Jonathan's blog

Recently I upgraded to a 1080p screen and a 5.1 speaker set to compelent my Windows Media Center home theatre PC. Suddenly those low-quality 700MB DVD rips with stereo sound and about as many pixels as a Nokia phone from the last millennium don’t seem so great. It was time to go high-definition.

I downloaded a slightly compressed BluRay rip, but it was 15GB and took a week to download. My ISP seems to be rate-limiting filesharers these days, which doesn’t help. I searched for legal HD movie downloads but I couldn’t find any in the UK. Even if there were such a site, there’s still no getting round the fact that a good quality video is going to be at least 10GB.

So I decided to buy a BluRay drive and some discs. I popped the SATA drive into my media PC and it was immediately detected. So I put a BluRay disc in the drive, but Media Center said that software had to be installed to play BluRay discs. That’s OK – not entirely unexpected and hopefully just as simple as installing any other video codec.

The BluRay drive came with a CD of software, including Cyberlink PowerDVD, which said it could play BluRays. So I installed it, and it can indeed play BluRays. Unfortunately it offers no integration with Media Center, and to play a BluRay you have to scrabble around on your hands and knees with the keyboard and mouse.

After some searching online, I discovered an app called TotalMedia Theatre. Several people in home theatre forums had recommended it as an app that sort of integrates into Media Center. It’s a bit ugly because it minimises Media Center and launches its own splash screen before starting to play the BluRay, but at least it doesn’t require manual intervention.

Getting 5.1 audio out of TotalMedia Theatre took a bit of prodding at the settings, and at the buttons on the front of my Sony receiver, but it seems to be fine now. So, my first high-defition, surround-sound BluRay experience tonight will be to watch… erm….  Frost/Nixon. A dialogue-driven political drama. Never mind!

I bought a BluRay-ROM drive for my media PC this week, and so I decided to bump-start my collection of BluRays.

I dredged through the bargain movies at Play.com and ordered ten of them.

Much was my surprise when they started arriving today and I discovered that they were individually wrapped!

I can’t understand how they can possibly save money by using ten cardboard packets and ten orders with the courier. It seems to me to be more efficient to pick the ten discs in the warehouse, put them in one box and post the box off.

Not to mention the cost to the environment (or perhaps more importantly, perceived cost).

When I first started getting into photography a couple of years ago, I wanted to have a go at everything. I bought the cheapest infrared (IR) filter I could find on eBay and was delighted to find that my then camera, a Fuji S9600, was slightly sensitive to very deep red, and IR. I don’t think it was supposed to be, but it enabled me to take IR photos of outdoor scenes, and very hot objects, such as this light bulb.

When I traded in the S9600 for a Canon 450D, I was slightly disappointed to find that it wasn’t at all sensitive to the same range of IR and/or deep red. There are companies that will do an IR conversion, which involves taking the camera apart and removing its internal IR filter. It’s expensive, and it’s pretty much a one-way conversion.

Then I realised there was a cheap and practical alternative that had been staring me in the face the whole time. My 35mm SLR.

IR film is several times more expensive than regular film, but still vastly cheaper than digital IR photography. I bought a roll of Ilford SFX200 and it was about £8.

I read about how to correctly expose IR film and frankly it sounds confusing. Lots of people recommend using a light meter, but then you have to take into account the filter which is present on the camera but not on the light meter. It’s anybody’s guess how many stops you need to compensate for the IR filter.

It’s also a shot in the dark (no pun intended!) as to the ratio of visible light to invisible IR light. This varies with the time of day, what the light is falling upon, and about a million other things.

I wanted to shoot one or two frames, see the results, and then make sure I was doing it properly before shooting a whole film. Unfortunately that’s not easily possible, so I’m just going ahead and shooting a whole 36-exposure roll. As I write, I’m about halfway through the film.

The good news is that my Canon AE-1′s light meter appears to be sensitive to IR light. That is, with the IR filter on, the internal meter appears to work properly so I can simply use the camera as normal. I verified this with a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation to compare the meter’s behaviour with and without the IR filter. It seems about right.

So here’s hoping that this fantastic little camera will produce me 36 interesting IR photos. We will see – watch this space!

I was just considering the possibility of visiting a friend in Utrecht. With the flights currently grounded, I thought it might be a nice idea to get the Eurostar or ferry to Calais and cycle from Calais to Utrecht. I wasn’t exactly sure how far it would be, so I checked on Google Maps.

