Art, or something like it

Took the nice shiny SLR along to the Petersfield Fireworks display last night after reading a bit about some tips and tricks. Couldn't use all of them - mostly because the best tips required a tripod, remote-release and (preferentially) a very wide-angle lens, none of which works well in a crowd of 3,500 other people.

So the best of these shots are 1.3 second long exposures, at low ISO numbers (100-400 as I phaffed around), and f/9-f/10. All used manual focus. Despite the obvious hand shake, I'm very happy with the way these turned out....

iOS6: Panorama mode against Microsoft Photosynth

One of the stand-out features Apple promoted with iOS 6 is a new Panorama mode in the Camera (available on "all dual-core iPhones and iPads" - effectively only iPhone 4S and 5, and the retina iPad).

I'm interested in this because for a couple of years now I've been using the actually quite excellent (you've no idea how much it pains me to admit that) Microsoft PhotoSynth app to capture panoramas.

Functionally, there's no point in performing a comparison: PhotoSynth can take full 360-degree horizontal and vertical panoramas and can post them online using a viewer app that corrects for distortion and allows for interactive display. Whereas the iOS native functionality just captures a horizontal 180-degree strip as a single wide photo. So there's no way I'd ditch PhotoSynth just yet anyway.

Having said that, though, I am still interested in the technical differences: Very often with PhotoSynth the choice of stitch points and overlaps is less than perfect (or in English: You Can See The Joins). I've used this a couple of times to deliberate effect (a favourite of mine being capturing a helicopter taking off twice; less favourite being the appearance of my daughter no less than 8 times in a single panorama), so it's a Bug that's also a Feature. But it makes casual use harder.

With Photosynth, the gyroscopes / position sensors are used to detect the orientation of the camera; when it's moved sufficiently outside of the current frame another shot is taken (with plenty of overlap). For mostly horizontal scans this works well enough (although one does have to remember to only rotate the iPhone and try and avoid moving one's body or even just arm in an arc). The orientation sensors work less well taking deep vertical shots and tend to mis-align shots straight up or straight down, although the app's tap-to-take feature mostly allows one to work around this.

The iOS app works by just getting the user to follow a horizontal arrow across the screen held in portrait mode from left to right. There's no discrete shot-taking going on, it operates more like a video mode. As long as one rotates at the correct speed and keeps the camera horizontal, the shot works. Attempts to move or rotate the camera vertically either abort the panorama (big moves) or just clip the top and bottom of the vertical movement (small moves): the end result is always just a horizontal panorama with centre point and height determined by the starting position.

So really the only meaningful technical comparison that can be made between the two techniques is to compare the accuracy of the stitching and the compensation for focus distance and exposure across the apps.

I captured the same (or nearly so) 180-degree panorama sat on a bench outside my local leisure centre yesterday on a bright sunny day, moving from down-sun at the start straight into the sun at the finish. Because of orientation glitches and PhotoSynth's auto-start, I've had to crop the PhotoSynth panorama at top and bottom to reflect approximately the same strip as the iOS Panorama. As I took my time with both apps (particularly PhotoSynth which I more normally use in a discrete rotate-shoot-rotate movement), there was less difference in the results than I was expecting (or in English: I got better-than-normal stitching from PhotoSynth this time). But what I do find interesting is that both modes of panorama have considerably more softness to the results than I was expecting.

Here's the PhotoSynth capture (Scroll right for more of it):

Taro Leisure Centre 2012-09-21; Microsoft PhotoSynth, cropped to close to iOS Panorama output dimensions

And here's the iOS Panorama (pretty much untouched from as-taken):

The Same, only taken with iOS 6's Panorama function

My verdict (yours may vary): iOS does a better job of blending the frames together (there's some obvious exposure differences in the PhotoSynth example whereas the only obvious example on the iOS panorama can be explained away as Lens Flare if one's of a mind). Focus is also sharper in the iOS photo, although to be absolutely fair I may have over-cropped the PhotoSynth example and we're seeing some interpolation instead. I prefer the colour balance and exposure of the iOS example except for directly into sun which is better handled by PhotoSynth (which is taking multiple shots so can adjust the exposure to suit).


I don't have a conclusion: I thought I'd ignore iOS Panoramas as they're nowhere near as versatile as PhotoSynth, but the difference in quality is enough to make me reconsider for certain use cases.

£0.02 on the Latest and Greatest Software from Apple

Everyone else has an opinion, here's mine.

Upgrading both the Mac (OS X 10.8.2, iTunes 10.7, iPhoto 9.4) and the iPhone (iOS 6) at the same time was a mistake. It's made determining which side of the equation is glitching harder.

