Sunday, August 7, 2005
08:12 p.m.
20050807
1544 HOURS

  I received a call back from my friend Kenny down here in Houston, and he said that he will have a day or two off between jobs this week at the same time I will have to bring the truck in for some service. So, if things work out, we may be able to get in a round of golf or go out fishing this week. I have already received several calls for some other jobs, so there's a good chance that I may instead have to push on to the next location again.
  I also uploaded some podcasts yesterday and have some more to upload today, as well as try to get some paperwork done. Although as I was sitting in the truck, a huge thunderstorm moved in, temporarily knocking out internet service and generally making a lot of loud booming noises and flashing bolts, creating a somewhat uncomfortable environment when I am sitting in a large metal box capable of conducting large amounts of electricity.
  The feeds we are doing today have gone swimmingly, something that often happens on a lazy Sunday. There is plenty of space available, and most of the time we've had the whole satellite transponder to ourselves. It takes me back to many a weekend, sitting alone at the Conus Master Control satellite access center, staring at a green screen, or watching cable, or surfing the internet, or talking with the random person who stumbled in from the newsroom, often with a Saturday evening hangover.
  In television, weekend crews are often the models of efficiency because they are unencumbered by the non-stop meetings going on throughout the day, the non-stop stream of phone calls and emails coming in from people who want something. And on weekends, crews usually go about their tasks, easily trade tasks among other colleagues (who happen to be on that side of town anyway), and often work on other projects, like archiving important footage and data that gets pushed off during the week.
  Last month I stopped and had a nice long talk with John Whaley, a former boss at WDIO in Duluth, Minnesota. We got on the subject of archives for a little while, and discussing how it would be a shame to see that stuff deteriorate. The issues are that a lion's share of their archives are on 16mm film and ¾ inch videotape, and the machines for both of those formats are disappearing, are becoming difficult to transfer because the media is old and brittle, and transferring from one format to another always degrades the signal just a little bit, so even after the material is transferred you still want to keep the old copies because you will never get that good of a copy again (until it gets to the point of breaking every time you touch the film or tape).
  Film preservation has made great strides, thanks to large companies like AMC (American Movie Classics), and TCM (Turner Classic Movies). But they have their hands full just restoring movies. They have done a lot of work to restore and save the Movietone news reels that used to play before movies, too. But nobody that I've heard of, besides maybe the Newseum is saving, or at least attempting to restore the 16mm film footage sitting in television station basements across the country and around the world.
  And here's the biggest issue with letting that stuff disappear: By the time somebody decides to save it, all of the photographers, reporters and producers who can actually identify the people, buildings, rooms, and general information about the footage will all be dead. By making an honest attempt to save it right now, our generation and the next won't have to be guessing when it comes to trying to identify the shots. A movie is pretty generic, and there is a cast of characters who are usually pretty easily identifiable. With news footage, a college campus or downtown scene could change completely in a matter of a few decades to where you won't be able to identify it. Stories could be revisited decades later, as the next generation takes the baton and runs with it, homes and important buildings burn down, are torn down, railways and boatyards disappear and make way for mini-malls. Beautiful parks and wetlands disappear as they make way for these malls and large department stores involved in this century's “Cola Wars.”
  If the news business doesn't step in to save it's own archives, this new trend of ownership changes, and local affiliates quitting the news service continues, a large part of our culture will disappear.

20050806
1255 HOURS

  I had a nice talk with my friend Stacey this morning about how she is thinking about venturing into a new business that would take her on the road to a lot of little town festivals and get-togethers, mostly historically based. What they're looking to do isn't really being done right now, so they're trying to put together a list of the equipment and sundries they will need. I had some ideas, but the more a person thinks about it, the longer the list becomes. So that will be her ultimate challenge: How little can they get by with, and still have everything they need to get the job done?
  The nomadic lifestyle is as it has always been, difficult. Equipment, especially technical equipment seems to be getting smaller and less power-hungry. And while now, most people meet their power requirements with small generators or large amounts of batteries, the future could see the use of more solar power. Since chipsets are reaching a temporary threshold (laptops haven't really gone beyond 1-2 Ghz chips in the past couple of years, where they doubled every year before that), that means power requirements haven't increased in the past couple of years, and that's given battery makers a chance to catch up just a little bit and make laptops and other portable devices more efficient.