For many of us, Zoom has become a feature of daily life, and can sometimes be a lifeline to the outside world. In this episode, Christine and JJ explore the visuals of the platform, from the Touch Up tool to custom backgrounds, and share uproarious laughs over scandalous scenes captured by Zoom's cameras. Then JJ takes us on a virtual tour of fall colours around the world.
For many of us, Zoom has become a feature of daily life, and can sometimes be a lifeline to the outside world. In this episode, Christine and JJ explore the visuals of the platform, from the Touch Up tool to custom backgrounds, and share uproarious laughs over scandalous scenes captured by Zoom's cameras. Then JJ takes us on a virtual tour of fall colours around the world.
Talk description to Me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to Me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashtag in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec:These days in October 2020, everyone is no stranger to Zoom. It's become our intimate friend that's connecting us to the world that we use to connect to in in real time and space. And for those of us with visual impairments, we think about zoom as primarily an audio conduit. But of course it has a visual component to and that's not just limited to looking at the people we're talking to. There's whole other visual components to the platform itself. So we thought we'd talk about that today. So, JJ, what's the visual presentation of a zoom call. So zoom calls are, as you say, they're everywhere, right. And the funny thing about zoom is that they've made the visuals of it really quite basic, there's not a lot of branding with zoom, they want it to be super, super simple. So the logo for zoom is, is a little sky blue box with rounded corners. And inside is a simple stylized video camera like a you know, an old 1980s video camera icon in white, it's actually quite similar to the FaceTime logo, in fact, yeah, but there's not a lot of branding or much of a unique layout with the zoom that most of us use on phones or on desktops, it's very straightforward. It's very simple. Every zoom user gets a box that's theirs. So that's either their profile picture or their name, if they don't have their camera on, and they haven't uploaded a profile picture or their video image. And then those are arranged on the screens in different ways. So if you are if you have been in a zoom call with with sighted friends or workmates, or whatever, what their experience is, of of a zoom call is maybe how will is how I'll go about this. So for someone who's sighted, before you start a zoom call, there are a few things that you can do to prepare. Like I said, you can add a profile picture. And that will then be will be in your little box when your video is off. And if you haven't uploaded a profile picture, your name will go up whatever name that you've included. And there's a little slider tool in the settings that allows you to touch up your appearance. Have you ever used this, Chris? have you ever heard of this? Gosh, No, I've never even heard of it, what could I do to myself. Ha ha! So this little touch up, the slider tool allows you to drag it to the left or right if you drag it to the right, you soften the lighting and blur the lighting a bit. So it's a softer, gentler look. And if you drag it to the left, you get a cleaner, crisper image. Yeah, I know I never use this. But if I do, I do! you go all the way to the right, it's almost a little bit hazy. It's kind of like a real time version of Photoshop. Or like a digital version of smearing Vaseline on the lens of the camera like they did in the original Star Trek series. There's also a similar tool to adjust the lighting. So if you're in a darker space, you can, you know, pump up the lighting or if you're in a lighter or brighter space, you can tone that down a little bit. So now you've got yourself looking good you're looking as like you want to be now you can adjust the background. So the default of course, is your camera aimed at you. So whatever is behind you is on screen. But with zoom, you can swap out your background for any image that you upload onto their system. And they have a few sample images up there. So they already have the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, a close up of some green grass and like a dark planet with a star rising behind it or something like that. But you can upload any image you want. And so some people if they're doing this for a work setting, I know I've done this, you can upload images that you want to be discussing. So it's almost like a like a weather person standing in front of a weather map. So you can you could do that or you can just put up a more pleasant background than the laundry hanging on the line behind you or something like that. Or if you want, you can do something goofy something funny. So right now I actually on my zoom, I have the background from a meme. This is the "This is fine" mem. So it's a cartoon of a carto n dog in a bowler hat. And he s sitting at a round table with a mug of coffee, and the enti e room is on fire. And this li e wide eyed cartoon dog is ju t sitting there with his coffe, and the speech bubble says, th s is fine. And so what I have s my zoom background is that roo, but without the dog, so it c n look like I am sitting in t e burning room with a coffee ico. Yeah. It's kind of fun. And hen you can - also while yo're in the settings, if you wa t - you can choose your react on for the chat function. o in the chat function, ou can like give a thumbs up r an okay that kind of thing. nd you