The Garret Tree

Major Ontario storm kills the original Garret Tree

2009-08-21T20:03:00.016-04:00

The tree that inspired this blog, The Garret Tree, was brought down by the fierce line of storms that crossed southern Ontario on August 20, 2009. The same storm brought two [update five at last report] tornadoes, killed an eleven-year-old boy, injured a number of others and damaged or destroyed homes and businesses across the province.

CBC News story: Ontario storm devastates communities

As the storm struck across the province, I stayed at work at CBC, watching for news pictures and user photographs and monitoring Tweets of the storm from the public and competing media. So I did not get home until well after dark.

This morning a CBC colleague who had just moved in across the street mentioned in a Facebook status update that a neighbor's tree had crashed into his backyard during the storm. He told me how the tree trunk had come down across his yard and into the neighbor's on the other side.

It was a busy day at work for post storm coverage so it wasn't until I was on the way home that I wondered if it was the Garret Tree. There are/were two large trees across the street from my garret. And when I got home and looked out the attic window, unfortunately I discovered that the Garret Tree was a victim of the storm.

The empty sky where the Garret Tree once stood.

The Garrett Tree in a January, 2005 snowstorm.

The Garret Tree in full leaf, June 2005.

The Garret Tree in November, 2005.

(By the way, there was no other damage in the immediate neighborhood.)

I am currently redesigning this site. So with the death of the original Garret Tree, this will be the last entry in this blog. I will have new blog once the site is relaunched sometime this fall. Farewell leafy friend.

Photoblog Don Valley Brick Works

2009-05-18T23:01:00.002-04:00

Photo blog for May 18, 2009.

Red winged blackbird at the Don Valley Brick Works.

More photos from the Brick Works hike in my public Facebook album.

All images are copyright Robin Rowland 2009. Do not download or reuse without permission.

What "breaking news" means in May 2009

2009-05-18T00:20:00.005-04:00

Around 8:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, May 17, 2009, an earthquake with a prelminary estimated magnitude of 5.0 struck near Los Angeles International Airport LAX. As this is written an hour later, at 0025 hours May 18 Eastern Daylight Time, the Los Angeles Fire Department reports no major structural damage or injuries.

Here is a lesson for all those news executives in our dying industry who insist on screaming about hours-old "breaking news."

This is a screengrab from Tweetdeck taken at 0017 hours EDT which shows Twitter trending topics, as measured by Tweetdeck. (Twitter's own trending topics are a little different, I've found but in this case the earthuquake is still a top topic). The top topic, of course, is the earthquake, aftershocks, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods where it the quake was felt.

Even the Los Angeles Times in its coverage is quoting the LA Fire Departments Twitter feed.

Updated at 9:10 p.m.: An initial assessment by the Los Angles Fire Department found "no major structural damage, no serious injuries," according to spokesman Brian Humphrey's Twitter feed.

In May 2009, news breaks on Twitter.

If you've got a red "breaking news" banner on your screen or web page even an hour later, rather than "developing story" you're crying wolf and further eroding the credibility of our already stricken profession.

More and more people on the cutting edge of online journalism and high tech coverage are calling for a return to quality (although no one is sure how to pay for it right now). "Citizen journalism" is no longer someone ranting on the comments section of any news site. It is hundreds of those citizens' tweets.

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Twitter, news,

The Japanese waterboarding debate widens

2009-04-24T23:30:00.009-04:00

The debate over Japanese waterboarding is growing.

Paul Begla, in the Huffington Post, writes Yes National Review, We did execute the Japanese for waterboarding.

Begala is responding to an assertion by Mark Hemingway of National Review Online that U.S. did not execute the Japanese.

The problem with that debate is that it is apparently based on only one case, that of Yukio Asano, and that debate is based only on the online summary of the trial. Apparently it's too much in this internet age to have a debate on the substance of a matter of national and international importance based on the facts or substantive research, just what you pick up on the web. (And these are older adults, so why are we boomers complaining about kids basing their school work on Wikipedia? We have here role models for Wiki-searching from both sides of the polarized American political spectrum.)

There is the usual American parochialism, that it only counts, apparently, if an American was waterboarded or if the Americans executed war criminals for waterboarding. To many Americans, and almost all American conservatives, not only on the Huffington Post or the National Review Online, but on other blogs, that the British tried the Japanese for waterboarding is of little or no importance.
That's why it's called International Humanitarian Law (A lot of the evidence against the Japanese for torture in the Double Tenth case, which was a British military tribunal, came from American war crimes investigators.)

Finally there's a double anonymous comment on the Huffington Post in response to Begala. From an anonymous poster calling himself The Golden Master, quoting an equally anonymous so-called close assosicate who apparently says:

In the first place, I had studied, written, and; 'published' on the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, but I've never come across information that the Japanese waterboarded their captives, even less that Japanese war criminals were executed for waterboarding. So, Paul Begala has no credibility unless he produces his source(s) for that assertion.

Obviously whomever this person is has never actually checked the index to the published edition of the transcript of the hearing of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Far East, for the "water treatment" is easy to find.

I quoted from the trial in my original post

This form of torture was not limited to Singapore. The judgment of the Tokyo war crimes trial said “the water treatment was commonly applied…there is evidence that this torture was used in the following places: (spelling in the original)

China, at Shanghai, Peiping and Nanking
French IndoChina, at Hanoi and Saigon
Malaya, a Singapore
Burma, at Kyaikto
Thailand, at Chumporn
Andaman Islands, at Port Blair
Borneo, at Jesselton
Sumatra, at Madan, Tadjong Keareng and Palembang
Java, at Batavia, Badung, Soerabaja and Buitonzorg
Celebes, at Makeskar
Portuguese Timor, at Orzu and Dilli
Philippines, at Manila, Nichols Field, Palo Beach and Dumquete
Formosa, at Camp Haito
Japan, at Tokyo"

The online debate was triggered by this "discussion" on CNN's Anderson Cooper.

There is also Andrew Sullivan's response to Hemingway here and to Begala here.

Update:

There's a good summary (and much more intelligent debate) on Mahalo Answers.

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, torture,F Force, Prisoner of War,military tribunal, waterboarding, law, book, CNN, Huffington Post, National Review

Times of London blogs A River Kwai Story

2009-04-21T23:29:00.004-04:00

The Times of London, Times Online Archive blog features A River Kwai Story on April 21, 2009.

Titled Waterboarding was a war crime in WW2. What's changed? it builds on former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's contention that waterboarding was an effective way of getting information.

It links to my 2005 blog, Waterboarding is a war crime as well as stories in the Times about POW Eric Lomax and a letter to the Times from General Sir Arthur Percival marking the death in a plane crash of Cyril Wild. (Note to read letter you must accept popups from Times Online)

See also a second link from the Times on "humane" torture by the French in Algeria.

