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Hands on with Apple Vision Pro

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Today I finally went to the Apple Store for a demo of Vision Pro. I’ve been interested in it ever since Apple announced it, not so much as a potential purchase but for the technology it contains. For what it really represents, I’ve always thought of it as a potential game changer placing the ball firmly in the court of developers.  Having finally put Vision Pro on my head and done the calibration, (they put optical inserts in to closely match my prescription, so if you wear glasses don’t worry, Apple have you covered) the view opened up so I could see the Apple Store again. I was absolutely blown away, it didn’t feel like I was really seeing an image on a screen. Instead it looked like I was seeing through the Vision Pro, this was an incredible start. As I got walked through the interface and how to interact with apps I found it very intuitive and picked it up straight away. I got shown some panoramic photos first, which looked so much better than when you see them on a screen. The...
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My thoughts on Digital Cinema

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Ok so I realise that cinemas have been running digitally for well over a decade at this point, so in that regard I am somewhat late to this. However I have been to the cinema a couple of times this year for the first time in ages and I find myself surprisingly underwhelmed.  This isn’t because I’m a dinosaur or being nostalgic, I’m a former projectionist who worked with 16mm and 35mm and is also a trained digital projectionist. I’m all for progress and I love watching films on my Apple TV in full 4K Dolby Vision. The reason I’m so underwhelmed by the digital cinema experience is that the overall presentation is just lacking in so many ways. I’ll elaborate. First a little background on my expertise in this field, I was a projectionist for several years, mostly working with 35mm but did some with 16mm and attained my digital projectionist certification. I worked mostly independent cinemas, but did end my career with a major multiplex chain before moving on to trains. I liked all the ...
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Training course day

Today I had to go to my periodical refresher on Depot Track Safety. I say periodical because while it is, in theory, and annual interval those intervals can be shorter or longer depending on a number of things.  What is Depot Track Safety you may ask. In short it’s required for familiarising people with the layout of a train depot (walkways, first aid, assembly points, routes into and out of the depot etc. It’s not so much about specific layouts, more about the important things you need to do, managing safety, briefings you need to provide and correct working practices. It’s an essential part of delivering training in my job.  Now I have successfully completed the course, my licence has been updated ready for me to continue to deliver on the job training. It was good to catch up with some people I haven’t seen in a very long time as well, a hidden bonus of training days. It has made me think about a few things though, I’ve always enjoyed delivering training. That is why I do m...
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New beginnings

This is my first post here on Blogger and it’s been quite a journey to get to this point. Over the years I have hosted my own website on my own server. It went through a few iterations of purpose, starting as a social hub, later becoming a companion site to my YouTube channel then becoming a site for tech news and reviews with a hint of gaming thrown in. Truthfully the gaming side took over a bit more as my interests have changed over the years, but it still largely had its purpose.  Then of course there are the changes to the visual appearance, going through three different content management systems and multiple visual styles to boot. However in recent years I simply hadn’t updated any of the content, partly due to time and partly because I just lacked the motivation. The site just didn’t reflect who I am or what I was interested in.   So then, why the new home? It simply came down to the fact that I had no desire to keep paying for a web server. After all I was hardly using...
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