Win

don’t let IT beat you

Sunday, November 9th, 2008
at 11:31pm

Wireless networking experiments

Image by hockeyshooter via Flickr

Today, like any other has been a mixed day for me in IT. On one hand i installed a wireless router first time, no problems - WTF? Since when has installing a wireless router EVER gone right for someone first time? :smile:

On the flip side, i stumbled upon a nasty problem with adobe premier pro which threatened to throw a huge spanner in the works for my video project.

I’d noticed it for a while but brushed it off as something i’d be able to fix when i got time… i had time today but just couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong. Anytime i went to export a video, i’d get an error.

Eventually i noticed that whenever i rendered the video, it would fail just when it’s in a transition from clip 1 to clip 2. Hmmm… interesting - now i know WHERE the problem is, i just have to figure out WHAT the hell it is.

Upon ‘needle in haystack’ like inspection (breaking the videos down frame by frame), eventually i noticed that several frames where in fact not loading correctly or freezing. Unnoticeable to the naked eye when playing a video, but very noticeable to premier pro who would just tell me i had an unknown error - fat lot of good that is.

Anyway, problem solved by trimming a few broken frames and I end the day on a high… just thought i’d blog about it as this typifies my workload on a daily basis. Things ALWAYS go wrong and cause incredible frustration. The most important thing to do is to keep your head down, keep plugging away at a problem and eventually persistence will pay off. NEVER give in, never let technology beat you - if that happens once, it’ll happen again and you’ll lose your sharpness in IT.

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Last chance to win something!

Sunday, September 28th, 2008
at 9:50pm

We’re now in to the last few days of my charity skydiving contest. It’s flown by and although i’m nowhere near my $1000 target, i have raised over $200 thus far which is respectable.

This was just one idea i had and i’ve learned a lot from it all. My strength was in finding people to sponsor prizes… the fact i’ll be printing a t-shirt with my sponsor’s logos on it went down well - that helped secure prizes.

charity competition

Actually getting people to donate cash was / is the hard part. Not as easy. I wasn’t overly aggressive marketing this but then again it is all for charity and the last thing i want to do is (a) spend all of my time focusing on this (b) get to the point where i push it so much, it damages my rep.

But i’ll not be simply ‘giving up’ here… i may not actually be completing the skydive until next spring due to a variety of reasons (i’ll go into them once the competition ends), but i’ll certainly be flexing my creative muscles online again for more fun and games in relation to this skydive.

As things stand there are about 25 entries in to this competition with over 35 prizes so if you’re not in, you’re missing out ;-) 4 x $50 cash prizes up for grabs remember + a whole bunch of other webmaster goodies.

All you gotta do is comment on this post to have a chance of winning something! If you’re feeling extra generous, why not donate a $1 or two :-)

The competition draws to a close on Tuesday September 30th and on October 1st i’ll be revealing a full list of entrants and their assigned numbers. On October 2nd i’ll record a screencast of me generating random numbers and assigning the prizes to people - no catches - all above board :mrgreen: