Been a mixed week. We had meetings at the beginning of the week with one of our partners. They have appointed a new Internet manager and he spent two days with us going over things. It clarified in my mind how what we are doing is important, but we have maybe 20% of the manpower and resources needed to do the stuff. And its running us dry [Peter and I] trying to do it. One question came up "If you stop doing this, who would you recommend we go to?" The answer is that there is nobody who can take over what we are doing in some areas at all.
Alongside this we had one of the programmers we work with over from Egypt at the start of a one month visit. He is developing a second website with us and starting on a third. If these are as effective as the first one this will be tremendous. I wish I could describe what these sites will be about, but... hmmm.... sorry, cannot!
And alongside this Peter was working on the new upgrade to the email system and I have been helping with some of the database functions for that. We hope to make the upgrade live next week.
Other think I did was build an autocue unit. This is fully described with pictures in my equipment notes blog so I won't repeat it here.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Work and play...
The last week seems to have flown by. I completed the preview copy of the dub from Arabic to Farsi and the film is now being reviewed by one of the satellite TV stations to be put out over the air. Another friend working in Iran is very keen to have a copy as soon as possible.
In between completing the dub there has been a plethera of little things to do, discussing with Peter about the new upgrade to the email system, the SMS phone system and the failover system... [which was failing over when it shouldn't have been!] Actually the one that was most painful to sort out was the failover system.
So what is the 'failover system' I hear you ask. Basically because our systems have to work 24 hours a day 365 days a year we have two servers for most of the tasks that we need only one for and we have some clever software that says 'Use this server if you can, but it you cannot use this other one'. Sounds great
in practise but configuring this system is a tricky business and for some oddball reason it was switching over to the backup when it shouldn't. I looked through all the configurations and checked everything and it was just being 'ornery' as the Americans put it, which means it was not behaving as we wished.
The configurations were difficult to wade through as I needed to relate the configuration files on four separate servers. Eventually I decided to re-write all the configuration files and [in my view] make them more logical and easy to read. And... yes, so far it worked the failover system is now working 'as advertised'.
The SMS phone system has also been causing us grief. Ever since Christmas it has been getting increasingly unreliable. By that I mean we have had to restart one or more phones every 12 hours at least. We consulted with the manufacturers who said [like they all do] 'We don't have these sorts of problems normally...' and then in passing mentioned there was new firmware for the phones that 'might fix it'. We installed the new firmware and it does appear [so far] to have fixed it.
The email system upgrade is a major undertaking. There are two parts to it: firstly making our system more compatible with other systems and secondly reducing the spam coming in to the system. Peter has been working on it for nearly a month now. He has completed the first part and working on the second part which is far from trivial.
I spent most of Friday talking through with him and looking at the configuration for a system called 'greylisting'. Blacklisting is where you say 'never ever send me email from this person'. Whitelisting is where you say 'always let me have email from this person'. Greylisting is where you say 'I'm not sure about this person, check out that its a real person and not a spam robot sending it'. Greylisting works because real email servers will try again and again to deliver but spam robots try once and give up, so basically for greylisting to work you log the email and then say to the incoming server 'please try again later'. If they do its a real email ad we accept it, if they don't then we're sure its spam!
They say 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' and in between all this work I have been over the last two to three weeks stripping the varnish off the boom, mast, gaff, rudder and centreboard of my little mirror dinghy and then revarnishing them and repairing parts of the mast where a friend had a little accident with the dinghy last year. Now I'm longing to sail her and hopefully next weekend if the weather is good I will be able to have a day sailing.
This afternoon I went for a wander to my favourite place in Larnaca... the marina, where I can drool over the larger boats and dream of the one I would love to buy. The marina is somewhat empty at the moment as many of the boats are 'on the hard' [ie dry land] being repaired by their owners. There is one thing that is certain about all types of boat... you are constantly repairing them.
