On April 22, 2013 the varsity baseball teams from Fairfax High School and Madison High School honored Fairfax student Drew Bonner with a ceremonial at-bat. I recorded the event on my iPhone and then uploaded to YouTube. After my tweet was re-tweeted, the heartwarming story was first picked up by Preston Williams of the Washington Post and it went viral from there.

Drew Bonner Day – Fairfax Rebels vs. Madison Warhawks: youtu.be/kLobh7kLHJw?a via @youtube

— Neil Bonner ♚ (@IrishPrince) April 23, 2013

A few days later Tom Jackman of the Washington Post put the story on the Post Local section of the website. Drew and his crew got a little schweg going when the video and story was posted on MLB.com’s Cut 4. The guys loved it when David Culver of NBC Washington showed up to practice with a camera crew and aired the story on local NBC 4.

Danny Farris of MLB Fan Cave blogged about Drew’s walk up song, “First of all, how amazing is his walk-up song? It’s “Ridin Dirty” by Chamillionare and the first lyric in that song is: “They see me rollin.” That’s about a 14 out of 10 on the incredible scale. It made me smile and laugh.”

Just this week reporter Diane Roberts ran with the story on USA 9 — the local CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. She put together a nice two minute segment that you can see on the USA 9 website or watch below.

With all of the discussion the past few days concerning the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut the media and elected officials are emotionally reacting with suggestions that the solution to Newtown and mass shootings in general, is to ban military-style “assault weapons”. This emotional reaction is understandable but nonetheless, trampling on the Constitutional Rights of citizens is always wrong and makes for poor public policy.

According to the Center for Disease Control, falling out of bed accounts for 450 deaths each year. According to the FBI, last year only 358 people were murdered by rifles.

In this post I show why those that seek to limit our rights and freedoms are wrong and I propose a solution that would limit future mass shootings.

Yesterday I felt the need to respond to a post on the GovLoop website calling for the ban on “assault weapons”. As typical with most emotionally driven folks, they never define what is an “assault weapon”. Is it a weapon that looks like a military gun? Is it a weapon that contains a large magazine that can hold 30 rounds of ammunition? Again, those that wish to weaken certain elements of the Bill of Rights, never are able to articulate what exactly needs to be removed from civilian use. Some in Congress are now calling for banning the popular AR-15 rifle that is by far the most popular rifle sold in the U.S.

Civil Unrest and Domestic Riots

It seems that the gun control crowd has forgotten the aftermath of Katrina and the L.A. Riots of 1992. A little refresher is in order.

Starting in April 1992 there were six days of widespread rioting in Los Angeles where the police were largely absent as it was deemed “too dangerous” for them to be out on the streets. 53 people were killed during the rioting and there were over 2,000 injuries. Citizen and shopkeepers were forced to defend themselves from the rioters and looters, as the government was unable and unwilling to protect its citizens.

Some Korean-American shopkeepers used AR-15’s to defend themselves and their shops from the looters. They were largely successful but the citizens and shopkeepers without AR-15’s and other firearms had their stores destroyed. In all 2,300 Korean-American’s had their shops looted or burned.

Many Los Angeles citizens wanted to purchase firearms to protect themselves from the rioting but the 10-day waiting period in California prevented them from adequate self-defense while the rioting was ongoing.

Therefore it is reasonable that AR-15’s and other so-called “assault weapons” including large capacity magazines should be in the hands of law-abiding private citizens. If one were to take a look at the rioting that has taken place in Europe over the past few years it is not unreasonable to suggest that civil unrest is very likely to occur in the United States given the economic and fiscal crisis that awaits us.

This discussion is about Civil Rights

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has had two notable rulings on the Second Amendment. The first, UNITED STATES v. MILLER, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), concerned a “sawed off shotgun” and the Justices ruled that the 2nd Amendment applied to “ordinary military equipment”.  It acknowledged that citizens have a Constitutionally protected right to “ordinary military equipment” and the AR-15 fits into that category as far as the media and politicians are concerned.

