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On Ants, Powerlifting & Macro Photography

Michael Cervieri — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:13:26 +0000

An Asian Weaver ant carrying 100 times its body weight while upside down — Thomas Endlein, via the BBSRC.

The Journal of Comparative Physiology A once published a cover story on “passive control of pretarsal attachment in ants.”

Translated into English that you and I can understand: certain ants have incredibly sticky pads on their feet that let them walk upside down. A fundamental question facing researchers though is that given the adhesion, how do they walk without getting stuck?

How to Shoot an Ant

Congratulations are in order as Endlein just won the BBSRC Science Photography competition for the amazing image above. He explains how he took it:

“The image was taken using a Canon EOS 5D with a 2.8/100 mm macro lens and twin flash guns. To get the shot I made use of their natural behaviour: these ants are very aggressive towards almost anything which comes close to them. They try to grab and bite to take down potential threats, like other insects. And once they grab an object they won’t let go for a very long time. So they did with the little weight suspended on a string.” — Dr. Thomas Endlein

“The basic principle of sticking is to use a thin fluid layer in-between the adhesive pads and the substrate,” explains Dr. Thomas Endlein of the Centre for Cell Engineering at Glasgow University. His research demonstrates that the Asian Weaver ant can control its adhesive strength on three hierarchical levels: the foot, the leg and the entire body.

“On the ‘foot level’,” he says, “they can change the size and shape of their pad dynamically to adapt the contact area according to the experienced load. If they have to carry heavy loads they increase the contact area, when they need to run they decrease it.”

Such is shown in the image above where we see an Asian Weaver ant carrying 100 times its body weight while upside down. If I do an apples and robots comparison that could be me carrying 18,000 extra pounds on my back. Additional adhesion from my legs and body would help me do it.

“Ants vary the number of their feet in contact,” says Endlein as he outlines how ants demonstrate body control. “When they run upside down they often keep at least 4 feet in contact, whilst running upright they use only three feet simultaneously in contact.”

And then the sticky business about not getting stuck. The metaphor Endlein uses is tape attached to a surface. We’re generally successful removing it when we pull it off at steep angles. Shallow angles? Not so much.

“Ants use the same mechanism,” he says. “In case they want to stick they keep their legs in a shallow angle towards the surface, when they want to release them, they increase this angle and peel off easily.”

Understanding the biology of the Asian Weaver could help scientists develop better glues and adhesives. If so it wouldn’t be the first time the powerlifter demonstrated its worth to humans. The fiercely territorial ant has defended Southeast Asian citrus orchards from invading insect pests for the past 1,500 years.

This American iPhone App

ScribeTribe — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:05:24 +0000

Radio junkies and story tellers have a new way to listen to and access This American Life stories and extras. The venerable radio series just released a $2.99 iPhone app.

Developed by Public Radio Exchange, the app should, according to TAL, give fans:

On-demand access to every radio episode we’ve ever produced
Lists of staff favorites, and the ability to save your own favorites list
Countdown to the Friday night live feed, which you can stream in the app
Exclusive extras like Ira Glass’ and David Sedaris’ first radio stories, video of live events, excerpts from our television show, audio of Ira Glass interviewing Terry Gross (and vice versa), a word from Torey Malatia (he’s real!)

So, do you continue to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, or do you show some economic love and pony up a few bucks for extras?

Internet Explorer Backlash Continues

ScribeTribe — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:52:49 +0000

Last month the German government urged its citizens to drop Internet Explorer in favor of more secure alternatives such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari.

As the Daily Mail wrote, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security said even running Explorer in ’security mode’ did not render it fully safe.

While most attribute this to IE6, the 2001 browser release that’s the bane of developers worldwide, the French warned against all Internet Explorer versions, 7 and 8 included.

Now comes a petition before the British government by concerned designers and developers.

“Most creative and software development companies are forced by government department clients to build websites for IE6 when most of the industry has moved on,” the petition reads while acknowledging the large-scale effort needed to move governmental agencies off of it.

Tweets are Candy, Tumblrs are Snacks

Michael Cervieri — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:46:04 +0000

Here’s what we like about the Bygone Bureau’s Best New Blogs of 2009: the Tumblr love.

Seriously. We seriously like the curatorial acumen of those that use Tumblr and pass mindless hours perusing the ~~porn~~ excellent visuals found there.

What we like as well is that Tumblr is sort of like the forgotten younger cousin in the Twitter/Facebook hype of the past year. Sure, we don’t know what their business model is. But then again we don’t really care because if you want a slew of curated memes delivered to your browser right now, create your account and start following those that stoke your ~~pornagraphic desires~~ media whim.

If it ends it ends. Right now though, the Tumbling’s good.

But, back to Bygone Bureau. Their words do the talking:

This year, one new site embodied the larger-than-it-seems Tumblr zeitgeist better than others: Mad Men Footnotes.

TV recaps had become a moribund genre. Thousand-word recaps of things you already saw, recaps were the downtrodden hookers of internet discourse: felicitous with their views, but leaving behind the emptiness of sloppy seconds. Mad Men Footnotes flipped the genre around. It wasn’t about the telling you what you just watched — it was about exploring the entire universe that it created. Through short posts that allude to passing show references (Rothko, Ann-Marget, salted ice cream), the site made history feel like the present.

Or check this from from Mike Deri Smith, assistant editor at the Morning News with a personal Tumblr favorite called Slaughterhouse 90201 (wink and nudge, we get it too):

Tumblr provided the blogging platform to define how it felt to be online-in-oh-nine. The best Tumblr blogs adhere to the essential rule of “have something to say” and maintain a tight and clear curatorial mandate: you know what to expect

Or another way, Tweets may be candy but Tumblrs are full on snacks.

