They could film at 24FPS and still have each frame pin-sharp, by making each exposure brief. Making each exposure long is an artistic choice (sometimes forced by light levels and film stock, but not always).
If you film at a faster frame rate, of course limits your choices. The shortest exposure you can make at 60FPS is 1/60th of a second, minus the time it takes to move the next frame of film in (or the digital equivalent). Any photographer knows that sometimes you want a long exposure, so you can have a small aperture for high depth-of-field.
Regardless, shaky-cam has become overused, but it's a stylistic choice, designed to give the impression of authenticity -- because that's the style you'd get from a hurried TV cameraman, an inexpertly wielded camcorder or a smartphone.
There's a reason scuba divers are told to *never* hold their breath. If you don't release pressure from your lungs as the ambient pressure decreases (when diving, by ascending), you'll do catastrophic damage to your lungs.
First, the transfer window would have to be LONG. Like, 5 miles or so, such that at 60MPH you had five minutes to make the transfer.
Then the doors would need to close in plenty of time before the tracks diverge, such that you'd be on one carriage or the other. Nobody need ever be dumped between the tracks.
It's all *possible*. It's just the scale of the infrastructure it needs that's huge.
Okay, so the obvious first question is - how do you get on the trams? Do they stop?
Here's how a typical journey might work without his plan:
- You get on a slow local service
- It has, say, 7 stops on your route, which is what makes it slow.
- You get to the high speed station and disembark
- You walk to another platform
- You board the high speed train
- Two possibilities here:
- (a) the high speed train goes direct to your destination without stops, which is great for you, but not as generally useful to others
- (b) the high speed train stops at a few places, slowing down your journey
- You disembark
- You walk to another platform
- You get on another local service, which takes you to your final destination
Now with this bloke's idea:
- You get on a slow local service
- It has, say, 7 stops on your route, which is what makes it slow.
- Your local service latches onto a high speed service and you transfer in-flight.
- The high speed train slows down, but does not stop, at some intermediate stations
- Another local service latches onto the high speed service, and again you transfer in-flight
- You get on another local service, which takes you to your final destination
It's definitely a smoother journey.
I don't think it's workable (one delayed train screws up the whole system), but in principle it would speed up journeys dramatically.
A shot of the full pitch is very rare in TV "soccer" coverage. It's difficult to develop a real sense for the team tactics, just by watching TV. For that you want to know what the forwards are doing while the ball is the opposite end of the pitch; TV rarely shows you that.
I believe the coverage makes assumptions about your existing knowledge of the game. If a midfielder is dribbling up the wing, the camera shot doesn't show you the forward positioning himself for the pass. You're expected to know he'll be there.
It wasn't until I started going to games, where I could see the whole pitch, that I came to appreciate football.
You've got slopes though, so hydroelectric storage is practical (pump water uphill when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining; bring it downhill through turbines when the demand exceeds the supply)
You just need the political will to dam some valleys. They did it in the 60s.
I'm sure people objected for all kinds of reasons at the time -- those displaced from their homes; those who liked the valleys as they were -- but within a decade, at the Rheidol hydroelectric plant I'm thinking of, both the top and bottom reservoirs are beauty spots and havens for nature.
In fairness to the author, most power plant designs can be sited close to abundant water sources; solar power plants tend to be in deserts. So water usage is more of a concern for solar plants than for other kinds.
However, you can transport water to the desert. You can minimise loss of water. Or, you can trade off water availability against sunshine levels when choosing where to site the plant.
Really, the question is, are we ready to adapt to a more expensive, less available energy future? I suspect that we won't have a choice, but that people will cling to the old ways as desperately as people always have.
We already are doing that, in a small but increasing number of ways.
We insulate our houses, to save heating bills. We look at the fuel economy when we're choosing a car. We use energy saving lightbulbs. We have showers instead of baths.
Really, I feel that if governments stopped striving to keep the cost of fossil fuel down, this natural adjustment would accelerate. Whether it's ways of reducing our energy usage, or better ways to get clean/renewable energy, or somewhere inbetween, I don't really mind.
We are not going to run out of sand in any plausible scenario, so that's just nitpicking.
I read in Michael Welland's book "Sand" (which is rather good) that chip manufacturers tend to be quite secretive about the source of their sand, because not just any old sand will do, and the right sort of sand is in limited supply.
That said, I imagine that if it ran out, they'd develop ways to refine other kinds of sand.
