I just read the article over at TechCrunch about Google’s Wave platform. It looks very impressive, and it seems to be a Twitter killer, and maybe even a Facebook killer (since it brings people together in a more interactive & instant way than Facebook does). However, that doesn’t mean that the idea will catch on, since many good ideas never made good products. But this one might. My real question is, how this will integrate with GTalk and Gmail. Because if it won’t integrate well, it just might not catch on.

Update: How ironic. Twitter is “over capacity” again. These guys remind me of Vimeo: they never managed to optimize their platform.

Canon announced today it will release a firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II allowing users to manually control exposure when shooting video. The firmware update will include the following manual controls when shooting video:

* Full aperture selection
* ISO speed: Auto, 100 – 6400 and H1
* Shutter speed: 1/30th – 1/4000th second

This, in addition to its exposure compensation, exposure locking abilities, and gamma/color/picture settings that can be modified via templates generated with Canon’s PC/Mac accompanied 5D application.

This new firmware makes the 5D MII the best video camera out there for DV Rebels, and by far the best DSLR video camera out there. Of course, there are a slew of video-specific hardware features missing (e.g. XLRs), but in terms of actual visual quality obtained with its 38 mbps h.264 files, and with its new basic control options, it beats anything in that price range. Especially if you have some good lenses for it.

The only other feature that matters for us DV Rebels and that’s _really_ missing is frame rate support. 24p (=23.976) is still not there, and its 30p is 30.00 fps instead of 29.97. Additionally, 720p at 60p would have been nice too (for slow-motion usage). If Canon fix these two small problems (easy to implement), it has a real winner in its hands. There was a rumor a few weeks ago where someone said that Canon doesn’t want to implement 24p in its 5D in order to not cannibalize its prosumer cameras, but truth is, people are asking for it — a lot. They will have to comply.

In our home, we are 60% ready to buy the new 5D. Before today’s announcement, we were 10% ready. So we are close. But still not there. Add some frame rates that make sense, and then we will buy it with closed eyes. Promise.

Some people are whining online that their smartphone doesn’t last for more than 1-2 days without recharging, while their 5 year old phone could last over 5-6 days before need any recharging. This is a fallacy. The new phones have better battery life than the older ones.

Consider this: Phones like a Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, etc. come with many media and internet-heavy applications. It’s now customary to check for email, to check Twitter, to check the internet-updated Weather app, to check stocks, sync between the phone and various online accounts many times a day, to check some RSS or web pages, to use Y! or Google maps. And on the side, play some music, quickly visit youtube, and maybe even watch a small TV episode while waiting on the bus.

All these things are features that you couldn’t do 5 years ago. At least not in a way that would be pleasurable. 5 years ago, you would check your voicemail, your SMS messages, and just do voice. And that was about it. No wonder you could do over 5 days in battery life.

What changed is HOW we use these phones. We now use these phones as mini-laptops. And yet, we expect them to have the same battery life as they had when they were dumb bricks. I am sorry to say that battery technology doesn’t move as fast as software tech does!

And then there’s the other thing. On platforms that allow background apps, the third party application designers only care about their little app and not the whole device. As long as they can invoke a network ping or connection when you are not looking to sync something, they are happy. Very seldom these app developers think what would happen if there are 5 (or 10) background apps installed and doing their own thing whenever they damn want. The user will see a big drop in battery life, and will place the fault at the phone manufacturer instead.

In conclusion, be objective when you are damning a manufacturer of bad battery life. Maybe there’s something you can do to better the experience (short of inventing a new kind of battery altogether).

So we finally watched the new Star Trek movie (on a digital screen). It was extremely entertaining, the CGI were perfect, the subtle references to all things Trek were very nice. The new Spock was fantastic too. The new Star Trek movie was not about the normal social commentary stuff found on many Star Trek episodes, but for a franchise reboot, it needed the action and visual awesomeness to attract the young generation. I am willing to give Abrams the benefit of the doubt this one time.

