ECHO11's GUIDE TO LIFE

Sub Zero

2010-12-21T18:27:00.003Z

Well this weather has started to take the piss now, this week alone it been below - 12, this morning i had minus - 12.5 in the car, at least the frost was on the outside, Dana's car has snow on the inside

this pic was taken yesterday and that was close to 09:00, at 05:00 this morning when i was heading to some god forsaken cinema in the middle of nowhere it was just a tad colder. It was that cold this morning the windscreen washers were actually frozen solid, not the ideal situation as when they did finally unfreeze some 60 mins later i sprayed the widescreen and rear window and the water froze on the rear window.

NEC DLP

2010-12-12T11:14:00.007Z

one of the pleasures of my new job is i get to see so much new kit, a few weeks ago i was at the NEC factory in Telford

The light tube, the most expensive part on the system, yet so simple, the wonders of these machines is that they can run 24/7 and never burn a lens out or light tube out, if only the 35MM world was like that.

Oops i seem to have removed all the parts, amazingly this is the sum total of parts needed to build a DCI 2K projector

The bare chassis, well all barr the wirering loom, it really is a very well thought out system, much better than the Mk1's,

The business end of the system the 3 chip DLP prism, the alloy covers are basically fan holders, these systems are loud when the run, many many fans, but what a picture

Goodbye old laptop

2010-12-11T18:18:00.006Z

Well sold off my Sony Vaio today, for spare / repairs, £50 not bad since it was royaly shafted, so its gone to a new home in bath, via Fallowfield.

Had the laptop since 2004 and was a present from Dana to me, it never let me down even when i swapped to a netbook i still used it

Its been sold as the new user wants it for the screen, i hope it serves them as much as it did for me.

Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters

2010-12-11T09:50:00.002Z

Alan is back only this time its more cringe-worthy than ever before , only on the internet now but watch it still as funny as ever before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucrpgmJxx0E&feature=channel

And now the good

2010-12-11T08:58:00.003Z

So in 18 months lost has happened A new role was created call Sound and Projection Operations Manager, AKA SPOM, well this originally started back in sept 2009, but due to me shaving the emulsion off one eye of Mr Potters latest money making film i decided that rather than apply id just stay put and be so embarrassed on what I’d done, saying that i could have very much been looking for a new job. Support off good friends was amazing, well in Feb Huggy moved onto a new role as ROM, regional operations manager and i got thinking about maybe it was time, my Protégé was there to step into my shoes, so i went for it and got it, although it was a great opportunity i would be leaving what i created and that was hard, 11 years of bloody hard work id put into that, i was the first one appointed in Feb 1999, so leaving was tough but my friend arranged a amazing leaving party and i was deeply moved by the comment written, during that time I’m proud to say many have now gained TM positions .

Moving away from that place was hard but seeing Ben take up the reigns and steer the good ship was great and when i look back to August 2001 when i interviewed ha ha well maybe tell those stories another time,

So SPOM, Great job, hard job, stressful job, amazing job, you name it and it’s that job, it was hard to get to grips with now start – stop time, wear what you wish, i get a laptop HP they are amazing, but every now and then HP call you and say you’re a C***, still I’m on my 3rd one now, blackberry which is a assets and hindrance all at once and a car, and you get to choose, i wanted a Toyota Prius, but they delivered 3 Series M Sport BMW, I’m telling you it’s a grind sat in leather upholstery with the AC on

We are now rolling Digital out big time, normally that’s 5 days away from home shacked up in a hotel, my last one was a London based cinema during the snow , so the hotel was running out of food and the snow and ice was thick on the ground, i can honestly say my car might be good but its shite in the snow and ice, sitting so low on the ground it acts like a snow plow and has less than zero traction, whilst going to the cinema last week, i approached the multi story car cark and the car skidded down the ramp ending up against the wall rather than in the barrier

It is a great job, i travel loads see so many cinemas and as i love cinemas i can’t say how good it feels Anyway enough of that more to come

