 MB 720p video. It’s in WMV format because none of my h.264 efforts worked. Long story, I spent 4 hours with the bloody thing trying to encode it correctly, but no cake.

Update: At last, an h.264 version of the 16x-sped-up video, in full 1080p or in iPhone/PSP format.

Remember my rant the other day about how bad iMovie ‘08 is in terms of features? Read the comments that people added over the last few days (”imovie ‘08 sucks” is the No1 google search that I get on my blog stats). The Apple iMovie forum is full of complaints, and blogs like on NewsVine or here and even the well known Apple-head David Pogue is dissing iMovie ‘08 like there’s no tomorrow. Make sure you read David’s article.

Apple did a boo-boo with the release of iMovie ‘08. And the worst part is, I don’t believe that they ever had any plans to add back the missing features, like the timeline, in future versions. Their current UI design reveals to me that they never had any such plans. Well, that’s what you get for not doing market research and check HOW your users are using your software. I wish that they were to add some HD fixes and AVCHD support on iMovie ‘06 and that would just be enough for most people. There was no reason for the complete rewrite of Frankenstein’s “iMovie ‘08″.