Where I do find myself in disagreement with JJ Abrams’ vision is in the alternative timeline route he took. To make a franchise or show believable, it should not have prop errors, it has to be consistent, and it has to be true to its timeline. Without these, you lose in believability (like “Lost” lost points this season too). Sure, there have been many alternative timeline and mirror universe episodes over the years on the various Star Trek incarnations, but well, I never liked any of them. Especially when it comes to such an important movie that’s supposed to re-launch Star Trek.

Let me be clear: altering the timeline to have Spock and Uhura together, Kirk & Spock’s father and mother respectively dying, and Pike becoming an admiral is one thing. But destroying a whole planet, Vulcan no less, is a whole another thing. Vulcan is a constant in the Star Trek universe, it’s inspirational. Removing it from the new Star Trek is like removing Yoda from Star Wars. It doesn’t work. At least not for us older Trekkies, who have spent 30+ years in that universe. The destruction of Romulus was equally unneeded.

I don’t believe at all that JJ Abrams needed this alternative timeline thing to tell his story. He could have fit a similarly impressive story within the realm of the existing timeline. Undoing 45 years of Star Trek history was just disrespectful of the franchise and the fans.

Pay attention: I wouldn’t mind at all if he had rebooted the Star Trek franchise completely. Meaning, rebooting it in the same way Moore did for Battlestar Galactica, which he “re-imagined” it. This way, we the fans, would know that the director is going clean slate and he re-starts the franchise from the beginning. Re-designing and re-architecting the whole Trek universe! And that would be fine. That would be honest. But not doing exactly that, is like toying with everybody feelings and expectations. Believe it or not Mr Abrams, we, the older Trekkies, are not dead yet.

To me, it felt like someone taking my left-over pizza, removing my toppings, adding new ones, and re-heating it, instead of simply either re-heating it as is, or redoing the pizza from scratch (including a new dough). Therefore, I felt that this movie was a cheat.

The sad part is that Paramount will continue having my money for the upcoming Star Trek movies, because as I said above, that was some good sci-fi. And it was a good Star Trek in its absolute value. But it wasn’t the Star Trek I wanted. Star Trek is much more than a 2-hour movie. It’s a universe with a grand history. You either delete the history and re-write it from scratch (if you have the chops), or you play within it. But you don’t mess with it like a child messes up his vegetables during dinner. You don’t do dat.

Two more blog posts by others, saying the same thing as I do here.

When I look to buy a cheap digicam/digirecorder (NOT a camcorder) these are the video features I first look at, in this specific order:

1. Does it have exposure compensation?
2. Does it have exposure locking?
3. Does it have shutter speed control?
4. Does it have color/gamma settings? (low saturation/contrast/sharpness)?
5. Does it have manual white balance?
6. Does it have focus locking?

The first two are the most important video features one should be looking for. Without them, you can ruin your shots no matter how careful you are. For example, the Flip/Kodak digicam/digirecorders don’t have any of these features. The Panasonic ones only have #1 and #5. The new Canon ones have #1, #2, #4, #5, #6 making them a better buy overall (missing only shutter speed). Of course, a choice between 24, 25 and 30 fps would have been nice too.

Notice that I don’t list gain or aperture control. If I was looking for a still picture camera, aperture control would have been much higher up in the list, but for video, shutter speed is more important — at least for the kind of videos I am shooting. Needless to say that for all of my HV20 videos, none was shot in aperture mode. They were all shot either in shutter speed mode, or Cinemode.

Update: JBQ wrote a similar blog post too, about still cameras.

First, it was the computer games (they briefly made them illegal because they couldn’t distinguish them from gambling). Then, they invalidated perfectly good passports (while *no other* country in the EU did so when they also moved to biometric passports). This cost me $3000 back then (I had bought plane tickets), because the local Greek Consulate who had issued my previous passport didn’t even fucking sent me a letter to let me know!!! ANY OTHER country would have sent letters to people who live abroad (my address at the time was registered with the Consulate here).

