We have met the Martians, and they are us?

In watching a lot of Science Channel lately, there have been many shows dealing with our solar system and the exo-planets. What is an exo-planet you say? It is a planet that is not in our solar system. Twenty or thirty of these exo-planets have been found in other solar systems in our galaxy in search of planets that are Earth like in other solar systems. So far only large gas giants like Jupiter have been found but they say it is only time before a small rocky Earth like planet is found as the scientists get better at finding exo-planets in general. In all of this planet talk, one planet seems to keep being talked about more than any other, Mars. In the last 10 years or so, the interest level of Mars has increased ten fold.

With the 2004 announcement that NASA has been charged to go back to the Moon and on to Mars within the next 40 years, scientists have started looking toward the red planet. The current extended missions of the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity (they originally had a 90 day mission timetable, 4 years ago) having found evidence of flowing water in the recent history (millions of years ago, not the first thought billions of years ago) of the red planet. Along with the discovery of the meteorite that came from Mars with what appears to be the fossil remains of simple one cell life forms that are found on Earth in it, "the question of did life actually start on Mars and then come to Earth?" is being seriously asked in the halls of the planetary scientists.

Of course we have to first prove that there was life on Mars at some time in its past and when. Then what, if anything, is shared with life on Earth? I have a good idea that this question of being a Martian will not be answered in my lifetime, but I would bet by the end of the 21st Century, we will have a good idea what the answer is.

If it is proven we are descendents of Martian life, how will that fact shake up our mind set of where we fit on Earth and in the Universe?

Terrorist's New Tactics?

The day has come when terrorism moves west. With the 3 Iraqi style car bombs in the UK over the last few days, it is obvious that the terrorist are rethinking their MO on how to reek havoc in the west.

I think realizing they over shot their mark with 9/11 when it comes to just how much death and destruction they could heave on us (I really think, Rosie be damned, that bringing down the WTC WASN'T in the big scheme of things on that day. Fire and death yes, but no one had any thought the buildings would come down. UBL is smart, but he ain't that smart! No one is.) that the only way to top 9/11 would be a nuke. I just have to think that a nuke really isn't what they want to do for a very simple reason. As crazy as they are, and they ARE crazy, if you set off a nuke, you galvanize the world against your cause in such a way that you never recover and also sterilize a portion of the Earth that will take thousands of years to be habitable again. Not a receipe for gaining a foot hold in the new world for UBL's version of religion. But like I said, they are crazy and their cause and effect analsys doesn't go much beyond next Thursday at the latest.

So, like everyone else, they seem to be scaling back. Economizing if you like. More "bang" for the buck, pun intended. Iraq has certainly shown them that for a couple of dinars you can put together a whopper of a media event that may not have the wall-to-wall media coverage capacity of 9/11, but in the long run do as much media damage. Hell, out of three V-BIED's (vehicle borne IED's - don't you just love those acronyms the military comes up with!) only one actually did something and it only started a small fire and killed no one and only slightly injured one bystander. But look at the world media. They have gone off the deep end, hanging on to every sniffle and sneeze that comes out of Scotland Yard.

That Al Qaeda media machine is a genius. They pull off a half ass attack and get the coverage of a full scale victory. The end result is EXACTLY what they wanted! They don't care that the cars didn't explode. The media acts as if they DID! The world goes into a panic. As far as Al Qaeda is concerned, mission accomplished!

Maybe we just need to ignore them from the media stand point and let law enforcement and the military go get them quietly. Just tell us when they round them all up or kill them all. Take the camera away and you take 90% of their fuel away. That has been proven time and time again in the Middle East. They play EVERYTHING to the camera. But no one is going to listen to me. Too many hours of time to fill on the all news channels.

This time the good guys got lucky and as the old saying goes, "I would rather be lucky than good any day!" And ah, yes, John Edwards? There really IS a War on Terror. Just turn on your TV set. The world media is covering it, including your beloved BBC. And let's hope to God it DOESN'T come here. It might put a kink in your $400 haircuts.

