Category: Rants

London Marathon 2009

Poster
Poster
Once again the carnival atmosphere returned to The Island (Isle of Dogs) today, as 35,000+ people ran down our street as part of the London Marathon, including our friend Luke, and our gym instructor Marie-Jane. What a lovely day; sun shining brightly, cool gentle breeze, full tourist boats swanning their way past our flat on the Thames.

We had the 25km marker right out the front of our flat today. Two pads crossed the running track, with four cables protruding from each, connecting with what looked like a scart cable to a yellow box; this contraption was recording each runner as they went past, with an annoying high pitched chirp for each.

This data was probably available from several places; I had tried the Adidas web site, which today seemed to stall under the load. I subscribed for text-message updates on our two friends, however text messages seemed to take up to 30 minutes extra to come through. The web site itself from Adidas was all done in flash, and by design it was impossible to bookmark the runners I was following. Should my mouse run over any of the menus, the main page of the flash app completely disappeared – most disorientating. Adidas, thanks for the effort, but lets get some people with some knowledge of web design involved; how about an RSS feed for my runners? How about a bit more “real-time”?

Asus, where is the B204 w/Linux?

Dear Asus (pron: “a-sue-s”, not “ace-us”, apparently),

I’ve been looking for a small set-top home media player running Linux, with an HDMI on board, capable of running 1080p video. Looking around I’m quite fond of the Eeebox B204, but I don’t want to pay for MS Windows. I like the Bluetooth for my remote keyboard/mouse/input, and the battery UPS is cute up until the point the battery has lost its ability to charge/discharge.

I wanted to email you, but your asus.com web site has telephone numbers only. Its been a long, long time for you to bring this product to market in the UK. You’re also reselling different models in different markets, and your branding of the models is somewhat confusing: the B204 is “better/higher spec” than the B206 that was released at the same time?

Having said that, the on-line retailers I am Google-Frugal-Shopping searching through all seem to list the product, but have zero stock. Are there supply line issues? Is the product recalled? Or is it selling really well? Where are the Linux versions (sans-Microsoft-tax)? And why is your UK channel selling these at a considerable mark-up compared to the US retail prices? Currency does fluctuate, but I’m sure that UK£ and US$ are not on parity…. yet.

Sincerely,
JEB

EasyCAP 4 channel input USB Video Capture

Video capture card; a gotcha

Once again, life proves when it comes to commercial offerings, you get what you pay for.

I found a £13 (~US$20) USB device with 4 composite video inputs, and one audio input, called an EasyCAP 4 channel device, on Amazon. I was planning on streaming 4 video captures from it at some quality. The unit turned up very efficiently, and emblazoned across the stick is “4 CHUSB DVR”, and a neat little Win32 utility called Multiviewer 2.0, by Zhong Kai Ran.

Fire up the software and an impressive 4-screen display is shown, however, its not until you plug in a video camera to one input that you can see that the device rotates through each of the video inputs; it doesnt appear to be able to stream all four simultaneously. A pity. So, if you’re looking for a “poor man’s multi-camera CCTV”, this is a very good choice, but be aware that you’ll only get (configurable) number of seconds from each channel in sequence (or selectable) but not a live continuous stream of all four inputs.

At least, that’s my experience under MS Windows thus far. I haven’t yet thrown it at a Linux system yet to see if it detects the device and/or it works any differently, but I’d suspect not.

Either way, it’s a start at what I’m looking to do anyway, so I am not too disappointed.

Next up, a small PC to house it in that I can run my GStreamer video processing on… hmmm… I want an Asus Eee Box B204 with its cute built in HDMI… its flirting with me promising Full-HD 1080p, but I guess if/when I have a spare £300 to play with I may find its also a little short!

On the variance of price

I want to play with an RFID reader. I found a nice one from Parallax here. So, how much does this cost? Well, the Parallax web site says $39.99. Shipping and tax are all extras, but lets look at base price.

So a UK supplier quotes £37.50 for the unit. Using today’s FX conversion rate, which will vary wildly, the US$ equivalent is US$54.83. That represents a markup of almost 40% compared to the US listed price. Now taxes and delivery included, it looks like I’d be around the same percentage better off if I order in the US and pick it up next time i am there, than get it her in the UK.

*sigh*

Ikea scrapheap challenge

Ikea has some useful affordable stuff. But why does it always descend into a scrum like scrapheap challenge? Invariabley when looking at a display, thee is one sample product that is cracked or broken left on display as a trophy of the hoards that have tossed over every item.

The maze of homewares. The shove of crowds. The products that meet 90% of what you want, but at a price that seems worth settling for…..

Yes, its another day at the Viking shop!

Posted from my blackberry, on the second floor of the Lakeside stor, surrounded by light fittings!