The theremin is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928. Theremins are distinguished by the fact that they are played without the performer touching the instrument. The musician moves his or her hands in proximity to the theremin to control the tone of the sound. I was told that mastering the theremin requires skills and lots of practicing, but only a few instrument provide the unique visual appearance of performance. The sound is quite unique for that instrument. Even if you don’t know theremin by name, you might have heard the sound of it at The beach boys -good vibrations or on the sound offects of some old scifi/horror movies.

The electronics of the theremin consists of two high frequency oscillators connected to antennas. When the player moves hand near the antenna, that changes the frequency of the oscillators, and that changes the sound (frequency or amplitude depending on antenna). Here is a block diagram of theremin from www.thereminworld.com Fred Tells All article.

All DIY persons now interested in theremin instruments can also view Make a Theremin video and check ePanorama.net theremin links.

XP is a proven platform. It runs well and its easy to tune so why wouldn’t you go with it if the newer features of Vista or Windows 7 are not critical. No enterprise in their right mind would make a complete shift to a new OS (Windows 7) in less than 6 months since its inception. There is too much testing involved. Too often in computer software products lots of (too much?) the testing is left to the end user…

In enterprise it’s a waste of time money and effort to fix something that isn’t broken. There are always more than enough things that are broken that need the focus. When XP can no longer do the job or the efficiency gain of an upgrade is more than the cost, then is it time to upgrade to something that works better in the given application. And that is not always a newer Windows version. For some people/applications that better solution could be Linux or Apple Mac OS X. Both of them are based on Unix technologies.

I have already known for long time that another 5 percent of the population have problems that make it impossible to view in 3-D. But it was totally new that around half of the young population have some problems with 3D video viewing. The article says that there are therapeutic exercises that can be prescribed that enable some people to gain the ability to see in 3-D, but it won’t work for everyone.

I can imagine something like this happening in the future: A customer has bought a brand new 3D and comes back to shop to complain. The customer says: “I can’t see the image in 3D on this 3D TV you sold to me. The TV must be broken!”. The salesperson says: “There is nothing wrong with the TV. The problem is you. You have to go to therapy to get to see right way and believe that what you see is really 3D. What kind of therapy package you want to buy? I have a good selection of therapy products for this…” Is this imagination or future of the 3D TV?

The TV manufacturers in 3G game wishfully expext that the new technology will be as big a boost for the industry as the transition to color TVs from black and white. TV manufactuers want some new hit because LCD TV profits are shrinking fast as prices for the TVs drop.

But investors think it is still too early to put money on 3D. The problem is that many consumers have only just unboxed new fancy high-definition television screens, making them unwilling to spend on upgrading again any time soon. Major problems now is that you need glasses to see 3D effect and there is a lack of interesting 3D video material to watch.

Because lack of 3D material some manufactuers have included tricks to convert 2D to “3D”. The Toshiba Cell TV includes a converter to make everything that’s normally 2-D on your screen pop out in 3-D when viewed through active shutter glasses. That’s where the processing power comes into play. I am very skeptic if this kind of processing can give any good quality 3D that could be enjoyed.

The BDA’s spec mandates encoding 3D video using the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) codec, an extension to the H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) codec currently supported by all Blu-ray Disc players. This codec will need around 50% more data rate / storage space for 3D video compared to 2D video. MPEG4-MVC compresses both left and right eye views with a typical 50% overhead compared to equivalent 2D content, and can provide full 1080p resolution backward compatibility with current 2D Blu-ray Disc players.

The specification provides a way for existing Blue-ray players can take the new 3D content and display it in 2D form at 1080p. This will allow Hollywood to release 3D movies in place of 2D version without pissing off the installed base – assuming it doesn’t charge an unreasonable premium for the material, of course. Maybe just wishful thinking keeping in mind the history of Hollywood pissing off with paying customers with DRM and other artificial restrictions…

There is also some existing Blue-ray players that work with 3D system. The Blu-ray 3D specification is designed so that it allows Sony PS3 game consoles to play back Blu-ray 3D content in 3D.

This kind of 3D as used in 3D Blue-ray is not like a hologram, it is more like a viewmaster. I have seen many 3D video systems and played with 3D technologies in the 1990’s, and everything I have seen didn’t really feel like I was looking at the real world, but something “artificial”. I am still waiting to be amazed by 3D video some day.. I was really amazed by some 3D photos and computer graphics around 15 years ago when I saw then first time and had possibility to play with them. Nowadays 3D video seems to be mostly recycling the same old ideas and same limitations. 3D can be entertaining and look cool on special uses where the presented video content is designed in such way that the limitations of the technology can be hidden… My quess is that 3D will not overtake the traditional 2D video anytime soon…

LED lights are becoming more and more popular for common in Christmas lights for many good reasons. They consume considerably less energy than traditional light bulbs and fail much less often. If you LED lights fail, you can find ideas how to fix then at LED Christmas Lights and How to Fix Them web page.