In the recent DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER, the Court found that the 2nd Amendment was an “individual” right to “keep and bear arms”.  Whether the reason for wanting an AR-15 is for target practice, hunting or self-defense, the 2nd Amendment guarantees us the right to keep and bear these arms. Radio talk show host Mark Levin has recently responded to the, “Why do you need a military style gun?” question. Levin says it is the “Bill of Rights not the Bill of Needs.”

So please, let’s be honest about this discussion – the anti- 2nd Amendment crowd want to deny citizens of their constitutionally protected rights. There is a legitimate way to do that and it is thru the amendment process (2/3 of Congress and ¾ of the States). Good luck with that. Instead, the gun-ban crowd will once again trample on the Constitution instead of using the amendment process.

Is mental illness the common thread of mass shootings?

The common thread is not really mental illness as the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas showed us. The common thread is the so-called, “gun free zones”. US Army base Fort Hood (like all Army bases) do not allow the possession of firearms unless they are on-duty and authorized to carry a weapon. The mentally ill, evil and terrorists use gun-free zones to execute their mass shootings.

A common sense solution

If we really were interested in reducing these types of mass shootings we would encourage all law-abiding citizens to be trained in the safe and competent use of firearms and be encouraged to carry them in all places at all times. By definition, we have nothing to fear from law-abiding citizens. We need to ensure that these responsible citizens are in a position to protect themselves and others from the depravations of the mentally ill and ideologically driven terrorists.

Instead of feel-good “solutions” of banning “assault weapons” that would not have prevented the shootings in Newtown, CT, how about supporting a licensing and registration process that allowed law-abiding citizens with proper firearms training to carry firearms in all places at all times?

Moving your video collection from DVD or Blu-ray discs to “on demand” digital content is easier than you may think. As the years have gone by your collection of commercial DVD discs has likely grown large. In recent years you may also have purchased blu-ray discs because of their superior High Definition resolution on large HD televisions. With the advent of devices like the Apple TV which lets you stream your own music and video content, more people are considering converting their existing content rather than repurchasing it in a digital (non-disc) form.

Over the past few years, I have converted my favorite movies and TV shows into a format that I can stream directly to my HD television. I also load movies onto my iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch devices.  The best part is that you can do it yourself without spending much money. Here’s how.

There are a number of devices you can hookup to your HD TV that can act as a media server/player. My favorite is the Apple TV which can play videos and movies in 1080p and it supports Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. At only $99 it is an incredible bargain especially if you already use iTunes to manage your music and video content. You will also need a computer and an external hard drive to hold all of your media. I use an Apple Mac Mini to convert my disc content to digital files. If you do not have a DVD reader/writer the Apple SuperDrive is a good drive for Mac users. Another option to consider is the Samsung USB2.0 External Slim Blu-ray Writer Drive. It uses two USB 2.0 ports but requires no power cable. It’s small, lightweight, supports both DVD and Blu-ray, works on Windows and Macs; all for around $80. I use the Samsung drive to “rip” Blu-ray discs directly to my computer’s external hard drive.

Some terminology

If you are a novice at converting video content there are a few concepts you need to understand before you dive into the deep end. “Ripping,” refers to the process of moving content from a DVD or Blu-ray disc to (usually) a hard disk. “Re-encoding,” or to transcode refers to the process of changing a video from one format (or size) into a different format or size. Then there is “muxing or to remux” which refers to the process of repackaging the content into a new container but not changing the actual content. Lastly, you will want to “tag” content with metadata so that you can browse your video collection by title, genre (drama, comedy), rating, etcetera. This may sound more complicated than it is in practice, yet if you follow the steps below you can have your own on-demand digital library.

Is this legal?

The first step is to choose a DVD or Blu-ray disc that you legally own. The U.S. Copyright Office has issued exemptions to prohibition on circumvention of copyright protection systems. The ruling would allow consumers to legally remove copy protection on DVDs and Blu-ray discs in order to backup or change the format of the content – which is exactly the process we describe. Be advised that you must have legally acquired and own any disc that you intend to convert and the conversion must be for your own private use.