Now, they want to invalidate 13.5 million SIM GSM cards that exist in the various Greek cellphone networks because they are “anonymous”. This just sucks. I do NOT object to offering your name to get a connection, but I do object in yet another massive invalidation, AND to the fact that in order to get a new pay-as-you-go SIM card from now on you HAVE TO ALSO BUY A CELLPHONE WITH IT. At least, this is what the article says.

This is fucking retarded. These people have no clue what they are doing. They always take the most extreme routes to battle a problem.

Here’s a selection of the kind of things I talked about on my Twitter page this week. Not sure if I will continue with these digests on my blog, probably not.

1. Just finished going through ~400 songs (free mp3 downloads) at Spinner.com. Only about 30 were “good”, and only 3 of them were “very good”. 2 of them I had already bought on iTunes.

5. My mom is lonely and unhappy atm. I wish I was in Greece to comfort her. My brother’s family doesn’t seem to understand her.

6. A nice, and free, legal #mp3 of the day, by the ‘Free Energy’: http://bit.ly/drrwf

7. I can’t play my beloved LTris anymore on Ubuntu. The game doesn’t clean up itself while exiting at the new Jaunty 9.04 Ubuntu version.

8. TETRO is Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie. It has almost no shallow DoF: http://apple.com/trailers/independent/tetro

9. Check out this very nice punk-rock band, named Daddysmilk. They have 8 mp3s for free download here: http://is.gd/Cd9t

11. I loved Steve Martin’s bluegrass song “Pretty Flowers” last night on American Idol, so this morning I bought the song on iTunes

13. My father’s name day was recently. He killed, skinned & roasted a goat for him & his friends to celebrate. I miss my family in Greece. AARRG

15. The Nokia E75 just arrived in da house. Pretty good business phone!

16. @wiretreetheband Great free song to download, thanks! I’ve been waiting for your new stuff!

18. The Canon HV20 was used as a secondary/test camera for Blitzen Trapper’s new music video. You can catch glimpses of it at http://is.gd/C7yT

19. A very interesting interview about where the music industry was, is, going to be and what that means for rock bands: http://is.gd/C7b4

20. Period pain… actually hurts. You heard it first here. Argh…

24. Some say that Arkansas pulled 38m out of the ~90m votes on American Idol, even if it only has 3 million inhabitants. Hence Kris’ unfair win.

26. During AmericanIdol, a long Transformers trailer was shown. It featured the best color grading I ever saw on a movie. Looked super in HD.

28. Adam Lambert should have won, end of story. Either Americans are idiots, or the show rigged the results. Either is disheartening.

30. My birthday is growing closer. I want a sushi lunch, a sushi dinner, and the Star Trek movie in between. But JBQ objects to too much sushi.

32. Reviews to write for this coming week: A Sandisk mp3 player (my blog), the Nokia E75 smartphone (OSNews), and Vegas Professional 9 (OSNews).

33. Legal settlements are about money. Not when the FSF is involved. With the FSF, it’s all about power clinging! God save us! http://is.gd/BM16

34. ‘Eleventh Hour’, a TV show with GOOD ratings, canceled. Why? Because most of its viewership were old people, so the ads were not paying out.

35. Why a [futuristic] society where institutions raise all people’s children won’t be possible: http://is.gd/BLjI

36. Woohoo! It’s LunDuke vs LinuxHater! Battle it out to the death! Read at http://lunduke.com and http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com

38. I am currently listening Josiah Leming’s beautiful songs: http://is.gd/BI1a Why is his full album not out yet? I’ve been waiting months now!

42. Good, free, legal music by Miike Snow. Get: Animal, It Don’t Move Me, Burial (DJ Mehdi Remix) at http://bit.ly/12ZdSH

46. Prepared a smoothie with strawberries, blackberries, orange juice & kiwis. The kiwis were not done, so I added honey. It came out terrible.

