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sf_foundation is now up and running for anyone who is a member of, or interested in, the Science Fiction Foundation.Aug. 4th, 2008
sf_foundation is now up and running for anyone who is a member of, or interested in, the Science Fiction Foundation.
Blog Alert: Digital Curation Blog
Aug. 4th, 2008 01:00 pmDoes your work (or hobby) involve archiving data, or looking at information that other people have archived? If so, you may be interested in the Digital Curation Blog, run by some people I know at Edinburgh University. Their latest post has some interesting snippets from a workshop on digital archiving, including this thought-provoking comment on storage formats:
...a half percent error rate in a BMP file shows a smattering of black pixels, whereas in a GIF file there were serious artefacts and visible damage introduced. Same error rate on a WAV file produces a barely audible rustle effect, while on a MP3 files sound is seriously distorted/. Same error rate on a DOC or PDF file, and you get “File damaged, cannot open”. Be very afraid!
Having done error-correction theory in my MSc (which included some painfully weird binary mathematics, some of which I understood for just long enough to pass the exam) it occurs to me that the overhead of adding error-correction coding to highly-compressed storage formats would be far less than the storage space saved my moving to them. An MP3 file is around a ten times smaller than the WAV file it is created from, so even going from 8 bits to 8+3 bits would still give a compression of seven times, with much improved resistance to bit errors. Anyone know anything about the use of ECC in highly-compressed lossy file formats?
...a half percent error rate in a BMP file shows a smattering of black pixels, whereas in a GIF file there were serious artefacts and visible damage introduced. Same error rate on a WAV file produces a barely audible rustle effect, while on a MP3 files sound is seriously distorted/. Same error rate on a DOC or PDF file, and you get “File damaged, cannot open”. Be very afraid!
Having done error-correction theory in my MSc (which included some painfully weird binary mathematics, some of which I understood for just long enough to pass the exam) it occurs to me that the overhead of adding error-correction coding to highly-compressed storage formats would be far less than the storage space saved my moving to them. An MP3 file is around a ten times smaller than the WAV file it is created from, so even going from 8 bits to 8+3 bits would still give a compression of seven times, with much improved resistance to bit errors. Anyone know anything about the use of ECC in highly-compressed lossy file formats?
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
Aug. 4th, 2008 11:17 pmI'd not seen Blade Runner in years when I picked up the two-disc edition of the (for now) definitive version. Of course, I've read plenty enough about the film's protracted and complex history, so watching TFC was a little odd, with it feeling like I was intimately familiar with a film I'd last seen in a different version a dozen years ago.
TFC is certainly a very good version of Blade Runner. At the most mundane level, it has cleaned-up special effects, better video quality, and good sound. More importantly, it loses the tacked-on happy ending (undoubtedly an improvement) and Harrison Ford's voice-overs (opinion is more mixed on this). It also has a host of more minor but nonetheless significant changes, such as several continuity fixes and scenes that are either new to this cut or changed in emphasis. This version certainly leans much more towards the interpretation that Deckard is himself a replicant, not so much through the unicorn scene, but via numerous hints from Gaff, whose role vis-a-vis Deckard seems not so much colleague or superior as that of handler to a particularly autonomous dog. (By fixing one continuity error though, it is made evident that Deckard is not himself one of the escaped Nexus 6 replicants; he is presumably a separate model kept to hunt down his kin.)
Just as interesting as the recut film itself is the documentary on the second disc. I'm usually unimpressed with 'making of' supplementary materials, but in this instance the issuers have excelled themselves. Dangerous Days comprises three hours of recent interviews, documentary footage and unused sequences, with contributions from just about everyone still alive who appeared in Blade Runner or had anything to do with it. More impressively, it is refreshingly unsanitised, being quite frank about the creative differences that bedevilled the film during production. Harrison Ford comes across as not having enjoyed the production much but being grateful for having been involved, whilst Rutger Hauer clearly thinks it was the best thing he ever did. Daryl Hannah is evidently a lot smarter than some of her roles would have you believe, but for Sean Young one wonders if the reverse is true. And it's fascinating to see how much Edward James Olmos immersed himself in his role as Gaff, apparently putting in extensive language study to come up with the character's distinctive 'Cityspeak'.
Verdict: given that this set seems to be available for £5, it would be superb value for the revised film or the documentary alone. For both, it's an incredible deal.
TFC is certainly a very good version of Blade Runner. At the most mundane level, it has cleaned-up special effects, better video quality, and good sound. More importantly, it loses the tacked-on happy ending (undoubtedly an improvement) and Harrison Ford's voice-overs (opinion is more mixed on this). It also has a host of more minor but nonetheless significant changes, such as several continuity fixes and scenes that are either new to this cut or changed in emphasis. This version certainly leans much more towards the interpretation that Deckard is himself a replicant, not so much through the unicorn scene, but via numerous hints from Gaff, whose role vis-a-vis Deckard seems not so much colleague or superior as that of handler to a particularly autonomous dog. (By fixing one continuity error though, it is made evident that Deckard is not himself one of the escaped Nexus 6 replicants; he is presumably a separate model kept to hunt down his kin.)
Just as interesting as the recut film itself is the documentary on the second disc. I'm usually unimpressed with 'making of' supplementary materials, but in this instance the issuers have excelled themselves. Dangerous Days comprises three hours of recent interviews, documentary footage and unused sequences, with contributions from just about everyone still alive who appeared in Blade Runner or had anything to do with it. More impressively, it is refreshingly unsanitised, being quite frank about the creative differences that bedevilled the film during production. Harrison Ford comes across as not having enjoyed the production much but being grateful for having been involved, whilst Rutger Hauer clearly thinks it was the best thing he ever did. Daryl Hannah is evidently a lot smarter than some of her roles would have you believe, but for Sean Young one wonders if the reverse is true. And it's fascinating to see how much Edward James Olmos immersed himself in his role as Gaff, apparently putting in extensive language study to come up with the character's distinctive 'Cityspeak'.
Verdict: given that this set seems to be available for £5, it would be superb value for the revised film or the documentary alone. For both, it's an incredible deal.