Shoutout to a Fellow Employee

Stewart Pittman is just another video photographer or vidiographer or photog or shooter. He is a fellow employee. Are we "friends"? Well no, not in the sense that we hang out together and drink beer after hours and conmisserate about life. Do we "know" each other? Yes. Very much so even though we work in different departments. We both need each other so to speak. He needs me to keep his camera and gear working and a transmitter to send his pictures to the world with. I need his pictures to send to the world so people will watch and buy advertising (and answer my stupid blogging questions). "It is the circle of life Simba." Oh yeah, he is also a damn fine writer. Much better than I will be in my whole life.

He writes his own blog, Viewfinder Blues at lenslinger.com. He chonicles his life as a medium market photojournalist. (I never knew so much news happened around here. You can't tell it on TV.) My life compared to his is nothing short of non-existant. Thirty-five thousand volts withstanding.

From hanging out on the beach, huricane hunting ,

to hanging out with fellow shooters at those same huricane scums

to hanging and having real relationships with celebs like

Bucky Covington

and Chris Daughtry.

Of course being a shooter isn't all cushy assignments. It does have its problems too like shooting a remote vehicle demonstration when the vehicle goes out of control and into the group of photog's set up to record the event

or covering the worst mass homicide in American history, Virginia Tech.

But Stewart's real strength along with his photograpghic eye is his wordsmithing. Along with his daily tales of "commiting news" as he likes to describe it, he has an alter ego he writes about named Garrett and his fellow newsers of News Leader 3. In the latest installment he writes: "Thirteen minutes they pulled up on scene, a dipping curve in an otherwise featureless country road. The ride over had not been pleasant. As he always did, Garrett drove like a pyro en route to a barn fire, causing Camille to not once, twice but thrice curse his choice of RPM’s. It didn’t help that the rain really picked up just as they got on Highway 42, a twisting country corridor known for it’s own collisions. And then there was Live Three - by far the hoopty of the lot. Garrett and the fellas had been trying to kill Live 3 for years, but the ’83 SUV with the stubby mast and peeling logos just wouldn’t die. Nor would it hydroplane, a fact Garrett tested several times on his way to the ‘bus ax‘." I can name SEVERAL people who fit that characterization of shooter and "hair do" (reporter) Camille and equipment! I just couldn't do it with such pazz that makes you want to read more. My interpretation would make you want to leave screaming as quickly as possible.

Stew keeps saying he has a book in there somewhere. I hope so, because I would love to be first in line for the book signing!

Others in the biz also think highly of not only Stew's writing ability, but his opinions on the biz from lone VJ shooters to network lenslingers who cover hot spots around the world. He is linked from around the world blogs. He has even been quoted in some of the trade rags. Not bad from a self proclaimed slacker from eastern North Carolina.

To check out Stewart's little piece of the net, http://www.lenslinger.com/ will get you there. To check out his MANY still pics as he "commits news" check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/86947467@N00/

And ah, Stew, anytime you feel a little parched after a day behind the glass, give me a call. I buy the first round!

A Bad Night on the TV

Television stations are no different than any other business when it comes the risk of fire. It could be said that television may have a higher risk with all the electrical stuff we have. Of course these days people think of TV disasters of 9/11 but the real danger is fire. WABC TV in New York City found that out 10 minutes before the 11 PM newscast.

While waiting for the start of the 11 PM news with the anchors and set personal in position waiting for the start time, when a high intensity light bulb explodes, something that does happen quite frequently in a television studio, and catches a stage curtain on fire (something that doesn't happen). Within 30 seconds the rear of the news set is in flames and the fire alarm is going off. The building is evacuated and FDNY is called and begins to put out the fire that has now smoked up the building pretty good and has now forced WABC TV off the air for the next several hours.

It is interesting to me that after 9/11, WABC wasn't prepared to stay on the air. Since WABC lost their transmitter site on the World Trade Center, you would think they would have a plan in place to handle routine emergencies, like a fire. We have a saying at work, "We never close, period." Unless the apocolypse hits, we have plans that will keep us on the air, no matter what. FOX has spend lots of money to be sure that we can stay on no matter what. We may not have regular programming on, but we will still be sending a signal out. For at least two hours, WABC had either dead air or color bars on the air. Not good. I would not want to be the managers of WABC today having to answer to the "mouse" suits. New York being the number one market in the country, the amount of money lost is in the tens of millions. A fire shouldn't take you off if you have the proper backups in place.