One boat that I have been watching for the last 9 years is called Windsong registered in Littlehampton in the UK. Its a 44 foot long wood hull ketch and has been very sadly deteriorating steadily over the last decade, although the owner has done a small amount of repair work during that period. It looks a boat in desparate need of TLC. Her masts are at the state where you don't need to rub off the varnish, the sun and wind has done that already. The deck and cabin too have been at the sharp end of the elements.
So what makes Windsong so special? She is the only surviving David Hillyard sailing yacht to take part in 'Operation Dynamo' - and one of the very few pure sailboats. Operation Dynamo was the name given to the flotilla of 'little boats' that evacuated the British troops from Dunkirk. Which, of course, gives her the right to fly both red and white ensigns... and there is not another little boat up this end of the Mediterranean who has that right!
Built in 1931 it is interesting the sailing technology of the day. We don't see an autopilot at the stern to control the rudder but a wind vane. This keeps the boat at a constant direction relative to the wind rather than a constant direction. Of course the modern autopilots can do both and even tack the boat for you, but it's facinating to see how the old mechanical systems used to work. The mast has steps up it to make climbing easier rather than using a bosuns chair and a halyard. I would love to see inside and see how the cabin is laid out and the navigation was done.
I just hope this dear old boat is not allowed to deteriorate further and is restored to her former glory and actually enjoyed as a sailing boat again.
In between completing the dub there has been a plethera of little things to do, discussing with Peter about the new upgrade to the email system, the SMS phone system and the failover system... [which was failing over when it shouldn't have been!] Actually the one that was most painful to sort out was the failover system.
So what is the 'failover system' I hear you ask. Basically because our systems have to work 24 hours a day 365 days a year we have two servers for most of the tasks that we need only one for and we have some clever software that says 'Use this server if you can, but it you cannot use this other one'. Sounds great
in practise but configuring this system is a tricky business and for some oddball reason it was switching over to the backup when it shouldn't. I looked through all the configurations and checked everything and it was just being 'ornery' as the Americans put it, which means it was not behaving as we wished.
The configurations were difficult to wade through as I needed to relate the configuration files on four separate servers. Eventually I decided to re-write all the configuration files and [in my view] make them more logical and easy to read. And... yes, so far it worked the failover system is now working 'as advertised'.
The SMS phone system has also been causing us grief. Ever since Christmas it has been getting increasingly unreliable. By that I mean we have had to restart one or more phones every 12 hours at least. We consulted with the manufacturers who said [like they all do] 'We don't have these sorts of problems normally...' and then in passing mentioned there was new firmware for the phones that 'might fix it'. We installed the new firmware and it does appear [so far] to have fixed it.
The email system upgrade is a major undertaking. There are two parts to it: firstly making our system more compatible with other systems and secondly reducing the spam coming in to the system. Peter has been working on it for nearly a month now. He has completed the first part and working on the second part which is far from trivial.
I spent most of Friday talking through with him and looking at the configuration for a system called 'greylisting'. Blacklisting is where you say 'never ever send me email from this person'. Whitelisting is where you say 'always let me have email from this person'. Greylisting is where you say 'I'm not sure about this person, check out that its a real person and not a spam robot sending it'. Greylisting works because real email servers will try again and again to deliver but spam robots try once and give up, so basically for greylisting to work you log the email and then say to the incoming server 'please try again later'. If they do its a real email ad we accept it, if they don't then we're sure its spam!
They say 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' and in between all this work I have been over the last two to three weeks stripping the varnish off the boom, mast, gaff, rudder and centreboard of my little mirror dinghy and then revarnishing them and repairing parts of the mast where a friend had a little accident with the dinghy last year. Now I'm longing to sail her and hopefully next weekend if the weather is good I will be able to have a day sailing.
This afternoon I went for a wander to my favourite place in Larnaca... the marina, where I can drool over the larger boats and dream of the one I would love to buy. The marina is somewhat empty at the moment as many of the boats are 'on the hard' [ie dry land] being repaired by their owners. There is one thing that is certain about all types of boat... you are constantly repairing them.
