Randomness...

This evening was the first of the four candidates' question times, with video being recorded (I think?) for the first time. Tallie Kane (reviews editor), Jacob (news editor), Luke (web editor) and Hannah (Pure FM sec) came along and helped out, broadcasting the evening's events to literally billions* of listeners, and videoing the night's proceedings - hopefully the videos should be up on our YouTube stream soon (i.e. once I or another kind soul processes them).

The evening is always scary for the candidates, so a big pat on the back to the girls and guys for doing so well tonight. A few are going to need to be trained to talk louder into the microphone, but that's nothing a little adjustment of the mixing desk can't fix. Alternatively, the "sound engineer's limiting stick" can be used to similar effect... 

Tomorrow night we're doing something very similar over at Rees halls for their residents. I'm told space there is limited, so it's more an opportunity for residents to come down, wonder what the hell we're doing and ask the candidates some questions rather than a bring-all-your-supporters-along-and-make-lots-of-noise night. Not that I mind either way - all I have to do is sit behind a sound desk and try not to get into (any more) trouble!

Thursday and Friday night will see the elections candidates at the Union, so that should be a really good night and will see Pure FM "OBing" (broadcasting live) and the Pugwash News bods recording and interviewing. Ooh, that reminds me, we have loads of interviews from tonight we need to sort out, as well as the candidates' segments.

If only I had half a clue about video editing... Oh dear...!

In other news (ahem), the latest issue - issue 11 - of the newspaper arrived today. It's looking good, although the editorial/pre-press process still needs a little tweaking.

Newspaper "oopses" 

This also appears to be as good a place as any for me to publish some "oopses" from the newspaper... 

I'm guilty as charged of cocking up Jacob's article with the inaccurate 'Frewen Library wins "Best New Building"' headline - apparently the Frewen part is the old building - the new building is simply The University Library. Sorry Jacob!

We also have some images on the PWs front page of the paper credited to "some guy with a camera", and an article has been attributed to the vaguely-titled "Union Council Chair". My apologies to the two hard-working bods involved. The cause of the mistakes will be looked into, and a suitable scapegoat found and made an example of. Possibly...

* potentially, of course ;o)

As we gear up for a video-tastic Elections 2008, I've been polishing our YouTube homepage, which currently has a few videos on including the BBC coverage of the recent anti-fees lobby in Bitterne, and some breakdancing...

The design might get a little more tweaking as we get some feedback - hey, I'm no graphic designer by a long shot - but it's supposed to be all about the videos anyway ;o)

Check us out online at youtube.com/upsuportsmouth!

/al 

UPSU.net has a new toy, which (I hope) will make it a lot easier to add a video to your blog, and easier for us pixel geeks to add videos to news and web pages.

Find out more here, and to see a really bad impression of Richard Hammond advertising a boot sale (... or something ...).

/al 

After making a bit of a mess of trying to post this the first time round, here's a second attempt to make this work...

And don't worry kids - the dog was fine. Just a bit surprised, apparently... 

(Yes, I know that this is what happens when you let a munki loose on the controls, but it's working now, so :oP The only problem now is I have to go and write a "how to" guide so everyone can use this new toy - it's no use if it's not easy for everyone to use!)

/al - point 'n click...