Jan 26, 2018

Happy Friday

Happiness is the best habit to cultivate.

Happiness always blooms, especially on a Happy Friday!

Australia Day

On January 26, Australia Day a National Holiday of Australia is celebrated.
Australia Day, celebrated annually on 26 January, is the official national day of Australia, commemorating the establishment of the first British settlement on the continent of Australia. The date is that of the foundation of a British penal colony at Sydney Cove on Port Jackson, New South Wales in 1788, by Captain Arthur Phillip, in his capacity as the first Governor of New South Wales. Australia Day is an official public holiday in all states and territories of Australia, and has also been known as Anniversary Day and Foundation Day.

Thomas Crapper Day

Squeezed in between Australia Day and Auckland Anniversary is Thomas Crapper Day on January 27th. Thomas Crapper Day is a holiday devoted to the man who purportedly invented the flush toilet, although he actually did not.

As with many inventions, the flush toilet did not suddenly spring into existence, but was the result of a long chain of minor improvements. Thomas Crapper's plumbing company built flush toilets of Giblin's design.


He was not the original inventor, but popularized the siphon system for emptying the tank, replacing the earlier floating valve system which was prone to leaks. The similarity between Crapper's name and the much older word 'crap' is merely a coincidence.

Auckland Anniversary

On the Monday closest to January 29 Auckland Anniversary Day is celebrated.
Auckland Anniversary Day is actually the 29th of January, but it is observed on the Monday closest to that date. Auckland Anniversary applies to the Auckland Province which includes Northland, Auckland, Waikato, King Country, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, and Gisborne and East Coast Regions. The date 29 January itself is not the actual day on which Auckland was founded, but the day on which explorer and first governor of New Zealand William Hobson first sighted North Island at the Bay of Islands.

In 1840, Hobson arrived in New Zealand and quickly signed a treaty with the Maori, the Treaty of Waitangi, which led to New Zealand becoming a new British colony. It was on 18 September of 1840 that Hobson founded Auckland and made it the capital city of New Zealand.

Super Bowl and Olympic Cameras

Even though we will not be seeing the Super bowl in 4K in the US, it will be filmed in 4K. The same is true for the Winter Olympics, which will be filmed in 4K and 8K HDR, but will not be shown on cable in 4K in the US, except by Xfinity. Unfortunate that the rest of the world gets to enjoy 4K, while we do not. Seems many countries have more advanced distribution systems than the US. The good news is that regardless of the game play, the Super Bowl commercials are always worth watching.

Olympic feeds will all be distributed in 4K, then locally distributed by country. South Korea will be broadcasting the Winter Olympics in 4K HDR throughout the country. It utilizes the ATSC 3.0 broadcasting that will be tested in the US beginning this Spring. This standard will replace the current antenna (OTA) signals in the US and allow us to receive 4K TV with an antenna.

For the Super Bowl, NBC Sports will deploy 36 cameras with a mix of Canon and Fujinon lenses. Among them will be:
Four Sony HDC-4800’s operating in 4K,
Seven Sony HDC-4300 hard cameras configured for 6X super-slo-mo
One Sony HDC-4300 operating in 4K,
Two Sony HDC-4300 handhelds configured for 6X.
Eight Sony HDC-2500 hard cameras,
Eight Sony HDC-2500 handheld cameras,
Two SkyCams and a few robos.


The four Sony HDC-4800 4K cameras, outfitted with Fujinon PL 85-300mm Cabrio lenses, will be positioned in the left and right end zone and the near-left and far-left sideline. The Sony HDC-4300 4K camera, with a Canon 95X lens, will be positioned in the high-left end zone.

Super Blue, Blood, Snow Moon

We will be able to view a super moon, blue moon, and a total lunar eclipse (blood moon) all on the same night.

The blue moon is the second full moon in a month and the first full moon showed up on January 1. The full moon (blue moon) will occur at 8:37 a.m. ET Jan. 31. It is the first blue moon total lunar eclipse in the US since March 1866.

The lunar eclipse on January 31 will last about 3½ hours from the beginning of the partial phase at 3:48 a.m. PT until it ends at 7:12 a.m. PT, from western North America across the Pacific to eastern Asia. In the United States, the best view of the eclipse will be along the West Coast. For skywatchers in the central and eastern US, only a partial eclipse will be visible.

The full moon will take on a dark, reddish appearance during the eclipse and is described as a blood moon. This full moon was also known as the "snow moon" by some Native American tribes.

A super moon occurs when the full moon is at the closest point of its orbit to the Earth.

Bigger MicroSD

Many are familiar with those little cards in smartphones, and used by many laptop computers. They are called microSD cards. Micro due to physical size and SD means Secure Digital.

Interesting to think that anything called micro could be considered large. However, there is now a microSD card capable of holding over half a terabyte of data. Integral Memory’s new 512 gigabyte card. It should hold about 24 or more hours of 4K video, depending on compression rate.

To give a perspective, 64GB is often the standard for high-end casual users and is capable of holding hundreds to thousands of high-quality photos. However, HD movies take up much more space.


Incidentally, just a few years ago, 32GB card was thought to be all you would ever need for storage. Before that, computers were sufficient at 32k. My how quickly times change.

Sizes Explained

Using the metric system 1,000 bytes would be a k, or kilobyte, but in the computer industry a k is equal to 1024 bytes. That means each of the below metric designations are approximate for computer terminology. Some medical computers currently have storage measured in petabytes. Even as devices have shrunk in size, demand for storage has increased in inverse proportion.


kilo = thousand
mega = million
giga = billion (There are 1,024 GB in 1 TB.)
tera = trillion (There are 1,498 CD discs in 1 TB)
peta = quadrillion (A human brain can store about 2.5 PB of data)
exa =
quintillion (Almost 11 million 4K movies can fit in 1 EB)
zetta =
sextillion (1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424)
yotta =
septillion

Jan 19, 2018

Happy Friday

Tomorrow, as with climate cannot be accurately predicted.

Do not worry about tomorrow, be happy today and celebrate a Happy Friday!