Bad bits first

2010-12-11T08:35:00.001Z

Well finally got around to blogging again, and realised it’s been nearly 18 months, wow will things have moved on a lot since then, from good to bad. I now have a new job as a SPOM, moved house, have a new car, so let’s get the bad over with first, Well we lost the house, tough but hey there you go, life goes on in a much better place now, second bad thing was the passing of Gordon, old school friend and a genuine nice guy, passed away in his sleep from a heart attack, he served in the navy as a submariner, was the gentle giant at school who people picked on until the day he came home from basic training in the navy, it was like a scene out of full metal jacket and Prt Pyle, my biggest regret is that i never got a chance to go and see him, i kept saying you must go and see Gordon and all that, his service was very moving and very poignant, Gordon had a saying I’ve been to so many places I’ve never ever seen, which was true but he loved the navy life, he signed up for 25 years in July 1979, left the yokel town where we all lived and set off to the discover the world. He did what many of us dreamed, and every time he was on leave we would all meet up and have a great time. Although funerals are normally very glum, i meet up with my oldest school friend Ian “Ernie” wardrobe, I’ve known him since 1974 and has not changed , his dad used to run the locals conservative club and was like a father figure to us all, making sure we were all well feed and watered lol. Whilst waiting outside the crematorium Ernie asked you ever seen anything of “clique clique Lee” who vanished off the face of the world in 1995 when his then girlfriend gave birth to their son, he upped and ran away, well there we were sat in the pews and turn to my left there was martin, small world Well Gordon if you looking down on us now you will be able to chuckle about the time you reversed up a duel carriage way with martin jumping out of your car, the time coming back from Whitby you pulled over to the left to avoid the car turning right and drive down the ditch, with us all in the car, the time you brought that tiger fish and it ate all the bloody fish in your tank, and finally for this time anyway the time you slide down the death slide face first at flamingo land and friction burned your face, which was funny as you were due on parade the very next day. Rest in peace my friend you can look at your beloved stars now with such clarity

My New Toy

2009-06-07T11:52:00.010Z

Yep got a new phone, been a Sony Ericsson man for years but My darling wife got me a Nokia E71, very slick, very good, I’m impressed

What amazed me most was the ease of use on the software, it just flows, one of the good points of the Sony was how good the Smart Suite was, well I have to admit its not as good as the Nokia PC Suite

The phone feels well made and is pretty heavy, with a metal back,

The PC Suite is so easy to use, any files that you wish to transfer is a simple case of drag the file and drop it into the picture of the phone

Quick Charge

2009-03-10T12:54:00.003Z

Another new toy We have all had it when our Mobile goes flat and you don’t have a charger, well check this out, a single AA battery will give your Moby a much needed charge. Comes with the adaptors for most modern phones, i charged my mobile up this mornig using a used AA battery and it worked. however i will now not only loose the charger but also the emergency charger.

Gadgets a Go-Go

2009-03-07T15:54:00.006Z

I love gadgets, nothing better than new toys with, Well i found tis site a few weeks back and have brought a few things off it, The bets thing so far has been the Micro Video Camera, Built into a Pen, it looks and actually works as a pen, but with a 4GB USB flash drive and Video/Still/Voice recorder all built into one. Well never one to shy away from trying new kit i fixed the camera to the Motorbike to record a trip into work and to see what the recording was like, it was surprisingly good. I will be uploading the video soon

Check out the Global Secure Technology web site, http://globalsecuretechnology.co.uk/ so many good things on there

Welcome to the world of Ubuntu

2009-01-31T13:27:00.010Z

After getting so pissed off with Windows and seeing so much said about Ubuntu i thought id give it a go and i have to admit im pleasantly surprised how good it is,

It’s a free down from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

I originally started off with it as a duel boot system with Xp, which worked well but i really wanted to see it work on its own, doing a clean install was painless, make up your Cd, yep it all fits on a CD and just boot off the CD, your prompted with some option , install was nice and fast.

Once installed i was very pleased to see it had detected and loaded all the drivers a thing im sure we have all suffered with XP, it detected my two ADSL lines and connected to each no problems, I want to use tis machine as a Media Server/Player in our bedroom to go with the 26 LCD i have in there, so thought id give it a try with Video, the system did not have the correct codec but instead of the normal windows one where you need to go and look for the codec this goes and seeks the files you need a very neat trick , although all you Unix/Linux crowd will no doubt tell me thats what’s been happening to you all the time.

