IBA Tech Report from 1970

After writing about the new Tek WFM7100 last Friday I came across this brilliant document - it is the Chief Engineer's report to the IBA board and contains lots of info about the state of broadcast technology thirty-five years ago. There is a description of how they were upgrading the ITV network for colour and how the use of twin-lense telecines were taking off - Mk.1 Cintels I'm assuming - the Mk.2 was either a jump-scan or "digi-scan" depending on vintage (we had a few of those in TV news at the Beeb - I was quite a dab-hand at repairing the memory boards). Automated measurement using Vax PDP-series mini-computers is examined as well and serves as another parallel with the Tek. This picture shows how they did screen-grabs back then - using a polaroid camera mount!
Anyhow - give it a read - I was gratified to see how much of it tied in with what I learnt at BBC Evesham in the late eighties. It is a big 12-meg PDF but worth the download.

Gilbert's Fridge

When I first started at the Beeb in the late eighties there was a superb kids TV show called Gilbert's Fridge - Gilbert was an alien who (for no explained reason) was a South London car dealer. He was voiced by Phil Cornwall who has gone on to much bigger things. Although it was a children's programme all the BBC engineers I worked with thought it was superb and there were always VHS copies floating around the workshop. Imagine my delight when I found the complete series on UK Nova - here is a two minute DivX clip so you can see for yourself.

It's also on YouTube.

Tektronix WFM7100

I've just my hands our new Tek WFM7100 demo unit and after one quick firmware update (to v. 1.23, fact fans!) I've been monkeying about with it ('cause I'll be demo'ing it post IBC). First thoughts are that it's very sluggish - screen update on waveforms is fine but navigation is slow. It feels like i's running on top of something (Windows Embedded?!) and that seems to be born out by the fact that when you hit it over the Java interface the menu on the front panel screen remains with the last selection you made and the remote display changes as per selections you make on the browser - almost like a remote desktop.
Anyhow - feature wise it is pretty much a WVR7100 with some nice extras. The biggest step is the screen grab facilities. In the same way that video or audio 'events' (gamut, level etc.) can be placed in the log, close the GPI, honk an SNMP alarm or just indicate on the front panel you can now have an error condition dump a screen-grab to a USB thumb drive. Now you can imagine exporting the XML log with still-frames of the offending video - excellent for monitoring the state of a cable head-end (for example). Another addition is having a picture o/p SVGA as well as the instrement's display out. We often install the WVR series rasterisers into machines rooms and DA the feed to several places (including for the operator in the machine area) - but since this has a built-in insterment display it would be advantageous to have just the picture (on a 15¨ TFT panel) thus avoiding the cost of an HD monitor.
Unlike glass-tubed traditional 'scopes (and even some other rasterised models - specifically the Videoteks) the 7100 generates the graticules in the same digital space where the HD/SDi stream is demultiplex'ed - the upshot of this is that they are ultimately accurate - something no other 'scope can lay claim to (unless they've just been calibrated!). Having spent time doing a head-to-head with the other manufacturers (Videotek, Omnitek and Hamlet) I conclude that the only reason folks don't buy Tek is the price. In terms of accuracy, ease of use and feature set the Tectonix are way out in front. Their automated QC features are pretty impressive and make delivery reports very easy to prepare.

The comma is on its way out....

Wired is a fashion magazine for people who like to imagine they know something about technology. Every five years or so I read it and my prejudices have always been confirmed! It appeals to people who have money to buy-into a digital lifesyle (sic.) but have little understanding of any underlying IT.

Anyhow - in this month's issue I spotted this Nathan Barley style quote:

Commas are a kind of channel noise. You’re not getting to the verb fast enough. Why make us wait? The comma is on its way out. Use small words.

- Bart Kosko, Polymath (apparently).