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, water boarding,F Force, Prisoner of War,
military tribunal, torture, Times, book
A River Kwai Story, France, Double Tenth, Japan

Amazon situation updates

2009-04-15T00:47:00.004-04:00

A few updates on the Amazon post.

My CBC colleague John Bowman posted a wrap up the Amazon situation in his Blogwatch column for April 14.

Although reports make it clear that Amazon e-mailed a news release to media that requested it, there is still no news release on the Amazon news release page, where the public would go to find it. So Amazon is still making mistakes.

One of the links that John points to in Blogwatch is a report from the Seattle Post Intelligencer, which was on the only media outlet on top of the story from the beginning (and, of course, is Amazon's hometown online newspaper)

In AmazonFail, An Inside Story, "news gatherer" Andrea James (aren't there reporters any more?) recounts what happened as her sources at Amazon related.

Amazon is apparently still going with the spin that:

Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as "adult," the source said. (Technically, the flag for adult content was flipped from 'false' to 'true.')

I've worked with computers, programmers, IT folks good, bad and indifferent (often indifferent) for a quarter century, so I do believe it when Andrea James quotes her source as saying:

The source wanted it known that mistakes do happen at Amazon.com -- they're all human.

"Most everyone at one point who works with catalog systems has broken some piece of the catalog," the source said.

Not all the comments on the Seattle PI site are buying that problem. And there's one big problem not mentioned by James her item. The customer service response to the original query by Mark Probst

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Ashlyn D
Member Services

In his two latest Live Journal entries, the first written later on April 12 and on April 13, Probst has shown a great spirit of forgiveness:

So my guess is, yes Amazon has a policy in place not to display the sales rankings of adult material, but no, they never intended for gay and lesbian material, per se, to be classified as “adult.” It’s a major faux-pas which I’m sure they mean to correct.

As a person who has struggled with the issue of forgiving all my life (see my work on the River Kwai) I am not yet prepared to give Amazon the complete benefit of doubt in a murky situation. I've always liked Ronald Reagan's statement that you have to "Trust but verify."

I have inside knowledge from my own sources of how customer service works at big organizations. My source is not at Amazon but I think it applies in this case.
Most tech support and customer service support operations now have a large database of canned answers which can be called up on to handle 85 per cent of all queries. (The other 15 per cent are escalated for detailed handling but the rep has to beware that if he/she escalates without a good reason, they are in big trouble)

When you call one of the major telecom companies for technical support you are not speaking to a techie (as you would have done in the 1990s) you are speaking to an actor who is "between engagements," since that telecom company hires actors who can read the database scripts and can sound authoritative even if they don't know the difference between Linux and laundry.

So it is that canned response to Mark Probst that makes me suspicious. It's my belief that the situation at Amazon was a cluster fark but it was a cluster fark based on a real Amazon policy on classifying books as "adult," whether warranted or not, that through a series of human and computer errors did get out of hand.

So that Amazon policy on "adult" content is still a danger to the freedom to read.

Amazon should post the criterion it uses for determining whether or not a work is "adult."

And let's just hope some kid doesn't get a call from an Amazon computer asking, "Do you want to play a game?"

Update

Excellent article from the Washington Post from a tech expert on the assumptions that likely went into the algorithms Amazon uses to rank all books (not just the ones in the recent controversy)

See Why Amazon didn't just have a glitch by Mary Holder

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook,gay, lesbian,
#amazonfail, Jeff Bezos, metadata, book

The Amazon Cluster Fark : The Return of the Jedi-Author

2009-04-13T20:56:00.006-04:00

As I write this, Amazon has not yet explained what it calls the “glitch” that saw books with gay, lesbian, feminist and similar content delisted from best sellers and sales ranking over the Easter weekend (April 13, 2009).

The Associated Press is now reporting that

“Amazon.com apologized Monday for an 'embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error' that led to the sales ranking being removed from tens of thousands of books.....On Monday, Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener said that 57,310 books had been affected.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that some of the rankings are being restored at this moment.

Amazon is still being stupid and ham fisted but let's go beyond the events of the day.
There is a very important lesson for Amazon from the events of this weekend. It's not just the usual public relations post mortem (even though this has been a PR disaster for Amazon. Why hasn't Amazon fixed things overnight ).

As Humans at Work says

Amazon has handled this communications crisis in the worst possible way, which is to ignore the outrage and throw corporate-speak at the issue. I was aware of the controversy early Sunday morning: there was no response from Amazon until late afternoon, and the company spoke through a press release to the Associated Press. Amazon is an online business, suffering an online publicity massacre, and they offered no online response of substance. No blog post of their own. No direct dialogue attempts on Twitter. Imagine that you’re on an arena stage in front of tens of thousands of angry people, and instead of speaking into the microphone, you get on your cell phone and call someone to take a memo to send those folks. That’s essentially how Amazon handled it.

So no wonder all authors were so outraged by Amazon's screw up. High Amazon ranking, being on the Amazon best seller lists mean sales. If Amazon could do it to the gay and lesbian community ( intentionally to please conservatives or through a series of mistake) it could do it anyone else (bird books maybe?)

If Amazon is smart and goes beyond the computer glitch strategy (and so far they have been just plain stupid), the company will realize that the authors, whose products they sell, are either the company's best friends and worst enemies. Although the Tweet hurricane, the Facebook tornado, may have begun with gay and lesbian writers, what happened at Amazon was an immediate threat to all authors and a huge number (Neil Gaimon, for example) reacted.

The calls to boycott Amazon are a big problem, a very big problem. Authors need Amazon. A boycott won't do any single author any good at all. Amazon promotes books that the chain bookstores won't touch.

Those calling for a boycott should think about this. How many of those gay and lesbian books that Amazon deranked are found in your local big box bookstore? A handful, and probably none published over three months ago.

If Amazon wants a long term fix to the business and public relations disaster, they must immediately create a respectful relationships with the authors that create those products.

The Cluster Fark glitch (or hack)

It appears that the “glitch” is some sort of meta data malfunction. It's easy to blame it on computers, (but of course the famous wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl was a case of humans doing their thing).

There are two theories:

that some form of homophobic hacking manipulated Amazon's meta data.
a series of perhaps unrelated management decisions created an unintended consequence.

The Making Light blog calls what happened a Cluster Fark where a series of management decisions led to this public relations disaster:

(1)Sometime in the middle-distance past—maybe a couple of months ago, maybe a year, it doesn’t matter—somebody decided that it would be a good idea to make sure that works of straight-out pornography (or, for that matter, sex toys) didn’t inadvertently show up as the top result for innocuous search queries. (The many ways that this could happen are left as an exercise for Making Light’s commentariat.) A policy was promulgated that “adult” items would be removed from the sales rankings and thus rendered invisible to general search.

