Been to the gym three times this week, which is pretty good.
Was there for a circuit this morning which was pretty tiring as it had lots of running in it. Got home, cleaned up some stuff, did some washing, did some email, had a shower, got out of the shower to find that West Coast had a media conference on in 45 minutes. Glad I live this close.
Went to that, took photos and recorded it, came home, processed photos, wrote stories, hit wall. VERY tired. Happy to get one of the photos used on the AFL site with the story - going to call myself a photojournalist now, I think…
Talk about shows that have run their course. “Thank God you’re here” is a pretty lame ripoff of the theatre-sports-inspired “Whose line is it anyway”, but in it’s first season, it managed to be not too bad. (Cha watches it upstairs, so I get the spill over onto my desk.)
But wow, is it now way past its use-by date. It’s now in its third season, I think, and any semblance of humour is long gone. It appears that to get on the show you can just rock up with a wad of cash, because it appears no attempt has been made to get anyone funny.
Working Dog get more congratulations for stopping the outstandingly brilliant “Frontline” after three series if this is what happens when you go too long…
Or Lrd’s Pr. A religious group has shortened the Lord’s Prayer to fit within the 160 characters allowed in SMS. The result is somewhat less poetic than the original version, although most complaints about this aren’t charges of blasphemy, but horror at the appalling spelling & grammar prevalent in SMS culture.
(Each phrase piped to the original line):
dad@hvn
urspshl
we want wot u want
&urth2b like hvn
giv us food
&4giv r sins
lyk we 4giv uvaz
don’t test us!
save us!
bcos we kno ur boss
ur tuf
&ur cool 4 eva!
ok?
If you have trouble understanding that - here it is de-SMSified:
Dad at heaven
You are special
We want what you want
And earth to be like heaven
Give us food
And forgive our sins
Like we forgive others
Don’t test us
Save us
Because we know you are boss
You are tough
And you are cool forever
Ok?
That, my friends, is a Mediagate MG-350. I bought one, and an MG-35 which is the same, pretty much, but sans wireless.
What is it? Well, it’s a way to play movies, tv episodes, etc that are stored on your computer be played on your TV. Without mucking around with cables, etc. The 35 is upstairs on the LCD, and plugs into the router with standard CAT5 cable, and the 350 is downstairs on the big TV.
So what does it let you do, in reality? Well, for example, Cha can watch old episodes of the Vicar of Dibley downstairs while I’m watching TopGear up here, or she can watch movies that are stored on the HDD, or whatever. No burning DVDs, finding DVDs, etc. Just navigate to the correct folder, select the episode, and you’re away.
We rang the ground in the afternoon, to discover that we had a bench
with power. Great! Except that it was on the boundary line, in the
forward pocket/forward flank. Not great.
But it had power! Good.
But we got ourselves moved to the top level of the grandstand. Great!
Except it had no power. Not great. All the radios and TVs, etc had
power, but not us dumb print jockeys. Oh well, I’ve got a good
battery.
Oh, and we could only see 60% of the ground! Also not great. Because of the way the grandstand was designed, we weren’t out the front, we were on a setback wing, which meant the middle/front section did a great job of blocking out our view. (See the red circle? THat’s where we were.) Draw a line from the centre-wing on our side of the ground across to the half-forward-flank on the other, and we couldn’t see forward of that.
Oh, and no phone lines. “No worries, there’s one in the office
downstairs, you can file from it.”
Fortunately there were three of us there from Perth, so we split the
duties up. One wasn’t filing Friday night, so he did the main running
around to see what was happening off to the blindside on our right, I
did the super-detail keeping with my brilliant spreadsheet, and the
other did the matchups, etc.
The ground had a clock - it was a digital one in the corner of the
scoreboard with numbers about 6 inches high. Good thing we had
binoculars…
And then at 7pm, game time, the breeze died, so it was pretty muggy
from then on. Oh well.
We got through the game, and as soon as it finished, I raced
downstairs to file. “Here’s the line,” they said, pointing me at a
network cable. Which wasn’t distributing IP numbers, so no use. And no
phones! Well, I finally got someone to let me use one in the office,
but it wouldn’t give me a line, either with or without a ‘0′ at the
front. No, I’m not overly surprised.