I feel sorry for those guys in the trenches who had to pull it all together to get back on the air, it was a long night to get things in some kind of shape to get their morning news up on time and a big round of applause and congrats for pulling that off because that ain't easy, I am here to tell you. To the managers, I hope you got your resumes current, you might need them.

Video is here -> http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5345032

We have lost another example of the "Greatest Generation"

Before 9:30 in the morning of April 16, 2007 only a small group of people knew the name of Liviu Librescu. I was not one of them. Mr. Librescu was a member of the "Greatest Generation" that knew the Depression, World War II, The Cold War and 9/11. He knew World War II from the inside of a Nazi concentration camp. He saw more death and torture during World War II than 10,000 people see in a life time. He was 76 years old.

For the last 20 years he has taught aeronautical engineering at Virginia Tech. The number of lives he has molded there are in the low thousands. In any life a great accomplishment. But unfortunately Mr. Librescu will not be remembered for that great achievement by a handful of people, but will be remembered by millions around the world for something, I am sure, he would rather not be remembered for even though it is the highest and noblest thing a human can do. He sacrificed himself so his students would have a chance for survival. But from the reports I have seen and heard of him, no one should be surprised of his sacrifice. Remember, he was a member of the "Greatest Generation," a generation that put service and the "right thing" above all else. They defeated fascism and socialism in the face of bullets in the past. They sacrificied.

Was he afraid as he stood at the door using his body as a lock and shield? As more wise men than I have said about life and death situations, if you aren't scared, you’re crazy. But that fright didn't seem to stop Mr. Librescu from doing what can be called a martyr act. We will never know what his last thoughts were as Cho Sueng-Hei fired round after round through the door that Mr. Librescu was standing behind trying to keep him out as his students escaped through the windows of the classroom. But I think we can guess his determination for keeping Cho out long enough for the escape to work from many years ago from the Nazi concentration camp that must have been playing in his head like an old familiar film. He was that last line of defense. He knew it. Didn't shriek from it. Stayed calm and clear headed and knew that was what he had to do. And he did it. And if he lost his life in the process and it only saved one life, it was still worth the effort.

Well he did more than that. He saved many lives. He made a statement for life and the love of life. He made a place in Virginia Tech history and the world for himself. It was obvious standing behind that door was not what he wanted to be doing on that Monday morning, but when history and fate called on him, he once again answered the call as he did in World War II and didn't hesitate.

Mr. Librescu held the most important class he ever taught Monday morning. He taught more in 90 seconds to the world than he had in a lifetime. He taught courage, love, bravery and sacrifice. As a teacher, he fulfilled a teaching destiny that very few teachers ever achieve.

To the nouns that describe Liviu Librescu; cancer survivor; holocaust survive; husband; father; aeronautical engineer; teacher; we now, reluctantly and with great sorrow and humility, add maybe the most important noun to his name, life giver.

We say, "Mr. Librescu, thank you for the lesson you taught us Monday morning. We are sorry you had to teach it." Shalom.

Work,Work,Work,Work,Work

Seems that is all I am doing here of lately. But it has been pretty fun work. As I stated in my last post, we had been installing a new routing switcher. Well that is all done now and here a picture to prove it!!

We have moved on to installing a new Master Control to replace the aging analog Master Control that we have been using almost 10 years. It is woefully out of date now and we are truly seeing it as we install all of these new gizmo's.

Here is what the area looked like when we first started late last year. Pretty bare, huh? Well it had been where we had our commercial playback servers and we rotated them 90 degrees so we can start construction. After we get on line, we will move the servers to a new server room and that will open the floor space back up and we can put up the walls.

Here it is now about 2/3 of the way completed. We have many monitors to be able to view most anything in the station that deals with on air since this will be the "helm" of the good ship "El Ocho." This point here has taken several months and work just about every day. It doesn't look like much, but there is lots of wire under those floor tiles. Lots of wire, almost 6 miles we figure of digital video and digital audio cable. And here is a picture of the back of one of the racks with the audio frame of the router and the master control frame.