I did both late last night, so this is preliminary. In particular I may be mis-assigning glitches:

OS X 10.8.2

1. I got prompted on login to supply a password for "Back To My Mac". I've never enabled that before, so this was a surprise. Not as much as being told I was using the wrong password over and over though (As it's the same iCloud account that works for everything else....)
2. Attempting to change an iCloud account setting caused System Preferences to hang. Killing it and launching again got a pop-up about changed terms of service. And "Back to My Mac" now enables (although it doesn't appear on icloud.com; should it?)
3. Facebook integration's a bit intrusive, isn't it? 

iPhoto 9.4

1. Seems to have improved performance over previous versions; it navigates faster than the previous point-release on my library, which is welcome
2. Not sure if PhotoStream agent is working; I had to kill the previous incarnation due to it sucking up bandwidth during the patch download, even though it was uploading photos. Reboot / relaunch and the new agent is sitting there idle making no attempt to upload. We'll see, we'll see.

iOS 6

1. iCloud settings appear to have gotten messed up a bit: Reminders weren't syncing to the cloud. I thought that was a Mac problem but changes/updates made on the iPhone weren't appearing on icloud.com either. If you're affected, disabling the service (Settings -> iCloud -> Reminders OFF in my case) then re-enabling seems to cure it
2. Maps is hopeless, isn't it?
3. I'm mightily annoyed that Podcasts have completely disappeared from the iTunes Library. I've got the Podcasts App, and the latest version is moving closer to working territory but for years I've used a smart playlist in iTunes to manage what and how I go through Podcasts and now that doesn't work.
4. Whilst Podcast loss on the phone itself is irritating, it's a real blow to me using it in the Car: my car's iPhone integration pulls across playlists from iTunes on the phone. So now I've lost that, and if I'm lucky the override "just act like aux in" option will let me use the podcasts app as a substitute.

iTunes 10.7

On balance, most of my issues with this update lie here, particularly with syncing:

1. Photo syncing got mightily screwed up. On first attempt I ended up with duplicates of about 1,000 random photos in the iPhone's library. Not stuff that was also on PhotoStream, stuff that's older than that. Had to turn off all syncing, which left me with only the "orphan" duplicates, then sync to a blank directory to wipe those, then turn iPhoto Library syncing back on. 
2. Even after this, I've got 20-30 phantom Events appearing in iTunes's Event List. I sync "last 3 events" plus some favourites and this is now broken because I have 10 entries saying "20 Sep 2012" with no photos in (all newer than the latest actual events in iPhoto itself). I don't know what got messed up but I've checked and there's no empty events in iPhoto... Doing  Repair Library in iPhoto doesn't seem to fix this either.

3. Similar sorts of Orphan Data glitches with Music syncing. e.g. my Voice Memos are set to sync, but don't appear in the library any more. I've turned OFF Music sync to wipe the library and start again, and I've still got (empty) playlists on the phone.
4. After initially contacting but not completing a sync (for some reason), WiFi sync just flat out would not work last night. This morning it's back again. My best guess is that the uPNP port assignment magic got screwed up on my router; it's got a time-out for all that so leaving it for a bit sorted it out. 

Edited 2012-10-02: iPhoto '11 9.4.1 update, just applied, fixes the phantom events problem nicely.

Done a bike ride.

Inspired by @ChateauGateaux's epic rides and prodded not too subtly by @henleysmissus to do some sodding exercise, I took to the bike this morning. Several things were learned:

1. 6 weeks is far too long to leave between rides...but...
2. The difference between "less unfit" and "very unfit" is state during and after the ride. I still average 20km/h.
3. I still don't have my seat position correct (oww...)
4. East Hampshire has become less flat in the last couple of months
5. There's a LOT of East Hampshire I've never seen, even after close-on 20 years here
6. There's a lot more military presence within 10 miles of my house than I was aware of
7. Our country lanes suffered a lot with the poor weather this year
8. They're still suffering from some odd drilling and other maintenance activities leaving crud all over the roads
9. Just because someone in a 4x4 on a tiny road nearly runs you over doesn't mean they're a bad man. He even pointed me in the right direction at a crossroads.
10. My god it's beautiful out there.

London to Brighton After Action Report

I had the great pleasure of riding the London to Brighton bike ride organised by and with fund raising on behalf of the British Heart Foundation.

My main motivation for doing it was simple - Friends have done it in the past and enjoyed it, and Patricia did it last year and, frankly, I was jealous and eager to have a go myself. So we did a deal, and used her priority booking as a result of the money she raised, entered her and then swapped for me.