can change the skin tone or the thumbs up or for the fo the you know, for your hand, your your digital hands. So hat's the skin tone range is a ywhere from yellow, to a very ark brown. So now that you'v got all that set up your camer s on, you're looking good, you ot your background, now you ca join the meeting, or the whatev r you're joining. And there are ind of two major views is w at they're called. There's the g llery view and the speaker view. The gallery view puts eve yone on your screen, whether t's your phone, or your tablet or your your laptop, whatever everyone gets to be on the scr en in a box of equal size. An if it's just two of you, you' e side by side, if it's three o four, you're in, you know, ou're in a smaller grid. But if t's like up to 20 people, then you can imagine your screen b oken up into 20 equal little, you know, little blocks, little boxes. It's kind of like the The Brady Bunch mode. Remember he beginning of the Brady Bunch
JJ Hunt:Yeah, exactly. So it's like that. This is good for, you know, groups of like two to maybe 20. But more than that, it's just too crowded, you can't see everyone because their their image gets too small. So then you might switch to Speaker view, or you might switch to Speaker view anyway, just because you prefer it or if there's one person who's leading a meeting, then that one speaker is going to be more prominent. So you might switch to Speaker view, which puts the speaker in a big box that more or less fills the screen. And all of the other participants are in a much smaller row either at the top or the bottom of the screen. And if there are too many get, they don't all fit in that row too many other participants, you can just kind of scroll through them. And again, if you have your camera on, it's your video feed in that little box, if you don't have your camera on, it's your picture, your profile picture or your name. And that's how that goes. And there's some other fun things that you can do. There's a new feature on the most up to date, version of zoom, where they have filters. These are like - Snapchat uses these and you can actually link your snapchat camera to your zoom. And what the filters do is it recognizes the various parts of your face so that you can layer cartoon or digital images on to yourself. And then those digital images will move as you move.
Christine Malec:Oh my god!
JJ Hunt:Yeah, totally cool. So you can like put on like a pair of sunglasses, or little cat ears or great big eyes or a COVID mask. You can put a COVID mask on yourself. And yeah, and then as you move it will move with you. Or you can make it rain or snow in your screen.
Christine Malec:Woah!
JJ Hunt:Yeah, pretty cool.
Christine Malec:Can you make it rain in front of your face? Yeah, if you if you click on the right thing, it'll rain all throughout your whole box, your whole little window will be you know, snow or rain or sparkles. Yeah, you can even there's a there's a filter that you can do with Snapchat that lets you essentially put your features your eyes, your mouth, on two other objects like you could be a potato head. Well, you can and your face would be talking on a cartoon potato or something like yeah, they're It's weird. It's it gets really weird. I have a question about the gallery versus speaker view. I was on a zoom call yesterday there was about 30 people and I had thought that whoever was speaking was the one who was shown and the the moderator said she was wanting to indicate certain people and she said, okay, Frank, Can you wave? And so the gallery view versus speaker view, is that something that the host controls or that the viewer controls. So that's a good question. So individual people at their own computers can control how they have their their own setup, they can control, I can decide if I wanted in gallery view or speaker view, unless the host of an event has done has has has put on an override, essentially. So you might do that for screen sharing. If you're doing a presentation. For example, I was in a zoom presentation yesterday, and the person who was presenting had had put up screen share. So everyone that was in the meeting was looking at their screen. So you didn't have much of a choice, you could open up a sidebar for a chat function. And you could adjust the size of their image. So because they were in presentation mode, there was like a slideshow, and then they had a little box with their their speakers image in it. And you could you could shrink or expand their video image within their slide. But they had control over that. I did not. Yeah, it depends on how the how the meeting is being run or how the gathering is being run. But most of the time, it's up to you if you want gallery mode or speaker mode. Ok, I was getting confused because she was saying, okay, let's all wave, and I wasn't hearing them speak. And so when she got to me, I sort of made the goofy waving gesture, but I spoke to say "Hi, it's Christine!" because I didn't think you would see me unless I was speaking. So that's really useful. That's good to know. What are some of the funkiest backgrounds you've seen people use? Oh, I seen some really goofy ones. So like you can. So most of the time with backgrounds, you, in my experience, people are doing it for fun to be silly. So when the COVID situation first hit, and all of our, you know, my kids were getting into they were playing games with their friends on zoom, they would all get together and tell stories, or they would play battleship battleship was a good game to play. Oh, on zoom, the old fashioned, like "You sank my battleship!" Sure, ya.
