Rough Cuts Ltd Blog

In 2021 UK drone regulations are changing in a significant number of ways to bring them more in line with the EU.  With a number of caveats, Permission for commercial operation (PfCO) is no longer strictly required, although to acquire aerial images and/or video, insurance will be. The law still requires that pilots of larger drones, without PfCO, maintain 50m clear of buildings, people, property (such as cars) and 150m clear of urban, built up areas and do not fly over crowds of people ever, however if the drone is under 250g those rules do not apply, quote 'for short periods of time'.  Verbatim, from the CAA  "The (new) rules are based on the risk of the flight; where you fly, proximity  to other people and the size and weight of your drone" Pilots who have previously passed courses and flight tests might well find that their insurance quotes are significantly less than those who have no experience or qualifications. I have had a quote for one days work which has en

There was a time when you were looking for a technical solution that Google had a handy and convenient answer.  Music, Photos and Files. Google had the solution, but as time has passed, all of these solutions are now past their best. Let's have a look at what they were and why they're no longer worth our time.  Google Music This used to be a great way to sync/backup your music collection and stream to your mobile device without eating into any of the storage on your phone, Great when storage was only 8 or 4Gb. You could also stream audio, from your laptop or device to your Chromecast plugged into your hifi at 320kbps and browse your collection with ease.  Google Music is dead though and has now been replaced by the much more inferior YouTube music service. Much like Apple Music and Spotify, primarily it is now a streaming service you pay for. While you can transfer your files across from Google Play Music, the interface is aimed at the subscriber, and limitations on bit rate an

As has become the pattern with Google, the freemium products that entice you in to use their services and devices, like Google Music, manifest to become something utterly useless, unless of course you pay. But now, with Google Photos even if you pay, that service is still going to become useless, until you pay some more, and the year after that, even more and so on... I love convenience and if there's a solution that offers it, I will usually be an early adopter. Google Music was tremendous as it let you synchronise the music on your computer, with a cloud based service so you could access your entire music collection from your (Google) Android device. That switched to YouTube music, a service that is worse in every respect. Lower streaming quality, a dreadful interface, and no more streaming from your phone to your Chromecast Audio that you bought in good faith.... from Google.  And the same thing is happening with Google Photos. That superb service that allowed you to easily back

Over the past few weeks and months I have been asked to produce a number of videos for virtual events. For some I have done the filming which makes things super easy, but for others I have collated clips made by the clients. For some the most convenient way has been to use Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive or another cloud based storage solution, which from a Laptop or Desktop computer isn't too much of a problem. But capturing video on a mobile device makes so much sense, as the camera quality can be exceptional, and when paired with a lapel mic (which can be used with 99% of smartphones nowadays), a tripod and some natural light, near professional results aren't too difficult.  But unless you're an everyday user of Google Drive, or Dropbox then transferring that video can prove tricky. Using Whats App or Email usually compresses the video to an unacceptable degree. Resolution is lost, sharpness is lost and the effort you put in, to get clear audio, can also be lost.  So w

I've had my Samsung S7 edge since 2017 and for the most part it's been a solid purchase. It's a beautifully designed phone in gold, with wireless charging, fast performance, a tremendous camera an IP68 rating, glass rear, fingerprint sensor in the button, heart rate and O2 sensor. But now with my high usage, the battery is starting to let me down. Buying a replacement for a flagship handset has been a challenge. Upgrades should have all of the features of your old phone and then some, right? Well, I also have a general rule which makes things far more difficult, I don't take contract phones (I have a £10 12Gb 30 day Sim deal from Voxi  [voda] which is fine thanks, use link for the same deal and a £10 amazon voucher) and I don't buy phones for more than £500, in fact the S7 Edge was a bargain as I bagged it in a a Black Friday event for less than £380, so finding a replacement for this has been eye opening. The assumption that flagship features move down onto cheaper

So my Mum is a retired headteacher, although you would struggle to notice as she volunteers her time to a local school as a teacher, and like many, uses Hwb. She does however struggle with her email, as a non smartphone user, she hasn't configured her mail app to use it so, apparently, their school secretary emails her on her personal email, to let her know when she has email in her Hwb account. Then, my Mum will open her computer, click on her saved link, login to check, read and respond.  Hardly convenient.  Like my Mother, and presumably many others, I do not use my Hwb email as my primary account, so I have set up email forwarding. This means when an email comes in, I will instantly receive a copy on my school email and I can respond accordingly. Without the need for our school secretary to get involved.  So how is this done? So for my Mum and anyone else who needs it, it's done like this.  Log in to Hwb and navigate to Outlook. In the top right, click the Gear icon and the

For generations before music streaming every record on earth became a thing, there have been music lovers known as collectors. Discerning music lovers who will audition, listen, share, and ultimately 'collect' albums to add to their ever growing library. People who would selectively spend their money on supporting artists they loved, by buying albums instead of paying subscriptions to global corporations who are known to pay a pittance to artists .  Collectors total album count are their badge of honour, their knowledge of each artist and history, their passion. In the 1970s Vinyl was the collectors medium of choice. For portability in the early 80's Cassette's become almost as popular (although not for the true audiophiles). Then in the mid 80's the Compact Disc became the long term winner for many millions of collectors and in the late 90's MP3 made it's first appearance. With low bandwidth and small hard disk drive sizes, the best we could realistically h