(2)Sometime more recently, an entirely different group of people were given the task of deciding what things for sale on Amazon should be tagged “adult,” but in the journey from one department to another, and from one level of the hierarchy to another, the directive mutated from “let’s discreetly unrank the really raunchy stuff” to “we’d better be careful to put an ‘adult’ tag on anything that could imaginably offend anyone.” Indeed, as Teresa pointed out, it’s entirely possible that someone used a canned list of “adult” titles supplied from outside, something analogous to the lists of URLs sold by “net nanny” outfits, which would account for the newly-unranked status of works like Lady Chatterley’s Lover. (As one net commenter observed, “What is this, 1928?

(Aside: The Amazon disaster happened the same night that the Discovery Channel Canada premiered Who Sank the Titanic? with the theory that the deadly cluster fark was a series of management blunders, beginning with the substandard rivets and reducing the lifeboats from 48 to 16).

#amazonfail – Twitter comes alive on a holiday weekend: A lesson for the media.

The groundswell of rage against Amazon showed the power of the social media and the absolute failure of the bean counters in the mainstream media (as one who works for the MSM, I am sad to say)

The media managers assume that, in most cases, news doesn't happen on a holiday weekend, when they have to pay overtime.

Most media workers these days are so over worked they crave the time to relax, by themselves or with families or friends on a holiday weekend.

Newspapers, starving to death, still don't “get it” that today news has be posted NOW. It can't wait for 24 or 36 hours until the presses roll.

As history now shows (even though the history is only 48 hours old), blogger and author Mark Probst found that his young adult books about the old American west, which have gay characters, had been deranked.

From Probst's blog, the word quick spread to Facebook and Twitter., where the hashcode #amazonfail quickly became the top subject on Twitter.

I was watching as the events unfolded over the Sunday afternoon. I saw posts from other media workers, with no outlet for their work on the weekend, also posting on Facebook and Twitter. The Amazon glitch was and is a direct threat not only to authors of gay and lesbian subjects, it was a threat to all authors. So authors posted, cross posted, linked and sent out messages. So did the reading public, who saw those initial posts. Then came the online community at large on Twitter and Facebook.

The events of Sunday were not only the first time that Twitter became a viral phenomenon without parallel media coverage, it showed the power of crowd researching. People would go to Amazon and check their favourite books and authors and find out if the ranking was still there.
Hundreds of people doing targeted research all at once creates more information more quickly than a single reporter can.

That, unfortunately, is a lesson, for the mainstream media. When we weren't there, the public didn't need us. They cover the news themselves.

Return of the Jedi-Author

Here, dear reader, I am, without apology going to mix my metaphor, from Battlestar Galatica to Star Wars.

Authors are under threat from an Empire, publishing companies and chain bookstores, empires ruled by corporate Palpatines and Vaders.

Authors are like the lonely surviving Jedi holding out against the chain bookstore Death Stars and publishing company storm troopers that view authors as cannon fodder.

Amazon enters the picture.

A neutral Force. (yes a Force with cap “F') that might give power to the Jedi-author.
Is Amazon going to go to the Dark Side or Light Side of the Force?

That is the decision the Amazon corporate executives must face.

Every author (like me) today links to their books listed on Amazon. (In fact one of my frustrations is that due a rights Cluster Fark, people can't order A River Kwai Story from Australia on Amazon)
The long tail theory began when the sales of books were tracked on Amazon and those figures showed that a book could have a long and perhaps profitable life long after the three months that the chain bookstores carry a book.

Ask any author today and they will tell you that the publishing companies have no respect for them. At publishing companies, the corporate mail mobile (whether human or robotic) is more important than an author.

The majority of bookstores don't want authors around, in fact, they'll keep them at bay with a 10 metre pole (unless they're Stephen King or Neil Gaimon)

So I am hoping that the Force really is with the author. That Amazon will realize that they have completely farked their customer relations and they are still farking their customer relationships.

Hiring a PR firm that specializes in salvaging this kind of mess won't t help.

So here's what I think Amazon should do.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos should call a televised news conference with as many live cable news opportunities as possible, as well as a webcast, apologize to the gay and lesbian community, to gay and lesbian authors, the writing community at large and to all Amazon customers. Relying on third rate news releases won't cut it.
Then Amazon should reach out to all authors and become the authors' best friends. Begin with gay and lesbian authors and come up with a way to repair the damage, perhaps a special sale of gay and lesbian titles to take advantage of the public interest.
Then Amazon should begin a long term strategy, a win win strategy. Respect authors the way the publishers and bookstores don't and won't Figure out how Amazon's sales and marketing strategies can coincide with the desire of authors to sell their books. Amazon has already taken a first step in this by making it easy for self-published authors to get their wares on the Amazon database. Publishers refuse to niche market. Amazon can do that just retweet [bad pun intended] their database and create hundreds of niche markets. Authors know their subjects, authors know the market they are aiming for. As the publishers continue to sink in the current recession, as the ones that hope to survive are cutting back on acquisitions, that means there will be more and more self publishers in the future.

Will Amazon take advantage of a disaster and turn it into an opportunity?

Or will it turn to the Dark Side of the Force and become just another literary Death Star?

Jeff Bezos. You have choice. So, from metaphor No. 3, take advice from Spiderman. With great power comes great responsibility.

Updates:

Amazon really doesn't get it. It apparently issued a new release on the afternoon of April 13. Yet nothing but corporate/SEC stuff on the Amazon.com Press Release page. It was the public on Facebook and Twitter that alerted the media to the problem, yet it seems Amazon is only speaking to the media who ask. The public still doesn't matter.

Ad Age: Amazon's Silent Mistake in the Face of a Social-Media Firestorm

All weekend, as the firestorm spread, Amazon maintained silence. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, who's on Twitter, has yet to write a word about the brouhaha. Finally, today, Amazon's director of corporate communications, Patty Smith, blamed the issue on a "glitch," which was not explained.

Whether the incident is a glitch or the work of a hacker is rather beside the point. Amazon should have been monitoring its brand in social media 24/7. And clearly it wasn't. It should have responded much sooner and much more clearly. If it didn't know the cause, it should have said so and explained what it was doing to find out.

LA Times updates Amazon blames book-search glitch on 'cataloging error'

Herdener did not respond to requests to clarify the cause of the error, nor about why works such as the "Milk" pictorial -- which did not appear to be listed in any of the categories mentioned by Amazon -- may have been removed from the search listings...

In striking contrast to all of the online uproar, Amazon -- a leading Internet company and media pioneer -- remained nearly silent. It issued a brief statement Sunday evening, citing "a glitch," then waited most of Monday before issuing the mea culpa.

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook,gay, lesbian,
#amazonfail, Jeff Bezos, metadata, book

The pre-Twitter tweets from The Economist

2009-03-11T22:01:00.010-04:00

It has been said so many times, "it came before its time."

