Q&A: Adding Radio Stations to iTunes

Q.

The iTunes Radio list lacks a few streaming stations that I like. Is there anyway to add these so I can listen through iTunes instead of keeping the station’s Web page open all day?

A.

If you have the Web address for a station’s stream, you can add it to iTunes by copying the station’s URL. Open iTunes and in the Advanced menu and choose Open Stream. Paste the URL into the box that appears and click the O.K. button. The stream should begin playing through iTunes.

To save the station to a playlist, go to the File menu, choose New Playlist and call it “Radio Streams” or something similar. To save the current station to the playlist, right-click (or hold down the Control key and click) the name of the station as it plays in the iTunes track-display window. From the contextual menu that appears, choose Add to Playlist from and select your radio playlist. You can also drag radio streams listed in the lower part of the iTunes window onto the playlist icon to add them.

If the radio stations you want to add to iTunes are available on the SHOUTcast radio directory, you can easily add the streams to iTunes. On the SHOUTcast mail page, click on the Help menu, choose Settings and click the button next to “Play SHOUTcast stream in default media player.” Click the Save Settings button.

When you click on a stream you want to play in the SHOUTcast directory, the station’s .pls file downloads to your computer. If it does not begin to play in iTunes, double-click the downloaded file to start it. In most cases, the streams are automatically added to an “Internet Songs” playlist in iTunes.

Gigapixel Photography: Another Promise of Camera Revolution

Photographers are used to thinking in megapixels, but researchers at Duke University have gone even bigger with the first gigapixel camera for general use.

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One image from the Aware-2 camera, with segments at 4x and 32x zoom.

One image from the Aware-2 camera, with segments at 4x and 32x zoom.

uke's Aware-2 camera uses 98 sensors of 14 megapixels each to stitch together images of extraordinary detail. The pixel count is high enough that even faraway objects can be cropped to look like close-ups from a conventional camera. From 1 kilometer away, the camera can spot objects as small as 1.5 inches wide.

The researchs say that the Aware-2 uses a 16-mm entrance aperture to capture snapshot, one-gigapixel images at three frames per minute.

“Ubiquitous gigapixel cameras may transform the central challenge of photography from the question of where to point the camera to that of how to mine the data,” the researchers say in an abstract for their article, which was published in Nature.

Multi-Sensor Approach Widens the Field

The Aware-2 isn't the first gigapixel camera, but as Gizmodo points out, other cameras can only capture a narrow field of view, so photographers would have to record a sequence of images while panning to make up a whole scene. The Aware-2's multi-sensor approach allows it capture the entire scene at once.

Already, news outlets are throwing around the word “revolution” when referring to the camera--reminiscent of the raves about Lytro's light field camera--but it'll be a long time before the Aware-2 is ready for real-world use.

The mounting dome for the Aware-2 camera, with microcamera optics attached

The mounting dome for the Aware-2 camera, with microcamera optics attached.

It's not exactly consumer friendly. The current version weighs 100 pounds, and is roughly the size of two stacked microwave ovens, the Wall Street Journal reports. Each photo takes about 18 seconds to record--a limitation of today's computers, rather than the camera itself--and is only in black-and-white, though a 10-gigapixel should be ready by the end of the year.

The researchers currently operate on $25 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, whose Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is interested in gigapixel cameras for surveillance purposes. There's no word on when the technology will become portable.

Nokia 808 PureView smartphoneNokia 808 PureViewIn the meantime, there's always the Nokia 808 PureView smartphone for consumers who want the biggest pocketable pixel count. Unfortunately,at 41 megapixels, it's still 959 megapixels short of Duke's new toy.

Follow Jared on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for even more tech news and commentary.

Why It Matters Whether a Toy is Thin and Sexy (Or Not) - Rachel Stone

Child's doll with tape measure, Peter Dazeley / Getty Images

Child's doll with tape measure, Peter Dazeley / Getty Images

So the ‘thinner-and-sexier evolution” series is kind of winding down, as there are (thankfully, I think?) only a limited number of consumer products that have been around long enough so as to be able to undergo some kind of thin-and-sexy transformation. Besides, at this point, it’s kind of "clicked there, browsed that," you know? Especially since every toy/image transformation does some basic variation on the theme of “thin down and sex up.”

Call it the Barbiefication of toys for girls.

Or, you could call it what the American Psychological Association does, which is sexualization. Sexualization, as opposed to healthy sexuality, is defined (by the APA) as any one of the following:

  • a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
  • a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
  • a person is sexually objectified — that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
  • sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.

As usual, a picture makes things clearer: what if all the Avengers posed like the female one?

This brilliant artistic experiment demonstrates just how pervasive images portraying females as sexually available objects are, such that when we see men posing in ways that signify sexual objectification, it looks strange.

The APA task force writes:

“In study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner (e.g., dressed in revealing clothing, with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness) and are objectified (e.g., used as a decorative object, or as body parts rather than a whole person). In addition, a narrow (and unrealistic) standard of physical beauty is heavily emphasized. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate.“

Sexualization is damaging, really damaging, in a number of ways. Namely, it:

  • has been repeatedly shown to detract from the ability to concentrate and focus one’s attention, thus leading to impaired performance on mental activities such as mathematical computations or logical reasoning;
  • has repeatedly been linked with three of the most common mental health problems of girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression or depressed mood;
  • has negative consequences in terms of girls’ ability to develop healthy sexuality; and/or,
  • makes it difficult for some men to find an “acceptable” partner or to fully enjoy intimacy with a female partner as a result of over exposure to narrow ideals of female sexual attractiveness.

The APA has a number of recommendations—you can read the report here if you like—but one thing the organization mentions kind of stuck with me in relationship to what churches can do/have done:

“encourage girls to become activists who speak out and develop their own alternatives.”

As I’ve said before, many of the messages given to young girls in evangelical churches—at least in my experience—encourage passivity, whether muted or outright. So Ruth, in the Old Testament, is not a story about a courageous woman sticking by her destitute mother-in-law, working hard, and making things happen so that “Mara” (bitterness) can be “Naomi” (pleasantness) again. It’s about Ruth’s wonderful feminine qualities in waiting for Boaz’s male leadership.

(I’ve seen this in a number of places–namely, in this book, this one, and this one, and in the now-defunct Brio magazine from Focus on the Family.)

While these discourses emphasize ‘purity’ and, in so doing, do something to resist sexualization, I worry that the fear some evangelicals have of being “too feminist” actually means that they acquiesce to the broader culture’s objectification of women by insisting on a female passivity that’s JUST. NOT. THERE. in the Bible they claim to revere.