One boat that I have been watching for the last 9 years is called Windsong registered in Littlehampton in the UK. Its a 44 foot long wood hull ketch and has been very sadly deteriorating steadily over the last decade, although the owner has done a small amount of repair work during that period. It looks a boat in desparate need of TLC. Her masts are at the state where you don't need to rub off the varnish, the sun and wind has done that already. The deck and cabin too have been at the sharp end of the elements.So what makes Windsong so special? She is the only surviving David Hillyard sailing yacht to take part in 'Operation Dynamo' - and one of the very few pure sailboats. Operation Dynamo was the name given to the flotilla of 'little boats' that evacuated the British troops from Dunkirk. Which, of course, gives her the right to fly both red and white ensigns... and there is not another little boat up this end of the Mediterranean who has that right!
Built in 1931 it is interesting the sailing technology of the day. We don't see an autopilot at the stern to control the rudder but a wind vane. This keeps the boat at a constant direction relative to the wind rather than a constant direction. Of course the modern autopilots can do both and even tack the boat for you, but it's facinating to see how the old mechanical systems used to work. The mast has steps up it to make climbing easier rather than using a bosuns chair and a halyard. I would love to see inside and see how the cabin is laid out and the navigation was done.I just hope this dear old boat is not allowed to deteriorate further and is restored to her former glory and actually enjoyed as a sailing boat again.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Pictures and sound
The ongoing saga of video editing... I am now trying to complete a dub of a film from Arabic to Farsi. We were getting on well and then the transfer from Windows to mac took place. Should be easy mac can read Windows files. Hmmm... never expect anything to be easy. In the process I found out that the Windows machine had been making corrupt files. Although this explains a lot [like why we were getting problems on the Windows machine] it means that I have had to start from the beginning with the picture edit for the dub.
'Picture edit? I thought this was a sound dub...' I hear you mutter. Yes it is, but the opening and closing captions have to be replaced with Farsi rather than Arabic, and the original Arabic pictures don't match the new audio. So I have to re-edit that.
Peter has been involved with upgrading the email system, which is taking a lot longer than he hoped. Its pretty complex keeping up with all the changes to email to try to defeat spam.
Alex has been relaying a big prayer conference this week. We had over 4,400 listeners connecting over 38,000 times over the 4 days to listen to it live and nearly 3,000 viewers connecting over 18,000 times to watch it [either live or pre-recorded].
'Picture edit? I thought this was a sound dub...' I hear you mutter. Yes it is, but the opening and closing captions have to be replaced with Farsi rather than Arabic, and the original Arabic pictures don't match the new audio. So I have to re-edit that.
Peter has been involved with upgrading the email system, which is taking a lot longer than he hoped. Its pretty complex keeping up with all the changes to email to try to defeat spam.
Alex has been relaying a big prayer conference this week. We had over 4,400 listeners connecting over 38,000 times over the 4 days to listen to it live and nearly 3,000 viewers connecting over 18,000 times to watch it [either live or pre-recorded].
Monday, March 05, 2007
Flew last week, flu this week!
It seems like yesterday I was back from traveling, but its actually been over a week!
Much of the time has been taken up developing a newsletter to send out to people so that they can read about what we do. I know there's this blog and one of the things I did [well actually a very dear friend, called my wife, did it for me] was to cut down a couple of extracts of the blog as a way of encouraging people to read it!
I went to the launch of a new streaming studio too... they also moved all the control for one of the 24/7 radio stations we had been handling to their own facilities. We will still be handling the streaming to listeners on the internet, on their behalf.In many ways the new studio is actually our success as we planted, watered, nurtured and are now seeing a plant in full bloom so to speak.
When I first suggested the idea of internet radio to them just over three years ago they were not interested. Within a few months they changed that to a cautious first step into internet radio with us developing all the systems needed and running the station 24 hours a day from our own centre here in Cyprus... and it developed and developed till last year when the person in charge admitted that he had been seeing the traditional radio audience decreasing , while the internet audience was rapidly increasing.