More than a quarter century ago, the staid old Economist invented Tweeting. Of course, only a handful of people noticed (and I'm sure The Economist has forgotten all about it).

By the way, I have just joined Twitter and you can follow me (if you care) at rowlandr.

Back in 1981, I was working in London, at the Universal News Services PR wire and using Britain's fledgling Prestel videotex service. The Economist was also one of Prestel's clients.

In this early form of new media, you had a keyboard attached to a TV screen, which was wired through the phone system to a mainframe computer somewhere in an early version of cyberspace.

It was also expensive. You were not only paying for the phone line (at per minute rates) but in most cases (unless Prestel waived the charges) a per page fee as well. (So it never really got anywhere, a warning to those revisionist columnists who think the media should have started charging for access in the early days of the web).

The best way to get the news across was in short briefs. Not everyone did that, but The Economist did. If you wanted to print out a page, it came out on silvered, heat sensitive paper, with the type appearing only slightly darker silver. Hard to read, old chap.

And why do I remember all this? One story in the summer of 1981, reminded me of my home in "the colonies." It went something like this

There's good news and bad news from Canada. The good news is that the television network is on strike. The bad news is that the post office is on strike.

(I make that 130 characters)

Ha ha ha. Yes there was a strike at the CBC at that time, And yes Canada Post was going through his infamous period of labour unrest.

The other stories were just like that. They were "tweets."

If they only knew what they started.........

Of course, The Economist is back at it. Twitter name The Economist and as of this moment there are 10,195 followers.

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Twitter, Economist, videotex, Prestel,

Aviation history in an old envelope

2009-02-24T21:55:00.007-05:00

DHC-2 Beaver at Ootsa Lake, B.C. 1951-52

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through old family pictures. There were baby pictures of me among the prints from that roll. Since I am planning to return to the parts of northern British Columbia where I grew up, I was looking for landmarks that would help me identify the places where I was little kid. Among the photos I found interesting were of some old planes, so I scanned the old prints at high res, and checked them out.

Turns out that I flew as a baby and toddler in one of the most famous aircraft in Canadian history, the original DHC-2 Beaver. And the story is now up on CBC.

The de Havilland Beaver and the birth of the bush plane

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, DHC2 Beaver, Ootsa Lake, De Havilland,Junkers W34, Kitimat,
Kemano, Central BC Airaways, bush plane, Alcan

You can be replaced—by a Meccano set

2009-01-25T23:49:00.022-05:00

You can be replaced—by a Meccano set. The 2009 version of that Meccano set (Erector set in the US) you got under the Christmas tree as a kid.

Professional photographers are, to use the football term, hearing footsteps from the citizen journalists, fearing their jobs are threatened by “user generated content.”

Now there’s a new threat, the whine of the servos and motors of a robot.

On Saturday Jan. 24, I went to shoot a yearly assignment, the Canadian Toy Association's Toy & Hobby Fair at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

I always wonder through the corridors between the booths and the big displays first at the trade show to look for the best toys to create a photo gallery. Not necessarily the hot toys of the year, but the ones that will be best for the gallery.

Almost as soon as I arrived there it was, a small almost insectoid robot making its way slowly but surely across a deep pile carpet.

I dropped to my knees, raised by camera and click,

click

click,

click.

Then the salesperson controlling the little ‘bot motioned me over to the counter where he was working a laptop.

Turned out the robot was shooting me as I was shooting the robot.

It’s the Spykee Spy Robot from the French arm of Meccano, a robot that has its own website at http://www.spykeeworld.com/ (Both Meccano and the U.S. Erector firms are now owned by the same company).

I was at a toy show, where I was tracked by a robot that can record audio and video.

I was recorded by a Meccano set! When I was a little kid, I got a Meccano set under the tree, girders and big screws that might make something that somewhat resembled an oil rig or a small girder bridge.

The control panel.

The Spykee Spy Robot can be controlled from anywhere on the planet (and possibly beyond) using internet WiFi connections.

The video quality wasn’t that good.

My immediate thought was wait six months and it will get better.

Then I realized, it’s a Meccano set. Someone with enough technical skill could probably convert it into a broadcast quality video and audio or print quality 200-300 dpi still image newsbot.

I left the show with the instructions for building the robot kit.

According to the website, the Spykee can also carry its own Ipod. So even if it’s a robot, it can ignore you just like humans do when they are in the world created by their Ipod.

A child can do it. Meccano says it's for ages 8 and up.

You can set up your laptop at a WiFi hotspot and control the bot. The Spykee website shows someone controlling a robot in Paris from New York.

There goes the Paris bureau. You can be replaced—by a Meccano set

Yes, you can imagine the beancounters sending in robots so they won’t have to pay salaries (just a little maintenance).

Newsbots have been a staple of science fiction since the 1940s. I remember stories of paparazzi robots chasing their targets, showing live video or sending pix back to an office.

A future Rover on Mars. (NASA/CalTech)

NASA has already created robots that are on Mars at the moment, sending back high quality images and robots that will head to the Red Planet will have even better images.

Three generations of Mars rovers. (NASA/CalTech)

Military forces in the developed world are planning combat robots. The Predators and other drones are in action over Afghanistan and Iraq. Iin Gaza, those reporters who were there often told of the constant noise of Israeli drones flying over Gaza.

With the Israelis blocking human journalists from getting into Gaza, why not send in the robots? Of course, combatants in a war zone would likely try to destroy the newsbots. And the newsbot would have to have a satellite link since all the WiFi cafes would be rubble. On the other hand, newsbots are relatively cheap and getting cheaper. So news organizations could send the robots into dangerous situations where humans might not want to go, heavy combat, forest fires, natural disasters.

It comes down to how the robots are managed, doesn’t it?

Here"s anoher look at the robocam image. Just for fun I converted it to black and white in PhotoShop and then applied the G-Force filter that is said to emulate Tri-X film. Not much difference between the robocom image and a picture taken with a very cheap camera loaded with good old Tri-X. And as I said, wait six months.

Technorati tags
robot, journalism, photography, Meccano, Erector set,video journalist, spybot, Tri-X, war,

Financial meltdown reaches the sun. Is Earth doomed?

2008-11-14T20:05:00.004-05:00

Click on image for full size view.
(If the sun lost 15 per cent of its power, there would be another ice age)

When a computer becomes a photo editor.
From Google News, approximately 1100 ET Nov. 14, 2008

Sony launches the Alpha 900

2008-09-09T21:38:00.006-04:00

I covered the Toronto launch of the Sony Alpha 900 today Tuesday, Sept. 9. 2008.

