After a lot more work documenting the configuration parameters for the builder, Test-AutoBuild 1.0.2 release is now available. As well as the documentation improvements, there are two new HTML status page features. First is simply the ability to create arbitrary hyperlinks, second is a facility for copying build artifacts to the website, for example test results.
I’m in the process of switching over to using the PHP Gallery software for managing my photos. Pictures from the BVI, New York & Philadelphia are now online in the new gallery. Many more will be uploaded when I finally get around to buying a Nikon Coolscan and processing the several thousand photos I’ve accumulated over past year.
Last night I encountered the first program on BBC Four that I was actually interested in watching: The Lomo Camera: Shoot from the hip. As you’d expect it was packed full of fantastic photos taken on the classic Lomo Kompakt Automat and the newer multi-shot cameras produced by the Lomographic Society, but the really interesting stuff was about the history of the Lomo. Way back in the early 90’s the Lomographic Society was beginning to take off, and needing a reliable supply of Kompakts, made a deal for its exclusive worldwide distribution. Unfortunately shortly thereafter, the Lomo PLC (now in the world of capitalism) worked out its per-unit production costs and discovered they were higher than the per-unit sale price, thus deciding to cease all production. The Lomo Society tried many tactics to convince them to continue production, in the end involing then Mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladamir Putin. Putin, realising the importance of the Lomo Kompakt to both St. Petersburg & Russian history, as well as to the Lomo Society, managed to convince (pressure ?) the factory to continue production. Truly he is the Godfather of Lomography
But what if you got a second chance? That’s the premise of Richard Linklater‘s film Before Sunset, a 9 year later followup to Before Sunrise. I won’t repeat the plot here, since that’s readily available on the IMDB pages I just linked to. Before Sunset has a mere handful of sets, with most of the film taking place on the streets of Paris as Jesse & amp; Celine wander around catching on their lives. What’s more the entire film takes place almost in real-time – a mere hour and 20 minutes & shows you don’t need to span a whole 24 hours to build a really entrancing story.
Its nice to see the BBC taking a stand against the extortionist licensing model of RealMedia (and other commercial media streaming companies) by pushing ahead with development of its own Open Source standard. Its also interesting to note that since the design & implementation can be based on technical merit rather than potential commercial benefits, Dirac could feasibly turn out to be faster than existing codecs.
Borer believes Dirac could turn out to be more efficient than standards based on commercial patents, even though it has to use technology more than 20 years old to avoid breaking patents.
Many of the techniques were published by academics long before they were used commercially, and some are relatively new in being applied to video compression. ‘Wavelets [exotic waveforms used to map changes] have been around for 20 years now
…snip…Efficiency depends on how techniques are used as much as on the techniques themselves. Commercial organisations trying to agree a standard currently fight to get their own intellectual property included, which makes for complexity and does not necessarily lead to the adoption of the best of breed. ‘We have tried to make our codec as simple as we can so it is easy to understand and easy to implement efficiently,’ said Borer.