A night sky

<Written in a plane, mostly with one hand.>

It’s a wonderful night in Australia, the air con is going, the ears are popping, the stars are shining and I’m cramped as hell.

That’s right. I’m in a plane. It’s even a big one, an airbus. But is it big enough for me? Well let’s check;

Arm rest: firmly in thigh

Knees: firmly in seat

Shoulders: pushed forward by neck rest

Arms: squashed by wall and nice guy next to me (also on his laptop)

Laptop: unable to sit flat

Movie: Independence Day (the first one)

Now I am aware that some of my readers will have experienced some or all of these symptoms, but there will only be a select few who truly appreciate my pain at the moment.

There is something very levelling about this sort of environment. Sitting here I can see clear above everyone else in the cabin, as far as the bulkhead in front of me. This is similar to experiences I often have at the mall. You see, dear reader, there is a kind of immunity that tall people build up. When you spend your days, nights and weekends with the same people, usually notably shorter people, you become used to their shortcomings. It’s only when you go somewhere like a mall or sit on a plane that you realise just quite how tall you are.

You start to notice the sea of hair that sits just below your nose, and observe the strange human prediction to not look up; and as you walk past those of lesser stature, you wonder what life in their world must be like. A world in which you can have those clothes that look cool without having to take a picture and have them custom made, a world where you can go and buy a suit off the rack and sit in a plane chair without feeling like an accordion.

But this is also a world in which indecision rules, where you don’t automatically know where to stand in a class photo. Where you need to use a chair or even a ladder to change a simple lightbulb.

The other world, is one where you were always tall enough to ride on the fun looking ride at the festival and where you can spot your family in a crowd because they too stand head and shoulders above everyone else. This is a world where giants live. A world where three year olds look up at you in awe and reverently if they too might be allowed to touch the sky and ask precisely how tall you really are. This is my world.

Sadly this is also the world of minuscule aeroplane seats, and my one hand is getting a cramp.

Internet reeeeepting

Perhaps I’m getting old, so let’s review,
Birth of me: 1983
My first computer: 1990 (Amstrad PPC512, in case you were wondering)
Birth of commercial internet proper: circa 1995Learning that man learns nothing from the past not studied: ongoingThat’s right, boys and girls, I was alive in a world before the Internet, in a world where Windows came on about 20 floppy disks (that weren’t) and games came on 3 or 4 floppy disks (that were).I saw the birth of the internet, grew to both love and hate the sound of the 14.4k (that’s kilobits per second, people) modem, lived in fear of someone picking up the phone, and saw the birth of the much loathed html blink tag.But now, as a true veteran of the internet, I am beginning to see things come around that have been before. You may be a little, young dear, reader to remember some of these things, but some years ago there was a massive farcical campaign to stop the use of Dihydrogen Monoxide in all sorts of products. Apart from being something that any student that has passed high school should be able to recognise as the formal chemical formula for water, there have been e-mails from companies that have sworn that they do not use that “chemical” in their all natural products, or that they discharge any amount of it into rivers or the sea.
My main problem is not with the massive lack of education of the general populous who have gone through the education system, but that these same people have not learnt from massive internet trolling that has come around only years before.Nor is this the only example of the repeating trend. I am amazed that there are still people who believe that there is a one-day-only (no date provided) sale on ray bands with 90% off. And that if you type “7” after sharing something on Facebook, that an amazing thing will happen to the static picture that you just shared. Worse than that, I have actually seen this post grow in real time: it grew to fill up two pages worth of scrolling before I was forced to de-friend the person in question or lose my general sanity.So what is it that causes people to lose all sense of memory when it comes to the wide world of Facebook? Is it perhaps the constant flow of information of websites like this, that almost require you to have knowledge that is a mile wide but only an inch deep? Is it just that we have replaced Google as our repository for knowledge and instead focused on the pleasure of the trifling and fleeting?I have often been told that my memory is unusual, that most people don’t remember things in the same way I do. Perhaps this is what I am noticing, merely on a grander level. But perhaps, to quote from memory from a TV program,
“‘Nowadays, kids have got all these diseases, ADD, ADHD. In my day, kids were just stupid.
‘What’s wrong with my kid?’‘Oh, him? He’s stupid. Next!’”
Are we all just suffering from stupid? Are we suffering from the google era? I mean, I’m all for self-driving cars, but is it at the cost of our intellect? We are already starting to see memes of possible future wedding vows using emotes as part of the wedding ceremony, of brides and grooms not kissing without first snapchatting the moment. Or is it just that stupid people finally have a massive voice that the rest of us must suffer through?

x

Do it right the first time

Do it right the first time.

