Tag Archives: guides

How To

How to choose a camcorder

If you’re interested in purchasing a camcorder, this guide will help you decide what to get when you look at the dizzying array of products out there.

At the moment, the industry is “in the 80’s”, caught between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, and standard and high-definition video. The HDV, 16:9 camcorders are still expensive, while the standard 4:3 camcorders are months to years behind the technology curve. There are some mongrel/hybrid models out there, that offer a mix of standard to high-def recording, on both 4:3 and 16:9 aspects.

To make things more complicated, there are multiple high-def formats: 480p, 780p, 1080p. There are also multiple media: Hi8, DV, miniDV, DVD, miniDVD, and hard drive. Each kind of media has its pros and cons. Finally, there are multiple connections: Firewire, mini-DVI, S-video, RCA, etc. There are caveats with each connection, and the quality of the video output varies with each, even on the same model camcorder.

So, how do you make sense of all this nonsense? Well, my recommendations are:

  • 16:9 aspect ratio (the extra width to the picture truly makes a difference, and allows you to compose your shots a lot better)
  • HDV (780 or 1080p, preferably the latter)
  • Firewire or mini-DVI connector
  • MiniDV or hard drive media

I should mention that some people like the convenience of storing directly on DVD – just realize that if you do that, it’s harder to edit the video. You have to import it to the computer from the DVD or the camcorder, then edit it, which is a slower process overall, plus most DVD media isn’t reusable, etc. Also, if your camcorder will record to mini-DVDs, realize that some DVD players won’t be able to play them, in particular the slot-loading ones that you find on Apple computers or some in-car entertainment systems.

You should also look for a good optical zoom, low-light capabilities, and optical image stabilization. Good, intuitive controls should also be present, and it’d be nice to have good battery life as well.

If you’re more than an amateur/home videographer, then you should look at the capability to use different lenses, and the presence of relevant physical controls directly on the camcorder’s exterior. You probably also want to look at the ability to switch between different frame rates.
Before you go out there and try to find a camera with all these features, realize the market’s in disarray, and you’ll be disappointed if you look for a camera that has it all. A camera that has my list of desired features will cost over $1,000 at the moment, and that’s out of reach for many people.

CNET’s put together a camcorder guide which will help you narrow down your choices, and my advice is to look through that as well. On their site, they also have reviews of many camcorders. Just realize that the editors are people, and the reviews are subjective, in particular the video reviews. I remember viewing one where the editor referred to the LCD panel as very small, literally “the same size as the viewfinder”, when it was clearly 4-5 times larger in terms of surface area.

The best thing to do is to come up with your own wishlist of features for your dream camcorder, using this guide and other guides like the CNET guide, then go to the stores, and see which model most closely fits your wishlist. You’ll have to compromise or give up on some features, but you’ll come out with a great buy in the end, because you’ll have done your homework.

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How To

Video: How to turn your MacBook into a SmackBook

CNET has a great video that shows you how to turn your MacBook into a Smackbook. To do it, you enable dual desktop environments on your MacBook, then switch between them by gently smacking the laptop, thus triggering the hard drive’s motion sensor. It’s a great hack that’s sure to be liked by coders!

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How To

How to find cartoons for children

Stephen Metcalf from Slate wrote a good piece entitled “Beyond Bugs Bunny: The Quest to Find the Perfect Children’s Cartoon“. It reminded me to write about my own thoughts on the issue.

Unfortunately, Stephen’s piece falls short of the truth. While I agree with him on one aspect, that “one is faced with an uninviting… choice: insipidity or carnage” when trying to pick from among the choices, I disagree with his characterization of what constitutes inspidity or carnage in cartoons.

Most Walt Disney cartoons aren’t insipid, in particular the classic ones. I have great respect for the art, and the way in which Disney chose to portray certain things. Look, he was trying to make commercial movies. There was a path to be followed if commercial success was to be the result, and he knew what needed to be done. I don’t think the overwhelming majority of people would consider his movies a compromise, or an example of insipidity.

You want to talk about insipid? What about Ed, Edd and Eddy? What about Codename: Kids Next Door? What about Pokemon? What about Beavis and Butthead? What about Ren & Stimpy? The list is endless. Cartoons like these are a veritable waste of time. They’re not funny, their plots are mediocre, their art is ugly, and one gets up from watching them feeling like they just lost a few hundred brain cells.

I’ve also heard talk of Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry being violent, and I disagree with that line of thought. There’s a huge difference between the violence portrayed in those cartoons and the violence one finds in the cartoons of today, in particular some of the action cartoons, or the anime, which can be extremely violent, to the point of brutal cruelty.

