MAX EBB — "P
lease wait," my computer told me, "the meeting host will let you in soon." OK, I was 15 minutes early, but I needed to make sure I had time to dig up the correct link to the online seminar. Online seminars are a far cry from the real thing. Back in the old days, pre-COVID, half the value of an inperson event was the pre- and postevent schmooze with all the other participants. This loss seemed especially poignant for this pre-race seminar: no chance to work the room for crew prospects, gear exchange, or back-channel gossip with the other skippers and navigators. The invitation to join the meeting appeared soon enough, and I clicked in to discover a surprise substitution: Lee Helm, naval architecture graduate student and accomplished offshore navigator, was the meeting host and principal lecturer. "Welcome aboard, Max!" she greeted me. "You're the first one in." "I grew up in New York," I explained. "and 'New York Time' means 'show up for everything 10 minutes early.' " "Max, un-mute your mic! Lower left, on the microphone icon!" "Right, sorry," I mumbled as I clicked the little microphone icon with the red slash through it to turn on my sound. "Lee, are you one of the speakers today? What happened to the famous meteorologist listed on the seminar invitation?" "He had to cancel," Lee explained. "Had to fly off to advise on some big race in Europe." "I'm not surprised you're in the seminar organizer's Rolodex," I said.
"Whatever a 'Rolodex' is," she answered. "Anyway, this gives me a chance to, like, tear up the syllabus on weather tactics they gave me. The best weather briefing for racing to Hawaii is already online, by Stan Honey. Don't mind the poor production values — I mean, it looks like it was shot with a handheld camera by one of the attendees — but the content is the best you'll find anywhere on the subject. I'm sending people there for weather strategy. That's like, the cool thing about online classes. You can watch a lecture given by the best in the biz, and the local teacher's role changes to providing individual help with the homework. It's the Khan Academy concept of 'flipping the classroom.' " "Then what's your plan for today?" I asked. "Routing software tutorial," Lee answered. "By the end of the session, you will have downloaded and installed your very own weather routing optimization program, loaded a GRIB file, and calculated the fastest route to Hawaii, based on the latest wind forecast, for a boat similar to yours." "I tried to use one of those routing programs once," I confessed. "It's either a very steep learning curve, or I'm pretty dense. The user manual was almost no help — I could never get the thing to define the 'active route.' " "Lots of people get stuck there," she said. "The trick is to make the first mark active. But we'll use a program from France called qtVlm. It's free! And almost as capable as the expensive apps." Meanwhile, my screen was filling up with more little boxes showing animated portraits of the seminar participants. Lee was welcoming them in as they arrived, but she was merciless with her
critique of everyone's video setup: "Put your laptop on a shoebox!" she chided one arrival. "With that low camera angle, we're like, looking up your nose!" "Um, could you pull down the shade on that window right behind you, and turn on a room light or something?" she asked another participant. "There's too much backlight to see your face." But she also allowed time for some chatter among the group, which I thought was a good way to give it more the feel of an in-person event. The more experienced teleconferencers had clearly put some effort into their background images. We agreed that the best one was a video loop looking aft from the stern of a very fast boat surfing on ocean swells, showing not much more than a clean wake and a rooster tail, and the whitecaps, a blue sky and a blue horizon. Next best was another video loop of dolphins playing around the bow, even though there was a big old plow anchor in the bow roller, proving that this one was shot from a heavy cruising boat. "Careful attention to the background image is a great tool for business meetings," the dolphin photographer explained. "It's especially useful when someone is in the middle of a long and boring presentation. I put up my own slideshow as a sequence of background images, usually with the intent of making an entirely different point from what the speaker is droning on about." "Cool!" Lee agreed. "This medium has unexplored possibilities for creative disruption." "After almost a year of this," I added, "you'd think by now everyone would know all the tricks."
How to download, install, configure, and run qtVlm • Do nload from meltemus com inde h en do nload • hoose indo s or other o system then indo s des to or indo s ta let ut use indo s des to for a la to computer. • lic Do nload • Then select the latest version tVlm and clic the orange do nload utton on the right lic a do nload utton again on the ne t screen t s a B le • setu le named tvlm setu e e should a ear in your default do nload folder To nd the default do nload le if you haven t saved the le else here loo in This P then Do nloads r in sers ser ame Do nloads • lic on the do nloaded and saved tvlm setu le to start the installation • icrosoft Defender might try to loc the installation elect ore info and then Run any ay Then ans er es in the "User Account Control" window. • elect English or rench ith then e t to continue e t to acce t the default installation folder and e t to create a shortcut in the Start Menu. Also, check the box for a desktop icon shortcut. Click "Next" again, then "Install." • The setu rogram ill do nload some additional les during the installation lic inish hen rom ted elect do nload to get the default • The rst message tVlm ill dis lay is harts are missing — hat do you ant to do global charts. You will find yourself off the coast of France. Click and drag the chart to bring California into view. The scroll wheel zooms. Note that qtVlm shows global daylight and darkness regions. Some people find this annoying when viewing the Page
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Latitude 38
• February, 2021
