teainthehub

Build your own cricket stump camera for under £200

2011-06-07T11:19:00.000+01:00

TV at your local cricket club is just a short throw away, just assemble some money and some friends with the energy to help and ideally a knowledge of cricket, electronics and woodwork!

I have only written this as a rough guide and really it's up to you how you use these instructions, I am neither a craftsman, engineer or camera genius but a little common sense should get you to the end. Without a commercial or even kit offering, and negligable information about stump camera construction available on the internet, I thought it was high time someone wrote something!!!

Shopping list:
Buy this lot first, so you know what accessories you need

An AV transmitter / receiver set (2 watts, range around 200m) - About £50 [Chinavasion.com]
Lipstick camera (ensure less than 1" diameter and don't get CMOS!) - About £40 [Chinavasion.com]
20mm Penta prism - About £45 [Anchoroptics.com]

Then...
Accessories, leads, connectors and power:
8x AA Batteries
Battery holder pack with connector
Phono to SCART connector (or other Wires and adaptors to connect receiver to your TV in the cricket club house / pavilion)
Wires to connect battery pack to transmitter
Soft core chokes
A regulation stump (try to find a wide one!)

About £25 in all

Other DIY stuff advised:

Drill, assorted bits
Clamp or vice
Hammer
Chisels - straight blade wide and narrow, rounded
Soldering iron
Screwdriver
Bathroom / Silicone sealant
Polyfiller
Expanding foam

IMPORTANT: Once you're confident you understand what you need to do, practise on a broken stump first - most clubs have one or two lying around and it's critical you get this part right - a badly hollowed or poorly fitting mounting will shorten the life of your stump cam and may even stop it from working all together.

This is a bit of a bodge but it's about £5000 cheaper to make than the ones they use on TV.

Firstly, assemble the kit so you understand what does what.

My experience of the cheaper chinese made AV transceiver kits is that the power supplies and cable connections are a bit ropey, so make sure you add 'soft core chokes' to reduce power hum and crackles, and double check the quality of connections.

Hollow out part of the stump so the camera, lead and prism fit snugly in to place.

The camera is mounted vertically in the stump, lens pointing upwards.

The Penta prism faces down (meeting the camera lens) and the second surface faces outwards at a perpendicular angle, up the pitch. The unusual shape reverses the mirrored image so everything looks normal (i.e. not a mirror image) back on the TV!

I should point out that cricket balls are very hard and will break everything listed above on direct hit, make sure it's all listed on your club's contents insurance before use.

One way of protecting the electronics is to line the holes with card, or even to make slightly larger holes and fill the gaps with expanding foam or expanded polystyrene sheet, though this will inherantly weaken the stump.

One conclusion I came upon when designing this was to cut the stump completely open and deliberately weaken it in certain points so the energy released by the stump breaking apart protects the far more expensive electronics inside.

A channel from the camera cavity will be required to run down the rear of the stump. As wires seldom break when unexposed, it's probably easier to make a channel straight out of the back of the stump and chisel a line down to where it plugs in to everything else, filling the space with polyfiller.

I'm sure the more capable DIYers will figure out a way of putting everything in to a single stump, but really it's a lot easier to have just the camera and prism in the stump and everything else sat in a very small plastic box which can sit behind the stumps in a box which is comfortably out of the way.

It's important to note that anything on the pitch must be approved by both captains and both umpires to allow its use before the start of the game, but this concept is certainly a magnificent addition for clubs with active junior / colt sections, as DVD and TV highlights can provide a new revenue stream, and encourage parents to stay in the bar!!

+ = +
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|/-\|
|| =| --> Prism
|\-/|
| _ |
|| || --> Camera
|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
| - |
| | |
| | | --> Power, AV and Mic wires
| | |
| | |
|/ |
/ |
/| |
* | |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
\ /
\ /
+

You can spend more to improve individual components, make it smaller, increase resolution and so on, but costs will quickly spiral up to the professional level! I know this is done on the cheap, so you should expect cheap results. I hope you make progress with your stump cam and would love to see your attempts and hear lessons learned.