There is a Billy Joel song to this effect – technically the song says ‘get it right the first time’, but the gist is the same. It’s been a lesson that recently we’ve been forced to contend with.

Sometime ago we had a leak in our kitchen, no big issue, got cover from insurance and fixed the leak nice and quick, no problems.

Now, six or so months later, we have planned and pondered, pontificated and proposed, prepared and ……

Nope, can’t come up with a sixth. Shoulda got it right with just the first two, perhaps three. But I digress.

In the process of the upgrades we have come across several problems with the construction of the house. Now I am aware that this is not unusual with houses, but the builder – both this one and the one previous – told me that when we did our bathroom our house was unusually bad.

The two biggest of the faults thus far have been the window that was unceremoniously moved from the original plan and thus made the whole wall unstable, and the roof that was simply not finished so that rain had been dripping into another wall ever since, oh, some 15 years ago or so.

My question is why didn’t they do it right the first time? Our builders have fixed both of these and it took about three hours for the window and about a day for the roof. I am reliably informed by the builders that neither of these problems would have taken more than about five minutes to fix when they first appeared, but now I, as the current owner of the house, must pay for the repair of people who wouldn’t take five more minutes to make the house secure or safe.

Now I work hard; I always try to do the best possible job that I am able. After all, I am being paid well for my work, I have the skills to do it, and people who commonly do not have these skills have paid me to use the full extent of them.

Thus I am annoyed by those who have not done things to the fullest, or to even the legal standard. I mean, come on people, taking shortcuts is one thing (I can even understand doing a half-hearted job at the end of a particularly long week), but not doing things to a legal standard on something as permanent as a house, come on people!

It also reflects the character of a person. It shows if a person is honest in what they have committed to do, if they will abide by the laws of the land that they, as a representative of their profession, have agreed to uphold.

Imagine going into a café or restaurant, eating a meal, and then finding out that every person in the flow of food had not done it right because they felt like they didn’t want to. The farmer had fed the cow on bad food because it was cheaper and the cow had got a disease; the slaughter house hadn’t cleaned their tools and so the meat was infected; the cook hadn’t cooked it right through so all of those diseases and infections were still alive; and the waiter hadn’t washed their hands so they added another one to the mix. This is all just one element of a simple meal.

Get it right, people. You are paid to do a job and that comes with conditions upon you. These conditions do not only affect you if you do not meet them; they affect all those you interact with and those that receive the fruits of your labours. In short, other people rely on your work to be done to the standard that you agree to by taking your job.

It’s about more than you, it’s about more than money, it’s about more than just doing the bare minimum, though you should at least be doing that.

Tolerance

Tolerance

Yip – this is the one that gets me in trouble.

Fair warning - this will offend.

Recently there has been a movie showing called Zootopia. It’s a reasonable movie, OK for a kids’ film; I give it a solid 6.5/10. Now while the CGI is good and the voice acting is also well done, there is a message that screams louder than anything else, the message of tolerance. In this world one must accept that anyone can do anything and that everyone must be respected.

I have a problem with this.

I don’t think that anyone can do anything. I think that there are people out there that absolutely could not do my job. In turn, I think that there a jobs that I absolutely could not do. I don’t think that everyone should be treated equally because not everyone is equal. There are those who cannot teach a class of advanced microbiology; I’m one of them. There are also those who would not be able to do a full day of manual labour. I’m one of those as well.

Now most people (I think) would agree with me on these points; we don’t, for instance, want our local plumber training brain surgeons. Indeed, I think that most of us would accept that plumbing and brain surgery are two very different skillsets, and no matter how good a brain surgeon the person might be, when your toilet is clogged they are far from your first call.

