The Business End

"So, what would you say... you do here?"

During the past 10 extremely busy days, I've been working to bring the Olympics from Beijing to your couch at home.  Since the actual process is long and complicated, I'll break it down in very simple terms:

1. video of the events (track and field, swimming, archery, etc) is shot at the venues (National Stadium, Aquatics Center, etc..) and sent to the CDT (where I work.)
   
2. the video is then sent within the IBC to all the Rights-Holding Broadcasters (NBC, BBC, etc.)
   
3. the RHBs package all the video with commentary and commercials, etc and send it to the satellite farm directly outside the IBC.
   
4. the complete programs are then uplinked to various satellites hovering in earth's orbit.
   
5. the video is then transmitted from the satellites to all the RHBs in their local countries and then distributed to local TV stations and then to your house (in a nutshell.)
   

viola!!! 

(my apologies to all the broadcast folks reading this...  I'm trying to explain it as simply as possible here :)

so, seeing as I've been here for nearly a month, I suppose it's fitting that I finally show you some pictures of where I'm spending the majority of my time.   The CDT.  CDT stands for Contribution, Distribution & Transmission (it's in the middle of the IBC.. I know, too many acronyms)...  anyone that actually wants me to explain any of this in further detail can see me after class.

away we go!:

in front of the DX (distribution)  monitors.  a bunch of small TV screens?  nope..  what you're looking at here are six 103-INCH flat-screen monitors!!!  I have outlined one in yellow to show the actual size and scale.  It takes at least 4 grown men to lift one of these bad boys...  imagine having one at home!

in front of the "smaller" monitors.  there are 36 of these in the room, each displaying 12-16 feeds at once.

at my desk.  I'm happy about all the green lines on the network monitoring screen (left).  green=good!

another shot of the 103" monsters.  top middle is displaying the opening ceremony.

Here I am posing quite geekishly in front of some of our Nimbra 680 nodes.  This is the gear responsible for safely transporting the video signal from the stadiums to the CDT, all via fiber optics.  My team and I are responsible for maintaining the health of the network, which consists of about 150 of these finely-tuned, mean, lean, Swedish-engineered machines.  A shout out to all my good friends at Net Insight, the company responsible for manufacturing these magnificent beasts.

well, that's all for now.  time for bed!

I'll try to keep the updates coming!

One Day Left!

A little more than 24 hours until the big day.  In case you didn't already know,the number 8 is considered extremely lucky in China.  So 8/8/2008 at 8:08:08pm is the perfect day and time in which to hold the opening ceremonies.  I happen to be one of the lucky ones working during that time as well.  yay!  

A little background (from Wikipedia):

Eight

• The word for "eight" (八，捌) in Chinese (Pinyin: bā) sounds similar to the word which means "prosper" or "wealth" (发 - short for "发财", Pinyin: fā). In regional dialects the words for "eight" and "fortune" are also similar, eg Cantonese "baat" and "faat".
  
• There is also a resemblance between two digits, "88", and the shuang xi ('double joy'), a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (xi, 'joy', 'happiness').
  
• Telephone number 8888-8888 was sold for USD$270,723 in Chengdu, China.
  
• The Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m.
  
• A man in Hangzhou offered to sell his license plate reading A88888 for 1.12 million yuan.
  
• Dragon Fish Industry in Singapore, a breeder of rare Asian Arowanas (which are "lucky fish" themselves, and, being a rare species, are required to be microchipped), makes sure to use numbers with plenty of eights in their microchip tag numbers, and appears to reserve particularly numbers especially rich in eights and sixes (e.g. 702088880006688) for particularly valuable specimens.
  

and so forth and so on...

So, before all the excitement and mayhem, I decided to take one last peaceful walk out on the Olympic Green two nights ago.  I was working midnight to 7am so it was the perfect time for me to go out, enjoy the calm and relatively cool atmosphere, and snap a bunch of pictures.

Here are a bunch of shots from that night.  I must say to was quite a surreal experience and I'm really glad I was able to get out of the office for a little while to explore the empty and alien world of the nighttime Beijing Oylmpic Green.

Enjoy: 

first, some shots of the Water Cube in all it's LED encrusted glory.  

a video:

now, a couple pictures I altered for maximum desktop background usage.  (for those non-savvy folks, left-click on the image to open the high resolution version, then right click on the image once it loads and select "set as desktop background")

the water cube:

the national stadium:

these "mini nests" line all the pathways to the stadium.  ain't they cute?!?

most of the Olympic Green is covered with these color-changing lighted footpaths.  very alien, indeed!

not a UFO coming to abduct me, just a cluster of lights.

That's all for now.  As promised, I will provide plenty of pictures of the IBC in a few days.  I was just waiting until all the feeds are up so you're not just looking at a bunch of blank screens.  how considerate am I?

until then...