The receiver I have, made by 'Bada' has 4 channels which automatically switch every 6 seconds if other transmitters are detected. This means in a single match, you could have a helmet camera, umpire camera and stump camera all active at the same time, and the cost of adding all that functionality is much lower once the basics are in place (about £60 per additional camera).

Greenwich to Eastbourne on National Cycle Network route 21, August 2010

2010-09-10T17:48:00.002+01:00

The seed of a thought started knawing at me to attempt this 90 mile ride some time back in May, when I simply wasn't getting an exercise fix. Badminton season had just ended and I wasn't playing Cricket (due to a slightly hectic weekend schedule and a disorganised local club with an aversion to using phones), my only exercise was 1-3 hours of five-a-side football at work.

Not enough... Come early August, and I set the goal for the first two days off (a weekend) of my summer break (two whole weeks of leave) and, after increasing my football (to around 5 hours a week) felt fit enough to tackle it.

I agreed to cycle with my neighbour Justin on the first day, leaving Merstham in Surrey on the train to London, changing at Norwood Junction to be dropped about a mile or so from the start point, just by the Thames.

Day One

The start point, from what I'd been able to find online, was the Cutty Sark – though I think we missed the sign for the true origin, which I imagine would have been a pleasantly carved mileage sign of some description. Anyway, fuelled up and fresh, we set off through South East London's winding lanes, small parks (many of which were surprisingly picturesque) and back streets.

The first day was marked with some trepidation, since being a country boy, I was less than enamoured with the idea of cycling in London. I shouldn't have worried, in fact only the road getting to the route start and a very small number (perhaps half a dozen inside the M25) of road crossings provided any real contact with anything other than very light traffic.

Watch out for the pretty suburb of Kent House, and consult the map as modern signage seems to be unwelcome in that area (it may be a heritage area or something, as the roads are loose gravel and everything looks very olde worlde).

The climb on to Shirley Heath, zig-zagging up a residential estate, was made easy by the frequent countouring, and while I was slightly disappointed by the rest point at the top (unmarked with now view) I think we would have been better off making a proper break on the heath itself rather than assuming there would be somewhere nice to sit for lunch 'strictly on the route'.

A quick downhill (some traffic on this bit) took us across the tram stop, but we lost the route until about-facing with a pair of Chinese students who were taking on the London-Brighton route. We eventually found the tiny red label up a path running uphill from the tram stop, which then took us back across the tram lines, on to the road and up on another climb.

Later on, another small detour around New Addington, not sure how we lost the path but a quick consult with the TFL cycle map guided us back on course.

The climb to Warlingham Girls School looked like a doddle on the map, but toward the end of the day and with incessant drizzle, it became really tiring. Once we pushed past the top of the North Downs, a very long and comparatively fast downhill section on loose ground brought us careering to a Golf Club nestled in the foot of the Downs. I must state the obvious at this point and ask that you take extreme care on this section of downhill! Whilst under breaking, I basically had little control (it was damp and loose under wheel) and felt much more stable going full tilt. This was really exhilarating, but in hindsight, quite dangerous. Check your tyres and brakes can cope with it before you try it, and if you get nervous, get off.

Another set of smaller ups and downs, past a house with its own helipad and gold course (!) and we dropped around Caterham, via a silly detour around a bridge which we then had to cross anyway, past a good South-facing viewpoint towards the back of Merstham, under the M23, then over the M25, through Spynes Mere Nature Reserve (a former quarry) and passing The Inn on the Pond – a great cycle-friendly pub with quiet outside space, good food and, of course, drinks.

We stopped for a beer and cycled back to Merstham village (about 2 miles away) to stay there for the night, as we both live there.

Generally speaking, signage was fairly good on day one, but the possibility of going wrong in an urban environment is much greater, simply since there are so many options, roads to follow and traffic to put you in danger! Overall, pleasantly surprised by the small quantity of traffic, and ease of completing the route.

If you're attempting the route over a two day period, you will definitely want to think about getting a train back from Redhill. The station serves major stations in every direction, including Tonbridge, Reading, London and Brighton. There are also plenty of eateries there, and the Toby Carvery (at which the food is plentiful and cheap) is attached to a big-chain hotel if you want to stay overnight. The route takes you straight past the station, but the Toby Carvery is not more than 100 yards away.

