The Great Move South

To say the last couple of weeks were chaos would be an understatement. I've made the move south of the border. For only a few months mind you, but it's still a big move anyway.

South of the border is a big place. So it's probably appropriate to give you more information. It's Bath I'm in. Working for a small but well known company over the next three months.

Now, I've only been here less than a week but it is possible to give my first impressions of Bath. It's a historic place (but then where isn't?) with architechture if you're into it. The place is only a few miles from Bristol but seems to be fairly seperated.

I'm currently staying in university halls. Floor 8 at that! So I'll probably be a bit fitter by the end of the summer. Talking of which, I plan to make a few weekend trips out of the place during the summer break. I've been to Bristol before, however, last time I was in the place, the bus I was on crashed. So it's probably not a good move to return too quickly. But there are other options, I can explore the "west" or even venture east towards London.

Exams

Finally, they're over. For the next wee while anyway. So that means I'm making the final preperations to go to Bath for the summer (yes, I'm being serious). I managed to land one of those internship things, so it's a working summer. Down side is I'm not going to be presenting while down there (or at least as far as I can tell). But then it's the old trade off of money vs. fun. :P

Prep and Show Notes

It's pretty much a requirement in radio - you need to do some show prep. For one, you need to know what you're talking about otherwise it's going to be a very boring show. I may go a bit far though, major links with notes and almost two sides of A4 per hour once the show's airing. That's insanely prepared.

 

However, there is also an ongoing argument over going in/out of songs. The official line where I do shifts is "do NOT talk over songs that end". Simple rule that I've never broken, even before I took the role on. But how do I know how songs end? Some playout systems will tell you, but that's usually unreliable at best.

 

My approach - PFL is key. I listen to the start and end of the song.  I've then got little symbols I put on the show notes to indicate how the song starts / ends. As this may be useful to some other people, here is the key:

 

Song Outros

 Song fades out.

 Song ends.

 Song ends with a sustained note.

 

Song Starts

  Song has no intro.

  Song has an intro. A number in a circle will be used to indicate the intro length.

 

In addition to the into time in seconds, I usually mark the first thing I'll say over an intro with an asterisk (*). This is quite useful to prevent me overfilling that intro. Most time, I've only got one or two lines in the intro. It allows me to enjoy the music as well. :)

Weekend On Air and Calling Out The AA!

So, I'm currently covering drivetime as well as my usual weekend shows at work just now. That means 7 days a week on air for a few weeks. It's doable and should be a bit of fun. This weekend also saw the team taking a trip down to the local highland games.  It went well enough... if you ignore answering a phone leaving the mic up in the studio. "Hello, <name> speaking...". Rather entertaining hearing it on air actually.

 

As for the AA. Well, I lost my alarm remote for the car. I could get in with the key but it set the alarm off and imobilised the vehicle. The guy turned up, used the small key (I had no idea what it was for - I bought the car second hand) on the box under the steering column and the car came to life. Ah well, you learn something new every day.

Blog Moved, etc.

Well, after the incident involving a complete rebuild of Wired, I've decided to move the blog into my own home directory. It's Wordpress and should survived moving between machines better than movable type. All the old posts have been moved over.

 

This week has been a busy one. Not only have I been working on wired,  I've also been campaigning to become station manager at STAR (we still await results).

 

At work, we've got a new website as well. Check it out at http://www.perthfm.co.uk/  It's better than the old one and has some content. Talking of which, I got my photo taken and have submitted the required material for the "DJ Blog".

More Radio Fun

Yesterday, I took Digiplay on air for a spin. When it worked it was very good. Thankfully when it crashed, it didn't take the audio thread out with it. So I could wait until the end of the song and reset the system then.

I can see it being useful once stable and bedded in. Thankfully it wasn't obvious I was having issues when you listened to the station output.

Today saw me taking on two on-air shifts in one day. To say I was knackered by the end of it would be accurate. I'm not complaining, it was fun but maybe worth repeating with more sleep before the breakfast stint. :)

A Working Holiday

As per student tradition, my holiday was not actually a holiday. Working more hours over the holiday period has been the norm for the last 3 years.

However, the difference this year is I actually like my job. So, I'd better explain what I've been doing. Breakfast radio. It's a simple as that.

I've spent the last week or so covering for the usual presenter and basically having a lot of fun. It turns out weekdays are far more fast paced - 2 news bullitens per hour, traffic & travel as well as the usual "What's On" guide. Plus the golden hour eats up an hour of programming.

The period also saw myself bringing in the bells on air and being the only live show on Boxing Day. So to say I've done a lot of work is a little bit of an understatement. However, it has been far better than handling customer complaints and queues all day!

Interviews and Playout Systems

Yesterday saw me taking a 700 mile round trip for a job interview, all in one day. To say I was a little tired by the end of it is a bit of an understatement but it was far better than my previous trip, overnight, by train (you can imagine the pain, now multiply it a few times).

