TechDistortion

The MOD Tracker Scene

Many, many years ago when Fraunhofer IIS were busily refining the mp3 audio standard (late 90s), there came a brief and geek-popular music format known as the MOD-file. The concept was simple: sequence a series of very small sound bytes, stored as raw WAV (Wave) format and bundle them as a single, small file with a “track” that would play each sound at the given speed, pitch and duration. The idea started on the Amiga in the late 80s with CDs coming into existence and CD-ROMs able to dump what were then “huge” audio files (40Mb per song) onto small hard-drives, MOD files were a great way of making PC music that sounded great but took up little space and could be more easily swapped on the internet over 28.8k Dial-up Modems. They were also a far more compact method of adding musical scores into computer games of the time. I personally didn’t own an Amiga so I used either ScreamTracker or FastTracker 2 and when I started using Windows 3.11 it was the awesome Mod4Win.

Usually musicians that were composing for video games would come to “parties” where for 2-3 days they would just code/compose with an endless supply of caffeine and pizza. It must have been an incredible experience (says the inner-geek in me) but I never attended one personally. Due to their file size though I became interested in the format and working my way through the charts a song at a time I fell in love with several MODs, including one called Space Debris. ((For those paying attention Defloration was another popular MOD file that was used as the Intro/Outro music for my first podcast with Clinton Phillips called Exastential.))

The song itself was composed at the Anarchy Easter Party from the 29th to the 31st of March, 1991 (Note that the Wikipedia Entry mentions the 1990 Horizon Party - this is incorrect). Marcus “Captain” Kaarlonen composed Space Debris (at the time he was there with the Image (IMG) team) which was a MOD Tracker song that would rise to the top of the MOD Charts in coming months and years (even 23 years later it’s listed at number 17 overall most downloaded). There were several repositories each keeping their own “charts” but only the Mod Archive remains today.

The SpaceDeb.MOD file can be found here and Mod4Win is still available here and runs mostly okay on a Windows XP VM. I found the ScreamTracker video of it playing on YouTube and a screen shot on my VM.

In more recent years I converted my favourite MODs into mp3 format and thought nothing more of it. It was a freely distributed song back in the day and thought briefly of attributing the file to Captain/Image (Refer Track 11 in the track list of the MOD file) but when we were putting the songs together for Pragmatic I had no idea that several sites now had the original composers details. Then I received several requests for the details of the Outro song and I stumbled upon the details I had wondered about from many years ago (see above embedded links).

However that isn’t the end of the story for this particular song. The composer is now a member of a musical group called Poets Of The Fall and they recently (2011) did the score for a cross-platform game called Rochard. “Captain” decided to update his old tune from two decades prior but with modern instruments and the result is spectacular! Unfortunately with the POTF website digital store doesn’t stock downloadable music so the only place I can find the music for sale is bundled with the game through the Steam store. Space Debris the Remix is Track number 9.

I attempted to contact Markus however for whatever reason did not receive much of a response. At this time Pragmatic continues to use the MOD Tracker version of Space Debris as the Outro music except that now I know the man who wrote it, and if you like his music then you should look into his other work.

Joe Steel Writes A Screenplay

Title: Joe Steel Writes A Screenplay Credit: written by Author: John Chidgey Copyright: (c) 2014 TechDistortion

EXT. JOES RESIDENCE - NIGHT

The wind blows gently in the background. Waves can be heard breaking on a nearby beach. The moonlight casts peaceful moving shadows of palm trees in the front yard.

CUT TO:

INT. JOES HOME OFFICE

Wearing his well worn “Hooray for Sarcasm” T-Shirt Joe is hunched over his keyboard typing.

JOESTEEL (muttering) ‘…Tell Marco, that I love him…’

JOESTEEL (aloud and shaking head) No. That’s too obvious. Make it ‘Erin’ instead.

Three loud consecutive knocks at the front door. Joe jerks his head up, shakes his head subtly and then stands.

JOESTEEL (muttering) At this hour? Really?

Walks to the front door with quizzical expression and an heir of impatience. Opens door.

CUT TO:

EXT. VIEW OF PORCH The backs of three men wearing identical black suits. Moonlight illuminates Joes face as the door opens.

