Back In Time

I spent some time at BT's R&D centre Adastral Park last week, what an amazing place, from the outside it looks really modern and amazing, and in parts it actually is, the new IP centre looks like mission control! But other areas are like going back to the 1960's, complete with funny notices! I wish I could have taken more pictures but they get a bit funny about all that!
I was there to do some stuff on BT's vision platform, which has a small team on it now that its in production. after a while i noticed that all the bread and butter engineers seemed to be Indian, after talking to Mark the senior developer it seems that Adastral Park has over a thousand Indian contractors working there for 4-5 months at a time! what a commute to work!
Apparently some of the residents of Ipswich are not the most accepting of people, and have huge problems with the local influx of foreign labour. I can tell you the two guys I worked with really knew their beans and where a pleasure to deal with.

Im Still here!

Its been a long time since I've blogged anything, My life has kind of settled down, so I'm gonna try and start blogging again!

Where am I?

I'm currently working for a US company called Anystream inc They are a new media software company with some really cool products (check out the website) I married my gorgeous girl Jude 6 months ago (I can't believe its so long ago!) and am settling it to married life very happily.

I'm really enjoying my new job, lots of traveling around Europe and America has been really cool, It's quite a bit of a challenge but that's what I wanted, I'd kinda gotten into a bit of a rut in my career, but now Ive found myself having to learn a lot in a short space of time, its really taken me out of my comfort zone, which is good, I work from home and am my own boss, which means I really need to keep myself motivated.

The Americas Cup seems so long ago! at least the law suite between Alingi and Oracle is now settled, so planning for the 2009 cup can start! I can't really see myself being a part of it at the moment, but you never know!

That's it for now, I will try and post some more in the week, but December looks to be one of my busiest months!

Salut! Ben

Me on the phone to my wife while on business in the states

The most pointless label ever?

2+2 = 5

Sorry no post recently, I received a polite email reminding me about my duty to portray this event in a good light, and that the management do not like "unofficial" news and views from current staff on the Internet!

So here's a picture of an otter

Swedish Party at Victory Challange

Stuart does some bean bag surfing, I don't know if they will invite the brits back! was a great night but don't think I an EVER going to drink vodka red bull again!

Where has all the good wind gone?

OK so 7 days of competition and only one day of racing, today's not looking too healthy either, we've just been given a modified schedule which has reclaimed our next two days off, and has pushed into the week off that was scheduled for May, luckily I'm OK as I'm paid to be here all the time anyway (I don't get days off) and I'm sodding off for three weeks in May WHATEVER HAPPENS! There are mutinous rumbles in the TV compound though, with lots of people unhappy about the fact that we are hearing about all this from press conferences that we are covering! you could actually hear the crew groan during it this morning!

I'm also being made to feel very guilty for asking the runner to go 8 miles away to Starbucks for me..... It was nice to have some weak milky coffee again rather than the Spanish thimble full that makes your spoon stand up while you are stirring it! Funnily enough all the organisers where bothered about was the fact that t he cup had Starbucks written on it as one of our sponsors is a famous European coffee company, the picture above was taken just before they made me cover the logos with gaffer tape! you couldn't make it up!!

Spanish work ethic

mañana

Most expensive non event?

Day 4 of the Louis Vitton cup and...............................

hmm 4 days of non racing, not enough wind, in fact no wind at all, we are making highlight programmes of highlights! all our days off are now extra race days, everyone's pissed off!

Oh well its curry night tonight, maybe there will be more wind tomorrow!

sugaRAPE!

I Lent a copy of the brilliant Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker comedy Nathan Barley to one of my fellow engineers Wayland, Last night myself and a couple of others went around for a spot of supper, and after buzzing the intercom got a 45 second SUGARAPE! after the first episode he was hooked!

That evening I stuck an episode on as I went to bed, it actually made me miss Soho a little bit.......but only a bit!

If you haven't seen it give it a go, especially if you work in the meejia.

Im Back!

No posts for the last couple of days, Judith came over to see me over Easter weekend, obviously there was no wind for one of the previous days racing so Saturday's reserve day became a race day! and if it could go wrong it went wrong........ and when I wasn't at work I was spending as much time as possible with Jude........... I will see her again in 3 weeks :-(

Managed to escape for two days after all though so jumped in the car and drove down to my parents in Murcia, stereotypically turned up with 2 bags of washing! thanks Mum!

Had a nice rest in "little England" and it was great to see the folks, and my brother. Unfortunately I will miss my brother Colin's 30th birthday but I'm sure he won't notice, and we'll have a drink in the UK in May.

Back to the grindstone today, pulled up in the car park this morning to 25 Maori warriors performing a hacker! Tourism New Zealand are really here in force, and the Prime Minister Helen Clarke is hosting a BBQ here on Saturday, should be quite interesting.

Racing starts again on Monday, but before hand we have a kind of opening ceremony (again) called the parade of boats. Unfortunately that means us engineers will spend the rest of the weekend re-patching the gallery's for the racing!

will post some photos of the operation after the weekend.


Stay Chilled!

