Category: Thoughts

Over the last month we have all become regular video conference participants, of course very much par for the course for me but the rest of the family are now taking part in online quizzes, community meetups and have become experts in the use of tools such as Zoom, Houseparty, and even Microsoft teams !

In this short post I’m not going to cover the etiquette of video calling (Mute when not talking and don’t multitask it’s rude) rather offer some pointers to making you look and sound good or at least a little better on screen.

Sounds Good ?

At the very minimum you should be able to improve the way you sound to other people on the call. A common thread here will be to avoid using the inbuilt microphone/camera on your computer and instead something a littlebetter. In terms of the cheap and usually rather hidden microphone on your computer a better replacement would be the simple headphones you might use for your phone (with a 3.5mm jack plug).

Better would be dedicated headset even one with noise cancelling perhaps, the great advantage here is that the microphone ends up a consistent distance from your mouth.

I am a big fan on Plantronics devices, but there are many available at most price points, of course you do end up looking like an Apollo Flight Director at Mission Control but hey that’s not a bad thing.

Having a good microphone does make a big difference to the quality of your interaction of course even if you don’t use video so it is worth making the effort here – if you really want great results then a condenser microphone which produces the warm sound of talk radio is the ultimate upgrade. With a condenser microphone such as the Blue Snowball below make sure you put the microphone into cardioid mode which will pick up sound from directly in front of the microphone only.

Most video conferencing systems can cope with the duplex problem of broadcasting what you are hearing and thus creating a nasty feedback issue, however I think it’s always best if you can and especially if you are alone to use a headset/headphones for listening to the call.

Camera – it’s all about the glass

So goes the photographers mantra, it is all about the glass, e.g. the quality of your camera lens. Once again your very expense laptop probably has a cheap inbuilt camera prone to poor low-light performance, motion blur, and noise artifacts – otherwise known as looking rubbish.

The obvious step is to use an external webcam, such as the popular Logitech 920 but these have become very hard to find recently with the unprecedented growth of home working.

There are of course many other webcams from various OEM’s but there is a very good alternative already in your pocket..

Use your phone for video conferences

Your relatively expense smartphone actually has quite a high quality front facing camera for taking all those selfies and combined with computational photography techniques produces excellent results when used as a video conference camera.

Most of the popular video conference systems have a phone app for both iOS and Android and allow you to connect using the same links you would use on your computer. Indeed in most cases you can login on your phone for video/audio calls and at the same time your laptop to follow along with slides etc..

Key to success here is positioning your phone, you don’t want to be holding your phone for any extended period of time and of course want to avoid the “up the nose” camera angle if you can avoid it. The solution is to use a small desktop tripod such as the Gorillapod or Manfrotto mini tripod with phone clamp.

Note : most consumer video conference tools don’t support true HD so it maynot be worth trying to gone beyond 720p 30fps if you have the choice !

Try to position your camera at eye level, so with my example above I would aim to put the tripod on some books perhaps to raise the camera or course a webcam on top of your monitor is perfect but remember to look into it, for other on the calls you donlt want to appear distracted looking at something more interesting (unless of course you are commenting on the quality of the proceedings so far!)

And finally lights !

If you have ever visited a Film set or TV studio you will know the importance of lighting, so even in your home office or bedroom adjusting lighting can make a huge difference to how you look on screen.

Most importantly try to avoid backlighting, your camera will try to adjust exposure as much as possible but if you are in front of a window you will always appear dark almost in silhouette as the bright light coming in from the window dominates. So if possible move the camera so the light is behind it.

If you are using artificial lights the same rules apply, move a table lamp or use the bright screen of your laptop to try and light your face. Ideally you want to have multiple lights to provide both key and fill lights to prevent shadows forming on your face. I use some LED spotlights from Ikea above my monitor to achieve this and the results are quite good.

Here are some examples of the difference lighting makes..

So now when the BBC or CNN skype you for your comments on something or another, and yes they are getting that desperate, you may look as good or better than the host !