*24.6 megapixel full frame sensor
* 5 frames per second capacity, recording capacity at continuous 11 images at raw 105 at jpg extra fine

Sony is saying their new viewfinder based on refinement of an old Minolta system is the best around.

My report on the launch is at

Sony fires new volley in pro camera war

I had only had a brief hands on, had to get back to the office to file.Sony handed around the bare bones body to show how light it was. But in the hands on session, with the all the bells and whistles stuffed into the chasis and the lens, it was just as heavy as any other DSLR.
As well as the two new lenses announced todaythe 70-400 and the 16-35, their sales people were enthusiastic about 135 2.8 STF prime lens which they said was a revamp of a popular Minolta lens. That was the one I tried and in those few moments really liked it, especially using the new view finder.

Sony is also offering a fully pro flash with a wireless system where you can control the ratio of multiple flashes from the camera. And finally a proper converter for the pocket wizard to the Sony proprietary flash system.

Price is a lot lower than expected $3300 Cdn MSRP body only with cameras available in November.

Sony's prime marketing seems to be aimed (at least from what they said at the launch) at fashion, advertising and product photography. (Although Sony is using photographs shot around Banff for their world wide Alpha 900 promotion campaign.)

I have heard from a couple of fashion shooters that some of their colleagues in Europe are switching to Sony from Canon.

One of the demonstrators, an ad photographer, said "You don't need this to shoot sports." Not exactly the most diplomatic statement--and I am sure folks on the sidelines would disagree.

Now if I wasn't spending all that money in energy retrofits for the house I would be preparing to buy some new toys in November, Well may be the spring, if I have the $$$$.

Technorati tags
Sony, journalism, photography, Alpha 900, Minolta,

The newscutter

2008-08-23T08:50:00.009-04:00

For me the most fascinating talk at the David Lean Conference at Queen Mary University in London last last month (where I was speaking on The Bridge on the River Kwai) was by Linda Kaye, a senior researcher at the British Universities Film and Video Council.

Here's an abstract:

In January 1930, when David Lean was 21, he joined Gaumont Sound News as a cutter. He honed his editing skills at a time of rapid transition, as the sound revolution began to transform the film industry. Linda Kaye offers a unique insight into this experimental environment, which was to prove a key formative period in Lean's development. Linda Kaye is Senior Researcher on the 'David Lean and Gaumont Sound News' project at the British Universities Film & Video Council.

My emphasis on the word cutter.
For someone who has spent a great deal of my career in television news, Kaye's presentation was a "hey this is really neat" moment. How many times have I sat in an edit suite, going back to my first VO edit at CTV News (Remembrance Day viz from Ottawa in November 1988) on huge machines of two inch reel to reel video tape, then through Sony betacam to todays' desktop television editing on computer and server?

Well, here is where it all began (at least in the UK).

Kaye explained that in the transition from silent to sound came just at the same time as newsreels were coming alive, the "editor" was closer to what today we would call a news producer. What today we would call an "editor" was called a "cutter."

(And interestngly enough today there is a widely used Avid editing product called Newscutter. )

The special website David Lean and Gaumont Sound News (launched on August 1, 2008, just after the conference) takes you through the earliest days of editing news for the big screen.

There was a race in 1929 and 1930 in a highly competitve market to get the first news with sound on film (SOF or today SOT sound on tape) before the public.

If you want to skip the history (you really shouldn't) and just want to watch the news, you will find the Gaumont archive here.

Watch the item on a 1930 match play golf tournament and ask yourself just how different is it (if you forgive the muddy sound for a moment) with today's live coverage of a golf tournament with all cameras on Tiger Woods.

Listen to Stanley Baldwin warning about the deficit and the need for a balanced budget. (how little has changed! It's black and white not colour, otherwise, it's network news.)

Then there's BREAKING NEWS. "Breaking news" wasn't used, of course, but probably this was the first time the term would have meant something in film/video journalism (unlike today where "breaking news" is so over used that the public is beginning to ignore it). Unfortunately the clip is not on the website but here's the description:

The British R101 airship crashes at Beauvais, France with the loss of 48 lives including a Cabinet Minister. David Lean recalled recording the commentary for the first edition of Gaumont Sound News released early that evening. The newsreels claimed to beat the press to the news story of the year.

Business news combines with street actuality and natural sound (with no idea of the long term consequences of what is happening) with the collapse of the German economy and a run on a Berlin bank in 1931

It's part of a larger project co-sponsored by ITN and Reuters to put many of the old British newsreels on the web. It's called the News of the Twentieth Century Project and you can see British news from the 1920s until the 1970s.

Memo to newspaper managers: Watch the Oscars

Watching those first newsreels cut by David Lean and those other young men (as far as I know there were few young women in the field at the time) from their late teens to early twenties all those years ago, made me think about my newspaper colleagues who are jumping into video.

Video is the latest saviour for newspapers, especially in the United States where newspaper industry has been grossly mismanaged by their corporate overlords. The same emphasis on video is happening in Canada where, so far, newspaper corporate management seems to have kept their heads on their shoulders.

And figures do show that page views on newspaper pages does go up if there is video.

I have seen some great video on newspaper sites. But in many cases, the editing of some of that newspaper video is not as good as the work from those teenage film editors in 1930.

The difference is editing.

Lean first made his mark as a newscutter. He then became a feature film editor. He directed his movies with editing in mind. He directed Oscar winning movies with editing in mind.

So, at work the other day, I stopped an editor friend of mine in the hall and asked her, "How long does it take to become a good editor?"

An executive producer just happened to be passing at the time and she said, "Ten years," as she walked by.

My friend the editor nodded in agreement. "Anyone can read a software manual," she said. "Anyone can top and tail. (cutting a one shot sequence so it is at the beginning you want and the ending you want-RR) But it takes along time to know how craft a piece." (And I would add, save the reporter's or producer's ass if something wasn't shot or not shot properly)

Yet this is the typical job ad we see for newspapers today:

A minimum of xxx years experience in photography is required, training or education in photojournalism and video production is an asset expertise with PhotoShop, Final Cut Pro, slideshows and video is required

I recently saw an ad for a journalism professor at an American university that demanded both a Phd and expertise in Final Cut Pro. (Can you do both at the same time???)

Once, not long ago, a young photographer would pay his/her dues, gain experience, find a style in smaller newspapers before working up to a major metropolitan daily newspaper (like The Daily Planet).

In many ways, today's system works better for young talent. In the desperate search for the younger audience, news organizations are hiring young talent and the good ones are working at their full potential in major news organizations (at least until the next round of layoffs)

Newspaper managers are expecting people to read the manual for Final Cut Pro (newspapers are Mac based operations) and then produce quality work. A tiny talented few can. Many others can't and most will take years to learn the craft. (Only at that point does TV have to watch out. But TV managers get ready)

So newspaper managers mark your calendar so you have time to watch the Oscars. Some star opens the envelope for best achievement in editing. And another star opens the envelope for the best achievement in sound editing.