The violence to be found in LT or T&J cartoons was rubbery. Nothing really ever happened to the characters. They emerged unscathed. It was all done for fun and with great comedic timing, and even as a kid, you would know it – I did, at any rate. You also can’t call them children’s cartoons. They were created at a time when cartoons would get shown before movies in theatres. Adults were expected to watch and enjoy them. Some of them won Oscars. The brand of humor to be found in them is a mix of pratfalls and other physical jokes, which appealed to everyone, and jokes that only grown-ups would get. Unfortunately, all of that has been lost on the cartoonists of today, who seem to produce only violence and insipidity.

You want to talk about risqué? What about the Max Fleischer cartoons, which Stephen touts, in particular the Betty Boop ones? Would you call those children’s cartoons? Not by far! They treat themes such as adultery (albeit with subtlety) and theft. Betty has many gentlemen callers, most of them old and rich, and some are married. In some of the cartoons, she’s only in her negligé. There’s a scene in “Poor Cinderella” that would make the fellows whistle even nowadays. What about Felix the Cat? In “Felix in Hollywood”, he peeps into the dressing room of a star, then whistles and exclaims, “Oh, Boy!”. In “Neptune’s Nonsense”, Neptune has a mermaid do a belly dance for him. In “Sultan Pepper”, the same character that fools around with Betty Boop in one of her cartoons now tries to sleep with the entire harem of a visiting sultan. This is clearly not kid stuff. Sure, some of Fleischer’s cartoons are safer, but you’d have to pick and choose.

One has to do the same nowadays. Stephen seems to have stumbled upon a good find with Charlie and Lola. I would also recommend Little Bear, which is an absolutely charming show that doesn’t get aired often these days, unfortunately.

The truth is, cartoons made specifically for children, and in particular cartoons made for infants and young children, to the age of 4-5, are a relatively new thing. Even Disney didn’t make his cartoons just for children. He said that himself. So there’s no point in criticizing the man or the other existing art because it doesn’t work for something it wasn’t originally intended for.

There’s a good reason college kids can’t stand Barney, but little kids love him. His TV show is specifically intended for very young audiences. It’s the same with The Wiggles. I go bonkers watching them, but my friends’ little daughter (who’s also 3 years old) loves them. So you see, one should look at what’s on the market today, and make an intelligent decision based on facts and personal preference.

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How To

100 Potential Interview Questions and other great resources

Monster has put together a great list of 100 potential interview questions. If you’ve ever had an interview, and I’m betting you have, you’ll have encountered at least a few of these beauties. Take a peek at number 7: “Where would you like to be in your career five years from now?” Yuck! But, you’ll get asked these questions, so you’d better have an answer ready.

After you review the questions, take a look at the top right corner of that page, because they’ve got links to other great articles about job interviews, like how to make a great first impression, how to prepare for an interview even if it’s tomorrow, the answers that interviewers are looking for, nonverbal communication, job interview pointers, a podcast with interview tips, how to assess your skills, and how to get ready. Good stuff!

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How To

Moving email from a PC to the Mac

Background

For the purposes of this guide, I’m going to assume that you were using Outlook or Outlook Express on the PC, and you want to import your messages into the Mail app that ships with Mac OS X. I speak from personal experience with this guide. I had to do this when I switched from a PC to a Mac in September of ’05. I’ve finally solved the last piece of the puzzle, and I wanted to share this information with you so it won’t take you as long as it took me.

I had an email archive that spanned close to 10 years – a fairly complete one at that. I’d been keeping it in Outlook Express, then Outlook, over the years. When I switched to the Mac, I didn’t want to lose it. My wife had an archive that spanned a few years as well, and she kept it in Outlook. We didn’t want to lose those messages, either. As you know, there’s no easy way to import email directly from the PC into the Mac. There’s no nice and easy transfer wizard, for multiple reasons: different operating systems, different file systems, different ways of storing the mail, different applications, etc. Even if there had been a wizard, given my huge mail archive, I’d have probably crashed it.

What didn’t work

Still, I tried to be reasonable. I thought equivalent Microsoft products on the two platforms might be able to import from each other. So I took my PST from my PC, transferred to my Mac, and opened Entourage (the Outlook equivalent on the Mac). The import failed. The two can’t talk to each other. You can’t import between them either way. I thought that was pretty silly. Of all the things Microsoft does wrong, this has to be one of the more obvious ones.

