TrueStoryBob @ TrueStoryBob @lemmy.world

Posts

6

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393

Joined

2 yr. ago

Basically, my job is to edit video... live.

For about four hours every day, I sit in a room filled with about $2 million in equipment next to a studio with an even larger pricetag. For example: a robotic camera can cost upwards of $90k... our studio has four. Thosw robots are my children and I love them with my whole heart.

No NDA and no problem!

When I last used Overdrive, it was a fresh installation, but the system itself had been around for a few years. The UI was uncooperative, making changes required going into a script instead of just a quick fix in the on-air playlist or changing a few lines of typed coding (like with ELC and Ignite respectively). The program itself was crazy unstable... look, crashes happen with any computer program or system, but this was a daily occurrence (sometimes twice in an hour long show) which is completely unacceptable. Finally, compared to Sony and GrassValley, building new codes was a trial that often required access to the video switcher itself instead of just handling things through the code editor program.

While I haven't worked on an Overdrive system in years, one or our competitor stations in town just got one; they've been having a hell of a time with it and it shows on-air. Been working in broadcasting for almost twenty years and I've launched all three automation systems at one time or another. With Grassvalley and Sony's automation there's seldom a problem at launch... Ross seems to always be a beast that needs to get wrangled. I seriously want to go to that competitor and help them (also, their studio is lit for shit and I want to fix that as well).

I'm a television technical director and Ross Overdrive is hell on wheels... it's a video production system mostly used by local television stations to consolodate "automate" their control rooms down to one person. There's three major companies that build systems like this: Sony, GrassValley, and Ross. In my experience GrassValley's Ignite is pretty good, it's stable and gets the job done. Sony's ELC is best, going above and beyond what I need it to do (plus their customer service and tech people are just awesome). Hands down, Ross Overdrive is a pile of garbage. Their physical video switchers are really great (super intuitive and built to last), but the Overdrive automation system itself is just a clunky and uncooperative UI. I've had such a bad experience with their system I've turned down jobs when the place uses Ross Overdrive. Ross's Xpression graphics system (or "Chyron") is also a hot mess. I've heard that if you're using all Ross stuff (video switchers, graphics system, video servers, robotics, etc) it runs smoothly and that may be true, but Christ-on-a-pogo-stick have I had nothing but trouble with their software.

I'm still on Facebook to keep up with family I don't want having my phone number. I'm on Insta to support friends who's business is kind of tied to it (tattooers and other artists mostly). I'm on Threads because my work requires me to be in there (and elsewhere) to promote their stuff. I don't actually do that, but apparently once you have an account it's there forever unless you want to nuke your Instagram account as well.

I've receeded from FB and Insta (along with Twitter {"X"} and Reddit) as well as being fully adverse to posting on Threads in favor of Fediverse alternatives. Been on Mastodon since the 2021 Facebook whistleblower and Lemmy since Reddit's API BS last year. Haven't tried BlueSky or the other Twitter alternatives. Now... getting away from using Google/Alphabet has been another struggle entirely.

Literally would make most police actions illegal and there's no way Uncle Joe would sign it.

I left the Catholic Church shortly after leaving Catholic school. Like, in Catholic high school, they taught us about the "issues" (read: CA scandal) the church was "going through" and how we all need to "pray for the victims" of these "isolated incidents." You then step into the real world and learn that the church protected monsters from the law for DECADES (and continues to do so), it really fucks with your head. In college, I went "spiritual but not religious" for a while and then landed squarely into atheism town... been a resident there now for more time than I was ever Catholic.

Yeah. I'm not using it for like graphic design or even scribbling notes. Just clicking on things and scrolling or swiping.

Oh, and I do use the stylus from time to time... compared to high end devices (like Samsung's Galaxy S lines) it's not as responsive and there's the occasional misclick, but it's not bad. That's the rating I'd give the experience with the phone overall: not great but certainly not terrible... 7/10 does most of what it says it'll do.

Been using the 2023 version of the Moto G Stylus 5G for a few months now and I've got similar things to say. Motorola has built a fairly good mid-tier product here. Camera could be better, but it's got a headphone jack, a good screen, and very good battery life. Only other problem is, again because of the obscurity of the model, screen protectors are easy enough to find, but cases have been another matter. Had to take a Dremel to one so the hole would line up with the headphone jack. Otherwise this has been a good daily driver smart phone.

I'm guessing it was a tower like this one.

Balanced on a single anchor point foundation with guy-wires stabilizing it from all sides.

Automation and it's also possible this was a repeater tower... so, not the main broadcast tower but one that fills in a dead zone within the market. Radio and TV stations use repeaters in areas with a lot of hills or tall buildings.

Basically, the idea is to build orbital solar farms (where is always sunny), then beam the energy produced back to the ground with microwave transmitters and ground recievers. It's technically feasible, unlike fusion we have all the technology needed to do it right now. However, it's cost and resource prohibitive. The US government studied building such a system in the 1970-80's after the energy crisis. We could do it, but building it would take a generation to get running and about double the US's current military annual budget. Launch costs are coming down since then, but the industrialization of space and the moon will take generations and would need to be an international effort to have any chance of success.

"Our friends at CNN are here... you guys love breaking news. And you did it. You broke it. Great work." -Michelle Wolf (2018 White House Correspondents Dinner)

Well, over the last four years I've only received a 3-4% annual raise. This means that, because of inflation, I've seen an effective pay cut of ~10%. Meanwhile the CEO of the company I work for just bought his third condo/apartment (or whatever) overlooking Manhattan's Central Park while full on doubling his take-home in 2022. That'd be a huge reason as to why I feel like shit Uncle Joe. Not like Trump and the Republicans would make things any better or do anything about it... they're more on the billionaire take than the Democrats only plus the GOP apparently is just openly talking about wanting to overthrow the government. I'll hold my nose once again to vote for a Democrat, but they've seriously got to pull their heads out of their asses.

For like half a second my brain thought this was a meme comparing the fictional megacorps Zorg Industries from "The Fifth Element" and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the "Alien" franchise.

Outlook is super buggy on FireFox for my phone. I found that Vivaldi has been running it fine enough though. It still fails to launch on first try from time to time, but I've never gotten frustrated enough to consider downloading the app.

I've often wondered, how were the economics of renting a car to drive for a service? Did you usually make back your money for renting and fuel, etc?

Well, what I meant was don't just take a dealership's word for the maintenance of a car they're trying to sell you. But yeah, dealer mechanic shops can be some of the best out there especially for their particular brand.

Almost always cheaper to make your own anything.

Aldi is also great if you've got one near you and are not able (or don't need) to buy in bulk.

If you haven't shopped there before, they're a German based chain that's spread across the rest of Europe and a lot of North America and almost-only sells their own store-brand products. Their prices are similar to Walmart and Kroger store brand but, IMO, they're of much better quality. As a person with ADHD, I find shopping there to be much less anxiety inducing... it's a grocery store the size of a Walgreens. If I need pickles, there's one brand with five different cuts in three flavors; there's only two kinds of ketchup, six kinds of fruit juice, four different laundry detergents... one kind of paper plates. Also, the cashiers are scary fast.

I can complete my weekly shop in like twenty minutes without a headache or back pain. It's genuinely like someone designed a grocery store just for me and it's cheap AF... just remember to bring your own reusable bags and a quarter. You'll need a quarter to unlock the shopping cart from the rack. You get your coin back when you return your cart like a civilized human being. They have paper bags for sale at the register for like 28¢ if you forget to bring your own.