So I rang AAP, (because I was filing for them as well as the AFL
site), to explain that I couldn’t file from the ground, as I raced
back upstairs for the press conferences. Only to find that they had
been moved downstairs, after being arranged for upstairs. No, I wasn’t
overly surprised.
So we raced downstairs, and waited for about 15 minutes. Finally got
to talk to Woosha, then Neil Craig.
But an interesting sidelight while we were waiting for the second
presser - I was complaining to one of the local urns about the
complete lack of organisation, and how I couldn’t file. “Well, at
least AAP has copy,” he says. “No, I couldn’t file,” I say. “No, I
filed to them,” he says. And yes, he’d been doing the
quarter-by-quarter scores, same as I had, etc. Nobody at AAP had told
either of us that it was being doubled up. Unreal!
After the second presser, I raced back to the hotel to file, and rang
AAP and happened to talk to a good mate, who was very unhappy to
discover that I’d been there and was filing, as the other match report
was pretty terrible, apparently
So frustrating
But I did get an SMS from my boss on Saturday AM saying I’d done a
‘fantastic job’, which was nice. I rang him to tell him of the events,
and he was PHSL
And on Saturday arvo I got some really nice photos around Alice.
Well, it’s less than 48 hours since I got a call from the MediaGiants office about a possible trip to Alice Springs, and now I’m here in the plane.
No idea why I’m going (obviously West Coast are playing) but it would have been much easier to send someone from Adelaide, I’d have thought. I guess I’m just a star
My brother-in-law and his wife live in Alice, so after not having seen Tim for a couple of years, I’m about to see him again after seeing him at Christmas. Weird.
Apparently the hotel I’ve picked is a good one, Tim says, and I’m staying with him and Sil on Saturday night,when I’m also eating at his restaurant, which is sports-themed, so fits in nicely with the purpose of the trip.
We’re in a Boeing 717, which is pretty small, I can tell you. Two to the left of the aisle, three to the right. I was wedged in with a couple of old Poms, who seemed quite fascinated by the fact that a fair number of the West Coast boys had a chat as they shuffled past me on their way to their seats, but a kind cabin attendant moved me a couple of rows forward where there was just one bloke in a row of three.
Lunch was quite nice, surprisingly. Cold silverside and roast veges, and a bread roll.
Ah, the Nano. Such a good thing, and if only I’d had it when we went to Taiwan last year. (Ignore that they weren’t out then.) With the Westone IEMs, you can feel the engines more than hear them. SO sweet! (Sitting here listening to my ‘Christian’ smart play list. The new one for Casting Crowns has gone missing, but I’m listening to some old stuff, and the bass in “Send it on Down” (Youth Alive Sydney) is just stellar, and really makes me appreciate these headphones. (And David Holmes has got outstanding guitar all over the album, and it’s always a pleasure to listen to him.)
The boys are heading to the oval after we arrive, so I’d better find out when and get there to get a story, I guess. Adelaide fly in tomorrow morning, so I’ll be back out to the airport to see them and get a quick story for their site.
Because I’ll be carting around, I’m getting a car while I’m there, which will be nice.
I’m a freelancer - I buy my own gear, pay for my own stuff. No problem.
So I need to buy a recorder. Yes, my phone will do it, but I live in terror that it will reboot during a presser and then ring, or the like. The chances are low, but you’ve got the potential to REALLY annoy a lot of people you have to work with constantly.
So, to buy one. It has to dump the data via USB, be small, be light, be easy to use.
The Edirol R-09 was the leader until I realised it doesn’t have a windsock, nor can one be bought for it from anywhere.
So the next one was the Zoom H4, which DOES have a windsock, and is apparently very good quality as well. And is about $150 cheaper.
It also has phantom-powered XLR inputs for my nice mics I bought last year.
Well, went to my first footy press conference for a long time today.
Quite nervous about it, actually - well, not the press conference, but the story to follow it.
I haven’t written a footy story for print for about 18 months, but it was funny - standing there in the presser, listening to the answers, automatically thinking of how to write the yarn.
All good.
Then remembering how I used to do it back in the old days - creating files, etc. Felt weird, but good habits are still good,even when you haven’t had to use them for a while.
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Been to the gym three times this week, which is pretty good.