Why, then, do we aspire to treat everyone the same? Why do we give everyone the same standard tests? And why do we insist that everyone should have the same say when it comes to, say, road networks or refugee intakes?

Now here’s where it starts to get tricky. Due to my belief that not everyone should be treated equally in all things, it follows that everyone should not have the same rights. For example, I don’t think that everyone should have the right to vote. I don’t think that they should because I don’t think that everyone can make an informed decision on who can run things. Now before you go railing at me – you think so as well. You don’t think that everyone should be allowed to drive;  you think that before someone gets to jump behind the wheel of a potentially dangerous car they should pass a standardised test. So why should it be any different before you get behind the curtain of a voting booth? Driving a bus, you may affect the lives of, at most, 60 people. The person behind the voting booth has the power to affect the entire country. So then, why should we let just anyone vote?

Now once you’ve started down this road it becomes very easy to keep going. Why must I tolerate your tolerance? Why do I have to accept all the things you accept? I don’t agree with many things that you might agree with. I don’t agree that the LGBT community should be celebrated the way it is. I don’t agree that I should have to accept everyone – there are, believe it or not, things that I just don’t like. Let me put it this way: I don’t like pumpkin. It’s foul. I don’t want it on my plate and I don’t want to have to eat it just to make someone else happy that they cooked it. I would rather people didn’t cook pumpkin.

My wife on the other hand quite likes pumpkin; she cooks it in most of the roasts she makes; she has it on her plate and enjoys eating it. So you know what we do? We agree to disagree. I think she’s wrong and she thinks I’m wrong. We used to fight about it, but she is still wrong.

Tolerance has come to mean that I must accept my wife’s view of pumpkin, that I must agree with it and that I must accept it to be true and I must myself come to like pumpkin, to stand for a pumpkin’s right to be on my plate and to be eaten. Sounds a bit silly, right?

Why should I stand for any of pumpkin’s “rights” when I wholeheartedly disagree with them? Why should I go out of my way to help Pumpkin when I don’t like its very existence?

Now many people will rail against this particular rant, almost like they are tolerant of my views, like they insist that I fall in line with their beliefs. But when I spout my theories, they are allowed to not only disagree with them but feel that they have some right to tell me I’m wrong.

I disagree.  It doesn’t really matter about what in the end; I’m just not going to tow the party line on everything because people say that I have to. I disagree. 

The Rules

The Rules

It’s true, I watch a lot of TV; I have several Tb of movies and TV series on my server and frequently watch old series alongside new. This is great, I love having the choice and the ability to switch between one universe of lore and another on the spot. I frequently do this and with a whole bunch of different series. The problem is with the rules.

In Star Trek (as an example), faster than light travel is possible; there is sound in space and you can travel through time. However, in Person of Interest you cannot do any of these things, but there are two massive supercomputers watching your every move and trying to determine your destiny. Move over to Supernatural and none of these things is true, but demons exist and fairy tales are more real than the newspaper.

These rules are all very well and good, nothing wrong with any of them, and with a healthy amount of suspension of disbelief one can easily follow these universes. But when one switches between the different programs it can take a second to switch mind-sets. This just occurred to me (not for the first time): I was switching between Person of Interest (new episodes out now) and season 2 of Supernatural.  In the opening scene of this particular episode of Supernatural, you are confronted with a man who has ordered wood from the same place that he always does for building projects, but the wood has bowed and is unusable.

No big issue there, right? A bad batch of wood from a normal supplier. Unless, of course, you’ve just been watching Person of Interest. In which case the evil supercomputer has changed the order or interfered with the delivery in some way, just as it did in the previous episode. Oh, wait. Nope, wrong rules. No big supercomputers in this one. And those three stoutly gentlemen constructing houses are the three little pigs. Right. Gotchya.

Now I’m usually pretty quick on the uptake - I’m not particularly tired at present - but it still took me a second or two to kick back into the rules of the new program. This is not the first time that I have experienced this phenomenon, and I would put money on the fact that you have experienced it as well.

You may not have even noticed it at the time, but take the opportunity to think back now. You’ve just finished watching the latest James Bond or the most recent Fast and the Furious movie. It’s late, and the roads are clear because you saw an 8.30 showing. Did you ever feel like you could totally take that corner just a little faster than you normally do? In fact, you’re quite sure you could drift that wet piece of road if you wanted to - I mean you won’t because that would be silly, but just a little faster couldn’t hurt, right?