Back home, with Sarah and Charlotte in Yorkshire, I was able to stuff myself with food, rub down my legs with Muscle Rub ointment and get everything into the washing machine. I wish I had been wearing some more padding on my derrière!

Day Two

Prepared with padded cycling shorts and a freshly greased bike, the pre-arranged 7.30am wake up phone-call ended with me saying 'Well maybe next time, just take it easy and rest up' as Justin clearly had had enough of cycling for at least a few weeks. Wimp.

I packed my lunch, drinks and accessories and got on my bike. Alone. Rejoining the route at the Inn on the Pond, I continued through the marshy area of Merstham (actually this has properly made cycling tracks), through Redhill where – knowing the area intimately – I was thoroughly annoyed by missing at least ¼ mile of signage. Luckily, I knew that NCN 21 whizzed past East Surrey Hospital, so I followed the A23 for a while until picking up the trail again.

The quite lanes gave way to a bridlepath, where I was overtaken by two ladies on the way to Eastbourne (Or 'until they'd had enough') while in training for a ridiculously long endurance charity ride. They overtook me at Gatwick before I finally caught them up near Eridge, some 20 miles later on.

I was surprised by the pretty cycling areas between Redhill and Gatwick. It's not an area known for it's constructed beauty, and with an abundance of post-war construction (notably around Horley), I was certainly not expecting so many leafy and enjoyable meandering paths before having to endure the flight-path of Gatwick runway. Saying endure isn't quite fair, it was quite interesting looking at one EasyJet's shiny underbelly as it roared overhead. I suppose you could also head home from hear at the route goes right alongside Gatwick train station.

On to Crawley, where I was slightly let down by the sights of the sprawling industrial estate, before a park, road crossing then another residential estate and eek, no signs... And I knew I had no map to cover this particular section. Cue half an hour of riding around looking for signs before heading to Three Bridges Station on a hunch and once again picking up the trail southwards.

From Three Bridges, I wound my way on to the Worth Way, to East Grinstead and onwards still – being a Sussex lad, I was now most definitely in familiar territory, so I knew what was to come. I felt that the Worth Way was a moderate challenge, no free-wheeling but 15-20 miles of pleasant countryside and lots of cyclists, walkers, dogs and families on what actually was a cool damp afternoon – and everyone was very pleasant and friendly (quite the opposite to day one).

As I pointed out earlier, I caught up with the Redhill ladies at Eridge as one had a flat tyre after hitting something that had also caused a airbound departure from her bike and unfortunately a large cut on her knee, which I helped patch up. Sadly I could not help with her flat, as the Halfords 'all in one' puncture kit they had (with only self adhesive patches and no other glue) failed to stop air leaking, and the spare tyre they had was the wrong size. It seems silly to say that, but I had actually left London without either puncture repair or spare tyre, let alone a pump.

A short climb to Eridge station, and this was where I met my biggest disappointment of the route – a short (less than 50 yard) climb on the most appalling track, barely navigable even on foot and it needs desparate attention. Onwards and upwards, across a road and back on tracks, lanes and so on.

Eridge to Heathfield, another 15 miles distant, was really really hard work. I walked perhaps 4 miles of it, the worst uphill sections – not particularly steep just very wearing to a fairly irregular cyclist. Lovely countryside though, and usually pretty good views at the top, freewheeling to the bottom ready for the next slog. I went to school in Heathfield and new the next section, most of the way to the end, intimately – in fact I walked or cycled on the route to school on many many occasions, and spent summer evenings building camps and playing on the embankments on what has always been called the Cuckoo Trail. After the fatigue of hill-climbing after Eridge, I nearly cried with joy at reaching what I knew to by the high-point, literally, of the last 20 miles. From Heathfield – specifically the little kitchen shop HKS – it is downhill all the way to the sea.

Dropping through the town (I ignored the route because I knew a slightly faster way and wanted a look around some of my childhood haunts), I joined the Cuckoo Trail on the Station Road Industrial Estate. I covered the next 3 miles – to my childhood home of Horam - in 8 minutes, peddling hard all the way.

