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fredericksmeg-blog · 8 years ago

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Week 2.

Hi everybody. Thanks for saying nice things about my last post; this one is definitely going to be of a lesser quality because I am frantically typing it while I should be sleeping or packing, probably.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Like I said in my last post, Wednesday (the 11th) was great. We did Covent Garden and the Tate Modern, which we’ve since decided that we need to go back to. I came home, posted the blog, and then we went to a pub where I had a delicious smoked porter. Great day. 5 stars. Would recommend.

I’m really sorry about this, but on Thursday I went to class and that was about it. I woke up, made tea (earl grey) and a bagel (this is my morning routine now, although sometimes I class it up with avocado toast), and put regular human clothes on. I had class from 2-5. Afterwards, I made a forgettable dinner and sat in our room with my friends while we bought tickets for our trip to Amsterdam – the Anne Frank House and a tour of Heineken (we had to).

Friday was a big day of pop culture landmarks that I curated, essentially. We woke up and took the tube to King’s Cross, where my friends who wanted to/hadn’t been there before took the picture with the trolley going into Platform 9 ¾ . Environments related to Harry Potter are the ones that I really thrive in. I got a coffee and tested my self-control in the gift shop. After we’d all picked up coffees we headed to the British library, where I was nothing less than THRILLED to see an exhibit all about maps!! I didn’t actually see this exhibit because it was ticketed separately and I didn’t want to drag everyone through, so I’ll be going there by myself in the very near future. What we did see in the library was pretty impressive though: the original copy of Beowulf, the Magna Carta, original sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, and early versions of some Beatles songs.

After the library, we went to a pub for lunch. I had chicken in a bleu cheese sauce and it was just fine. From there, we headed for the Euston Square tube stop but not before I made a quick detour to see the building that is used as 221B Baker St. in BBC’s Sherlock. Next we went to Abbey Road to ruin people’s lives during rush hour and take so many pictures. They had just painted over the wall outside the Studio so a bunch of us wrote on it. I went into the gift shop and got really emotional over some eggcups that said, “I am the Walrus” and “I am the egg man,” respectively. We spent a solid amount of time over there and I really enjoyed it. It is hard not to.

We zipped over to the British Museum from there for only about an hour, but I think it’s going to be a weekly occurrence for me to go back and say what’s up to the Parthenon marbles. We came back to our flat for dinner and then we watched the Prince and Me, which you’re all aware is supposed to be about a girl from Manitowoc, WI who goes to school at UW-Madison. The setting is, however, not Madison. Shenanigans ensue. You get it.

On Saturday we woke up kind of early actually, and went to make the most sacred of brunch pilgrimages to The Breakfast Club in Soho. I’ve been seeing Instagram posts about this place for YEARS. It was a necessity. I had one of the most phenomenal eggs benedicts of my whole life. We will be back, but probably at night because we waited almost an hour and a half to get in. A+ some of the finest brunch I have ever consumed. From there we journeyed to Borough Market, which again, I would like to go back to, because it was crowded and there were a lot of us and I’m trying not to spend all of my money on food. It was incredibly tempting though. I seized every cheese sample that I could. Outstanding. We made our way up to the South Bank of the River Thames and walked along the path towards Tower Bridge. We got to see the HMS Belfast and City Hall, the latter of which I am absolutely obsessed with. We walked over Tower Bridge, which I thought was very cool and had never done before. It was especially nice because it had been gloomy and raining all morning, and the sun came out right as we crossed. It was good for pictures. We admired the Tower of London from afar and walked around that area for a bit. Naturally, we walked through an empty Leadenhall market (which is closed on the weekends) because it was used in the Harry Potter movies as a filming location for Diagon Alley. By this time it was around four, so we headed home for dinner.

That night we had tickets to a pub crawl in Camden. It was a really good time, and we got to see a bunch of different pubs and bars in the area. We really liked a few of them and I’m sure we’ll be back. One of the pubs was exclusively playing music from great films, which was as perfect as it could have been for me. At one point there was a scene from Dirty Dancing playing on their big screen while A-Punk was playing over the speakers. Another one of the bars was really great for dancing and I think everyone had fun. The last bar we went to was huge and it had airport style security and we weren’t really there for long. I’ve flagged all of the bars on my London map if you care about that kind of thing.

