I worked on Saturday. Two Saturdays in a row! Last week it was a pre-admissions program for incoming students. Today it was a video program for current students producing short stories on local businesses and programs. Good turnout:
And outside, things are beginning to sprout!
… but after a rainy four-mile run I can definitively say it isn’t yet springtime:
Nor will it be for some time yet, I’m afraid.
Putting up some clean clothes, which Allie doesn’t like, because she likes a big pile and she sat there staring at me as this one got smaller and smaller:
So, of course, I left the last little bit on the bed for her, and then surrounded her in more clothes. This might sound unreasonable, but she stayed like that for a few hours last night. She was happy.
Here’s a monologue I recorded this morning:
And, finally, a program we produced today. Skip beyond the first little bit …
And now we’re on to Tuesday, where we should get up to about 60 degrees, but it still won’t be spring, though it should be.
Talked a little tackle football on the podcast today. There’s a bill pending in Sacramento, California that would ban a tackle version of the sport before high school. That’s the story sports researcher Jimmy Sanderson brought to us today. Pretty interesting stuff.
In the evening, we were in the television studio. The students were making news shows. And Zoe was giving us our weather forecast:
There were other things, but they were mostly as exciting as email. It was one of those days when you just spent most of your time hacking away at a thicket of emails and attachments and replies and drafts and they never seem to thin out. Sometimes the studio is easy to get to, other days you really must work at it.
IU / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off on They got away with it too, I’m no meddling kid 19 Feb 18
Indianapolis Star sports writer Zak Keefer came into the studio today and talked about a fine story about Jim Crow-era high school basketball. It started with a jumpshot, one of the first, in fact, and Keefer takes us through a bit of a great old story:
From the weekend, at the pre-admit event on campus:
She took that one, just before she went and talked about the sports media program and I went and talked about the television studio. And, later, at home I put on the mask and started sanding on a project:
I cut up some lumber on Friday night and then today I got to know the many pieces. Sometime soon I’ll try putting them all together and make something of it.
Hanging out with Allie, The Black Cat:
I found myself exploring in a mostly empty warehouse this evening:
I walked in, looking for a local company. I ran across three people, and none of them paid any attention to me — a confident stride and a neutral expression will get you into a lot of places — and a fourth person who was busily working on some sort of project and never noticed I was there.
It isn’t at all clear what they are doing there:
This was the point where, simultaneously remembering all of the episodes of Scooby Doo, I left the warehouse. I’ll find the folks I need by phone.
I can’t tell you what this is. If I told you what this is, as the spy movie joke-cliche goes, I’d have to kill you.
Which is, of course, ludicrous. If I told you what that is I would only have to take out a reduction of your salary, powers of the purse being very humbling things, of course.
Which is also rather silly. Oh, alright, it’s a remote control. You’d only guess it from the left and right, forward and back buttons. And maybe from the peeling label, which is no longer accurate. One presumes it once was a remote that lived in some room labeled 207. Why, in the new building (which is 111-years old, mind you) there isn’t even a room numbered 207. We have a 206 and a 208. And across the hall there’s a 206A and a 209, but no 207. It sounds very Harry Potteresque, I know.
Also, I’ve never seen the door to 206A opened. No idea what’s inside. Maybe that’s where they keep all of the extra remotes. Maybe it is is a closely guarded state secret.
Anyway, tomorrow I’ll be at work, because we’re doing a Saturday event for incoming students and it will be my job to stand around and point and occasionally talk to people or plug things in when there is a need for plugging in things. I will also hand this remote and a microphone to various people. It is decidedly less Potteresque, I know.
Today on the podcast, Carley Lanich, the editor-in-chief of the campus paper, joined me once more to talk about an investigative series being produced by The Indianapolis Star.
Lanich is a very recent winner of a Hearst Award. She won a $1,500 scholarship for her investigative story that examined the university’s sexual assault investigation process. Her’s was a four-parter, and it is was an impressive thing, year-long thing. She’s a sharp young woman on her way to big things, no doubt, and I’m always glad when she comes on my little program.
Anyway, off to your weekend. Mine starts sometime tomorrow afternoon. I hear they store them in Room 207.
One of the things I get to do is teach students how to use new equipment. And one of the areas that has become partly mine are the audio production booths. Can’t imagine why.
Anyway, WIUX, the campus radio station, which is very large, probably has a new group every other week that I get to show how to do this or that, and then we book them to do this or that in one of our production studios. I also get to tell them they can do these same things in their own studios, but that doesn’t offer a solution they like, somehow.
I get it, the production facilities on campus are nice. But if we knew what podcasts were back in my college radio days, I would have never let the booths in the station. Which, come to think of it, I spent an awful lot of time in those production booths anyway. And most of the gear here is much, much nicer than what I learned on. Part of that is the endless march of technology, and also the esteem of things. Indiana has put so much into the student experience and their production opportunities in The Media School that most places just can’t measure up. And I get to work there and learn all of the gadgets and play with them and teach them to others. So I get it. We have some super nice setups.
I was in one of those booths today with five students and I ended up having to pass out a few business cards. So I reached into my pocket and pulled out my business card holder:
One of the guys said “Whoever made that for you is a true friend.”
Well, I made it myself, so here’s to hoping!
It was a weekend project. I made three of them one evening. Different cuts, different stain patterns, and I rotate through them. Everyone thinks they are great, but they are a bit on the thick side and they could probably use a better finish. But they keep my cards from being bent.
I might try some more out of different materials, because there will, hopefully, be another evening that needs a project.
Today’s podcast was about a column about men’s basketball in Colorado. The program at Colorado State is a mess and a writer there has an interesting idea of how to get things cleaned up. At first, the story sounds exactly just like that. But the more you get into it, the more interesting it becomes, and the more interest this episode generated.
The analytics tell me that this little podcast is now truly global. Australia, Canada and Georgia (the country in Eurasia, not the 13th state) all registered downloads this week. I don’t know what the people in Georgia like the most about the program so far, but if they’ve found their way here, I’d just like to say this: I’ve listened to your anthem, Tavisupleba, and it is quite stirring.
If you haven’t had enough talking yet, here’s a show my sports crew produced for last weekend. It’s still steamy and the takes are still hot, as they say, so check it out:
What? That’s not how they say that? Maybe it should be. Have you thought of that?