Was there for a circuit this morning which was pretty tiring as it had lots of running in it. Got home, cleaned up some stuff, did some washing, did some email, had a shower, got out of the shower to find that West Coast had a media conference on in 45 minutes. Glad I live this close.
Went to that, took photos and recorded it, came home, processed photos, wrote stories, hit wall. VERY tired. Happy to get one of the photos used on the AFL site with the story - going to call myself a photojournalist now, I think…
Talk about shows that have run their course. “Thank God you’re here” is a pretty lame ripoff of the theatre-sports-inspired “Whose line is it anyway”, but in it’s first season, it managed to be not too bad. (Cha watches it upstairs, so I get the spill over onto my desk.)
But wow, is it now way past its use-by date. It’s now in its third season, I think, and any semblance of humour is long gone. It appears that to get on the show you can just rock up with a wad of cash, because it appears no attempt has been made to get anyone funny.
Working Dog get more congratulations for stopping the outstandingly brilliant “Frontline” after three series if this is what happens when you go too long…
Or Lrd’s Pr. A religious group has shortened the Lord’s Prayer to fit within the 160 characters allowed in SMS. The result is somewhat less poetic than the original version, although most complaints about this aren’t charges of blasphemy, but horror at the appalling spelling & grammar prevalent in SMS culture.
(Each phrase piped to the original line):
dad@hvn
urspshl
we want wot u want
&urth2b like hvn
giv us food
&4giv r sins
lyk we 4giv uvaz
don’t test us!
save us!
bcos we kno ur boss
ur tuf
&ur cool 4 eva!
ok?
If you have trouble understanding that - here it is de-SMSified:
Dad at heaven
You are special
We want what you want
And earth to be like heaven
Give us food
And forgive our sins
Like we forgive others
Don’t test us
Save us
Because we know you are boss
You are tough
And you are cool forever
Ok?
That, my friends, is a Mediagate MG-350. I bought one, and an MG-35 which is the same, pretty much, but sans wireless.
What is it? Well, it’s a way to play movies, tv episodes, etc that are stored on your computer be played on your TV. Without mucking around with cables, etc. The 35 is upstairs on the LCD, and plugs into the router with standard CAT5 cable, and the 350 is downstairs on the big TV.
So what does it let you do, in reality? Well, for example, Cha can watch old episodes of the Vicar of Dibley downstairs while I’m watching TopGear up here, or she can watch movies that are stored on the HDD, or whatever. No burning DVDs, finding DVDs, etc. Just navigate to the correct folder, select the episode, and you’re away.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
We rang the ground in the afternoon, to discover that we had a bench
with power. Great! Except that it was on the boundary line, in the
forward pocket/forward flank. Not great.
But it had power! Good.
But we got ourselves moved to the top level of the grandstand. Great!
Except it had no power. Not great. All the radios and TVs, etc had
power, but not us dumb print jockeys. Oh well, I’ve got a good
battery.
Oh, and we could only see 60% of the ground! Also not great. Because of the way the grandstand was designed, we weren’t out the front, we were on a setback wing, which meant the middle/front section did a great job of blocking out our view. (See the red circle? THat’s where we were.) Draw a line from the centre-wing on our side of the ground across to the half-forward-flank on the other, and we couldn’t see forward of that.
Oh, and no phone lines. “No worries, there’s one in the office
downstairs, you can file from it.”
Fortunately there were three of us there from Perth, so we split the
duties up. One wasn’t filing Friday night, so he did the main running
around to see what was happening off to the blindside on our right, I
did the super-detail keeping with my brilliant spreadsheet, and the
other did the matchups, etc.
The ground had a clock - it was a digital one in the corner of the
scoreboard with numbers about 6 inches high. Good thing we had
binoculars…
And then at 7pm, game time, the breeze died, so it was pretty muggy
from then on. Oh well.
We got through the game, and as soon as it finished, I raced
downstairs to file. “Here’s the line,” they said, pointing me at a
network cable. Which wasn’t distributing IP numbers, so no use. And no
phones! Well, I finally got someone to let me use one in the office,
but it wouldn’t give me a line, either with or without a ‘0′ at the
front. No, I’m not overly surprised.
So I rang AAP, (because I was filing for them as well as the AFL
site), to explain that I couldn’t file from the ground, as I raced
back upstairs for the press conferences. Only to find that they had
been moved downstairs, after being arranged for upstairs. No, I wasn’t
overly surprised.