On the good news front, STAR's new playout system now has a music library. This means the music team can be trained for the system to go fully live and take over the current one.

It'll be a bit of a see how it goes on this one. We've now tried a few Linux based playout systems and if this is hopeless, we'll be paying out for a Windows licence and a mainstream playout system.

Talking of Windows based systems. Work on AllDay DJ 3 is well under way. I've started afresh, using NHibernate for the database stuff (it'll now work on a number of DBMS without screwing about AND I don't need to write all the boilerplate SQL) but still the same old for the audio library.

Progress wise, I've got the database part working, a track importer operational and the main player core operational, though without overlap / VT or soundcard playthrough support (think IRN if you're not seeing a reason to support this). The plan for supporting these is to edit the player object to take different special file names (e.g. "#PLAYTHROUGH 30" to indicate 30 seconds of playing through a soundcard input).

Change Of Job

That's it, I'm now mainly self employed. I am to start working as a freelance radio presenter [available for work in Fife and surrounding area :)] with a gig presenting Saturday Breakfast on Perth FM (in Perth).

Should be fun and certainly an interesting change from retail.

First Show on Commercial Radio

Well, I suppose I'd better tell you how it went. Not too badly by the sounds of it. I will tell you it's a rather strange experience getting up at 5am and enjoying it. :)

I even had my father taking a listen (the last time he did that, I'd just started on hospital radio). He was rather blown away by the whole thing.

However, it will remain to be seen if I get the position perminantly. If I do, I've got a cracking embarassing story to share with you then.

First Steps

Yesterday, I got a call rather out of the blue from Perth FM. The reason for the call: asking if I would do an on-air trial on Saturday morning.

My answer, of course was yes. So this Saturday (tomorrow) I'll be presenting Breakfast between 7am and 11am. I can only hope it all goes smoothly tomorrow.

Though, I was at the studio this afternoon. Mainly to get keys and obtain training on the equipment. It was also a great guide to how difficult it is to find the studio. Ah well, I know where it is now.

Anyhow, if you want to listen, it's 106.6FM in Perth or online at http://www.perthfm.co.uk/

Technical Blunders for the Win!

Sunday saw me starting my new job as out of hours staff for one of the UK's major electrical retailers. It's not a bad job really and there's no real thinking to it. However, I just received an email today from the recruitment team stating:

"I regret to inform you that we won't be progressing your application any further on this occasion."

WTF? I've just been employed and get told I will not be getting employed. Go figure!

Best Intentions

Working in customer services, my job consists of handling complaints from time to time. Some complaints are valid, need investigation and fixed. Others not so much.

There also exists a sub category of valid complaints. These are valid issues that need taken up and investigated, but are reported for the wrong reasons. Take the example of the allegation of staff at the fish counter not using gloves. That is something that will be taken up with the branch management. However, it was reported not because of *just* cross contamination (the reason I would have it investigated) but because this cross contamination may put vegetarians off eating the fish!!! I'm a bit lost by that one. Why would a vegetarian be eating fish (a meat)?

There are also the bizarre. I was reading on the internal notice boards system that a customer had complained about the refurbishment at one of the small, town centre stores. You would think it would be because of noise, disruption, works, etc. You'd be wrong. Turns out the food was being moved to different locations during the works and the customer insisted we hand out maps! This is for a store with about 3 isles in it.

And finally, a story was printed in the local press about hospital staff wearing uniforms on public transport. Not something they should really be doing. The paper quoted a person taking about contamination from the "unwashed masses". Bit full of yourself, eh? No wonder you asked to remain anonymous.

When Local Gets National

Call your local supermarket. Go on, I dare you. If it's a national chain, likely the phone will never be answered or somebody from another part of the country will answer. Sounds a bit odd? Not really.

My job currently involves answering phones on behalf of local stores. So if you call the Poole branch, a guy in Scotland may answer.

Sounds a bit daft really, until you think about it. Personal experience tells me retail outlets will rarely answer their own phones. Usually because most calls are pointless. Yeah, most calls are checking if we have a specific item in stock.

Ok... I'll check it for you. But really, did you need to call to check we had butter in stock? Get real, get over it and make the trip next time. I can see the point for big items (e.g. a BBQ set) but not for a loaf of bread.

This will probably give away who I work for but they are currently running an offer on wine. 25% off when you buy X amount. As I said before, I'll check if an item is in stock. However, I am not getting a small city centre store to keep their entire stock of a particular wine back for you. Remember, other people buy wine as well. Anyway, most of the smaller stores have "bulk buy" policies limiting you to 6 bottles, so you can't get 25. (WTF do you do with 25 bottles between 2 people anyway?).


Ok, I'll admit some issues will require me to speak to the store on your behalf (if I can get a hold of them that is...). For example, lost property. However, some issues can easily be handled by the call centre.

Take the example of being overcharged. Now, you certainly will not get any money back over the phone. So when I tell you that you will need to re-visit the store to get the money back, please don't argue that you need to speak to the store. I'll put you through but it will not get you anywhere.