Then, newspaper manager, ask yourself, if anyone can do this, why are there Oscars for those fields?

Let the shooters shoot. If they're good at stills let them shoot stills. If they can shoot both stills and video beware of multitasking (when I see newspaper colleagues trying to do both I keep wondering, are they going to miss the good video moment when they are shooting stills and miss what what be an award winning still photo moment while fiddling with the video camera?)

So hire a newscutter to edit the video your folks shoot.
Who knows that kid you hire might win an Oscar one day (after that kid moves from news to the movies)

Links to this blog post

Peter Power

This was England by Paul Gorbould

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writing, journalism, A River Kwai Story, Bridge on the River Kwai, David Lean,film, photography,photojournalism, videojournalism, Gaumont Sound News, book

The David Lean Anniversary Conference

2008-06-06T22:16:00.008-04:00

This year, 2008, as we've all heard from the superheated publicity, is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of author Ian Fleming.

The fact that 2008 is also the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of one ot the greatest film directors David Lean, has had less hype.

There have been events in London all year marking the anniversary and one is a conference at Queen Mary University on July 25 and 26, 2008, that "offers an opportunity both to celebrate David Lean's career and to evaluate the nature of his achievement."

You can find out more about the David Lean conference on both the conference website or, if you're on Facebook, by joining the Facebook group David Lean 100th Anniversary Conference QMUL.

Facebook Event page for the conference.

I'll be speaking about "that movie" that it is what many former prisoners called The Bridge on the River Kwai on the afternoon of July 26, officially on "The Reception of The Bridge on the River Kwai among Former Far East Prisoners of War." It was a love hate relationship with that great film for many former POWs.

And I'll tell the conference why.
Hope to see you there.

Technorati tags
writing, London, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, film,F Force, Prisoner of War,
David Lean, Bridge on the River Kwai, Kwai, book

Garret e-mail box disabled

2008-05-26T20:39:00.001-04:00

The e-mail address for this blog garretATrobinrowland.com has been disabled after it was taken over by spammers. I have received very little legitimate e-mail for this box since the end of the lockout, so it is no real loss.

A River Kwai Story published, available online

2008-04-06T11:39:00.007-04:00

A River Kwai Story: The Sonkrai Tribunal was officially published on April 4, 2008 by Allan and Uwin in Australia. The publisher is distributing the book in Australia, New Zealand and parts of the western Pacific. Allan and Unwin also has non-exclusive rights to distribute the book in Asia.

So far I haven't been able to sell rights in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe.

No matter, in the age of the Internet, the book is available online almost everywhere! (See below)

A River Kwai Story is a project that has taken almost eight years, but I was planning it for almost a decade, if not more, before that.

My father was a prisoner on the railway of death and so I heard his stories at the breakfast table. He also bought any book he could on the railway, most of the POW memoirs that were published following the success of David Lean's movie The Bridge on the River Kwai.

I really began work in the summer of 2000, when I was admitted to the interdisciplinary masters program at York University in Toronto.

Although my father was part of the group known as "H Force," when I was reading the memoirs my father had bought, I had a gut feeling that "F Force," the events at Sonkrai, was the key to understanding what happened on the Railway of Death. My gut feeling was confirmed when, as part of the interdisciplinary program, I began studying international humanitarian law and found out that the story of F Force not only had some of the most fascinating characters of the Second World War, but was also a little known but key case in the concept of command responsiblity for war crimes.

As I entered the second year of the part time program in September 2001 (I worked for CBC throughout the process and I am still working for CBC News) the attacks on September 11, and the subsequent events in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Iraq made the story all the more relevant. While the Bush administration was denying that there was a strong legal definition of what constituted "inhuman treatment" of detainees, it was clear that every post-war case in the Far East, including the cases tried by the United States, clearly defined "inhuman treatment."

After I graduated from the MA program in the fall of 2003, I turned turning the academic thesis into a book. I thought it would take a year. It took four. There were delays in getting additional material to flesh out the academic thesis, to write the book as world events kept me busy at my job and then there were some delays in the production process at the Australian publisher.

Now it's available for you to read:

International orders for A River Kwai Story The Sonkrai Tribunal

Updated August 2008

Outside of Australia and New Zealand, the best way to order this book is through a book store that resells through Amazon.com.

A River Kwai Story page on Amazon.com.

(Note this link does not operate from either Amazon.ca or Amazon.co.uk, if you want to order you must go through Amazon.com.)

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, Iraq,F Force, Prisoner of War,
military tribunal, law, book

John McCain on Japanese waterboarding

2008-03-09T23:27:00.006-04:00

Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for president of the United States surprised me again tonight when he appeared on 60 Minutes and mentioned to interviewer Scott Pelley about how the Japanese used waterboarding during the Second World War.

In one way, I am not surprised, as the son of Second World War POW, abuse like that is of great interest to all who have that legacy and so it is no surprise that the Senator, who was, of course, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, would have a strong interest in the subject.

But is, as far as I know, the firs time since the Second World War, that an American politician of McCain's stature has brought up the subject of Japanese waterboarding. It is certainly the first time that a presidential candidate has discussed Japanese waterboarding on a major network news show like 60 Minutes.

Here is the key quote:

Pelley asked him about American interrogation methods today. Asked if water boarding is torture, McCain said, "Sure. Yes. Without a doubt."

"So the United States has been torturing POWs?" Pelley asked.

"Yes. Scott, we prosecuted Japanese war criminals after World War II.
And one of the charges brought against them, for which they were convicted, was that they water-boarded Americans," McCain said.

You can read the complete 60 Minutes interview here

Here is my account of the infamous Double Tenth waterboarding case in Singapore in 1943.
I first blogged about Waterboarding is a War Crime in November 2005.

Despite the claims of U.S. officials, waterboarding is not an effective interrogation technique.
You can read the entire blog entry but here is the bottom line summary. British and Australian commandos raided Singapore harbour and successfully blew up ships. The Japanese secret police believed it was civilian internees who committed the sabotage.
So the Japanese tortured their suspects, who under water boarding, and other tortures confessed to taking part in a commando raid they knew nothing about.

Related link: An account of the waterboarding of American POWs by the Japanese during the Second World can be found here from Georgtown University.

Watch the 60 Minutes interview with Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain:

Now that Senator McCain has raised the issue, and raised it as part of the campaign, I hope that more people will take a closer look at how the Japanese decided to ignore the Geneva Convention and how the Far East war crimes trials dealt with the issue.

For me this is probably the most interesting U.S. presidential campaign in my lifetime. All three candidates have admirable qualities. (John McCain has also got good poilcies on climate change)

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, John McCain,F Force, Prisoner of War,military tribunal, torture, law, book, waterboarding, water torture, 60 Minutes, CBS,POW

Kwai, photography updates

2008-03-04T21:48:00.003-05:00

A couple of updates:

Promotion for A River Kwai Story, from my agent Waterside Productions.

