tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-337777752024-11-01T06:41:59.286-05:00it's kind of like a portfolio.obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-90910444106041586072017-04-19T17:39:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.952-05:00

DEPARTURE I am on a plane. It's been well over a decade since I've flown anywhere, almost 20 years since traveling for work. I'd never even heard of early check-in before yesterday (when an app on my phone when got really insistent about doing so). I went ahead and printed the boarding pass since a paper ticket sounded familiar, and then carried it around the airport. I loitered for while near

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-8023208267657836302016-06-13T10:09:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.910-05:00

One of the main purposes for this blog is for me to find a way to catalog some of my work. I tend to forget about projects pretty quickly after they're done, so the popular question, "What have you been working on recently?" is usually met with entirely too much vacant staring. This was a quick project to address a minor (but long-running) nuisance for me. I've been pushing it out here and there

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-73812496324252210432016-03-04T16:03:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.845-05:00

Well, it could become a panic. Being constantly disappointed by the horrific cost of RTLS (think indoor GPS) combined with a recent edict to better track time and attendance in my department has led to this glorious albatross: Now anyone can figure out what I'm (maybe) doing and (very generally) where I am while at the office! What's to keep me from tracking everyone doing everything,

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-66350580114492565712015-12-08T09:16:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.760-05:00

It bears mentioning that the purpose of this blog is actually to archive information about projects I do. You like it? FAB! But seriously, I tend to forget everything I do as soon as I'm done. This way I don't have to try to remember things on the spot. And now, the long story of the Monolith, WFYI's Broadcast Archive Portal. Chapter One. Nosy Beginnings. Several years ago, a thing started

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-39737242405331216742015-12-07T14:44:00.003-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.630-05:00

Other things actually led to the Traffic Cam Selfie project. Namely, wanting to pull up traffic cameras (dammit) to peek in on my daily commute before leaving the house. This was born of the knowledge that all of this data was floating around out there, and then wishing there was some way to benefit from it. (again, big thanks to INDOT for making this all open) First was a simple page that shows

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-30008104642795166672015-11-19T11:15:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.588-05:00

My father-in-law and I have, over the years, exchanged silly gifts. That's really all the lead-in there is. I actually started writing this thinking there'd be more to it than that, but no. Something silly, and if at all possible, entirely ridiculous. This year for his birthday he'll be getting a new television remote that also doubles as a subtle commentary about his age: This one's going

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-11871621667776388452015-09-24T09:51:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.391-05:00

You won't have to watch too much television before you stumble across some official barking, "Pull up the traffic cameras, dammit! We need to find this guy." Then dozens of people start banging on keyboards until an entire wall is filled with live traffic video from across the city. Part of what makes it nonsense is the fact that it really doesn't take so many people to dial up a video. You

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-19922412553255908512015-08-07T11:16:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:29:16.109-05:00

I've never told anyone this. Never will, either. So mum's the word, you. About six months ago I was jumping between some Cisco routers and a Windows XP FTP server. I had several terminals for each going for days. The Windows server was throwing errors when another system would try to delete a file by sending FTP commands directly. I got in and gave it a shot. No error, but the file remained. I

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-41121985177849938582015-08-03T20:39:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.673-05:00

Back in 2012 we got this thing from PBS with video in it. There was some ruckus made, but I didn't really care at the time. It got plugged in and turned on and there it sat. For the next few years I paid it no heed. The gist of it is as such: We're a PBS station, so we often enjoy playing PBS shows. Makes good sense. The shows we get from PBS? Those get sent via satellite. Satellite plays the

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-70046616713053353092015-03-31T16:57:00.002-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.802-05:00

Now this was a silly minihobby: A lovingly restored Kellogg/ITT 500 that I'd say was late 60's or very early 70's. My family made terrible fun of me as I sat and polished the housing over a weekend. I'm glad they'll never know just how long it took to make the dial card.

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-46714633596495417152015-03-27T14:31:00.002-05:002022-06-16T13:25:26.014-05:00

I made an art: I've been working on generating my own metadata for our local (television) programs based on closed captioning content. First round of scraping text from CC resulted in just over 2 million words (after a long, dreadful cleanup). I'm about 1/3 of the way through our programming. The database won't be ready for a while, so I crammed the raw text into one of those word-cloud

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-28828816455138632982015-02-23T16:48:00.001-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.545-05:00

Request: Is there a way for me to keep an eye on temperatures in the studios without a PC? It sounded so easy: HTML table set at 90% width = instant responsive web design. Never in all my life have I encountered a more secretive shadow-organization that the cult known as Honeywell. Except maybe Sonitrol. I understand Sonitrol's paranoia well enough (it's tough to find security

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-48869621148980561622015-02-23T16:17:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.716-05:00

A while back a smooth-talking salesman came and sold somebody around here some giant displays for our lobby: Shortly thereafter, I discovered my boss fiddling around with a control panel to shut the system down at the end of the day. He explained to me that he turned them on first thing in the morning and off again at night every single day. The process went like this: A small rack contains

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-20191754220072619972015-02-23T15:38:00.002-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.459-05:00

(ongoing) As staff turns over, I try to maintain the illusion for new hires that they're not inheriting garbage. People are very gross. One of my favorites, if only for the mystery of it: (hint: not a touchscreen)

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33777775.post-2329069927886337562015-02-13T12:21:00.000-05:002019-02-15T10:24:55.502-05:00

Maybe the best offline project of my career in nonsense: globes. Globemaking is not a hobby. It isn't even a real word. I got curious about it not too long ago and decided to give it a go. There's actually very little published about how to make globes, which (of course) made it irresistible. Globe #1: not shown. This was my introduction to gluing paper onto a ball. Not much to see. Globe #2:

obrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08498731882406343068noreply@blogger.com0