JJ Hunt:That was a good one to play.
Christine Malec:Cause you can't see the - ya, right.
JJ Hunt:Exactly. And there are games like, there's like a murder game, where, you know, you're all supposed to be in a,
Christine Malec:That's when you you just sit back and go "Thank you know, a haunted house or something like that. And there are two murderers, and two cops and some people close their eyes at some moments and open their eyes. And that was another good game. And anyway, all of these kids in their various households, the first 10 minutes of every zoom call they had was throwing up pictures onto their background. So they would just go through the whatever photos were already on the computer, or they would go online, and they would, you know, they would download images. And they were doing like, you know, the Death Star from Star Wars or, you know, a lot of good sci fi stuff, like give or take, take a fan of fantasy world. You know, the Harry Potter banquet halls or lunch rooms or something. Or a classroom from the Dead Poets Society, I saw someone who had the classroom from the Dead Poets Society as their background. Yeah, so you'r grabbing images and videos or like Martian landscape o something like that somethin from deep space. I have see some fantastic zoom fails, wher people only get dressed from th waist up. And you know, they d their whole zoom call and it' all good. And then maybe someon says, okay, maybe let's have five minute break to get coffee and the person forgets t at they're on a video call, get p and stretch with their underw ar right in front of the God, I wasn't the one who did that."
JJ Hunt:Oh, seriously. The embarrassment! I mean, this is mortifying, and there's a whole rabbit hole of zoom fail videos. I mean, because because these are being filmed. People keep them right if something ridiculous happens, but you can be on a zoom and no one's recording it. But you can be on a zoom and someone is recording it. And that means it's there forever. And they want to do something goofy happens. They can share it. And so, oh yeah, there are some -
Christine Malec:Lay it on us. Whattaya got?
JJ Hunt:Oh my god. So a lot of virtual classes, right. Like this is where I saw a lot of the of the zoom fail videos was from schools, so young people, teenagers in high school or college situations or whatever. So I saw one video, this was in a gallery mode. So someone was doing a screenshot, right? Like they were basically filming their own computer screen. And this was in gallery view. So there were 11 people in this in this class. I think it was like a tutorial of I had to guess, and everyone has their camera on. And so everyone's sitting at their desks. They're all looking essentially at us. This mode, and there's a young woman on our far left, in the middle of this zoom, call the zoom meeting, she just picks up her device. I think, by the way, she was holding it, I'm guessing it was a laptop, and she carries it through her apartment and the whole, you know, the tutorial is still going on. And this woman carries the laptop through her apartment, and she puts it on the floor so that she can still see the screen. And then she pulls down her pants and sits down on the top. Few people in the other windows react immediately, like a few people just cover their faces like, Oh my god, oh my god. And one person cops like to try and get her attention. And then one woman in the far right starts waving her arms hoping to get her attention. And some are giggling to themselves. There's one older man in the in the group, I think was like that the you know, the prof or something. He says, I don't see anything. But the speaker just keeps talking until the woman finally figures out, oh, my God, I'm on a zoom call on the toilet and everyone can see. And so there's a scramble where that, you know, you see you're reaching for what looks like her own camera, the laptop shuts. Meanwhile, the woman in the lower right is just going the woman who's waving her arms was going crazy with embarrassment. She's mortified. She's literally pulling out her hair. And she buries her head in her hands. And she says, poor Jennifer. That's a really good one. Really good one. I saw another one that was a video meeting with 16 participants and almost all had their cameras on but it was it was the beginning of this meeting, or people were popping into it. So there's a guy near the bottom right? In our in our gallery view who turns on his camera, he's kind of leaning over his laptop, which is on a desk, and he turns on his camera and then stands back and stretches. And he is completely naked. just completely naked. And at this, all of the other participants are like, Oh, honey, oh, teacher says let's make sure everyone has their clothes on. But the guy doesn't catch on. I think his microphones on mute. Or he's like he he's muted. And t forgets that. And he's not at all Mike. He's not listening. He's got his speakers off or whatever. So he just keeps wandering around his bedroom, completely naked. And everyone else is like screaming at him"Guy, put some clothes on!" Yeah, yeah,
Christine Malec:It's like all those nightmares finally come to life, you know where you're in line for school and you realize...