Perhaps this is why we tell stories, set the rules of a universe so that we can do the things that we are quite sure we could do, but would never try. Perhaps we just enjoy the fantasy of becoming someone else for a little bit, seeing the world through their eyes for a time. Perhaps it’s just me.

It’s true that when I was shown my first movie, I cried at the end. I was 4, give me a break. I cried not because the movie was sad or my favourite character had died; I cried because the world had ended. I cried because this magical place that I had inhabited for a few short hours had ceased to be. This started my lifelong obsession with movies and TV. I’m actually on the second episode of this particular piece of writing.

But at the end of the day, I love the rules, I love seeing them explored, seeing the boundaries reached and pushed against. I love seeing them run into new rules and finding the limits of them. Is this just me? Is this true of all fans, or is this true of all humans?

Perhaps I just enjoy my media too much.

NAH

What ever became of the CD

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men. 
            Isaac Asimov

What ever became of the CD? The humble compact disc, the one that changed the very nature of the way we listen to music, the merging of data and music, the almighty shift between analogue and digital.

Now 700MB of information is barely enough to watch a TV episode; CDs are heavy, bulky and costly. Who wants to have a physical copy that can be scratched, broken or smashed? What use is an album that at most could contain 15 analogue songs or a mere 230 in digital format?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the CD has gone the way of the tape that proceeded it or the vinyl record before that… no, wait, scratch that last one…

The CD is obsolete, with its spinning motor that required physical movement and sucked the batteries dry, the extra skip protection that you could turn on but at the cost of perhaps a song of listening time.

But why mourn the CD? Surely the fact that technology continues to march forward at such pace that in a little over 20 years we have eliminated not only the CD but its successor(s), the DVD, laser disc and minidisc?

Well sure, I can now fit entire movies on my phone and access my e-mail and digital calendar from the middle of nowhere, but by the same measure my father’s records lasted him over 30 years. His heavy copper-filled stereo would still be running (had I not ruined it) {I was a teenager; leave me alone :P}. But I have to buy a new phone every two years to keep up. I must constantly update apps and spend my data on upgrades that I see no real difference from just to remain safe.

If you have ever been to my house you will have seen my wall of computer history. It contains items from the history of modern technology dating back as far the humble 2½ inch “floppy” disk. I used to have what was called a laundry drive but was silly and threw it out in my younger years. The reason that I bring this up is to emphasise just how much technology has changed even within my relatively short lifetime. But I have talked to people online (younger than myself) who do not know even the function of this technology. The now infamous save icon used in Microsoft Word has remained a pictorial representation of the floppy disc for as long as I can remember, and yet as newer generations of people have come to use the program, the relationship between the item and the representation has been lost.

The point then is not the lament of the CD, nor of the once important Horse and Buggy, but rather a eulogy of the knowledge and skill associated with the previous technology, that those who specialised in the older ways are now shunned and ridiculed, ostracised and stripped of their income for merely continuing in the way in which they had been taught, for practicing their craft to the best of their abilities.

We as a society have become impatient, narrow minded, and intolerant. Not, as some would have you believe, of things like gender issues, sexuality or race; we have long been intolerant of those and are as a whole becoming less so (but that is for another time). Rather, we have lost respect for the old, the long-suffering and the specialist, preferring instead to embrace the next best thing, the faster, more efficient and better-looking option no matter what other costs we may incur as a result.

So, when you purchase your next Samsung, or piece of fruit, remember that there is an importance in the old, in the tried and true, and in the traditional. That just because we can change something doesn’t me that we should change it. That progress for the sake of greed will not always yield the outcome desired. And that if we forget the mistakes of the past, we may end up electing another Hitler…

Snobbery

Snobbery

I’m going to see the new Marvel movie on Monday, namely Captain America: Civil War. As is the case with these new releases, I like to refresh my mind with previous instalments. Now my wife would argue that my memory, when it comes to movies, needs no refresher course, but nonetheless.

So I’m watching through the Iron Man series before my last movie: Ant Man. But alas my transition between Iron Man 3 and Ant Man involves a drop from glorious 1080p to a meagre SD (Standard Definition.)