Ruth’s a kick-butt type of lady. So’s Jael. So’s Rahab. So’s Tamar. so are a number of others.

So here are my questions:

  • Have evangelical churches offered a coherent alternative to the objectification of girls prevalent in American culture? (Because even where they’ve resisted sexualization—at least, sexualization outside marriage—they’ve emphasized passivity in that sphere?)
  • Is it possible to do so while continuing (as some do) to insist upon women’s subordination to men in the church?
  • What can churches, families, and individuals do to resist messages of sexualization?

Rachel Stone is a writer living in Greenport, N.Y. She has contributed to Relevant, Books and Culture, Christianity Today, and Flourish, and blogs at RachelMarieStone.com. Her book, Eat with Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food, is forthcoming from IVP in February. This piece orginially appeared HERE.

 

from | God's Politics Blog | Sojourners

'Time Zero' For All Those Heartbroken Polaroid Photographers :NPR

Time Zero: The Last Year Of Polaroid Film looks at what happened when Polaroid decided to discontinue its instant film.
Enlarge Silverdocs

Time Zero: The Last Year Of Polaroid Film looks at what happened when Polaroid decided to discontinue its instant film.

Silverdocs

Time Zero: The Last Year Of Polaroid Film looks at what happened when Polaroid decided to discontinue its instant film.

Time Zero: The Last Year Of Polaroid Film begins as a sort of slow meditation on an art form a lot of people don't even think of as an art form: instant photography. Specifically, Polaroid photography. It introduces you to photographers who adore Polaroids; who plaster their walls with them and have thousands of them in boxes. Director John Waters explains that he takes a Polaroid of every single person who enters his home (well, any of his homes) for any reason, from the plumber to perhaps not very memorable one-night-only visitors.

These are not people who love to take Polaroids ironically or because it's retro; in many cases, they can explain to you exactly why they consider instant photography to be like nothing else, and some of those reasons really do make sense: It gives you a physical object you can hold right away. It gives you a photo you can hand to the subject of the photo right when you take it. It appears within a recognizable white frame that, as long as it's there, is a pretty good guarantee the photo hasn't been doctored from what the photographer saw. It has an intriguing color palette that looks different from other films.

YouTube

Unfortunately for all these lovers of Polaroids, the company decided in the mid-2000s to move away from the instant cameras that made it a giant and toward televisions and digital frames and so forth. They still make some instant cameras, but they're really just digital cameras that print immediately, and while that might seem to satisfy some of the enthusiasts' demands, you can bet it's not enough, based on what they say in the film about digital in general. They want real film that develops. They want what's called "integral film," which is the develops-with-chemicals-inside-the-camera kind. So they were devastated – really, they were devastated – when Polaroid announced in 2008 that it had decided, a few years earlier as it turns out, to stop making it.

Instantly, people started snapping up what remained of the film that worked in traditional Polaroid cameras, particularly the beloved SX-70, the model introduced in the early 1970s that became the classic Polaroid. People still love the SX-70, and these artists became artists by working with it and cameras like it. So what do you do when the only company that sources the medium in which you work just ... stops making it?

First, you grieve. These artists explain in interviews how much they love instant film, how much they hate digital photography, and how they cannot imagine having to spend more hours at their computers looking at images when they already spend hours at their computers doing everything else. One proudly points out he doesn't work with images anyway – he takes photographs, for crying out loud, and with a digital camera, most images will never live to become photographs. The story bogs down a little bit in the middle and turns to telling rather than showing as everyone earnestly explains how everything real is disappearing, the next generation won't have any memories, and so forth. This is the part you've seen in a lot of other places in debates over everything in media from music to books, and it's the least interesting section of the film.

But things pick right back up again when something unexpected happens: somebody else expresses interest in making instant film again. Not Polaroid film, exactly; it turns out that for lots of reasons, you can't go back to just producing the same film Polaroid used to put in the SX-70. But might there be another way to make it? That's the theme of the film's third act, which follows an audacious project that everyone agrees is highly unlikely to succeed but that seems to run purely on the enthusiasm of the potential audience. Can they figure out how to make new film for an old format?

There are times when Time Zero is a little too broadly sentimental in delivering the message; it could have done with a little less beatific lighting in places and a little less dreamlike wooziness in the score. There are times when it looks – in style, not in content – a little bit like a Super Bowl commercial about a tech company leading us into the future.

But over and over, the photographers return you to the story, to their love of what they do, and to their desire to keep doing it. It really is a particularly modern film, in that it's pretty rare these days to run into the problem these people are facing. We don't lose access to consumer products we really, really want – on the say-so of a single corporation – very often anymore unless they're replaced with things that are at least kind of similar. When Polaroid film went away, there was nothing. If you were an instant photographer, you had the boxes of film you had, which weren't especially generous at 10 pictures to a box, and when they were gone and what had been manufactured got too old to be any good, you would have ... nothing. Nothing to put in your camera, not unless somebody else came up with something. And that gives this film a chance to ruminate on art and scarcity in a way that eBay has made rare.

You'll have to track down a chance to see the movie for yourself sometime (which I really hope will happen, though it seems it's early days) to find out whether it worked. And hey — don't Google it and spoil yourself; that's no fun.

 

Going paperless: answers to your paperless lifestyle questions | Jamie Todd Rubin

Going paperless: answers to your paperless lifestyle questions

Posted on 19 June 2012

In this week’s Going Paperless post, I am answering the questions that folks asked in the comments to last week’s “open forum” post. I looks like I got seven questions, covering a fairly wide range of topics. I’ve answered them in the order they appeared below. I’ve tried to provide a general topic area for each question so that folks have an easier time finding what you’re looking for. And so, without further delay, here are the questions that you asked and my answers.

1. [Scanners] Adam asks, “In one of your recent Paperless post you did for Evernote, you mentioned a scanner that has great capabilities fit for EN users (particularly Scan Directly to EN) I cannot recall the model number, but it was a portable Fujitsu. I am after the same capabilities, however in the form of a printer/scanner combo. Did your road to a paperless lifestyle ever take you into the printer/scanner world with your research?”

