Author Archives: Pete

Value for money

Venetian masks 2008
 I said I’m pleased with my new Panasonic DVR but I’m just discovering how good it is.
I put on a music CD this morning for the first time. It recognised it and played it but also put a track list up on the screen with the titles and times of all the tracks! I’ve never seen this before. It’s obvious now: all this information is encoded in the TOC (table of contents) in the inner track of a CD, but you can’t usually see it on a CD player.
Then after a minute or two, it switched the TV screen to a screen-saver display of quite good built-in photos of mountains, trees, flowers and so on. Nice! I’m sure I’ll become blase about it soon enough, but I’m impressed at the moment.
But wait, there’s more: I’ve had a DVD for a while with 24 old Sgt Bilko episodes in black and white that someone gave me (thanks Colin). They’re in .avi format, downloaded from the web. I’ve played one or two on the computer, but it wasn’t the ideal way to watch.
I just put it into the Panasonic to see what would happen. Bingo! It recognises them as playable by the DiVX decoder and lists them on screen complete with titles. Select one, press play and Ernie’s your sergeant.
Amazing.

Lese majeste

(C) PJ Croft 2008

I’ve just sent the following to Media Watch:

I couldn’t believe it. Last night’s Thames Jubilee Pageant was a once in a generation, once in a lifetime, once in 350 year never to be repeated event, but the ABC cut us off early!

I have it recorded so I’m not making this up.

I knew the event was scheduled to run from 2.00pm to 6.00pm UK time (GMT of course). No need to take my word for it, see http://www.thamespageantlive.com/  That’s 10.00pm to 02:00am WST (GMT+8hrs) and 12:00midnight to 04:00am EST (GMT+10hrs)

In fact the broadcast started at 8.30pm WST on ABC24, two hours before the official parade start, so that was good.

But at 01:00am WST (5:00pm GMT), our ABC cut us off and ended the broadcast, at least one hour before the end of the pageant!! We never got to see the fireworks from the Tower Bridge – I didn’t know about those until I saw the French news on SBS this morning.

As well, at the very moment “our ABC” ended the coverage, we were seeing a historic image – the RPO were playing The Sailors’ Hornpipe and the royal family were doing a little jig on the barge! I doubt this has ever been seen before, but we were cut off. I’m absolutely disgusted. It’s too late now – it can’t be fixed, it can’t be undone, it can’t be repeated. Historic vision, and “our ABC” cut us off.

The other atrocity is that the ABC News 24 news ticker was left on the bottom of the screen for the entire broadcast! While we were trying to see this amazing royal spectacle, the news ticker was telling us “Broncos defeat Sea Eagles in NRL thriller”, “Body parts found in bush grave”, “New domestic violence laws target emotional abuse” and other endlessly repeated bullshit, ad nauseum!

I tried to adjust my TV display size to force it off the bottom of the screen with some success but not enough. I tried to train my eyes to ignore it, with the same result. I ended up having to use a strip of gaffer tape across the bottom of the screen to block it off. I switched to the 2 hour delayed feed on ABC1 to get away from it, but that was in considerably degraded Standard Def and since it was 2hrs delayed, a waste of space.

SO I AM ANGRY. I have this recorded so I think I’m going to do some screen grabs and send them to the BBC to say, “Look how the ABC graffitied your pictures. Look how the Australian ABC made a travesty of this unrepeatable event by ending it early.”  Copy to Buckingham Palace. “Look Queenie – the ABC buggered you up.”

I can only hope some other organisation will release this in its unvandalised form on BluRay. Can’t rely on “our ABC”.