On Sunday I woke up, made breakfast, and watched SNL from the night before, which is something of a Sunday morning ritual for me. It felt nice to do that from London, it made it feel more like home. After that I did a whole lot of nothing. I looked at lots of plane tickets and figured out some travel plans – a few of us are going to Paris on the 10th of February! I caught most of the Packer game, which was phenomenal of course. I will be back in London with enough time to catch the next game on Sunday. GO PACK GO

On Monday, I had no classes, so I woke up and decided to go to the museums in South Kensington, since they’re all free: The Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. I probably did about 1.5 hours at each of them before I left to go to Sainsbury’s to get groceries for the week. I was especially sad that the main hall in the Natural History Museum was shut down for construction, because it is one of the most beautiful rooms I’ve ever been in (it’s actually the cover picture for this blog) and Dippy the dinosaur is on a European tour. OUTRAGE. It was pretty empty upstairs, though, so I took a pretty lengthy stroll through the equally gorgeous hall of Minerals. I went though the Science Museum for the first time and thought it was a lot like MSI in Chicago, wasn’t too thrilled by the experience but it was nice to walk around and see the building. I’m almost mad that I tried to tackle the V&A afterwards because it is huge. I only had enough time to find the exhibit on architecture, look at it, and then leave; it is so large and it’s a little bit of a maze in terms of what staircases lead to where. I will be back there for sure.

On Monday night I came home with my groceries, made dinner, got ready for my classes the next day. Before I went to bed I facetimed Will (hey, miss you) and watched the series finale of Sherlock, which I have a lot of opinions about so let me know if you’re interested in having an aggressive conversation with me.

On Tuesday I had all of my classes. For BLC (British Life and Cultures) we had a walking tour through central London with our Professor. He’s a pretty funny guy and he took us from Embankment station to St. James’s Palace and Green Park. He told us a lot about buildings and statues that I’ve seen before but had no idea of the relevancy of. After that I came back to my flat and had some yogurt and a salad before I went to my art class. We talked about class projects, critiqued our Instagram pages (a big ol thanks to everyone who followed my project feed), and heard from a very cool guy who makes timber-framed bridges. He’s actually going to Madison in a few weeks to start work on a bridge there. He’s just very interesting and has a lot of great insight on pretty much any topic. Then of course we went to the Science Museum because I was just there the day before.

A pretty decent group of us had to leave early though, because we were visiting the BBC Broadcasting House for our media class and needed to get to Oxford Circus during rush hour. This was one of the best parts of the trip so far, in my opinion. Aside from seeing many Doctor Who related props in the lobby, we got to see the largest (known) newsroom in the world, and walked through it while the 6pm news was on air. We saw quite a bit of behind the scenes rooms, and also got to be the studio audience on “The One Show,” which is kind of like a weird mix of an American late night talk show and Ellen. The guest was Sanjeev Bhaskar, who none of us knew because he’s not in a BBC America Show, but he does a lot of comedy (Goodness Gracious Me on BBC 2) and he was very entertaining. They talked about fake news, so of course Trump. When we met the hosts, our professor made a joke that we were refugees. If only.

Today was pretty stellar because I had another fantastic brunch. I woke up and bopped around Notting Hill for a while before I met up with Bridget and Emily to eat. Before I met up with them, I sat in the sun and read a little bit because it was pretty nice out. While I did that I saw someone walking a greyhound with a beagle on either side of it and they looked like they were escorting him. I just about passed out from sheer excitement and unfortunately I did not get a picture. For brunch we went to Bluebelles, and I got a “stack” which consisted of tomato, halloumi, mushroom, avocado, and a fried egg balanced on top of a large potato pancake. It was unreal. After we ate we made our way back to the flat. Over the course of the rest of the day I picked up some essentials for our trip!

And here we are.

Tomorrow we are flying to Amsterdam for the weekend. There are eight of us going and I’m anticipating that a lot of people will think that one of us is getting married.