Next up Hellingly, then Hailsham, where I again left the route for a very welcome food, shower and fresh-clothes (not to mention bike servicing) break at my Mum's house. She scoffed at my foolhardy lack of repair equipment, and helped me wash the bike down – the grit and mud from the day was starting to badly affect gear changes, so a thorough watering-can full and dowsing with 3-in-1 got it back to functioning normally.

Two miles on and bumpy bumpy bump. A flat tyre. 8 miles from the end, 2 miles from Polegate – the next station. As a younger man, I used to cycle the following 5 miles fairly regularly, so not too bothered about that, but I would like to complete the rest of the ride at some point. Otherwise it's unfinished business.

Comments

Equipment:

Make sure you have a spare tyre, crash helmet, pump (that fits your tyre valves!), lights, spare socks, padded shorts, rucksack, lots of drink and food, maps, lightweight waterproof, mobile phone, some ID and a donor card, enough money to eat and drink in a pub – and get a train home, ibuprofen, first aid kit, train times for various stations on the route. Know the weather forecast for the whole weekend over the whole route!

Maps:

East and West Sussex Councils have cycle maps online, the former has an excellent downloadable PDF which will guide you accurately for the whole county – I didn't have any problems in East Sussex at all.

I used Ordance Survey Landranger map for the area around the North Downs, but amazingly these were also not particularly accurate. As a very experienced walker and expedition leader – and used to the normally extremely high standard of these maps, I was very surprised by this.

Transport for London also have leaflets, free, which can be ordered online – these take about a week to arrive and have attractions and public transport on too. I can't recall looking for maps on the Surrey Country Council website, but despite searching extensively on Google, no single organisation had a digital map of the whole route.

I felt let down by the mapping in this respect, and the Sustrans website mapping online was quite rubbish (Needing live-web access all the time, the mini-application they have was frankly pretty unusable). I resented the idea of having to buy the book of the map for what looked like £10 online. I appreciate that Sustrans are trying to raise money for projects like these, but feel alienated by their insistance that to have a pleasant cycling experience I am held to ransom over having to buy a map when I have so many other outgoings for the weekend out already.

Summary:

A great experience, really enjoyed it and thoroughly surprised by the overall high standard of cycling routes and surfaces on which I rode. In hindsight – a wonderful thing - I was probably not properly prepared, so I give you the benefit of my experiences.

The fall out:

I was tired, in a way I'd not really experienced before, for about a week afterwards. Hands, shoulders, chest.. but strangely my legs felt pretty good. The sore bum went after two days and I just kept eating loads! I am hoping to attempt Brighton-London with Justin on one day in October 2010. I have also now bought a puncture repair kit, spare tyre (correct size!), lights, pump and a few other accessories.

Growing, pruning, eating, drinking

2009-11-16T10:28:00.000Z

I've just acquired a new role, as spokesman for Growing Redhill.

This is a small group of people who have been granted a landshare agreement with a local landowner in Merstham. It's attached to Sustainable Redhill, but with a little less fervour on the CND front and a little more action on the militant gardening front... ;)

The plan is eventually (in April) to plant approximately 100 vines on one area of the land, which covers a total of about 3 acres at my estimation. About 1 acre is suitable for veg or fruit trees and vines, the rest is trees or orchard already.

I'll put some pictures up from the weekend soon, at which I finished de-turfing and digging over my plot, and helped prune two apple trees.

Bald Eagles have excellent vision

2009-11-06T13:37:00.000Z

A while back I worked as a volunteer at a Bird of Prey (and Reptile) centre, part of a larger mini-theme park . As one of the physically larger volunteers (I am just over 6 foot 5 inches - just under 200cm tall), it was normally my job to handle the largest reptiles and snakes.

These included the pythons (the largest of which was 18ft long) and a Bald Eaglewhose name, appropriately, was Liberty. Far from being a small, shy, retiring bird, Liberty was - at one year old - a boistrous teenager.

With a wingspan greater than my height, she was a heavy bird with a long reach. This made holding her, on a particularly thick Eagle glove, quite a challenge. Eagle gloves are reinforced to deal with the larger Bird of Prey's tremendous power of talon grip, which can easily pierce skin and even break bones if they mean business.

