Wow - I always maintained that I'd never extend VGA feeds over cat5 cable. I've tried maybe a dozen units over the last few years and they always seem adequate for a sys op to dive in and do five minutes on the server (creating an account etc.) but never good enough to drive monitors at hi-res that someone has to look at all day (in an edit suite for example). They all look smeary and soft.
Scene Double have a range that works splendidly - they use skew compensation (and in fact you get a whole host of LF and HF adjustments) to make the picture spot on - even at 1280x1024 over 50m of cable. I'm a believer! (I've just installed eight sets - they ain't cheap though - £899 a set).

I'm currently supervising the installation of a TV facility that I designed for the company I work for. Part of the job is making sure we have a proper three-phase technical mains distribution. Last Monday the guy came from EDC Meter Services to install the meter, thus allowing us to liven up the power supply. Jamie, my chief electrician had warned me that we'd need to "buy the guy a drink" if we wanted the meter installed on the first visit - I was horrified to think we'd have to bribe the chap just for him to do his job. Sure enough - when he arrived he span us a load of stories about how he'd forgotten this and didn't have that and it was only when Jamie offered him a back-hander that he started to cooperate. Britain is truly a third-world country!

Jaffacakes!

Last Christmas when I was working on Celebrity Big Brother the company's accountant warned us not to spend any of the cash float on 'fancy' biscuits "like those Jaffacakes I see the engineers eating!" - talk about red rag to a bull. I set up a webcam and encouraged everyone to only eat Jaffacakes and pile the empty boxes in front of the cam - Marcus, the voice of Big Brother kindly recorded us this tribute!
hear it here!
(many thanks to my chum Ian Staite for re-finding this mp3 - I'd lost it).

USB Digital Camera Cables from Lindy - one of my favourite suppliers of computer bits. I got an extra one for my Fuji FinePix here.

I'm a big fan of the Orange SPV smartphone - it even has MSN messenger built in - but for a messeging app that supports to various other protocols (a kinda hand-held Trillian!) try Agile Messenger,
Get it here.

This text culled from the sig on an email seen at work:
Being a Mac user is like being a Navy SEAL: a small, elite group of people with access to the most sophisticated technology in the world, who everyone calls on to get the really tough jobs done quickly and efficiently.
Talk about being deluded! Navy SEAL - performing seal me thinks!
Modest hardware with an operating system that is more unstable than Charles Manson!

Our IT manager, Ben Brown, has a unique style - hear a recent voicemail he left for me here.

Couple of handy documents relating to video and audio levels - I wrote these when I worked for Resolution so they are a bit specific to the machine rooms at their facilties. Most of the technical details are good though.

Audio for assistants.pdf
video for assistants.pdf