Yours in sadness and disillusionment

Ho hum

Those who fail to learn the lessons from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.
George Santayana
I’ve just been reading of what it’s like to be in Greece at the moment:
It is a country where the fascists and the anarchists battle for control of the streets, where immigrants fear to go out at night and where a woman whispers “it’s like the Weimar republic” as a motorcycle cavalcade from the Golden Dawn party, devotees of Adolf Hitler, cruises past the parliament building. Graffiti says: “Foreigners get out of Greece. Greece is for the Greeks. I will vote for Golden Dawn to remove the filth from the country.”
(The Guardian, Larry Elliot, economics editor)
Greece is in such trouble because their government and financial authorities ran up huge debts, told lies to the European financial authorities, generally spent money with no regard to repaying it and the whole country avoided paying their taxes.

“Practically all the banks are bankrupt and there has been a very large redistribution of wealth in favour of the rich.”

This is the point: there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in favour of the rich, worldwide and it’s going on every day, faster and faster. That old saying about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is not only true, it’s completely, outrageously true.

There’s not a day goes by when there’s not some new item about the outrageous financial dirty dealing going on in the world. The Facebook IPO stands out – here’s everyone’s favourite web business run by a fresh faced Bill Gates lookalike who decided to let everyone get a slice of the action.
The shares were offered to the public at $38, but only a couple of weeks later they’re worth about $28 and falling. If you were a small investor, you’ve lost a lot of your money.
But:
  • the company placed shares with big Wall Street banks and institutions days before the actual day of listing;
  • the company also warned the big financial institutions weeks before the listing that profit forecasts were not looking as good as predicted;
  • that allowed the big boys to short the shares before they were listed so they still made a profit even in a falling market;
  • the head of Facebook, that cheery faced kid, sold some of his shares this week for about $1 billion;
  • as the head of the company, those shares didn’t cost him anything, so that $1 billion is pure profit for him.
If that isn’t dirty dealing, I don’t know what is. The unsophisticated investors lost their money, but the owner and the big boys won their profits from them.
What about the lessons of history? They are being repeated and it’s the little people who are being hurt.
But worse, it’s financial instability like this (the Weimar Republic referred to above) that led to WWII and other conflicts. When people get scared and desperate, they do desperate things and mistakes  spiral out of control.
Not far away from Greece is Syria, where terrible things are happening with the active support of Russia. The Russian government is supplying arms to the Syrian government forces who are shelling and murdering their own citizens. When we (the rest of the civilised world) try to stop the violence, Russia blocks us.
This is the same Russia that has threatened recently to wage war on NATO, including using nuclear weapons, if NATO installs an anti-missile shield to protect against Iran.
Iran meanwhile, has enough material to  make 5 nuclear weapons and now has missiles capable of putting a satellite into orbit. That’s why NATO wants a missile shield over Europe.
Spain and Italy, meanwhile, are tottering on the financial cliff edge too. Britain is now so poor that they are scrapping large parts of their armed forces.
Even in the  days of the Cold War, I don’t remember things being as dangerous as they are now.  WA would have to be one of the world’s safest places, we hope.

My fallout shelter

John Lennon Knew

John Lennon sang, “Nobody told me it would be like this”. How true.
All my life I told myself  “All dogs end in tragedy” as my reason for not having a pet. It was from experience: I’d seen dogs die in our family and although I didn’t grieve as I do now, I still remember them.
What a paradox. A pet dog gives unbelievable pleasure and keeps on giving. But at the end, owww, oooooowww, it’s so hard.
Minnie 31 May 2012 6.30pm
Minnie is 13, going on 14, but she’s still OK. She still as all her teeth and they are fine. All her senses, hearing, smell, taste, sight — no problems. She still eats properly, has a fine appetite, crunches the bones, excretes properly, sleeps properly, all is good, except for walking and the lumps. You can’t see it in this shot but she’s got a big lump in her right side and a big “sore” on her right face cheek. She doesn’t seem to be in pain from these – she doesn’t scratch, she sleeps on the lumpy side. But it can’t be fun for her.
But she insists on sleeping outside! It rained heavily today, but she stayed out in her “dirt pit” until the thunder started, then she finally came in when I insisted. She was scared by the lightning (so was I!) and came up really close to me, but she’s soaking wet and covered in dirt! I really want to comfort her, but it’s a bit messy.
Then an hour later the rain set in again. After a while, I wondered where she was and looked out the front. There she was on her cushion, but it was out in the rain! I called her inside and she came when I insisted, but again, wet through and not exactly pleasant to comfort. I gave her dinner inside for once, on her cushion so she wouldn’t have to move.
Then about 7.05pm I moved, to get my dinner. She immediately got up and went for the door! I tried to get her to stay inside in the warmth but, no way.
I just don’t know. Is  she OK? Is she in bad pain? Jeez, this is hard.