In fairness, if the solar power plant is in the desert (where they often seem to be) where water is scarce, water used to clean mirrors is going to evaporate and fall as rain elsewhere, probably where water is less scarce.
However, it doesn't seem insurmountable. If it's really an issue, I'm sure one could design cleaning systems that minimise the amount of water lost - and the cost (both financial and environmental) of transporting water in trucks ought to be minimal compared to the power output of a large plant.
"At 1:50 pm on December 20, 1951 it became the world's first electricity-generating nuclear power plant when it produced sufficient electricity to illuminate four 200-watt light bulbs."
It's decommissioned now, but the building and much of the original equipment is still there, along with good museum exhibits.
You haven't said what route you're taking across the States, but Arco is along the "Oregon Trail" as documented in the guidebook "Road Trip USA" (which I thoroughly recommend, having driven four of its cross-country routes)
So these guys really think the future of development lies in the browser which will what, replace the OS as the top level development platform? Sorry , but thats rubbish. It aint gonna happen.
Altogether replace? For everyone? Maybe not.
But while I use MS Office for my job, *all* my personal word-processing and spreadsheeting is done in Google Docs, and *all* my personal email has been in GMail ever since I got my beta invite -- and I'm not alone. There are flaws in these applications, but they're all outweighed by the ease of moving between computers, and sharing documents with other people.
You don't have to kill your competition in order to be worth doing.
Slashdot Mirror
The smear is not directly a function of FPS.
They could film at 24FPS and still have each frame pin-sharp, by making each exposure brief. Making each exposure long is an artistic choice (sometimes forced by light levels and film stock, but not always).
If you film at a faster frame rate, of course limits your choices. The shortest exposure you can make at 60FPS is 1/60th of a second, minus the time it takes to move the next frame of film in (or the digital equivalent). Any photographer knows that sometimes you want a long exposure, so you can have a small aperture for high depth-of-field.
28 Days Later "garbage"? Really?
Regardless, shaky-cam has become overused, but it's a stylistic choice, designed to give the impression of authenticity -- because that's the style you'd get from a hurried TV cameraman, an inexpertly wielded camcorder or a smartphone.
Conclusion: being in a vacuum will kill you.
Yeah, I know you were only being flippant, but...
There's a reason scuba divers are told to *never* hold their breath. If you don't release pressure from your lungs as the ambient pressure decreases (when diving, by ascending), you'll do catastrophic damage to your lungs.
This is enforceable at the point of ticket sale.
You'd have to prevent people from getting off at a station other than the one they have the ticket for.
You'd simply have to not allow these trains to get packed. Rigidly enforce maximum occupancy; problem solved.
First, the transfer window would have to be LONG. Like, 5 miles or so, such that at 60MPH you had five minutes to make the transfer.
Then the doors would need to close in plenty of time before the tracks diverge, such that you'd be on one carriage or the other. Nobody need ever be dumped between the tracks.
It's all *possible*. It's just the scale of the infrastructure it needs that's huge.
Okay, so the obvious first question is - how do you get on the trams? Do they stop?
Here's how a typical journey might work without his plan:
- You get on a slow local service
- It has, say, 7 stops on your route, which is what makes it slow.
- You get to the high speed station and disembark
- You walk to another platform
- You board the high speed train
- Two possibilities here:
- (a) the high speed train goes direct to your destination without stops, which is great for you, but not as generally useful to others
- (b) the high speed train stops at a few places, slowing down your journey
- You disembark
- You walk to another platform
- You get on another local service, which takes you to your final destination
Now with this bloke's idea:
- You get on a slow local service
- It has, say, 7 stops on your route, which is what makes it slow.
- Your local service latches onto a high speed service and you transfer in-flight.
- The high speed train slows down, but does not stop, at some intermediate stations
- Another local service latches onto the high speed service, and again you transfer in-flight
- You get on another local service, which takes you to your final destination
It's definitely a smoother journey.
I don't think it's workable (one delayed train screws up the whole system), but in principle it would speed up journeys dramatically.
I'm always staggered by the stat-heavy nerdiness of US sports coverage.
Not in my perception.
A shot of the full pitch is very rare in TV "soccer" coverage. It's difficult to develop a real sense for the team tactics, just by watching TV. For that you want to know what the forwards are doing while the ball is the opposite end of the pitch; TV rarely shows you that.
I believe the coverage makes assumptions about your existing knowledge of the game. If a midfielder is dribbling up the wing, the camera shot doesn't show you the forward positioning himself for the pass. You're expected to know he'll be there.
It wasn't until I started going to games, where I could see the whole pitch, that I came to appreciate football.
