The Bradnam Blog

Filed under: video

'Show Dock' keyboard shortcut on a Mac bumps windows out of the way

I find this behavior strange. If you use the Mac keyboard shortcut to reveal a hidden dock (Cmd + Option + D), the appearance of the dock will 'push' any windows out of the way that are in the area where the dock appears.

Typing the keyboard shortcut again to hide the dock does not move the window back. This video hopefully demonstrates what I mean:

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A long weekend in Portland: part 1 – cars

I spent last weekend in Portland, Oregon. This is somewhere that my wife and I have been meaning to visit for many years but never quite got around to going. We had a great time, and I think this long weekend will inspire several blog posts with many photos.

To start with, I will just say that we spent one afternoon visiting the Portland Art Musuem which had a special exhibit on about the 'Allure of the Automobile'. As well as the collection of amazing cars inside the building, there was also a temporary display of classic cars (along with their proud owners) outside the museum. I don't think I've ever seen so many vintage cars all in such immaculate condition in one place. I'm not a car fan by any measure, but there was an undeniable beauty to many of these cars, some of which dated back to the 1930s.

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We arrived in time to see most of the cars outside the museum noisily drive off into the distance.

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The final stage of becoming a US citizen - photos and video from a citizenship ceremony

This week my wife (@fairymel) became a US citizen. The final part of the whole process was to attend the citizenship ceremony. In California, I believe that these take place once a month in each of the major cities (northern California has ceremonies in Sacramento and San Francisco). On Wednesday morning we drove to Sacramento and made our way to the beautiful Memorial Auditorium. We were told to be there for 8:30 am, but at that time there were very few people there.

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The soon-to-be-citizens took to the main floor of the auditorium whereas friends and family had to go upstairs to the balconies. After quite a wait for everyone to take their seats the ceremony began. It started by having someone recite the names of every nationality that was being represented by the people who were there. Amazingly, there were people from ninety-one different countries...this is almost half of all the world's nations. 
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There seemed to be no real pattern or trend contained in the list of nationalities that were represented. Small or large, rich or poor, near or far...all types of countries had people present who were about to gain US citizenship. For each country that he mentioned, he also read out how many were present from that nation. This led to various degrees of cheering and applause, with certain countries eliciting a more exuberant response than others. There was a certain amount of intrigue as to which county would have the highest amount of representation and the speaker played up on this; as soon as he named a new country that had a large number of citizens present, he would recount the current 'top 3' countries. 

As the following video shows, the end of this part of the ceremony turned into a bit of a pep rally.

The next part of the ceremony had a very different feel. Becoming a US citizen requires you to swear an oath, and so this needs to take place in front of a judge. Effectively, the whole auditorium became a huge courtroom and we all had to rise as the judge entered and made his way to the stage. The judge said some words to mark the occasion, noting that this was one of the largest citizenship ceremonies he had attended. He, and another speaker, also spoke about what it meant to be an American and the other speaker made some thoughtful remarks about how many Americans will have parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents who have been through this process. This country is truly a melting pot of different cultures and ethnicities. There was also two songs that were sung at this point, you might not be too surprised to know that they were 'The Star-spangled Banner', and 'America the Beautiful'.
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This last video captures the moment when the United States of America gained a thousand new citizens. 

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There and back again, a honeymooners tale - Part 1: the setup

At the end of August I became a happily married man. The wedding had been in preparation for about eighteen months, which also gave us plenty of time to plan for what we wanted to do on our honeymoon and more importantly...where we wanted to go. Whatever the final route was going to be, we knew that the first port of call would have to be London, UK. This was because we are both British, who just happen to be living and working in Davis, California. We very much wanted to get married in California but we knew that this would mean many of our friends and family would not be able to make it. So it was always in our plans that the first thing that we would do on our honeymoon would be to have another wedding event in London. But where else should we go?

Our first thoughts were modest. We would spend a few days in London, and then fly to eastern or southern Europe, perhaps the Czech Republic, or maybe a trip to Croatia with a short excursion to Italy. We would end our honeymoon by retracing our steps back through London with another long-haul flight to take us back to San Francisco. However, when we saw how expensive the flights would be just to get to London we became curious as to whether we could be a little bolder with our plans without incurring much more in the way of expense.

