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There was a time, back in the day, when I thought I might end up running my own production company. I sort-of have, in a way, though not quite in the manner I might have expected. Life’s interesting like that.

Anyway, I had a name for the not-production company. It was based around a single visual gag: at the end of our productions, in that three-second slide where the company name flashes up, I was going to use a black frame with the company name emblazoned in big bold block capitals, in a pale-mid grey, with a hint of white outline and drop shadow.

The name would have been ‘Media Offline.’ And every time one of our shows went out, producers and editors right across the country would have caught a glimpse of the production caption, and in a sudden moment of panic they’d have thought, in unison, “Shit! Was that mine?”

‘Media Offline’ is a frame that Avid edit systems display when they can’t find the clip they’re supposed to play at that point. This usually means you’ve forgotten to turn a drive on, or the network’s on the fritz. But it also has an annoying habit of cropping up on a single shot in the timeline, just as you’re laying the final edit master back to tape.

But luckily, you were watching, caught it when it happened, noted the timecode, made very sure the editors saw it too, and left them to it while you wandered out for another coffee. Right?

I’ve never seen the Media Offline card actually go out on transmission, but it must have happened, and we all live in fear of it being on our show. Hence, using it as a production caption would be a very, very evil joke indeed.

I guess it’s unlikely to happen, now. But at least I can have a mousemat.

I missed this news from IBC this year: JVC were showing a prototype/design study/mockup of a new very small/light SD-card camcorder. Small, that is, but still with ‘proper’ XLR audio jacks. Think ‘Sony A1 without tape’. Very interesting indeed – particularly since it’s badged ‘ProHD’, which implies MPEG2/HDV streams, not MPEG4/AVCHD.

Thread at the Panasonic discussion forums; Video segment on MacVideo.

Also interesting: JVC have licensed SxS from Sony, for their high-end cameras. So broadcasters now either go Panasonic and P2, or Sony/JVC and SxS, with a range of cameras from either.

• Obama: 349
• McCain: 162
• Twitter: 538
• BBC sound engineering: -4096

I was very conscious, as I watched the BBC’s coverage, of three things. Firstly, that I should have gone to bed after Ohio declared. Secondly, that they were having horrific problems with audio, all through the night. Barely a link was survived without echo, mysterious noises off, one-way connections, a contributor or correspondent yanking their earpiece to avoid howl, microphones not being faded up or down correctly, or a remote cue being entirely missed.

Couple the all-pervasive audio problems with some distinctly squiffy video quality (some amazingly bad chromakey, very chunky compressed stuff in places, and some footage that was plainly transmitted in the wrong aspect ratio), and you have a bad night for the BBC technical department. Something of a rout, in fact.

The dodgy technical quality was mirrored, to some extent, in shaky production values. There were some excellent, fiery and insightful studio guests, and the BBC’s correspondents were, mostly, thoroughly professional (Katty Kay and Matt Frei, take a bow). However, the new touchscreen analysis battle room set they were trying out was, frankly, ill-conceived. Let’s not mention the ghastly sound effects and touch…touch…touch dammit touch screen, let’s rather point a scornful finger at the basic problem of using such devices on TV: the presenter spends most of their time with their back to camera. Gee, thanks, that’s lovely.

Couple with Dimbleby rather bizarrely moving the show along immediately there was any sniff of interesting discussion – usually to something banal, or with no audio feed – and the whole package was, frankly, pretty shaky.

Now, for the most part it wasn’t bad as such. But the show rarely rose to the heights we expect – nay, demand – of our national broadcaster.

Which brings me to the third thing of which I was critically conscious: this was, I believe, the last election night I will experience exclusively through ‘old’ media. I’d intended to lug my laptop into the lounge, but it was busy compressing video and my broadband was on the fritz anyway. So I didn’t.

And then I started to miss Twitter, and the US political blogs.

And then I got all nostalgic. I don’t remember even thinking about following the 2004 election online – I was BBC all the way. Now, suddenly, I’ve crossed whatever mental barrier was in place, and my starting assumption is that the BBC’s coverage is just another feed to place alongside all the others.

I realised, at that point, that I’m unlikely ever to watch election results the ‘old’ way, again. So I watched as much of US’08 as I could with a slightly forlorn sense of time being marked.

If it’s possible to be nostalgic for something while it’s happening, that was my frame of mind. Hence, I rather liked the technical goofs. They were part of that package, part of that way of doing things, part of how the world used to be.

Now we have fail whales and “500 Server Error” and spam storms. They’re just not the same.

Matt Webb likes plastic cows. I don’t know why. Neither does he. But if he receives 100 as gifts (specific kinds only), he’ll donate £500 to a choice of charities. Details here.

Yes, he really is this barking. Excellent.

Here are some clever maps of US voting. I remember admiring this guy’s work after the 2004 election, too, though I still find the red more visually-dominant than the blue, which skews my perception of the red/purple/blue renders.

More election maps collated by Kottke, here, who also links to some terrific photographs of Obama.

Chessboxing. Obviously.

Perhaps my favourite photo of the year. A gift of a scene – the sort of moment where you look at your camera and wonder if it’s going to see what you see, because it doesn’t seem plausible.

I’ve posted a bunch more pictures to Flickr, most taken (last month, admittedly) with the aforementioned crazy-wide lens. Enjoy.

I’m not sure what surprises me more: the Economist endorsing a US presidential candidate (Obama), or their use of the phrase ‘cack-handed’ in doing so:

“…the cack-handed way in which George Bush has prosecuted his war on terror has left America less feared by its enemies and less admired by its friends than it once was.”

But of course, one forgets that the Economist is a journal of vigour and style, of pragmatism and plain-speaking. It’s a terrific magazine; I frequently ponder switching my New Scientist subscription to it.

Anyway, the article’s worth reading for a blunt assessment of the challenges facing the next president. Bang on the money, I’d say.

Great writing.

Having raised an eyebrow yesterday about portraits, today I’ve:

• Asked someone for a mugshot, only to have him take the piss out of me. Apparently he reads this blog.
• Had a colleague who’s working on her website ask me if I have a portrait I can send.

There’s no escape, is there?