The scanner I use is a Canon ImageFormula P-150M, which I discussed here and here. When I decided to go paperless, I wanted to stick with a minimalist approach as much as possible, and that included finding a good portable scanner that integrated with Evernote, in case I wanted to take the scanner along with me. So during my research, I really only looked at portable scanners and not the combos. Many other people do use Fujitsu scanners to scan directly into Evernote and they are very happy with them. I believe the Fujitsu model I’ve seen most frequently mentioned is the SnapScan line. My reasons for liking these smaller, portable scanners were pretty straight forward:

  • They integrate directly with Evernote. (My ImageFormula scanner has a programmable button that sends scans directly to Evernote, for instance)
  • The ImageFormula scans both sides of a page at the same time, speeding up the overall process of scanning.
  • The scanner can scan something like 14 pages per minute at standard resolutions, which is convenient for my volume of scanning
  • The scanner uses a very small area on my desk

In all of the time I’ve used this scanner, I haven’t run into any problems. I scanned normal documents, business cards, greeting cards, and other types of documents and they all seem to work just fine running through the scanner.

I can’t say much more about scanners beyond that. Once I found what I was looking for, I bought it and stopped looking. However, many other people have made recommendations for a variety of scanners. I’d suggest checking out Evernote’s Paperless Lifestyle forum and searching for “scanner” or a specific model to see if anyone has something to say about other scanners beyond what I’ve mentioned in my posts.

2. [Exporting] John asks, “EN a really interesting option for a digital filling cabinet. I’ve just been using a dropbox folder. My concern with EN is future proofing. Can you walk through the process to extract files (PDF/images) from EN exports should something in the future happen to EN, so that we can see how we can get our raw files back if need be.”

John, I covered this somewhat in my post on securing and protecting your digital file cabinet. But let me go through it again here with your question in mind. The concern, it seems to me, is: what happens if Evernote as a company goes away. I don’t think this is likely anytime soon, but let’s pretend it happens. How do you get back your data?

First thing’s first. You should have a backup of your data. As I explained in an earlier post, I backup my Evernote data once a month. I do this as part of my normal process of protecting my data, not out of any fear that the service might go away. It’s just a good practice, like having car insurance or life insurance. Here is how I backup my data:

 

  1. From inside the Evernote client application (Windows or Mac), I select “All Notes” under Notebooks.
  2. In the Notes column (the column just to the right that lists all of the notes) I select all of the notes in the list.
  3. From the File menu: click Export…
  4. In the Export dialog, I use the ENEX format to export my dataEvernote export 1.PNG

    You can
    see that I’m exporting 1,877 notes. The ENEX format is an XML format which embeds the binaries (like PDFs, photos, etc.) as encoded documents, in much the same way said documents are encoded as an email attachment. If you were to open up this file, it would be readable as plain text and look like XML but with sections of data that look like gibberish. These are the encoded documents.

  5. I click the Options… button and make sure that the “Tags” attribute is checked.
  6. I click Export.
  7. I give the export a file name. I will typically call it “Monthly Evernote Backup” because this will replace the previous month’s backup, which is important for my particular backup scheme.
  8. I click Save.

This will start the export process, which can take quite a while, depending on how many notes you have any how much data is contained in the notes. Also, the size of the ENEX file can be quite large. My last backup of Evernote data (May 2012) was 640 MB. So when the backup is finished, I will compress the file. This will typically bring it down to about the 480 MB range.

Once the backup is done, I move the file to my external hard disk (I have a 1 TB external drive). I keep this type of data on the drive (as well as media files like photos, videos, music, etc.) so that it is separate from my OS drive. All of my disks are also backed up using a cloud backup service. The backups are incremental and happen nightly without me having to do anything. So each time a new Evernote export file is created, it not only resides on my external drive, it is also backed up to the cloud.

Now, if Evernote ever went away, the local software would still work. That is, I could still start Evernote on my computer. Once I started Evernote, I could go to File->Import->Evernote Export Files. I could select the ENEX file that I want to import, make sure the “Import Note Tags” box is checked, and click Open. This will import the files into a local notebook called “Imported Notes.” That the data is imported to a local notebook is key if the Evernote service is no longer available. Local notebooks reside only on your local machine and not on the Evernote servers, so you don’t need the Evernote service to import. If the service is available (which, of course, it is), you will also see this message:

Evernote export 2.PNG

 

If you want them imported back to a synchronized notebook, click Yes, otherwise, click No. Once the notes have been imported locally, you have access to all of your note data, including any documents and attachments.

You can sort of simulate what it would be like if the Evernote service didn’t exist. To do the simulation, I would do the following:

  1. Export a small set of notes (with at least a few attachments) as documented above.
  2. Disconnect your computer from all networks (so that you don’t have access to the Evernote service)
  3. Import your small set of notes to a local notebook
  4. Verify that you can access them.

Once you know you can access your notes using the Evernote client, but without the service, you should be good to go.

3. [Clipping data] Veronica asks, “Any suggestions on moving materials into Evernote from devices that do not copy and paste well? For web materials, I use Pocket as a queue for materials (such as recipes) that I would like to put into Evernote. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. I’m also wondering if there’s any way of moving recipes from magazines viewed on the Kindle Fire into Evernote.”

Veronica, I am generally not using devices that don’t copy and paste well, but I suspect it can be done as a two-step process, especially if you are willing to batch things together. For instance, I might try something like this:

  1. Send the link for the web page in question to a service like Instapaper (you mention Pocket).
  2. When you are on a computer that has better capabilities, go to Instapaper.
  3. For each page you want to capture in Evernote, open the page from Instapaper and use the Evernote clipper in your web browser to send the page to Evernote.

You can probably speed up this process and at least partially automate it by using a service like IFTTT, which I discussed in detail in my post on how I use Evernote to remember everything. IFTTT lets you make “recipes” that allow different web services to talk to one another. Indeed, IFTTT supports Pocket, so you could setup a “recipe” that would allow you to automatically send anything you put into Pocket directly into Evernote. Here is how you would do that:

  1. Go to IFTTT and sign up for the service (if you haven’t already done so). It is free.
  2. Create a new task
  3. For the THIS part of your task, select Pocket as your trigger
  4. You may be prompted to activate the service. Follow the prompts to do this. It is a one-time setup.
  5. Click “New Item Marked as Read”
  6. Click “Create Trigger”
  7. For the THAT part of your task, select Evernote
  8. You may be prompted to activate the service. Follow the prompts to do this. It is a one-time setup.
  9. Choose “Create a new Link Note”
  10. Leave all of the values as the default, except you may want to update the Notebook and tags that the notes go into
  11. Click Create Action

Once this is done, each time you send a link to Pocket and then read the item in Pocket, that item will get automatically sent to the notebook in Evernote that you specified.

I use this service quite frequently. For instance, when I take a picture with Instagram, it gets sent to a notebook in Evernote. When I update twitter, that too gets sent to a notebook in Evernote. It’s a great tool for this type of automation and it may help you with getting your queued Pocket material into Evernote.

