QuickTime Javascript for Video Blogging
Andreas has written a javascript for correctly embedding QuickTime into blogs. Provides access to all the embed tag features, and does one job (embedding QT) very well. He’s a whiz that one.
Archived entries for
I’m Sure It’s Got A Name
I regularly miss deadlines. Or if I don’t miss them then find myself scurrying and stressed trying to organise things at what feels like the last minute. Right now this is apparently the case with a public lecture that we’re hosting on November 22, a research retreat for the end of the month, and a staff development workshop slated for before years end. I’ve been aware of this for a long time, and I”ve tried all sorts of ways to try and prevent it happening. But it just keeps happening.
Coming home yesterday as I was trawling through the above list and what should have been done already but isn’t, I realised something about all this. A moment of self reflection that might be a first (belated) step to understanding what’s going on here. I’m not sure what it is, and from here it seems difficult to explain, but it is some sort of cognitive come conceptual thing in relation to time.
Now I know that sounds like a cop out. Some sort of trumped up excuse for not being better organised or whatever (I am a flighty thinker, I start many more things than I finish, and I very bad at finishing, but that doesn’t account for what I’m trying to explain), but that isn’t it. Let’s take this lecture as an example. My conception of this, if I tried to write or script the internal conversation I have about things that needed doing and when, it would look something like this:
OK, it has just become November, sheesh, nearly end of the year. Now at the end of November Patrick is coming and we have an official sort of lunch and a public lecture. Need a room, to promote it, and make sure about all of that. Ok, let’s make a list now of what I need to do. Great. Now, its just become November and this isn’t till the end of November. That’s just
Now I get stuck, I was going to write something like “that’s just ages away” but that isn’t accurate. I literally can’t see how far (or close) that event is. I have no scale, no measure to actually realise that no, November began a week or two ago and it is already the 8th and if this is on the 22nd then that’s (let’s see 22 – 8 = 14) two weeks, and the 22nd isn’t really the end of November is it? It’s actually more like a week from the end. Additionally even after I’ve worked out that it’s two weeks that feels to me as something way over the horizon, as outside of my current temporal orbit or view, something not yet visible and I don’t actually have to act on it until it is visible. Though I’m not actually sure how close, or large (important?) something has to be before it becomes visible! I assume, but don’t actually know, that this isn’t the case for most other people. I’m very aware that my terms around all this are spatial, that I just don’t perceive how near or far away an event is in any meaningful way. Of course I know something might be soon or a few months off, but that is about as focussed as they ever get.
That is why I miss the deadlines. I just don’t seem to be able to develop a cognitive map of the things that I’m doing and when they need to be done by. I know what I am doing, I know what needs doing, but without the timeline I often do the wrong things at the wrong time, or if you prefer I don’t do what needs doing now to make sure that thing over there happens at the right time. This is hardly a disability, it is quite minor, though I’m certain there’ll be some suitable psychological descriptor for it where you no doubt have people who have an extreme version. (In the same way that many scientists score at the very minor end of autism (see this test for example, and this New York Times article outlines it quite well), at the end where you have some of the traits – structure, system, the need to concentrate on one thing and if that is disrupted you’re quite lost as to what to do next – yes, I can empathise with these too, but clearly are not autistic.)
I think my next step is to see if I can find a way to visualise these things (normal calendars don’t work for me, the next month is off the screen or page, or the next week or the next day, I have to make it visible and then show the distances in a meaningful way). Perhaps a small fold out year calendar? Would that be tool small? I wonder.
NewMediaFest2007
The festival is on again and as part of the now prolific and very well organised Wilfried Agricola de Cologne I have a small vog in the “SlowTime 2007, QuickTime as an Artistic Medium” part of the festival. I can’t provide a URL directly to it, you have to enter the site, click on the SlowTime link and then find the videos. But they’re worthing having a look at.
Ageing
A few months ago I realised that my eyesight had deteriorated. It was as I was trying to read the print on the side of a bottle and I found myself moving the object closer and further away with that squinting look I once noticed in old people. Thought I’d better do something about it before I poisoned the children by misreading the dosage on something. Had my eyes tested and am now the owner of reading glasses. I’ve had them two days, my eyes are still good enough to not have had to wear them. Until this evening. Home from work, trying to get some work done on the computer. Tired. Decided the glasses would help. Slip them on. Crystal screen clearness. Freaks me out a bit, sort of this tunnel of clearness. Still feel tired but.
So It Turns
In a presentation the other day about a prototype (more a sketch really) atlas that students and I made I mentioned that when we first started we couldn’t find a web 2 app that did what we wanted. Then a few weeks later Google Maps supported video and we had enough to sketch the atlas ‘off the shelf’. In that presentation I made the point that in a few months there would probably be a service that could do what we needed, and listphile could well be that. Remain fascinated with the pace and scale of development. Remain convinced (more than ever) that apps are no longer apps but services – what do they let us do and do they let us do this better – rather than ‘word processor’, ‘spread sheet’, ‘email client’.
This is a truism in the world of industrial design where it is no longer ‘lets design a car’ since the technology to make a car is, apart from the capital expenditure, not that difficult (it is readily available). But we no longer just want a car. We want a car that, for example, has fantastic sound inside (young owners with their first cars – you can skimp on the finish but you should spend on the sound system), feels good, and has a smaller carbon footprint. To design for these is something all together different to the engineering problem of ‘making a car’.
Like 5
L = load, P = play and S = stop. Since this is the fifth one in the series I guess I should explain what they’re talking about. The brief is simple, describe something that you like, without naming it. All video is shot on my mobile phone (SonyEricsson K750i) and transferred to my PowerBook via BlueTooth. Saved as QT (just to get the .mov extension to avoid any problems with the .3gp extension) and then authored using my soon to be doomed copy of LiveStage Pro.