Mixed about multimedia and technical stuff

This page has been added as an afterthought. Just like with other things, there are things I learn about and would like to tell about. They tend to pop up in different areas which do not really fit the main areas of this web site. I figured that much about it is either multimedia or technical, so this page was created to have a place for them.

Audio quality has had much attention but no web page

If this page had existed when I bought my home video equipment, there would have been a lot about audio quality here. As it is, all of what I investigated, tested and learned then is already passed now. The only thing about music that is "semi-new" is that when I bought a smartphone, I re-discovered radio via internet (tunein). I did actually use internet radio many years before that, but it was not good enough to catch the interest for too long. Same thing with Spotify (which at that time was not portable). With age, my hearing has gone from extremely good to worse than normal. With that, the music does no longer feel as vibrant as it did before.

Quality loss was something I considered a major problem with mp3 players before, when my hearing was better. The positive side of my worsened hearing is that I can enjoy the music also using an MP3 player (an Archos 605 WiFi, which is big enough to also show videos) without noticing too much quality loss, as well as through internet.

Pictures and home video is very interesting

Playing around with pictures is an interest that has accelerated and gotten attention for many years now. I bought a good DV video camera many years ago, a Sony. And then I bought the SONY HDV video camera (Sony HDR-HC1). I own both Pinnacle Studio and Premiere (both was bought together with hardware capture boards, Pinnacles own board, and a Matrox board). I have since then upgraded Premiere and added Photoshop to the list, in fact the whole adobe design suite before Adobe CC came around. These, together with an Olympus My800 digital camera, and lately a Panasonic FT2 waterproof camera, and now an Olympus TG1 give me a lot of opportunities for playing with multimedia in many ways. Also, the very good software HDVSplit helps a lot to get it into the camera (for DV I preferred Scenalyze, wish it supported HD as well). I have recently gotten an interesting update to a program I have been using, movavi video suite (I have it for my mp3 player). It now contains slide show creation, and thus I have added slide shows of trips to the web site (although I ended up using proshow)..

I have sometimes a re-discovery of chess

I used to play chess many years ago when I was young. At that time, even a medium player like me could beat all chess programs. I did not feel I had the time to spend joining a chess club. So learning more on chess got tedious and boring. What was available was books, which is good until you do see possibilities not mentioned. It then becomes very hard to see why those possibilities are possibly flawed ideas.

Recently I discovered that todays chess computers easily beat most players. They are cheap, and they are good at showing their vierw on played games and positions. I found that using them to look at games give a quicker and more pleasant learning than books. Can still not beat a good coach, but for someone like me who only plays occasionally, it is a good help to see what works and why. I have tried some chess programs. The one that I think is "best" is Aquarium, however user interface is sometimes confusing. Chessbase has Houdini (more or less Fritz with Houdini chess engine). That one has an easier user interface, although is lacking some functions I like in Aquarium. I am nowadays leaning towards chessbase program.