As long as the flight/hostel stuff runs smoothly, we should have a great time. Jasmine just spent a while looking up Dutch food and almost fainted when she read about all of the cheese that they make. I think we will be okay. I’m sure I’ll be trying to post lots of pictures while I’m there (and of course afterwards).

Also – this has nothing to do with my program – I just want to take a second and talk about Barack Obama. In a few days, a lot of things are going to change and I am going to be beside myself. I am so glad I grew up and developed my “young adult consciousness” with such a classy guy as the president of the United States, and that I watched so many people become passionate about politics and social movements because of his win in 2008. At this moment, I could not be happier with the human being running the White House. The next time I post on this blog, I’m getting the sense that I won’t feel the same way.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night.

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xpressfocusworld · 6 years ago

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Nebula Capsule Projector Review: It’s a Mini Cinema In a Can

Jason Fitzpatrick

The Nebula Capsule is a mini projector with the form factor of a soda can. It’s cute, eye catching, and frankly, the design practically sells itself right out of the gate. But is this can-sized projector worth the price of admission?

What’s In the Box

The Nebula Capsule is Anker’s first offering in the pico projector market. The projector is, quite literally, the size of a 12 oz soda can give or take a few millimeters and doesn’t weigh much more all things considered—a plain ol’ Coke can weighs around 400 grams whereas the Nebula weighs 470 grams.

Inside the can-shaped profile, you’ll find a compact DLP projector capable of putting out 100 ANSI lumens at an 854*480 pixel resolution. For a frame of reference, 100 ANSI lumens is about 1/15th to 1/20th the brightness of a full-size home projector and the resolution is standard definition (480p) but with extra width to make it 16:9—we’ll talk more about the brightness and resolution later in the review.

In addition to the critical part—you know the bright moving picture bit—there’s a 360-degree speaker design that gives the projector a definite Bluetooth speaker appearance, and the whole thing is powered by Android 7.1.2. The little projector includes 8GB of internal storage (roughly 5GB of which is used up by Android and the stock apps). The 5200 mAh battery charges in around two hours with the included Quick Charge 2.0 charger and offers 4 hours of playback when in projector mode and 30 hours of playback when in Bluetooth speaker mode.

Jason Fitzpatrick

The Nebula Capsule projects out of a small opening in the side of the can, roughly the size of a quarter. There is no built-in lens cover nor removable cover. When not in use the projector should be stored in the included storage bag. Next to the lens, there is a small gear-wheel used for focus adjustment (no automatic focus adjustment, alas, although there is auto keystoning).

The on-device controls are simple, but they get the job done. Jason Fitzpatrick

The top of the projector is a directional pad that offers simple interactions with the projector. The only other visible ports or points of interest are found on the rear and bottom of the projector body.

On the rear, you’ll find a small IR port used for the remote control. At the lower rear, there is an “Input” port, which functions both as a charging port and as an input for USB storage (which you can connect using the included USB to Micro USB OTG cable). Beside the Input port is an HDMI port. On the bottom of the cylinder is a standard tripod mounting point which makes it dead simple to put the Nebula Capsule on a regular photography tripod or any other suitably sturdy device (like a Joby GorillaPod or other flexible tripod) with a standard screw.

Setup and Interacting with the Nebula: Easy Peasy

There are three ways to interact with the projector. The first way is to use the circular control pad on the top of the device. There you can press the parallel arrow button at the top of the pad to switch between projector and speaker mode, the +/- buttons on the left and right side to adjust the volume, and the power button to turn the device on and off (as well as, thoughtfully, check the battery life by tapping the button swiftly wherein the projector will turn on for 3 seconds and project a battery meter on a nearby surface). Clearly, the directional pad is intended more for the actions performed when turning the device on and adjusting the volume without much fuss. Beyond that, it’s quite limited.

The second way you can interact with the Capsule is the included IR remote. The remote worked as well as any other IR remote and included a pretty standard media player interface that will be familiar to anyone who has used an Apple TV or Fire TV.