JOESTEEL Yes?

FIRSTMAN (emotionless voice) We’re looking for Joseph Rosensteel.

JOESTEEL Yeah? Who’s asking?

CUT TO:

INT. VIEW OUT FRONT DOOR The three hart-less men are wearing sunglasses at night.

FIRSTMAN We represent Apple Incorporated. May we come inside?

JOESTEEL (forcefully) The porch will be just fine.

The first man unbuttons and pulls back his jacket revealing a large scroll of paper in an inside pocket.

FIRSTMAN We’re not here to hurt you Mr Rosensteel and we have something you need to see. Urgently.

Joe glances behind to the left at his Samurai Sword hanging on the wall above the dining room table.

JOESTEEL (Steps back to allow them in) Fine. You have two minutes. And don’t try anything.

CUT TO:

INT. DINING ROOM

Joe and the Firstman are seated opposite each other. The other two men are standing behind where the first is seated. A large scroll with a wooden core tied with a white ribbon with the Apple logo emblazoned on it sits on the table between the two seated men.

FIRSTMAN We’ve been keeping an eye on you for some time…Mr Rosensteel. It seems you have been living two lives. In the first life you’re a visual effects artist. You work regular hours, earn a wage and your neighbours…like you.

Joe squirms slightly in his seat.

FIRSTMAN The second life is lived in computers…where you go by the alias ‘JoeSteel’ and it is for your activities in this capacity that we are brought here this evening.

JOESTEEL (Raises left eyebrow) Okay. I’m sorry but I’m just not getting this. Have I done something?

FIRSTMAN (impatient tone) What you see in front of you is a petition…tabled by iTunes users and Podcasters from around the world. It calls for you to cease and desist your online activities immediately.

JOESTEEL (nervous laugh) What activities? Exactly?

FIRSTMAN Your ‘Terrible Podcast Screenplays’ have become…shall we say…a problem.

JOESTEEL (scrunches lips) Everybody loves them. What’s the problem?

FIRSTMAN iTunes is a system…Mr Rosensteel. That system…relies on consistency. You have created an inconsistency. An imbalance in the system. You’re going to stop writing those reviews; whether you like it…or not.

JOESTEEL (shaking head) Why do so many people want me to stop?

Joe opens the scroll and begins to read through the list.

JOESTEEL What the heck is the ‘Totally Forgettable Podcast?’ Who are all these people?

FIRSTMAN By writing such exceptional reviews you have inadvertently created an imbalance in the system. Any podcast that you haven’t written such a review for is now suffering as a result. Less listeners…less advertisers…more people aren’t being listened to…and it comes back…to…you.

FIRSTMAN (removes sunglasses dramatically) We are here representing…those people.

JOESTEEL (recognises who FIRSTMAN is) Eddy Cue?

FIRSTMAN Agent Cue Mr Rosensteel.

Firstman (Eddy Cue) stands and glowers at Joesteel.

JOESTEEL (swallows but is still sitting) I have the right to free speech. I can write what I want, where and how I want. I don’t care what these people say or what YOU say.

JOESTEEL (stands quickly and knocks his chair backwards) You’re leaving my house now and I’m getting back to typing my latest review. Good night.

Joe gestures towards the door.

FIRSTMAN (confidently) Tell me Mr Rosensteel how do you expect to type a review if you have no fingers with which…to type?

JOESTEEL (confused look) What?

Joe looks down at his hands. His fingers are slowly merging together into in rounded blobs with only his thumbs still defined. He lurches backwards and bumps the wall making the sword fall near his feet. The three men in suits draw glock pistols from their holsters as Joe extracts the Sword from its Saya. Gripping the sword clumsily with his abnormal hands Joe faces the men.

JOESTEEL (yelling) What did you do to me? WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY HANDS??

SECONDMAN He will not comply willingly.

THIRDMAN We must escalate the issue.

EDDYCUE You are part of a system Mr Rosensteel. Our system. You are under our control. Your reviews are our reviews. We can remove them just as we can remove you.

