Video Odyssey

I had this brilliant idea. After watching people with Flip video cameras and cell phones trying to conduct an interview, I realized that there had to be a better way. A tripod mounted camera pointed at the interviewee felt more like an interrogation, to my mind, so I kept thinking about ways to mount two cameras on a tripod.

In hindsight, I don't know why I limited myself to a single tripod. Perhaps it was because I only had one. Regardless, as I thought about ways to mount two small video cameras on one tripod, I remembered my friend L. One of his hobbies is stereo photography. I sent him an email and he said he had what I was looking for and I could borrow it for a little while. It's a custom piece of machined aluminum about a foot long with mount points for two cameras (see picture above).

There are a couple of other hurdles that I had to address. First, what to do if I'm interviewing someone taller than myself (like my PJTV Citizen Reporter interview of Bill Hennessy)? And how do you keep you and your interviewee in the video frame? The simple solution to both of these problems is to sit down for the interview. That worked well for Bill and I. Still, if you're conducting standing interviews, I'd strongly recommend using two tripods to address the first problem, though even that may not work since many tripods are only 5' to 5' 6" tall. For the second problem, I'd get a couple of interlocking foam mats—one for the interviewer and one for the interviewee. Just having a place to stand should do the trick.

I think this is a pretty good hardware setup for conducting interviews. I'm not sure if it will catch on, but one place it might is Bloggingheads.tv. There's something about the cybernetic headgear commonly seen on Bloggingheads.tv that I find distracting, but I think the bigger gain would be the face-to-face exchange that this sort of setup facilitates. I recognize that in many cases, Bloggingheads.tv interviews are conducted over large distances. Also, there may be technical reasons for their setup.

Before I talk about the nightmare that video editting can be, I'll mention that you should check your video camera's focal distance. That's the distance at which your camera is in focus. I had not paid attention to this detail and, at 2m (6.5') my cameras are dismal in this regard. Keep in mind, you want to be relatively close to the camera for good audio recording, so I'd look for something at or under 1m. If I were looking to buy, I'd go with the Flip Ultra.

Video editing is still a mystery to me. I've dabbled in it for about fifteen years and I'm always surprised at what a frustrating time sync it is. Once I had recorded my interview with Bill, the process forward seemed simple. Take the two source videos, line 'em up based on the audio, and then dissolve back and forth depending on who's speaking. This is about as simple as video editing gets.

I don't know how many times I rendered/exported the movie from Adobe Premiere. I certainly don't understand why it took two input sources of about 0.5G and created output anywhere from 2.5G to 6G. The 16 minutes of black screen with audio that weighed in at 3.5G... what in the world? How did I solve the black screen and the still image video problems? Simple, I stopped using my Vista box and went to my XP machine. Unfortunately, that did not help with the size of the rendered movies.

The size problem was largely solved with ArcSoft's MediaConverter. Once I got my final render out of Premiere (weighing in at 2.5G), I put it through MediaConverter and got a 70M version. That's the one I put on Facebook, but at 16 minutes it was over YouTube's 10 minute limit. I used Windows Movie Maker to split it into the two parts that are now on YouTube (pt1 and pt2). Splitting the video definitely reduced the quality.

Bill Hennessy Interview

This past weekend I went down to The Arch and Kiener Plaza. I was hoping to find the protest led by A New Way Forward and get some video interviews with the protesters. I got there about 1:20PM and the protest was scheduled for 1:00, so I think I missed their smallish event. I did get the sweet picture above—it was a goregous day. My next stop was Kiener Plaza for an interview with the leader of the Saint Louis Tea Party movement, Bill Hennessy.

When I got to Kiener Plaza, I wandered around a bit taking pictures including the one above. The water in the fountain was orange for National Caution Cone Week or some-such. I noticed a similarly orange fountain at the botanical gardens earlier in the week. Your tax dollars at work. I also took some video:


Bill was gracious enough to consent to an interview. Since I've never done an interview before, it's a little rough in places. Feel free to offer your constructive criticisms! Due to YouTube limitations, I had to split the interview in half. (I'm working on another post about the hardware and software I used and what I learned.) With that, here's part 1 of the interview:


And here's part 2:

FBI Datacenter Raid

Glenn links to a Wired story about an FBI raid of datacenter. First, if you don't know what a datacenter is take a look at the picture atop the Wired story. Those look like 42u racks each of which can hold, in theory, 42 x 1u rackmount servers. In practice you'll have some 2u, 3u, 4u and maybe a few 6u blade servers, as well as rackmount UPSs and networking equipment. Their are eight racks in each aisle and there are eight visible aisles, so we're talking about the potential for a lot of hardware. The article indicates that about 220 computers were taken.