Showing the Desktop, you can have multiple desktops running at once, in the lower right hand corner you can change desktops.

The media player section, here showing Music very simple to use.

You can do the normal burning of CD’s and DVD’s via the drag and drop

Like XP you can have folders for you pictures and files

Showing just another desktop, so easy to switch between the desktops, I’ve not got into it fully but im sure that it has some great uses

Good old Firefox on Ubuntu, and its very smooth as well when running, maybe it was me but it did seem to be running a lot easier when used on Ubuntu

Movie viewing is as easy as the rest of the applications.

I would advise anyone with a spare PC laying around give it a try, its well worth it

Enjoy

Echo11

2008 NEC Bike show

2008-12-04T17:31:00.018Z

Popped down to the Bike Show at the NEC Birmingham, despite numerous weather forecasts for snow, rain, the end of the world and all between, we did not see a flake of snow all day long. This year the show had more side stalls than main bike exhibits, as per usual i headed for the BMW Stand to see what was on offer, lot of nice new shiny bikes, and some fantastic deals on clothing, and accessories. Cut Away, a really good detailed example of a R1 engine stripped naked and sectioned in places, some clever engineering Came across a very nice Quad, I’ve always fancied one of these on the road, and a Hybrid , we saw one on a Dyno ready to run up for a bargin sale of £14,500 although it was fully kitted with Öhlins Shocks and some clever titanium exhaust systems. Don’t know what they have tricked to the engine but by the looks of the fuel injection system im guessing its dumping a lot of fuel into those cylinders. Moving onto the KTM stand there now very good bikes, had a lot of people around them, they have stayed true to there roots and kept the Black/Orange paint scheme the RC8 has to be a must have bike, although they have a long way to go to go up against the much loved R1 or Ninja from Yamaha and Kawasaki The new Kawasaki Nija 750 was nice, although they seem to have got smaller or ive got longer,as im more like a praying mantis when sat on them now, and to be honest numerious broken wrists, fractures have made it hard to tolerate the long hunched down postion now to make it enjoyable As with all these types of shows there is the normal collection of weired and wacky bikes, well the first one i came upon was a 125 Motorcycle from China, its an actual police bike, i doubt an asmatic ant would struggle out running Mr Officer on that, still it beats the electric one we found last year Along with the much laughed at Police bike was some very good examples of outstanding custom work, stating off with a Spondon framed bike, A classic R1 turbo which was very subtle indeed and you had to take a double take to see where they had put the turbo Right next to this was a classic ZX-10 from Kawasaki that had been giving the Turbo treatment and a very nice job it was as well, then there was a beautiful Yamaha RD350, a bike that brought power to the masses, with the now much missed YPVS Yamaha Power Valve System, an outstanding restoration job had been done A Suzuki Bandit 900 had been fitted into a GSX frame that had been polished to perfection Properly one of the best bikes i saw today was a custom built Vmax but what do you do to an already very fast bike, well clearly you add N02- Nitrous Oxide and a bloody great turbo into the mix, Single sided one off rear wheel, split final drive, The tyres have to be some of the biggest iv seen and the profile was so wide you could possibly have just stood the bike up without side stands, im sure it makes for an interesting ride One of the strangest yet eye catching bike was this white beast, very clean cut styling , but odd, very odd bars. A very good days trip, and its always good to some of the new bikes and some of the classic ones, the RD350 was a great reminder of past times

PGR4 to the Max

2008-12-03T18:17:00.008Z

Things to do whilst your on holiday, well one for sure is to get over 12,000,000 Kudos point on Project Gotham Racing.

Nuremberg ring, snow flat out coming up to a corner

Knee down going at full tilt into a Left hander about to do those two cars on the inside

Oops, a few seconds before i get ejected off the bike at full speed, not good, even worse in real life

Power sliding around a corner, lifting off the throttle hence the flames licking out of the exhausts

Wheelie 1, me just showing off i was so far ahead i was messing around coming up to the finish line

Blu-Ray

2008-11-22T17:44:00.004Z

As you will know we are pretty lucky that we get to play with lots of new toys, an addition to our Tech Toys is Samsung Blu-Ray Player, combine this with a Christie Digital Cinema System and you will be amazed by the picture Stunning sound and crystal clear sound.