If you don’t use the app, you’ll be using this little remote a lot. Jason Fitzpatrick

It sports the usual suspects: a home button, back button, directional pad, and OK button, as well as a menu and power button. In the upper right corner there’s even a “Mouse” button to pull up an on-screen cursor and move it around, mouse-like, using the directional pad should the need arise. You might be thinking “When would I need a mouse on a smart projector?”—we’ll get to that later on in the review.

Although the remote’s buttons and functions worked perfectly fine, we found the placement of the IR port on the projector to be problematic. If you’re not behind the projector, the remote is hit or miss. Given that you often place a projector behind yourself to get the maximum screen size and, in the case of tiny projectors like this, you might even lay it on the floor to shine up at the ceiling, a remote that only works when you’re more-or-less directly behind the projector with a clean line of sight is a big pain. An RF or Bluetooth remote would fix this issue.

Thankfully, there’s the last method of interacting with the projector that largely makes up for the finicky physical remote interface. The Nebula Connect app you can download through the App Store and Play Store turns your iOS or Android device into a remote control for the projector.

The app works well enough and, for the most part, just turns your phone into a giant touchpad with a few buttons. If nothing else it makes typing in your streaming video logins, thanks to a pop-up keyboard, so much easier.

While you can set up the device using the physical remote because the app connects to the projector via Bluetooth you don’t even need to suffer through using the remote with the on-screen keyboard to connect the projector to your Wi-Fi. Just download the app right away, pair it with the projector, and use the app for the rest of the setup process. That process, by the way, is trivial and if you’ve ever set up a new phone it’s an almost identical process with way less hassle.

What You Can Play On It: Just About Everything

Knowing what’s in the box and how you can control the projector is all well and good but what’s a projector without some material to blast out of it on to the wall, right?

Thankfully, you can play quite a bit of stuff on the Nebula Capsule. If you want to bring your own movies and images, it’s easy to do so with the USB input via the OTG cable (for the unfamiliar, it’s just a simple USB A to micro USB adapter).

Jason Fitzpatrick

You can slideshow the usual suspects: JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, and TIF. You can play H.264, H.265, and MPEG4 video, as well as MP3, ACC, FLAC, and other audio formats in speaker mode—for the specifics of the different compatible formats, check out the Specs section here. In our testing, it was no different than plugging in an OTG cable and a flash drive to an Android phone or tablet. Loading up the files wasn’t an issue at all.

While most people won’t, in the comfort of their own home, fuss around with loading up a flash drive full of media, if you want to use the projector at a remote location like a campsite or even in the park where you can’t rely on stable internet to stream (or don’t want to deal with bringing along an HDMI-based device which will require its own power source), the ol’ flash drive of ripped movies is a real lifesaver and we’re glad the option is there. That said, it’s a bit of a mystery as to why they didn’t include a micro SD card slot. With the incredibly low cost of micro SD cards these days, it would be really awesome to pop in a card loaded up with movies instead of messing with a cable adapter. It would also allow for simultaneous playback and charging.

Also on the physical port front, the HDMI port works great for whatever you want to throw at it: you can plug your Xbox into it, you can plug your Bluray player into it, you can even plug streaming media devices like a Chromecast or Roku Stick.

Finally, because the device is running Android instead of just dumbly passing along whatever is on the USB or HDMI input, you can, naturally, run streaming apps. This includes all the crowd favorites like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video. While all of these popular services worked well enough on the Capsule, there are some definite quirks in how the apps operate which brings us to a nice point to transition into our experiences with the Capsule in real world use.

Real World Use: It’s Super Fun with Some Streaming Hiccups

Overall, we really loved the Capsule. It’s just fun. But before we talk up all the fun, we’ve got to get the biggest annoyance about the device out of the way. Despite running Android 7.1.2, the device does not have the Google Play Store installed on it. (Although, if you email the Nebula tech support and ask to be enrolled in the beta testing group they’ll send you a code to upgrade your firmware to a version with Google Play Store and other Google services installed.)

By default, instead, it has an app delivery system you’ve likely never even heard of: Aptoide. The ten-second explainer there is Aptoide is a specialized app store that allows for the creation of customized stores, that function like Linux app repositories. In this way Anker is able to curate their own little appstore.