Video Recording

Boy, I’m quite pleased with my new HDD/DVD recorder described yesterday.
The difference was noticeable as soon as I hooked it up and turned it on. The pictures through the machine are much better than the old one. Panasonic seem to have got their technology right in upscaling standard definition to 1080p — it’s noticeably better than before, even though the old one purported to do the same. There’s a new depth and saturation to the pictures.
Second, I no longer need to worry about recording conflicts. Two programs to record at the same time? At first I started my usual triage decision, but now, no problem, just push the OK button. Quite pleased, in other words.
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I’m just shaking my head in open mouthed disbelief at the moment.
a) Julian Assange has today lost his appeal in a London court against extradition to Sweden to face trumped up charges, from a setup orchestrated by the CIA, to get him back to the USA where the US government will try to legally murder him for legally publishing information that was revealed by one of their own soldiers and which they failed to protect. I have no doubt they are mightily upset about it, but there is every chance they will try very hard to murder an Australian citizen for it.
Sweden, you have sunk into the sludge at the bottom of the pond. I used to think the Scandinavian countries were the good guys of the world, but I wipe Sweden off that list.
The USA of course, continues on its murderous, genocidal course, not content with killing their own citizens, mental retards, youths, ethnic minorities and anyone of a darker skin colour. Now they want to kill an Australian for offending them.
b) the member for Alfred Cove, Janet Woollard MHR has this afternoon embarked on the next step of her campaign to help her son, and her, avoid facing his responsibilities over the horrendous boat crash in 2007.
She’s used her electorate office and time and public money (!) to send 14,000 letters on what she denies is her parliamentary letterhead, but which she admits looks quite like it, to plead her case to her electorate. Her son has avoided his responsibility for the awful injuries and medical costs to his passenger by declaring bankruptcy, but she pushes the blame back onto the victim!
I loathe this woman and her son. Is there a stronger word? I’ll come up with some, trust me. She calls herself Doctor Janet Woollard. Her doctorate is in nursing. To me, she is the antithesis of a nurse.
These people (MPs and the medical elite) command huge fees and salaries, live in an expensive suburb, yet they continue to tell us that their son is “a good boy”, can’t afford to pay and is being persecuted over this awful mistake.
Sue me, Janet, please! I would love to face you in court. You are going through purgatory at the moment and you deserve every second of it. Long may it continue because you are bringing this on yourself. As Russell said, if you just paid up, it would all go away and you could sort it out in private. You could then force your good boy to pay you back, as I’m sure you would. Stupid women.
We have not heard the last of this. All power and thanks to John Hammond who is acting for the victim. Go man, go. 
c) Speaking of doctors, Bashar Al-Assad, the head of state of Syria, is a medical doctor, an eye surgeon. He trained in the UK and therefore I’m certain he took the Hippocratic oath to “Above all, do no harm”.
But under his authority his army are executing children and women, non-combatants, innocents, guilty of no more than being in an area where people, his own citizens reside, simply because he believes they oppose his rule.
To practise medicine, I assume he was or is registered with the British authority, the British Medical Association, the BMA. I’m trying to find out whether he was, or still is. He must be banned? Stay tuned.