Bad calls are part of the fun of the job. However, there are a staggering number of people who will refuse to speak to me and demand a direct number to the store. Unfortunately, you're out of luck there. Not only the 0845... numbers but the 01... and 02... numbers now get redirected to the call centre. We can then transfer you to an internal line but you cannot skip us.

Surprisingly, it's not only customers complaining about that one. Staff have had a good moan to me about it too.

Though the classic has to be job vacancy enquiries. You actually have to physically go to the store to check vacancies. Get over it, you will need to do that when you work there. I did it with previous retail jobs, and you will need to now. So when I tell you this, please don't get all huffy and demand personnel on the phone (some sneaky ones try it without mentioning they are enquiring about vacancies). I'm not allowed to and probably won't even try for you.

Thankfully, I haven't yet had too many issues with "you're not local". Though I had one guy with the cheek to say "I can't understand a word you're saying". All I said was "...<my employer> customer services, steelegbr speaking...". Not too many people happy with the Scottish accent. It also gets a few annoyed that Poole store is not answering, even though I can sort out most issues without involving them!

But with all these issues, is it worth it? Well it means the phones actually get answered and most issues never actually reach the store (most of them don't really need to). It also means we can look into stuff on your behalf and solve most problems within about 30 seconds.

Also, having just done a week of solid overtime in this call queue, most calls are not this bad. Most go well enough.

Though I have found another disadvantage to doing solid overtime. Working my way through the wired inbox after a week of not using it. A couple of hundred automated messages and almost 200 spam messages. It hurt working my way through them.

Fun and Games

I never told you, but I got a better contract at work. This means I work in the same place, do a slightly different job and get paid more. You can't complain about that. What's more, I am doing exactly the same job until I get training.

The only downside so far has been the pressure sale by the union to get me to join (being perminant staff now). I didn't fall for their sale but it was worse than trying to reject an extended warranty (being an ex-salesman I know how bad those are).

Interview

Well, it appears the telephone interview must have gone better than I thought as I was asked to attend an assessment day today. It was the usual stuff such as group exercises, interviews, typing tests, etc. As for the results... I'll hear back soon. I'll let you know then.

Premium Rate Numbers

Stories have broken in the past few days about ITV being fined and the BBC paying back money due to running premium rate scams numbers on TV programs. Although both of these broadcasters have been held responsible, I do feel the viewers do have to take some responsibility for calling these numbers in the first place. Nobody forced you to do it!

What's more, broadcasters don't even need to run competitions using these numbers. Yes, I can understand the economics of running such competitions but do you really need an 0845 number? Though a quick poll of local radio and TV stations show a number of them using 0845 numbers though thankfully a fair number do not. In the voluntary broadcasting projects I've been involved in, phone numbers given out on air usually start 01...

There are websites out there that will provide you with a mapping from premium rate to regular numbers. However, these do have a flip-side. Working at a call centre (not even answering calls!) I occasionally get calls asking for help from a department I'm not involved in. Why? The website SayNoTo0870.com have published some of the direct dial numbers for the desks in the office.

How's that bad I hear you ask. Well, direct dialled calls can't always be transferred to a charging queue. Also, don't bother asking for a direct dial number for the department you're after. We aren't told them. What's more, I'm not going to let you get away without being charged when I'm charged to call these numbers. Why should I pay and you not?

Anyway, rant over! (Hurrah!). I did promise yesterday to tell you how the phone interview went. Well... I was fobbed off at the end with "we'll contact you within a week...". The interviewer was not chuffed in me wasting their time after being told this by asking about the rest of the selection process.

Meetings

Well, yesterday saw the first meeting with me as Head of IT/Tech for STAR. Pulling in a record 3 attendees (thanks to Kieran and Adam for turning up) we did get a few problems solved.

 

One that was touched on by Adam in his blog was about live bands on STAR. Occassionally, we do allow this for small bands and the tech team provide assistance. However, once you get above 2 or 3 people, things start to go a bit wrong. We only have 4 microphones in the studio for one. Also, STAR's studio is very small.

 

Two suggestions were made to fix this: set a hard limit on the number of members for live groups or pre-record the session for playout later. I suppose if need be we could link up from another room using a porable mixer if we really needed to (the union has a rather large room directly opposite STAR's studio). Unfortunately, any action in this area has to be made by the comittee as it's a policy decision. I think I'll take my asbestos suit to the next meeting when I suggest restricting live performances.

 

Also, a number of things have been "inherited" from my predicesor. Usually these are good, e.g. all PC's running Mac (DJ / News web browser) or Linux (playout, servers, file storage, etc.). But there have been a few surprises. For example. we have a wooden rack currently holding just as portable sound recorder. We also have a flight case holding all of our non-portable compressors. I'll let you figure out the flaw in that one...

 

In other news... I'm due to get a telephone interview tomorrow for a better paid position at my work. I'll let you know how it goes...