Month: May 2022 - Net Magellan

CMOS Online

The Chicago Manual of Style is one of the well-known American style guides and is liked by many editors. Companies can and do have their own house styles, as did Unisys when I was a senior editor in 1989-1991. I used the Hewlett-Packard house style when I did a contract task there. Apart from browsing it online, in this context, you access it through PerfectIt.

PerfectIt

PerfectIt is a consistency checker. It isn’t a spelling or grammar checker. The following is taken from its own Getting Started guide:

PerfectIt checks:

Hyphenation consistency.

Capitalisation consistency.

Consistency of title case in headings.

Spelling variations.

Consistency of italics.

Numbers in sentences.

Punctuation and capitalisation consistency in lists and tables.

In addition, PerfectIt finds:

Abbreviations that have not been defined (or that appear before their definition).

Table titles presented in the wrong order.

Brackets and quotes left open

Subscript missing in chemical formulae.

Superscript missing in measurements.

PerfectIt also checks house styles. It can:

Check UK, US, Australian and Canadian spelling preferences.

Check UN, EU, WHO, GPO, Australian Government, and American Legal styles.

be customized to check your house style.

As an example of checking consistency, it presented “end user” and “end-user” as variations I had used. Some writers will need this type of check if they are not sure about using a phrase as a noun or as a modifier.

Detecting hyphenation opportunities

Towards the end of its numerous checks, it offered to tidy up the loose ends. For example, many of the edits needed the references to be updated.

Tidying up the manuscript.

Summary Report.

For a small book of about 70 numbered pages (14,874 words), the process took me just over an hour. The other two books are 100 and 200 pages, respectively, so that will be fun.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I ordered the Lumina camera on 10 May and it arrived eight days later – an excellent turnaround. I had seen a friend share his Lumina Founders Edition webcam image and I was so impressed that I ordered one immediately.

First Looks

These are my initial comments, as I unboxed the camera less than an hour ago. The parcel was well packed and the camera box is well-made – not unlike an iPhone box.

Contents of the Package

The camera comes with a magnetic cover to hide the camera when you don’t want the bad guys to monitor you secretly (if you believe in that), but the magnet is only above the lens. So you might bump it off by accident when the camera is exposed. You get two kinds of USB cables There is a folding mount that connects to your own tripod, or folds over your monitor or laptop screen. A supplied Allen key helps to tighten the camera on the mount.

Software

You need to download the Lumina software from their website, but before you do that, the camera must be connected to the computer so that its serial number can be supplied before the download. I installed it and there was also a firmware update I installed. All pretty straightforward.

Bugs

The colour tuning card you see in the photo could not be used immediately, as their website mentions some issues that are being ironed out. I used Zoom to test the camera and found that switching between the AI “Plus” mode and the Raw mode caused Zoom to not see my face until I restarted both the Lumina app and Zoom.

I became invisible. — I became invisible in Zoom settings.

Comparison – Old and New

My old webcam is a 10-year-old RocketFish RF-HDWEB that had served me well for the occasional video call. Most of the old cameras don’t have zoom (the feature, not the app). I sit more than an arm’s length from it, so I look small compared to others who sit close to their laptop’s built-in camera. I will soon be publishing two SEO books, so I expect to be on camera a lot and needed this new camera. This odd comparison of old and new isn’t fair to the RocketFish, but it’s the kind of comparison that consumers will face, unless they are buying a new camera every other month.

My face with the old RocketFish HD camera.

Checked shirts don’t suit video cameras, but I wasn’t changing clothes for this quick review. There was just one ceiling light and ambient light from the monitor in front of me. The Lumina is clearly better than the old one and the Plus mode is better than the Raw mode. I saw the warning about using 720p rather than 1080p, so I took the above screenshots in 720p mode. I did not test the AI mode, which adjusts the virtual “cameraman” if you are an animated kind of person who moves close to the camera and then moves back.

Warning about using AI at the higher resolution.

You can read more about the software at the Lumina website.

Zooming

Zooming (not the app) is done by having the Lumina app open along with your video app (Zoom in my case). A convenient slider lets you choose the level of zooming.

Maximum zoomed out (and background blur on).

Verdict

Keeping in mind that I have used the Lumina camera for a few minutes, my initial impression is one of delight. Without adding any special lighting (which I will buy soon), my face is better lit than the old camera could achieve. More impressive for me is the ability to zoom in.

Lumina Website Link

Full disclosure: This link will take you to the Lumina website where you can read more about it. If you buy through this link, you will get $25 off and if two people buy a camera each, I will get a free one – I intend to gift it to a very deserving person whom I know.

Lumina website link

Chicago Manual of Style and PerfectIt