The Eagle glove (example pictured under a Steller's Sea Eagle)like any falconry glove, also has a metal loop through which is tied the jesses (you can see hanging down) - leather tassles which loop around the birds' legs - to allow it some freedom of movement when being held but also to restrain it without imparting any physical damage. So the bird can fly away - as far as your arm will reach.

With a very large bird, prone to stretching and occasionally beating it's fantastic wings, your face is directly in the firing line, if, like most people, you hold the bird close to you. If you spot the bird is about to kick off, then you stretch your arm and hope not to get caught in the face. The problem with this is that thanks to the laws of physics, by creating a long lever, gravity (affecting your arm, with glove and bird attached) takes its toll and you can only stretch your arm for a few seconds at a time.

Wings beats aren't the only danger... the beak is also a potent weapon. Even if meant only in jest as a 'friendly nibble', one nip can mean a lost finger, a scar for life or lost eye.

Checklist: difficult to handle, heavy, powerful, sharp talons, sharp beak, incredible strength with dangerous feathers!

Two more things though, which makes them the master of their environment, even in captivity.
1. Exceptional eyesight
2. Problem solving intelligence

They can untie knots. And if they bite you once, they'll recognise that you're tasty from around half a mile away (yes, even pulling your face out of a crowd) and call out to you.

Apparently, the reason I was nipped (thankfully not particularly hard - there was blood but no scar) was because I wasn't wearing the 'company colours', and Liberty preferred long-sleeved shirts, dark maroon in colour.

Incredible animal though. Very beautiful. But very dangerous.

Danger is my middle name

2009-11-05T13:47:00.001Z

It is.

A long while back (more than 10 years) I wrote an expose of a company's slightly dodgy (aggressive management / negative comments about competitors to potential customers, etc) actions, detailing their activities and writing about the somewhat questionable history of some of their staff.

The company was owned by a chap with a fake title (Lord something or other), purchased through some mail order company thanks to his wife's large purse - she herself had just been divorced from a well known and popular radio DJ. Probably because she was very pretty, but ultimately a truly horrible person.

Anyway, so aside from the detailed (and robust) reporting, the article was taken personally by Lord such and such and his wife, threats ensued (email, telephone and 2nd hand verbal threats of legal action / violence) and I carried on regardless. I was looking out for both consumers and small businesses, after all - not to mention freedom of speech .

A number of people contacted me to say how happy they were to see this bully's actions come to light and by way of a thank you, chipped in to buy me a 'title'. A few pounds and a deed-poll name change later (it's far cheaper than buying a 'landed title' and I became Lord Goodey.

Except I didn't. No. The deed-poll people rang me up to confirm the details, so naturally I asked if it was too late to add an extra name. They said that it wasn't. So I said 'can you add in 'Danger'?

Two weeks later, the paperwork came through. Danger is my middle name. Or one of my middle names, at least.

addendum: I later saw my Doctor and asked for the records to be amended, handing him my slip of paper with the name details. 'Ooh', he said, 'Danger' (pronouncing it like 'banger') - 'That's an unusual name'.

Yahoo pipes and the way forward

2009-11-04T16:30:00.000Z

I think Yahoo pipes is fantastic. Being able to easily* combine feeds into one place is a fabulous proposition, if only I could understand the thing I'd be some kind of feed monster.
(* = actually not that easy, but I'm getting there slowly)

Everyone publishes feeds these days, from content houses like my lovely employers at the BBC, to their press office, to every other Tom Dick and Harry. But by far the most interesting use of feeds is in search.

Google offer an RSS feed of search topics (check the bottom of the pages for any search, even in news), and for up-to-the-minute news topics, it's far more in depth once you push multiple feeds through Yahoo pipes to aggregate tand organise them than the otherwise weighty and confusing mass of feeds that you'd otherwise have to browse through.

I'm fiddling with Pipes at the moment, trying to build feeds that will tell me about what people are saying about the BBC (as a former journalist for the BBC's staff paper, this is a tool which I think is fairly valuable). Of course you can adapt your sources and sorting mechanisms to do as you please, but critically it means that the information at your grasp is far more compact and faster to update.