The transfer is complete, my music collection that I have enjoyed listening through Google Play Music for the best part of a decade has now moved to the new improved cash machine that is Youtube music.  The end of an era, the end of listening to albums cast to my hifi at 320kbps.  So what is my problem with Youtube Music? Let's start with the least infuriating feature. Finding an individual album (that I own and have uploaded) is now incredibly difficult. Albums and Artists are listed on separate tabs. Tap either, through the web or the app, and you're presented with the YouTube Music Artists you have bought, which is none, so I have to manually switch it to uploaded. If I'm looking at Albums, they're not listed in artist order, but album title. With 10,000 songs, that's a lot of albums to scroll through and loading time isn't great, so getting to 'The Seldom Seen Kid" or anything lower down in the alphabet takes forever. But there is an easier way, bei

As I have recently found out, having a team member leave a shared Google Drive can be infuriatingly complex . The best way to handle a shared Google Drive is by using an admin account for the organisation. All of the folders within a share, should be managed by this one account. If they are created by the key member representing the organisation, then the sharing permissions for the folder can be managed by the admin. The admin can remove people from the share, or share the folder or files with other people. Other team members should not create new folders within the Parent folder. Other team members should, as a matter of course (for their sake as well as the organisation, upload folders, but as a matter of habit, make the owner of the file or folder the orgnisation's admin account. If you already have an active share with hundreds of valuable files, between a number of people, then you can prepare for future issues (someone moving on) in a couple of ways. There may be better ways

Let's say you collaborate on a project with some people. You decide between you that Google Drive is the way you're going to share the work and you find for the initial period, workflow is good and you're contributing, editing and sharing in equal measure. The way collaborative work should be. Then as the project matures, so do people's intentions and goals. Maybe one goes on to start and collaborate with another group of people, their contribution to the project was more relevant at launch and now they want to respectfully go their separate ways. How do they reclaim the space back from their drive. How do they (or you) remove them from the share and how do we ensure confidentiality on future work? Well that's where things get interesting. Lets call the guy who is part of the remaining team, the new leader, A and the person leaving Z. Before we dig in, I'd like to point out that I am admin for other G Suite partners, and a Google Certified Educator. I know my wa

Ebikes are fun.If you've never experienced one, you really should, once you start pedaling you feel like a 10 year old who's been given a push. If you've ever ridden on an exercise bike, you'll know that the effort required is pretty similar to that of a normal bike, assuming that bike is on a perfectly flat surface and constant. The experience of riding an ebike is pretty similar, only instead of going at a normal pace indoors looking at your wall, you'll be going 40-50% faster, in the fresh air, enjoying nature, sunshine and beautiful scenery. A 10mph cruise on a normal cycle will be closer to 15 mph on an ebike. A slight incline will likely not affect your speed or have much effect on the effort required, steeper and, depending on your fitness level, you'll start to really feel the benefit of an electric motor on your side. But, too steep and because of the laws in the UK, you'll need to be physically fit to continue. Upwards of 8% inclines and you'll

I am truly blessed to work with a number of outstanding teachers and head teachers in close proximity. I didn't know it, but I've accidentally stumbled on my dream job, creating ways to educate students on the wonders of technology and digital creation is more rewarding than I ever thought it could be (who'd have thought after 20+ halcyonic years in retail) , and helping teachers navigate the ever changing world of technology makes me feel useful and valued. Throughout the covid crisis, the schools I work in, have coped amazingly well, receiving praise from teachers and colleagues, pupils and parents for effective communication and workload distribution. But what has struck me is the difference with which the schools have done things. Whilst highly effective, their approaches are completely different and I know that these two opposing approaches aren't the only solutions that schools have adopted. There is a massive spectrum of solutions in-between these two methods,

With lockdown, childrens time spent online is naturally going to increase, and thus, the likelihood of bumping into an idiot online and children being targeted or bullied is increased. It seems pertinent to start with the basic facts. If your child is going online to play games in situations that allow players from around the world to join, they will, (as in real life) occasionally encounter unpleasant people. I'm lucky as I am naturally interested in gaming, but if you're not, it pays to ask your child to show you what they play, how they play it and with whom they are mixing. It's also worth noting that Xbox Live and Playstation Plus, despite being for gaming, are not services that are designed for minors. The age for an account is 18 on both. It is anticipated, sometimes incorrectly, that minors will have an adult to steer them through the pitfalls of using the service. But there are ways we can keep our children safe and confident online.  Online bullying can be in

