Sep 11

The 9/11 Memorial At The US Embassy In London (2001)

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On September 11, 2001, we were in London walking back from the British Museum when we saw the newsstands with the horrible pictures of the Twin Towers. We though it was some crazy gossip mags or something before it sunk-in. The people there were amazingly supportive and we all knew this was an attack on the world and all of us. We sat in packed pubs drinking pints and watching CNN all night on the walls that usually would be showing football matches.

I will never forget how many people came up to us to tell us they were ex-pats and now living in the UK. What was really amazing was the outpouring of the sorrow of the English people down around the US Embassy. Here is the location on Google Maps. I was able to take some pictures.

 

I dug them out of the archives and looked at them this weekend. I am sure this sort of support was in many other countries as well, but I am still struck at how remarkable it was and how much it all made us feel at home with our country mourning the horrendous events of that day even though we were thousands of miles away.

Sep 02

Adding Film To Minimize Glare On Large LCDs

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We installed a 50″ LCD with built-in speakers in a very tricky and bright classroom to try and allow easy projection capabilities for the teacher and eliminate the always problematic use of normal projector systems. Three of the walls of the shop are fully windowed and the room is bright no matter what the weather. There are workstation islands through the space, so having everyone have to move to a part of the studio to see a presentation or demonstration was never ideal. This is a classroom envronment, so we really need to have everyone in the room be able to connect with what is happening on the screen no matter where they are in the room.

Pictures of the Glass Studio space.

As you can see, lots of windows that can make it tough to project anything. After hanging the LCD we noticed, that the glossy screen (common on most large LCDs) still created an issue because it picked-up on the glare through the windows when it was sunny or overcast. The mirroring effect of the windows and space outside the studio was impossible to ignore. Relocating the display was not an option. So, I tried to find something standard that would provide anti-glare. But, there is really nothing ready-made on the market that I found to buy through my channels that could work with something as large as a 50″ display to cut the glare and not possible damage it in the process.

Enter Photodon.

Photodon (http://www.photodon.com) is one of the few/only to have film that will work to address the issue on large LCDs or TVs. I called them and Mary Ellen was super-helpful. I went back to get an exact measurement of the surface area of the screen and gave her the dimensions. They cut it to the specs I gave them for the Samsung LCD we recently put in there. When we got the film in, it fit perfectly. But – If you think putting a protective screen on a phone or iPad is tough, try doing it to a 50″ LCD! We took our time and stayed relatively patient throughout to get a great result with minimal blemishes on the contact of the screen to the film.

Before and After Shots Of The LCD

The result has made the LCD absolutely visible throughout the space of the studio with windows and all. The film was reasonably priced and well-worth the investment to really make the LCD functional in that space now. Very happy customer. If you are dealing with glare issues on your large LCD, TV or digital signage I suggest you give these guys a shot.

Aug 24

Compiling current clone of FFMPEG on OS X 10.7 Lion

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Upgrading to OS X 10.7 (Lion) has really caused some issues for me. A big issue for me was not being able to easily grab the current clone of ffmpeg from the git repository. I was able to compile after doing the following.

1. Get your OS X 10.7 system current (as of now 10.7.1 is the latest and greatest)

2. Get Xcode from the App Store and there will be a software update on that (unless Apple has recently changed that.)

3. Reinstall fink (recommended after the 10.6-10.7 upgrade) and get it fully up-to-speed. http://www.finkproject.org

4. Install pkgconfig via fink using

# fink install pkgconfig

as root or do it with sudo.

5. Get (git!) the current clone of ffmpeg. (info here —> http://ffmpeg.org/download.html )

6. When you do the ffmpeg source configure, include the  –disable-yasm flag

#./configure –disable-yasm

Then

# make

Then

# make install

7. You will have ffmpeg on OS X Lion.

Hope this helps.

Jun 23

Pictures from the San Francisco Canstruction Award Reception, 06/22/11

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San Francisco Canstruction Logo
The first San Francisco Canstruction Awards Reception and all the work leading up to it at the Metreon on 06/22/11 was a lot of fun. The all the teams ended-up donating around 50,000 cans to the San Francisco Food Bank and built some wonderful structures in the process. The theme was “Spirit of San Francisco” and all the teams put in a lot of work on their preparation and finished designs. San Francisco’s very first Canstruction is free-of-charge and open to the public from June 23-26, 2011 at Metreon.

Here are my pictures. More information at http://sfcanstruction.org

Jun 19

Why Tweetbot Rules

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TWEETBOT LOGO

I have bought just about every Twitter client for iOS and have found them all pretty much as waste. They have features that are hit or miss and they are all probably fine for the basic user if you want to just stay within the bounds of what Twitter and the known services want to dump your way. Tweetie was great until Twitter acquired the developer and app to make it the official Twitter for iOS client then proceeded to strip-out functionality that actually made it really useful.

I run my own URL shortener and image hosting service so the options with Twitter clients are super important to me. Just about all the clients now for iOS stick to the standard services and do not allow custom configurations. This year, with the dumbing-down of Tweetie/Twitter, that I just started to use the web or mobile interface for Twitter for quite a while because the various clients were just so limited on configuration options. The key to Twitters success has always been innovative clients to help users (and power users) provide an interface to the stream of consciousness that is the Twitterverse. As Twitter tells developers to no longer develop client software to protect their own search for monetization, I fear the value of ease of use will decrease and ultimately destroy all that has been built. Twitter as shown it can rapidly inspire revolt with new ‘tools’ like it’s hated ‘QuickBar’ if there is a not a diversity of client interfaces.

Tweetdeck was a shining light in the dismal landscape, but that, like Tweetie, is now under the ownership of Twitter to soon be parted-out or stripped down based on the urgency of Twitter to figure out how they will be about to sell ads or something. Many feel Twitter acquired Tweetdeck to try and minimize client competition and unify client interface for it’s own benefit (not the twitter users that actually provide the content for Twitter.)

In this declining state of affairs for Twitter client innovation – Enter Tweetbot.

Tapbots is a small company that really gets it. In Tweetbot, they have developed the best user client for Twitter I have seen period. It runs on iOS but I hope they get it running on OS X as well. It runs circles around the other clients out there if you are looking for configuration options and settings. Here are some screenshots to show you what I mean.

Tweetbot rule because in this day of limiting user options and conforming to Twitter company mandates it pushes the focus back to the user of the tools and services to give us options on what and how we want to do. I hope many support this product and what it represents. If you have an iPhone and are not using Tweetbot, you need to give it a shot and trust me, you will be happy you did. @jmergy

Link: Buy Tweetbot From The Apple App Store