Update Overdue

2008-11-22T17:17:00.023Z

Thought i had better update what’s been going on, so where to start, hows about this imagine coming home to find 2 fire engines sat in outside teh front of you house, putting your car which was ablaze and was your pride and joy , well i came home one afternoon to see a house 3 door up from me have it happen to them

Well first thing first i was trekking around liver pool a few weeks ago and needed a GPS, not having one for my Bike, i used the combination of Car Tom Tom, Plastic bag and Gaffer tape, worked well i thought, might need to so refining but it worked.

Out of Africa,

We were lucky/Unlucky depending on how you look at it to run the Premiere of the Coronation Street “Out Of Africa” event here, 6 screens, much hassle, but a great party afterwards,

Prior to this and to add to my surreal collection of events I’ve done during the past here, now add Interactive golf, or a Laptop, and Digital Projector and a Gold club, It was not bad, but it aint no Tiger Woods on the Xbox360 i will admit.

Then comes Surviours, just about to be shown on TV, this HD, Premiere was very stunning and a big

We did an event a few weeks ago, for school kids, all was going so well until presenters posed the question “Sexual Ethics”, i actually did not believe what i was hearing, but yep among the questions asked was Is it ok to Masturbate?, Sex with Animals, god i love my job, there cant be another job that you going to see that question posed often i can tell you

We also managed to squeeze in a Ryan Giggs DVD Launch which was a TV feed from the red carpet, and then the Actual DVD being screened, all be it via Digi-Beta , looked good, not my thing Football but another gig to put down on the CV.

Happy Birthday My Darling

2008-10-20T20:53:00.003Z

People say miracles happen, well i have living proof back in October 1996 @ 21:45 Kate was born, very premature and gravely ill, she fitted into my hand and weighed under 2 Lbs., this is the very first picture we have of her, after i delivered her [i delivered all my children and am extremely proud of it] she was rushed away to the intensive care unit. What’s more freaky is this, about 10 days prior to Kate being Born, my Dads, mother passed away, now we had spent the best part of the 3 months at that hospital with Dana being ill, and had seen every nurse in the maturity unit, well the very second Kate was born this lady walked in , she looked the absolute double of my Dads mother , dressed in a real old fashioned nurses outfit, picked up Kate and took her away, Later on when i ask who the nurse was no one had any idea, but Kate ended up in the ITU, and is still here today, im not superstitious really only when its anything to riding my bike, but even now we still don’t know who that lady was, but who ever she was, if it was not for her Kate would not be here.

How Hard Is Air

2008-08-23T14:19:00.004Z

Soft i hear you say, really are you sure, have you heard of the phenomenon called Cavitation? Or the formation of air bubbles in a flowing liquid

What does it do well look at the two pictures below, the first one is what is left of a Pump Impeller after 18 months use, the damaged is caused only by air bubbles. As you can see the new impeller looks nice and shiny with smooth surfaces and impeller blades that are straight.

The water we use its not normal tap water either it’s distilled, and filtered through a two big ass purification filters. So its not contamination in the water causing.

As you can see from the close up, the damage is pretty bad, well the water breaks away the bits of the brass impeller and the causes the bits to be circulated around the system, as you can imagine this is not good for it. So next time you thinking about water remember its not as inocent as it makes out

North-South-East-West

2008-08-20T11:43:00.002Z

I seem to have been on the road for what seems ages, in the last 3 weks i have visited all 4 points of the compass, In total I’ve just worked out we have travelled 1710 miles, and spent 36 hours in the car, we have seen 1 major accident, and numerous minor ones, travelled through rain every type of weather you could find, Stopped at more Service staion than i care to remember. We have been to Region 1 - London, Region 2 - London, Region 3 - Bath, Region 4 - Sheffield, Region 5 - Manchester, Region 6 - Breahead Whilst heading towards my office today i git a call to try and help somebody out, upon walking into the room i found the following How bad a day are you having when you cant even get two tables to lie on top of each other, it was a Kodak moment for sure.