In theory that sounds like a cool way to keep the user experience tight, clean, and controlled. In practice, the end result is you sometimes get stuck with the mobile (instead of TV) version of streaming apps which means they are optimized for touch screen input, not remote input. The YouTube app wasn’t too annoying to use and Plex automatically asked you if you wanted the TV interface as soon as it sensed you were clicking around with a remote (blessings on the Plex app designers for that). The Netflix app was a giant headache, however, and even with using the Nebula app on your phone to control the interface it was still irritating.

The only positive thing we can say about that is all the apps that were finicky at least came with warnings suggesting that you should skip using the physical remote and use the phone app instead. If you get frustrated enough with a specific app, like Netflix, it’s really simple to plug in a Chromecast or other small streaming device though (even if that takes away from the magic of the soda-can-design a bit). All that said, it’s a bit puzzling why they didn’t simply go with Android TV and, in doing so, erase all their interface issues in one go.

That complaint aside (which is, in the grand scheme of our using the device, pretty minor) we really liked the Capsule. Anything else you can complain about isn’t a shortcoming of the Nebula Capsule, it’s a shortcoming of mini/pico projectors as a whole product niche.

Before anything else, let’s address the resolution. The Capsule’s 480p 16:9 resolution isn’t as big a deal as you might think. Yes, if you’re up close to the wall studying the image, it is definitely not 4K. Practically speaking, however, under the conditions most people will use the Capsule, that doesn’t matter. At no point in showing the Capsule off to people did anyone say “What the hell is this? Is this standard def?!” and even though we knew it was very low resolution compared to modern displays, we never noticed in real-world use either.

We had a similar opinion about the brightness. 100 ANSI lumens is not really bright in the world of full-size premium home projectors. It is, however, really bright for a projector that fits in your hand. The Capsule isn’t going to fill an actual movie theater with blindingly bright light, but that’s not the point of the product. The point of the product is the ability to bring a projector wherever and whenever you want. You can pull it out of your bag at a friend’s house. You can carry it out to your deck to shine on the wall of the house without breaking a sweat (or busting out a box of extensions cords and cables). You can shine it on your bedroom ceiling for the absolute laziest The Office marathon ever.

This nifty Joby setup is exactly how we watch TV on the ceiling. Jason Fitzpatrick

Maybe one day we’ll live in a future where you can get an eye-searing 2,000 ANSI lumens out of a soda can form factor, but that’s not today and that’s OK.

The same can be said for the sound. It sounds exactly like you’d expect a soda-can-size Bluetooth speaker to sound (especially if you had to cut down the internal size to make room for a projector). In fact, it probably sounds better than what you’re imagining, even. The bass is weak, to be expected, but the volume is surprisingly loud. So loud that during our testing we rarely turned it up past around 30-40 percent. Given the distance you’ll typically be using this at, it’s plenty loud and clear.

Should You Buy It?

The answer to the question “Should you buy the Nebula?” is more complicated than you might think because there’s a new version of the Nebula projector right on the horizon. Yet, despite that, the original Nebula we’ve taken such a close look at is still a really good value.

The Nebula costs $299.99 and, while not the cheapest projector in the pico/mini projector market, is a fantastic value. For three hundred bucks you’re not going to get more projector and more features in a smaller package. The Nebula II is available for pre-order for a few more days and will begin shipping in June. It’s twice as expensive at $599.99 but, in fairness, does sport some big improvements including doubling the brightness to 200 ANSI lumens, upping the resolution to 720p, adding in USB-C power charging as well as a separate USB A port for a flash drive, swapping out plain Android for Android TV, autofocus adjustment, and baking in Chromecast functionality. That is, by no means, a paltry number of upgrades.

Despite the pile of upgrades you get with the Nebula II, we still feel confident recommending the Nebula. If you want an incredibly competent pico projector for $300 or less, it’s tough to beat. Given that you’ll likely see it on sale soon thanks to the upcoming release of its successor, it’ll be an even better deal on sale for $250.

If anything about it (like the lower resolution or the lack of Chromecast support) is a dealbreaker, however, then that just means you’re a prime candidate for the only pico projector currently in line to dethrone it, the Nebula II.

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