Australian publishers Allan and Unwin will reveal the long-held secrets of the River Kwai Story in their April 2008 publication of A River Kwai Story, The Sonkrai Tribunal by Waterside Author Robin Rowland.
According to the author, more prisoners of war died at Sonkrai than any other camp on the infamous River Kwai Railway. The seven thousand Australian and British prisoners of war who comprised F Force were sent by the Japanese to build the toughest section of the railway in the mountains between Thailand and Burma. More than three thousand people died from slave labour, disease, starvation and exposure to the never-ending monsoon rain.

In 1946 seven former guards from the infamous River Kwai camp were put on trial for their lives before a military tribunal in Singapore, charged with the deaths of more than three thousand people. The account of the trial tells for the first time the story of F Force from all sides-Australian, British and Japanese-from the lowest private to the lieutenant colonels in command. The testimony, verdict and the surprise sentence shed new light on what really happened on the Railway of Death.

A River Kwai Story, The Sonkrai Tribunal is much more than a story of the infamous Railway of Death during the Second World War. The book is about the fairness of military tribunals/trials/commissions in cases where there are atrocities and heavy loss of life. As the United States begins trials of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, the reader discovers that the story of the River Kwai, known best through David Lean’s Oscar winning movie starring Alec Guinness and William Holden, is as relevant as tonight’s evening news, for the events on that railway led to military tribunals with almost the same rules of evidence and the same charges of unfair proceedings as are the trials now on at “Gitmo.”

Photography

Third place, Feature photography, Clips contest for November 2007, from the Eastern division of the News Photographers Association of Canada.

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, F Force, Prisoner of War, military tribunal, photography, book

My microcareer in videogames

2008-02-23T21:43:00.006-05:00

When you've got a book coming out you Google yourself a little more frequently just to see what's happening out there.

That's how I found out today that my very brief career in videogames actually resulted in a game called Maabus. Somehow the reference showed up in the second page of my Google search.

Back in the winter of 1993, I was freelancing, mainly as an underpaid casual writer at CTV News and so I was always on the lookout for other work. And that's how I came to be working for a CD duplicating company in Toronto called MicroForum that wanted to move from manufacturing into actual production.

I was hired to write a scenario for a game, where earth was threatened some mysterious force.

Here is the blurb and it is pretty close (as far as I remember) to what I wrote:

The year is 1999.
A mysterious new form of radiation is threatening life as we know it on Earth.

... On a small tropical island, 1500 miles southwest of Hawaii in the Pacific, something sinister is going on...

Rumors abound: monstrous mutants, alien fiends, and inexplicable phenomena. Is this the malicious plot of a hostile country? Or does the threat originate from some extra-terrestrial power?

Many research teams have gone in... not a living soul has ever come out!

Now as the last hope, the military has turned to you to crack the mystery and save the world from impending devastation. Your mission is to explore the island with the aid of a highly advanced computerized robot and an arsenal of state-of-the-art weapons. You must investigate uncharted tropical terrain, examine and analyze clues to seek out and destroy the source of this Evil. It will take all of your courage, skills and wits. And remember...

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!

So I handed in the scenario, got paid and that was the last I heard about it, until today,more than 15 years later.

Now, thanks to Google, I find myself on a game review site called Moby Games, as a game developer!
(There's nothing there right, but I certainly intend to update it)

I never even got a copy of the game. (So I just bought a used copy on EBay.)

When PC Gamer reviewed the final product, it said:" On the box Maabus comes in, Microforum calls it both "the ultimate videogame" and "the ultimate adventure" - and that's a good clue to what's wrong with it. Maabus tries to be two things at once, and it succeeds at neither." The sort of thing you'd expect for a first effort (for both me and the company)

But it appears that the music is quite catchy and that's why the "Maabus Trailer" been posted on YouTube.

From the comments it appears that the song is much more popular than the game itself!

The credits say the music for the game was created by Maurizio Guarini and Steve Convery, but the trailer, according to the YouTube the credit for theTrailer for "Maabus" by Monolith Productions, taken from Softkey's "Game Empire" disc.
(It appears that it was an early effort by the Monolith Productions, now part of the Warner empire.)
So it's unclear where the song came from. I'll update when I get the CDs!

Technorati tags
writing, games, Maabus,

Kwai, Afghanistan links

2008-01-22T21:47:00.000-05:00

A couple of quick links.

Front Line
An audio slideshow for CBC.ca with photographs from a forward operating base in Afghanistan by award winning photographer Louie Palu.

Front Line
Photography and audio by Louie Palu
Reporter/editor James Cudmore
Producer Robin Rowland

Cecil Brett

Cecil Brett is one of the key characters in A River Kwai Story. Brett was the intelligence officer who wrote the official analysis and history of the Burma Thailand Railway at the end of the Second World War. Brett was a Canadian intelligence officer assigned to a special allied unit in South East Asia.

From 1963 to his retirement in 1983, Brett was a professor at Monmouth College in Illinois.
Here is a mention of A River Kwai Story from the Monmouth College faculty Pipeline for Jan. 19-25. The page is not archived so here is what it says:

Cecil Brett featured in new book

A former faculty member's pre-Monmouth College experiences are featured in Robin Rowland's new book, "A River Kwai Story: The Sonkrai Tribunal."

Cecil Brett, who taught government and history at Monmouth from 1963 to 1983 and was director of the East Asian Studies program, also did post-World War II intelligence work on the Burma Thailand Railway, which Rowland says is a "significant part" of his book, which will be released in Australia this April.

In a communication to the college, Rowland thanked MC history professor Stacy Cordery for her help in his research.

A River Kwai Story progress report

2007-12-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

A brief pre-Christmas progress report on A River Kwai Story The Sonkrai Tribunal.
I spent the first couple of weeks of December going through what were once called (and perhaps still are in some ways) "the galleys." In the old days the galleys were the proofs were the long sheets of paper taken off long rows of metal ("hot") type. Later the galleys were the proofs that came out of some sort of electronic typesetting system.

These days it is Adobe's Acrobat system that is the standard, the complete book (all 6.5 megabytes) came to me by e-mail as a pdf attachment for that final check.

So it is now off to the printers (although the book won't be officially out until April, this was a good time to fit into the production schedule.

There is growing pre-publication interest in the book, with my agent looking at an offer for Asian English language rights and United Kingdom rights. Now perhaps an North American publisher will be interested as well.

I appeared live on BBC Radio Five this week (live from a CBC studio in Toronto) at 10:30 pm Toronto time, 3:30 am in the UK, for a 20-odd minute interview with Up All Night's host Rhod Sharp where we explored both the historic aspects of A River Kwai Story and the modern implications.