It’s All Happening

After trying for several months to find a way to resurrect the DVD drive in my HDD/DVD recorder, without success, the pageant on this Sunday has given me the excuse to buy a new one.
I bought my first hard disk recorder in about 2004 (I never wanted a VHS machine!), but it only had a single analogue tuner. I could record programs to DVD, but only from the analogue channels (ABW2, TVW7, STW9 and NEW10, remember them? They die next month by the way, off the air, transmitters switched off! I predict screams from people living in the country regions. No more fringe area reception via tall antennae.)
In about 2007 I replaced that analogue machine with my present one that has a single digital tuner. I can record digital channels, but only the Standard Definition ones (so no recording, or watching through the recorder, of ABC News 24, Nine’s GEM, TenHD etc).
Then a few months ago, the unit’s DVD drive started refusing to believe there was no disc inserted, so I can’t get programs off the hard drive or even play DVDs. I’ve tried to live with that for as long as I can, but the Thames Jubilee Pageant coming up on Sunday night has kicked me into action, so I’ve just bought a new Panasonic recorder with twin Hi-Def tuners, able to record two HD programs simultaneously. (See next item)
It means I’ll also be able to get things off the disk drive to DVD. Annoyingly, the web page of the shop I bought it from clearly says the unit can also play back BluRay discs. No it can’t. “Oh, no mate, that’s an error, sorry. There’s no BluRay playback.”  Gee thanks. I’ll be checking their web site tomorrow and if the error isn’t fixed, I’ll make a complaint.
Anyway, the Pageant on Sunday night is on ABC 24 which means it should be in 720p High Definition with stereo sound, so I’ll be able to record it. Since it goes until 3am and I will be toasting the queen, there’s a good chance I’ll fall asleep!
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You’ll appreciate why I sound a bit incredulous when I show you this:
That’s what a videotape recorder used to look like when I first started work in 1966. I am very familiar with this machine because I used to operate it. You can see the tape on the gold reels – all 5,400 feet of 2 inch wide tape which could hold one hour (a bit more, 70 mins actually, you hoped) of black and white TV. If you were lucky. There were so many things that could and did go wrong!
L-R: Me, Ross McDonald, Ken McKay, Gordon McColl on Friday 25 May.
It looks a bit funny because we were having to dismantle it, and it’s big and heavy. 
Why do we have to dismantle it?
Because it’s in the Wireless Hill Museum in Melville and someone in the council has decided that the museum is not popular enough (despite it being locked all the time, viewing by arrangement), so it all has to go.
What you can’t see in my photos is an enormous radio transmitter, twice the size of the VTR, that also has to be dismantled and moved out. But where can we take them? We don’t know! We (the people who are vitally interested in this history) have no money, no way to move this stuff (it needs cranes and trucks) and nowhere to store it except in sea containers somewhere.
As you can see, we’re not exactly young, fit and able guys, but it seems we’re all there is.
You can read much, much more about this at http://watvhistory.com/ and the very top article, only posted yesterday, explains more about it. (You’ll also find many, many of my photos covering 30 years of TV technology on the web site as well, eg http://watvhistory.com/2009/09/peter-croft-reports-on-the-end-of-the-videotape-era/).
Unfortunately, it looks as if all this historic equipment, not to mention all the program material in all its different forms, may well be lost. Why? Because almost no-one cares. There’s no money, no storage premises, no display premises and even when we had these ideal premises, we’ve been kicked out.
So next time you record hi-def digital colour video onto an SD card, this is how it all started. But who cares?

Yay!