So I've known since January that I'd have a ride (places are limited, despite there being 27,000 of them), and I've had every incentive to prepare. For I am not a fit man, I work at a desk and I have no idea what most gym equipment does let alone any inclination to use it.

I've been riding most weekends since the end of January, starting with some depressingly short rides but ending up at a respectable 40-50KM in a couple of hours or so. Sadly conditions have conspired to keep me out of the saddle for a couple of weeks now, but I got a little warm-up done last night (and I needed to warm up as I got drenched going to the station) cycling 11KM from Waterloo station to the hotel I'd booked into in what was laughably described as "Wimbledon South" but resided at the end of Balham high street. If you're ever tempted to try this route, a word of advice: cycle lanes are respected in central London but the denizens of the suburbs treat them as parking spaces and 3-point-turn overflow points. Scary stuff.

So I woke this morning feeling a little apprehensive, but quite excited that today's the day. Thankfully the weather had improved - the wind dropped, and the sun came out (so much so I've got sunburnt arms, not that I'm complaining). 

A quick note to Mon Pere to say Happy Father's day, an adequate breakfast shared with several other riders sharing the same accommodation, and off we go. 15 minutes back up Balham High Street and I arrived at Clapham Common, along with several thousand other riders. Despite appearances it was very, very well organised with big entry lanes complete with start times (riders go into 30 minute blocks, with first come first served through the block). I had 20 minutes or so to wait, and enjoy the spectacles laid on like jugglers, one-man-bands and stilt walkers.

I made it through the start gate at 08:53, and saw my first puncture 50M up the road. Poor fellows; that must be disheartening. Over the next 50 minutes I got as far along (via a more triangular route) as crossing the same road I'd ridden up the previous hour, which was dis-heartening. Although the mood of all involved was good - a real festival atmosphere percolated through the day - an hour or more of this stop/start and crawling along drew groans at every new traffic light. We wanted to cycle, not push bikes.

It took me about 90 minutes to get to the same rest-stop as Patricia used last year, at the 18K line. A quick piddle, some phaffing around to raise my sagging seat, a bit of banter with others using the facilities and off I went again. 

Things went much better - or rather, faster - from here on. I don't have much to say about the next 25KM other than I enjoyed the ride, it's the English Curse that as soon as the rain stops and the sun comes out the pollen rises and the itchy eyes start, and DEAR GOD why do all these people get off and walk at the slightest incline? 

I arrived, a little unexpectedly if I'm honest, at the halfway point (the Hedgehog Inn outside East Grinstead) moments after 12. I was feeling great, I'd done 42KM, the sun was out and the biggest and greasiest bacon cheese and egg burgers you've ever seen were on sale. 

Took a nice 30 minute stop here to load up on grease and water and enjoy the sights. Including Batman, Robin and Superman, funnily enough.

Fought my way out of the rest stop, past the crowds of drinkers (really? I mean, I like a pint but with ~30 miles still to go that was never going to happen), and pushed on. The GPS's next waypoint was set to the top of Ditchling Beacon, 29km as the crow flies. The next hour or so wasn't so bad, although it was noticeable that I had less in reserve going up inclines than I had in the morning; the effects of this were masked by the preponderance of people walking up the hills and causing road-blocks at the top where there was inevitably a refreshment stop with accompanying traffic going in and out to add to the confusion. 

But after 90 minutes or so - around about 2pm - and as I went through Heywards Heath, about the 60KM mark and notably 8KM past my longest training distance, it became clear that I was (not to put too fine a point on it) knackered and suffering. The old legs weren't playing ball, my arse was in agony from the seat, and the heat was causing a headache despite getting through several litres of water. 

Not long after I had one of those fantastic moments of Random Kindness thrust upon me, as an older geezer pulled alongside and berated me for having a badly-adjusted seat. He pointed out the nose was raised, and that must be agony (how perceptive). I replied that I'd tried adjusting it and it only went fore and aft, not up and down. He insisted he knew how to fix it, and pretty much forced me off the road to demonstrate. Out came his surprisingly complete toolkit, and by extensively loosening the seat post bolt he showed convincingly that it's easy to rotate the seat up and down, as well as fore and aft. With the seat now firmly nose-down, and with my eternal thanks ringing in his ears, this made one hell of a difference to my nethers, with blood swiftly returning to parts I'm perhaps over fond of, and the adjusted position aiding my pedalling as a bonus.