I've been to a couple of datacenters. They're basically warehouses with aisle upon aisle of these computer racks. I know of a couple of companies that have space in datacenters—smallish consulting companies with twenty to thirty employees. They rent half racks. Larger companies will need more space and, obviously, business needs will drive the space requirement, too.

For the FBI to waltz in and take the business critical computers of so many companies because of a couple of bad apples, well, that is a really bad precedent. Looting the bank accounts of the owner of the datacenter is appalling. This is going to force companies around the country to waste time updating their disaster recovery plans to address the recently introduced problem of FBI raids and it's going to driveup the cost of using datacenters.

Hacking the US

Breitbart tells us that the Pentagon is shoveling money at cyber attacks to the tune of $100 million in half a year. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the US electric grid has been infiltrated by both the Chinese and the Russians.

I don't understand this. Why don't these organizations simply block all traffic originating from IPs assigned to non-friendly nations? That's pretty simple with iptables. Is there some compelling reason to allow that traffic in? Yeah, attackers could get around that by spoofing their IP or with US-based proxies, but I still think this is an 80% solution.

You might be wondering: "maybe people in the organization want to go to websites in those non-friendly nations." The way that iptables (and I presume other firewalls) works is that it can be configured to allow connections that are originated locally while denying remotely originated connections.

The Coming Second World

We think of the nations of the world as falling into one of two categories on the development axis: First World and Third World. I believe that one of the side effects of the current global economic turmoil will be a convergence towards a more uniform level of development around the world. The first world countries will come down a peg due to mountains of debt, unaffordable government bureaucracies, falling populations, and civil unrest. The third world will rise by largely dodging the economic problems of the first world, collecting interest payments (China in particular), and maintaining stable population growth.

The most important factor leading to this convergence will be the Internet and the various technologies that it has spawned. The global economic crisis is not the driver of this change, it is merely the catalyst. The Internet and technology will facilitate our evolution.

Government corruption will hamper progress of both First and Third World countries. The surprising thing is how rife the First World is with graft. This gives well governed Third World countries time to advance while the First Worlders are spinning their wheels. Of course, that doesn't mean they'll do so—I don't expect any meaningful improvement in Zimbabwe for another generation.

Unemployment Later this Year

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that unemployment had reached 8.5%. The Department of Labor has a helpful chart on their website that indicates that the "minimum wage" will go up to $7.25 on July 24th. That will be the third annual increase since the Democrats retook Congress in the 2006 midterm election. It represents an 11% increase from last year and a 40% increase over the $5.15 rate of early 2006.

Here's my prediction. Companies and businesses that purchase minimum wage labor will accelerate those purchases as much as possible prior to July 24th. This implies that they will avoid labor purchases after July 24th. In other words, I expect unemployment to remain steady or even drop slightly before August and to increase after August. Sadly, I think we'll see double digit unemployment late this year.

Note: The minimum wage has always been, is now, and forever will be $0, that is why I put "minimum wage" in scare quotes.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Instapundit links to an article about the predictions of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Russ Roberts first introduced me to Bueno de Mesquita a few years ago in this EconTalk podcast interview: The Political Economy of Power. It's a long interview with Bueno de Mesquita at an hour-and-a-half, but I've listened to that one interview three or four times. Bueno de Mesquita has participated in several other EconTalk podcasts. The first one is still my favorite.
I started reading Bueno de Mesquita's book, The Logic of Political Survival. It's a dense read with a health serving of mathematics. I've set it aside for now, but will return to it when I can put more time into reading it. Here it is:

China Responds to Obama's Auto Bailout

President Obama's speech on Monday, inspired the leader of the People's Republic of China to offer his thoughts on the American economy. Here are Hu Jintoa's redacted remarks (emphasis added to indicate change from Obama's original text):

One of the challenges we have confronted from the beginning of the Obama administration is what to do about the state of China's struggling American economy. In recent months, my economic task force has been reviewing requests by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury for additional Chinese assistance as well as plans developed by each of these bureaucracies to restructure, modernize, and make the United States more competitive. Our evaluation is now complete. But before I lay out what needs to be done going forward, I want to say a few words about where we are, and what led us to this point.

