After helping our intern with our infernal Epson inkjet that kept on jamming on perfectly fine paper, I found this cartoon on Oatmeal that sums up my feelings perfectly. This is just one of the hilarious-but-true panels:
Read more:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers
One of my friends asked me about my experience publishing a DVD with CreateSpace and Amazon.
CreateSpace is a company that allows you to publish your own DVDs, CDs, and books. They were bought out by Amazon and so Amazon can also handle the distribution of your materials. The royalty rates are quite generous, especially comparison to mainstream publishing and distribution companies.
I have two films distributed through them: Bethel: Community and Schizoprehnia in Northern Japan and A Japanese Funeral
I personally think that CreateSpace is a harbinger of the future for publishing independent documentary and ethnographic films. It used to be that you needed a publishing house for DVDs because of the complexity of the production process. But now with Apple's Final Cut Studio, it is easy to author a DVD entirely by yourself and produce a master disc suitable for reproduction.
After the jump, I'll go into the steps that I took to master A Japanese Funeral.
Spending the last month writing has resulted in my carpal tunnel syndrome flaring up again. Now I have it in both wrists. Typing, mousing, and now driving are painful.
I now have braces on both my hands, which truly sucks.
I just ordered a new ergonomic mouse, we'll see if that helps. I may try switching keyboards as well.
The good news is that MacSpeech Dictate which used to be really bad has improved over the last few versions. It now has correction and learning capabilities, which makes it actually usable. I am using with my Sampson Go Mic, which is a huge improvement over the cheap headsets that I've used previously.
I am now using speech recognition for my e-mail correspondence. Unfortunately, Dictate is still not quite fast or accurate enough for writing academic text. But maybe after some more training it will get better or, I will get laryngitis.
Well.... I lamed out and decided to get an iPhone 4 after all. The iPad is tempting but too expensive and JCR's comments about not using his iPad as much after getting his iPhone4 seemed to resonate with my gut feeling of what I would end up doing with it. If the iPad had a front-facing video camera for Skype and SD-card support, I'd reconsider but methinks that Steve J. is keeping the video-camera for the iPad 2.0 -- and likely will never get an SD-card or USB jack since Steve likes to keep it proprietary.
I thought seriously about getting an Android-based phone, but in the end lamed out on those too. They don't seem to have any must-have advantages over the iPhone. One thing that would have swayed me is free tethering, but it seems that all of the 'droids that have tethering also have it as an extra option, just like the iPhone. And though you can root them and add a hack to tether, I could also jailbreak and do it on my iPhone if I was that inclined.
So I lamed out and got an iPhone. I drove up to my "nearest" Apple store, which is in West Hartford. They were clean out of stock (and judging from the inside of the Apple Store, I think Apple is entirely quitting the computer business and selling only iPhones and iPads).
I walked across the mall and went to a Radio Shack. I knew that as the unsexiest store in the Mall, it had the best chance of actually having stock of the iPhone and I was right.
So I'm now the proud (?) owner of an iPhone 4 -- 32 gig.
Thanks everyone for the comments!
My contract for my original iPhone 3G is up and I'm in the market for a new smartphone. I'm currently kind of pissed at Apple because the iOS 4.0 update really crippled my iPhone 3G, rendering it impossibly slow. This is the kind of crud that Microsoft used to pull (Vista, anyone?) and I'm kind of getting sick of the closed environment that iOS represents.
Nonetheless, the iPhone 4 is a huge temptation, as is the couldn't-be-worse-named iPad. One consideration is that I almost never do voice calls -- maybe 15 minutes a month, tops. So there, the iPad's data-only plan is good. But it's way too large. If I could get the iPad data plan with the iPhone form factor.... (and no, an iPod Touch wouldn't work since it doesn't have mobile data, which I need).
Anyway, so I guess I'm really forced into a smartphone. Any thoughts gentle readers on the Droid X and Evo 4G? New Haven isn't a Wimax/4g city so the Evo's greatest feature is worthless here.