Bens Brain

Its funny how people try to sabotage other people because they are jealous

Can you really call yourself an assistant editor if all you do is digitise tapes? I would call you a digitiser

People find it very easy to blame equipment, to cover up the inadequacy of their knowledge


over and out

Slo-Mo RIB

Spent my first day out on the water with the ultra motion camera today, and I must say I was quite impressed. I installed laptops in some funny places but I think on the back of a rigid inflatable boat (RIB) has got to be the most mad so far!

For some reason the Ultra motion camera has been designated a post production item, hence why I'm hanging on for dear life with a laptop in the back of a boat while the cameraman shouts hurry up on the download so he can shoot something else. The basics of how it works:

The camera head is set into a looping capture with (depending on the frame rate you are capturing at) around 5 seconds of record before it loops. you have a chap with a laptop (Me) hooked up to the camera, that operates the trigger, when the camera is triggered the capture is then saved into the camera head, so if you are capturing at 500 pictures per second you may set it to capture 250pps before the trigger and 250pps after the trigger, this is completely customisable as to how you want it. Then you select an in and an out point on the capture and save the file out to the hard drive of the laptop, this then downloads it from the camera head and saves it out as the file format you want, all this with the boat bobbing up and down quite heavily!

I loved every second!

Google tisp

I forgot it was April Fools day today! until I came across this Google advert for broadband. When your working solid without a day off or weekend you tend to lose track of what day it is!

Check out the full site: http://www.google.com/tisp/

An Intersting article from AC official site

America's Cup television - coming soon to a TV near you Television coverage is a crucial part of the America’s Cup. As the sport takes place offshore, out of sight from everyone other than those fortunate enough to be on spectator boats, television is often the best way to follow the racing. ACTV is the host broadcaster for the 32nd America’s Cup. As such, ACTV is responsible for producing and distributing television coverage of the Cup in the form of ‘live’ television, highlights and daily news package productions which are distributed to over 100 countries around the world.

Broadcasters ACTV operates from the IBC (International Broadcast Centre) located directly behind the Emirates Team New Zealand base in close proximity to the Media Centre. The IBC is the headquarters for all broadcast television operations and administration during the 32nd America’s Cup. It is a new facility designed specifically to accommodate the needs of television broadcasters and serves as the primary base for the host broadcast and rights holding broadcaster operations and personnel. The television suites have panoramic views over Port America’s Cup, providing the perfect backdrop for broadcasters presenting live shows. During the 2007 season, more than 100 host broadcast crew and 500 rights-holder TV production crew are expected to use the IBC, a significant increase in TV personnel compared with previous Cups. ACTV’s Caroline Hunt has been overseeing a busy week’s activity for the team, and is looking forward to the racing beginning next week. “Five of the 10 broadcasters have now arrived on-site and have been busy installing all their equipment and cabling within the IBC, TV compound and presentation studios, in addition to setting up their 'studio sets' in the presentation studios,” said Hunt. Meanwhile, ACTV's technical installation programme is close to completion; the 'master control room', the 'technical operations centre', all edit suites and on-board camera systems have been successfully tested. “Once we have rigged all our chase boats and helicopters, ACTV will be ready for April 3rd when the competition begins.” ACTV will produce three TV feeds – one world feed, one Romeo and one Juliet (reflecting the two race areas). Each has a live director and producer to ensure the best coverage. The ‘world’ feed is a compilation of the other two, with the addition of full 2D and 3D graphics. The ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet’ feeds focus on the action on each race course. TV facts in numbers:

33 – the maximum number of cameras in use at one time (helicopters, catamarans, RIBs and competing yachts)
24 – total number of cameras on board competing yachts including 12 fully agile and 12 fixed cameras during the Round Robin phases of the Louis Vuitton Cup.
6 – number of cameras on board each competing yacht in the Louis Vuitton Cup final and 32nd America’s Cup Match
Over 300 – Minimum number of hours of ‘live’ coverage distributed to rights-holders
36 – minimum number of 26-minute highlight shows distributed to rights-holders
134 – number of production people employed by ACTV on site in Valencia
Over 500 – number of people employed by rights-holders on site in Valencia

Ultra Cool

We are using Video Europe's ultra motion camera as a bit of an experiment on one of the Catamarans this year, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on it. It shoots a thousand frames per second and if you get the light correct looks amazing! I think everybody remembers the pictures of the wobbling cricket bat from the ashes 2 years ago. Not sure what it's going to look like on the water though!

It reminded me of a very old episode of Only Fools and Horse's when Del boy was flogging a load of old Russian military camcorders!

As my old boss would say "it looks like a Russian tractor!"

Before & After

We've been having some nice civilized dinners the last couple of days, Wayland really is wasted as an engineer and would give Jamie Oliver a run for his money! Unfortunately the 2 photos below show us at the start of dinner then alot later, and it doesn't look that civilized in the latter........

before

After

Not so sunny Spain :-(

We've given up on the bikes this week, flooded unsealed roads are not fun!

The Funny things you see while cycling to work

With thanks to Wayland & the great TBL

Polica!

