Back from Spain. It went really well. Really great people, and it was cool helping to support technically all these guys who are so excited by what they’re doing.
Quite a surprise that some friends from Cyprus were particpants at the conference! So it was quite cool meeting up with them!
We’ve been back a week now. Becky was with some friends down south, and I was up in Carlisle finishing off some projects, and then we met up again on Friday, here at the Quinta.
Last time I was here, was for a few days break after my first 2 years on Doulos. I’m now here with Becky for a couple of days debrief with our home-office, and talking to some of the new people who are joining the company in september about life on board the ships.
It’s again quiet, relaxing, and also very good hanging out with some of my friends from the Doulos who are living and working here now.
I managed to spend catch lunch with my brother and some friends in Birmingham on the way down.
Here’s a crazy story:
Trying to buy tickets to get here, straight from Carlisle to Quinta would cost 40 pounds+… but if I booked Carlisle to Birmingham, and then Birmingham to Quinta, it cost 26.
I do NOT understand why. I blaim computers. They’re evil. It’s all a conspiracy.
We only have a few weeks more at Carlisle, for now, and hope to fly to Cyprus in about a month. Probably.
Then, hopefully, God willing, etc, to come back here for a few years starting some time in the summer.
Today marks 2 months of Becky and me being at OMNIvision, up in Carlisle. Time… is weird. It has gone so fast, and yet it seems like we’ve been here for only a few weeks, and yet Doulos is like another world away in the past.
I guess there will be another 200 odd people around the globe feeling the same way right now… and about 300 people every year have been feeling that for the last 30 years.
Our work is a bit random - we hardly know what we’ll be doing, one day to the next. We spent a lot of time in our first week or two pulling wires out of a big OB truck, then about 10 days sorting out books, inventorying, etc, then a few days moving a server rack across the building, including making and crimping all the new cables/extensions. Then a bunch of random small editing projects, a live concert in Manchester (me on a camera, Becky as my “cable monkey”), Becky is working a lot on admin stuff - figuring out some of the shipping arrangements for equipment, and writing the OMNIvision manual, and I’ve been doing some cleaning, sorting, lighting design, editing, fixing stuff, inventorying equipment, measuring cables, pulling electric cables through ceiling spaces, writing 30 second advert clips, and so on…
Yes. Quite busy.
And yet, not… it feels in some ways a lot more relaxed and slow than Doulos… yet also it feels a bit like I have less free time.
Becky and I live about 20 minutes walk apart, and neither of us have cars. The Office - where we go 2 mornings a week - is 15 minutes one direction, and the Studio - where we work the rest of the time - is 20 minutes the other direction. Busses are slow, somewhat irregular, and expensive, so we’re spending a LOT of time travelling. Also all the regular domestic stuff - cleaning, cooking, washing up, etc, takes time. On Doulos, I’d frequently be working until 6.15, pop down to the dining room, grab a plate of food, and the continue working while eating my meal. Same for lunch, and often Breakfast. Here, a meal can take over an hour. I guess it’s good, helping me to slow down… but BOY is it frustrating.
Like yesterday, I hoped to get a video project edited and finished… but then after Prayer Breakfast at the Office, I got a lift to the Shed (where we keep the vechicals), and picked up some equipment there, then got a lift to the Studio, and it was already 12.30. At lunch, there were a whole bunch of announcements and talking… and then with computers taking a long time to work, and Final Cut Server being a pain, I didn’t actually get to editing until 2.30pm!! And then Final Cut Pro decided to act stupid and to forget half the work I did with the Multi-Camera Editing tool (which otherwise is VERY cool…)…. So I only really got about 2 hours work done. Still, I’d done enough prep work with the lighting to make the keying and stuff a fairly easy job. I spent most of today editing too, and so that’s another piece basically finished.
I think it looks a little better. Still messy, but at least understandable. Pretty much everything is plugged in now, and from preliminary tests, we appear to have somewhat better clarity in EVERYTHING, and some of the video signals are visibly higher signal-to-noise with much less interference.
We bought two new audio patch panels too, Behringer ones. Strangely, Behringer also seem to do unbalanced patch panels. Fortunately, the shop had both, and I noticed. What on earth would anyone want unbalanced patch panels for?!
I also had to butcher the two panels which we were replacing to get enough parts to fix a third panel which was very glitchy. Here are some of the internals which are slightly broken.