So we raced downstairs, and waited for about 15 minutes. Finally got
to talk to Woosha, then Neil Craig.
But an interesting sidelight while we were waiting for the second
presser - I was complaining to one of the local urns about the
complete lack of organisation, and how I couldn’t file. “Well, at
least AAP has copy,” he says. “No, I couldn’t file,” I say. “No, I
filed to them,” he says. And yes, he’d been doing the
quarter-by-quarter scores, same as I had, etc. Nobody at AAP had told
either of us that it was being doubled up. Unreal!
After the second presser, I raced back to the hotel to file, and rang
AAP and happened to talk to a good mate, who was very unhappy to
discover that I’d been there and was filing, as the other match report
was pretty terrible, apparently
So frustrating
But I did get an SMS from my boss on Saturday AM saying I’d done a
‘fantastic job’, which was nice. I rang him to tell him of the events,
and he was PHSL
And on Saturday arvo I got some really nice photos around Alice.
Well, it’s less than 48 hours since I got a call from the MediaGiants office about a possible trip to Alice Springs, and now I’m here in the plane.
No idea why I’m going (obviously West Coast are playing) but it would have been much easier to send someone from Adelaide, I’d have thought. I guess I’m just a star
My brother-in-law and his wife live in Alice, so after not having seen Tim for a couple of years, I’m about to see him again after seeing him at Christmas. Weird.
Apparently the hotel I’ve picked is a good one, Tim says, and I’m staying with him and Sil on Saturday night,when I’m also eating at his restaurant, which is sports-themed, so fits in nicely with the purpose of the trip.
We’re in a Boeing 717, which is pretty small, I can tell you. Two to the left of the aisle, three to the right. I was wedged in with a couple of old Poms, who seemed quite fascinated by the fact that a fair number of the West Coast boys had a chat as they shuffled past me on their way to their seats, but a kind cabin attendant moved me a couple of rows forward where there was just one bloke in a row of three.
Lunch was quite nice, surprisingly. Cold silverside and roast veges, and a bread roll.
Ah, the Nano. Such a good thing, and if only I’d had it when we went to Taiwan last year. (Ignore that they weren’t out then.) With the Westone IEMs, you can feel the engines more than hear them. SO sweet! (Sitting here listening to my ‘Christian’ smart play list. The new one for Casting Crowns has gone missing, but I’m listening to some old stuff, and the bass in “Send it on Down” (Youth Alive Sydney) is just stellar, and really makes me appreciate these headphones. (And David Holmes has got outstanding guitar all over the album, and it’s always a pleasure to listen to him.)
The boys are heading to the oval after we arrive, so I’d better find out when and get there to get a story, I guess. Adelaide fly in tomorrow morning, so I’ll be back out to the airport to see them and get a quick story for their site.
Because I’ll be carting around, I’m getting a car while I’m there, which will be nice.
I’m a freelancer - I buy my own gear, pay for my own stuff. No problem.
So I need to buy a recorder. Yes, my phone will do it, but I live in terror that it will reboot during a presser and then ring, or the like. The chances are low, but you’ve got the potential to REALLY annoy a lot of people you have to work with constantly.
So, to buy one. It has to dump the data via USB, be small, be light, be easy to use.
The Edirol R-09 was the leader until I realised it doesn’t have a windsock, nor can one be bought for it from anywhere.
So the next one was the Zoom H4, which DOES have a windsock, and is apparently very good quality as well. And is about $150 cheaper.
It also has phantom-powered XLR inputs for my nice mics I bought last year.
Cool podcast review.
But then I saw it had a baby brother coming out soon, the H2.
It’s only about half the size, and it’s US$200 rather than US$300.
But it’s not out until May in the US, so who knows when it will get here, and it doesn’t have the XLR inputs.
Nice, but I think I’ll buy the H4.
Well, went to my first footy press conference for a long time today.
Quite nervous about it, actually - well, not the press conference, but the story to follow it.
I haven’t written a footy story for print for about 18 months, but it was funny - standing there in the presser, listening to the answers, automatically thinking of how to write the yarn.
All good.
Then remembering how I used to do it back in the old days - creating files, etc. Felt weird, but good habits are still good,even when you haven’t had to use them for a while.
Sweet!