There is, unfortunately, no podcast of the show, and the onsite "aircheck" expired on Dec. 26.

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, Iraq,F Force, Prisoner of War,
military tribunal, law, book

A big cross border camera rip off

2007-12-01T23:04:00.000-05:00

At this moment the Canadian dollar has fallen back even with the United States dollar.
One US greenback may no longer be worth $1.10 Cdn, as it was when a friend of mine was up from New York a couple of weeks ago but it's at PAR. $1=$1.

So how's this for yet another big cross-border rip off.

I really like my new Sony A700 camera. Not so sure about Sony.

And the one additional feature that most A700 users want is the vertical grip, that is just that a vertical grip --but it also has space for two batteries.

The manufacturers list price has been $399.99 in Canada and $349.99 in the US.

It isn't any more.

Sony US is selling the vertical grip through Sonystyle.com at $249 and giving US customers free shipping up until December 31.

Here's the page from the US Sony style site,

but in Canada it is still $399.99 and no free shipping through the Great White North.

Here's the Canadian URL

And just for the record at the moment $1 Cdn = 111.04 Yen, $1 US =111.11 Yen. Not much of a difference is there???

Technorati tags
photography, Sony, Alpha 700, Canadian dollar

Blackwater:civilian contractors were prosecuted after WWII

2007-10-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

Although many legal experts who have been discussing the case of Blackwater USA, the private contractor now being investigated for a shootout in Baghdad, say private contractors are in legal limbo, accountable to neither government nor laws, there is yet another episode from the Second World War in the Far East that is relevant to the modern world.

The guards in the River Kwai prison camps were gonzoku, private contractors employed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Many were tried as war criminals after war, including two of the defendants in A River Kwai Story.

Link to my story for CBCnews.ca

Private military contractors subject to rule of law
Second World War gonzoku provide precedent

One of the main characters in A River Kwai Story is a Korean gonzoku or civilian contractor named Hong Ki-song, also known by his Japanese name Toyoyama Kisei, who was one of the most hated guards on the Burma Thailand Railway, and was notorious for beating prisoners of war with the shaft of a golf club. Toyoyama, who volunteered for the duty, was sentenced to death by a British military court in Singapore. That sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. This mug shot was taken by the U.S. army in Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. (U.S. National Archives)

Technorati tags
writing, journalism, Burma Thailand Railway, World War II, Iraq,F Force, Prisoner of War,
military tribunal, Blackwater, law, book

A River Kwai story picked up by Doubleday Book Club in Australia

2007-10-14T10:06:00.001-04:00

A River Kwai Story has been picked up by the Doubleday Book Clubs in Australia.

Link to Doubleday Book Clubs in Australia.

Photography: Why I stayed with Minolta (now Sony)

2007-09-10T10:13:00.000-04:00

After I posted my CBC blog entry on the new Sony Alpha 700, a couple of friends asked me why I stuck with Minolta when everyone else was working with Canon or Nikon digital single lens reflex cameras.

CBC technology blog post How about a HDTV with that DSLR?

It begins with my first SLR.

When Minolta made the announcement that it was going out of business, I wrote a longer version of my experiences with Minolta in my blog post The End of the Minolta Era.

Here's a slightly updated summary:

My father gave me my first SLR, a Minolta SRT 101 for my 18th birthday many years ago.

That camera took me right across Canada in the summer of 1969 from Montreal to Victoria, across Canada to Halifax and then back to Montreal. I was part of the first Aventure Canadienne, one of Pierre Trudeau's first experiments in bilingual and bicultural exchange, twenty students, half Anglophone, half Francophone going across Canada in two blue minibuses.

I used the SRT 101 in journalism school and on my first job as a reporter/photographer on the Sudbury Star, and then I took it across Europe a year later. I took the SRT 101 with me for the year I worked in London,where it survived being tossed across a room by a crazy landlady.

In the early 1980s, bought the Minolta X700 just before I moved into broadcasting and used that camera for years...mostly landscapes since I wasn't shooting journalism at that time.

For video I used a Sony Hi8 camera to shoot my documentary for CBC's Pacific Rim report on my trip up the River Kwai and later bought a Sony DV camera).

I bought a Minolta Maxxum 4 around 2000 or so and added a Sigma zoom and a Minolta 50mm.

At the time when Canon and Nikon and other camera companies were going big on high end, professional digital, Minolta stood still--one reason they got into to business trouble.

I probably would have switched to Canon except for the fact that in October 2005, Minolta Canada went out of business before the company's other branches which closed down in January 2006.

That meant the retailers here in Canada wanted to dump their Minolta cameras and lenses (they didn't foresee the deal where Sony bought Konica-Minolta digital camera technology and patents)

So I got the 7D for $1000 instead of $2000, got a better mid range zoom and a wide angle and a flash --all at less than half the price it would normally have cost.

It appears that elsewhere around the world no one dumped Minolta lenses at fire sale prices after the Sony deal was announced-- the retailers knew the lenses were good for the upcoming Sony cameras.

So I have now all this equipment and most of it is compatible with the Sonys--and if, from time to time, I want to shoot film, most of the lens and equipment will work with the Maxxum film camera. So I am going to stick with cameras I know, know how to operate and like using.

I didn't have much time last Thursday for the hands on session with the Alpha 700. You will find a review from Doug Brown on the DPreview forum here.

Among the features that stood out for me in the Alpha 700 were:

The presenters were pushing a function key system that means you don't have to stop and look at the menu in midshoot.

Both in the PR book and the presentation Sony said the in camera image stabilization system is made to work with any lens--in other words all the Minolta lenses out there just waiting for a new digital camera.

Some of the "new" features were on the Minolta 7D which I use such as the auto focus/manual focus button.

One feature I found interesting is a white balance bracketing setting, three frames at different WB settings, could come in handy if you are shooting jpg in an unusual lighting situation.

Offers an optional vertical grip with a second battery with automatic switching to the second battery when the first gets low.

Shoots 5 fps -doesn't match the Mark III's 10 fps.(although Brown was told Sony was working on improving this).

Offers something called cRAW which compresses the RAW setting by 30 per cent.
Continuous shooting capacity is 18 frames RAW, 25 frames cRAW and 16 frames extra fine jpg, looks like the continuous mode is optimized for cRaw.

Doug Brown's review also said the Alpha 700 is the only DSLR on the market at the moment that shoots in the 16:9 aspect ratio. That will be a great advantage for me because broadcasters are now shooting mostly 16:9 as part of the transition to high definition and I am already shooting 16:9 assignments using my Lumix FZ50 point and shoot.

Sony Canada news release.

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photography, journalism, Minolta, Sony, Alpha 700,CBC, 16:9,
photojournalism