Author: richard

I’ve been noodling around in iMovie for a few years, but there was plenty just bugging me and slowing me down with it. Mostly I found that going back and editing a sequence could really screw up the timing of the whole movie. So the logical thing to do was to move on, and I decided to move on to Final Cut Express (version 3.5 when I bought it).

Here’s what happens: you install Final Cut and all the tools it comes with, fire it up all excited, and… panic. Then get frustrated that you’re doing less than you could in iMovie. Then get depressed. What I did, pretty much the same day I installed Final Cut, was go out and get a copy of Final Cut Express HD 3.5 Editing. I found the book exactly what I needed, with a DVD containing sample projects I could work through to check I was getting the right end product, and a section on moving from iMovie to FCE. Recommended.

I’ve also found a couple of vodcasts that were helpful: Creative COW Final Cut Pro Podcast and Final Cut Help Podcast.

Turns out it’s not so daunting after all, but of course I always knew I could just phone Ray…

For six months or so I’ve been grabbing the audio edition of The Economist. It’s superb in terms of quality and mad in terms of size. Each week they churn out about 6 hours of word-for-word reading of the week’s articles (the christmas edition was over 9 hours). That’s a lot of stuff, and they manage to get this out by the end of Friday every week.

It’s not a substitute for the newspaper for a couple of reasons. First, the download is a ZIP of MP3 files (which is fine), but you have to guess if you want to listen to a story based on a rather short file name. I find I can make better decisions on what I want to read by flipping through the print edition. The second reason you don’t want to rely on the audio is that the print and web editions include graphics, which are often excellent. Check out the free daily charts web site if you don’t believe me.

Mince pie season has kicked off for me, starting with a six pack from KaiOrganic in nearby Hove.

These are billed as “filled with naturally fruity mincemeat laced with cognac”. This is incorrect. It should say “absolutely packed” not just simply “filled”. The filling is not only generous, but very tasty. Quite rich, as you would expect for a mince pie. Working outwards we encounter the pastry, which is sweet and soft, rating around 2 or 3 on the Crumb Drop Scale. A light dusting of icing sugar gives the impression of a home made quality product.

The packaging is a reassuringly flimsily cardboard box with a large cellophane window, sealed with a silver label along one edge. Inside the pies are further sealed in two rows, each of three pies each. In our tests 2/3rds of the pies suffered significant damaged in transit. So take care.

Our rating: Buy! Plus, being organic, and having a short shelf-life, you have a great excuse to munch your way through the lot.

Ingredients: Mincemeat (raisins, sultanas, currants, sunflower oil, sugar, apple juice, oranges (juice and zest), lemons (juice and zest), dried apples, mixed spice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, flakes almonds, cognac, cinnamon), Self raising flow (wheat flower, raising agent* (calcium phosphates, sodium carbonate), sugar, margarine (sunflower oil, palm oil, coconut oil, carrot, juice, emulsifier: lecithin*, lemon juice, natural flavouring*), Unsalted butter, water*, icing sugar (sugar, corn flower). All organic except when indicated by *.
Allergens: Gluten, nuts, sesame.
Suitable for: vegetarians.
Suitable for home freezing.

Availability: available throughout Sussex.

The Crumb Drop Scale:

• 5 – Pieces of pastry explode off the pie or pastry at high speed, making “ping” noises as they hits crockery. Someone comments: “you could’ve had an eye out with that”.
• 4 – You look down at your shirt, or lap, in horror at the amount of crumbs.
• 3 – Light flaking: may be difficult to contain in a strong breeze.
• 2 – Very little crumb drop. Slight risk of small flakes adhering to the lip.
• 1 – A solid pastry producing no crumbs at all. Consider returning the pie to the store.

Another serious issue! In this blog? Surely some mistake…. I’ll try to return to your regular programming of pictures of our friends drunk really soon. But first this…

In the UK active assisted suicide (a.k.a. assisted dying, a.k.a. euthanasia) is illegal.