This one, rendered as an RSS, combines stuff from Google News search, the BBC Press Office, BBC news article search and a few other press offices in the broadcasting arena, such as Ofcom.

Sharepoint demos

2009-11-04T16:04:00.002Z

I was at Microsoft in London today for a mini-conference on accessibility within MOSS or rather Sharepoint 2010. The speakers included a Microsoft bod called Tara whose job description, she told the hundred or so IT people present 'changed with the wind'. She didn't know the product and couldn't answer most of the questions asked by the delegates.

HiSoftware, whose products aim to make Sharepoint 2007 and 2010 better for those with access issues, were also present. They were slightly better, but still couldn't answer some basic questions. They seemed to know more about the Sharepoint product than the Microsoft presenter!

The latter's add-on functionality was moderately clever, allowing some content and accessibility guardianship with basic 'find/replace' search functionality on pages and documents in Sharepoint, but delegates were asking lots of basic questions - some which I asked and nobody could help with were:

Q: Does Sharepoint 2010 offer similar keyboard access to Microsoft Office? A - don't know.
Q: What are the server load implications for a latent find/replace function (to maintain content and accessibility standards without manual updating) in HiSoftware's 'content sheriff'? A - don't know
Q: Can the find/replace system look within non-text files? (since we know text find/replace is easy, what about the far harder to police image/brand processing). A -we're looking at that... dont know.

The 3 hours of PowerPoint was bad, but the fact that it was hosted by Microsoft simply wasn't good enough... there was no demo installation available and nobody offered any form of accessible demonstration (i.e. with a screen reader or magnifier) which infuriated several delegates, some of whom were JAWS users (including a colleague of mine, who is totally blind).

Far more interesting, to me at least, were the revelations within ARIA - the accessible web applications framework. It's very clever.

At a roundtable discussion about accessibility, to not actually make what you are showing accessible is pretty shameful.

On the up side, lunch was pretty good.

How to get behind the scenes

2009-10-20T13:04:00.002+01:00

I've just been asked to produce some content for the BBC's internal TV channel. Now I hasten to add that this is not a TV channel like you and I know it, but merely an internal comms tool.

Think not of the BBC as a broadcaster, and actually just an employer, and the need to ensure staff know what's going on in their place of work is clear. Crumbs, even Mercedes-Benz has two TV channels.. and they make cars! But they also have quite a significant budget for new programming. I won't.

There are regular events around the corporation which are watched by staff, training events and sometimes news stories - many of these are filmed for later online consumption anyway - by respective departments and sometimes - if news - by BBC News people, so centralising the content and sticking it on a huge loop actually incurs almost no cost. All this content is floating around somewhere, so it's simply a question of getting the right permissions from people and pressing flesh (getting friendly agreements from those responsible)

I will also be recycling a lot of the content which is already produced either for on-air trails, bumpers, idents or the slightly longer videos produced for public consumption on the video syndication websites - such as YouTube.

All in all, the pilot will try to achieve two things - 1) Improve how staff feel about working here - they do, after all, feel passionately about what the BBC should be doing, and; 2) Giving staff content a little in advance of the public, by perhaps a few hours or days, and letting them become a marketing tool on behalf of the BBC.

At present, it's a long and winding road from programme creation to communications, and staff are often the last to know.

I'm simplifying massively here, so please don't take this as gospel: After a programme idea is developed - sometimes with an audience brief developed by audience research people - it'll go to a commissioner, who may or may not 'buy' it. This is done in competition with independent production companies, so up to 50% of programming money is not actually spent internally - then the programme gets made. Then, during or after production, the marketeers get involved.

They plan the behind the scenes filming, publicity shots, and pick out salient nuggets the press might like. Then the comms people write the press packs, press releases and so on.. and then the press finds out. It's usually at this point that Ariel - the staff paper - gets involved.

So staff are often the last to find out about a production which may be happening in the very next office or studio. Hopefully I can cut a lot of that out and cheer up my miserable colleagues to boot :)

The pilot will launch on December 2, and will not be available to the public.. but I'll see what I can do about putting a few clips online. Should be fun!

Watch this space.

