Work

It's suddenly a busy time at work, and I have got some interesting and varied things on. 

I am doing a website for a fire protection company - sprinklers are their main thing. While I was meeting with the GM he took a call from one of his blokes out in the field; a solid brass fitting had somehow broken. "See if you can sweat a brass nipple on to it. Yeah. Nah. Yeah, its only an outlet, we are only after the orifice".

I am also doing some animations and graphics for an online education video about brain pathology in dementia. One of the top men of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre is an old friend of mine, so it was a real pleasure to go and talk business with him, then get 20 minutes just shooting the breeze. His office is at the top of one of Hobart's architectural landmarks; unfortunately the building doesn't work that well in some respects . The offices with windows get so hot that everyone has just been issued with electric fans. 

While there I stuck my nose into the office of friend-of-the-blog Matthew K who works down the hall from James. I know these guys are super-smart and well regarded in their field but I tend to take it for granted. James said quietly at one stage "Yeah Matt is pretty much the go-to man in Australia now on brain anatomy".

James has been filmed talking off the cuff about dementia - he has a terrific command of his subject, I guess naturally since he runs an institute devoted to it. As there was no script I felt like I had to transcribe what he said to have a basis for editing and matching graphics to his comments. 

As its over 20 minutes worth, I googled how to convert speech-to-text; not that hard if you are speaking into the microphone on your computer, but a bit fiddly to organise if the source is a recording. But I did it, and the result (although it needed cleaning up) was outstanding. Without any training in understanding James' voice, it correctly transcribed "neurodegenerative", "neurofibrillary", "cytoskeleton", and "proteinaceous". "Symptomology" it got right most of the time but in a few spots that came up as "supermodel".

I am also filling in for a friend who works as a designer at Tourism Tasmania for two weeks. They will throw work to me that can't wait for her return - although we are two and a half days  in, and nothing has come yet. I am sure she knocked herself out to get ahead of the curve before she left; and everyone will probably prefer to have the Key Woman work on their stuff if possible.

Another job I just finished was logos, banners and packaging for Cashew Creamery - they make non-dairy ice cream from cashews.

I just realised I haven't mentioned the Tasmania Advertising and Design Awards that I attended in February - the House of Fudge packaging was a finalist in the Print Graphics category. I'll blog that whole experience separately; I was actually also on the jury.

OK, time to go and animate some brains.