Week of 6th September, 2010

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Monday, 6th September

New fortnight starts today - another 10 shift, swapped from an early.

And it's not too busy - absent the much-increased weight of line feeds for quick-turn-around transmission.

Of course, "Haven't you heard? It's all been changed..." applies, and the previewing department seems to be dropping the ball. At this rate, I think we'll be previewing all this material ourselves - especially since the official previewers are now five-day-weeklings, and apparently none too industrious ones, at that.

All this is live server recording, sometimes for transmission a few hours later - in one case, as little as 5 hours delay.

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Tuesday, 7th September

More of the same. I'm into the swing of this now, so it's not onerous - except that I'm not supposed to be generating transmission-timed material. Or so I thought - they certainly aren't paying me to carry that can if something goes pear-shaped.

Two simultaneous recordings early this evening - that's the most so far. It has been rumoured that there may be a maximum of 3 at the same time - and if you believe that, I have a bargain for you....

When I got home this evening, Jenny had been merrily shredding lots of paper - 6 big bags worth. I have been deputed to carry these to the recycling centre - tomorrow.

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Wednesday, 8th September

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Thursday, 9th September

I've just remembered - Saturday is the day of the school reunion. That's for everyone who first attended the school in September 1960 - 50 years ago this month. And I've done nothing about it. Must book leave for the occasion.

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Friday, 10th September

Eid-ul-Fitr. End of Ramadan

OK, leave is arranged - only a half-day, but it will suffice.

No other problems, all short-form work completed. And I have a chore tomorrow morning, before driving down to Wales - package a bunch of fillers. Luckily, they should not need editing - maybe a bit of judicious audio tweaking, but nothing else.

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Saturday, 11th September

9th Anniversary of the 9/11 Atrocity

I wasn't planning to book a hotel for tonight after the reunion, but Jane convinced me it would be a good idea. I'll book into the reunion venue when I get there.

The filler ingest went well enough - not quite a simple as it might have been. Some of the material needed to be captured twice, the second time with audios adjusted, and one clip needed to be fed through Final Cut, to tame the audio dynamics. A total of 24 clips processed, of various lengths from just under 3 minutes up to about 12 minutes duration. Timing data is now in the scheduling system, so that's all well.

And then away down to wales. An easy trip, traffic was not heavy. The AvMap GPS brought me direct to the door - thank $DEITY for Google Maps and postcode search in the GPS.

And I can haz a room at the group discount rate.

It's amazing how people change in 50-odd years - I didn't recognise most of the attendees. This is, of course, a combination of bad memory (I've never been good with names and faces) and the passage of years. Still, it was a convivial occasion, and it was pleasant to reminisce about times past, and what we've all been doing over the years.

Good thing I booked a room - it would not have been safe to drive.

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Sunday, 12th September

Back to London this morning, after a full English breakfast at the hotel. Not my usual fare - a couple of slices of toast, and a cup of coffee is par for the course.

Had to get petrol on the way back - the trip is 134 miles each way, according to the AvMap, and I started yesterday with just over half a tank. Other than that, the return trip was uneventful.

Back at the salt mine, I picked up and packaged 5 movies. These were all on the old network storage, but I was the only one beating on it, so things were reasonably quick and hassle-free.

I finished up with a half-hour reality TV show - which didn't actually need anything done to it, but since it was there I tightened the black holes and added a clock. That material had been placed on the new network storage, and it was astoundingly quick. It is my habit to log timings into the scheduling system while rendering the finished package. With the old storage, there's plenty of time for this - with the new, the render finished before I'd finished typing. Upload back to the media management system was equally quick.

So once we're all using the new network storage bucket, work should be dramatically quicker, and maybe we can reconsider the decision to not insist on in-vision material identification if the clip is otherwise to spec. This is for long-form material, of course - promos and commercials must always have idents.
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