48. A “LOST” dispute on IM earlier: He called me “crazy Greek”, opinionated. I called him an idiot. Now I remember why we split up 12 years ago.

51. Just upgraded my Windows Live Mail version. The installer failed the first time! Way to continue the legacy of bugs with Live Mail.

52. I updated my PF24 pulldown-removal tutorials with a new, smaller, and easier method. AVCHD: http://is.gd/B6J1 – HDV: http://is.gd/B6IW

53. Spent $80 on iTunes yesterday: Disturbed, Rise Ag., Keane, AFI, Atreyu, Avenged S., Breaking Ben., Cage the El., Framing Han.,Jimmy EW, etc.

54. The ‘Sarah Connor’s Chronicles’ show got canceled. Good riddance. It wasn’t a great show. Dollhouse sucks as much btw.

58. I don’t really get Twitter, I am old school. But my hubby registered, so I had to, too. Hopefully I’ll get it soon. Have faith in me.

– Flash Forward (ABC)
The whole population of the planet blacks out for 2′:17″.

– V (ABC)
A re-imagining of the 1980’s miniseries about the world’s first encounter with an alien race.

– Day One (NBC)
It’s the story of life on earth following a global catastrophe that has devastated the world’s infrastructures.

– Past Life (FOX)
A psychologist and a former NYPD detective who have to unravel mysteries in the present and the past.

– Human Target (FOX)
The new series is more of an action thriller with a few brushes of sci-fi.

– Eastwick (ABC)
The series is based on the popular movie “The Witches of Eastwick”. Fantasy.

– Vampire Diaries (CW)
A young woman is torn between two vampires — one good, one evil. Fantasy.

My daily brain thought stream can usually be divided into three categories: music, video, and… exo-politics. I am afraid there’s no space left for good taste in fashion.

I am not a [firm] believer of UFOs or alien abductions, but I surely try to keep an open mind about it all. So, let’s assume that the alien abductions are true, and that — according to Temple University professor David Jacobs, Ph.D — the aliens’ sinister plot is to replace the human race with new Grey-human hybrid beings (so they can survive in this planet, while otherwise being Grey). To continue reading this blog post, please read the link above. Now, how is all that “alarming” and “unethical”?

Sure it’s alarming for our race, and our history, and our culture, but is something like annihilation of a species unheard of? Humans have been killing other humans to take over their land, they have killed off whole species numerous times for no good reason, and as very correctly my husband pointed out the other day: “how’s our genetically modified soy, or corn, different than this alien-human hybrid?” The same ethical rules apply (saying that sentient beings have priority over other lifeforms is sorely misguided). That didn’t stop humans from devouring this planet, and changing it and its species fundamentally. It’s one thing to hunt for food, and another to act like you own the whole star constellation.

So why are all these UFO web sites, and forums, and alleged abductees are crying foul? Why do they think that humans can do all these things to others but no one else can do this to them? Oh, of course, the various abductees will reply to my argument with a “but I personally never did any of these things”, but we all know that they didn’t do anything to stop it either. When was the last time you wrote to your Congressman, or camped outside the White House to protest a bad environmental law? Or even stopped buying corn or soy products? Fuck, you can’t even stop buying RIAA music (I know I can’t), no matter how much you disagree with their tactics. We are ALL responsible for what we collectively do, so shut the fuck up and enjoy your alien anal probe.

And who is to say that “evolution” is only a natural process, and not also an artificial one? So if our next step as a species is to be part alien, and adhere to new philosophies or beliefs, why is this exactly bad? I am pretty sure when most of you who have read of the Neanderthal species and how it eclipsed to make space for Homo Sapiens, you applaud it (even subconsciously). Well, what if this is something like this? Why stop progress? Who is to say that we are better than this hybrid species and we deserve to continue be who we are? And who says that if we weren’t the ones with the superior technology we wouldn’t do the exact same thing to other alien species? I bet you $100 that’s what we would do!