I can only take some of the credit for some of the images that were described by a fellow tweeter, Ken, as 'amazing' last night. Knowing about photography helps capture these shots, but anyone who knows me well, knows I always prefer the easy way to do things, and if there isn't an easy way, I'll usually find one. This also makes it easy to explain to others, how they can do the same. So here goes. Everyone is capable of spotting what a great image looks like. "Look at that view" and "What a beautiful sunset" aren't phrases exclusive to photographers, we all know what beautiful countryside looks like. But sometimes it's the contrasting light that makes the scene what it is. This happens more in the golden hour; an hour after the sun is rising or the hour before it sets. In these moments, we get huge variations in contrasting light. We have bright skies and deep dark shadows falling over the land, which create depth that give us texture. Our

If you're a music lover that prefers to own their music than subscribe to a music streaming service, be it on vinyl, CD that you back up digitally, or that you buy digitally, you may have been disappointed yesterday to hear that Google Play Music is swapping to YouTube Music. While YouTube music is ok, it's not quite the same as Google Play Music. Google Play Music simply offered 50,000 song storage capacity and a pretty neat app that allowed you to stream that entire library to your mobile devices. There are apps for iPad, iPhone, Android phone and tablets. It was ok. Sometimes it would muddle up your library and put songs in the wrong album, but hey iTunes used to do the same. Currently the You Tube app doesn't let you stream music in the background though, without a subscription, which is pretty lame. You also can't 'buy' music through it, you can only subscribe to the service, like Spotify, that lets you have access to all of the current music in their ent

Here are my Top Ten recommendations that you might not know, to help you get the best out of your Smartphone ... 1) Turn off Notifications for Social media - Be the boss of your phone, not the slave to it's chimes, because mental health matters. 2) Clean your lens before you take a photo -This makes a much bigger difference to the clarity and sharpness of your images than you might imagine. 3) Buy a Sim only deal - There's no reason to pay one company for your service and your phone anymore. Check your data usage and buy what you need. £10 will get you 8GB and unlimited social media use on Voxi. My whole family pay less for 4 agreements, than I see many individuals pay for one phone. 4) Buy a Sim free phone - Budget smartphones are now incredible, mid range phones are mind blowing. Save your pennies and don't get suckered into a contract that'll see you lose money if you crack your screen, and on that.... 5) Get a good case - Nano technology is

So for Christmas I bought my Mum a computer book from a very well known (slightly insultingly titled) series of books that allegedly make computing simple. Absolutely 100% up to date, with everything about how to make her Apple Mac do exactly what she wants. Initially the gift was well received, but from conversations I had, it appeared to be draining. Too much, and perhaps not written the way normal people read or talk. In the same way if someone bought me a ladybird book about gardening or er, ladybirds, regardless of how well it was written, I'd likely struggle after page 4. It lacked engagement. I am very privileged to teach and support in 2 schools in sunny North Wales. With groups of both 6-10 year old's starting out with computers for the first time, and more mature teachers, some of whom are totally stuck in their traditional ways of using a computer. Both groups of computer users, make  similar mistakes though, fall into the same pitfalls, or simply don't know, e

So a couple of days ago, I posted about Zoom being a risk. For being 'zoombombed', to having your personal identity stolen, installing malware on your machine, passing your browsing habits on to facebook and other serious and legitimate concerns for users. On the back of that, today we tried our first Skype Meet now with 13 people. In a nutshell, and by comparison (to Zoom) it was very poor. While it only took people a few moments to grasp the interface and no one seemed to have too many issues getting onto the call. People also seemed to like the 'blur background' option. The chat window and the peculiar bubbles that people disappeared into were odd, but ok. Swapping people into the four visible windows worked ok. But not having full grid view was odd. (There is only the option to view 4 at a time, but streams should have been live in the bubbles). People's video feeds kept dropping out (although the sound seemed to be connected throughout), and it was differe

Zoom has been getting a lot of stick recently and not all because of one fault. It seems that there are a number of problems facing the company and after investigating these issues, described below (with links to the source) I've uninstalled the software and will be urging my colleagues to do the same.  There are better alternatives available without the hassle and worry that comes with Zoom. So what are the problems? One group that has had a shock using Zoom is a Norwegian School class who's online lesson was interupted by a naked man . This happened because, by default, Zoom meetings aren't password protected and they're not encrypted. He guessed the meeting number and hey presto, he's naked in a class full of school children. Not good. If that isn't bad enough Zoom yesterday announced that they accidentally allowed their traffic to pass through chinese servers . China has a tempestuous relationship with internet freedom and because Zoom calls aren't

Do well (including Rough Cuts) are a band of professionals who collaborate on a multitude of varied projects. We have no office, so the Coronavirus simply won't affect the way we work as we're remote workers anyway. Here's an insight into how we operate. Organizational focus To keep our minds focused on our work, we start with Trello. We have one board, with cards for each of our clients on. These are organised into columns, depending on the client type, and each has a unique ID. This works in a similar way to a forum. Band members associated with a project are linked to the card (and get notifications about that work). Our project work For our collaboration and file storage, we use Google drive. Without a subscription Google will give you 15gb, per account. The folders here are labelled exactly the same way as our Trello cards. So it's easy to find work thats associated with a project. We're trying to move over to Google docs, Google slides and Google sheet