Best thing ive heard all week

2008-08-13T19:39:00.004Z

Whilst sat chilling before heading off to work early this week, i saw a news clip that cheered me up no end, Oldham Police force had gone to raid a house and finding no one in, the kicked the door in and searched the house, It then turned out that they had actually raided the wrong house Nice work there then boys, i mean how hard can it be. Well upon discovering this slight Feux Par, they did what any other decent person would do and left a message on the fridge out of the those funky Alphabet letters

You have to admire there Gaul for doing that, top class. The guy who lives in the house said he wanted a written apology, i say that is a pretty good try

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1061900_polices_fridgemagnet_calling_card

Road Trip North

2008-08-09T18:10:00.018Z

Oh what a week, been out and about , Monday was a trip to Scotland, stunning scenario going up there even if it was 05:30 , stunning, Breahead was a nice surprise indeed and the regional meeting was great success, The foyer of Breahead was most impressive and its good to see how they have improved the design of the cinemas to be very clean annd clear

the only trouble with this road trips is the long drive back, as we left Scotland for a nice 4 hors drive back all was going well until as we travelled form Scotland to Carlisle along the M74, we saw a Toyota side swipe the Armco barriers on the hard shoulder and i mean it hit it hard, we stopped to ensure every body was ok, when we discovered 5 young girls in the back of the Toyota, i called the emergency services and asked foe all the services, Police, Ambulance, Fire,

After waiting for what seemed a life time the first of many emergency vehicles arrived, in the end the final tally was 5 ambulances, 4 fire engines, 1 police car with two sarcastic coppers, it appears it’s not a crime to carry more people than seats in you vehicle

Having returned to the office on Tuesday you suffer from being away one day, with a host of meetings and stuff today, as well as running the gauntlet of trying to get onto the roof, which although this sounds easy, i swear smuggling a African elephant in via the airport could prove easier

Wednesday sees us on our way to sunny Sheffield, for Number 4 of the regional meetings, lets just say the meeting was much more vocal and i few people had a few truths told to them, enough said

ITV/Granada came in on Thursday not before a Nice 05:30 am start to turn the power off, yet again i mean its not as if it aint been off a few times in the past few weeks, i swear if we take that switch apart one more time I’ll scream,

The Granada gig gave me a chance to us our new SDI/HDI interface card for the CP2000 unit, the picture looked stunning, and we learnt a lot, like they produce TV pictures at 25 Foot Lamberts , your retinas would be bleeding at 25 foot lamberts on a cinema screen. one thing i liked as the new deck that Broadcast crew used, the Sony SRW 5500 is supposed to be a great unit, normally on these events you woudl use a preview monitor but this have one built in which can be full screen on the panel or just in the corner

All in all a very enjoyable week was had, and now im getting ready for No: 05 and No: 06 Regional meetings.

Echo11

Would you do it?

2008-07-31T06:18:00.001Z

Don’t know if you got a chance to watch Lifesavers on Channel 5, what an amazing program, the program looked at organ donation and all involved. There was young women whose job it was to ask the relative/parents if they could use the organs, a 17 year old lad, had been involved in a bad car crash and was brain dead, there was not a mark on his body, he carried a donor card and this lady was speaking to the parents. Some days i think my job is hard and harsh but imagine you have to and speak to the parents who have just lost there son, i could not do it, Never, they removed his heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver. What was really nice is that when they had finished removing the organs, they took time to clean him, wash his hair and they even took a cutting from his hair to give to his parents and very moving thought They also showed a heart being removed for a person in Northern Ireland and being brought to Papworth, but they had this device that keeps the heart beating with some of the original blood so to prolong the life of the organ, what a brilliant piece of engineering. This heart went into a gentleman who could not walk more than 10 steps before he had to sit down, two weeks after the transplant and he looked like a new person. I carry a organ donor card, for one simple reason, once your dead the organs are now good to you and if you can prolong someone life for even 1 extra day then its worth it. https://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/Consent.do My view is that we should have to opt out of not being a donor so then there is no shortage of donors, If you do get a chance to see a rerun please watch it.