Now, I tried. I honestly did. But I just couldn’t do it. And my 100/20 fibre connection was sitting right there…

And so it is with a sad rattle of the keys that I must label myself a snob. It’s sad, but it seems that I have inadvertently entered a class of people hated by many for different reasons. But upon reflection, this is not the only area of my life to which this moniker applies, because it also seems that I have become a snob regarding live performances.

This particular snobbery came about due to a very unfortunate performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. You see, my wife had never seen the musical in question, but her mother had an old recording from when her high school had done a selection of songs. I thought it high time to educate her, having been brought up on such things. Thus we found ourselves going along to a local performance of the show. Now, know and understand, dear reader, that Joseph was written for high schools – it was designed to be simple, to be played by high school bands and sung by those with high school talents. So when we attended the local level production, generally considered to be, at least, a few steps above that of high school, and found that the music was simply played from a recording, that the actors were bad and that the singing was off key, I was, needless to say, rather disappointed.

After this I made a decision: I would not see a musical production unless it was at least at a national level, preferably an international one.

Now, if this were not bad enough, I am also fond of rather high-end foods. Not all the time, not even most of the time, but when I go out I like to buy off the higher end of the menu, again much to the chagrin of my wife.

Interestingly, I do not, as many men do, have this ‘problem’ when it comes to cars. Many of my friends will tell you that my car is filthy, both inside and out. So I am not an all-around snob, but nonetheless the snobbiness pervades. It pervades in interesting and varied ways, almost contradictory in some cases. This is especially true in the area of language. As previously mentioned, I have quite a memory when it comes to certain things: quotes from movies and words spoken, for example. Entire albums of songs and the music that goes along with them. But I do not have a memory for the spelling of words; I legitimately forget what my wife has told me not 5 minutes previous and am unable to do much more than put dates directly into my calendar lest I forget.

So all of this has caused me to think a bit. Is snobbery a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, or should we consider the benefits of it? Does it push us to be better people by only accepting the best from others, and do we then push ourselves further?

I never wish to have other people experience that awful performance of Joseph, so I do my utter best every time I operate a sound desk. I dislike the brutal shift between HD and SD so much that I always try and use the best equipment available to me so that others will not feel the pain that I do, even if they are unaware of it.

So, perhaps being a snob is not such a bad thing, so long as you take it and use that repulsion of the mediocre to push yourself and make yourself better than the thing you dislike.

Be a Snob, and be proud.

Where have all the people gone?

Where have all the people gone?

I have been traveling from Hamilton to Auckland a lot quite recently for work, and I have noticed that no matter what time of day I travel that all of the many roadworks seem to be deserted. Now, to be fair, I do sometimes travel at odd times; a midnight return trip is not uncommon. But I have also traveled at more “reasonable” times, 2pm for example the odd 10am. And still, the roadworks remain bare. 

Where have all the people gone?

It occurs to me that this is not the only place that people seem to be disappearing from. As I drive in Auckland and along the motorways, cars seem to cut me off with great regularity. This is not usually the case if I am walking in the supermarket or down the street, so the conclusion I have come to is that people are disappearing when they get in their cars as well. No one says thank you when you let them in or gesticulate in such a manner as to indicate that they may go first, but instead the car zooms into position, claiming it as though it was their birth right.

Now, I’ve talked with people - yes, real people - and they as whole don’t seem to act the same way their cars do, at least not in polite society. So my theory is that the people are disappearing.

As previously mentioned, the road workers are also disappearing. I, at least, never see any of them. This wouldn’t usually be a problem; fewer orange vests and means fewer distracting things on your drive. But they seem to leave behind their annoying speed signs that have no bearing on the “work” being done. There is, as an example, a long section of SH1 that has been slowed to 70kmph for at least 6 months. The work done has been almost entirely off the road and for about 4 months of that the work done was entirely off the road,  but still the traffic has been slowed. In recent weeks part of the 70kmph zone has been further slowed to 50kmph, for no apparent reason.

