AndyBlog

Filming

I have a very different kind of job to do today.

I have to go to a big building and point a camera at people.

Sounds easy, doesn't it?  You'd think that was it - just turn up and point a camera at people and stuff. The actual truth is - it IS easy - and don't you let any famous director of photography tell you otherwise - even at the very nicest and most convivial of parties.

The only hard part is going to somewhere new, meeting new people, and getting the hang of a whole new atmosphere. This is not actually one of my projects, it has come in from Jason, who is away on holiday, leaving nothing behind at his house, but a team of highly trained Russian security men and a crate of Vodka.

I can safely, therefore, muse along these lines - knowing Jason won't read this, at the very earliest, till after he is home:

It's pretty difficult working on someone else's project. To the person whose project it is, all is clear. It's a simple and straightforward turning over of one small part of the work. To the person coming in, with a bevy of new names to learn, concepts to acquire and pitfalls to become aware of - it can be quite intimidating.

So it is today. I'm not even sure if today is the day they want me to film. They have already expressed that it may have been better if I turn up there on Friday - and yet.... today is the day Jason said they wanted the filming doing. So do I go there today and potentially film nothing, or very little?  Do I go back on Friday, if they wish it, and take a chance that both trips will be funded? Do I take stills as well as movies?  Do i interview people or just observe?  Do they all hate fat people?  Should I reveal that I was once a classical musician too?  Should I let it slip that I hate Opera?

Welcome to my frantic brainworld. Remember, you can leave - I must stay.

Big Brother 2005

Well, here we go again.

...but it has crept up on me this time. I felt like I had no chance to look forward to it, it was just there - all of a sudden.

So, another bunch of opinionated weirdos, many of whom will soon drop their ridiculous fronts to reveal far more vulnerable real personalities. That, for me, is going to be the real interest.

They are all under so much pressure to be different and unique, in order to earn their place in the house. It has often surprised me how quickly those “acts” turn to vapour, once safely installed. It's almost as if the weirdness of the house environment itself steals the show from them at the outset.

The effect will be short lived, and so, once again, I will find myself snared for a quarter of my year, watching all the action from the house. I hope it manages to repay my commitment. I wish all fourteen of them good luck.

PS I hope you like my classy interpretation of the Big Brother logo.

The Grim Reaper

I have mixed feelings about the current crop of Grolsch TV adverts.

The long running star has urged people not to be hasty for quite some time now, with his fearsome battle cry of “Schtop!  Schtop!”.

So what are my mixed feelings?  I suppose, they are not that mixed. I think the attraction of these ads is more about how dreadful they are, than about how clever. At times, though, they come close to being clever, and so maybe this makes them more annoying. Of late, the production quality looks expensive - implying that Grolsch themselves like the profile the ads are bringing for the company.

The adverts obviously use humour as their chief weapon, and sometimes they do raise a slight smile for me.

That said, the simple fact, is that the ads are just not quite funny enough to even begin challenge the comedy genius of the Tango adverts - which have to be amongst the funniest ever in my book.

So why do I mention the adverts now?

I suppose it's not the adverts for Grolsch, more like this one particular advert for Grolsch. The Grim Reaper.

What fascinates me is that our “hero” gets to plead for his life - to demonstrate that he should be allowed to continue to live.

Simple question - if you got a chance to know that you were going to die, and that you had a chance to change that fact by pointing out your value to the world and reasons to live..... well.......  What would you say?  Would you bother?

Just made me think.

Gingerbread, man

My fascination with gingerbread men is a relatively recent one - and one that I was happy to see die down gently.

Not so, Jason - bless him.

In reality, when I saw that he has sourced me a new kind of GBM, as yet uncatalogued by me, my heart nearly missed a beat, or did an extra one, or something.

Anyway, this charmer is from the Baker's Oven - branches throughout the North-East, and Zimbabwe. He's a cheery looking little fellow, too - as I remarked to Jason himself, whilst chewing off a leg.

I can't pretend that the cannibalism element does not intrigue, or even please me. Where else can one legitimately bite someone's head off?

