FireWire 400 Devices Incompatible with FireWire 800 Macs?

If anyone knows of a solution to this, it'd sure come in handy.... I'm dealing with several converters that turn analog audio/video signals into standard DV video. All of them use the FireWire 400 interface, as is traditional for DV devices. My problem is that my Mac, a Mac Pro (4,1), has FireWire 800 ports. I've bought two different FireWire 400-to-800 adapters, both of which make the DV encoder boxes visible to most video capture applications (QuickTime Pro and iMovie, but not to Apple's example code for performing QuickTime video capture on the modern Mac OS). However, in no case can I capture video. No preview of the video shows-up prior to initiating the capture, and clicking on "record" in QuickTime Pro or iMovie produces nothing (literally zero byte movies - no data whatsoever is captured).

I've Googled for answers, and found indications that other people have had the same, or similar, problems, but I haven't found any answers. (At this point, I'd even settle for an explanation of why Apple seems to have screwed me.) If anyone has any insights, please share.

Video: Bats’ Morning Return to the Bamberger Chiroptorium

I had the opportunity last week to watch the bats return to the Bamberger Ranch Preserve’s chiroptorium. The morning return isn’t as dramatic as the evening emergence, but it’s still something to see. Realizing that, for the first time, I had a device that could capture high definition (720p) video, I propped up my iPhone 4 on the fence at the mouth of the chiroptorium and let it record for about 16 minutes. I’ve edited that recording down to two minutes in the following video. It is best seen at 720p - at lower resolution, the distant bats in the descending stream aren’t visible.

As the bats swooped down and maneuvered aggressively into the cave mouth, they produced a sound that I can best describe as a rapid vibration. My guess is that the trailing edges of their wing membranes vibrate violently during those maneuvers. (Much like the end of a piece of fabric held out of the window of a fast-moving car.) Unfortunately, that sound seems to represent some sort of pathological case for the iPhone 4’s audio capture system, and, as you’ll hear in the movie, it is distorted into something that sounds very much like static. That’s disappointing, but slightly better than no sound at all, I think. So, apologies about the static. It’s not an accurate reproduction of the sound produced by the bats, but its presence and intensity does correlate with the number of bats passing the camera at any given moment, so it has some value.

It is, of course, better to experience this first-hand, but one needs special permission to do so. Being fortunate enough to have that permission, it seems the least I can do to try and share some of that unusual experience. Enjoy.

Weekend Links Unclogged

• The real Turing test: learning to say sorry.
• Brown apologises for 'appalling' treatment of Turing
• Read This If You Hate Meetings
• Better world: Take Friday off… forever – I seem to recall that the American worker's productivity has doubled since the 1940s; maybe we could reduce the work week to 20 hours....
• Single Vaccine Dose, Even One from 1976, Could Protect against the H1N1 Swine Flu
• Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D – No excuse for not getting vaccinated, but very interesting.
• Vitamin D Deficiency May Increase Risk Of Colds, Flu – Again, no excuse for avoiding vaccination, but very interesting.
• NO Good: Nitric Oxide May Be Key to Overcoming Antibiotic Resistance
• 13 more things that don't make sense.
• Igniting Fusion
• Scanning Dead Salmon in fMRI Machine Highlights Risk of Red Herrings – If only it’d been a dead parrot.
• Icy stares and dirty minds: Hitch-hiking emotions.
• Brain science to help teachers get into kids' heads.
• Why Smart People Do Stupid Things
• First Drug Shown to Extend Life Span in Mammals
• Can Aging Be Solved?
• July 16, 1867: Concrete Gets Some Positive Reinforcement
• Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies
• Rethinking the bee's waggle dance.
• Moth Blocks Bat Attack by Jamming Sonar
• Rare plant worthy of Endangered Species Act protection--But won't get it.
• Spy Satellite Sea Ice Images Finally Made Public
• Potential Neuropoison Could Be in Our Food
• Obama, Farm Industry Clash Over Antibiotics
• 8-Story Antigravity Forest Facade Takes Root
• Time Magazine: The liberal bias of facts. – Thanks to Jay Lake.
• How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
• The Top 5 Lies About Obama's Health Care Reform
• The burden of debt.
• Why markets can’t cure healthcare.
• The Swiss Menace
• Better world: Legalise drugs
• Senate Votes to Stop Stealth Jets, Continue Pentagon Overhaul
• NSA surveillance program too secret for its own good.
• FBI compounds mystery with secret justification of gag order.
• US rogue nuke detection upgrades not worth the cost.
• Secrets, Leaks, and Outright Lies
• How to Stack a Rocket – The Ares I-X test vehicle takes shape, even as the program faces funding disaster.
• ATK test fires Ares 1 five-segment booster.
• Augustine appears before Congress about space review.
• Augustine panel presents five manned space options.
• ULA claim gap reducing solution via EELV exploration master plan – They might be proposing a great plan, but, on the other hand, when have our aerospace contractors ever tried not to steer billions of taxpayer dollars into their coffers?
• Tentative Signs of Water Found on Moon
• How to Land Safely Back on the Moon – Thanks to Jay Lake.
• Back from the Moon, Apollo Astronauts Had to Go Through Customs
• Historic Apollo landing sites imaged by new lunar orbiter.
• NASA reacquires original Moon landing footage.
• NASA High Definition Video: Partially Restored Apollo 11 Video.
• Mars, methane and mysteries.
• Cracks on Mars hint at dried-up lakes.
• Too much radiation for astronauts to make it to Mars – Not exactly new information, but it bears repeating.
• Rare meteorite found by 'fireball' observatory.
• "Green" propellant could give rockets--and the environment--a boost. – Aluminum and ice. Very nice.
• Armadillo Aerospace qualifies to win Lunar Lander Challenge level 2 – Congratulations!
• Students snap images of Earth from space for $150.
• Timeless Tom Baker Makes Return Trip to Doctor Who