You can see a bit of corrosion on the top contact - even with jackplug cleaners and everything, the equipment is just plain old.
Today, hopefully, I can do the full system tests (need to borrow a oscilliscope and reference signal generators…), and then get the whole thing boxed up and leave it until the end of drydock. Then I can work on more fun projects. Videos, song composition, etc.
That’s all for now, I’ll post more shorter posts later, with more pictures.
A whole bunch of people left, and a whole bunch of new ‘uns joined.
The crazy Swedish dude left my AV team and headed home, after two years on board, and now I’ve got a new American the team. It’s fun training him, although kind of strange. I’ve taught AV stuff to so many people now. It’s hard to remember what I’ve taught to whom. I’ve got a basic Doulos AV curriculum, finally, but it’s difficult to get it all together. Theres so many little bits of randomness.
So now the team is one Korean, one Brit, one American, and one confused-not-quite-sure-ean(me).
Amongst the new recruits is one of my friends from the UK, which is very cool. She seems to be enjoying the ship so far, and is working in the “Accomedation” team, cleaning the inside of the ship, doing the laundry, running the bookshop cafe, etc.
Anyway. So. This was intended to be a short post, and mostly informational…
Yeah.
It’s my girlfriend’s birthday tomorrow. The whole present-buying-birthday-celebration-rituals-cultures-thing terrifies me. Like, I dunno. Something about my INFP/TCK nature, I guess. I want everything I do to be meaningful, and genuine. Especially with those who are really dear to me. That’s the INFP side… But also, I feel like so many things (such as buying presents on birthdays, putting up signs, cards, etc) are very superficial, and just a crass part of some culture.
I want to buy presents that are really real - not just bought “because” of the birthday. Yet I don’t know if buying presents *for* the birthday, like, “doing the birthday thing” is also a way of being real, within a culture?
I don’t totally relate personally to any culture, really, and find almost all cultures have things which offend me, and which I don’t fit into.
Also, on the other hand, more practically, I know that there is an element I also probably ought to have of simply “Daniel, just grow up, accept the fact that you’re not all that great at buying presents, so get over it, stop making all these stupid theoretical excuses and work harder than everyone else to actually do it well, and on time. Stop being so lazy.”
Ever wonder what a stainless steel bolt looks like when it completely rusts into oblivion?
Well. Now you know. This fell off one of our lifeboats. Makes you feel very secure, right?
This is the latest addition to the AV room:
It’s getting quite full, these days. Well, it has been for YEARS now. Any time we want to change anything, it gets quite major and complicated, trying to shuffle things around. Basically, I was fed up of having our stationary drawer jam because of too many tools inside it, so had the carpenters make us this. Makes me feel all reminiscent of the keyshop. *sigh* good old days.
Here it is, in place. As you can tell, the room isn’t all that tidy, still. Just SO MUCH STUFF! Other additions, the mug hooks on the wall, the per-day form hooks too, and also a removable wall-mount for the fan (which always used to just sit on the floor and get kicked…)
and lastly, we’ve FINALLY got the slot on the door for request forms!
exciting! I’ll post pictures of the opposite side of this amazing slot soon. It’s small, subtle, elegantly engineered and discreet. You’ll love it.
If you’re not interested in video, then this may be boring as anything for you.
Then again, you might find it facinating.
OK. Here’s the deal. A conference, and it’s Mandarin. The main speaker is American, and speaks no Mandarin whatsoever. So he has a translator. No problem. Now say you have an audience of 300-ish, and are using live video to show the speaker on TVs around the room so people can see. OK, again, no problem. But, since the speaker and the translator decided to stand far apart, if you show a shot wide enough to get them both, they’re so small on screen that it’s totally pointless putting them on screen. Usually, I believe, it’s normal to just go for a close-up of the speaker. So, then, if you have audience who are all old people and probably somewhat hard of hearing, they’ll want to lip-read the translator at least somewhat. So. What to do? Cutting back and forth between two cameras is too much work, and tiring, and probably more annoying to watch than anything else.
I tried to be a bit clever and “TVish” this time, but I still am not totally pleased with it.
If the speaker and translator decide to move around a lot, remote cameras just will not cut it.
I’m pissed off at the system, thoroughly fed up of how things currently are - in my work, my life, and in many things around me.
Yet, still, most things are going fairly well…
I’m now the “AV manager”, and discovering more and more how disorganised and messed up it is.