Last Autumn they decided to start a regular weekly live broadcast from our studio. The number of people wanting to chat with staff using MSN or Skype was so great, the computer handling them slowed to almost a complete stop.
There's a limit to how much we can achieve alone. Currently we are working beyond that limit. That's why it was so exciting this week to see one of our partners open their own studio for live Internet radio instead of us doing it all.
In between all this we are rebuilding the edit suite... or I should say John is rebuilding it. He has taken out all the old woodwork for the old tube based screens which were build in and created a working surface and panel for the audio meters etc needed. Its nearly complete now. Pete and I were remarking on how with people around helping it really makes a difference to what we can do and we are really really grateful for what John has done.
From Friday I had a terrible cold or a light dose of flu, or something in between. Anyhow I didn't feel great at all. I think I caught it while travelling, or maybe I had been working so hard my body was giving up. Anyhow I wasn't well over the weekend.
Today I was still not 100% so I kind of did a couple of things and put the equipment into the new edit suite. All the audio wiring still has to be done. We need to but a new computer for this [a macpro which will costs between £2500 and £3500 depending on the options we get]. Currently we're using a macmini but this isn't really powerful enough for the purpose, however its vastly more reliable than the old Windows machine was. Two more smaller parts are needed: a Behringer BCF2000 control surface and a Contour ShuttlePro. The last edit suite has lasted 5 or 6 years [with some modifications on the way] so this is the biggest rebuild and hopefully when we have everything will last us another 5-6 years.
Much of the time has been taken up developing a newsletter to send out to people so that they can read about what we do. I know there's this blog and one of the things I did [well actually a very dear friend, called my wife, did it for me] was to cut down a couple of extracts of the blog as a way of encouraging people to read it!
I went to the launch of a new streaming studio too... they also moved all the control for one of the 24/7 radio stations we had been handling to their own facilities. We will still be handling the streaming to listeners on the internet, on their behalf.In many ways the new studio is actually our success as we planted, watered, nurtured and are now seeing a plant in full bloom so to speak.
When I first suggested the idea of internet radio to them just over three years ago they were not interested. Within a few months they changed that to a cautious first step into internet radio with us developing all the systems needed and running the station 24 hours a day from our own centre here in Cyprus... and it developed and developed till last year when the person in charge admitted that he had been seeing the traditional radio audience decreasing , while the internet audience was rapidly increasing.
Last Autumn they decided to start a regular weekly live broadcast from our studio. The number of people wanting to chat with staff using MSN or Skype was so great, the computer handling them slowed to almost a complete stop.
There's a limit to how much we can achieve alone. Currently we are working beyond that limit. That's why it was so exciting this week to see one of our partners open their own studio for live Internet radio instead of us doing it all.
In between all this we are rebuilding the edit suite... or I should say John is rebuilding it. He has taken out all the old woodwork for the old tube based screens which were build in and created a working surface and panel for the audio meters etc needed. Its nearly complete now. Pete and I were remarking on how with people around helping it really makes a difference to what we can do and we are really really grateful for what John has done.From Friday I had a terrible cold or a light dose of flu, or something in between. Anyhow I didn't feel great at all. I think I caught it while travelling, or maybe I had been working so hard my body was giving up. Anyhow I wasn't well over the weekend.
Today I was still not 100% so I kind of did a couple of things and put the equipment into the new edit suite. All the audio wiring still has to be done. We need to but a new computer for this [a macpro which will costs between £2500 and £3500 depending on the options we get]. Currently we're using a macmini but this isn't really powerful enough for the purpose, however its vastly more reliable than the old Windows machine was. Two more smaller parts are needed: a Behringer BCF2000 control surface and a Contour ShuttlePro. The last edit suite has lasted 5 or 6 years [with some modifications on the way] so this is the biggest rebuild and hopefully when we have everything will last us another 5-6 years.
Friday, February 23, 2007
A week in the life...
Monday morning, starts week normally: Catch up with things like email and prepare for trip to another country. Late afternoon: fly to other country, arrive late evening. Dinner with colleagues, starting around 10pm. After dinner one colleague shares with me his problems till approx 2.30am.
