We all have supercomputers now

Judson Rosebush, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I was watching a TV programme of 80s and 90s music videos the other day. I was marvelling at just how relatively advanced the video techniques and transitions were - such as the picture rolling up and zooming off the screen. In my mind I kept going round this little loop - "isn't that amazing for the time" - "but the technology I was using was so primitive" - "isn't that amazing for the time" - etc.

Then a realisation struck me as to why I was in this loop: These days I have access (though I don't use it) to such the type of technology that is used in, say, Avatar. I'm sure there's a bit of software out there that I could use that would do motion capture. I've heard of things like Blender which I could use to create 3d environments. I'd need to learn some stuff, I might want to buy some hardware to reduce render times, but it's all within my grasp.

In the 80s and 90s though, the height of what I could reasonably expect to be able to create myself (given time and skill) was Manic Miner and Doom. Those video effects came from computers like the Quantel Paintbox, which at $150,000 cost more than a house. (OK, not a fair comparison, as you could get houses so cheap then. It cost more than an expensive car.)

So, we all have supercomputers now. What are we doing with them?

Daddy, daddy, look what I found on YouTube

It used to be that my children would come to me and say "daddy, daddy, look what I made out of Lego". Now they say, "dad, look what I found on YouTube". (They don't really say "daddy" as I put in the title. That's a carefully crafted sentence designed to get you to click through from my social media feeds.)

What they are showing me is episodes from their favourite "series". I say series, because apart from the length, they are like TV series, with new episodes coming out regularly, weekly for example. The quality is professional. I wonder who's paying for this stuff? The money for those cameras has to come from somewhere, the people who do the work need to eat.

In the case of Rhett and Link (500 web videos produced) they "support themselves by creating and distributing their branded entertainment", though they do get paid to do stuff for other people. I'm not clear though whether the video or the money came first.

Video Games High School is another interesting one. 5,661 pledged $273,725 on Kickstarter to make this series. All those people paid all that money and we get to watch it for free. (Internet connection charges apply.) How does that work?

I don't have time to dig into all the other people my kids are telling me about. (Jenny Bee signed our ukelele, does that give me street cred?) I'm just bemused that all this good quality stuff is up on YouTube and people are managing to eat too.

An old hard disk and a new video

A few months ago someone from Wycliffe Canada contacted me. There was an old hard drive in the UK that had some music on it that he wanted to put on a video that he was producing. He wanted me to get the music off it and send it to him on a new hard drive.

The hard drive possibly hadn't been used since 2002. The hard drive was sent to me, and because it was in Mac format I got a colleague who used a Mac to help me get the files off. The drive span up OK and we started getting files off it, but then after 15 minutes or so it died mid-copy. It was pretty terminal and I couldn't get it to work at all after that. Not all of the original files for the music were there, but, thank God, the final mix of all files was there, including the song that was required.

This song now appears on a DVD. Here's the preview, but not with the song though:

Bible in a minute

tags: bible