Like the singing of the National Anthem before a sporting event, every day of taping began with Helge, our technical director, playing the 1980s song by German pop-rocker Nena. We all stand with our hands over our hearts for the intro to the song and then dance it out for a few brief moments before starting recording for the day. Notice the fist-bump between Dennis, our director, and Helge at the end.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
That's a Wrap!
We just finished taping our final show for Zain Africa Challenge 2010.
There's still some maintanance work to be done to shut this all down, and I don't leave here until Thursday evening, but we got 15 shows in the can. Another great season, I hope.
There's still some maintanance work to be done to shut this all down, and I don't leave here until Thursday evening, but we got 15 shows in the can. Another great season, I hope.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Almost done!
It's 5 in the afternoon here in Kampala and we just finished taping our 4th show of the day, our 12th of 15. Tomorrow we tape the 2 semi-final matches and the final game and crown a new champion. I know you're all curious about which teams made it to the final 4, but I can't tell you until I've collected on the bets I will be placing on this competition in Vegas.
Yesterday, during taping we noticed that some of the questions were displayed oddly on television. We take great pains to make sure that everything looks perfect. Two years ago I built a small database to which we export the question material on screens I designed to display the text in the same font, the same size and in the same size box as on TV. After I re-import the formatted questions I will display them for TV with one more small modification. I do a complicated calculation to determine how many lines of text will display. This takes into account the font that I am using, its size and the length of the text. Then I use that information to add space to the top of the text so that it hangs centered vertically within the box on my screen. This has worked perfectly for the last 2 years, without a glitch.
This year we had a glitch. Maybe it's because we changed the font in which we display the questions to a font that doesn't properly report it's height and width to Windows. Maybe it's a glitch on the over-powered computer I use to run the show. Maybe the Ugandan spirits are haunting me. No, I think it's the font thing.
After spending 3 hours pouring through my code last night and found a place where if I made a small change it would fix those questions that were being improperly displayed, but then it messed up others that had displayed properly before my code change. After banging my head against this for several hours I finally came to the realization that an elegant solution might not be possible, so I designed an inelegant one. I created a form to display the data after my being vertically centered so that I could find those questions with display problems and fix them by editing the text to include a hard carriage-return at the end of each line.
In this business you get noticed for results, not style. I'm not happy with my kludgy fix, but it will save our director and producer a lot of work in the editing bay.
I'll be finished working tomorrow afternoon, but not on my way home yet. We will finish taping at around 4 PM on Tuesday, but my flight home doesn't leave until 6 PM on Thursday, so I'll have almost 2 fun-filled days hanging out here at the fabulous Imperial Royale Hotel, Kampala. There's not much to see within walking distance and I've been here enough times that I don't need to buy any more souvenirs, so I'll just hang around the hotel and watch TV. I hope there's a cricket match on . . .
Yesterday, during taping we noticed that some of the questions were displayed oddly on television. We take great pains to make sure that everything looks perfect. Two years ago I built a small database to which we export the question material on screens I designed to display the text in the same font, the same size and in the same size box as on TV. After I re-import the formatted questions I will display them for TV with one more small modification. I do a complicated calculation to determine how many lines of text will display. This takes into account the font that I am using, its size and the length of the text. Then I use that information to add space to the top of the text so that it hangs centered vertically within the box on my screen. This has worked perfectly for the last 2 years, without a glitch.
This year we had a glitch. Maybe it's because we changed the font in which we display the questions to a font that doesn't properly report it's height and width to Windows. Maybe it's a glitch on the over-powered computer I use to run the show. Maybe the Ugandan spirits are haunting me. No, I think it's the font thing.
After spending 3 hours pouring through my code last night and found a place where if I made a small change it would fix those questions that were being improperly displayed, but then it messed up others that had displayed properly before my code change. After banging my head against this for several hours I finally came to the realization that an elegant solution might not be possible, so I designed an inelegant one. I created a form to display the data after my being vertically centered so that I could find those questions with display problems and fix them by editing the text to include a hard carriage-return at the end of each line.
In this business you get noticed for results, not style. I'm not happy with my kludgy fix, but it will save our director and producer a lot of work in the editing bay.
I'll be finished working tomorrow afternoon, but not on my way home yet. We will finish taping at around 4 PM on Tuesday, but my flight home doesn't leave until 6 PM on Thursday, so I'll have almost 2 fun-filled days hanging out here at the fabulous Imperial Royale Hotel, Kampala. There's not much to see within walking distance and I've been here enough times that I don't need to buy any more souvenirs, so I'll just hang around the hotel and watch TV. I hope there's a cricket match on . . .
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