You've got slopes though, so hydroelectric storage is practical (pump water uphill when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining; bring it downhill through turbines when the demand exceeds the supply)
You just need the political will to dam some valleys. They did it in the 60s.
I'm sure people objected for all kinds of reasons at the time -- those displaced from their homes; those who liked the valleys as they were -- but within a decade, at the Rheidol hydroelectric plant I'm thinking of, both the top and bottom reservoirs are beauty spots and havens for nature.
In fairness to the author, most power plant designs can be sited close to abundant water sources; solar power plants tend to be in deserts. So water usage is more of a concern for solar plants than for other kinds.
However, you can transport water to the desert. You can minimise loss of water. Or, you can trade off water availability against sunshine levels when choosing where to site the plant.
Really, the question is, are we ready to adapt to a more expensive, less available energy future? I suspect that we won't have a choice, but that people will cling to the old ways as desperately as people always have.
We already are doing that, in a small but increasing number of ways.
We insulate our houses, to save heating bills.
We look at the fuel economy when we're choosing a car.
We use energy saving lightbulbs.
We have showers instead of baths.
Really, I feel that if governments stopped striving to keep the cost of fossil fuel down, this natural adjustment would accelerate. Whether it's ways of reducing our energy usage, or better ways to get clean/renewable energy, or somewhere inbetween, I don't really mind.
Indeed, but the heat goes nowhere useful. And a solar plant is unlikely to be in NW Scotland. It's more likely to be in a desert.
We are not going to run out of sand in any plausible scenario, so that's just nitpicking.
I read in Michael Welland's book "Sand" (which is rather good) that chip manufacturers tend to be quite secretive about the source of their sand, because not just any old sand will do, and the right sort of sand is in limited supply.
That said, I imagine that if it ran out, they'd develop ways to refine other kinds of sand.
In fairness, if the solar power plant is in the desert (where they often seem to be) where water is scarce, water used to clean mirrors is going to evaporate and fall as rain elsewhere, probably where water is less scarce.
However, it doesn't seem insurmountable. If it's really an issue, I'm sure one could design cleaning systems that minimise the amount of water lost - and the cost (both financial and environmental) of transporting water in trucks ought to be minimal compared to the power output of a large plant.
Several times, she talks of water consumed by steam turbines.
Wouldn't any sane design condense the steam into water, and re-use it? Otherwise you're throwing away water *and* heat.
Ooh, which reminds me.
The House of Mystery, Hungry Horse, Montana.
(and other mystery spots)
... er, responding to myself. But that should have been:
"I know plenty of geeks with nice wives/girlfriends/husbands/boyfriends"...
It's the same with the stupid "sitting indoors with delivery pizza" stereotype.
I hate it.
I know plenty of geeks with nice wives/girlfriends, who eat healthily and exercise.
Or the Grand Coulee dam. Or the Glen Canyon dam.
All well worth a visit, depending on your route.
They all have informative visitor centres, and some insight into how to escape a recession ;)
The Barringer Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona is a must-visit if you're passing within, ooh, two hours drive from it.
If it was in any other state, it would be the biggest hole in the ground in the state. But it's in Arizona.
The Grand Canyon has to be seen too. You could call that nerdy if you're into geology.
Near Arco, Idaho, is the site of Experimental Breeder Reactor 1.
"At 1:50 pm on December 20, 1951 it became the world's first electricity-generating nuclear power plant when it produced sufficient electricity to illuminate four 200-watt light bulbs."
It's decommissioned now, but the building and much of the original equipment is still there, along with good museum exhibits.
You haven't said what route you're taking across the States, but Arco is along the "Oregon Trail" as documented in the guidebook "Road Trip USA" (which I thoroughly recommend, having driven four of its cross-country routes)
I said it was for personal stuff. I can get at my Google Docs on my laptop, on my home desktop, on my partner's PC, on my parents' PC... anywhere.
That said, if I ran my own company, I'd use Google Docs too.
So these guys really think the future of development lies in the browser which will what, replace the OS as the top level development platform? Sorry , but thats rubbish. It aint gonna happen.
Altogether replace? For everyone? Maybe not.
But while I use MS Office for my job, *all* my personal word-processing and spreadsheeting is done in Google Docs, and *all* my personal email has been in GMail ever since I got my beta invite -- and I'm not alone. There are flaws in these applications, but they're all outweighed by the ease of moving between computers, and sharing documents with other people.
You don't have to kill your competition in order to be worth doing.