Brian's World

Sitting Silent

Rarely do I write a blog with a title that directly relates to the content of the blog. This time it kinda does. I transgress into RPI TV in the bottom chunk. I develop a vision I like a lot, and if funding was available it could be a reality.
Where to start.

This week has been very hectic. After a rather relaxing weekend (I would recommend The Man of the Year btw) I awoke Monday realizing that I had school. Uh oh. And I had school work to do. I had a CS test that day, which I failed to “parse by reference” so I’m not quite sure how it will be graded. I could potentially get half off the entire thing, or just one questions. He only grades each question on a 0, 50, 100 basis. Hrm…

I managed to get the take home test for Growing Up In America done by the end of Tuesday which was a tad late but that class doesn’t count for anything.
Today I woke up at 6:15 to start studying Calculus which I had at 11:00am this morning. While I gave cramm a new meaning for myself, I think I did ok on the test. We’ll see when it gets graded, someday.

It was a relief to have all the academic stress off my shoulders, onto other topics. My main concern is my Eagle Ceremony sunday, as well as stuffs for Friday the 10th. For the ceremony, its been difficult to coordinate everything when I don’t talk to the scouts on at meetings on a regular basis. I could call but I haven’t gotten that worried about it. My experience with scouting is that things will fall into play if everyone does there part, of course my brother has a part so idk.. jk.. kevin will do fine.

Tomorrow I just remembered I’m suppose to register for classes during my Calc class.. who knows what I’ll do. I’m trying to take “Intro to Communications Theory”… because Communications as a minor is as close as i think i can get to television here at RPI the engineering school.

I’m also upset because I’ve learned very little helpful knowledge so far. I can say the most helpful thing I’ve learned has come from a student and an hour or two of computer work. I mean yes, I know now what I divergence test is.. or I can “pass by reference”.. but when I go back to South Hadley for the holidays and the summer, I’ll have a job, I hope its the same one I had last year. But I mean I’ll go back, make a new resume because I should, and add what… nothing…. well nothing really related to school at least. I’m doing some Microsoft Webnars in my spare time to stay current with Group Policy and Imageing and everything with Vista coming out soon. I would have expected a school like RPI to be on the bleeding edge, not the butter knife cutting one. I understand not every student comes in as a Freshman knowing how to do stuff, but the program should accept the fact that some people know more than others and let us learn at our appropriate levels. If i have to do another “tricky” lab from Malik I’m going to email him and be like please give me something that I can’t do. Ok, I lied…. he gave us one tricky problem. I could have done it, I think I know a way but I put it off until the day of. I’ll still be over the limit for points anyways.

I also wish I could minor in Information Technology, or whatever it is that puts me incharge of servers. As a CSYS (I learned the abbreviation yesterday) I fear I’ll be locked away in a corner writing a program or designing some wierd piece of hardware. Personally I’d rather be deploying software, designing a website, writing some scripts, something that keeps me learning. I hate doing the same thing 800 times.. yet I spend each summer cloning computers… lol

I spend most of my time at RPI TV meetings sitting silently laughing to myself, especially when it comes to the Programming Report. I just conducted a very brief web-study looking at the productions. I see very few (i.e 0) that stand out to me as edited productions, and even fewer that stand out as something that was planned by students, not a live event. Which makes me think, where are things going wrong. Clearly the Executive people are trying to push shows, but as I’ve seen there is a disconnect between the planning/filming/editing stages. What really got me going on this topic was when I was filming a Student Senate meeting, people were discussing WRPI (the radio station) and there several year long history of “problems”. A question was raised if RPI TV ever had problems like that, it was answered “Ha, no, RPI is way to young in its infancy to have anything like that.” The Ha almost made me feel people aren’t receptive to it, and this was coming from the person who was elected to be incharge of all the clubs. From old meeting minutes, it looks like RPI TV has been around for 2 or 3 years. If you ask me, it takes about a year to get established and well respected, if you haven’t gotten it by then something isn’t right. Tiger Times gained acceptance and respect when we started off the school year airing daily… with RPI TV its wierd. Partially I like to compare it to Tiger Times because there are similiar goal, but RPI TV is more a station, where Tiger Times was more a show.

How would I fix RPI TV? First I would give them a home. If WPI and The Poly both get homes, why can’t RPI TV. By home I mean an office, collaboration space, studio. I walked into a studio to get some gear last week, maybe it was the “RPI-TV” studio, maybe not.. if you ask me it was more of a closet with green walls and bright lights. There was no real studio setup in there, nothing to facilitate editing or filming on the spot. Things would have to be setup before anything could happen. Personally, my insta-fix would be a budget. A budget that included some capital moneys to establish a studio or base for RPI TV. Personally, I would take the studio.. if it is RPI TV’s.. and add two rooms, one for Linear Productions and for Post-Productions. The studio would have a decent sized space for filming in, with and L-Shaped cutout. Actually I’m starting to like this idea a lot. The studio would have instudio cameras wired in the Linear Suite, with some Monitors, decks, audio mixer, edit controllers, etc. All that stuff would be pretty permanent, or only used for special cases. The editing room would have a mac or two, and some head end stuff.. like a digital video server that could stream content or even connect into Media Ops somehow. I now have a vision. I’m in the mood to make this happen to, anyone else in on the idea?
See, I can to RPI expecting bigger and better things, all I’ve found so far is bigger lecture halls and better cafeteria food. Rensselaer’s motto is “Why not change the world?”, well.. I’d like to do my part to change the world with Television.. and right now I want to start at RPI.

With a more permanent home we could actually get together with people where there is equiptment and the ability to follow a tangent. If the computer is all setup and ready to go, or the camera is always in the studio.. I think RPI TV news could be pushing weekly, if not daily news out. Ok, I’ll bring that to the level of knowing it could be done, not just thinking it. RPI TV news is just an example…

Yes, portable equiptment is great for a lot of things, most things that have made it on the air so far… but what’s preventing other things from going on TV could very well be the over-portability of it. The lack of stability or commonality.

I hope this gets read and looked upon in a good note, I don’t want to be viewed as the Marx of RPI TV or the extremist.. I like the term experienced optomist. I know, I’m not experienced with any of this university stuff at all, I don’t know the budget, E-board, anyone else.. I just know a little about TV….