JJ Hunt:Exactly! And there are some, there are some fights. So there was one virtual class where there was a male student who I think was logged into the class in his girlfriend who was in the room with him, but was not supposed to be participating in this call. They start fighting, but they don't realize that their mic is on. And I can't repeat their language because it got a little bit offensive. But she's Yeah, she starts yelling at him for flirting with him what is in her estimation, a rather unsavory woman in his class. And she names her! You and Clarissa. And he's telling her that she is not a very smart person and he should never have gotten together. And the teacher just keeps saying "Would you please turn off your microphone! We don't want to hear this!" But they keep going.
Christine Malec:Oh no....
JJ Hunt:They rail at each other. Oh, yeah. The school ones are my favorite.
Christine Malec:Ha ha!
JJ Hunt:These the kids don't, they either don't care, or they haven't noticed. There are several videos where again, gallery view the various students are, you know, supposed to be in class, and the students will reach over. And they'll just like pull out a bong and take a great big hit on a bong.
Christine Malec:Wow.
JJ Hunt:Yeah! And sometimes the teachers call them on it. Like, come on, Jeremy. Please put it away! And sometimes they don't even bother. Sometimes it's like, let the kid take a hit. He's in class, like, what can I do ? It is outrageous. Outrageous!
Christine Malec:That's fantastic.
JJ Hunt:And you were talking about, we're talking about the filters earlier. This was one I don't know if this was done in post or if this actually happened, but there's a video out there of a priest conducting a church service on zoom. So it sets up the laptop and then steps back. And you know, he's doing his service. I think it's in Italian. But he seems to have the filters on on random. And so as he's giving his service, he's getting this like a series of funny hats and sunglasses. And he's up there totally serious delivering the service. And then it's like starts snowing sparkles inside the church.
Christine Malec:Ha!
JJ Hunt:And he gets this great big Fedora. Oh my god. It's fantastic. Like I said, I don't know if that one's real, but it was cute. It was really good.
Christine Malec:So on this podcast, we've covered some very difficult issues. But today, right now we're going to talk about something lovely, which is fall colors. And it's that time of year in this part of the world, at least, it's October. And so JJ, I barely know where to start. So just take it away. What do you want? What do you want to tell us about
JJ Hunt:The fall colors. So I mean, sadly, I'm not out in the world as much as I would like to be. So I did go for some walks to look at the fall colors around here in Toronto. But I also searched online, I went to YouTube, which is a little bit depressing, and, you know, search all fall colors, amazingly, on YouTube, in the first video that popped up was for a three hour long video of fall colors, and it had over 100,000 views. So there's really a lot of people who are feeling like I am like a lot out of my basement as much as I should be. So at least I'm going to watch fall colors on YouTube. Sometimes these colors look subtle and cozy, but sometimes they're really vibrant and almost outrageous. So I thought maybe I'd go through a couple of different kinds of trees just to give you an example of of the range of colors. So the river birch tree has dark green leaves in the summer and they turn yellow and the bark on the tree is a white and reddish brown bark so it's quite a contrast there. The black gum tree has brilliant scarlet red leaves in the fall. Sugar maples are medium green leaves in summer and then they turn yellow and then orange and then red over the course of the autumn. Japanese maple trees have shaggy leaves and they go from yellow color to like that purple burgundy that we were talking about. Hickory trees have yellow green leaves in spring and then golden brown leaves and fall. beech trees have dark green leaves in summer golden bronze and fall American sweet gum have dark green and summer and yellow, orange, purple and red leaves in Fall dog wood is a dark green leaf in summer. And then brick orange to fire engine red and fall just a crazy fire engine red suvmax have thin fan like branches. And they have bright orange and red leaves in the fall. And Aspen. They have this golden yellow leaf and fall and with brilliant