Nugget or Nonsense?

I've just read the following description of how an LCD projector works:

The LCD video projector contains three LCD panels. At the center of the projector is a halogen bulb, which is surrounded by the panels. The panels produce light. As the halogen bulb heats up, the crystals melt and allow more light to pass through. Hence, the intensity of the halogen bulb brings about the difference in the tones. Higher the temperature of the bulb, lighter the tone and vice a versa.

Images travel to the tube present inside the projector from the DVD player or the satellite box. These images in turn bounce on a screen that is coated with phosphor. Every fragment of light hitting the screen is termed pixel. On hitting the screen, the pixel breaks down into its color component that is red, blue or green.

This is from a site which claims to offer information and looks professional enough when you come to it. It's articles are written by many different authors, so it would be unfair to name the site. There's no peer review, though, as on most academic sites, or even Wikipedia. If you know nothing about LCD projectors, it would be easy enough to take this as truth.

However, there's hardly a statement in there that's true. An LCD projector can contain three panels, though it's possible to make one with a single panel and a colour wheel. The panels don't normally surround the halogen bulb and most projectors use metal halide bulbs, because they last much longer than halogen. The panels don't produce any light, but either block or pass light from the bulb. The crystals in an LCD don't melt.The temperature of the bulb has no effect on the lightness of the tone. The images don't bounce on a screen coated with a phosphor - there are no phosphors involved in an LCD projector. The light doesn't break into its colour components when it hits the screen - coloured light is projected directly.

I'm not writing this to try and pull down a fellow writer or to show I know more, but as an example of how it can be problematic to accept information off the Internet when you know nothing about its provenence. You don't know if a particular author is an expert in his/her field or a complete charleton who hasn't a clue about their subject.

So how can you tell if a piece is accurate? If you know something about the topic, you probably have a feel for the veracity of the facts in what you read, but you can also try the journo test; see if you can get corroboration from a second source. And that's not just another site with the same text on it, but similar information written by a different author.

This kind of check can be applied to those emails you get from well meaning friends which contain warnings of new viruses which 'Microsoft says are real and with no known cure'. Google the start of the text of the message and you'll soon find if its a scam message relying on the paranoia of its readers to be transmitted round the Internet.

Technological Regression

As somebody who makes a living by evaluating new technology, you might think I'd be a geek. In some ways, I am. I really enjoy looking at new gadgets, particularly if they embody some advance which makes them more useful than what we had before. There's a flip side to this road roller of advancement, though.

If this post makes me look like a grumpy old man, so be it, but there are several things about technology which were better when 'I were 'tlad' (never was good at accents). Take radios. I had a cheap, run-of-the-mill transistor FM radio, which could run on batteries or connected to the mains. Flick the On switch and there would be Radio 1, or before that Radios Caroline or London. Instantly.

On the 'Media Centre' I now use (I'm talking something the size of a ghetto-blaster, not an iPod) I have to use a remote. I have to wait for the machine to power up from standby and show me a menu on its 7-inch LCD screen. I have to select Radio and then the channel. It may only take 30 seconds or so, but I do this several times a day and its irritating (it's Radio 4 these days, must send for a POTBBC T-shirt).

It's worse with TV. To prove my techno-worth, and more importantly to save cash, I built a Media PC a couple of years back and run it into a digital projector. My TV may only be Standard Definition, but it does have a six-foot diagonal. The picture's good, but turning on the TV is a nightmare.

The PC runs Windows Vista (I'd need a new mainboard to install Windows 7) and takes about 90 seconds to start up and reach the main menu in Windows Media Center. For the next three or four minutes, it then responds to commands (from another remote) with the sensitivity of an elephant wearing earmuffs and boxing gloves. This is because it hasn't finished loading extraneous parts of Windows. Once it's done this, it starts looking around for any updates it can busy itself with. It may take an hour or more downloading these over our 470kbps 'broadband' connection, regularly interrupting viewing with pixellated or missed frames.

I know there are ways round this - add more memory, upgrade to Windows 7, turn off updates - but it seems to me it's another example of things being worse than they used to be. I had a Sony instant-on TV for 20 years which was just that; on as soon as you pressed the power button. There may have only been four channels to watch (material for another blog there), but you didn't miss the first two minutes of a programme if you switched on just as it started.

Then there's my digital camera. Actually, all my digital cameras (ones suppliers haven't picked up after review). All of them use LCD screens for framing shots. All are great indoors and pathetic outdoors, unless it's night or there's a typhoon approaching. The technology isn't there yet to produce an LCD screen which can compete with the brightness of the sun (though AMOLED may get close). So why remove the viewfinder?

This simple mechanism, requiring only a couple of lenses, meant you could instantly frame an image, in whatever light conditions, and see what you were shooting at. Simples, as the meerkats would have it. Instead, we put up with guessing at what we're looking at and hoping we haven't chopped off our loved ones most cherished parts. We are bending to the technology, rather than getting the tech companies to bend to what we want. Same with computerised TV. Same with 'Media' Radio. Why do we let them get away with it?

Why Post Poems?

As a frequent, possibly fervent, twitterer, I'm always interested when I come across other writers, and particularly poets, on the system. I usually follow through to have a look at any poems they've put up, to get a feel for the kind of work they produce.

Putting poems up on the Web is a brave thing to do. It's one thing to show them to friends and relations, another to take them to workshop groups or to read them at open mic sessions and another another to put them up for the world to read. It may also count as publication, which can queer the pitch if you want to submit the poem to a magazine or competition.

Surely, though, if you put a poem up for others to read and open the page for comments, you don't just want compliments. I've read many poems online, where all the comments have been 'excellent', 'brilliant' and similar words of praise. Yesterday, I worked out why this was.

I read a poem from one of the people I follow on twitter; in my opinion it was a fair poem, though there were one or two places where it could have used a little work. Somebody else who had read it obviously felt the same and made a couple of mild, constructive comments. They really were mild, simply asking for more explanation in the poem of a possessive made early on, and suggesting where this reader felt they wanted more. The poet had responded to these comments, summarily dismissing both.

I asked in a comment if only appreciative words were welcome and if so, how we could progress as writers. My comment was marked for moderation for a few hours and then deleted, along with the other reader's comment. All that was left were the 'excellent's and 'brilliant's.

I've been working on my poems in various forums, offering and (importantly) receiving suggestions on work for over 30 years. Some comments you reject as being differences of opinion, others you accept because you can see they could improve what you've written. But if you hope to progress your work, in my opinion it's never good to dismiss them out of hand.

Maybe these Web posts are more showcase than workshop and their authors aren't asking for comments, but they all seem happy enough to leave the positive ones on view.

I haven't put many poems up, though I've tweeted a few haikus and Clerihews, which lend themselves to 140 characters. So here's one. It's been workshopped a couple of times, has had some alterations and is getting there, I think. I'm happy for comments.

Small Fish

Every element a fish, but fodder,

they collect for safety,

dart everywhichway as the sun stripes

the water like a giant frog.

So many shots in the surface

they could be bubbles, berries, rain,

but tiddlers build like a bee-swarm,

like a jackdaw nest, one stick on another.

A whitebait of bodies floods

this volume with fins, tails, mainly eyes,

flicking to snatch a glimpse at predators,

all the river’s teeth.

No stickleback defences,

spines to catch the gullet of a perch,

each minnow body slips down easy:

no fire, no pan, no grill, just fry.