First and foremost I survived the Blog Familia Mafia Post.  Weird I would post about that and then drop off the face of the planet.  No there was no funny business unless you count taking time off from blogging, heheh.

This blog post has a little bit of everything. Strap in for the ride.

Contact Juggling Day 2015

Sunday 10/11/15, was Contact Juggling Day 2015.  This is the 5th year of this awesome day.  Contact Juggling Day is held the second Sunday of October.  Shockingly, I did a bit of CJ on that day and filmed it.  Next year in 2016 I will be doing some type of ‘event’ for the day.  I hope to make an announcement in an upcoming blog, stay tuned.

In my CJ Day video I did Vertical Spinning this year.  That led me to think about previous years and how I started on the vertical path.  It all started from upside down spinning.  Recently I figured out the best reason to learn upside down and I discussed it  over at the Flow of the Round(FlotR) Facebook Group.

So, Why should you spin upside down?

The answer, besides the obvious that it is great for your hands, is that it is great for massages.  After a long day training, it is really nice to have your muscles massaged by upside down spinning spheres.  Just remember that you should NOT go over the spine, ever, JOLT.

Technology Time – iPad Pro is it really Professional?

I have an iPad 2 and I have logged more hours on it than any other ‘computer’ I have ever owned.  Even the game systems I have owned have seen less time.  Why?  Because it does so much stuff and does it so well.  If you had told me 20 years ago that a $0.99 app(they were called programs at the time) from Moog(price was a deal they had when it first came out and it was a STEAL) that would allow me to have a Moog anywhere I go, I would have LAUGHED AT YOU.  Now I have that and about 100 other apps that make my jaw drop all the time.  Slow down a solo or have a text talk to you in a British accent, not to mention having a full audio and video production suite in your hands, pretty AMAZINGLY AWESOME!!!

So why knock the iPad Pro?

It has a really fast processor and a really big screen.  Doesn’t that make it a Pro model?  Well maybe for some that does.  For me unfortunately those things do not make it a PRO model.  I needed answers about Professional things I would use it for.  So,  I went straight to the source to ask some ‘real’ professional question.

Hey Apple Rep does it support ProRes(which is Apple’s Pro Video format)?

The answer from the apple rep ‘NO it does not’.

Does it support external drives?

Again the answer is ‘NO it does not’.

I stopped after 2 questions as I was concerned what else they might say.

So while the iPad is Pro sized and Pro priced and has a Pro speed.  It lacks what I need to use it in a Pro setting.

So what does a Pro Photographer do?  You dump images to a drive and then edit them and then print out to the printer.  You could dump the images to the iPad Pro.  You would probably run out of room before you run out of photo shoot data.  Good luck getting a pro printer to print off the iPad Pro easily.  Meaning the iPad doesn’t handle a Pro workflow for images.

Lets talk about video then,  if it can’t do ProRes Video then it is pointless to talk video(that was fast).  Sure I have the editing programs and I could load up my ‘Transcoded’ footage and ‘play’ with it.  I just would see this workflow as a detour.  Great for novelty purposes but I will tell you that transcoding is a PAIN IN THE BUTT and very TIME CONSUMING.  Both are things that professionals pay money to avoid.  Love the iPad don’t think they can put the PRO after it until it can do more than just ‘apps’.  Give me a Thunderbolt connector and full programs like Final Cut and Lightroom then we might be able to talk.

I might have missed something about the iPad Pro that someone else has found so please let me know your thoughts and ideas for making the iPad Pro a truly Professional Tool. 

Speaking of Pro’s they like to save time, money, and making the process more streamlined.  CFast 2.0 the newest darling of the Digital Film Revolution is also the most expensive one as well.

Then Along came C-Box Systems

CFast 2.0 is the newest standard to come out for portable digital film camera storage.  Think of it like SD Cards on Crack.  One 256GB CFast 2.0 card at B & H is a mere $660.00.  How reasonable(sarcasm drips from these words).  The normal memory paradigm is they all start expensive then with volume they will come down.  SD Cards were once more expensive then this.  So what is the big deal?  Just wait the price will drop.  The big deal is that it probably will not drop anytime soon.  Unlike SD cards the CFast 2.0 cards are not used in many things.  The real kick in the pants to CFast 2.0 cards is that SSD’s(Solid State Drives) with equal or better specifications are much cheaper.  1TB (That’s 4 times the storage) is $450.00 for a Professional Sandisk drive.  So if someone could make a CFast connection to SSD then that would be awesome.