Unfortunately, I have no experience with the Kindle Fire so I can’t make any suggestions there, but others reading this post might have ideas.

4. [Mobile access] Ralph asks, “If you don’t have Premium and you are on the go and you only have wi-fi access how would look up the things you mentioned in your blog?”

The condundrum here, of course, is not having Premium service and only having Wi-Fi access. For folks who don’t know, Evernote’s premium service allows you to mark notebooks as “offline” notebooks on devices like an iPad. Notes in an offline notebook are still synchronized, but they are also available to you when you have no Internet access. I love this feature of Evernote premium, but of course, not everyone is willing or able to pay for that additional service.

I think this becomes a kind of cost-benefit analysis. If you do have Wi-Fi access, then when you are on the go, you should be able to connect to public Wi-Fi almost anywhere you are, at least in metropolitan areas, which is where the bulk of my own experience is. If I walk into a Barnes & Noble with my iPad, I can generally use their public Wi-Fi for free. But some places (like some airports or hotels) charge you a fee to use their Wi-Fi. The key point is: if you have Wi-Fi access, you can access your notes in Evernote.

The question is: are you willing to pay for Wi-Fi access?

I think the Evernote Premium service is $5/month or $45/year. I know that some hotels charge as much as $12/day for their Wi-Fi service. For me, the cost-benefit falls on the side of the Premium service. I can pay $45 for an entire year of premium service, mark those notebooks that I want access to as “offline” and not worry about whether I can connect to Wi-Fi or not. If I make one business trip a year, and stay in a hotel for a week, the Evernote Premium service ends up being cheaper than hotel Wi-Fi. Of course, I can also use the Evernote premium service when I am at Home Depot, or the doctor’s office or the DMV even if I am not connected because my notes are available offline.

So you have to decide for yourself:

  • Pay for the premium service OR
  • Pay for Wi-Fi each time you connect OR
  • Take your chance that you’ll visit places that have free public Wi-Fi.

For me, the premium service is the cheapest option to having full access to my notes wherever I go.

5. [Organization] Michael asks, “How would you organize the evernote notebooks for a couple, e.g. wife and husband? Especially if one of the two is not into archiving everything digitally?”

I keep my notebooks organized in a few simple stacks, which I discussed in greater detail in my post on organizing your digital filing cabinet. And since between me and my wife, I am the one who does the digital organizing, maybe my organization will work for you too. I have the following stacks:

  • Diary
  • Home Life
  • Reference
  • Work Life
  • Writing Life

The notebooks in those stacks help to organize things a little better for me, but in general, I’ve organized my stacks around those major areas of my life. Home Life contains notebooks relating to all household stuff, including my main “paperless filing cabinet” where most scans go. Work Life includes notes related to my day job. And Writing Life contains all of the notebooks related to my role as a science fiction writer and blogger. Diary contains a lot of automatically generated notes, like all of the tweets I make or all of the instagram photos I take or all of the Foursquare checkins I make. And reference is a placeholder for various reference material.

With stuff organized this way, it is pretty easy to find what you are looking for. My wife rarely goes in to search for stuff, but when she does, she knows she can pretty much select a notebook within a stack and type in a keyword or phrase (“kia,” for instance) and should find the last time we had the car services, and the maintenance record and receipt thereof.

I have in the past set up some of these notebooks as shared notebooks and given my wife access to them, but she didn’t use them enough to make it worthwhile. Now, when she needs some information, she”ll either do a quick search herself on the computer at home, or she’ll ask me to find what she needs. It’s worked pretty well so far.

6. [Receipts] Todd asks, “Love the Evernote blog. I am new to Evernote and am fascinated by the potential for organizing my life. I am concerned about scanning receipts and throwing them away. Will stores accept a receipt that I show them on my phone? Do I have to reprint the receipt before going to the store? It seems as if I would be wasting more paper by doing the latter.”

Todd, in my limited experience, on those rare occasions when I’ve had to return something (two or three times in the last two years), I’ve never been asked for the original receipt. Most receipts these days have codes on them that the customer service people can enter to look up the information they need. On two occasions, I’d thrown away the original receipt and simply printed out the PDF from the note in Evernote. I did this because, while I might be paperless, the rest of the world is not. One time, I had a receipt that had a barcode on it, and I simply pulled up the PDF on my iPhone and let them scan it. They were willing and it worked!

These were all for relatively inexpensive things. I think there are a couple of factors involved:

  • How much the thing costs
  • How knowledgeable the customer service people are
  • What the individual store policy is

I tend to gamble. We don’t return much stuff and so with a couple of rare exceptions, I’ll scan the receipts and toss the originals. Hasn’t been a problem for me so far, but I suppose it is always a good idea to check with the store to see if a scanned version of a receipt is acceptable for returns. My suggestion might be: scan the receipt, and keep your originals for a while. If you have to return something, try it with the scanned version first, but have the original as a backup. If the scanned versions turn out to be acceptable, you’ll get a read on whether or not you can dump your printed receipts.

Remember, a big part of going paperless is being comfortable. You don’t need to go cold turkey with everything. The rest of the world is not yet paperless and even the most paperless people in the world still have to deal with paper from time-to-time.

7. [Organization] Tom asks, “I’m interested to know how many notebooks you have in each of your stacks. I’m with you that tagging slows the process down when adding notes without the pay-off when searching, but I’m already feeling the need to add notebook after notebook and worried it could get out of control.”

Here is a list of my notebook stacks and the notebooks contained within:

1. Diary (notebook stack)

  • Reading (notebook): a note for each thing that I read, be it a book, story, or article. Note is created on the date I finish reading. Sometimes contains an image of the cover, or notes I’ve made about what I read.
  • Social Networking (notebook): automated notes created using IFTTT. Things like my Foursquare checkins, instagram photos, tweets and blog post I’ve made. It’s all captured in this notebook without me having to do anything. IFTTT is awesome.
  • Timeline (notebook). Contains notes that I create manually that I want in my timeline. Things like notes about my son’s 3rd birthday party. Or that fact that I got no sleep 2 nights ago because my 10 month old kept me awake. Or that I had a good annual review at the day job. Or that I sold a new story.

2. Home Life (notebook stack)

  • Digital home (notebook): floorplans, elevations and annotated photos of my house
  • My notebook (notebook): where miscellaneous stuff goes when there is no other place for us. This stuff usually gets refiled later.
  • Kids (notebook): stuff related to the kids. Scanned in art work, birthday cards, etc.
  • Magazines (notebook): PDF versions of magazines I get in electronic format, like Scientific American)
  • Paperless Filing Cabinet (notebook): my digital filing cabinet and where most of my scanned documents go. This is my default notebook.