Now this sort of thing would not normally bother me, but it has been going for so long that my estimated travel times have had to be adjusted to accommodate for the roadworks, and this is unacceptable. Where are the people doing this work? Why are they making us slow down for no reason? Why can’t I travel over the same piece of road on which I used to do 100kph over at 100kph when you have made no changes to the road for 6 months? And why must I do it at midnight when there is absolutely no chance of the non-existent workers working?

Now, to be fair, I don’t expect many, if any, of these questions to be answered, and certainly not by anyone who might hold the actual answers. But my questions remain and are added to. I was under the impression that the men in orange vests were only allowed the signs out for two reasons. Firstly if they were working, and by working I mean having one of the 23 daily meals they seem to have, and secondly if there was some actual damage to the road surface, or the surface was currently under repair.

Many, if not all, of the road works that I pass on a regular basis do not meet these criteria and yet I am still required, by law, to slow down beyond all reasonable speeds that should be, and in the past have been, allowed for the given piece of road. This, combined with people being swallowed by their cars, means that the average road user experience has now become a horrible affair.

Bring back the people.

You’ll never believe number 6

You’ll never believe number 6

What he did next OMG

Clickbait. We all know it, and I for one hate it. Now don’t get me wrong; there is a LITTLE good stuff in some of those annoying posts, but most of it could easily be displayed in a single post making things far more enjoyable for everyone. The reason for this particular rant however is not clickbait as such, but more the ridiculous puzzles such as “1x1+1/1-0+1=” or “comment with an English word That begins and ends with the letter “T”” or “type Amen for this completely useless cause”.

So here for you is a decent puzzle (the answer is at the end of this should you wish to chicken out): there are 3 words in the English language that begin with the letters “dw” – name them.

While you are thinking on that, consider how many people type ‘amen’ or ‘solve the BEDMAS puzzle’ (correctly or incorrectly) and whether or not you need to do a fb friend purge based on the number of your friends that respond to this sort of thing.

But let us step back and admire the beauty and simplicity of this game. In the end it is, unsurprisingly, about money. The way it works is that the person/company provides a story, or headline, or picture, or easy problem to solve but doesn’t show you all of it (for the problem or story ones). From there the idea is that you will click through to the website. What this does is it logs your visit on a counter. One visit one tick – as it were. If they can get you to click further, start the gallery for example, then they receive more ticks on their counter. And what is the point of these ticks, I hear you ask. The ticks are counted by the all-knowing google; these ticks mean that they can verify that a person has visited the site, and if you have visited the site it means you saw the ads, which makes the ads worth more, which means they get paid more.

But this isn’t all they get. This blog receives about 50 reads for every post (feel free to share it around, by the way), and because I host it on a google site I get to use google analytics (for free) and it tells me wonderful things like what browser you are using, when you read it, and which country you are reading it from. This is just the free stuff. And information, as they say, is power, or in this case money.

So it’s a smart game, and it makes money for those interested. But for the rest of us we must put up with those that generate the money, and those that click on and indeed share these annoying posts, because it’s pretty, or cute, pulls at their heart strings, or challenges their limited intellect to remember the things they forgot after their 4^th form maths test was over (Brackets, Exponents, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction).

What then to do? Well, there are only really two options: either put up with the annoyance or do a Facebook cull. I do a Facebook cull about once every 6 months or so – it just gets rid of the contacts from kindergarten that you haven’t spoken to since but contacted you anyway. So do a cull, get rid of the chaff of your contact list, but do it nicely, give people an opportunity first, I suggest something like, “Hi all, I’m about to get rid of people on here that I haven’t talked to in a while, just to keep my numbers down. Please feel free to re-friend me if you would like to stay in touch; if not please take no offence – my feed is just too busy.” And then do a cull.

The answers?

3.

ThaT.

Dwindle, Dwarf and Dwell.

The pilgrimage

And so, with the sun high in the sky and long in the night, the pilgrimage began for hundreds - ney, thousands of those that rally to the banner of the flightless bird.

Yip its Parach … uhh… Festival One time. Now, while many of you may have been to one or other of these, very few will have experienced it quite the way I do, and it being a unique experience for me, I thought I would share my view of one of these things for your enjoyment.