We hope to be on the air with this in the next few weeks so we keep slugging away. Who knows, it may actually look like something and work to boot!

A Little Heart Surgery, Please

WOW! Where did January go? I swear, we were just celebrating New Years (that was last night wasn't it?) and now it is Valentine's Day! Oh my God. Where is time going? (a little music from “Abraham, Martin and John”) “I turn around and it’s gone.” My. How time flies.

But I guess I have a good reason. I have been involved in heart surgery. (HEART SURGERY!! Are you OK! What happened?!) No, no, not me. I am fine. Well as fine as I could be and still be classified “alive.” Just transplanting a heart at work. (A heart at work? You work for a TV station, not a hospital) True. But the patient in this case IS the TV station and I, along with Ross the Boss and my other fellow doctors, eh engineers, have been in the process of changing out the heart and nervous system of the station. The routing switcher. With out this behemoth of modern electronic wizardry, the TV station would be like a body with no heart or nervous system. It would just lay there and do nothing. This device takes signals from satellite receiver 7 and routes it to the news department and takes signals from a microwave truck and routes it to Production Control for air in the newscast or routes graphics from the Art Department to Master Control. All at the same time.

I call it a behemoth for what it does, but in size it really isn't. Not compared to the routing switcher that it is replacing.

Look closely and you can see Ross The Boss IN the audio side of the router switcher

This new one takes up one half of a 7 foot high rack. The old router takes up one whole 7 foot rack and doesn't have as much horsepower. The old router was installed in 1994 and the manufacturer went out of business about 5 years later. So we have been keeping this thing working with chewing gum and string for the last 7 years. It has served us well though but it is time to upgrade. The old router is what is called a 128 by 160 frame meaning it can take 128 sources and route them to 160 different places. The new one is a 128 by 128 and even though it routes to fewer places, because of computer networking, many of the places that we used to route video and audio to, we do it over Cat 5 networking cable using IP now so we don't need or use all 128 outputs on this one, but that is the smallest size they make for the number of inputs and outputs we need.

It is really a pretty neat system. It is of course all computerized where the old route router, which was computerized as well, was only as powerful as most mini calculators. This one is so smart, just a reload of a file, it can completely reconfigure itself. And the learning curve is pretty steep. As far as usability goes, it can take analog inputs and route them to digital outputs and vise versa. The biggest problem with it though is that it is so small; it has to be mounted in such a way so the monstrous amount of wire has to have room more than it does.

It has taken about 4 months to get it installed and up and running. I went straight from the DTV project into the router project. Luckily, all I have had to do was provide labor. Others are doing the heavy lifting of making the “life or death” decisions. But the last few weeks, it has gotten pretty intense as we get to the point of cutover to be sure all is done to make it a smooth cutover. That point has been mentally taxing. To look at it from the outside though, it looks like for the last few months we haven’t done a thing. All of the work is in the system configuration and the wire under the floor and in the ceiling. There are miles of cable we have put in over the last few months and then the changeover from the old router to the new one. A full day just to get the major systems connected and another day to finish. Now we are in the clean up work of documentation and labeling. Then a short break and on to the next project. Wish I could talk about that one. But maybe later!

The End to the Beginning

Looking back on 2006, this was to be the year that things calmed down after the big DTV project of 2005. Of course that didn't happen with that project spilling over into 2006 until August for the new site and October to complete the old site. The transition from a major project to the everyday has been a little challenging since I had been in a mode of people looking to me to make decisions on a daily basis and now that stress is gone and there is a void that is slowly being filled. I am just another one of the guys now. Of course that has its advantages as well so I am NOT knocking it!

The end of the year has been calmer than the start. The start saw the arrival of the transmitters and the process to getting them installed and all of the stress that went along with it. The end of the year sees me on vacation with a nasty cold that for the last 4 days has seen me sneezing, coughing and just laying around recovering. I hope that is a good sign for the start of 2007. A much calmer 2007!

Happy New Year!