Brian's World

Leningrad

Sometimes I hate it when I start thinking, I don’t like to think of myself as any con of a philosopher, but I like to contemplate being alone frequently; usually when I’m alone, or when I’m so busy I wish I was alone. Most people get bored or uncomfortable being alone, just sitting around, silent. I think thats why so many people are obnoxious and don’t shut up, they’re too uncomfortable to sit down silently, alone, knowing they’ll have to face their own problems. Me? I admit problems left and right, I tend not to dwell often on the specific identification of the problem, as soon as I have something to work with I’ll start working on it, flushing out the rest as I can. Very AJAX’y.. lol. Wow, I think I just related my life to web 2.0. I need to move on quickly.

Well tonight, as most weeknights, I spend it alone after 10pm. Me and the internet, I haven’t found myself playing and MMORPG’s lately, nor participating in any large internet’ed activities. Sure, I commonly miss the MMORPG.. but I know my brother Kevin will always beat me at it. Yea, the ARG scene is great; but I have a very strange involvement. Coding? I tend to be the lone coder. If I’m working on any “group” projects, they are so heavily componentized that I rarely deal with anyone else. Sometimes typing all the code yourself is boring, especially when its the same code several times, or you’ve got the blueprint in your head and you know there will be 0 problems implementing it, just typing because it won’t type itself. If I was feeling extra motivated I would make a drag-and-drop php programming thing, I tend to have the same code just in different formats. But doesn’t everyone?

It sounds weird, but I enjoy disappointment… well not exactly, I don’t enjoy being let down.. maybe modesty is a better word. I like modesty, I don’t like huge crazy events very often. I’m not a fan of going out to a party with several other people, I would much rather sit and stare at a a wall. You can do a lot with a white wall, good for thinking. Speaking of white walls.. the clock is stuck at 8:24:13, ever since we knocked it off the wall approx. 12 times it stopped working well.

For example, tomorrow is my birthday. I don’t want a 19th birthday party or anything of the sort. I didn’t have a huge 18th birthday party, 3-5 friends got me a cake and some balloons and a few things, mostly spearheaded by Katie. I think that was big enough for me, more than 3-5 people and I tend to isolate myself from others, seeing how they’re better at mingling with each other.

Lets take my Eagle Ceremony. I was the only person getting the award, now discard the fact that no one from SHHS showed up :-(.. but I found myself just like blah. While I made my way around to thank people and such, I found that I could just as easily stop and just stand there, all alone. No one noticed, everyone was just as content talking amongst themselves. You could call it depressing, or you could look at it as if I facilitated their communication. Yea, I like the second better too.

For me, I dunno. Silence is great, I don’t need to talk to feel ok or happy. I don’t need to be doing things to not be bored. Of course then the logical part of me kicks in, generally while I’m showering in the morning.. like hey you, today your gonna rewrite such and such, or do blah-de-blah but then motivation secedes to E.R reruns and Walker: Texas Ranger. I like to think of myself as the Texas Ranger of the internet, even though I don’t carry a digital gun, nor do I pretend to be Neo and break my back every 3.4 seconds, but who doesn’t like to think their special.

But tonight, its just me and Mr. Joel, catching a flight to Leningrad. Care to come?

RPI TV News

RPI TV is not in the position to produce or broadcast anything under the title or association of “news”. The 3 day broadcast delay removes any chance of news being timely or relevant to today or tomorrow and the facilities don’t exist to allow for a regular weekly or daily newscast. Real-time news at RPI is lacking, when breaking news occurs student have no where to turn but the Administration, which releases information to student very slowly. The Poly is lucky to have a “news bulletin” out the next day by noon, in the meantime students are left to discuss on facebook or livejournal. Clearly there is a need for some news oriented production on campus, something that can tell students what they want to know, answer their questions or at least try, and do it quickly, not 24 hours later.

For RPI TV to do news there would need to be 2 major changes. First, production facilities. RPI TV would need a more-permanent home, or something that slightly resembled it. Two closets in the basement of Sharp Hall can not hold a full news crew and the campus’s (one?) green screen room (I didn’t say studio) is shared between several groups, making a permanent setup impossible. The work related to breaking down and doing a full setup every week (dare I say day) takes too much time off the news end of things and puts it all on the setup and testing of equipment.