3. Reference (notebook stack)

  • Tech clippings (notebook): code snippets I’ve written, or tech articles I’ve kept

4. Work Life (notebook stack)

  • Queries (notebook): SQL queries I’ve written that I want to reuse in the future
  • Work notebook (notebook): all of my other work notes, kind of the paperless filing cabinet equivalent for my day job

5. Writing Life (notebook stack)

  • Book reviews (notebook): book review columns I’ve written
  • Business (notebook): contracts, correspondence, receipts, etc. related to the writing business
  • Conventions (notebook): notes pertaining to science fiction conventions I’ve attended or will be attending
  • Critiques (notebook): critiques I’ve written for my fellow writers in writers groups, etc.
  • Guest Posts and Articles (notebook): guest posts and articles I’ve written for other venues
  • Ideas (notebook): idea file for stories and blog posts
  • Interviews (notebook): interviews I’ve done
  • My Daily Fiction (notebook): fiction I’ve written on any given day. I don’t write fiction in Evernote, but I collect it there afterward so I know what I wrote on a particular day
  • Published Fiction (notebook): electronic copies of my published stories.
  • Research (notebook): writing-related research and notes
  • Vacation in the Golden Age (notebook): notes for my bi-weekly Vacation in the Golden Age posts
  • Writing Groups (notebook): stuff related to the writing groups to which I belong.

All of my notebooks are designed with the timeline concept in mind. That is, I can do a general search of all notebooks for notes created or updated on a specific date and see everything that happened on that date:

  • Where did I go (Foursquare checkins from Social Network)
  • Tweets I made (from Social Networking)
  • Writing I did (from Social Networking for blog posts and Daily Fiction Writing for fiction)
  • Stories I sold (from Timeline)
  • Bills I received (from Paperless Filing Cabinet)

You get the idea. I like being able to quickly find out what was going on a given day and I’ve organized my notebooks to help support this.

Wrap-up

Thanks to everyone for your great questions.  I think I was able to answer all of them, although some probably better than others. In next week’s post, I’ll be talking about “digitizing your house” which will discuss in great detail what I meant by the “Digital Home” notebook in the Home Life stack above. Stay-tuned.

(As always, this post, along with all of my other Going Paperless posts is available on Pinterest.)

Very good info here.

I use the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and Evernote Premium.

Creativity: The Secret Behind the Secret (perceiving differently) - Psychology Today

The short answer—talk to a skateboarder. The long answer… well, it’s long… and it starts with a Swarthmore University psychologist named Solomon Asch.

In the 1950s, Asch performed what has since become on of the classic experiments in social psychology. He was interested in the effects of peer pressure, so designed an experiment to test our willingness to follow the herd. 

In Asch’s study, groups of 5-8 people were assembled. Only one subject was an actual subject—the rest were Asch’s co-conspirators. Everyone was seated in pair of rows, with the subject seated towards the back of the second row. They were then told they were participating in a “vision test,” in which they would be shown a card with a line on it, followed by another card with three lines on it (labeled A, B, C). The “goal” of this test was to guess which line (A, B, C) matched (in length) the first line shown. 

For the first two round of the test everything proceeds like normal. The experimenter held up a card with, say, a two inch line. Then everyone, including the study subject, guessed the matching line correctly. The same thing happened on the second round. But on the third round, something funny unfolds. The presenter showed a two inch line on the first card. On the second card, line B was obviously the two inch line and both A and C are shorter or longer respectively. But all of the conspirators gave the wrong answer—claiming the shorter line (say a one inch line) actually matched the two-inch line.

The question was what would the study subject do? Will they go along with the herd and give the wrong answer or will they be willing to stand out from the crowd and give the right one? 

There were 18 total rounds. In 12 of them conspirators gave the wrong answers. And our study subjects? 75 percent went along with the herd at least once. 32 percent went along every time. A stunning example of conformity.

When asked about their decisions later—none of the subjects had any idea why they made the choices they made. They didn’t realize they were intentionally picking the wrong line.  They thought they had given the correct answer.  Humans were sheep—that’s the moral of this story.

But in the early 2000s, Emory University neuroscientist Dr. Greg Berns decided to rerun Asch’s study, only this time inside an fMRI scanner. Instead of line length, Berms used rotational shapes…(he showed people two abstract 3-D shapes that were rotated with respect to one another. This was the only deviation from Asch’s study. Everything else was the same—including the result.

Again, subjects went along with the crowd. Again, they didn’t quite know why they did so. But when Berns look at the fMRI data, it told a different story.

When subjects studied the shape, there was activation in the visual processing regions of the brain. Simultaneously, both the parietal and temporal lobe showed activity (these were involved in reorganizing the shapes, essentially solving the rotational portion of the problem).  This was baseline data—exactly what we’d expect to see.

But when subjects conformed, something else occurred. The parietal cortex, which before had emitted a faint glow, was now lit up like a Christmas tree—the telltale sign of hard work being done.

“A plausible explanation,” writes Berns in his excellent book Iconoclast , “ is that the group’s wrong answers imposed a “virtual” image in the subjects mind. In the case of conformity, the image beat out the image originating from the subject’s own eyes, causing the subject to disregard her own perception and accept the groups.”

Now, there has always been considerable suspicion that we live in a world entirely constructed by our brain—our own private little Matrix—but Berns had confirmed this to a scary degree. Conformity, up to that point, had been thought of as a fear problem. The terror of standing out from one’s peer group and all that. But Bern’s data showed that conformity was also a perceptual problem—our brain literally showed us “false” data when that terror began to grip us.

Now, humans are social creatures and this neuronal reaction makes a certain amount of survival sense—but if our natural tendency is sheepishness and finding creatives is one of the top goals for any organization—well how exactly do you do that? 

Berns asked a similar question. He had started to wonder about iconoclasts—which he defined as people who do something other say couldn’t be done. He was curious about the likes of Walt Disney, Ray Krok, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson and such. What was it about these innovators that allowed them to think differently?

Berns came to a number of conclusions, foremost among them an interesting fact: iconoclast don’t just think differently, they have different brains—literally. They don’t just think differently, they perceive differently. 

Here’s how he explains it:

"At every step in the process of visual perception, the brain throws out pieces of information and assimilates the remaining ones into increasingly abstract components. Experience plays a major role in this process. The human brain sees things in ways that are most familiar to it. But epiphanies rarely occur in familiar surroundings. They key to seeing like an iconoclast is to look at things that you have never seen before."