Eddy fires his weapon at Joe and the bullet hits him squarely in his chest adjacent to his heart. Joe staggers backwards briefly but is still standing. Blood does not appear. There is no visible wound.

JOESTEEL (looks down at his chest) This isn’t real.

JOESTEEL (rubs hand over spot where the bullet visually entered his chest) You’re not real…and you can’t hurt me!

The three men each fire their weapons at Joe. He swings the sword and cuts each bullet in two with swings so fast they can barely be seen. Time appears to slow down as bullet after bullet is decimated by Joes swordmanship.

JOESTEEL (panting but smiling) You’re all empty.

EDDYCUE So are you.

JOESTEEL (matter of factly) No I’m not. It’s a sword! It doesn’t run out of ammunition. Okay?

CUT TO:

INT. JOES HOME OFFICE

Joe is sitting with his face laying on the table in front of his keyboard as The Matrix: Revolutions closing credits are scrolling past on the screen. Joe wakes up and draws a sharp breath.

JOESTEEL (rubbing eyes) I always fall asleep during the third one…I should finish that review I was working on.

JOESTEEL (mumbling groggily) ‘…Tell Erin, that I love her…’

Three loud consecutive knocks at the front door. Joe jerks his head up, shakes his head subtly and then stands.

JOESTEEL (muttering as he stands and staggers towards the door half-awake) Didn’t we already do this?

Walks to the front door with quizzical expression and an heir of impatience. Opens door.

CUT TO:

EXT. VIEW OF PORCH The back of one man wearing a black suit. Moonlight illuminates Joes face as the door opens.

JOESTEEL Yes?

STRANGER (excitedly) Hi you don’t actually know me but I’m a big fan of your reviews.

JOESTEEL Oh…gee…well thanks. Um, one question though. Why are you here this late at night? For that matter how did you find me?

STRANGER Oh that’s easy. I’m not really here. This isn’t really happening. This is one of your scripts you’re just not sure how to finish. Any second now…you’re going to wake up with the answer.

CUT TO:

INT. JOES HOME OFFICE

Joe is sitting with his face laying on the table in front of his keyboard looking at a screen of text. Joe wakes up.

JOESTEEL (rubbing eyes) I must have dozed off…I should finish that review I was working on.

Three loud consecutive knocks at the front door. Joe jerks his head up, shakes his head subtly and stares back at the screen.

JOESTEEL (continues typing) Not…this time.

THE END<

You can find Joe’s much funnier screenplays here.

Fountain Plugin

Fountain is a markup language like Markdown but for Screenwriters. I augmented some existing work on the format and modified it to work with Statamic as a plug-in. Why do this? Well Statamic already supports editing in standard text editor in Markdown, why not add Fountain to the list.

The fountain add-on for Statamic that has been adapted from a PHP conversion by Christoph Mewes in 2013 of fountain.js by Matt Daly in 2012.

PHP is a better choice for a bunch of reasons and it allows anyone to write in the standard ‘fountain’ format and with minimal work can integrate with Statamic.

Warning: I have modified this script to suit my own purposes that I believe will also suit a great many other peoples that don’t want to spend hours messing around. However as modifications have been made to the original fountain.js script in the conversion to PHP, and then again by myself, note that 100% compatibility with the Fountain format is not guaranteed. Use at your own risk, folly or foible. Okay not foibles so much.

To use create a directory called ‘fountain’ in the _add-ons subdirectory and place both pi.fountain.php and fountain.css in that directory.

In whichever theme you are using, insert into the section of the default.html file the following:

{{ fountain:head }}

To interpret a block of text immediately prior open/close with the Statamic tag as follows:

{{ fountain }} TEXT TEXT TEXT {{ /fountain }}

My GitHub repository with the fountain plugin.

Review of the AtoB iPhone Camera Grip

The A Grip B Photo and Video Shooting Assistant Grip is a long name and not very catchy but it conveys pretty well what the product does. It provides a proper hand grip for holding your iPhone single handedly as well as offering physical buttons for all photo tasks except zooming and focusing. In addition it has a standard tripod mount built into the bottom and a booster battery pack built in. It set me back just under $50USD and in the month that I’ve been using it, I’ve grown quite fond of it.