However, this effect wasn't a magic panacea, and as the South Downs hove into view I was clear my underlying problem hadn't vanished. The route heads due South from Heywards Heath, and it's mostly downhill until one arrives in Ditchling village. Then it's not, any more. The little and minor uphill sections through and immediately after the village proved really hard work, so at the last stop before the hill I collapsed in a heap, ate half a packet of jelly babies, swallowed more water, and took a good long rest. 

But that wasn't going to crack the hill, so eventually I decided to have at it. I got a couple of hundred metres into the hill proper, and then hit my first snag: dropping from 2nd to 1st gear jumped the chain over onto the spokes, twice. Much cursing ensued. I got a bit further in 2nd and then successfully into 1st, only for the chain to slip on 4-5 occasions. This caused a bit of dispair, and I hopped off and walked. After some cursing and percussive maintenance (observed in humour by a very fit but not stupid gent carrying his single-speed racer up the hill), I had another go in 2nd gear. I got another couple of hundred metres, but again attempts to use 1st gear proved futile. That was it, my legs were shot and I was (if honest) somewhat despondent. I dismounted and pushed the bike about 2/3 of the way up to arrive feeling a bit of a failure at the summit.

There's not much more to report: the remaining 12KM or so of the ride from Ditchling to the finish line are all downhill and flat, and the only incident of note was that 7th and 8th gears in top didn't want to play, and freewheel wasn't really working. On reflection, I was resting my bike on the wrong side today - gears down - and I somewhat suspect I've dislodged or otherwise affected the positioning of the derailleur gears.

I arrived at the finish line down on the seafront at 15:42, 6 hours and 50 minutes since starting. It was very good to finish, a little disheartening to do so on my own (we'd agreed that getting wife + kids to the centre of Brighton was, logistically, foolish so it wasn't a surprise). But in glorious sunshine, on a fantastic day, with the marvellous company of similarly inclined strangers I'd ridden twice as far as I'd ever managed in a day, raised a lot of money for the BHF, and generally - despite the setbacks - had a great day out.

The fact that it took me another 45 minutes to get from the finish line, past the pier and along the seafront to Hove Tesco is incidental. The hair I discovered on removing my hat (I'd deliberately kept it on all day) provided what I had hoped would be the "money shot" of a daft final appearance to amuse or at least confirm the suspicions of my friends and acquaintances:

Patricia and the girls picked me up soon after, having spent the day on and around the beaches of East Sussex geocaching, eating ice-cream and throwing frisbees. Kate managed the shortest time ever from getting out of a car to showing her father with kisses, hugs and a big bag of Father's Day goodies which was very welcome but a little out of place.

The minor coda to this tale is that, through faulty memory I was sure I'd beaten Patricia's time by about 5 minutes - a technicality really since she cycled up Ditchling Beacon which is a win by default - however on comparing GPS tracks I see I'd badly mis-remembered, and was never in the running: she has a good half an hour on my time; partly through making shorter stops but mostly because she's actually fit and healthy and I'm not.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank all of the people who I badgered, pestered, annoyed and cajoled into supporting me in this endeavour. Without your assistance, I'm not sure I wouldn't have given in at Heywards Heath, and the motivation of a bunch of people willing to stand behind actual money in their confidence that you can do it is a great push to get one across the finish line. Thank you all, gentlemen and ladies, I really mean it. 

Thank you, Shelly. Thank you very much, Dave. Big thanks to Rich not only for the financial support but also for the fantastic advice and guidance and benefit of your experience. Thanks to Tony, to Brian, to Bode, to Nick, to Paul W and Paul P, to Len and to Dave - all of whom go to show that great colleagues shouldn't be taken for granted and will always support you if you ask them. Thanks to Helen and to Simon for showing me that old friends don't mean distant friends. I owe you all an enormous debt of gratitude. Or failing that, beer.

Now it's time for bed.

Charitable Begging

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record about this: I'm doing the London to Brighton Bike Ride this year on 17th June, and any sponsorship in aid of the British Heart Foundation would be very, VERY gratefully received.

For more information please visit my fundraising page:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MatthewExley

Many thanks.

Wow, scammers are getting desperate these days...

I got this spam email t'other day:

From: dead <info@dead.com>Subject: dead or aliveDate: 9 May 2012 10:50:36 GMT+01:00
This is the only way I could contact you for now,I want you to be very careful about this and keep this secret with you until I make out space for us to see.
You have no need of knowing who I am or where i am from.I know this may sound very surprising to you but it’s the situation.I have been paid some ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer
It’s someone I believe you call a friend, I have followed you closely for a while now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusations leveled against you.
Do not contact the police or try to send a copy of this to them,because if you do, I will know,and I might be pushed to do what I have been paid to do.Besides,
this is the first time I turn out to be a betrayer in my job.I took pity on you and your kids... That is why I have made up my mind to help you if you are willing to help yourself.