It will come as a surprise to no one that some of the Americans who have suffered most during this recession have been those in publicly traded firms and those working for companies that support them. Over the past year, the US economy has shed over 5,000,000 jobs, not only at the firms that create American products but at the businesses here in China that produce the parts that go into them. More than one in 20 Shanghai residents is out of work. And towns and cities across the Peoples Republic of China have watched unemployment climb higher than it's been in decades.

The pain being felt in places that rely on our export industry is not the fault of our workers, who labor tirelessly and desperately want to see their companies succeed. And it is not the fault of all the families and communities that supported manufacturing plants throughout the generations. Rather, it is a failure of leadership -- in Washington -- that led our companies to this point.

We cannot, we must not, and we will not let our export industry simply vanish. This industry is, like no other, an emblem of the Chinese spirit; a once and future symbol of China's success. It is what helped build the middle class and sustained it throughout the 20th century. It is a source of deep pride for the generations of Chinese workers whose hard work and imagination led to some of the finest plastic products the world has ever known. It is a pillar of our economy that has held up the dreams of millions of our people. But we also cannot continue to excuse poor decisions. And we cannot make the survival of our export industry dependent on an unending flow from American printing presses. These American federal agencies -- and their government -- must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of China.

That is why China provided the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury with emergency loans to prevent the sudden collapse of the US economy -- only on the condition that they would develop plans to restructure. In keeping with that agreement, each bureaucracy has submitted a plan to restructure. But after careful analysis, we have determined that neither goes far enough to warrant the substantial new investments that these American government agencies are requesting. And so today, I am announcing that China will offer the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury a limited period of time to work with creditors, unions, and other stakeholders to fundamentally restructure in a way that would justify an additional loan; a period during which they must produce plans that would give the Chinese people confidence in their long-term prospects for success.

What we are asking is difficult. It will require hard choices. It will require public sector unions and workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more. It will require Washington to recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of monthly Chinese bailouts. Only then can we ask American taxpayers who have already put up so much of their hard-earned money to finally repay their countries debts. But I am confident that if we are each willing to do our part, then this restructuring, as painful as it will be for the US, will mark not an end, but a new beginning for a great American economy; reconstituted as a Chinese subsidiary that is once more out-competing the world; a 21st century vassal that is creating new jobs and unleashing new prosperity. I am absolutely committed to working with Congress, the Fed, and the US Treasury to meet one goal: the United States of America will lead the world back to sound money.

But the US economy is not moving in the right direction fast enough to succeed. So let me discuss what measures need to be taken starting with the US Treasury. While Treasury has made a good faith effort to sell bonds over the past several months, the plan they have put forward is, in its current form, not strong enough. However, after broad consultations with a range of experts and financial advisors, I'm confident that Treasury can rise again, provided that it undergoes a fundamental restructuring. As an initial step, Treasury is announcing today that Timothy Geithner is stepping aside as Secretary. This is not meant as a condemnation of Mr. Geithner, who has devoted his life to tax evasion; rather, it's a recognition that it will take a new vision and new direction to create the Treasury of the future.

The situation at the Federal Reserve is more challenging. It is with deep reluctance but also a clear-eyed recognition of the facts that we have determined, after a careful review, that the Fed needs a partner to remain viable. Recently, the Fed reached out and found what could be a potential partner -- the international car company Fiat… er… a return to the gold standard!

Hu Jintao and Tim Geithner

If the Chairman and CEO of General Motors serves at the pleasure of the American President because GM is so indebted to the US Government, does this mean that the US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, serves at the pleasure of Hu Jintao because the Chinese are the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries?

Rick Wagoner sacked by Obama

OpenSecrets indicates that Rick Wagoner, recently departed CEO of GM, only gave $1,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Clearly, one must be more "generous" if one wants to keep their job in the new order. Since Wagoner resigned at Obama's request, I think he's ineligible for unemployment benefits.