But there’s one step farther on this line. Certainly, finding someone who is constantly seeking out new sights, sounds, information—whatever, is a decent marker to look for when trying to hire creative employees. But to go one better, why not seek out someone who looks at the things they see everyday from constantly new angles—someone who sees the old as new again.

Now that’s real creativity, and this bring us to skateboarding. 

In a recent blog , I made the point that skateboarding is an extremely creative activity and that legendary skateboarder Danny Way has managed to stay atop this game for most of the past three decades, a period in which the sport went from a nascent, underground activity to a nearly five billion dollar industry. My point being that Way has had exceptional creative longevity in an arena that emphasizes novelty and youth—and this is no simple feat.

So how did he pull it off? Simple—just like Berns explained—he perceived things differently.

Sports that involve wheels—skateboarding, BMX riding, motocross, etc.—all do something very peculiar to the brain. And it happens fast. Usually around the point a novice begins to acquire their first bit of real skill, the world morphs. An entire new possibility space emerges. Instead of seeing a rock outcropping and thinking: “Oh, look, the majesty of nature.” The mountain bike rider says—“Oh look, the majesty of nature, can I ride my bike down that? Is that even possible? How can I make it possible?”

The same goes for skaters. As Danny Way  explains: “I look at everything differently. My first thought is always—how can I skate that. With architecture, or urban planning, I see things no one really notices, subtle differences in materials, the shapes of stairs, tiny ornamental features that might mean interesting possibilities. It’s always can I skate that, how can I skate that, how can I skate that in a way that no one’s ever skated before. That’s the thought process. I just see the whole world as a playground.” 

But, for our purposes, the most important point: This talent doesn’t just stay locked up in skating. “This creative way of looking at things impacts every aspect of my life,” continues Way,  “as a skater, as a businessman, a musician, when I’m with my kids—all of it.” 

 

How Feeling Lonely Can Shorten Your Life

Keith Brofsky / Getty Images
Keith Brofsky / Getty Images

Is loneliness lethal? According to two new studies published online Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, living alone or feeling lonely can increase your chances of disability and early death.

In one study, researchers at Harvard Medical School followed nearly 45,000 people who had heart disease or were at high risk of developing it. Over four years, the study authors tracked the participants’ health and found that those who lived alone were more likely to die from heart attack, stroke or other heart-related problems than those who lived with others.

The association was especially marked by age: for the youngest participants, aged 45 to 65, living alone increased the risk of early death by 24%; in people aged 66 to 80, solitary living was associated with a 12% increased risk of death; among those over 80, there was no link between living arrangements and risk of heart-related death.

Why the differences? It could be that for middle-aged people, for whom living alone is much less common than it is for the elderly, the single life may be a marker for other psychological or social problems that can affect health — a poor support system, depression, loneliness, job- or relationship-related stress. For the elderly, however, living alone may be a marker of strength; if you’re 80 and living solo, you might be healthier and more independent than your peers who can’t manage on their own.

Living alone affects well-being in other, more practical ways, too: people who don’t have a partner or family member to remind them to eat right or take their medicines or to recognize signs of health problems are less likely to maintain good health.

(PHOTOS: Senior Love Triangle: Photographs by Isadora Kosofsky)

Much previous research has linked social isolation with poor health outcomes, including depression, heart disease, sleep problems and other disorders, but it has never been clear what it is exactly about being alone that may be so harmful. In the second study published Monday, researchers led by Dr. Carla Perissinotto, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, report that it’s not just living alone, but having actual feelings of loneliness and isolation that matters.

In Perissinotto’s study, which involved 1,604 participants, average age 71, the researchers defined loneliness not by gauging the participants’ living situations, but by asking them to answerthree questions regarding feelings of aloneness: did they feel left out, isolated or that they lacked companionship? If the participants answered “often” or “some of the time” to any of these questions, they were considered lonely; if they responded “hardly ever” to all three, they were not.

The researchers checked in with the participants every two years for six years to evaluate certain day-to-day abilities like bathing, dressing, eating, walking and climbing stairs — all measures of overall health in the elderly. By the end of the study period, lonely people showed significantly more disability: they were 59% more likely to have lost the ability to perform tasks of daily living. For example, they were 18% more likely to suffer mobility problems and 31% more likely to have trouble climbing stairs than those who didn’t report feeling lonely.

Even more concerning, the lonely participants were 45% more likely to have died by the end of the study than those who weren’t lonely. “I was surprised by how strong the relationship actually was,” says Perissinotto. The association held even after she and her team adjusted for other factors that could influence the health outcomes, such as a previous diagnosis of depression or other medical conditions that could account for declining health.

(MORE: Feeling Alone Together: How Loneliness Spreads)

Loneliness can be detrimental in many ways, some of which are biological and some of which are more behavioral. Feeling isolated can trigger changes in brain chemicals and hormones that can increase inflammation in the body, for example, which can exacerbate conditions like heart disease and arthritis. Loneliness may also lead to other problems — poor sleep, depression, a disinterest in one’s own health care — which can in turn contribute to disability and early death.

Which is why the researchers were particularly concerned over another finding — many of the elderly who said they felt lonely were not actually living alone. Rather, they were married or living with family members. That suggests that the size of a person’s social network isn’t the only measure of loneliness, and that studies that look only at the number of people’s contacts may miss an entirely separate factor that can have a significant impact on health, says Perissinotto. “I think that from a public health and policy level, we are doing a disservice by not asking [people] about their subjective feelings of loneliness,” she says. “We focus on their diabetes control and treating their hypertension, but are we missing something that may be more distressing to patients and have more of an impact on their health?”

Many elderly patients experience declines in their daily activities, and doctors are often at a loss to explain why some slip more quickly into poor health, while others with similar circumstances tend to remain healthier longer. Feelings of loneliness, and not just social isolation, could in part explain this difference. Perissinotto encourages more doctors, particularly those who treat the elderly, to ask their patients about their feelings. “We are trained to ask about a patient’s physical environment to assess how they are functioning, but we aren’t traditionally taught to ask about things like their feelings of loneliness,” she says. “It’s challenging, but it deserves more delving into, and that should be the next step to addressing loneliness and its impact on health.”