Well a company did and I have a feeling someone else will copy this idea.  C-Box Systems did a Kickstarter and raised enough money to make this a reality.  You can order one now and if you have a camera that uses CFast 2.0 then you will save money immediately.  2 1tb drives and the C-Box System cost about the same as Two 256gb CFast 2.0 cards, WOW!!!

Now I just need to get one of them Fancy Pants Cameras to use with this solution.  Any Fancy Pants Camera will do I am not picky, heheh.

Don’t forget to celebrate BACK TO THE FUTURE DAY!!!!!

And now for the important thing SHOES!!!!!!

This week is all about the Stiletto Heel.  I like the fact that a shoe is named after a weapon.  I am sure more than one stiletto heel has been used as a weapon.

They need to outlaw this shoe, JUST KIDDING!!!!  This shoe is amazing in so many ways.  I will need to revisit this shoe with a gallery of people wearing them in style in a future blog post.  So please send in your photo’s of you in them and I will keep an eye out.

So I ask you my reader

Do you attend or participate in any yearly events and if so which ones?  Have you attended a once in a lifetime event?

What electronic devices can you not live without in this modern age?

Have you ever worn Stiletto heels and did you like them?(I would love to hear from Men as well as Women on this one).  Don’t forget to send in your images!!!

Thanks for reading my post.  Don’t forget to share it with your Friends and Frenemies.

Also check out my YouTube Channel, Twitter and Instagram for what I have been doing during the week. Oh and if we really must be friends for some reason I have FB and G+, #heheh.

Be Awesome, Make Awesome, Watch Awesome, You Are Awesome. Find that inner SuperHero and Fly with it (or whatever your Super Power is).

Rich Shumaker

The iPod not only destroyed the Walkman it also destroyed the established record companies distribution methods.

Who sells the most digital music? Is it a record company, nope, it is a company that sold computers and electronics before they got into digital music distribution, Apple Corp. They had another big boom that people laughed at before it came out called the iPhone, now App’s are not just for dinner at a restaurant. Since the Rise of the APP, software developers don’t charge nearly as much as they did.  I bought software that is free now for over $100 before App’s existed.  Oh how the economies of scale have re-balanced things.

Being a person on the bleeding cutting edge I have always enjoyed these shake up’s and enjoyed Disruptive and Destructive Technologies.

Google Fiber is my favorite new disruptive technology.

Broadband killed the ISP(Internet Service Provider). Now Google Fiber is making broadband shake and quake. I don’t live near where it exists but anywhere it does all the broadband companies need to adapt and compete or go away. Google Fiber gives you one gigabit per second uploads and downloads for $79.  If I paid on the same scale my internet would cost either .80 or $8.00 as they split the upload and download speeds unlike Google Fiber.

The way they sell broadband to the masses is a lot of Puffery. They have ads that say you get UP TO 10mbs speed as an example.

It is puffery because they can’t prove what you get as they don’t measure these ‘speeds’. If you have an issue YOU have to go and measure YOUR SPEED with a speed test.  If your speed test proves your connection is bad, then they say your equipment is the issue.  Or the method you used for testing is the problem. What is funny is that they don’t measure how fast you fill the glass they just measure how full the glass is.  So they measure your total usage of the broadband and if you fill your glass too full they cut you off.  They bury this usage cut off deep in the fine print and don’t make you aware of it.  Maybe if you knew how much you could have you might notice just how slow you are getting it.  It is like trying to fill a pint glass with an eyedropper.

DEMAND GOOGLE FIBER SPEED AND WATCH YOUR PROVIDER STUTTER.

The Raspberry Pi was disruptive technology as NO ONE thought a $25 computer was possible.

Now someone is building CHIP the $9 computer and they have LESS THAN 12 HOURS till the Kickstarter is done. The Raspberry Pi also now has a $20 model and even Intel is getting in on the action with the Edison $55 computer. Yeah the Intel Edison is a lot more money than the CHIP but just a single Intel CPU before the Raspberry Pi existed was over $100.  Oh and Intel had no desire to build a whole computer for any $$$$ at that time.

The DVD Killed the Videotape.

The Blu Ray didn’t budge the DVD as the DVD was good enough.

No one has made a 4K UHD Physical Distribution Format as it will be all digital. It is cheaper, easier, faster, and better for companies to go digital for distribution. Is it better for you? Can you sell your digital stuff yet? I hear an industry being born as I type “The Selling Digital Stuff Industry”. If you own it that is part of ownership, transferring that ownership.  I don’t technically own it if I can’t SELL IT.   I am just renting it.  I wonder how they have handled people’s Wills with Digital Media.

