@artandtechnic@digipres.club
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

artandtechnic

@artandtechnic@digipres.club

From post to production, infinity and beyond.

Video archaeologist for histories of Closed Captioning.
On-Set Digital Imaging Technician.
Owner of Art & Technic LLC.

ars sine scientia nihil est

formerly known as
@orangecomma / https://digipres.club/@artandtechnic
on the bird site

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

artandtechnic, to random
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

Got on one of the toll highways this afternoon to make my way back to the thrift store I’d discovered last weekend… and found myself immediately stuck in traffic. After noticing that there only seemed to be traffic in a single direction - southbound - it hit me: this is Urban Weekend (a.k.a. Urban Beach Week).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Beach_Week

The wikipedia seemingly hasn’t been updated since 2013, so it omits that weekend’s overwhelmingly violent, criminal history.

Thankfully, I wasn’t going that far.

artandtechnic,
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It took me about 90 minutes to make my way through the densely packed shelf of VHS tapes. The picture is from when I was finished with it, so it’s “more organized.”

This was a deeply unpleasant experience as the place is cramped, and difficult to move around in (in a dangerous kinda way). It was also hot, smelled of sewage from the toilet, and had flies indoors.

Ended up bringing only 12 tapes back with me; while I’d meant get 13, I’d only realized I’d forgotten one when I saw it in this pic.

artandtechnic,
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@foone Nope, but I’ll add it to the list! 😄

artandtechnic,
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@foone Oooh, added to the list! Next time I’m in California, I’ll need to make it a road trip.

I haven’t been in the Silicon Valley area since ’96 … which is probably too long. 😂

mediaarchaeologylab, to random
@mediaarchaeologylab@post.lurk.org avatar

there are very few things we will bend our "must be in working condition" rule for but... iykyk

artandtechnic,
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@mediaarchaeologylab Wow, those are some old discs.

Definitely spend some time playing the interactive Laserdisc game.

artandtechnic, to random
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There are few things that say ‘this is a cultural product of The South’ more than a promotional photograph of the women employed by a business, who are all wearing white blouses (or in more recent years, white polo shirts).

It’s one of those things that becomes weird, when you realize it’s something that only people in certain areas do… but it’s not clear why.

artandtechnic, to random
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

One of the VHS tapes that I purchased yesterday was selected entirely on the basis of its label, which claimed that it contained (bootlegged) recordings from 1977.

Since I’m perpetually on the look-out for recordings from that year, so that I can acquire samples of the Line 20 Nielsen SID signal, you could say it grabbed my attention. 😂

artandtechnic,
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Of the various recordings on the tape, only one appeared to have the Nielsen data signal, so I made a point of digitizing it: an excerpt of an NBC news/entertainment program, “The Land of Hype and Glory.”

UGA catalog listing (seems incomplete):
https://bmac.libs.uga.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/28218

artandtechnic,
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Although I ended up having to manually tune my SID decoder’s solution, it was able to decode the data without issue.

The following timestamp data originated from the very beginning of the recording.

artandtechnic,
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Once I had an authoritative calendar date from the SID data, I then proceeded to search contemporary newspapers for the program.

I soon discovered that 1977 was thewrongyear. 😂

Searching for the actual program name, I discovered that it actually aired in 1978 (see promo below).

artandtechnic,
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

According to the TV book, the program aired at 10 p.m. on January 10, 1978.

So, you might wonder, why does the SID data say that it was transmitted at 1:03 a.m. on January 11 ???

Well, that’s because the original videotape recording was made on the west-coast of the United States. Since the SID system only represents the current time in terms of the EASTERN time zone, if you adjust by three hours, you have the correct east coast broadcast time.

artandtechnic,
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@foone Yeah, super weird choice.

artandtechnic, to random
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Ahhh… when the future was just “1990 - 2010.”

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Getting movies in Pan & Scan is annoyingly hard. I'm just gonna have to buy a bunch of VHS tapes and digitize them, I guess.

Maybe some occasional early "full-screen" DVDs on ebay. Those'd be easier to rip.

artandtechnic, (edited )
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

@foone It definitely has become very, very hard in the last 2 years.

One of the 2 places that I could still reliably get commercial VHS tapes from, one liquidated all their tapes in Jan/Feb. 2023. The other place, which I’m way overdue on a return visit to, did have a large box ‘in the back’ full of them… but I’m not sure if even they still have them, now that a year+ has gone by.

Let us know if you have a want list. I digitized several P&S tapes for CC research, which I don’t need anymore.

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Properly photographing a 3.5" floppy disk for archival is annoyingly complicated. The label has THREE sides!

I've already built an automated system to take a picture of the front of a disk, but really I need to take THREE photos if I want to get the whole thing.

That means either three cameras or I need to rotate the disk 90° and then 180°, which is going to really stress the limits of my mechanical engineering skills.

artandtechnic,
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@foone Looks like it might be possible to put two - and possibly three - small cameras on the chute.

artandtechnic,
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@foone Nice!

artandtechnic,
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@foone Looking good!

artandtechnic, to random
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This is why we can’t have nice trolleys

artandtechnic,
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@petes_bread_eqn_xls Unfortunately, no. https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-dade/investigation-underway-after-man-fatally-struck-after-getting-off-trolley-in-miami/

artandtechnic, to random
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

WaPo: “The elections next door: Mexico’s cartels pick candidates, kill rivals”

‘More than two dozen candidates have been killed leading up to the June 2 vote. Hundreds more have dropped out of their races.’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/11/mexico-election-candidates-killed-violence/

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Here's a weird question: so Dynix made a text-based library catalog system that used Wyse terminals, and they shipped them with custom keyboards. They had four keys above the numpad: one of these keys was Start Over/New Search.

Does anyone remember having used these terminals, and recall what those other keys were?

artandtechnic, (edited )
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

@foone I think we might have had them at our regional library back in the 90s.

Next time I’m back there, I’ll have to see if any of the photos that they put up for their 40th anniversary have any shots of those systems.

artandtechnic, to random
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

WaPo: “National Archives and Ancestry team up to digitize millions of records”

‘More military and Native American records are to go online over five years.’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/05/09/national-archives-ancestry-digitize-records/

artandtechnic,
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

The article makes note of the National Archives’ new ‘Mass Digitization Center,’ which is something that more people should be aware of.

Details - and a video - can be found in the following press release:

https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/mass-digitization-center-college-park-opening

artandtechnic, to random
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

I’m going to make some coffee, and crack open the 1541 that I’d rediscovered at the beginning of the year, so I can make another set of measurements of the head resistance.

Words alone cannot express how exciting the prospect of getting the otherwise blown-out read heads to work again is. 🔥🧨🎆🎇

artandtechnic,
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

So, in my quest to actually be able to recover some family documents and recipes from the ‘80s, I’m left to scouring eBay for working 44-year-old drives.

Which, among other things I’m doing, isn’t exactly the most high priority task, but certainly one that occupies space in my mind… since waiting longer won’t make things easier.

Especially since I’m still debating making a cross-country trip to pick up a 5 1/2” drive from our storage unit there, just so I can get this done without a 1541.

artandtechnic,
@artandtechnic@digipres.club avatar

@foone That’s very kind of you, I appreciate that.

I’m still working on some local leads, but if those don’t work out, I’ll let you know. :)

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