What we need? Honestly we need a full studio, with close to permanent cameras, video switcher, audio mixer, the works. So that a news crew, or crew of any show really, can move a few cameras, turn everything on and be ready to film in under 15mins. Not the 1-2 hours it takes to setup for a multi-camera shoot.

Secondly, we’d need a must faster way to get on TV. Non of this 3day nonsense, maybe thats a digital video server, maybe its a “live” feed that we control to MMS, maybe its a head end. But something must be done.

My parents are paying approximately a lot of money to send me to RPI, and also paying under $2 each money on the cable bill for a PEG fee. That fee goes towards a local PEG station, which in South Hadley is housed in the high school. I lived in that place for 4 years, and its a whole lot better than most things I’ve found at RPI. No, they don’t have an XL-2, but they have 3JVC DV-550’s and a permanent studio setup. You can’t say its financially not possible, and if you argue it is raise a fee by $1 (tuition or housing)

I was surprised to arrive at RPI to find a lack of television facilities, as if computers were the only thing people cared about. So far I’ve yet to find any “studio” at RPI that looks like and works like a TV studio, and I can’t seem to explain why such a place doesn’t exist. Television and broadcast media isn’t going away, the technology is changing, integrating heavily with theinternet and IPTV yet nothing exists at RPI to allow a group of students to come in, film a linear production, and be gone in under the hour.

Maybe the campus doesn’t like to be on the cutting edge, if so someone should tell admissions, cause I can guarantee they are selling that idea to prospective students.

I’m open for some discussion or thoughts. Please submit some. If you’re interested in reading more, this is an expert from “what I type about RPI TV when I’m bored, frustrated, and wanting to change the world”. I can send you a link to the google doc.

P.S. I’m sorry if anyone strongly disagrees and thinks that I’m a freshmen/sophomore that doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I think I have a little idea, but you can always enlighten me.

Monday Morning

Hello all, its been close to a week since I last spoke with you, and there are a bunch of topics to address today.

I’ll let everyone know who hasn’t already heard, I took the opportunity at MassMutual. Today was suppose to be my first day but I’m waiting to hear from my boss regarding if my background check is completed or not. This means that the other people, or at least one other person, on the project will have started already and I’ll be a latecomer, I don’t like being late. I wonder how thorough the background search is, if they dig deep enough they will find my blog.. “Hi background searchers”, or they’ll find Katie’s blog.. actually hers is more popular than mine. 🙁

While everyone raised very valid concerns during the debate of the topic of previous blogs, overall I appreciate all the remarks very much. (Its the most non-spam commends a blog of mine has seen) There are a few things I should clear up, in no order whatsoever. I don’t hate anyone, that doesn’t just apply to this blog, its more a rule in general for me. I love Katie very much, that is also a rule in general. These rules in general don’t get broken like ever. I can’t think of any times I would break them. I live in the future, I think about how things will effect tomorrow, whats the best solution, not the fastest. I like to try some new things sometimes. Like new computer things. My parents have a strong influence over a lot of my decisions. I frequently choose to do things I don’t want to do or I don’t like to do, because I think it will be better for me tomorrow or will be better for other people. The real challenge is trying to manage both, whats best for others and whats best for me tomorrow, well I applied a unique principle here, I applied the rule recursively which made the decision so hard to make. I applied the principles of whats best for me tomorrow & whats best for others to the other people, which in English (or my attempt at English) translates to whats going to be best for other tomorrow, and whats going to continue being best for them. It should be no secret I aspire to change the internet somehow someway. Right now that plan translates into working for a large web company or some sort of something like that, but all of its likely to change at any point.

What does all this translate to in regular people speak? Maybe that all the discussion and “arguments” are good for developing new ideas but I formally request that the bickering and fighting be kept to a minimum. The topic is resolved for now, and if at a later time more information is needed, I’ll be more than happy to entertain ideas, discussion, and arguments.

On some other topics, Katie’s website will have some cool new features coming soon. I don’t want to giveaway anything but I’m excited to get working on them. All my other projects need some work as well, but my setup in the basement isn’t as warm and welcoming as I’d like it to be. The whole “working in the basement” mentality or something.

Who knows what this summer will bring but it certainly will be interesting. I’ll keep everyone posted as always.

Hrm, still no call from MassMutual.. Grr