The shortest driving route from Calais to Utrecht is 337 km. That’s doable on a bike in a few days. However, being a car route, it was sticking to the major roads so I selected the walking option which I thought might choose quieter roads that would also suit a cyclist.

Apparently the quickest (not shortest) route on foot is 1,049 km. Unbelievably, the map shows that you are to go via the UK twice.

Calais to Utrecht

I suppose the implication is that it’s quicker to take the ferry for the long stretches than walk. The only segments of that journey to be undertaken on foot are a short stretch in Kent, a short stretch near Brugge and the home straight into Utrecht.

The shortest walking route still goes via Kent but makes you walk from Oostende to Utrecht.

I will probably end up getting the ferry to somewhere in Holland and cycling just the last stretch.

I dropped my iPhone 3GS this week. It fell perfectly face down on the pavement, and the glass front shattered.

The screen still works perfectly, and so does the touch-screen. Unfortunately some of the shards of glass are loose and they have an unpleasant tendency to stick in your thumb when you swipe to unlock the phone.

I will almost certainly have to pay for the repair out of my own pocket – and maybe even buy a whole new handset. Currently all of the iPhone handsets retail for over £400.

Broken iPhone

Broken iPhone

A friend of mine has just completed a project to design a computer program that will generate photo mosaics. She has now launched a survey to collect opinions on what makes the ‘best’ mosaic.

Have a go at the survey – it’s interesting and will help her with her project.

It comes in four parts, but won’t take you long…

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

No, I’m not savvy to some leaked press release or anything like that. But I was wondering the other day how long it might be before we see a Google sat nav device on the market.

Think about it – they already have maps of most of the world and software that is capable of route planning and they have an operating system suitable for mobile devices (Android). It’s only a small step to create a small touchscreen device with a GPS receiver that it designed to be used primarily as a sat nav.

I expect such a device would also have 3G so it could get hold of live traffic information faster than a TMC receiver. It would be able to sync with Google Contacts so your sat nav would know where all your friends lived. It might be able to send them a text message if you were going to be late.

And, of course, it would track you wherever you went. Scary.

My youngest brother will soon be sixteen, which means he will have come of age in the eyes of the Church of England. He was given a form to register on the church’s electoral roll, meaning he can attend and vote at PCC meetings, and probably entitles him to hold other positions of responsibility too.

However, I just glanced over the form and it seems so antiquated and difficult to follow that I am really not surprised that attendance is falling at Anglican churches!

A note for those of you who aren’t familiar with churchy stuff: church with a lower case C refers to a physical church building, or a single church. Church with a capital C means the wider Church; e.g. the Church of England. Confused?

APPLICATION FOR ENROLMENT ON THE CHURCH ELECTORAL ROLL

Full name: _________________

Preferred title: ________

Full address: _______________________

I declare that:

1. I am baptized and aged 16 or over (or, become 16* on ___)
2. I am a member of the Church of England (or of a Church in communion with the Church of England) and am a resident in the parish, or
3. I am a member of the Church of England (or a Church in communion with the Church of England) and, not being resident in the parish, I have habitually attended public worship in the parish during the period of six months prior to enrolment, or
4. I am a member in good standing of a Church (not in communion with the Church of England) which subscribes to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and also declare myself to be a member of the Church of England and I have habitually attended public worship in the parish during the period of six months prior to enrolment.

I declare that the above answers are true and I apply for inclusion on the church electoral roll of the parish.

Signed: ______________ Date: ________

Notes

1. The only churches at present in communion with the Church of England are other Anglican Churches aand certain foreign Churches.
2. Membership of the Electoral Roll is also open to members in good standing of a Church not in communion with the Church of England which subscribes to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity where those members are also prepared to declare themselves to be members of the Church of England.
3. Every six years a new roll is prepared and those on the previous roll can re-apply. If you are not resident in the parish but were on the roll as an habitual worshipper and have been prevented by sickness or absence or other essential reason from worshipping for the past six months, you may write “would” before “have habitually attended” on the form and add “but was prevented from doing so because” and then state the reason.
4. If you have any problems over this form, please approach the clergy or lay people responsible for the parish, who will be pleased to help you.
5. In this form, “parish” means ecclesiastical parish.