For those that don’t know, I’m a Video guy – so in the context of Festival One and previously Parachute, this means that I run a video team. So, for me, my last full pilgrimage began about June. This started with an e-mail in which I did my very best to be clever, witty, ironic, and my normal awesome self. I sent this out to about 30 different people all of whom were previous crew or had, in the past year, expressed an interest in joining my team for the upcoming year. I received some definite yesses, quite a few maybes, and a few no’s.

Next was an e-mail to my boss, the HOD technical at parachute, in roughly July. This set up my expectations for the year (side note: after about March the previous event became last year and the one scheduled for the end of next Jan became this year.) I would be told what our stage would roughly look like, how many crew members I could get onsite and what my output would be: Projector, LED wall etc.

After I had worked out a rough crew, I would talk with my counterpart and fellow video guy about what sort of setup we wanted to produce, how many cameras we would run, and would we finally get to use that crane? And then the important part (roughly September) I would make up the T-shirts for that year. Previous designs included the Palladium incorporated, the Delux Mart, and the battle star palladium.

The t-shirts went to the t-shirt guy in Christchurch and would turn up around a week before festival.

In the mean time I would finalise my team, organise car passes, and wish everyone a very merry Christmas. About December, we would organise the roster for the weekend, trying to take into account the bands that everyone wanted to see and when they would get onsite lunch and dinner breaks, and the skill levels needed for different positions. (Once, we had to rejig the entire schedule at 3am on the Saturday morning. NOT FUN.)

A couple of changes here and there and we get to the week before, Wednesday. This is where the experience proper begins. Wednesday starts by driving out to site and seeing the changes made for the year, we would unpack and begin the setup process. Usually this involves shoulder mounting a camera and walking out to as far as we can go (dependent on the lens) and still get the shot that we need, then marking the ground and beginning the cable run. This takes about a day and at the same time we would setup backstage control.

At different times this has involved hard copper cable, Cat5 or network cable, fibre and even wireless. After setup is complete (usually mid-day Thursday), testing commences and this takes us through to the evening and the crew meeting.

This meeting at different times has been inspiring and boring but there is always ice-cream so that’s good. Afterwards, the fun begins.

Many people think that working backstage is great fun, that you get to meet all the artists, hang out, swap stories and generally have a good time. These people have never been backstage and working.

Backstage is a busy, noisy place that tolerates no fools. There is no great view of the stage and the sound coming from stage is absolutely awful.

My day starts at around 0700, I would get up at home, drag myself out of bed and get to site before 0800 to get some breakfast. Call time is about 0900 or 0930 depending on what is happening that day, and then the talking begins.

My job is to stare at a 40-inch screen about 2 feet away from me. This screen has up to 8 camera monitors as well as a preview and program monitor. I have to check that all of these shots are in focus, think about the shots I have, tell all the cameras what to do while choosing the shot that I want, choose the shot I want next, change the shot and keep coherent while talking to everyone and listening to problems that the camera ops may have, offering solutions and listening to the music.

I do all of this (music dependant) every three seconds or so.

When there are breaks, they have to be handled carefully, because we still need all of our cameras online and available; so for me, lunch, the first break of the day, is usually eaten while backing away from the mixing desk in the 5 or so minutes between acts. Then we continue through to dinner. Sometimes there may be a panel, which is a little easier to shoot, but after dinner usually come the rockier bands, and so more attention is required.

The bands finish up around midnight when we have a hard sound curfew. This is the best time of day. Because after the many cans of V, eating in-between bands and the bowls of lollies on the table, at Midnight we get the crew BBQ organised by one of the best men in Taranaki. This BBQ has become legend among the various crews that have been served by it. After the BBQ, depending on whose turn it is, my night ends in going home and falling in bed, hot, dusty and tired, that or sticking around for the movie to end and shutting down for the day at around 2am.

So that’s Friday. Saturday and Sunday run much the same way, and then there is Monday. Monday runs much the same until about midday when the show stops. Pack up starts very shortly thereafter and will finish for us at around 3pm. As a rule, we help sound and lighting get out, everyone helps everyone, and thus we all get out sooner. About 2pm there is often another round of ice-cream that comes about. After 3 we go home. If you travelled from Wellington, you might get to Taupo, but for me that’s where my experience ends. Until the next year at any rate…