We have small forms in the drawer under the computer which are used during the sunday service on board, we give out the little forms, then people can fill them in if they want to, so that they can give to the weekly offering (usually to help a local ministry, or work in India, or similar) direct from their on board account, rather than having to use cash.
Anyway, this morning, the guy running the service came up and asked for them.. We had 10. Not good enough! So, I told him a few ideas of who he could ask for more, but this was at half an hour before the service, on a Sunday Morning. Not the best time to go looking for people to do random work like that.
We need to have once a week or so someone to check how many we have, say on a Friday, and then to get at least 200 before the Sunday morning.
Not a big deal, right?
Well, no, not a problem at all. Just the problem is that there are *hundreds* of little issues like this. Every day. And *NONE* of them are written down. When I started, there were no current weekly checklists or anything.
I don’t want to become a lists and rules based dictator, but how on earth else do you manage to get everything done that needs to be?
When I took over this job, there was maybe 1 hour of discussion between me and the predecessor about stuff, but none of these little details were noted. Each day day I find mord
And it was the same thing when I became waterman, 2 years ago. There’s no consistancy! As soon as people leave, things get dropped.
It’s why ships tend to have such strict and over the top and detailed procedures - everything gets written down.
Anyway. It’s just intensely frustrating. I’m so bad at admin, so weak at organisation, so forgetful about details, so easily overwhelmed by situations, so inexperienced at leadership, so unknowledgeable about everything technical I should know about, so young!
I guess in one way it’s kind of exciting. I mean, whoopee! So much stuff to learn! So much I can improve!
Yet it’s kind of hard to say that and not at least have some irony and sarcasm in it too.
Yes, it’s good to be stretched and have all this improvement to do, but at the same time, it’s “live”. We’re not playing with blank bullets. Every round is for real.
Every time I start a video playing in a programme, it’s not school, not training. People are in the programme, watching, and notice if things don’t work.
Good morning, blog. Although, actually, it’s more like evening, seeing as how it’s 7pm and everything.
It’s probably morning somewhere in the world.
I have a friend on this ship who has a fetish for “Awkward moments”. I’m sure he wouldn’t like it to be called a fetish, but whatever, he really loves them. He savours them, as a connesour, specially saving them up and preparing them, finely planning moments of Awkwardness in the same way that a conductor of an orchestra prepares the finale of a grand opera.
He’ll often say stuff intentionally to make people uncomfortable.
So I asked about a week or two ago, why?
And his response was something like,
(a) it’s fun,
(b) I enjoy seeing how people really are.
And the second one is the bit that I took issue with.
He said watching how people react when they don’t know how to respond gives a great insight into them, and let’s you see them without the pretence and acting that accompanies so much of human interaction.
What’s there to take issue with?
Well, seeing people when they don’t know how to react, is that really how they “really are”?
It seems to me to smell slightly of the whole humans-are-nought-but-animals thing.
And also, the “You know the real person by seeing how they behave under pressure”. - Likewise, the same.
There is some truth to it, of course. It’s much easier to act nice and give a good image when you are relaxed and can concentrate on impressing others, or on behaving well, than when things are stressful and you’re under pressure and don’t have time to think about what to do next.
Others have also said that you know how someone is by what they do in their spare time, or when no one else is looking, and so on.
Some people seem to do well under pressure, and be able to think quickly and clearly. Others don’t. Some people find it easy to find jobs to do and to use their spare time productively and pro-actively.
So… it’s often very useful to know how someone behaves under pressure, but I don’t think it really shows who they “really” are.
This would have been all nice and theoretical, and all that, except for this week.
I got sick.
And, it turns out, I don’t act very nice when I’m sick.
Usually, when I’m healthy and fine and everything, I tend to use a lot of hyperbole, sarcasm, and irony in my general day to day language. It tends to be (I hope!) fairly good natured, and over-the-top enough that others realise it’s not intended seriously.
“Could you play this CD for me?”
“Nope. It’s completely impossible - the computer can only play CDs on Thursdays.”
and so on.
Well, the thing is, recently I’ve started to tend to mix double meanings and more biting sarcasm into what I say, and, usually, it doesn’t mean anything - to me.
Ie, “hey, the programme schedule says you’re doing a song later, but you haven’t put a form in saying you want any microphones or instruments or anything, so it’s just a Capella, right?”
