The other day, I had some urgent matters arise, so I put a number of vital items in my rucksack and went off to address them. One of those items was my USB thumb drive, which is named Thumby.
Upon returning, I unpacked most of the items but inadvertently left Thumby hidden deep within the crevasses of my rucksack. This morning, I had urgent need to copy off some files and, failing to find Thumby in its usual place, I realised it was probably still in my rucksack. However, a search of its deeper pockets revealed not Thumby, but rather, a pair of socks that I have absolutely no recollection of ever putting in there. They're quite clean and clearly a style I typically wear, but I haven't the faintest notion of what they were doing at the bottom of my rucksack. And I still haven't found Thumby. I can only assume that Thumby grew weary of toting vital files and so transmuted into socks.
Monday, August 21, 2017
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
On Vertical Videos And Idiot-Proof Phones
If you're on the internet, as most of you are (except Steve; I have to print my posts and send them to him by carrier pigeon), you've no doubt seen (and been bugged by) vertical videos— videos that are about 66% letterbox because they were taken by some nob who couldn't figure out how to hold their phone correctly.
So imagine my surprise when my own father sent me a vertical video he took. And then another. He clearly knew better— he insisted quite vehemently that he definitely took the videos correctly and had no idea why they came out the way they did.
Then for the first time, I finally got a chance to actually look at his mobile to ascertain the problem. The problem? He has a completely idiot-proof phone whose makers attempted to combat VVS by physically building the camera "sideways" so that when people held their phones upright while recording, they end up with proper horizontal videos. Unfortunately, because my father knows better than to record vertically, he made a point of turning his phone— and, of course, ended up with vertical videos because the "idiot-proof" sideways camera records vertical videos when the phone is held correctly.
Oops.
So imagine my surprise when my own father sent me a vertical video he took. And then another. He clearly knew better— he insisted quite vehemently that he definitely took the videos correctly and had no idea why they came out the way they did.
Then for the first time, I finally got a chance to actually look at his mobile to ascertain the problem. The problem? He has a completely idiot-proof phone whose makers attempted to combat VVS by physically building the camera "sideways" so that when people held their phones upright while recording, they end up with proper horizontal videos. Unfortunately, because my father knows better than to record vertically, he made a point of turning his phone— and, of course, ended up with vertical videos because the "idiot-proof" sideways camera records vertical videos when the phone is held correctly.
Oops.
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