Stevie & Sesame Street - the best things from the 70's

Nobody's Cool

It's a bit emo for my tastes, but this tune has been running around my head since I saw one of the students at my eldest boy's school do this at their last music evening.

nobody's cool, we're all the same, you're not a player, life's not a game
don't you think it's time we left high school behind
you're not a stud, you're not the man, you're not a pimp, and i'm not a fan
your misogyny is just a plea for l-u-v

the only thing i've seen that's cool in my life is a mom who loves her child and a man who loves his wife

your two tattoos don't make you tough, please quit the act i've seen enough
you say you're different but you all end up the same
just be yourself, don't fake the geek, don't say you're random or a freak
dude you're not punk rock, we're all just human beings

the only thing i've seen that's cool in my life is a dad who loves his kids and a man loved by his wife

nobody's cool, put down your nose, i don't care where you bought your clothes
can't you see it's time we left high school behind
cause it's plain to see we're all just human beings

Ubuntu and Your iPod

Well, you will be happy to know that Ubuntu does iPods, even Nanos. You will also be happy to know that using your iPod on your Ubuntu system is quite easy. All you have to do is plug your iPod into one of your computer's USB ports, after which Ubuntu will automatically mount it and place an iPod icon on your desktop (Figure 16-1). Yes, no longer do you have to mess around with mount and unmount commands or editing system tables. Just plug in your pod, and Ubuntu will do the rest.

I don't have an iPod but this is the kind of thing that might persuade me!

Bootcamp 1.1 Beta

Support for the latest Intel-based Macintosh computers
Easier partitioning using presets for popular sizes
Ability to install Windows XP on any internal disk
Support for built-in iSight cameras
Support for built-in microphones
Right-click when pressing the right-hand Apple key on Apple keyboards
Improved Apple keyboard support including Delete, PrintScreen, NumLock, and ScrollLock keys

I got video working under Skype! Now that is progress.
The Bluetooth seems to now work under Windows and the machine is running a bit cooler (although I think that is down to the firmware update). I haven't had a chance to benchmark performance while on battery - previously the dual-core chip speed-step'ed right down while not on mains - I'm hoping that this has been improved.

GAIM crashes with MSN accounts

Yesterday, Gaim started crashing for a bunch of people (most notably Windows users) when trying to connect a MSN account.

* Update - August 20th, 2006 - 12:32 CDT *

Gaim 2.0.0beta3.1 has been released which fixes this and other bugs in beta3. You can download it from its SourceForge file release page.

Holiday in Cornwall

I'm currently returning from the family vacation - see my photo blog for some nice pictures of what is Britain's most beautiful region.

Autostitch

This is the best bit of software I've found for making panoramas from multiple digital images. Here is an example from the Eden Project (visited during my recent vacation);

Cleaning your MacBook with Nail Polish Remover...DON'T

This was posted to OS X fanatics earlier -

http://channels.lockergnome.com/osx/archives/20060701_clean...

This is actually an awful, horrible idea -

Nail polish remover, over time, will eat away at polymer surfaces, leaving you with much much less than desirable results. Do NOT use nail polish remover on your MacBook, ever! You will eat a hole in the plastic surface - count on it.

If you're going to clean the white, what has worked on iBooks, and what works on MacBooks just the same is PLAIN RUBBING ALCOHOL either on a cotton swab or toilet tissue.

Again, I repeat, NO NOT USE NAIL POLISH REMOVER. This will leave you with an eating away of your MacBook over time!

SPV M5000 as Bluetooth modem under OS-X

Alasdair Allan gives a superb walk-though on using your HTC Universal 'phone as a wireless internet router with your MacBook or PowerBook - works for me!

Dual-link HD SDi is dead (and other things!)

I had a great meeting with Lee Ballinger - a sales engineer at Tektronix who looks after Root6. He periodically updates me on new products and gets me up to speed for when I have to demo them. He is a great guy - an old school engineer who is very much grounded in test and measurement. The WFM7100 series is the new range of portable rasterised video 'scopes and looks set to really clean up - they have addresses the (very few) weaknesses of the WVR range and have a killer product. I'll blog a bit more about it when I've had a day with our new demo unit. Lee also told me about a couple of interesting developments that he's been party to in other Tek divisions;

• Sony are set to kill off the dual-link HD-SDi interface - as a three-gig interconnect it has always been seen as ungainly and they aren't going to launch any more products that use it - a ten gig multi-mode fibre (straight to the back of the VTR/Telecine/etc.) is just around the corner. This will mean that those stick-in-the-mud engineers who refuse to take fibre seriously (or do it half-heartedly) will have to pull their fingers out.


