Week of 3rd March, 2003

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Monday, 3rd March

10 o'clock shift starts today - the Ingest shift, loading material onto the video servers. And it starts quiet...

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Tuesday, 4th March

Today was manic - commercials coming at me from all directions, promos the same... I didn't get it all done - about 15 spots left by end of shift, and about an inch of paper signed off on, one sheet per commercial spot.

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Wednesday, 5th March

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Thursday, 6th March

Today I reinstalled Armadillo - Win98SE, and all apps, preparatory to putting Microsoft Reader (the e-book reading package) on. If you're reading copy-protected e-books, you need Micro$oft Passport, which only works on Win98 or higher - Win95 need not apply, and that's what Armadillo was running.

The re-install gave me no problems, barring the length of time it took. Of course, since my copy of Win98SE is the full version, it refused to install over Win95, and I had to reformat.

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Friday, 7th March

Again the day started slowly - the Ingest in-shelf was empty. But things soon shaped up, and by end of day I'd done another inch of paper,and lots of promo spots. There are still about 50 commercials, a movie (which runs on two channels at the same time, so we need two copies) and a couple of promo tapes - plus the music videos, of which there are a lot this week. I'll do them Sunday - everything else will be cleared tomorrow.

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Saturday, 8th March

And so it proved - everything except the music videos done today.

I had enough spare time to do some research about automated ways of printing digital camera pictures (ideally 4-up on A4). I have a way of doing it manually (which involves using M$ Word, and placing the images into a defined grid, by hand - which is slow)

IrfanView could probably have been persuaded to do it, via the "contact sheet" option, but the quality wouldn't have been good. And then I was pointed at Serif MediaPlus, which I'm told will do exactly what I want - print a selection of images in a defined format, automatically. I'll have to try it - whan I get an installer file.

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Sunday, 9th March

One of my workmates passed me a copy of MediaPlus today - now to see if it will perform as advertised.

All the music videos are done, so I got away early.

And that was despite spending lots of time coaching Katy, by 'phone, in how to buy an e-book from Amazon - another "Star Wars" epic. This one is only available in Adobe e-book format, so I had to brief her on how to install Adobe E-Book Reader, which is a version of Acrobat.

We started with a call to my mobile, but soon switched to a landline - good thing too, the home 'phone bill would have been horrific. An hour long base-to-mobile call, and not Cellnet (or O2 as it is now)

Talking of O2, I got the 'phone call from their overdue bill department yesterday, passed on from Jane, who took the call on her mobile. "When are you going to pay this outstanding bill of UKP6.80?" Outstanding from the 22nd of last month, after I'd told their 'phone slave, last week, that I wanted them to bill my card now, having checked that it was the new card they had on record.

Oh no, it takes 3 to 4 weeks to set up a new direct debit instruction, or to change an existing one, it seems. So I told her to "Bill my bank cash card, just this once, right now, and if there are any more problems like this in future, I will port my number to another service provider. Do we understand each other?". I tell you, I was steaming mad. Every time I have need to change my payment details with O2 something like this happens, and I've had a sufficiency of it. No problems like this with Vodafone, my 'phone service provider.

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