Found a useful infographic online:
Any and all thoughts welcome.
Jason -- what are you running these days?
I was browsing the web for Japanese funeral sites when I came across this Youtube video made by a foreigner (he sounds British) who went to a Japanese funeral:
It's interesting to compare his experiences with mine in a Japanese Funeral. In particular, he really focuses in on the funeral donation which is a common at Japanese funerals, but rarer in most Western traditions. I didn't include the donation table in my film, which I now regret. Maybe a future cut will include this.
Apparently, our little Photoethnography.com blog got into the Top 40 Anthropology Blog list.
Online PhD
In the last few months, I've now gotten letters from prospective graduate students with CVs that suffer from what I would call "Areas of Interest" bloat. One had twenty-five (25!) areas of interest and the other was also well over a dozen.
This is just too much. Yes, you are young and the whole world looks like a giant oyster -- but too many raw oyster can give you really bad indigestion.
As a general rule, try to keep your areas of interest to less than six or so. Since I (rarely) try to practice what I preach, here are my "Areas of Interest:"
OK, I cheated on the last two bullet points...... anyway, you get my point.
Try to go through your areas of interest with a very fine tooth comb and make sure it's as concise and focused as possible. Use it as a way to find out which departments might be interested in what you study and vice versa.
I also tell my graduate students to perfect their elevator speech, but that's a topic for an entirely new blog entry.
Yikes! You've been out partying in Tokyo and missed the last train for the night. You need to crash, but where? Here's my list of cheap ways to spend the night in Tokyo:
I was inspired to write this because of two random events that happened this summer: one of my students almost got stuck herself stuck by herself in Osaka overnight .... and I went to the Oedo Onsen Monogatari bathhouse yesterday with my sweetie and noted that they had a very nice women's only "relaxation room" with full reclining chairs and individual TV sets -- and there appeared to be several patrons who were gearing up to spend the night there.
Oedo Onsen is quite expensive, Y2000 for general admission and another Y1700 for spending the night (in their lingo "extra late-night fee"), but other super sento in Japan are cheaper.
The LA Times has written a travel/shopping story about my favorite store in Japan -- no, not Yodobashi Camera, but the ubiquitous ¥100 stores:
Bargain hunting at Japan's 100-yen stores
In this shopping-mad country, the latest craze is the 100-yen store. For a little more than a dollar, savvy consumers can stock up on everything from origami paper to banana cases to milk carton-shaped erasers.
http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-100yen-20100627,0,4323842.story
Anyone else a fan of these bargain emporiums?
As the video indicates, shooting video with DSLRs is on the rise. In fact, "the House (great show, btw) season finale was shot entirely on a Canon 5D Mark II."
I'm very much an amateur as these things are concerned, but I was thinking about this with respect to Karen's thoughts on choosing a digital camcorder. Specifically, I've wondered how suitable it would be to use a DSLR to both record video and capture stills for ethnographic work.
With my limited knowledge, this seems very attractive to me, especially after getting a 50mm lens has changed my life, but the video does point to some very important caveats.
Wow, just, wow.
Most activities require the use of both hands, which unfortunately makes filming these experiences impossible ... UNTIL NOW! Our patent pending Hatcam Mounting System allows you to capture everything you hear and see, all while having both hands free. With our Hatcam Kit, experiences that would be just a memory can now be captured forever.
Via Gizmodo.
In my rush to pack for Japan, I forgot to bring my usual digital audio recorder. I decided to pick up a new one in Japan since there were several options that weren't available yet in the United States.
I decided to not go with my previous Roland- Edirol or Samson-Zoom choices. Those companies make great digital recorders designed mainly for studio recording, but I don't need XLR jacks this time around since I'm not shooting any video. My main frustrations with the R-09 and Zoom H4 as field recorders were their comparatively large size and the short battery life, surely there must be better options now.