“Since the 1961 Suicide Act, it is no longer a crime to commit suicide or attempt to do so. However, it remains unlawful, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, to ‘aid, abet, counsel or procure’ a suicide. And deliberately taking the life of another person constitutes murder, even if the person is dying and has asked to be killed. A patient’s refusal of treatment does not constitute suicide, which in law requires a ‘positive act’. Nor is it murder if, to relieve pain, a doctor administers a drug that as a side effect shortens the patient’s life—the ‘double-effect principle'” (The policeman’s dilemma, The Economist Oct 13, 2005).

I think some form of assisted suicide should be introduced. I realize the issues are tricky, but I suspect situations exist that trump the slippery-slope arguments. I don’t have any insights to add, I don’t have any experiences to draw on, but, as this is a blog, I do have a bunch of link for you 🙂

• The British Medical Association publish their views: “While the BMA opposes euthanasia primarily on the grounds that it is alien to the traditional ethos and moral focus of medicine, some of the most convincing arguments have been purely practical” (from Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide: do the moral arguments differ?.
• The Economist has run a number of articles, including The art of dying which lists the countries and states that permit euthanasia, and the conditions under which they permit it: Oregon, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland.
• The Wikipedia article on euthanasia (a horrible word) covers some interesting history.
• The last time a bill was introduced it was defeated in the Lords by 148 votes to 100 (2006). You can find an interesting write up from the National Council for Palliative Care, and the first report from the Lords is a good read.
• Dignity in Dying is the UK campaigning group.

So if you’re interested, there’s plenty to digest. If it’s an option you like to have (but hopefully never have to use), then you’ll probably want to start support it now: it’s going to take a long time to be introduced here.

In the process of upgrading myself from Atheist to Radical Atheist (after that it’s Angry Atheist then Person-you-cross-the-street-to-avoid), I thought I’d check out some of the relevant organizations in the UK. There seems to be two main ones: British Humanist Association (“for the one life we have”) and the National Secular Society (“challenging religious privilege”).

Secular? Humanist? I’m not sure what those terms really mean. To save you a couple of clicks, here’s the definitions you’ll find in Wikipedia:

Humanism is a comprehensive life stance that upholds human reason, ethics, and justice, and rejects supernaturalism, pseudoscience and superstition.

And for Secularism:

Secularism is generally the assertion that certain practices or institutions should exist separately from religion or religious belief. […] In the extreme, it is an ideology that holds that religion has no place in public life.

I joined both the BHA and the NSS to figure out if either of them are worth supporting. My apologies to the organizers if any of this is harsh, but it’s the impression I’ve gained, rightly or wrongly…

The NSS is, in essence, a news feed. It organizes some events that look good, but I don’t actually see it doing anything as such. The newsletter I get though the post seems mostly self-congratulatory. I won’t be renewing a membership there.

The BHA looks like a political lobbying organization. I’m not sure I’m particularly fond of lobbying, but if that’s the game that needs to be played, so be it. They turn up to party conferences and talk to people, they give you the information you need if you want to take any action, they’re the ones who seem to be doing something. They can count on my continued support.

There’s also a Brighton and Hove Humanist Society, which I know nothing about.

With Jane’s Nokia 6110 navigator, and the other GPS devices we have, we’re going to be accumulating KML files. We already have, in fact. We use them in Google Earth, but recently Google added the ability to show KML data in Google Maps. So here’s a couple of examples:

• locations of airports in the north-western USA (beta, do not use for navigation, all disclaimers apply)
• a day in Wolf Mountain

A month or so back I was given a SpaceNavigator (let’s not go into the details, but let it be known that sometimes just turning up means people give you things). My initial plan was to eBay it, but it turns out these things are too cheap to eBay, so I decided to open it up and plug it in.

I’ve used with Google Earth (which is the only supported application I have), and I like it a lot. You don’t hold it in your hand (as my picture might suggest), but plonk it on the table and use twist, push, pull and turn the device to control Google Earth. It’s a much nicer experience than using the mouse and onscreen navigation.

Now if only they’d add support for Final Cut: it’d be great for scrubbing through video and marking in and out points.