O’yea, o’yea, o’yea. Good news. The Thames pageant will be shown live on ABC News24 on Sunday night starting at 1030pm WA time.
This channel is 720p Hi-Def, so it should look good. The sound will be just as important so whack it up loud!
I don’t know whether my voice had any influence in this change, but I’ve certainly been shooting emails out in the past week to anyone I think may be able to help. Looks like it may have paid off.  Thank you anyway, whoever made this decision.
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Thames Pageant Update

I’ve had a reply from the ABC saying they don’t have the rights to show the Thames Jubilee Flotilla live!
They’ll be showing a delayed program at 6pm on Monday 4 June, but it’ll obviously only be edited highlights and if it’s on ABC1 it will only be in standard definition.
I can’t believe it. This will be an event which has not been seen since the 17th century in the times of Charles I and will never be seen again in our lifetimes, yet we won’t be able to see it live or in full.
It’s like saying that a manned landing will be occurring on Mars next month but we won’t be able to watch it due to rights, or costs, or lack of demand.
The BBC will be covering it in full in hi-def, so there will be a feed available. So where can we see it? I don’t know and I can’t seem to find out. So disappointing. We can get the live web feed but I doubt it will work for me on my limited bandwidth connection. So disappointing.
I hope I’m mistaken and if I am, I’ll happily correct my comments.

Next next

PS to below: I’ve searched the ABC-TV website and according to their program guide, there is NO broadcast of the Thames pageant scheduled on Sunday 3 June!
Naturally I’ve emailed them asking why, but after 48 hours there’s been no reply and I don’t have much hope of satisfaction.
Funny, we’re told repeatedly that Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Australia as well, but we get lower status than Europeans at UK immigration counters, are not allowed to work in the UK even though people from the EU are, and now it seems we won’t get to see this pageant.
I hope I’m wrong, but …
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I’m bloody psychic! I see the future! I’m convinced of it.
Yesterday (Monday) morning I was dreaming just before I awoke and the dream vividly showed a side yard of a house somewhere in a city. In the dream there was a blue painted steel fence above a brick wall and oddly, a crane or something was installing rectangular blue painted steel mesh columns spaced about 2m apart inside the railing fence. Weird, brief, but a very clear dream.
Then last night (Monday, same day) I watched 4 Corners on the Madeleine McCann missing girl in Portugal mystery. In the program they used quite a lengthy shot of – a wall with blue painted steel railings on top! Same blue, similar style!
Coincidence? Pretty strange.

Next

The new Royal Barge
I don’t know any more than what you see, but it’s a start. The start time in London will be 1pm, which will be 9pm our (WA) time, Sunday 3 June.I haven’t found any TV broadcast info yet. I’ve searched the ABC’s website but found nothing obvious. I hope they will devote their hi-def channel, News 24, to a full broadcast, free of interruptions until its finish time of 5pm GMT, 1am WA time.
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The RAAF balloon that “crashed”, no, sorry guys, had an unscheduled stop last Thursday, came down in Shardlow Loop Carine. That’s Peter Partridge’s street and he was there. So were nearly the entire suburb after a while, apparently, but it was a pretty unusual event. I briefly saw the balloon in the air but that’s all.
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I was returning from the shops where I was amazed to see, among the biscuits, nuts and sundry groceries, recordable DVDs in Black & Gold packaging! Yes, these ultra hi-tech discs which used to cost a fortune and come in gleaming jewel cases are there in 25 disc spindle packs among the food items.
Then in the newsagent, I saw 1Terabyte USB3 portable hard drives in blister packs for $156 or something, among the rulers, pencils and envelopes. Computers are now sold in Retravision, 8GB USB thumb drives come in double blister packs at the Good Guys where you can buy Mum a wi-fi router for Mothers’ Day… is nothing sacred?!  
What other commodity or service has fallen so far in price than electronics? It’s all due to the cleverness of electronics engineers that this is happening. They never stop finding better, cheaper, faster, easier ways of making electronic products. Would that people in other industries had the same aims and abilities.
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I proudly call myself a precisionista now. If you read Zoltan Kovacs’s articles in Saturday’s West Australian pages, you’ll know what I’m talking about. We used to be satisfied with the label of pedant, but I like the new term better.

Credit ESO

Isn’t that nice? It’s two galaxies colliding somewhere light years away in space, but astronomers have nick-named it Tinkerbell.