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Thursday, 6 January 2005
Shift patterns and speech synthesizers...
| I'm well into the swing of things now - the twelve hour shifts have started, and I'm doing the "supervisor" job full time.
Yesterday was a most interesting day - I took a trainee to Maida Vale for the engineer there to show us around (as it's an extended part of my patch) which, after a year with BBC Radio was my first visit to this hallowed ground. We chose to walk, as the weather wasn't too inclement, passing the lovely Little Venice just north of Paddington station. There are some lovely parts of London, although I still would never be persuaded to live here, even if I won £8 million! |  |
 Springs used to suspend some studios | Maida Vale studios were nothing less than I'd imagined - the large photo of John Peel outside the studio that traditionally hosted the famous Peel Sessions was very poignant, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra rehearsing in MV1 (a gym hall-sized area) sounded quite breathtaking. The engineering aspects aren't much more than I'm used to, although the equipment is top-of-the-line, and the challenges that face the guys who work there generally involve the ancicence of the building (which, incidentally, used to be an ice rink, and was hit by a bomb during the war) which was partially closed in the 80s, but has seen a new lease of life with the recent resurgeance in live music. |
I'm (hopefully) developing something of a rapport with the others in the central London workshop. I was recently made aware of something that's rather fun - did you know you can now send SMS messages to any UK landline number? It's a new service provided by BT that doesn't cost any more than a standard text, and calls the intended recipient with a recorded introduction and synthesized voice that 'reads' the message. How much fun is that? See www.bt.com/bttext for more information. Here's one I made earlier (94kB MP3).
Links of the day
- www.brookview.karoo.net/BFA/index.htm : Britain, explained for Americans. It's the very least we can do! (Thanks, Elin, for the link!)
- www.nethouseprices.com : A rather useful site if your hobby is finding out how expensive houses are in various parts of the UK.
Posted by james at January 6, 2005 8:38 PM