One of my favorite technologies are Cameras. 2 different products have radically changed the industry over the past 10 years.

The first is from a company that did not focus on the camera but on how you use it and what you experience with the camera strapped on. They never said “Hey we have a Great Camera” to point and click pictures of your family. They said STRAP IT ON and ENJOY YOUR RIDE. It is the GoPro.

GoPro sold more than Sony during Christmas at Best Buy, first time Sony didn’t win. How did GoPro do that? They focused on what people needed not on the spec sheet and what they thought people needed. They knew people wanted a camera to wear when doing dangerous things. So they built that.  They didn’t even have a way for people to see what pictures they were taking.  And guess what, people bought them, I did(I actually own 2). Most GoPro fans own more than one. Why? They do what you need. Once GoPro created their product the other companies saw their success and jumped on the bandwagon.  The newest GoPro product is pretty amazing as they now integrate the LCD in the tiny package.

The other company that focused on jumping forward and not crawling incrementally forward was RED Digital Cinema.

If we had let Camera Companies do what they were doing we may never have gotten 4K. RED pushed the whole industry and the industry had to play catch up. RED Digital is just about to release an 8K camera. Oh and did I mention you can BUY a RED Digital Camera.  When RED started professional cinema cameras were not purchased in fact call ARRI or Panavision and ask if you can buy one of their cameras, they will probably laugh at you.

Turning an industry on edge shakes it up and makes everyone think different.

Leader Lead, Followers Follow. Having a new idea is hard and copying an idea is easy.

I don’t think the artist that is using Instagram Pictures for his Art Show is right. He didn’t take the picture(the hard part). He copied them and added words(the easy part). I consider his art show to be theft and a followers method of doing things. That’s Art though as everyone has their own opinions. From a legal point of view he is ‘allowed‘ to do it. That doesn’t make it right and doesn’t make him anything more than a cheap imitation follower, charging $100k per image. There is a long list of ‘Artists‘ that didn’t make the art they just sold it. That doesn’t make you a true artist in my opinion. Oh and if you create a Genre of Art you don’t ‘own it in your basement‘. You are considered a founder and you inspired what comes next you didn’t create it.

What is funny about Disruptive and Destructive technologies is that the core tends to repeat.

My first real disruptive technology was the Digi-View Personal Digitizer. It took images and put them on my Amiga computer.

Not really revolutionary now but it was at the time. It was low cost and high quality(for the time). That Red Green Blue Clear Color wheel concept was actually an older idea from a Russian Photographer who took Black and White Images and made them color. And since technology repeats itself. You will see that same RGB Color wheel on all the Single Chip DLP Projectors  So if you see DLP on a projector most likely it uses a color wheel to change Black and White to color.  It does that by spinning Red then Green then Blue then Clear in front of a Greyscale image.

Disruptive and Destructive Technology can also cause problems.

If you have had a child in the last 20 years you probably bought them Velcro Shoes.

What’s wrong with that? We now have a generation that can barely tie their shoes. If you don’t learn a simple bow knot how do you expect them to learn harder more complicated knots? Also that eye hand dexterity then translates to other things. Without learning it you could be at a serious disadvantage moving forward.

When computers originally came out they said ‘We will have More Jobs because of computers’

AND NOW FOR SHOES!!!

Yes this weeks shoe is the VELCRO SNEAKER

Not nearly as Fancy Pants as my previous shoes and that is the point.  Not all shoes are super fancy and you need to know that. Without these shoes I don’t think my Mom who has Rheumatoid Arthritis would be able to wear shoes.  You see her hands are a bit kinked because of the disease and she has had all of the joints in her hand replaced with plastic.  It is one of the reasons that I won’t stop spinning spheres to hopefully avoid this fate with my hands.

LOVE YOU MOM and your hands will always inspire me, #heheh.

So I ask you my reader

What Destructive Technology do you use every day? What did it destroy?

What did you learn that the next generation just didn’t need to learn?

Do you think the Machines will take over or have they already?

Thanks for reading my post.  Don’t forget to share it with your Friends and Frenemies.

Also check out my YouTube Channel, Twitter and Instagram for what I have been doing during the week. Oh and if we really must be friends for some reason I have FB and G+, #heheh.

Be Awesome, Make Awesome, Watch Awesome, You Are Awesome. Find that inner SuperHero and Fly with it (or whatever your Super Power is).

Rich Shumaker