Oh, I should note everything I'm mentioning is only available in Japan. I'm not sure when or if they will ever make it to the states.
Olympus: I first looked at the Olympus Voice Trek data recorder series. These are highly rated by journalists and fieldworkers alike. Many of my graduate students use their sub-$100 series. On the higher end, I liked the DS-750, it had almost everything I wanted including the ability to recharge its NiMH AAA batteries itself, when plugged into USB. 4GB internal memory, linear PCM 48 kHz / 16 bit recording. The price, Y17,000 or around US$200.
Unfortunately, I'm the type of geekette that always has to have best of class. In the Olympus lineup, that meant the new LS-11 which just came out. Much better mics than the DS-750, 96 kHz / 24 bit, more internal memory (8GB) and a wireless remote control. Drool. Street price, Y36000 or US$400. Gulp. And while the two AAs would power it for an amazing 22.5 hours, there was no internal recharging capability like the lesser DS-750. Well, harumph.
Sanyo, which is not known for its audio recorders in the USA, had some very nice models. I wish they sold them in the USA because I think they would be a huge hit among field recorders. I ended up settling on the newest, latest, biggest, baddest model: the Sanyo Xacti ICR-PS605RM (egad, what a mouthful).
The PS605RM has 6 ... count 'em ... 6 mics. Four mics in a W-XY configuration and two that are omnidirectional. This allows for a wide variety of recording modes. When recording with the 4 W-XY mics, the frequency range is 40 Hz to an amazing 47,000 Hz -- digitizing at a 96 kHz sampling rate at 16 or 24 bits. Although no one except your dog might be able to hear pure tones above 25 kHz, there is some small evidence that even ordinary people can "sense" such ultrasonic overtones in musical instruments. Total overkill, the way I like it.
Although it doesn't look like it, the PS605RM is actually smaller than the Olympus models and is powered by a single rechargeable AAA battery (enclosed), which keeps it chugging for 26 hours in MP3 mode (15 in linear PCM). Incredible.
No fancy wireless remote, but there is a nice binaural mic option which I'm going to try.
Also, the Xacti can recharge directly from the computer with a slide-out full-size USB A plug. So no cables needed for downloading files or for recharging. The only thing I forget more often than batteries is the darn USB cable, so this is great. It can also take a 16 GB micro SDHC card if the internal 4GB isn't enough.
It comes in a nice bundle with a windscreen and tripod/clip adapter.
We'll see how it functions in some field tests this summer. I especially want to plan with the binaural mics, since I want to make some recordings that show Tokyo as a blind person would hear it.
The cost was just over Y30,000 or around US$350. A tad expensive. The next lower model was a full Y10,000 cheaper. But it didn't have the Klingon shaver look....
p.s. The binaural mic is the Sanyo HM-250 -- around $75 but unfortunately only available... yes... you guessed it... in Japan.
p.p.s. And I haven't forgetten iPhones, more after the jump.
The whole Adam Wheeler and Harvard academic fraud ordeal had me thinking about the importance of early detection in these types of cases. It seems like these students often start small (plagiarizing student papers) and then move onto bigger things (Wheeler was caught when he tried to fake his Rhodes Scholarship application).
In fact, Wheeler was apparently for one semester from Bowdoin College when he was caught plagiarizing a paper in his sophomore year. He could have gone back but Wheeler instead applied to Harvard on false credentials (claiming to be from MIT) and was accepted. There, he continued faking material until he was caught.
In Wheeler's case, it seems like Bowdoin did all the right things -- suspending him for one semester. That should have been Wheeler's wake-up-call, unfortunately it wasn't.
On the other hand, I've seen cases of plagiarism at colleges (not just Yale) where the actions taken weren't as harsh -- such as just an 'F' on the paper, which is just a rap on the wrist, really. I think this only encourages students to believe that academic fraud isn't a serious issue and could encourage them to continue in that vein, only trying harder to not get caught.
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