I've been on the internet for a while, I'm pretty jaded. But this one did at least catch my eye. That's a horrible way of trying to scam some money out of someone. Really really horrible. Thankfully better people than I know how to best deal with this sort of wild abuse, and reap the LulZ from it.

Best bit is the numpty's actually left a valid reply-to address plainly visible. And it's got nothing to do with the listed (holding) domain above.

I suppose the positivist's outlook on this would be: Hey, I must be making some sort of impact on the world to justify a contract on me. Right?

Digital Transition

So it turns out we're going fully-digital in March (the Midhurst transmitter). This, apparently, explains why we've got absolutely shonky Freeview reception at the moment. Channels disappearing, then re-appearing, appallingly broken-up pictures and sound etc. Ahh, digital. Degrades so much more finally than Analogue...


My parents went this time last year. My dearly sainted mother described the process as "the picture was horrible or unwatchable for a couple of months. Then your father retuned and it got better".  Well, we've got the same.

Since about Jan 10th , the BBC multiplex (Mux-1) has been fine. But availability of everything else has been spotty: poor to nonexistent during the day, occasionally fine in the evening, rarely good late at night.

Nerd that I am, I've managed to track this behaviour on my Myth box using "tzap". 

Here's a working channel:

 tzap -a 0 -f 0 -d 0 -c scan_localfreq_channels.conf 'BBC ONE'
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
reading channels from file 'scan_localfreq_channels.conf'
tuning to 754000000 Hz
video pid 0x0258, audio pid 0x0259
status 1e | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 0000303d | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1e | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 000000d0 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1e | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 00000080 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1e | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 000001c0 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK

And here's one that's probably not right now:

tzap -a 0 -f 0 -d 0 -c scan_localfreq_channels.conf 'Channel 4'
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
reading channels from file 'scan_localfreq_channels.conf'
tuning to 826166670 Hz
video pid 0x0230, audio pid 0x0231
status 1a | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1a | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1a | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000015 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1a | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1a | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK

Spot the differences? Status = 1e on BBC1, 1a on Channel 4. Constant high Bit Error Rate on C4, variable but much lower on BBC1.

Later in the evening I might get to see actual values for "signal" and "snr" (Signal-to-Noise) on both channels, which is an indication all is working well at the minute.

Now the experience of my parents above means basically that I should just sit back, wait until the switchover is complete in mid-March, and then start worrying if I can't get it to work again. And I'm mostly resigned to this. But I have a nagging feeling I'm actually looking at a local problem, not a switchover artefact: Up in the roof we've got a signal booster, tucked away where we can't see it. And I'm wondering whether it's gone "phut" recently....

Back Garden Astronomy - 2012-01-13

Very cold out tonight (Google says currently -2C) which combined with poor optical conditions meant only a short go with the 'scope tonight of about an hour.

Poor conditions were a disappointment; I think it's mostly dew / fogging on the scope (I was taking care to keep my frosty breath away as much as possible). Couldn't get good focus on stars and a massive halo around Jupiter.

Nonetheless, got some seeing in of:

• Jupiter - Closer to vertical than on previous views (well; it's just past South at peak altitude, what did I expect?). Nice to see an out-of-plane moon although I've had to verify in Stellarium that it wasn't anything else (Callisto; Io's on closest-to-Jupiter in-plane duty tonight).
• Betelgeuse - Much redder than I was expecting, although some of that might be exaggerated due to diffraction and the focussing problems I was having. Very distinctive though.
• Aldebaran - Again, much more colour than I was expecting
• Pleiades - Would be a fascinating object to study with the right equipment; I was getting too cold to do it justice
• Procyon - Again, quite distinctive but couldn't get steadied down enough to have a good gander.

As ever, though, it's the surprises that make it. As I was eyes-out looking around for a good target, at about 2045ish, a very large very bright orange fireball went over from about Jupiter (South-South-West) pretty much due-north. It's the first time I've seen one leave a big trail, with visible "sparks" breaking off. It got right overhead and disappeared (burnt out?) about 45 degrees above North. The whole thing only lasted about 10 seconds from appearing, growing a tail, particles streaming off, to disappearing. Very impressive. If I lived elsewhere and it'd been East-West I'd have guessed it might have been Phobos-Grunt re-entering.