The device grips onto an iPhone 4/4S/5/5S but may not fit the 5C nor the older 2G/3G/3GS. I use my iPhone to take ALL of my photos and videos particularly of the kids around the house, the yard, at sports, parties, the beach and bushwalking to name just a few. That said I’m always concerned about the weight of my devices because I’m always lugging them with me. For example: I use a MacBook Air, and a Retina iPad Mini (Had the iPad Air for 3 months and switched to the Mini as it was lighter)

The box doesn’t mention it supports the 5S but then since it’s essentially a hardware clone (in terms of external dimensions) of the 5 it’s a pretty safe assumption it will work okay. In the box is also a black wrist-strap which is a pain to thread through and a protective sock that it a tight fit but works as advertised.

As I’ve discussed previously I believe the iPhone is the best camera I’ve ever owned but it has several problems. Holding the phone steady is difficult with one hand, taking family shots isn’t possible without someone else to operate the phone, video drains the battery quickly and it’s not possible to remotely trigger a photo out of the box.

From my previous compact camera I had a tripod but no way to mount my iPhone to it. Family shots you can get away with a timer but a remote shutter gives much more control and you can take as many shots as you like without bumping the camera (great for low light and reducing motion blur). Taking an hour of video will flatten my battery which is a big problem if I need to make or receive phone calls.

In short the AtoB fits all of my criteria save one: the remote shutter. I’m fixing that with a different device I’ll discuss in another review.

Charging

The AtoB doesn’t come with a charging cable for your device so you’ll need to BYO 30-pin or Lightning USB cable. I’m sure the reason for this was to keep costs down and to avoid Apple licensing costs/issues; not to mention they would need to provide both a 30-pin Dock and Lightning cable since they don’t know what phone the purchaser would have.

If you’re connecting the standard charging cable that came with your iPhone, the cable is way too long and droops down getting caught up on everything if you’re trying to charge while you’re using the grip

It does come with its own USB to micro-USB charging cable for replenishing the built in battery through a connector on the top of the unit.

There is no visual indication that you are charging an iPhone however when you first connect the USB connector from your BYO cable the front indicators light briefly. The power button on the front is slightly misleading insofar as the unit doesn’t actually turn on and doesn’t require power to work in any way. The button when pressed lights up one to four blue LEDs that indicate approximate onboard battery charge level.

Gripping

Attaching the iPhone requires spinning a large black dial depressed into the front fact of the hand grip clockwise to loosen and anti-clockwise to tighten. You need to ensure the dial is loose enough when you insert your iPhone and that the small metal tab at the bottom of the device touches the band of your iPhone.

You must be in the photos app before you insert the phone into the grip which can be a pain but since the device isn’t integrated via Bluetooth or direct connection there’s no real option there. It relies on the Apple photo app having it’s three control buttons on the same physical location on the screen. In future iOS updates this may change, making the grip buttons useless unless an app is used that emulates their original physical location on the screen.

What it does do is make holding the iPhone with one hand effortless. There is practically no shake and in my video tests it was quite clear that the grip made a huge difference. That said with prolonged use, if you have sweaty palms like I do and it’s summer, the grip can get a bit slippery to hold. That said if you’re holding a bare iPhone with hands that sweaty it’s not going to be much of an improvement. After using it for an hour or more I found myself becoming a bit more casual with how tightly I was holding it whereas with the bare iPhone I was always extra careful. Something to consider.

The Buttons

The grip push buttons seem like a great idea and in many respects were necessary since the design of the grip covers the area where the touch buttons appear on the screen. The simple issue with the buttons was that they didn’t always work. Maybe once out of every 20 times the buttons wouldn’t work¹. It wasn’t a fault with the button but rather a reality of my hand grip. The conductive strip along the front edge didn’t always make contact with the palm-side of my fingers hence the buttons didn’t conduct through to my body.

Why Not A Case?

Why not a battery case with a tripod thread? I found a few of these (strongly considered the SnapGrip but I’d done the whole case on/case off thing in the past and it destroyed the cases. If I was to go the case route then it had to be a case I would leave on all the time and I wanted to keep the weight down for the majority of the phones usage.