MORE: The Reason You’re In Love With Material Possessions? Loneliness

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Confined To A Thai Fishing Boat, For Three Years : NPR (wow! :-(

Vannak Prum of Cambodia was sold onto a Thai fishing boat where he was forced to work in miserable conditions for three years before escaping. Thailand's huge fishing industry is coming under increasing criticism for using trafficked workers who have been sold to unscrupulous ship captains.
Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR

Vannak Prum of Cambodia was sold onto a Thai fishing boat where he was forced to work in miserable conditions for three years before escaping. Thailand's huge fishing industry is coming under increasing criticism for using trafficked workers who have been sold to unscrupulous ship captains.

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June 19, 2012

Thailand supplies a large portion of America's seafood. But Thailand's giant fishing fleet is chronically short of up to 60,000 fishermen per year, leaving captains scrambling to find crew. Human traffickers have stepped in, selling captives from Cambodia and Myanmar to the captains for a few hundred dollars each. Once at sea, the men often go months, or even years, without setting foot on land.

First of two parts

Cambodian Vannak Prum's destiny changed in a dirt-road town called Malai. It's a Cambodian outpost on the border with Thailand that is known for its involvement in the trafficking of human beings.

Prum arrived in Malai seven years ago searching for work. His wife was pregnant, and he needed money for the hospital bill. He intended to work for two months, but ended up meeting a human trafficker.

A few days later, Prum was sold onto a Thai fishing boat the length of a basketball court, where he worked in tight conditions with 10 men. He says he didn't reach land again for three years.

"I didn't get paid," he says. "I remained in the middle of the sea and worked day and night."

As Thailand grows more prosperous, its citizens are shunning fishing work in which, even in the best cases, men are away for months chasing dwindling fish stocks.

Injuries and fatalities are common, and seasickness — at least in the beginning — is constant. Wicharn Sirichai-Ekawat owns a small fleet of fishing boats and consults with the National Fisheries Association of Thailand.

"There are about 150,000 men working on the boats, and about 40 percent of them are using foreign labor," he says. "We depend on them."

Some of these men are recruited legally, but others, like Prum, are sold into bondage. They report 20-hour days under mind-numbing conditions: minimal fresh food or water, no medicine apart from aspirin, cramped bunks, unsafe conditions and the relentless smell of fish.

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.
Enlarge Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.
Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.

"Sometimes the winch cable would accidentally cut off," Prum says. "If any of us stayed in front of it, the cable would injure or even kill us."

Ship bosses pose their own hazards. "One man's head was cut off and thrown in the water," Prum says. "I saw it."

Reports Of Abuse, Killings

The United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking interviewed fishermen on Thai boats who are from Myanmar, also known as Burma; 59 percent said they witnessed a murder by their captain.

The fishermen also said that captains often give workers drugs — mainly amphetamines — so they will keep working through the night.

The fishing boats are able to stay at sea for extended periods thanks to a network of shuttle boats, or motherships, that come and pick up the fish that's been caught and deliver fuel, food, ice and other supplies that fishing boats need to keep going.

Ultimately, Thai fish products show up on American shelves in a variety of ways, from fish sticks to pet food.

The Thai boats catch an estimated 1 in 5 pounds of American mackerel and sardines, and a good portion of anchovies on American pizzas. Thailand's two biggest seafood exports — farmed shrimp and tuna — are not implicated in these particular abuses, but have labor and environmental concerns of their own.

Now 33, Prum looks out the window in Malai, perplexed by the changes that have transformed the place over the past seven years.

"When I was here last, there was a roundabout," he says. "Now I'm lost, because they removed the traffic circle."

It's midnight, and Prum cruises slowly through the dark. He is looking for his trafficker.

A Network Of Traffickers

The man who sold Vannak Prum into these conditions is part of a loose network of human traffickers that stretches from the bustling ports of Thailand, deep into remote villages in neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar.

Malai's district chief, Tep Khunnal, says traffickers move people through the area's illegal border crossings with the help of the Cambodian military and police.

Stranded At Sea

Thailand Fishing

"I don't know if the Thai side takes money," he says, "but I know they take it on the Cambodian side." Khunnal says he wants to address the problem, but too many people profit from human smuggling.

In Prum's case, he met a taxi driver who convinced him to search for better paying work in Thailand. When the driver brought him to Malai, Prum was introduced to a man who was a trafficker, but Prum got cold feet and tried to back out.

The driver, however, presented Prum with a $12 tab for the trip, which Prum couldn't pay. The trafficker then stepped in and paid the fare, and that effectively sealed Prum's fate.

The trafficker then sold Prum to another set of smugglers in Thailand. The driver turned a profit, the trafficker turned a profit, the local money changer turned a profit — and Prum was locked up in a Thai port.

Prum pressed his face against a crack in the building.

"I saw the sea and boats," he says. "That's when I realized I was trafficked."

Officials Get A Cut

I didn't get paid. I remained in the middle of the sea and worked day and night.

- Vannak Prum, Cambodian who was held on a Thai fishing boat for three years

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch says Thai police also profit off of men like Prum.

"Most of the time when migrants are arrested, the police aren't planning to make a case or hand them over to immigration, as they're required to do," he says. "What they're doing is holding them and then trying to extort money out of them."

Thai police aren't alone.

"Every part of the Thai officers will benefit from this — the province, police, labor officers," says former Marine Police Commander Surapol Thuanthong. "They all get bribes from illegal migrants and related businesses."

Thuanthong says Thailand's Marine Police have tried to convince the Thai government to make the workers legal so they can be tracked and protected — but the sheer number of undocumented workers makes it impossible.

"[The government] says it's too many and will affect the stability of the country," he says. "So they don't do anything."

Building A System To Track Workers

Sirichai-Ekawat says the National Fisheries Association of Thailand is trying to establish recruitment centers to register and track workers willing to work Thai boats.

If it works, legalizing workers could undercut the black market in men. But it's too soon to tell if that plan will work. In the meantime, men like Prum continue to be sold onto the seas against their will.

This river of men weighs heavily on Prum's mind as he winds through Malai.

"I wanted to come help so Cambodians wouldn't go work in a foreign country," he says. "And now you see everything has changed completely — the road, the house — everything."

Prum didn't find his trafficker. He slumps against the car door.

If he had found him, what would he have done?

"I was angry before," says Prum, "because he did a bad thing. But now I don't feel any anger or revenge at all. I wanted to find him and tell him not to do this job anymore because it does harm. "

With that, the car turns around and drives past the empty money-changing stalls and the restaurants with cots for border-crossers set up in back. Prum keeps his gaze straight ahead as he leaves Malai. He doesn't say a word.

Several groups are helping ex-fishermen get back to their home countries and are supporting them once they get there. They include Tenaganita, Healthcare Center for Children, the Labor Protection Network and LICADHO. The Made in a Free World app lets you ask brands about labor practices in their supply chain as you shop.