The day I nearly turned off the UK's TV network

2009-10-16T10:13:00.001+01:00

Reading that a broken cooling fan took down part of bbc.co.uk last night reminded me of another incident in which I would have achieved notoriety.

About five years ago, as a 'technology trainee' at the BBC, I was being given a tour of some of the corporation's technical facilities by the engineers and project managers I was working with. One of these tours was of the fledgling infrastructure for Freeview , the UK's digital terrestrial television transmission network.

I recall one moment, however, which had the tour guide gasping for air. Even as we walked into the room of whirring equipment in BBC TV Centre , he said - perhaps fatefully - "Don't touch anything, or it'll be my job!". He said it lightheartedly until he noticed that some of us were gently leaning against some of the unguarded switches towards the back of the informal tour party.

He nervously reiterated his earlier point: "No really, please don't touch anything - that switch there controls the whole transmission network". I looked to where he was pointing and saw a small metal switch, nothing big or impressive like you'd imagine in Dr Frankenstien's laboratory , just a small, dull switch .

I playfully lunged a finger at it, teasing the engineer.. felt a tickle in the back of my nose, and sneezed. My finger made contact with the switch next to it and to my horror - it clicked into the 'off' position.

"JESUS " he shouted, as he grabbed my shoulders, my heart thumping in my chest, terror gripping me. "If that had been the other switch, we'd all be seriously in the sh*t." I looked down... the left half of the panel was not connected to anything. It was, thankfully, a back-up.

He calmly, but forcefully, guided me out of the control room and quietly invited everyone else back out into the brightly lit corridor, locking the door behind him, resting his forehead - which by this stage had beads of sweat forming on its brow - on the reinforced glass panel of the security door.

They don't run tours for trainees in sensitive areas any more.

Stuff on the internet that's me

2009-10-09T16:29:00.001+01:00

I coined the term 'collabulary ', a mashup of collaborative and vocabulary. The idea works, but I really did it without meaning to be taken seriously. It was immediately taken seriously and appeared in 'Wired' magazine within 6 weeks and pops up regularly in ontology research papers.
I am not currently on Bebo or Facebook. But I am on Flickr (see bottom right) and use Hotmail - but not MSN. I am also on YouTube.
I do not own alexgoodey.com or work for a financial company (unlike some namesakes I found)
I did lots of stuff to do with Airsoft, for a good few years. Some might argue a few years too many.
I also abseiled (as described before) to street level from the roof of Brighton's Grand Hotel (you know, the one that the IRA blew up in the 1980s) for charity (Cancer Research UK ) while working for the NHS. I got a nice fleece. Which I lost.
I have not been to Japan.
I did help with planning for thePhoenician Ship Expedition .
I interviewed Erik Huggers , which was copied on to the BBC Internet blog. Nice chap.
I am in no way related to the very dead Jade Goody . The clue is in the spelling of her surname.

Late phone calls

2009-10-09T15:35:00.000+01:00

The phone rang at 10am the other night. My wife and I reacted angrily... 'Who is that?', we demanded of each other, as the phone continued to ring.

I picked up said phone.. a query about Saturdays' community gardening event, to which I have confirmed my own attendance at least three times already. I was polite, albeit blearily eyed, as my wife shouted 'And don't phone my house again' after my last few words of farewell but before the phone was replaced on the hook.

She was right. 10pm is too late for community gardening queries.

Blog title

2009-10-09T13:49:00.001+01:00

There are kitchens with soft seating areas in most buildings at the BBC, these are generally known as 'hubs' for informal chats, refreshments and sometimes mobile working, meetings, etc.

Some are better than others - with freshly ground coffee beans in some (at Worldwide, which is financially not reliant on the TV Licence Fee) and rather horrible instant coffee in others. The tea is mostly 'Imporient'... which must be cheap. Sometimes there are kettles, sometimes there are plumbed hot water dispensers - all very high tech. Most are now 'disposable free' - so no throw-away cups, though we still rely on dishwashers to clean the crockery.

The closer the hub is to a canteen or eatery (all of which are now independent of the BBC, albeit still largely on BBC premises), the worse the quality is.

And there are no free biscuits there.

