@ajroach42@retro.social
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

ajroach42

@ajroach42@retro.social

Trying to reshape the future of television.

I write and build stuff.

Est. 1990. (He, Him, Etc.)

http://andrewroach.net

Original posts CC-BY-SA 4.0 - Share them, but link to the original.

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

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

I wrote a thing about computers: https://ajroach42.com/community-software-building-the-future-inside-the-rotting-husk-of-the-past/

I do that sometimes.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

I hate the bullshit I have to do to make email deliver-ability work in 2024, and it's entirely capitalism's fault.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

I was recently reminded of Shouting Into The Void ( https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/p/iyvrwKhgqDQSTsPFMEyof8 )

This was one of the first sitcoms we planned for NETV. The first episode was completed, and it's honestly better than I remembered it being. It's clumsy, and it has some rough points in it that speak to our inexperience we we produced it, but it has a couple of solid bits, and holds up reasonably well as a short film.

The trailer is a lot closer to what we had planned originally than what came out in the edit, but ... well, I think it's pretty good and I wanted to share it again.

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

I was less proud of this episode when we finished it. The gap between what I had originally planned and what we produced was pretty big, and it took way longer than I wanted to make.

But ... I mean, it's honestly a solid thing on its own.

Shortly after we finished it, a bunch of stuff got shaken up locally. My dayjob became significantly more demanding, several members of our crew ended up in a protracted conflict that still occasionally ripples across our community.

The production was derailed. Basically all momentum died.

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

But I'm not working a dayjob anymore. I'm spending more time than ever producing media.

I would very much like to figure out how we can revisit that world (and , but that's a different story in more ways than one.)

I think there's room for an ongoing story here with contributions from across our community and across the web.

I think that we now have the technical skills to pull off the things we had originally attempted to achieve.

And we should have some more funding coming in to NETV soon.

ajroach42,
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(of course, going forward I'd really love it if the show was a little more Family Friendly. I'll have to fight with Connor on that.)

ajroach42,
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Episode one was basically one gag, and it goes on too long for that.

The planned plot for e2 was abandoned when one of the co-writers and actors for that episode stopped working with us suddenly.

So it goes.

I think I'm going to revisit the originally planned story instead.

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

In its original iteration, Shouting Into The Void was intended to be a show about the isolation of working remotely (and living through Covid lockdowns)

The idea was to start from a similar premise as Red Dwarf, but somewhat less bleak.

(Instead of following the last human as he tries to survive and slowly goes mad in a far distant future, this series was intended to follow a scattered band of humans who had been tasked with building an intergalactic internet, but who were abandoned by their employers, and left to rot in space.

They can communicate with one another, and they have enough resources to survive for a while, but they know very little of what has happened to human civilization in the hundreds (thousands?) of years since they left home, and they are all spread too far apart to actually reach one another.

But they aren't entirely alone, they can still talk, they're just isolated.)

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

The other original idea for this show is that it's the ideal thing to shoot with an entirely distributed team.

Do it on green screens, or do it with "virtual backgrounds". The whole thing is just people talking to webcams, and then occasional exterior views and space flybys.

But then we did that first episode and I saw how effective a couple of other camera angles could be and ...

Well, I still want to do it more or less entirely distributed, and I still want it to mostly be people talking to webcams, but working in a second angle occasionally isn't going to hurt anything, and with the right set dressing it can really help.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

Towel Day was this past weekend.

This is a thing I wrote just before Towel Day 2019.

It opens with this disclaimer:

[It's sad, and deeply personal, and not at all about computers. Content Warnings for 9/11, cancer, death, eating disorders, economic strife, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.]

https://ajroach42.com/towel-day/

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

Hey! Did you know I sell VHS tapes?

That means I also buy VHS tapes.

Vintage tape sales have been steady, but I haven't had a chance to restock much lately because of all the things (see https://ajroach42.com/some-surprise-expenses/ )

So, I'm doing something a little unusual. I'm asking the fediverse for VHS tapes. See next post for details.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

Did a job application a while ago that asked me how I performed compared to the other students in my Highschool in multiple subjects.

Not how I performed, but specifically, how I performed in comparison to other students.

I went to high school two decades ago, and I've been working in the industry since then. What possible bearing could my relative performance in my English class two decades ago have on my current job performance?

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

@onepict no, but that's a fascinating post.

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

@gdinwiddie I guess.

But like...

Yeah, I graduated with honors. Yes I was near the top of my class. So what? I test well, that doesn't have any correlation on job performance, and I dropped out of college.

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

@onepict just finished reading this, and that sounds like an absolute nightmare.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

I wrote about this fun 80s throwback movie Galaxy Warriors for the Hemlock Bazaar blog.

https://www.hemlockbazaar.com/2024/05/28/cowabunga-video-product-spotlight-galaxy-warriors/

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

The fact that AI and Al are visually identical is a travesty.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

I just got my first email from star labs about starlite shipping.

The first one that wasn't a response to a question I asked them since I got my initial order confirmation in ... September, I think, of 23.

It says that my product will ship on Friday May 31st, probably, unless something goes wrong.

That's welcome news!

But it's also in blatant contradiction to the last update on their status page, which indicated that all the orders would ship in by May 12th.

and, again, this is the first communication they've initiated with me since my order confirmation.

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

@tuckerm I had one of their netbooks, and liked it well enough. I broke it, but by doing something that would have broken any laptop.

I never ran in to major problems with it, my only real issue with it has been communication and fulfillment.

That being said, I have two System 76 laptops that I use nearly every day, one of which I beat to absolute hell, and I've never had any real problems with either of them. What issues have you encountered?

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

@tuckerm :oof:

Wow, that's a lot.

I'm sorry to hear it.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

We use a plugin on https://hemlockbazaar.com to list our products in the google product search thing.

I hate it, but it does result in a few extra sales a month and it's not much effort for us to manage, so I deal.

Today I noticed that they'd taken issue with 53 of our products (out of many thousand) so I popped over to figure out what was up and...

Well, I'm at a loss.

Google has flagged 53 of our products as Sexual, let me show you some of the flagged products.

ernie, to random
@ernie@writing.exchange avatar

Let’s try writing about something unrelated to tech or Google. How about this particularly robust kind of plastic? https://tedium.co/2024/05/26/hdpe-plastics-history/

new @tedium (finally)

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

@ernie @tedium looking forward to reading this. I've decided HDPE is basically the only good plastic.

ajroach42, to random
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This weekend at the shop has, for the most part, felt like a normal weekend.

Year over year, we're doing about 3/4 the volume of sales and about half the dollar amount that we did over memorial day weekend last year, but it has been about average for a normal weekend last year.

That's ... I mean, still really worrying, but better than I feared.

ajroach42,
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

You can buy records, movies, or books from us at https://hemlockbazaar.com

You can buy coffee from us at https://gamountaincoffee.com

You can buy toys from us at https://mountaintowntoys.com

You can buy music we produced at https://analogrevolution.com or https://analogrevolution.bandcamp.com

Or you can ignore all that, and it won't hurt my feelings.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

Ernie Hudson is in the episode of the a-team.

I don't think I've ever seen him in anything other than Ghostbusters.

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