white bark. So they're also very beautiful. I found an article on the Lonely Planet website that was all about autumn leaves all around the world. So I thought that was a nice way to kind of take a look at this because of course the the kinds of trees you find in different climates means you're going to get different kinds of different kinds of trees, different kinds of leaves and different kinds of settings for in the autumn. And so I took a few of those and then went and did some additional, you know, image searches on that. So in Japan, I saw some wonderful images of cherry trees, of course cherry trees, very big in Japan, especially in the spring in the spring, they bloom with pale pink flowers. And they're just incredibly pretty. They're pink flowers, and you get full trees have flowers, and then dozens of trees of flowers, they can line hillsides there, they're just so pretty. And in the fall, those leaves will turn to a golden orange like and going into like a brick red color. And I saw some wonderful images of Japanese pagodas with tiered roofs. And they're nestled between these autumn cherry trees with their golden orange and brick red leaves. Of course New Hampshire in the US. Very well known, they get lots of tourism usually for for people coming to look at the trees in the fall. These are rolling hills covered in Fall trees and a lot of these hills these rolling hills in New Hampshire they kind of look like soft blankets of orange red and golden yellow pom poms have been draped over the hills and mountains because it's just this is soft. There's a real softness to these puffy trees. Each tree a different color orange, red, golden yellow, occasional green in there. And then in in the Loire Valley and France. I saw some images of rows and rows of grapevines, which this time of the year have turned to bright yellow color and then they shift into browns and burnt orange is near the near the end of the fall. And because of the, you know, the orderly rows of, you know, for harvesting for wine, it ends up you know, it creates a really lovely pattern throughout valleys. In France, the Huangshan mountains in China, I saw some images of very tall trees with green, yellow and red tree tops, set against jagged rocks, that right up in the high up in the mountains, and you know, jagad dark grey rocks and waves of wispy clouds that are kind of, you know, going in and out of the the crags and the rocks and the and the, and these tree tops with their golden yellow and red leaves. The Bishop Creek Canyon in California I don't necessarily think of California as being a place that has a lot of color in the fall. But this canyon has a mustard yellow plant, it looks like a low-lying shrub or something very low to the ground. So one Canyon side, I saw just a full mustard yellow color all along the slope of the canyon, and it's dotted with tall, very bright, evergreen trees. Really interesting that the green and the mustard yellow. And in northern Italy, I found some stunning pictures of a mountain village and really like a handful of houses on a green plateau that is otherwise Way up high in the mountains. So everything else is surrounded on all sides by these reddish brown trees look something like a smoke bush. So this like a there is a smoky quality, especially at the distance that this image was taken at these like these reddish brown smoke bushes all around and some pale gray rock faces with this little handful of houses with green lawns and the small plateau right in the middle of this mountain. And then of course, here in Ontario, the Niagara Escarpment, which is quite close to where we are here in Toronto. There's some just some lovely, lovely spots to look at the the leaves, I like to go to the beaver Valley. So it's a beautiful spot where you can hike along the upper ridges of the valley and then get panoramic views of the valley below and then the and then the far side of the valley. And there they they still have some green left in the fields. But the woodlots on the farms. They create this patchwork of greens and reds, oranges and golden yellows. And there are hedgerows and long driveways lined with with evergreens and maybe dotted with these deep red almost purple trees. And then near the top on the far side of one side of the valley. There's a silver gray bear rock face. That's known as Old Baldy and it's capped with a thick line of fall trees in this rust orange palette. So just beautiful.
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