• Quad-core 4.4Ghz Intel chips - he's seen production samples in quantity and they are coming soon - Tek's new seven gig 'scope wasn't quick enough and they had to rush a set of prototypes to Intel to allow testing of those new microprocessors!

Killed the GUI in Ubuntu?

I did! Actually I was doing a patch-update and the battery on the Dell Latitude died. Subseqently I couldn't get the thing to boot to Gnome. Booting to the command line and doing an init 5 produced only the "brown screen of death"!. However - as with any Debian Linux you can run the patch-manager from the command line;

apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

and all is well!

Skype under Ubuntu

Hmmm - to get Skype working under most Linux distros you have the choice of using the old-skool OSS (Open Sound System) or the newer ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). I've never got anything running properly using the OSS-driver! The problem with the laptop I'm using is that it only has USB1.1 ports and so my US-Robotics handset wouldn't work properly either! Enter Skype 1.3beta which does support the ALSA driver and all is well.

Vista's virgin stack

Microsoft Windows Vista (now in beta testing) and Windows Server "Longhorn" (now in beta testing) include a new implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite known as the Next Generation TCP/IP stack.

So runs the blurb on Microsoft.com - it seems that they have started again (much in the way they did with XP and Windows 95 before it). Now I'm a big fan of writing something that is clean and not a hack'ed, patched version of something but as Steve Gibson points out the TCP/IP stack is the one thing you want to be hardened by sustained hacker attack - the stack in XP showed none of it's vulnerabilities in beta but as we know it was a security nightmare until SP2 (and even now we haven't had a quiet patch Tuesday for more than eighteen months!). The same was true of 95/98/ME - the only version of Windows that had a relatively secure IP stack from launch was Windows 2000 - and it inherited NetBSD's stack!
Now Symantec have been hammering Vista with malformed packets and have some very alarming results here - I suppose it's in their interest to portray Vista as insecure and needing of additional software (theirs!) to make it safe to use. Still - makes for interesting reading.
Like all OSes I'll be waiting a year before I install it on any machines I rely on...

As an aside I was chatting to someone I met on a campsite - he writes embedded applications for industrial machines - not Windows Embedded but proper assembler code for 80186 chips (and the like) - low power processors that can run off batteries etc. He is currently working on an IP stack for the x86 and has implemented stacks for Z80 etc. His observation was that there are no good quality "free" (as in free software - open source) code implementing an IP stack on those chips - today people are keen to save the time and implement using embedded Win2K (but not XP interestingly - probably for the reasons above). But, you only get the best performance with the economy of assembler code.
Reminded me of the little NetIOM board is was playing with just after Christmas - see here and here. It had a very rudimentary web server on chip and support of ICMP etc.

The old BBC News ticker

This is my favourite desktop widget of all time - it just provides a ticker of the top twenty or so BBC News stories - click on an interesting one and it fetches the web page. The Beeb stopped offering it for download a couple of years ago but I've been re-installing the last version I snagged on many machines and it still works a treat - don't be put off by the warning about it being for Windows 95 or NT 4.
It is very configurable wrt genres etc. Click the link above for the Windows installer. It has a very low memory/performance footprint (I've even got it running on a 400Mhz P2!).

Upside-Down-Ternet

My neighbours are stealing my wireless internet access. I could encrypt it or alternately I could have fun.

This is very funny - as well as giving you a few good pointers about port forwarding and proxy servers.

Ext2 Installable File System For Windows

If you currently have Windows running and you realize that you need some files for your work which you have stored on an Ext2 volume of your Linux installation, you no longer have to shut down Windows and boot Linux!
Furthermore, Windows will now be able to handle floppy disks which have been formatted with an Ext2 file system.
Linux Ext3 volumes can also be accessed.

There have been several times in the past when this would have helped me out immensely!
Thanks to Rupert for putting me on to this.