Follow these simple steps

Step 1: Rip the disc to your hard drive. There are a number of programs both commercial and shareware that can do this step. I recommend MakeMKV. While this program is still in beta (been there for years) it is free to use. MakeMKV comes in both Mac and Windows versions. It will take your Blu-ray or DVD disc and remove the copy protection and save the video, audio and subtitles to your hard drive without altering the content by compressing the video, for example. The MakeMKV program stores the movie into the Matroska Video (MKV) container format that is open and patent-free. The MKV format has quickly become a de-facto standard for storing movies.

After the movie is ripped to the hard drive you will want to preview it to ensure that the video, audio and subtitle tracks (if any) have been saved properly. I recommend you use the free Videolan VLC application as it will play movies in nearly all videos formats. It is important to check and ensure that you saved the correct audio track(s) as you want to be able to hear your movie in full Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

Normally you cannot stop at this step because the resultant video file is too large to fit onto many devices or too large for video streaming over a home WiFi network. DVD rips typically are between 5GB and 8GB in size. Blu-ray rips typically are between 17GB and 35GB. Also the MKV format is not a container format that the AppleTV, QuickTime, or Windows Media Player is able to play.

Step 2: Encode the video into a format that works for your device. Apple products use the H.264 / MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) which is a standard for video compression of high definition content. In most cases you will want your videos in this format. The beauty of the H.264 format is that it can preserve the video quality at substantially lower bitrates than previous standards. I mostly encode my rips to play thru my AppleTV in 1080p (if the source is a Blu-ray disc). If I want to play the content primarily on an iPad or iPhone, I would likely save the movie in 720p resolution. DVD source content should be saved in 480p resolution for best results.

The best program to convert your rips into device-playable content is HandBrake. This is a magnificent piece of open source (GPL) software that works on Mac, Windows or Linux. HandBrake has many options and can be complicated to figure out the optimal settings to use. Thankfully, the program comes with several default profiles including a profile for the AppleTV3 that can be used as-is or adapted. I may write another blog post about the ideal conversion settings for Handbrake, but for now this article focuses on the overall process of converting movie discs to digital video files.

Completing this step will take a typical 25GB MKV file (blu-ray rip) and save it down to a 4GB to 6GB M4V (MP4) file. Note that processing a feature-length movie in 1080p with “high quality” options can take a considerable amount of time even with a fast computer. Using a Mac Mini with an i5 processor, I can expect encodes in the range of 5 to 12 Frames per Second (FPS) when performing 1080p encodes. If your computer cannot encode at this speed or faster, you should consider scaling down display size or the quality.

Step 3: Tag your digital video file. The last step in preparing your new video file is to tag it with the metadata that describes the content. My favorite program for this is Subler which is only available on the Mac platform. If you use Windows, MetaX is a good metadata editor and costs $9.95. Both of these applications allow you to search online for a content match (movie, TV Show) and automatically tag the file with the relevant metadata. You should also be able to load artwork during this process so that the cover image shows up nicely as you browse through your movie titles. Both of these apps are worthy of your support and can save you a lot of time versus manually searching the web to find the right metadata.

Step 4: Load your video file for access. By simply using drag-and-drop I can add the video file to iTunes. I use iTunes to stream my content to all of my Apple devices. My iTunes library is on my Mac Mini which is always on our WiFi network which means my content is always available. You will want to have a device that is always on and always available on your home network.

Hopefully you will find this quick overview helpful. Once you become proficient with this method there are other tools available for more sophisticated video conversions.

The National Park Service launched their official mobile (iPhone iOS) app in August 2011. It is available free from the Apple iTunes App Store as a 13.9 MB download. I’m reviewing the latest, 1.0.2 version which is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 3.2 or later. The National Park Service (NPS) has flyers available with QR Codes that make it easy for folks to download the app while on the National Mall. At just under 14 MB the app download does not take too long using a 3G connection.