After a little bit of time playing around with the trip planning tool at airtreks.com, my suspicions were confirmed; a cheap round-the-world ticket would cost little more than flying to London and then taking one more journey within Europe. This led to lots of excited discussion between me and my partner as to where we would like to go. It soon became apparent that the Far East was top of our list. Our biggest restriction was time. Having already taken time off for our wedding, we knew that we could only have two weeks for the entire trip. After some consultations with AirTreks we realized that we could maybe visit two countries and would have to stick to major hubs (this meant we had to change our original plan to see Hong Kong). This is the final route that we came up with:

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Video also available here on twitvid

Not all of these legs were flights. If you are traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto, then the Shinkansen (bullet train) is the only way to go! One minor condition of the ticket was that the return leg to San Francisco had to be from Beijing which meant a bit of double-tracking back on ourselves. However, given the very low cost of the ticket, we were more than happy to put up with this minor hassle. The flights to London were with Virgin Atlantic (who we would have been flying with anyway if we stuck to our original plan), and all of the remaining flights were with Air China.

After we purchased the round-the-world tickets with AirTreks we then turned to their affiliate company Global Basecamps to plan the details of the trip. Normally, I am more than happy to organize (and book) everything myself whenever we travel. However, at the time of honeymoon-planning we were also deeply engrossed in our wedding preparations. Therefore this was one occasion where I was happy to pay a little more to have someone else take care of things. 

The only major thing that we had to sort out before the trip was getting our tourist visas for China (visas were not required for Japan). This relatively painless procedure requires a trip to a Chinese Consulate. There are five of these located in various major US cities. Luckily for us, one of them is handily located in San Francisco. As British citizens we could get our visa for a modest fee of $30. This fee applies to citizens of all countries...all countries except the USA. If you are American, then that fee increases to $140!

The next three or four blog posts will briefly recap (with photos) some of the many things that we experienced on our trip...a trip that would be my first time to either China or Japan, and a trip that would be our first ever journey together as husband and wife!

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My Life Revisited. Part 10: 1977 (bonus video edition)

If we go back some thirty-three years to the 7th of June, 1977, we find the UK strangely united behind our monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. That was the day that on which the country celebrated her Silver Jubilee, marking the occasion of twenty-five years on the throne. As I recall it was a national holiday and people across the country held street parties to celebrate Her Majesty's special day. It seems strange, thinking back, that this was a time when our monarchy was still held in high regard, and with a fair degree of affection. The subsequent decades put an end to that with a never-ending series of royal scandals, though it was touching to see some reverence for the Queen restored by the time of her Golden Jubilee in 2002. I guess it's not inconceivable that she will be around to celebrate a 75th (diamond?) anniversary in 2027!

Like many households, we too took part in a Silver Jubilee party, hosted by our neighbors in their back garden. Another neighbor captured some of the 'festivities' on video (on Super 8 film I believe). At that time in the UK, video cameras were kind of a big deal. I don't think i ever saw anyone else with any sort of portable video recorder for another ten years or so. As it was, I didn't get to see this footage until some 25 years or so later, when my neighbors received a copy of the clip on VHS tape and they then converted it into a digital format. Take a look at the video...

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Featured in this video are my parents and my two brothers, along with our neighbors and their two kids. I'm the one in the turquoise colored top. Tony (the neighbors son and the youngest person in the video) remains one of my best friends, and as he was born in the house that features in the video, I can say that I have literally known him for all of his life. Note the presence of bunting and home-made hats, all in the Union Jack colors of red, white, and blue. Also note the entertainments: the classic garden game of 'reel-the-thing-in-between-your-legs' and 'negotiate-hat-obstacle-course-on-stilts'. i guess this is what we had to do to amuse ourselves while waiting for Nintendo to invent the GameBoy.

The sad aspect of watching this video is that my father died of a brain tumor about six years after it was filmed. I'm glad to have this video as this is probably the only time in his life that he was ever captured on film. How times change. Kids growing up today will no doubt discover that their life-on-film starts from the time their parents make YouTube videos from their sonogram. I guess it is only fitting that I end a Silver Jubilee video with an appropriate message of God save the Queen.

My T-mobile Tap video review - part 2

via youtube.com

And here is the concluding part of my review. I had to keep reshooting sections because I kept fluffing my lines. Maybe I'm not cut out for a career in reviewing! Still I thought it was worth trying once, if only to improve my iMovie skills.

I'm now curious how 'professional' phone reviewers set up their reviews. If you are all by yourself, there are certain logistics of having a stable camera set up where you can see the camera screen *and* see the phone screen. My setup was a little awkward, but at least I managed to get a good focus on the screen.
Posterous theme by Cory Watilo
  
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