Does not quite have the same significance as 31 December 1999, but I’m sure someone in the mainstream press will soon draw the parallels with Y2K with stories of Airliners getting lost or Trading systems failing due to timing errors, April 6th 2019 is the date when GPS systems reset !

Actually for the second time the week code broadcast as part of the GPS signal is resetting back to zero.

The GPS system uses 10 bits to store the GPS Week Numbers starting from 6th January 1980, so every 1,024 weeks (approximately every 20 years), the GPS Week Number rolls over from Week 1,023 to Week 0, this is known as a GPS Week Number Rollover. This has already occured on August 21, 1999 but that was before the explosion in the use of GPS is smartphones, drones, buses etc.

There are efforts happening across industry to make sure that disruption is minimised, but there may be issues with older GPS receivers and smartphones .

With modern connected devices firmware updates can be applied without to much effort, I remember because I’m had one Garmin and Magellan sending out RS-232 cables and CD-ROMS to update their receivers in 1999 !

In summary look out for firmware updates and “Don’t Panic !”

LHR – JFK don’t those six letters cause some excitement to even the most seasoned traveller, there is still just a little romance left in air travel.

Romance here is the “feeling of mystery, excitement and remoteness from everyday life” as opposed to love !

For me part of the romance comes from the Airport codes themselves, those three letter IATA codes are a shortcuts to destinations known and imagined and each have a personal resonance. Many of the codes also have an antecedence that  provide a fascinating window into the early days of air travel.

LHR London HeathRow is both the starting point of most of my travels but also a link back to a childhood spent on the roof of the Queens Building watching British Airways Tridents, VC-10’s and 747 classics departing to destinations I never expected to visit in my lifetime.

Of those childhood destinations and even today New York’s JFK the airport named after president John F. Kennedy was always a destination that sparked my imagination, the destination of those Pan Am Clipper 747s and of course Concorde it was just such a  glamorous destination.  The name of course was the product of tragic history,  the original name of the airport, Idlewild also sounds wonderful but was named after a local Golf Course.

New York’s second international airport, New Jerseys’ Newark has the very functional code of EWR – NEWaRk.

LCY or to those who use if often Lucy

As an alternative to the giant that is Heathrow,  Londons CitY Airport, LCY provides a wonderful contrast harking back to the golden days of air travel when every flight began with that exciting trip up a set of stairs to the aircraft door, Jet-Bridges are just not the same.

LCY is loved by many  is often just called Lucy as a mark of familiarity.

London’s GatWick LGW, Paris Charles De Gaul CDG and of course HELsinki’s HEL are obvious in they derivation, but why is Chicago’s mega airport ORD and Los Angeles LAX ?

The use of Airport codes was originally introduced in the United States for Meteorological reporting  with airports making use of the existing two character city codes developed by the National Weather Service, Los Angeles was LA for example.
It was clear that this system was not going to work with the massive increase in Air Travel after the Second World War so in 1947 a three letter code system was introduced and to pad the existing codes a letter X was often introduced so Los Angeles became LAX, and PortlanD PDX .

A similar approach was taken in Canada where the two letter codes used by Canadian Railways were given a Y prefix so VancouveR’s code VR became YVR, and  QueBec’s code QB YQB.

Most interesting of course are the codes which don’t seem to make sense,  DCA Washington’s District of Columbia Airport  is perhaps not obvious but makes sense but why is the larger international airport in Washington IAD ?  Originally the Dulles International Airport DIA was too similar to DCA so it was simply reversed DIA becoming IAD !

Other codes which don’t seem to make sense are often the result of name changes as Airports have grown or cities have themselves changed name, so CMH the airport serving Columbus Ohio was once just the Columbus Municipal Hanger and of course Mumbai was a city once called BOMbay.

My personal favourite is Chicago’s ORD, very few peoples top airport, we might not feel so negative if it had retained it’s original name ORcharD Field !