Life is moving on

2008-07-25T20:20:00.000Z

Today was my little girls last day at Primary school, it only seems like yesterday that she started nursery , yet here she is all ready to move onto her next big adventure of Secondary school, Yesterday they had a year 6 end of year play, called “GELL”, which to be honest was good, at the end of the show they had a PowerPoint show of the children with pictures taken during the years since they started, the one of my princess was of this little girl, who look small and such a little one, there was not a dry eye in the hall, it was funny and moving, this year being the first where they will feed into 6 other schools, so some of her friends will be moving on. Im sure there will be tears when the bell goes this afternoon, and so the next chapter starts in her life, And as i sit here Im reflecting on where those years have gone, so much has happened in that time, and Im seeing her grown inot a beautiful young girl, who cares for brothers even through i sometimes think they don’t appreciate it.

WHY

2008-07-24T05:57:00.002Z

What is trust, i ask as over the past few days I’ve been working with a good friend who has been struck by someone who they trusted with there lives, in fact it is there own child, Well early 30’s but never the less, imagine how you would feel if one day this person who you had raised, nurtured, shielded, and trusted all off a sudden turned and spiralled into a nightmare of Misuse of substances and debt.

Imagine how you would feel if you had worked all you life to ensure that this person was safe, and secure and wanted for nothing, and now you have seen massive debts incurred by this person not only financial but also person in terms of life.

I saw a changed person, for someone who had a close call a few years ago to now have this is just not fair, when you’re that close to retirement to the point that during a procedure they stated this will be the last time i replace this bit of equipment here. As we sat there in the having what must have been the 10^th cup of coffee, i saw that this once very strong person who was challenge to work with somedays had been broken you could see it in there eyes, you could see them asking why us, what had we done, as we chatted last night they talked about starting work at 16, and there career path to the present day, special times Birthdays, seeing there child grow up to be there apple of their eye to basically have it all blown away by drugs.

He summed it up last night both he and his wife are hurting on the outside but crying on the inside, a brave statement made more so from a person who is so proud and not emotional, you could here it in their voice, and what’s worse is that they will never ever recover from this, no amount of words will remove the pain and heartache they must be in now.

A Dark Knight Is Here

2008-07-15T12:59:00.010Z

What seems to be the most anticipated film of the decade TDK “The Dark Knight “finally showed up last week, and with sterling work from Cinemec the print was assembled in under a day an impressive thing to say the least, some of the Imax tech guys got to watch it on Friday night and by all accounts not only was it stunning but loud as well, the film has a selection of full frame Imax scenes in it, the very opening scene to me is the best.

But rather than spoil it for you, it goes on release on the 23^rd July,

The more anticipated thing for me was the arrival of our new computer systems; it’s been longer coming than Batman, well on Friday 4 pallet loads of computers, switches, servers and cabling arrived, although no real photos yet as you can see there are plenty of stuff to be going on with.

You know you wake up on a morning and you think what a lovely day, well there i was warming my bike up today , as i was about to jump on it, i noticed something on my rear tyre, at first i thought it was bit of paper or something like that until i got closer and found it to be the biggest bloody Nail I’ve ever seen in a tyre,

Im not sure how deep its gone in, i pulled it out with my fingers so I’m Guessing-Maybe Hoping its gone in sideways into one of rubber sections on the tyre, just what i needed was that today.