Next I tried the less possible, which was to import from the PST file directly into Mail. That didn’t work, either. I surfed the internet for solutions, and stumbled across a possibility of installing Eudora on the PC, importing from Outlook into it, then copying the library onto the Mac, and using some special utility to do the PC to Mac translation. Well, Eudora failed on the import from Outlook. Again, I had a big PST, I wasn’t surprised. Plus, even when I tried transferring the messages it had managed to copy to the Mac, the utility didn’t do its job. At any rate, I hadn’t put my hopes in Eudora. It might have been all the rage in the early nineties, but it’s pretty useless now. Somebody else suggested using old versions of Netscape Mail. I tried that as well, only to fail again.

I called Apple Support, who were completely clueless about this. Finally, on my second try, the technician suggested I use an IMAP account to transfer the email between the two computers. I saw two problems with that, both related to the size of my archive: one, where am I going to find an IMAP account with more than 4GB of storage, and two, I’m not going to sit there and upload over 4GB of data through my DSL connection. It was going to take days, if not more. Obviously, not a very practical solution.

➡ Updated 1/3/08: Gmail now offers more than 6 GB (and growing) of email storage, and includes both POP and IMAP access.

What worked

Just so I won’t drag this out needlessly, Thunderbird turned out to be the best solution for the transfer. I installed it on the PC, imported from Outlook into it, then transferred the mailbox files to the Mac, where I had to delete the mailbox index files (.msf) files, and only leave the un-indexed data files there. That’s because the Mac version of Thunderbird needs to build its own indexes. So, I located the directory where the email got stored for Thunderbird on my Mac, moved the mailboxes there, and deleted the index files. I then opened up Thunderbird, and after it re-built the indexes, there were my messages! After all the trouble, I was pretty happy!

Next, I wanted to get my email into Mail. This is the step that took the longest for me, and I just solved it yesterday. Granted, I hadn’t been looking very hard since last September… Now, some of you might be asking yourselves why in the world I’d want to switch from Thunderbird to Mail, and I’ve got two reasons: one, and the most important, Spotlight indexes Mail messages, so I can search for what I need from one location, and two, iPhoto sends out photos through Mail, and we email photos a lot; we wanted to have our email messages in one place. Yes, I know, we should share our photos on the web instead, etc…

So, how did I solve it? Certainly not by calling Apple Support, who are were clueless on this issue as well. And I also didn’t solve it by importing from Thunderbird into Mail, which is impossible (not any more), as you might find out if you try it. Version 2.0.7 of Mail crashes miserably, and has done so, reliably, since September of ’05, on my every attempt to import from Thunderbird. I choose Import, then I select the Other or the Netscape/Mozilla option (since Thunderbird isn’t listed as one of the options), then I browse for the location of the message databases, and when I select Import, it crashes like a drunk limousine driver.

Instead, I solved this by doing a search on the Apple Support forums, where intrepid users have posted some great solutions. Among them, I found the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner. It’s a wonderful little utility that will let you drag your Thunderbird message databases onto its icon, and will automatically convert them to Mail message databases. It will also copy them to the proper Mail message library. All you need to do is sit back and wait for it to finish, then rebuild your Mail folders, and all your messages will appear – just follow the directions you’ll find on their website. The best part is that it didn’t crash while it processed my entire archive (over 4GB of messages)! Now that’s a reliable application!

➡ Updated 1/3/08: It turns out, as one of the commenters has pointed out, that Leopard’s version of Mail includes an import function from Thunderbird. Problem solved. Thanks Logan! Now I wonder if a new version of the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner will be released, or whether this new import feature in Mail will negate the need for it.

When I got done, I was ecstatic. All my mail is indexed with Spotlight, and I can instantly find messages and files that are years old without having to do separate searches for each!

Let’s review

  1. Install Thunderbird on PC, import from Outlook/Outlook Express into it.
  2. Install Thunderbird on Mac, note storage location for mail files.
  3. Copy message databases onto Mac, in the specific directory where mail is stored, delete index files, then start up Thunderbird and let it rebuild the indexes.
  4. Use the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner to export to Mail. (only for OS X Tiger)
  5. Rebuild mailboxes in Mail, then relax, because you’re done! (only for OS X Tiger)
  6. If you have Leopard, skip steps 4 and 5, and use Mail’s import function to get your messages out of Thunderbird. (only for OS X Leopard)

💡 Thunderbird and the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner are free software. If you find them helpful, please don’t forget to donate to them, even if it’s just a few dollars. It’s the right thing to do if you want to support the efforts of their developers. Here is a donation link for Mozilla (the maker of Thunderbird), and here is a donation link for the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner.

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