Technically, this is a great GBM. Icing buttons down the front, and a cute little bow-tie. Then a happy face etched into the dough, as well as two blue icing-sugar eyes. The feet even have shoes - something I have not seen before.

My problem came, when I neared the end of my GBM eating experience. Jason commented that he suddenly felt uncomfortable about my proceeding further. As I placed the arm in my mouth and bit down, I noticed him wince, noticeably. I have no explanation for his actions or protestations, and fully intend to remain confused about this for the foreseeable future.

Thanks, Jason.

Lorne Spicer

It would be quite wrong of me just “lay into” TV presenter Lorne Spicer. She doesn't really deserve it, and has, in all truth and honesty, done very well for herself.

That said, there would be no point in me mentioning her today, if she didn't annoy me in some way. In reality, she annoys me in pretty much every way. The tragedy is that I like some of the shows she presents, but preferred them when their original presenters were in charge.

So what's my beef with Lorne?  Well, it has to do, initially, with an out-take of her I saw on Denis Norden's “It'll be alright on the night”. She was working on a programme called “Car Booty” and it was raining. I'll not repeat her words here, except to say that she strongly implied that the people concerned were losers and that she felt she was wasting her time doing what she did, and maybe that people watching did not really care either.

Nothing wrong with that, you might think, but strange that she would allow TV to broadcast what were her real thoughts breaking through - not just an amusing quip or forgotten line.

Even without this, her obvious falseness and plastic smile would not have convinced me. It's clear that she has little interest or respect for what she is doing. She wears loads of make-up, which I also see as another attempt to hide the real her. Come to think of it - she often wears thick woollen coats, which hide almost all of her.

She's currently doing another series of "Car Booty" and "Cash In The Attic" on BBC1 during the day.

Anyway, see what you think - comments please....

Indian Call Centres

When businesses are young and we call them, we speak to the boss - as happens with my own tiny company. As they grow, many companies acquire the services of a receptionist or personal assistant to the owner. He or she then answers the phone instead of the owner, and this person becomes a line of defence when people call the business. With a receptionist installed, the owner can easily be “unavailable” or “in a meeting” at any time. This constitutes:

Stage One -  Client Displacement.

As a company grows, it can have many departments, between which we callers can be cheerfully passed, and almost all responsibility can be satisfactorily avoided. This constitutes:

Stage Two -  Displaced, and confused.

Then, when a company reaches its pinnacle, it employs a call-centre, full of people with no knowledge of the business whatsoever. Armed only with a handful of scripts, the eager, or not-so-eager, call centre employees happily ring us up and read those scripts out to us. As clients, we feel undervalued and, frankly, pushed away. This constitutes:

Stage Three - Complete displacement

Stage three was, up until recently, the ultimate in distancing the customer from the company - and most employers agreed that it was working a treat. Rarely was there any danger at all that a customer might get through to someone with the power to help with their problem. Customers felt completely pushed away and utterly devalued.

Job done. Or so we thought.

I can only imagine the smiles on the faces of Britain's business elite, when they realised that they could kill two birds with one stone by moving those call centres to India.

By using Indian call centres, costs were greatly reduced, because Indian workers are very comfortable with being paid next to nothing for their work. Not only that, but customers are now both culturally and physically removed from the companies they call.

The only barrier is the high cost of calls to and from India. But wait - that was all a lie!  International calls don't really cost an arm and a leg after all - certainly not if you buy in bulk and use 'B' grade carriers, often TCP/IP based. (ie. Internet carriers)

So there you have it - there simply is no downside, and those worthy business people have truly discovered:

Stage Four - Total Rejection

Now, we have to speak to people who do not know where “Der-ham” is, and who take 3 seconds to respond because the the time-lag. Line quality is poor and there is a feeling that we would do a lot better with a form or maybe some sort of automated system.

This is not the fault of the worthy and smashing people in Bangolore, who are justifiably trying to earn an honest crust - many of them staying up really late studying English in order to serve us better. They are great people - but they are being asked to do the impossible.

The companies concerned have been very up-front about all this. The Indian call centre thing is all about them saving money. Nothing else. We felt rejected enough by the British call centres - to move those call-centres abroad was always going to make it worse.