Perseid Meteor Shower 2009, The Movie

See the 2009 Perseid meteor shower as I saw it, albeit in 49 seconds, rather than four hours and fifteen minutes. The huge change in illumination over the course of the movie was caused by the rising of the moon.

This movie is 60 MB, and if any meaningful number of people attempt to download it on the same day, it will probably exceed my ".Mac" daily bandwidth limit. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it was too pretty a sight to show in low-res, or to compress into pixelated mush.

(And, of course, services like YouTube can't handle high-res video, or video in non-standard aspect ratios; in short, they can't handle any of my videos. Useless, bloody, one-size-fits-all, "good enough" solutions. I seem to have been born a square peg in a world of round holes, and these sorts of small-minded limitations are among the banes of my existence.)

Anyway, enjoy.

MPEG 4 Video, 647 x 972 pixels, 49 seconds, 60 MB

Perseid Meteor Shower
12-13 August, 2009
11:33 PM - 4:08 AM CDT
Bamberger Ranch Preserve,
Blanco County, Texas

©2009 Chris W. Johnson

Weekend Links

• National Ignition Facility is Ready – Big science to deliver fusion in small doses.
• Sponges Descended From Unique Ancestor – Procaryotes, eucaryotes, and archaea related by a common ancestor, but not sponges?
• Hundreds Of Natural-selection Studies Could Be Wrong, Study Demonstrates
• Texas vote leaves loopholes for teaching creationism
• Banking on the Brink – Paul Krugman quotes, of all people, Alan Greenspan (once Mr. Laissez-Faire Capitalism and Ayn Rand's pet economist) recognizing that nationalizing some banks may be a good idea. The article is six weeks old, but still worth a read.
• Tripping the boundary layer: Shuttle's re-entry experiment
• Soldiers Blinded, Hospitalized by Laser 'Friendly Fire'
• A Chip against Cancer: Microfluidics Spots Circulating Tumor Cells
• The Ogallala Aquifer: Saving a Vital U.S. Water Source
• A (Radioactive) Cut in the Earth That Will Not Stay Closed – Not as interesting an article as it suggests, but not without some worthwhile bits.
• Scientists Find 'Baffling' Link between Autism and Vinyl Flooring
• Caffeine Cuts Workout Pain
• Fact or Fiction: Raw veggies are healthier than cooked ones

• Computers, Clocks, Astronomy and The Making of the Modern World – The Long Now Blog points to episode 5 of James Burke's outstanding TV series "Connections", which, strangely, can be found on YouTube. If you've only seen the series "Connections 2", and "Connections 3", which seem to be re-run routinely (while the original "Connections" sits on the shelf), you've missed-out. IMHO, the original series stands head and shoulders above its sequels, which I've long thought should be renamed "That Reminds Me", because the connections they document are weaker and not necessarily causal.

  • Connections, episode 5, part 1
  • Connections, episode 5, part 2
  • Connections, episode 5, part 3
  • Connections, episode 5, part 4
  • Connections, episode 5, part 5

  And for a nuts and bolts perspective on computers, the episode of The Secret Life of Machines about the word processor is still wonderful, like the whole series. Equally strangely, it can also be found on YouTube.

  • The Secret Life of Machines: Word Processor, part 1
  • The Secret Life of Machines: Word Processor, part 2
  • The Secret Life of Machines: Word Processor, part 3

  On the subject of time, there's also an episode on clocks in general, and quartz watches in particular:

  • The Secret Life of Machines: Quartz Watch, part 1
  • The Secret Life of Machines: Quartz Watch, part 2
  • The Secret Life of Machines: Quartz Watch, part 3

Perseids and Polestar, The Movie

This 32 second movie covers 95 minutes of attempted Perseid meteor watching, from 3:23 to 5:06 AM on August 11. I've left out the hours of solid clouds before and after for the sake of brevity and out of respect for the sheer pointlessness of including them. During this movie, there are at least four meteors to be seen, one impressive, the others not so much. One thing that the movie reveals, which wasn't apparent in the field, is that there were two layers of clouds that morning, moving in nearly opposite directions, just to ensure the smallest possible chance of their gaps lining-up to permit the Perseids to be seen.

The movie is far from raw excitement, but, if you've followed along with my meteor watching tales this far, you might extract some small amusement from this moving-pictures experience.

The movie is in QuickTime format (H.264, specifically), measures 615 x 925, and is 6 MB in size. (I tried using Google video to host the movie, but, like every free movie hosting service I've encountered, it insists that movies be small, blurry and in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and that's never the way I make movies. One size does not fit all.)

Rockin’ the Saturn V

A bit of the (intentionally?) lost history of the Apollo program comes to light, complete with video.