Whilst it sounds like I take lots of photos and videos on my iPhone the truth is that relative to the number of hours for which I am not it’s really not a large proportion hence any solution had to be quick connect and disconnect again for short term but regular usage. This cases were off the list.

Battery Pack Charging and Boosting

The other option is to use the external battery booster continuously connected to the iPhone from the moment you begin shooting. When this is done, the iPhone charge is held at a constant 100% until the AtoB battery pack goes flat.

The lower three indicator lights light up constantly during charging, with the 4th blinking when it was charging. To determine the level of charge it was necessary to unplug the unit and then press the power button to see how many LEDs were lit which was a little annoying but not the end of the world.

So far as charging rates are concerned the AtoB boosts the iPhone at a slightly lesser rate (0.1%/min less) than the wall charger but this is to be expected and in practice is too small a difference to be of any real concern.

Physical Marking

In the long term there will undoubtedly be marks left on the metal band and in the back and front of the phone from the metal tag, clamp and buttons respectively. That said it shouldn’t damage the phone significantly, but the people that want to keep their iPhones in pristine condition might not like this attachment. Then again such people will probably keep their iPhone in a highly protective case that it never comes out of.

Wrist Strap

The first time I used it I dutifully placed my wrist in the strap just as I have a thousand times with my compact camera. The problem is that the strap itself is A) difficult to get my wrist through and B) when my wrist was in the strap it was difficult to put my hand low enough on the grip to comfortably reach all three physical buttons. In short, the strap was too short and too small - at least for my hands. I don’t consider that I have large hands although I can easily span an octave and can make 9 keys in a pinch on a full size keyboard but for anyone with hands larger than that, you needn’t bother with the strap. Since then I’ve considered removing the strap since it doesn’t help, it only hinders me. You mileage will vary I’m sure.

Maximum Recording

The tests below show up a rather obvious point: extending the battery to take more video is all well and good provided the iPhone can store it all. I have the 64Gb model for this (and a few other) reason(s) however the most popular model is 16Gb (48%) with the 16Gb (35%) not far behind² which severely restricts the amount of video that can be stored in any one sitting.

The following table estimates the maximum recording times by 1080p and 720p for each iPhone 5S model capacity³ based solely on my own testing. Your mileage may vary. For my most common scenario even adding the AtoB and starting with a fully empty iPhone I would not have enough battery to record up to the maximum amount, however this is not a real world scenario.

Memory Size	1080p @ 30fps	720p @ 120fps
16Gb	104 min	65 min
32Gb	207 min	134 min
64Gb	441 min	273 min

Testing Results

All tests used an iPhone 5S and it’s Apple-supplied charger ⁴ and cable. The first three tests relate to charging the iPhone and AtoB from dead conditions to fully charged conditions including the iPhone charging rates.

A) Recharging iPhone from AtoB from dead to 100%

1hr 56min (116min) ( 0.9%/min) ⁵

B) Recharging the AtoB from dead to fully charged

3hrs 18min (198min) ⁶

C) Recharging iPhone from wall charger from dead to 100%

1hr 38min (98min) (1%/min)

The remaining tests check how much video can be recorded with the iPhone on its own and with the AtoB boosting while video is being taken.

D) Fully charged iPhone no grip

Total Video Time Recorded: 2hrs 34min (154min) (0.65%/min) Space used on device: 20GB (0.13 Gb/min)

E) Fully charged iPhone using grip to boost battery when in use

Total Video Time Recorded: 5hrs 54min (354min) (0.3%/min) Space used on device: 45GB (0.13 Gb/min)

F) Comparative 720p 120fps test

Total Video Time Recorded: 45 min used 34% charge ( 0.75%/min) ⁷ 9.5Gb. (0.21 Gb/min)

The issues:

• The physical push buttons don’t always work
• Long term marking of the iPhone is inevitable
• It won’t work with a case on
• Slippery when sweaty
• The wrist strap is poorly positioned

Conclusions

Not everyone has the same needs but for those serious about getting more from their iPhone photography and video capabilities devices like the AtoB represent an attractive accessory. For me it’s been great and for the price it’s not going to break the bank I’d say its worth it.