There is occasionally food at meetings or functions.

Meetings, if catered (and there has to be a very good reason for them to be catered), require participants to hover over the food, which turns spontaneously into cardboard approximately 60 seconds after the cling-film is removed from the large platter on which food arrives.

Quality is fairly low. I prefer my packed lunch usually.

Heading off for a meeting at BBC Children's now, in the 'East Tower'. Odd place. Full of youth and creativity and small budgets and crumbling concrete.

History

2009-10-08T13:14:00.002+01:00

Past employers, in no particular order

Craigdallie Publishing (developed their first digital product)
LeClerc Dance Company (as a DJ, not a dancer!)
NHS (admin temp, while between other jobs)
East Sussex County Council (admin temp, while between other jobs)
Community Channel (interactive tv and web stuff)
Channel 4 (interactive tv stuff) - and worked on Big Brother (eek!)
Claudio von Planta - the guy who filmed Long Way Down, with whom I'm still mates (business development)
Eastbourne Hostpital Radio (Sports presenter. I don't even like watching sport)
Ecom communications (Voice over person. I was the voice of the Co-op bank - for blind people)

Past businesses I owned (1997-2003)

Budget Hire (event marquee hire - tagline 'You Collect and Erect' - ho hum) - Turned a profit in 12 months, really shook up competitors and changed their business aspirations offering extremely low overhead DIY hire of small (8mx4m) marquees for parties. Enjoyed it but not really worth continuing as the market changed so much thanks to what I'd done. Ah well!
Airsoft.org (online magazine and mail order company) - Gave me a second income for 3 years -SOLD with all assets to a US company.
Firefly Airsoft (wargames events) - enormous fun but early mornings (on Sundays) and hefty insurance liability meant that I lost interest in this when I sold Airsoft.org.
Jellypeople.com (dial-up internet service provider) - Profitable but petered out during broadband revolution and I wasn't willing to invest the money in maintaining momentum. BT's Wholesale prices at the time didn't offer enough margin for a small operation to compete without significant cash funds.

Weird life highlights, in no particular order

Meeting my wife on reality tv (BBC Three's How to Get Lucky) - she's amazing and we're about to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary.
Going to The Duchess premiere (and stepping on to the red carpet just in front of Keira Knightly ). The film itself was average, but that moment was odd - the crowd went mad. I thought they wanted me. I was wrong.
Being attacked by a Bald Eagle chick (I was working at a bird of prey centre one summer and was told afterwards that I wasn't wearing the right colour sweatshirt). Her name was 'Liberty'.
Getting caught in a tropical storm while standing at the top of a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka, overlooking a gardened forest clearing while two enormous fruit bats flew past in the roaring rain.
Being invited to Buckingham Palace and, weirdly, meeting Ronnie Corbett . He is short. I am not.
Having lunch with Isla Fisher - beautiful but quite dull and possibly not massivle bright. Sorry.
Meeting Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman at the Long Way Down launch - charismatic but quite dull people. Sorry (again).
Talking to Michael McIntyre (about two weeks ago) - very funny guy!
Abseiling off the roof of Brighton's Grand Hotel, for charity. So. Scary.
Working at the BBC. It can be enormously frustrating, but sometimes - it's the most inspiring and incredible place I've ever been.

Status update

2009-10-08T12:46:00.000+01:00

I am going to try to reemerge into reality, online, after a few years of sporadic presense - due to lack of time, I gave up Facebook and since I was only on Twitter 'professionally' think that a blog is fine for an occasional update.

My name is Alex Goodey and, broadly speaking, I am a new media / interactive platforms producer. I currently work at the BBC, where since June 2008, I have helped run the internal news service - Ariel online. Prior to that, I worked on several projects in either training, technology, interactive tv or communications roles since I joined in January 2006.

When my boss left Ariel online - to run the excellent Radio 4 Today website - I was left running Ariel online on my own... until Friday, when I began a new project.

This time, I will be trying to finish solving a problem I started on a few months ago but didn't have the time to finish to the level that was really required. Thankfully, I've now been given the time to do it - which is important, because it means ensuring that BBC staff with access issues can absorb the staff newspaper when it is published each week.