I'm a computer guy with a new house and a love of DIY projects. I like ranting, and long drives on your lawn.
I don't post everything I do, but when I do, I post it here. Maybe.
Here’s Part 1 in a threetwo part series of videos covering the Crossover 404K and off-brand Korean monitors in general.
It’s nothing fancy, but somehow I spent 20 minutes unboxing this thing. And yes, I did edit it down. So put on your best tray of popcorn, and hold onto nothing at all for this mildly unexciting voyage into a 40 inch “4K” (actually UHD) monitor.
Thanks in advance for watching, and please subscribe to make me feel better about what I’m doing with my life to catch the next videos in the series!
Hopefully you’ve already checked out my other video: Project Fi – From 1996 to Nexus 6. In that video I discuss Project Fi, the Nexus 6, and the cellular industry in general. It started out with an opening shot of twelve Nexus Sixes (or Nexus 72, if you prefer).
In another blog post and video I showed off my motion control slider project. I’ve been looking for excuses to use it in particularly “motion-controley” ways, and so I decided to composite a bunch of passes of the camera over my one Nexus 6 to make make many of them.
As you can see, it’s done in front of a green screen. That let me isolate the Nexus 6 in each pass, which I then layered on top of each other in Adobe After Effects. I just used a mirror effect in Adobe Premiere to create the left side of the “wall”.
I thought that this was a good use of motion control for compositing because it would have been nearly impossible (or at least very difficult) to make each of the 6 passes of the camera happen at exactly the same speed if I did it by hand.
My green screen and the holder for the phone (just a mini light stand covered in green masking tape) weren’t perfectly uniform, either in texture or lighting, so the matte came out a little rough and you can see some artifacts around the phones.
I’ll admit that I’m a lazy man, so rather than re-light and re-shoot the entire thing I used a garbage matte to get rid of the worst of it. With the footage having been sped up 3x and the white-to-normal dissolve thing, it’s not overly noticeable in the final product. (Or at least I’m hoping that you didn’t notice it.)
If you have any questions about how I put it together, or any advice for me on how to get a better result next time, please let me know in the comments!
I’ve been a Verizon customer since back when they were called Bell Atlantic back in The Year 2000. Lately their service has been terrible in my area. When I’m lucky enough to get an LTE connection, it’s slow and high-latency.
Project Fi lets my phone choose the best of two providers for my data service: Sprint or T-Mobile. And so far, it’s just plain better.
I go on at some length about it in the video above.
The Intro
In a previous blog post and video I showed off my motion control slider project. I’ve been looking for excuses to use it in particularly “motion-controley” ways, and so I decided to composite a bunch of passes of the camera over my one Nexus 6 to make a wall of Nexus Sixes.
What’s this for?? I have some Digital Juice SFX library DVD files from circa 2006 or some such. The DVDs contained tons of small WAV and MP3 files of sound effects, foley and music. They’re meant to be accessed with Digital Juice’s Juicer app, which contains all the metadata. I lost the DVDs a while ago, but had already copied them to my file server. The problem is that I don’t want to use the Juicer app. I have a bunch of other sound libraries, and want to be able to search them all at once. Unfortunately the sound files on the DVDs are all named generically, such as 00293_SFX.wav, which is pretty useless. My savior I did a quick … Continue reading
In the first place, it’s embarrassing just to admit that I get my hair cut at Supercuts. There’s a stigma associated with that brand: They call their locations “salons” (I wish there was something better than quotation marks to indicate derision), which is not manly enough for some men. And for women they’re seen as a bargain basement alternative to an actual salon. I guess it’s not a problem for the child demographic. But yeah, I get my hair cut at Supercuts. It’s not a considered choice but a matter of pure inconvenience. I’m about done with your brand Dear Supercuts: First let’s talk about your website. You redid it recently and added some interactive functionality. There’s now an “estimated … Continue reading
Introductory Video This video is and introduction of my motion control slider project, showing the basics of what it can do and how it’s used. Time Lapse Assembly Video I figured that I’d record the entire assembly process of the MC slider from start to finish. This video shows about 24 hours of real time in 15 minutes, and in it I discuss some of the problems I faced and design choices I made. Feedback If you’ve got any comments or random abuse to hurl, please post it here on the ol’ blog. Seriously, I’d appreciate any and all suggestions and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. As promised in the videos, various downloads and a parts … Continue reading
I should point out that I knew next to nothing about the Echo when I pre-ordered it. I knew next to nothing about it when it arrived. I figured I’d take the approach of someone that just got this thing as a gift or something.
Amazon Echo Unboxing
I unbox the Echo and spend some time setting it up. It did not go well.
Then I attempted to interact with Alexa. I suppose I’m just accustomed to Google, because I can ask it a variety of free-form questions and most of the time it comes up with the correct answer. Alexa seems to be far more finicky about phrasing and command syntax. Which is just what you want from a user-friendly tube that ominously glows at you from the center of your living room.
Then the Rest of the Review
I just don’t get the Echo. Fine, it can play music and it can control all of your lights a limited number of brands of lights.
For home automation though, I’d want something more discrete. Something integrated into the house, not an obvious cylinder that I have to explain to everyone.
For listening to music I’m fine with a Bluetooth speaker.
If I have extemporaneous questions for the internet I can always ask the Google that’s in my very pocket (or glued to my hand).
I am Hopeful
Amazon does publish an API for Alexa. After making the video I signed up for their developer program. It’s been about a week, and I still haven’t heard back.
However, I’m hoping that the community will come up with some killer apps, and that home automation compatibility will increase.
But in the meanwhile of my daily life, Alexa remains a novelty. My living room and my workstation in my basement already have better speakers than the Echo’s. So she doesn’t do me much good for music, and she still can’t answer questions better than my phone.
Yes, FedEx again I’m waiting on yet another delivery from FedEx, and this time it’s arriving via their SmartPost service. And so I’m writing yet another tirade about their incomprehensibly incompetent approach to package delivery. As far as I understand, their “Smart”Post service works like this: The merchant from whom I ordered gives the package to FedEx and pays them. FedEx then brings the package to a post office near to the recipient, and lets the good ol’ USPS handle the “last mile” of delivery. I fail to understand the point of this service. I mean I get that it saves FedEx the cost of bringing a truck to my house because the mailman is stopping at my house anyway. … Continue reading
Logging into Verizon.com I log into Verizon’s Small Business portal once a month to pay my bills. Generally speaking, their site is atrocious. It’s clearly the product of committee thinking and their fractured corporate structure. They recently implemented a redesign of the login portion, and somehow they resurrected good ol’ Frank Kafka and put him on the committee. I may have buried the lede of this story. So unless you just enjoy reading my rants, skip right to it. The initial login screen As with many banking and commerce websites, Verizon has implemented a separate page for your username which precedes the password entry page. This is good security practice and so I have no problem with it in general. … Continue reading
The Rejected Review I know that I tend to be harsh in my criticisms, but this is the most recent review that I tried to post to Home Depot’s site regarding their HDX 150-Watt Incandescent Clamp Light CE-300PDQ: Very rarely do I wish I could give a product a negative number of stars, but this is one of them. I know that for under ten bucks I shouldn’t expect an extremely high-quality, durable item. I know that at this price the light could fall apart completely after a bit of use and it wouldn’t be a huge deal. But what it absolutely shouldn’t do is cause a fire, which is what TWO out of the SIX of these I own … Continue reading
S.co.tt
I'm a computer guy with a new house and a love of DIY projects. I like ranting, and long drives on your lawn.
I don't post everything I do, but when I do, I post it here. Maybe.