Maybe at the very end it is all about the law of the jungle, but on a galactic terrain. Don’t get me wrong. In the event of an alien invasion, I will be in the front line, fighting for my, personal right(?) to live. I fantasize of punching Greys in the face. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t “understand” where these beings are coming from, and why they do the things they do. It’s just that when I read comments online from alleged abductees saying that “the Greys are not ethical beings”, it first makes me chuckle, and then it makes me angry. Are we all so blind, hypocritical, and arrogant anymore?

Ok, back to real world now. Felt good in the la-la land.

Here’s a small guide editing your DV/HDV clips with ffmpeg under Ubuntu Linux. All cutting, processing, and exporting is done via the command line (oh, the joy!). Sure, this method doesn’t have niceties like fades, titles, effects etc, but it works for basic editing. Please note that not all AVCHD formats from all such cameras are supported.

First, you need to install the right version of FFmpeg, that supports all codecs (the default Ubuntu version doesn’t, for legal reasons). Follow the “B” solution from this tutorial to install the full version of ffmpeg on the latest versions of Ubuntu.

Now, find the DV/HDV or AVCHD video files you want to trim, or slice & cut. Watch a video file on a video player (e.g. VLC or Totem), and on a text editor (e.g. gEdit) type the minutes/seconds you want to cut. For example, you can type:
video1.m2t
– section 1: keep from 00:00:01 to 00:00:15
– section 2: keep from 00:02:37 to 00:03:54
video2.m2t
– blah-blah…
– blah-blah…

Then, load your glorious terminal, navigate to your videos’ folder, and type:
ffmpeg -ss 00:00:01 -t 00:00:15 -i "video1.m2t" -acodec copy -vcodec copy "edited-video1.m2t"
This means that ffmpeg will only save to a new file the video from the first second up to the 15th second. Adjust the numbers according to your needs. The transcoding will be completely lossless and done in mere seconds. Do the same for all your other sections/files. The original files won’t be destroyed btw, so you can re-cut them if needed.

After you have done this for all your files, you can put together the various edited files in a single file!
cat edited-video1.m2t edited-video2.m2t edited-video3.m2t > chapter1.m2t
Warning: The files must be of the exact same type! You can’t mix and mash different formats!

Now, you might want to burn a DVD! Here’s how to create a widescreen PAL DVD:
ffmpeg -i "chapter1.m2t" -aspect 16:9 -target pal-dvd "chapter1.mpg"
Use “ntsc-dvd” for NTSC videos instead of “pal-dvd” above. Also, you can have many different “chapter” files, that can act as different chapters to your DVD. You can use an app like DeVeDe to put together the various edited chapters/videos, and burn your DVD.

And here’s how to export for YouTube/Vimeo/PS3/XBoX360 in 720p HD h.264/AAC .MP4. First, let’s put all the chapters in a single video (if you have gone that chapters route):
cat chapter1.m2t chapter2.m2t chapter3.m2t > myvideo.m2t
And then, do the final export:
ffmpeg -deinterlace -i "myvideo.m2t" -threads 2 -f mp4 -vcodec libx264 -level 41 -refs 2 -loop 1 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -parti4x4 1 -partp8x8 1 -partb8x8 1 -coder 1 -subq 6 -brdo 1 -me_range 21 -s 1280x720 -r 30000/1001 -b 5120k -bt 8192k -bufsize 15000k -maxrate 16000k -g 300 -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k "myvideo.mp4"
Use “-r 25” instead of “-r 30000/1001” if you are on a PAL instead of an NTSC region.

And one last tip, for those who want the ultra-widescreen cinematic look. Add the code below to your (final) exporting code of ffmpeg, and adjust the numbers accordingly to your taste and create horizontal letterboxing:
-padtop 44 -padbottom 44 -padcolor 000000

Then, sit back, and enjoy the video on your TV. Oh, did I mention before that my TV runs on Linux?