For a while, they had me on the 'back-foot' by suggesting I was being racist, but that really is not the case. It's about calling through to someone who has to wrestle with a huge time-lag, a foreign language, a lack of local knowledge and an inability to make the key decisions that matter.

They are disempowered, we feel frustrated and rejected.  Lose - lose.

I think this is one manifestation of greed that the great British public will not tolerate.

More out of guilt...

Hello there.

I write this entry, more out of guilt than having anything useful or worthwhile to say.

Actually, that is not quite true. There is actually a whole heck of a lot I could and should have been writing, but that has felt too personal to document here. So, what you read now, are the things that managed to slip through the 'appropriateness' filter.

It has been an interesting fortnight.

I say that, in the sense that 'interesting' does not necessarily mean 'good'.

....there has now been a pause of some 10 minutes whilst I go through, in my mind, all the things that have happened, and all the things I really should not say here.

So....erm....it's been a tricky fortnight. Some stuff has been quite hard, on various levels, and I'm not entirely convinced that I dealt with any of it well.

Areas such as xxxx and xxxx have been particularly difficult, and I have upset xxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx and xxxxxxxx along the way. I regret that bitterly.

On the plus side... I made a nice beef goulash tonight, and some great garlic soup. I also had a nice time with Jason and his charming family yesterday. It was interesting to experience another church and see people do things completely differently.

It's been an interesting fortnight. :)

PS Goulash pictured may not be actual goulash made by me. Stock level may fall as well as rise.

Speech recognition!

Whilst I did the last entry using the speech recognition program on my Mac, I thought you would be fair to post a least one Blog entry where I speak using the speech recognition program, but don't actually make any corrections, all indeed, even look at the screen as I am writing the entry.

The mean this is the exciting frontier of speech recognition, as I have no idea if it is rising more times saying, or if you have any chance whatsoever of understanding or have written.

I have read busy day today, doing one job after another. The phone was wrong lot and various things have gone wrong. So I have hand computers to mend, music to prepare, with coding to do, and various other little jobs, including a little light delivering.

Well, I don't think I can stand the suspense any longer I'm going to have a look good what has been typed and see have funny it is.

Canon i865, i950 under OSX Tiger - The Solution

I realise that this Blog entry will be a bit boring, because it is technical. My main hope that is that it will help someone else  in a similar position.

I suppose you should know that I have just upgraded to OSX Tiger, in the new Apple operating system.

I was expecting it to be a very simple upgrade, but such was not the case. The biggest problem, by far, was that only one of my printers work to correctly immediately after install.

For someone who does as much printing as me this amounted to near disaster. It turns out  that most problems can be easily fixed by  reinstalling the printer driver and deleting and adding again the printer queue.  All except for my Canon i865.

No help the is offered on the Canon site, and it is taken me three days of foraging on the Internet to find out how to get it to work under OSX Tiger. So here is a tip for anyone in a similar position:

To make a Canon i865 work under OSX Tiger...

1. Open your hard disk.

2. Open the Library folder

3. Open the Printers folder

4. Delete the Canon folder

5. Reinstall  version 232  of the drivers from the Canon site.  (http://www.canon.com)


After your machine has restarted, all should be well.

The only real problem I now have is that CD LabelPrint does not work. I have solved this by switching to Discus.  It's cheap to  purchase and is a much better program for labelling  than Canon's  own.

So then, did this  help you?  I hope so.

As a footnote to all of this, I should point out that I dictated this whole piece of text using the iListen software, which appears to be funky beyond belief.  The only worrying point was when I farted, and it typed “Oh!”. I'm not quite sure what this indicates.

So, Jason, it can be done!

Another exciting night ahead...

Well, if I manage to dash back from the music rehearsal in time  - thee will be another smashing AD-LIB radio show. there's lots of info about the show on it's own Blog - as well as info about the newest addition tot he line-up. Evelyn DeVere.

All very exciting in its own limited way. makes me happy though. :)

So, I have music to pick to rehearse tonight, and the music for the radio show to finalise. I really should not be doing a blog entry!

Message ends.