Last night I cycled back to my apartment at about midnight, now its about 30Min's ride away, mostly well lit, but kind of deserted, I was a bit worried, but unfortunately the production office closed at 7pm locking away all the car keys with it.

As I cycled back I saw at least 5 Police cars out on patrol! now I wasn't in the centre of the city, but out by the harbour and beach front areas, and a couple of times the policemen actually gave me a little wave as they slowly cruised past.

Now I actually feel allot safer doing that here than I would in the UK, where in the same situation, if I was in the car I would make sure the doors where locked, and would be surprised to see a police car fly past with its lights on on the way to an emergency much less one out on patrol.


I'm really enjoying cycling to work everyday, its a really pleasant way of waking up! still not totally sure after a hard days work though!

CAPTURE IN PROGRESS

Those three sweet sweet words after 2 days of hard slog!

As predicted the Airspeeds have given me no end of problems, to start with the ex demo one was shipped with a beta version of software, this one downgraded fine (after I'd sent the unit manager out into Valencia to try and find a USB DVD drive, not easy!) the second one was delivered a few point releases below where we need to be, unfortunately this one won't upgrade, I'd kinda given up on it for a bit while I sort out the correct one.

So the correct version one started up fine, could see the workspace's, and all looked happy except it just wouldn't send any video to the Unity. To me it screamed of an authentication issue, but all the correct info was in place. I spent a couple of hours on the phone to the good people at Avid Broadcast support, but after checking everything through they where also stumped!

As the time ticked away last night I decided to take drastic action and re-imaged the Portserver, 20 minutes later the jubilation I exerted when the airspeed wrote a folder to the unity was so Intense (i.e I swore quite loudly, and gave a high pitched scream) that 2 security guards came running truncheon's drawn, I think they where quite disappointed when they realised they couldn't give me a beating (thank god!).

So this morning I managed to do some nice long records, and when I eventually sorted MXF etc got those sweet words above in the source monitor.

I'm just awaiting the editors to arrive tomorrow now and decided they want the whole building moved around for their Feng Sui!

Avid City!

OK, I must admit I've been working with Avid products for nearly 10 years now, but this is the first major installation I've done with any of Avids "broadcast" products, namely Airspeed.

Ive kinda installed the rest of the facility, 4 Media Composers, A Unity system, MediaManager, and Portserver, and just left the airspeed's sat in the corner, I would say ignored, but unfortunately it has been sat in the back of my mind, effecting my sleep for the last couple of days.

Anyway today I couldn't avoid hooking them up. One of the machines is brand spanking new, the other is an Avid ex demo machine, which shipped with a beta version of software (just to make my life easier) both need the software updating on them. I'm going to carry on fighting with them today, they seem to connect fine, but we'll see how this changes when we update the software!

Unfortunately I've had a visit from the exec producer today telling me they want to start cutting on Sunday, joy oh joy! my nice little testing window has now got very small!

Fire!

This last couple of days it has been a Bank holiday in Valencia, this was a Fiesta called Fallas de San José. This as far as I understand is a celebration of the begining of springtime, the local streets all buy these huge carboard constructions, I have seen so many different designs with loads of colour, and then on the night of the 19th they set fire to them!

Last night we stood and watched the local one by our appartment go up in flames, all the locals gathered round and sang Valencian songs, drunk wine, threw fireworks! and just generally had a good time! and this morning the whole lot had been cleaned away like it had never happened.

Bizarre

hola!

Hola! from sunny Valencia,

After a very painful journey I finally arrived yesterday evening, and set down to a hard days work today. Unfortunately this weekend is a Spanish Feista, so........ everythings closed till Tuesday, and its like a bad day in Bosnia with all the fireworks till late in to the night!

All the kit arrived Ok and so far its like ive never been away, it's been really nice to link up with some old work buddys, and hopefully get to know some new ones.

Have a pile of uniform to sort out already, at least this year we arn't wearing easyjet orange, but us TV guys have a rather tasteful? beige and red kit, (I'll post a picture as soon as I find the camera lead!)

I have left the building!

Thanks Joel!

My leaving card from root6, I'd say they obviously know me too well!

Card designed by Mark Lloyd

Good Start

My first blog decided to fail so welcome to the "ALL NEW" and inproved blog!

My last week at my current employer is upon me and the end is in sight, I ship out to Valencia on the 17th of this month to start preping and rigging all the facillities. The racing starts on the 3rd of April.

Some of you may know that I am also getting married on the 26th of May to my long time Fiance Judith - She has been really great about the fact that im sodding off to spain 2 months before the wedding and again for a month afterwards! Next week is going to be very full doing as much as we can before I leave.

My First Post

Well,

As of next week I'm officially a freelancer.....scary, but I'm really looking forward to going back to Valencia and getting stuck in to the Americas cup. I going to hopefully publish all my thoughts and happenings here for everyone to see how I'm getting on (hopefully not from a Spanish prison!). it may be a boring blog.... I don't know but at least come back and find out for yourselves.www.bendavison.net