A Time To Blog

2008-07-06T16:17:00.015Z

I thought it’s about time i updated the blog with what’s been going on, Where to begin, well just got back from Watching Wall-E, with Dana, Kate and Cameron, Alas it was not cool enough for Jake to attend. It was more like a UCI reunion than anything else, with people coming out of the darkness all over the place. As with all Pixar films there is the normal Short on the front, this time it was a short called “Presto” about a magician and his very hungry and naughty rabbit which is as ever with these shorts funny, when you watch it look for the hairs on the rabbit moving the detailing is amazing One of the best things was it was shown using our 2K digital system, which really does show the films off to there full, the colours on the Odeon Digital Logo are so clear, Most of the people who read this know that Im, a big Xbox fan, i actually never got the first Xbox, but then when they brought out the Xbox green Crystal i snapped one of those, which was very swiftly replaced with the crystal much to Danas disgust, and then my much loved and much used Xbox360, however i kept my Crystal my youngest son was using it, well a few weeks ago i got an offer to have it chipped. so that it can play DVD’s as well as emulate many other platforms, well got it back yesterday and i was most happy.Of all the games on the system now has to be Desert Strike Return to the gulf, which brings back so many memories of playing this game years ago on my old Mega Drive , i need to buy a new controller for it, but i cant wait till Thursday when Im off. We have a tradition in our house, it been with us many years , even before the kids were born and that is to either eat out or have take-Away on a Friday night, one of my great loves in Pizza, if there is one thing i miss about not living in London is that you could get anything delivered to you door ion London, well up here you need to drive, so we headed for one of the better outlet Dominos , they always make great pizza, as you can see from the photo you can never be too careful when transporting your freshly made Pizza home, Clunk-Click Every Trip. One of the good points of my job is that we get to see films before Joe Public, one of the most anticipated films of the year is The Dark knight, well the hype in the building about this is pretty high so i hope it does not disappointed, there are selected scenes shot using Imax Cameras, so these will be full frame wall to wall image. New Computers are coming, we are rolling out a new ticketing system called “WinTicket” this is our second attempt at the whole new system. the first one sunk pretty much as fast as the titanic and taking a far amount f investment with out, So Im told this new system is the System of all systems, which can mean either one of two things, 1 its going to be amazing!!!!!, 2 its going to cause me untold headaches, i know which one I'm putting my money on. However there is a good side of this roll out is that we all get new Computers. Its well known that we play practical jokes on each other at any given opportunity, well we have a new game, our latest one was to take one of the managers Diary's and drill and hole through it and then padlock it close, and it goes without saying we did not give him the combination I guess he was most surprised when he went to get his diary and found it locked, no doubt this will now start a Managers , Technicians War but could be fun.

You’re Fired and your Hired

2008-06-12T18:36:00.001Z

The apprentice has run its distance and the winner was Lee, well found this brilliant piece of work on YouTube, the whole series was really good having been part of many “Managers Projects “ like some the tasks during my 18 Years with this Company i do feel for them.

Enjoy its good

Also this week one of my good work Colleagues leaves us due to a very much deserved promotion to Technical Manager at a cool 10 Plex, Just Remember I’ll be calling you if i run out of Paper you can fax some across to me

Ship ahoy to Light Fantastic

2008-06-11T15:27:00.016Z

HMS Ark Royal Paid a visit to Liverpool Docks and on Saturday they had an Open day which started off sounding like a good idea however upon getting there we found that at least 10,000 other people thought it was a good idea, and the prospect of a 2 – 3 Hour wait with Kate and Cameron was just not going to happen, Managed to snap off a few Pics, over all i was most unimpressed you would have thought that that they would have had it more organised, The Boat was impressive would have been better if i could have got near the bloody thing. One of the projects I’ve been meaning to start and finish is the Back lit Dolby Sign, well finally started it and all but finished it this week, just waiting for the local Maplins to get the battery box in.

So starting off with a clear Lexon Dolby Sign i managed to procure a 12 “ cold cathode strip and Inverter .

The first thing i had to do was the flatten the faces that were going sit on the Dolby sign had to be as flat as possible so some wet n Dry 1200 grade paper and a flat block were used to level it out this was then placed on the back of the Sign and Clamped in place with 2 Spring clamps, once i was happy it was Square and some Plastic Cement was used and applied capillary reaction, so that the cement applied a all even coating and this was let to set for s few mins, the setting time was increased by using a UV light to accelerate the curing time. The units was connected into the Inverter and then into my Adjustable power Supply 6V, 9V and finally 12V to ensure the cathode look ok. As the picture shows the image looks pretty good Finally to reflect the light back through the front of the sign a silver backing sheet was used, curved to cover the Cathode tube

Mad few Weeks

2008-05-24T20:58:00.013Z

Hey all

Its been a busy few weeks, Manchester was doing well until the chaps north of the border turned up and decided that Central Manchester needed a bit of a Make over and promptly started to wreck the place which was nice of them, Fortunately i got away early that day, but the normal quite Triangle area was a sea of Blue Shirts and Cases of beer.