Thoughts on 3D, 4K+ and Prometheus « Vincent Laforet

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I’ve been wanting to write this post for quite awhile now ;- but have been waiting for the right time.

I think a few things have become better defined over the past 6 months for me and for many of the people that I’ve spoken to in the industry .  These are my opinions only – but based on discussion with acquaintances at studios, fellow filmmakers, crew members, manufacturers, post houses and those who aren’t in the industry but go to the movies!

I think we’re seeing the start of the decline of 3D films.  Several key tentpole films have decided against shooting 3D recently – and a major one (The Avengers) started in 3D and after several weeks decided to continue shooting in 2D because production was going too slowly.

I myself have only seen two films that I thought added value to the experience in 3D – Hugo and Prometheus.  Both were masterfully shot and used the technique expertly.  At times the 3D effect was apparent (for effect) and the rest of the time it was there but not a distraction – which is what I think any technique should try for (not to be noticed.)

That being said, I can’t say that 3D ultimately transformed the viewing experience for me – it did not transport me into a different kind of place or appreciation for the films I’ve seen.  I’m willing to put up with glasses or other gadgets if they take the viewing experience and or the way I relate (emotionally or intellectually) to the content to a new level – but I can’t say it has done so yet for me unfortunately. 

I’ve never felt that the use of 3D in a film has fundamentally changed the way I felt or connected to the film or story – and in fact I’ve more often than not felt that the use of 3D detracted from the film.

I have always found the vast majority of glasses to be a pain, they make the image darker, and tend to shift the color of the film as well (as silly as this is, I found that I couldn’t sink into my seat and lean my head back when watching Prometheus on the IMAX 3D screen – and get lost into the film. If I did so the angle wasn’t quite right for 3D – so I had to sit more upright throughout the film.)  A lot of high speed action or camera movement simply doesn’t seem to work at 24 fps either (and that’s partly why Jackson and Cameron are pushing for 48fps.)  I also find that I am forced to look in the one spot where the 3D image converges – and that my eyes can no longer hunt around the frame as freely as I can with 2D films – which is a huge part of the filmgoing experience for me

And those are a few of the reasons why I don’t see 3D as viable until some technology changes the experience for the better. I think 3D is excellent for animation, sports, nature and any other specialized content.  I really do not see 3D adding much to the drama genre of films.

I will mention that the yet-to-be-released RED laser projector made a HUGE difference in how I experienced 3D relative to what is out there.  I was lucky enough to get a screening of RED’s technology at their studios and was told that James Cameron said that the projector was the first time he ever experienced "Avatar" the way it was meant to be experienced.

I think the future is 4K+ personally. The key word is "future."  I think that it will be awhile until the industry (outside of tentpole films) will make the leap in terms of their workflow, distribution and until we have 4K+ televisions at home.  I do think the future of cinema for large budget films is in higher resolution when those films can be enjoyed in high end theaters, with top of the line projectors (that are maintained) and large (30+ foot) screens.

Most theaters right now cannot take full advantage of 4K projectors given their lackluster quality controls and screen size.  Yet the top theaters, and notably IMAX theaters can definitely take advantage of it.  I’m still slightly on the fence to be honest – I think that the soft 2K Alexa image just "feels" more filmic than 4K+ cameras out there. (The camera has a 1/4 classic soft filter in front of its sensor.)  Yet one has to wonder how much nostalgia is playing a part in that opinion. I think it’s important to focus on what newer (younger) generations will want going forward. Will they truly miss the look of film?  One has to wonder: at some point they won’t be able to miss something they’ve never seen?

I know that audiences have been voting pretty clearly: towards seeing more and more films in 2D even when a 3D version is available.  My kids hate 3D for one thing… the glasses…

I would also like to note that I saw Tom Lowe’s "Timescapes" film in both 2K and 4K. (More to come on that soon!) Light Iron was gracious enough to set up a screening of the film that I had first seen at NAB (in 2K) – and I have to tell you it was noticeably more mesmerizing in 4K. I wouldn’t hesitate to pay a premium for a 4K projection of a film for example.  That being said,  I wonder how many people out there will be able to tell the difference between 2K and 4K in smaller theaters or on regular-sized televisions in their home – you really need to see 4K+ on a large screen to truly appreciate it.  A scary number of people polled still can’t tell the difference between SD and HD on their home televisions, and many cable providers still only offer 1080i or 720p on their "HD" channels…  point being, you need a large television/projector screen at home or in the theater to truly take advantage of the technology. When you DO have that large screen though – the experience is noticeable and adds a new dimension to the film. And that dimension has nothing to do with 3D!  I agree with many filmmakers that say that well shot films in 2D are far from "flat!" I definitely encourage you to share your thoughts on 3D and 4K in the comments section – I’m very interested to hear what you all think.

I went to see Ridley Scott’s "Prometheus" in IMAX 3D this past week. As I mentioned, the 3D was excellently done.  But I would quickly have given it up in exchange for seeing the film in the full 5K it was shot in on the RED Epic camera.  I found that the 2K image that was being projected was dark, uneven, and that I could see notably over-sharpened edges on most shots (and I was seated dead center of the IMAX theater.) I trust the original 5K files are stunning and would be even more so if projected on a IMAX screen.

As far as Prometheus – I thought it was a good film. The directing, cinematography, casting, and set design / CGI were absolutely superb. The screenplay didn’t quite have the "umph" that "Aliens" did…  I didn’t think it was quite as bad as some people out there were making it out to be. Although I agree the ending left a lot to be desired.

What I did find interesting is how the way an audience consumes and talks about films has fundamentally changed since "Aliens" came out – due, of course, to the internet / blogging/ twitter.  It’s amazing to see a film make or break it – in less than the 72 hours of its opening weekend. Definitely a frightening thing for any filmmaker – audiences aren’t holding anything back these days in terms of criticism.

That being said – I’d challenge any pundit to shoot a single scene in Prometheus half as well as Mr. Scott did…  Critiquing a film is always exponentially easier than it is to make one – something that is far too often and easily forgotten! !

Yet – here is a fun little poke at the film’s plot. Definitely worth a watch (the below is a comedic shortened version of the full review, which can be found HERE).

I think the biggest technical hurdle with film these days has nothing to do with cameras, lenses, or workflow – it seems to be that all too often the quality of the screenplay (or more to the point the quality of the story / storytelling.) It is after all about STORY and HOW WELL you tell it.

To that point one of my favorite Stanley Kubrick quotes:

"Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better. -Stanley Kubrick"