TAPPTOONS SOFTWARE FOR TRADITIONAL DRAWN CARTOON & STOP MOTION MODEL ANIMATION

TAPPTOONS NEWSPAGE

 10th October 2009

MAKING THE POOR SQUEAL

Last June Lord Carter of Barnes, the UK communications Minister (and no doubt yet another wealthy individual who won`t bat an eyelid at extra costs for his telephone service) proposed a new £6 a year tax on users of fixed telephone lines in order to pay for the provision of fast broadband internet access to those parts of the country who don`t yet have it, particularly rural areas.

The main purpose of this expansion seems to be to enable people to watch high definition tv, download movies and play videogames with someone else half way round the world all via the internet. So you and I are going to fork out extra money so some spotty youth in the countryside can indulge his or her no doubt violent fantasies with online gaming whilst others can clog up the internet with enormous hi-def tv data files, watching something they could no doubt view on satellite or terrestrial digital tv instead. It`s bad enough with all the spam emails clogging up the net.

Let`s not forget also that satellites can deliver internet access as well (albeit at a premium, but then, if you will live in remote areas.....)

Admittedly, 50p a month is not a huge amount of money, but you need to look at it in context. The UK government has already gotten rid of the 10p lower tax band. Fuel and beer taxes continually go up. The public house trade has been virtually ruined by government taxes and the smoking ban.

Some local councils are considering a Workplace Parking Levy (a tax by any other name) where employees in companies with more than ten parking spaces will have to pay to park. All imposed by yet more wealthy local politicians who can easily pay more charges (but probably won`t need to). This is to deter "unnecessary" car journeys. Is going to work an "unnecessary" use of a car? The money collected would go towards better public transport.

No doubt using flying pigs.

Another proposal is to tax car parking at supermarkets and other retail outlets. Totally unavoidable charges for businesses if it`s an out-of-town location. Those costs will end up on our shopping bills.

It makes you wonder how much more of this crap the British public are going to put up with.

 

TECHNICAL MATTERS IGNORED

A recent edition of the Gadget Show on the Five tv channel here in the UK featured a review of inexpensive High Definition video camcorders. The three little devices were put through there paces in the usual irritatingly flashy presentation style by one of the presenters creating a set of clips of the type that get onto those tedious home video clip shows.

The Sanyo Xacti model was eventually deemed the best buy for its picture quality and ease of use. Mention was made at some point about the ability of the cameras to shoot at 60 frames per second. Very impressive, you might think, but if you go to the manufacturers` websites and look into the specifications of these gadgets what you find is that a lot of them will only work at 30 or 60 frames per second. Fine for the USA or Japan (where a lot of these designs come from) but useless for Europe and many other parts of the world where 25 or 50 frames per second is the tv standard. Even more puzzling is that they do offer a PAL tv output to your tv set, presumably converting the tv signal to PAL from its NTSC origins within the camcorder.

These camcorders may be okay for uploading your efforts onto YouTube but if you wanted to edit your video for use on a PAL standard DVD you`ll be looking at an unsatisfactory conversion job in the editing process.

This type of technical ignorance, or indifference, on the part of tv shows and computer magazines in the UK is unfortunately par for the course.

Best Buy? Of an ill-informed choice.

 

VINTAGE POPEYE ON DVD

The second and third volumes of digitally restored Fleischer Popeye films from the 1930s and 1940s has now been released for Region 1 DVD collectors. This second volume includes the classic short GOONLAND and some interesting documentaries. The old cartoons look superb in their restored form if all you`ve ever seen were battered old prints from the AAP distributors and public domain copies. So far only available for Region 1 NTSC viewers but you can buy it from Caiman of the USA through Amazon (uk site) for about £15 and it will only take a week or so to arrive. Why bother with the old public domain copies when you can see these beautifully restored versions?

To read an article about volume one of the Popeye collection from the DVD Times website CLICK HERE

Here`s a handy page for hacks to convert DVD players/recorders to multi-region CLICK HERE

 

8th January 2008

WINDOWS XP DRIVERS FOR A MUSTEK A3 EP PARALLEL PORT SCANNER

Quite some time ago, in fact August 2000, I bought a Mustek A3 parallel port flatbed scanner the A3 EP model, thinking I would need to able to scan A3 size drawings for the animation work I was hoping to get. In the event the big scanner has seen very little use and when I upgraded from Windows ME to Windows XP I found, of course, that there were no XP drivers for parallel port scanners. My old Epson A4 scanner was redundant as well (although it must be said that it was making squeaking noises and the lid hinges had fractured, so it wasn`t going to last anyway)

So, for a long time, the Mustek has been languishing unused in a cupboard. However! I recently found that Mustek have posted on their downloads section a "fix" that enables you to install Windows 2000 drivers for the A3 EP on an XP system. They even have a registry workround if you have any difficulties with the installation.

So now I can use my old A3 scanner again.

To go to the Mustek download page CLICK HERE

 

*****************