As Saturdays go, this one went

OK, at this point I would open with a picture showing how the weather/hotel/locale is. But here's a picture of what I got to see once I had entered the IBC today.

This is the inside of the Personal Examination Booth at Security. I think they were having a slow day. It being Saturday and all there weren't as many folk trogging in at 9:00. Or at least attempting to. So Security were less fraught than usual. But I think they had also turned the wick up on the metal detectors - can't show you pictures but imagine an airport on acid. X-ray machines, Body scanners, Metal detectors, bored Russian Security guards, dogs. And it was my lucky day to make the bell ring. The astute will remember my belt has long left me so it wasn't that, and my shoes hadn't set things off the other day. So I find myself in the booth shoeless and fretting. A few minutes later the guard returns with my shoes, that have no metal in them, and a rather apologetic look on his face. I'll give them that, they're more apologetic than frightening, as if having to scan everyone is embarrassing for them. But 1, it's not as embarrassing as the things Putin says and 2, as I read somewhere, they have to win every time - the terrorists only have to win once...

So once re-united with my shoes my bag is inspected. Normally, this is just show computer, open computer, power-on computer. But today, it being a bit slack, they asked me to written some code... Nah. The iPad on the other hand does not need powering on. The iPad weighs more than the Chromebook. I also have to open my medicine bag, in which I keep Ibuprofen, Paracetamol etc. in case it's needed. He asks what it is and I say medicine, blank. His helper explains in Russian, blank. She says Drugs. Ahh, da, drugs. For a minute I expect to hear 'Take one each tablet' but instead he thinks I'm a wimp for having drugs on me. Well, when you've used a pencil as an anti-diarrhoeal, yeah takes some imagining and once done you wish you hadn't, you make damn' sure you have some with you at all times. Imodium, not pencils.

So the day passes and code is tested and we see some improvements. The images are more stable and the tune time better but some times there are no pictures... and in the end I do a mash up of 1.5.0 with a hint of a new brcmtsdemux and a helping of libQtWebKit4.8.1 and every becomes pretty stable. Even search works well. So it's nice to know we have a fallback solution now.

And it means I can do this:

Watch Southampton play Sunderland. And it wouldn't be so bad but people, American people, asked if we could get the West Ham game...

You may remember I said the bus route was a torture so I installed a GPS tracker on my phone and uploaded the route to Runkeeper but if you see a screen like this

I can only apologise. Not only for its presence, but also for the godawful spelling, grammar and just about everything else. "Howard Teece activity 10.38 miles" and I really don't know what the rest means... "activity a total of miles" ?

So, two more interesting pictures for you. One's the correct use of a computer:

And the other is of one of the production control rooms:

You may recall I said there were two studios, and another two live floors. They each have one of these.

And a final fun fact, the switcher in the PCR is a Sony HDVS-7200, its control panel is the spaceship flight-deck on the right; 20 years ago I helped on the prototype of it. They were designed in Basingstoke. Makes me pine for the old days, as does seeing a Tektronix WFM and some Abekas boxes. I thought they had packed up years ago. And there's a shedload of Snell and Wilcox standards converters as all the pictures are sourced 1080i50 and need to be 1080i60 for broadcast. Used to work for them too.