Tuesday morning... ahhhh... start work at 8.00am. Which is very bad news for me, being up at 2.30am the previous night was relatively easy, but starting to try to think about complex issues to do with web site design at 8.00am is positively tortuous. But I cannot start later as we have meetings planned for most of the day. So the first web site meeting ends at 2.00pm and I have lunch meeting with another partner till approx 5.00pm. Then go to another partner organization and start measuring up office space to see if a new department can use the office space: There are 5 offices to measure and try layouts for. Discuss the needs of this department and go to another meeting at 7.00pm. This is meeting over dinner, and ends at 11pm. Final meeting of the day from 11pm till 12.30am. Oh no it isn't... a colleague wants to talk so we do so till 2.00am again.
Wednesday morning... even more difficult to start at 8.00am but somehow I do. Today is an even more complex website design planning meeting and goes on till 1.30pm when I go to another lunch meeting with another partner organization. Meeting ends at 5.oopm and you probably guessed already its time for another meeting. But you'd be wrong... I get a short break and hmmm... meet informally other colleagues who want to discuss things... followed by a dinner discussion with a colleague and the next meeting starts at 8.00pm and goes on till midnight, when I collect some covers and cases I had made and go to where I am staying and again I have a colleague sharing with me till the small hours.
Thursday morning... joy of joys we start at 9.00am... well 10.00am would be better but never mind. Continuing on the complex website design meeting we started yesterday. This goes on right through lunch [and actually we all forget to eat] till I go to the airport at 3.00pm to catch a plane at 5.00pm. Now I am not sure if I should be pleased or not, but the airports have WiFi internet connections so I continue to chat [this time online] finishing off a discussion about another project till I board at 5.00pm
Friday morning... back in my own office so I start work at 10.30am and work through till 6pm. I think I worked out I had about 46 hours of meetings from Monday night through till Thursday night. I think I probably did a a more than 70 hour week this week so I am more than 'vaguely tired', but cannot sleep... so up writing the blog.
Tuesday morning... ahhhh... start work at 8.00am. Which is very bad news for me, being up at 2.30am the previous night was relatively easy, but starting to try to think about complex issues to do with web site design at 8.00am is positively tortuous. But I cannot start later as we have meetings planned for most of the day. So the first web site meeting ends at 2.00pm and I have lunch meeting with another partner till approx 5.00pm. Then go to another partner organization and start measuring up office space to see if a new department can use the office space: There are 5 offices to measure and try layouts for. Discuss the needs of this department and go to another meeting at 7.00pm. This is meeting over dinner, and ends at 11pm. Final meeting of the day from 11pm till 12.30am. Oh no it isn't... a colleague wants to talk so we do so till 2.00am again.
Wednesday morning... even more difficult to start at 8.00am but somehow I do. Today is an even more complex website design planning meeting and goes on till 1.30pm when I go to another lunch meeting with another partner organization. Meeting ends at 5.oopm and you probably guessed already its time for another meeting. But you'd be wrong... I get a short break and hmmm... meet informally other colleagues who want to discuss things... followed by a dinner discussion with a colleague and the next meeting starts at 8.00pm and goes on till midnight, when I collect some covers and cases I had made and go to where I am staying and again I have a colleague sharing with me till the small hours.
Thursday morning... joy of joys we start at 9.00am... well 10.00am would be better but never mind. Continuing on the complex website design meeting we started yesterday. This goes on right through lunch [and actually we all forget to eat] till I go to the airport at 3.00pm to catch a plane at 5.00pm. Now I am not sure if I should be pleased or not, but the airports have WiFi internet connections so I continue to chat [this time online] finishing off a discussion about another project till I board at 5.00pm
Friday morning... back in my own office so I start work at 10.30am and work through till 6pm. I think I worked out I had about 46 hours of meetings from Monday night through till Thursday night. I think I probably did a a more than 70 hour week this week so I am more than 'vaguely tired', but cannot sleep... so up writing the blog.
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