The app starts quickly and on first use asks your permission to use your current location. Users will want to grant permission as this app is designed to guide you as you travel about the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, DC. The home screen brings up a rotating set of beautiful photographs of monuments with the NPS branding and navigation overlaid. The app has a strong visual appeal, good typography and uses the popular Glyphish Pro iconography.  Rather than using a “More” as the fifth navigational element the designers decided to add four additional nav icon links as shown is the screenshot. This is a bit unconventional but it does work well in this implementation.

The Overview provides a good summary of the National Mall and Memorial Parks (NAMA). A minor quibble I have is they provide links to “our outdoor activities page to learn more” and a link to the NAMA website. Both webpages are displayed in a web viewer and are not sized for mobile devices (mobilized). Why send users of your iPhone app to your website? A better choice would be to offer the content within the NPS app itself.

You only get one chance to make a first impression and the NPS has done an outstanding job with their first app.

The Events and News feature pulls from a NPS feed, which is an intelligent method to keep the contents of a native iOS app up-to-date without requiring a new version in the App Store. The first News item caught my attention as it invites you to a “Public Meeting on Washington Monument Screening Facility.” However, clicking on the item does not reveal the date, time or location. NPS needs to think about adding more useful content to their News feed. The Events feed contains links with more details but I would have preferred to see the events in reverse chronological order. The oldest (October) events were on the top and the current upcoming events were near the bottom of the list.

The Postcard feature is fun and worked well. I was able to take a neat snapshot with the NPS branded boarder around the photograph. You can email the souvenir photo right from the app. I appreciate how the NPS designers were thinking about how and what their audience would want to do with this app, and providing a souvenir photo is brilliant.

The core of the app are the sites and monuments. The NPS provides several ways to discover our national treasures. Map and Sites are two direct methods. The later is an alphabetical listing of each of the locations. Clicking on any of the sites brings you to the details page of that site.  The Map view allows you to explore sites via a Google Maps mash-up. It’s easy to use your fingers to scroll and zoom to see where monuments are located. Using this Map view you can see your own location relative to the monuments that are nearest to you (assuming you are on or near the National Mall).

Each monument has a detailed page that offers an Overview, Info, Album, Events and a button to add the site to your My Tour. This allows you to build your own tour of monuments to visit. The Album button allows you to view photographs of the monuments as well as historical figures and artifacts. I was pleasantly surprised to see that audio and videos of NPS Rangers are also provided in some of the Albums (see Lincoln Memorial). The inclusion of the audio and video was an excellent choice. The Rangers give their own personal statements on why a given monument is important to them. Ranger Elmi Kawther who is from Africa, had a heartfelt message on what the Lincoln Memorial means to her.

It appeared that the photos were loaded over the Internet which may help keep the size of the app small enough for a convenient download.

One feature that I would like to have seen – given the overall high quality of this app – is a way to “check in” to the locations I was visiting. Perhaps an integration with Foursquare would make this a truly killer app. If not Foursquare, then perhaps a checklist of sites that I’ve visited with virtual badges or pins as a reward for visiting a set of monuments.

Location-aware social features could work well with the Tours feature built into the app. The NPS pre-built five self-guided tours that give walking distances between each location. This is another really neat feature and instead of randomly wandering around the Mall, this feature allows you to visit sites based on theme or how much time you have available.

The Park Lens feature uses the built-in iOS compass capability. Holding your phone up to a location lets you augment what you see with additional content. Have no doubt, this is a technically sophisticated feature. It is clear that the iOS developers know what they are doing.

I did experience one app crash after watching a video. This is not uncommon for technically ambitious apps that are only a few months old. I suspect that user submitted crash reports will help to squish any remaining bugs.  While hooking my iPhone 4S up to a MacBook Pro with XCode, the console logs suggested that the app checks to see if I had Twitter available for use, which was surprising as it doesn’t (yet?) integrate with Twitter or any of the other social networking apps such as Foursquare.

All in all, the National Park Service hit a homerun with their official National Mall and Memorial Parks iOS app. They are to be commended for not rushing and putting out a half-baked, poorly conceived app. You only get one chance to make a first impression and the NPS has done an outstanding job with their first app. I can’t wait to see what they do for an encore. Perhaps versions for other popular sites such as the Grand Canyon? We can only hope!