Piano, Meet iPhone

Michael Cervieri — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:46:45 +0000

Ever since Bartolomeo Cristofori created the piano back around 1700, pianists have tickled the ivory keys the world over. True, Johann Sebastian Bach didn’t like the new instrument, believing that the higher notes were too soft to give him the dynamic range he desired but he still came around and by the 1750s started selling pianos himself.

So while not Glenn Gould, and certainly not the Goldberg Variations, we can only smile at the video above with its six iPhone set-up and piano synth built in.

Music can be deliriously geeky.

Turkey Day

Peter Cervieri — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:43:57 +0000

Inge gives us the run down of what we’re going to eat for Thanksgiving. I used Sorenson Squeeze 6 to convert the raw .MPG video I shot on my mom’s Sony point and click to h.264 and upload directly to Youtube.

I entered my Youtube account information into Squeeze and started the transcoding process. By the time I came back to my computer an hour later the video had been converted AND uploaded.

Below is the Sorenson Squeeze 6 dashboard.

And confirmation on Youtube that my video uploaded directly through Squeeze.

Textures and Backgrounds

Peter Cervieri — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:35:26 +0000

Here’s a cool site that has good high resolution textures and backgrounds you can download to use in apple motion / adobe after effects projects.

psdGraphics

TV Talk Show Pilot

Peter Cervieri — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:06:06 +0000

Here’s some behind the scenes footage from a TV talk show pilot we’re working on.

We’re shooting in 1080p on Sony EX1s, using Kino Flo and Arri lights, Lectrosonics SMD transmitter / receiver packs with Sanken COS 11’s. The audio was live mixed on a Mackie board.

Webcasting with Adobe Connect

Peter Cervieri — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:05:15 +0000

I’ve used various webcasting tools over the past few years such as Ustream, livestream (formerly mogulus), on24, Webex, and in-house developed solutions built on top of Content Delivery Networks such as Akamai, Highwinds and Limelight.

Depending on the project and needs, the recommended solution may be different. A concert doesn’t require the audience to follow PowerPoint slides. So no need to dedicate lots of real estate to the “sharing” area and use a more corporate tool such as WebEx. uStream and a twitter feed work just fine.

Adobe Connect is kind of like the Cadillac of webcast tools. And a Cadillac with all the options. It’s definitely geared towards the business market.

I used Connect earlier this week to broadcast multiple, concurrent live video webcasts from a conference. Each day there were multiple sessions going on at the same time. Remote attendees could go from one room to another, just like in person participants can walk out the door and into the session next door.

The conference organizer wanted to make sure that only people who paid could tune in remotely to watch the conference sessions.

The organizer sent me an excel file the night before the conference kicked off with a list of registrants. I batch registered attendees in Connect. It was also easy to register late registrants on the fly so they could log in and participate.

I created a unique Web address for each conference room and set the permissions so that only people whose email address and password are in the database can log in. I sent an email out to participants with the conference schedule and a link to the room where they could watch each session.

I created two views for participants. Each view included a number of “pods”, which are modules that you can incorporate into the webcast window. For example, there is a video pod, a chat pod, an attendee pod, a pole / survey pod, a file library pod, a notes pod, a PowerPoint / desktop sharing pod, etc.

The first view was for when speakers used PowerPoint. I made the PowerPoint pod large, with a small video window next to it. Right before a session started I would grab the upcoming speaker’s presentation on a thumb drive and upload it for the online attendees from my laptop. When the speaker moved from slide to slide in the room I’d just click the next button for the online audience so they could see the slide he was referencing.

The second view was for when speakers had no PowerPoints, like during a panel discussion. In this scenario I don’t need to take up much real estate with the sharing pod, so I made the video pod bigger and featured the polling pod in case we wanted to get audience feedback.

I could transition between one view and the other with a click of a button and often found myself going back and forth.

When an online participant had a question, I’d just raise my hand like anyone else in the room and wait for the speaker or moderator to call on me. Appreciative thank you’s from the online audience often followed.

We had the same gear set-up in each room. One goal was to simultaneously broadcast a live mix and record the sessions so we could create on-demand video of each session by the next morning.

A Panasonic DVX camera has one firewire out and composite outputs for audio and video. Since we wanted to capture what we were shooting to an external hard disc recorder, we used the firewire output to go to a Firestore. This saved us from having to pull tapes. We sent the composite to a Canopus ADVC110. The Canopus converts analog to digital. I sent the digital signal via a firewire output on the back of the Canopus to the Mac laptop we were using for the webcast.

Adobe Connect detected the video signal coming from the external source and broadcast it to my online audience.

NYC Studios – EUE Screen Gems Studios

Peter Cervieri — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:59:13 +0000

I was looking at studio spaces in NYC this week to produce a TV talk show pilot. I brought my flip camera along and shot some footage at EUE Screen Gems Studios in midtown Manhattan.

Conveniently located on 44th street, about 3 blocks from Grand Central Station, EUE occupies about 6 of the 9 floors in the building, totaling 125,000 square feet of studio space. EUE has six studios ranging in size from 2,000 to 9,000 square feet, some with multi-format control rooms, hard-cyc green screen infrastructures, and fully wired grids; full lighting and grip compliments, non-linear video and audio editing suites; production office space, screening and conference rooms; dressing, hair, make-up and green rooms; and huge freight elevators for load in.

While our needs are pretty straightforward (a big square box that we can bring our own cameras, lights and set design to), they can accommodate pretty much any unique needs you may have. Need desk space? Office space? Editing stations? Gear? Crew? No problem.

I met with Mitchell Brill, who is a great guy, nice, personable and willing to work with us.