We have started up with the Satellite feed shows again called “Simulcasted” to 20 Other venues around the UK and Europe, this time we did Genesis, “When In Rome Event, taking a live Feed from Kensington, All in all it went well,

The next time your banging on about your Media PC check out or New Media Rack we built, well i say we built my engineer did and we took all the credit for it,

So in one rack we have a Dolby DMA8+ or Digital Media Adaptor , the difference between the this one and the old DMA8 is that this one has 4 Digital Inputs giving it greater flexibility, we also have a Behringer delay box built in as well, then a HD Satellite receiver which is a Fortech Star Passion. Then a Samsung Upscaling to 1080i DVD Player and finally our new Digital Media PC, brought in so we can run HD opera and things like that, all neatly wired in, It looks very good and is a vast improvement on the cardboard boxes we used to use.

We have also had a busy week with conferences this week, With Salford University doing some DVD screen , Then we had Bank of New York who’s event started at 08:30 and was done by 09:30 although we did start at 05:00 which was a killer, The same day we also have Exportel were making people redundant and finally we had Adactus returning again for there event,

As a treat for my Kids who i don’t seem have seen much of these past few weeks i brought them the Xbox360 Rock Band last night, and oh it so much fun, with Drums, Microphone and Guitar what a laugh we had last night, id love to see that on the big screen, talk about competition my kids where giving it all last night and even Jake the Eternal Chilled person was out of his bed like a shot today, as i left them they were banging out “All Right Now” by free,

I hope the Neighbours were not planning on having a lay in as it wont be happening today

R.I.P PADDY

2008-05-06T19:50:00.000Z

Paddy Rest In Peace my friend 1927 - 2008

A week that went on and on for ever

2008-05-02T11:49:00.012Z

I thought an update was needed, so here goes

One of the busiest weeks so far this year with numerous events going on I spent most of Tuesday in Birmingham at the old ABC site, brought back Memories of ABC Catford all those years ago, great place to work.

Then Wednesday and Thursday I had Microsoft and HSBC in doing big client events

The Microsoft guys were as ever very good, with little to no issues, apart from using nearly 200 meters of Cat5 Cable to ensure they had a good connection. As is with these event I try and procure as much as i can for my ever increasing collection of stuff iv got off this type of events these weeks tally consisted of 2 x Pens, 1 x Bottle opener, 1 x retractable Headphones and Microphone unit, some tech books on Microsoft Products and the Pièce de résistance was a nice 365 day free trail of Microsoft Vista Ultimate, which I was well happy with.

The tech guys had very cleverly made a roll in roll out bench that was used for these event, roll it in , plug it in and away you go, very simple and very effective, it looks plain and boring form one side, but look underneath and you will see many PC. Video Switching units all built into one unit

There were a couple of Microsoft Vendors that I was speaking to one of them had some very nice the first thing I liked was the new Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 Keyboard, those of you who have Media PC’s will know what a nightmare that mouse is, well this keyboard is a lot slimmer and better, blue tooth connectivity, proximity sensors and and a laser mouse, very neat, although I was some what disappointed that I could not get a free one off him, but it was not for the lack of trying.Check out the picture it’s very sleek and nice

Another person there was a Guy from the robotics labs and he had built his own robot using 8 servos and a custom built motherboard, all this was controlled via an Xbox360 Controller plugged into his Laptop,

the software they use now is impressive as its very much drag and drop

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/bb625969.aspx

The one ting we did notice was how few Females there, and I mean we are talking maybe 4 out of 500 people, But then again if you chat up line is about hexadecimal code what chance do you stand

The HSBC tech team spent most of the night setting up with a pretty impressive set, although there seemed to be some confusion on what time they were due to leave, and at 16:30 they were basically told stop or we will kill the power, They expected 2 – 2 ½ hours to break down which was not acceptable for us, so we attacked it mob handed and within 55 mins we were all walking out the building a lot more tired than we were in the morning.

We have a Maintenance man here ,although I don’t know how they get that name, his latest piece of craftsmanship is a masterpiece of high class workmanship, im convinced his tool kit comprises of a selection of hammers and a rolls of gaffe tape.

Thank good it’s a long weekend this weekend

My New Toy

2008-04-19T19:53:00.004Z

Ive added a new part to me Media Pc, Digital TV; we already have sky but had a chance to get on of these at a steal of a price

It comes with its own software for TV programs but ive used it with MCE and it work really well from a normal TV Aeriel I managed to get 80 odd TV and radio Stations from a small USB stick plugged into me USB Hub, Live recording.

And it works very well with Media Centre