SiC – David Sidwell

So, how ‘good’ is the picture on a 1080p screen versus the older 720p and the even older, original analog Australian TV signal?

Some simple maths.

• Original TV was 576 lines.  Rough estimate is it’s a 4:3 (4×3) picture ratio, so the width, in pixels (px), would be 576*4/3 which is 768 (see footnote)
• 720p (720 rows of pixels) at 16:9 is 720*16/9 which is 1280 pixels wide, or 1280 columns.
• 1080p is also 16:9, so 1920 pixels wide

Some more simple maths

So, as a nice rule-of-thumb, each jump more than doubles the resolution – number of pixels – than the previous one.

Some quick comments, then a footnote:

• There weren’t that many actual 720p TVs, at least here in Australia. They were 768 x 1366, very much the resolution of a PC screen. Nicely giving away the game that they were essentially big PC screens.   But the ‘double;’ rule is good enough here too (1,049,088 px total, that’ll do me as almost exactly 1/2 of the 1080p)
• 1080p is sold as High Definition. But it’s barely 2 Megapixel (!).  If I tried to sell you a camera, in 2010, as being 2 MP, you’d probably laugh at me

Footnote: Due to technical reasons, to do with pixel shapes not being square, the equivalent digital resolution of our old TV is actually less than this, that is 576×720 pixels (414,720 px total). Makes the double rule slightly more obvious.

Australia, 1955. “At the turn of the century Stan Parker takes a wife and makes a home as a small farmer in the wilderness of Australia. Amy bears his children and time brings him a procession of ordinary events – achievements, disappointments, sorrows and dreams. The author won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature” From the Amazon review.

I’ve been looking at non-verbal communication tools for the iPhone. Most cost too much or generally were not fit for our purpose. So, I decided to create my own free Picture Board, but with two key criteria:

1. To use existing, free graphic/pictures/clip_art, respecting any licensing
2. To use the in-built iPhone Photo viewer. It too is free with every iPhone/iPod Touch

In summary, it worked!

Quick steps

I obtained the raw images, mainly from Open Clip Art, such as the glass one from  http://www.openclipart.org/detail/4431

I added my own text – and a white background if required.

Created a new folder on the PC called MyPicBoard.  Saved this updated graphic (above) as drink.jpg in this new folder.

Continue reading “iPhone (iPod Touch) Picture Board idea”

This is a great walk. It’s part of a much longer one, but I think this is by far the best part. In summary, you start up the top of Mt Dandenong, walk along a summit track, see wonderful views of Melbourne and the suburbs, then descend down to the (site of) Doongalla Homestead. This is now a picnic ground with BBQs and toilets, all in the middle of the bush.   Take water and food.

It’s all on the standard Melways, map 66.  Go and get it now. Seriously!

Start. Park the car near the Kyeema Memorial. This little road at 66-E1 isn’t named, but some versions show it with the text "substation".

Head Left on Kyeema Track (south-west).

Great views at Burkes Lookout (66-D2). There’s a large metallic frame here, which we call the Metal Bed. No idea what it is.

Keep going on Kyeema Track and you’ll see the large Channel 10 TV tower. Just before the tower itself, there’s an obvious track off to your Right.  This is un-named; i.e. there is no sign. Take this track.  It skirts around the base of the tower’s fence then starts to zig-zag down the mountain.  On the maps this is shown as “Channel 10 Track” (66-D3)

Pretty soon it ‘stops’ at a T-Intersection.  Just to confuse you,  the sign clearly says you have just descended “Zig Zag Track”. Ah well, must be an older name.  Off to the Left, at the T-intersection , is “Channel 10 Track” (signed).  Take this.  Dalcite Track is off to the Right (ignore this)

The bush now changes quite quickly in a few minutes. It goes from dry forest to almost rain forest!  Hello ferns. Pretty soon you hit a multi-track intersection. (66-E4). Just keep going down hill, that is, turn Right.  Sadly the signs have been broken here. 

Descend this track, still called Channel 10 track, and it’s not long before you see water tanks, then a car park (right) and toilets (left) and you are at Doongalla. The Track becomes a road, does a turn and there’s the lovely Doongalla Homestead Site, with it’s BBQs and tables (66-D5).  From the stone steps, near the umbrella-shaped tree, you can see the Ch 10 tower way up there, through the trees.

