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Never completely finished - I can always think of more things I'd have liked to include - but enough
to give a flavour of the year 2003, including:-
Building a new storage rack and workbenches for work
I usually like to try to start some construction project during the Christmas break,
apart from this year, but last year I decided we needed some racking at work to store the
larger boxes. I could have bought some clip-together steel racking, but I like doing a
little woodwork now and again to keep my hand in for when I retire, as it's something I
could happily spend more time doing if there were no deadlines to meet or money to be
made. I've still got a radial-arm saw and plenty of clamps and tools - it's just a pity I
always seem to be doing it in winter when the garage is freezing!
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Construction work starts in the garage at home
with final assembly at the office. Apart from
some heavy coach screws holding the shelf frames
to the uprights, everything was glued together
with good old Resin-W.
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Before (left) and after (above)
Just as many boxes, but now we can at least get at the ones at the bottom
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| Apart from the racking, I also needed some proper workbenches
for system assembly and testing. We'd been making do with one table and VDU station
comprising a piece of blockboard on top of two Belinea monitor boxes (like the one in the
picture above). So the second half of the plan involved two back-to-back sets of kitchen
units with solid wood worktops, and a home-made centre console and shelves. The centre
console got finished, as in the right hand picture, but the shelves didn't. However, there
are now a couple of angle-poise lamps attached to the pegs just visible part way up the
centre uprights, so it's 90% functional, and an enormous improvement over the previous
arrangement. The desk to the left has a Keyboard/Monitor/Mouse switcher so that up to four
computers can be running and controlled from that one position, which is very useful when
we're building one PC and soak-testing another, for example |
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Kitchen Base units and tops from IKEA... |
...with home-made centre console & power points |
James Watt College, Greenock, installation trip Feb 2003
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Excellent breakfast at the B & B... |
...down the coast at Gourock |
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A couple of our externally boring (ie functional) but
internally quite exciting Video Editing PCs (if you like that sort of thing).
Get our Manchester Skyline background picture here |
On this trip we were supplying 10 new PCs for the
animation/video/graphics department. The first two machines we supplied (about 6/7 yrs
ago?) were Pentium 90s, one of which is still in use. |
Discovering Ebay
I'd heard of Ebay, but it wasn't until the end of
2002 that I actually had a look at it, and was astonished by the sheer scale and variety
of items available.  Like discovering Exchange and Mart all over again, but
with better pictures. My first purchase was a Digital Camera (the HP 912 used for all the pics on this page), but it
didn't stop there, and I now have a feedback rating of 47 (for those who know what that
means). In the course of this year I've bought all sorts of stuff, mainly for work, and
mainly successfully. I've bought one item which didn't work and which didn't get resolved,
a couple which weren't what I expected (my fault for not checking with the sellers), but
plenty of great bargains, some of which I've resold at a profit. I've also sold a few old
items of mine, mainly because I don't like throwing things away which are perfectly good
and might be useful to someone. In some cases they sold for a few pounds, but a couple of
old audio items which cost me about £70 in total (including the D25 pictured right) sold
for almost £450!
Exhibiting at the IOV Show, Birmingham April 2003
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The National Motorcycle Museum, near the Birmingham NEC |
..sadly destroyed in a fire in September just days after
we'd driven past it on our way to and from Liz Stock's birthday party in Oxford. |
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Our compact but efficient stand... |
...included two computers each housing two edit systems |
Hospital - as a non-visitor
In August I was booked into Hope Hospital for a small op for the removal of a couple of
"fatty lumps" in the groin/upper leg area which have been growing for the last
few years. I had an MR scan in 1999, after which they just said it wasn't dangerous and to
come back if it kept growing. So in late 2002 I went back and asked if I could be put on
the waiting list, and about 9 months later got an appointment. This was just after
returning a second letter asking if I still wanted the treatment, or whether I'd had it
done elsewhere.
It's the first time I've had a full anaesthetic, or indeed any sort of hospitalisation,
although I've spent plenty of time in hospitals, either as a visitor (after Kathie's
various ops) or working in my film crew days. As such, I've seen plenty of pain and
suffering, and so I was somewhat apprehensive about the whole thing, but I needn't have
worried. I was in and back home in a matter of hours, and with no side effects from the
anaesthetic (which is great, because I hate feeling nauseous). Top marks to all the
hospital staff who without exception were excellent. The worst bit of the recovery was the
effect of the dozen or more metal staples they put in to hold the wounds closed. Until
they took them out a week later it was like having the cat's claws stuck into my leg every
time I moved.
A month or so later, and it'd all healed up just fine. The only consequence is that
when the surgeon looked at me he said, "I think you've got a couple of hernias
too", which was confirmed at the follow up last month, so I'll probably be back in
there sometime over the next year or so. The surgeon suggested keyhole surgery would be
the best treatment but, because there's currently no-one at the hospital who can do it, I
should come back in six months when they might have someone trained up.
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Other business
Business-wise, we've had another mixed year at ZEN with a good start to the year, a
quiet June/July but picking up towards the end of the summer just when I was due to go
into hospital. Dealing with the sale of the house and other related administration has
distracted me from thinking about anything apparently non-essential at work, such that I
didn't see the looming crisis with Gavin that resulted in his rather dramatic resignation
on 1st November whilst I was on-site with a customer in Liverpool. He came in as normal
but then called me at lunchtime to say he'd gone home. I won't try and explain it, because
I don't fully understand it, but the net result is that I'm back to working on my own, and
whilst I am looking for someone else, I'm not in a desperate hurry. It's not easy finding
people with the right sort of computer/video related skills, and I'm not quite sure yet
what I'm looking for, and at what level. So far I've been OK, but I've not had a really
busy period yet.
The ZEN website is at www.zenvideo.co.uk |
| This page was updated on
24/12/04. |
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