Some of my photos of this whole area etc are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/artwill/sets/72157622345260203/

Explore here, then down the hill to the 2nd Picnic area, Stables Site (66-C5)

To get back to the car you have at least 3 fun options:

1. Return same way: Simply turn around and go back the way you came
2. Easy extra bit: Stables area  –> Stables Track –> right into Bills Track –> right into Camelia Track –> Doongalla (then as per 1.)
3. Bit of a climb, but worth it:  start the same as 2. but at end of Bills Track, turn left along Camelia Track –> right into Rankin Track (66-C2). Rankin Tk is a bit of a climb. But not too bad. It stops at Dalcite Track, turn right into Dalcite Tk and soon you are back at the T-intersection, with the sign pointing to Zig-Zag Track. Up Zig-Zag tk and retrace your original descent. 

Car to Doongalla should be under an hour, with photo-stops.  Bit longer to return as it’s up hill.

Amazon.co.uk Review

“Elizabeth Peters’ unforgettable heroine Amelia Peabody makes her first appearance in this clever mystery. Amelia receives a rather large inheritance and decides to use it for travel. On her way through Rome to Egypt, she meets Evelyn Barton-Forbes, a young woman abandoned by her lover and left with no means of support. Amelia promptly takes Evelyn under her wing, insisting that the young lady accompany her to Egypt, where Amelia plans to indulge her passion for Egyptology. When Evelyn becomes the target of an aborted kidnapping and the focus of a series of suspicious accidents and mysterious visitations, Amelia becomes convinced of a plot to harm her young friend. Like any self-respecting sleuth, Amelia sets out to discover who is behind it all”

Non-Fiction. Covers "May 10, 1972, Air War, North Vietnam" in very good detail. As the name implies; just what happened on that one day.

Out of print and obtained 2nd hand from Better World Books

Am re-reading the classic 1991 Australian novel

“Cloudstreet a broken down house of former glories on the wrong side of the tracks, a place teeming with memories of its own, a place of shudders, shadows and spirits.

From separate catastrophes, two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing this great breathing, sighing, muttering structure and begin their lives again from scratch.

There are the industrious Lambs, who wait and wait on the God of Miracles who seems to have foresaken them, and the gambling Pickleses, who prefer to deal with the mysteries of Lady Luck and her henchmen. Both aghast at the fates which have delivered them to Cloudstreet, and the baffling realisation that they will always remain there.

Together they roister and rankle in a divided house that begins as a roof over their heads and becomes a home for their hearts.

In this fresh, funny novel, full of wonder and dreams, brilliant young Australian author, Tim Winton, weaves the threads of lifetimes, of 20 years of shouting and fighting, laughing and grafting, into a story about acceptance and belonging.”

Source

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Re-reading it for 3 reasons:

1. The TV show First Tuesday Book Club is discussing it early 2010
2. A new 6-hour mini TV series is about to be made
3. I wanted to (well, after I heard about the first 2)

I remember years ago wondering why there wasn’t a Melways (street directory) of the entire State of Victoria, including the bush areas.

And here’s one reason….

This is going to be just a rough calculation, so don’t get upset about decimal places and rounding off.

An A4 sheet of paper is 21×29 cm. Leave 1cm margin (each side) for bindings etc, so we’ve got 19×27cm of printable area.

A bushwalking map is usually in the scale of 1:25,000. Hence 1cm on the map is 25,000 cm in real life, or 250 m.  It follows that 4cm of map = 1 km etc.

So an A4 map of this scale would be about 5km x 7km, that is 35 km²

Right, so how big is Victoria? According to the government it’s about 227,400 km².  So do a simple division and you’ll need about 6,500 A4s. Printing double sided means ‘only’ 3,250 pages.

And if printed in the main Melway’s scale it would be worse. The majority of their maps are in a smaller scale, 1:20,000.  So even more that 3,250 pages would be needed.

Current book is the Vietnam War account that is

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The cover says: “The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time – John le Carre”

To quote from Amazon: “Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war to date, when published in 1977. He captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any theater of combat ever fought, as well as the flavor of the time and the essence of the people who were there”

Purchased online from BetterWorld Books

Reading the WWII history book

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I understand this was one of the two main books used as the source for the excellent "Downfall" film. The other one, I have also recently read.

Purchased online from BetterWorld Books