Haunted Happenings Grand Parade Tonight!

It’s our yearly ritual, and mine, the 2010 Haunted Happenings Parade.  Once again, I will be working at SATV to broadcast and webcast the parade.  I will be posting pictures as we set up for the day.

Starting a 4th year of blogging

I have recently completed 3 years of blogging.  By tradition, I have a picture of my mom, Jeannette.  This year, I found pictures of her cat Frisky, her most recent and last pet.  She is minding Mom’s motorized scooter;  Scooters like hers are now commonplace but this was really something in her day that helped her independence.

Another Frisky picture:

She’s with me, her “daddy”.  I could not leave the house without her at my ankles. (“DADDY GOES!  DO NOT WANT!”) When I did leave, she would tell Mom endlessly and at length in many words, “PAPA GONE!”  (And then, coming home, she would see me—and totally ignore me!  “NOT TALKING!  YOU WENT OUT”)  It’s been 16 years and I miss them both.

My past year’s blogging saw an old Salem blogging duo go away, and a new one emerge.  A dear friend of ours passed on. I saw a lot of rancor and strife, no small amount from myself.

We saw the design for a new Salem Depot go forward, and I also saw blogging burnout.  I’m still fighting that—if it were not for SATV and my work on the Commission I would be lost..

My apartment was rearranged when a new elevator was built in my building this past year.  It still isn’t open yet but hopefully soon…

Last year I missed the groundbreaking ceremony for the Salem Jail.  The ribboncutting was yesterday.  I missed that too.  But I did go to the open house!

To another year of blogging!

SATV’s Annual Meeting for 2010.

Pictures from last week’s Annual Meeting

Bypass Road: Now the Veteran’s Riverway

Finally, Salem’s Last Road has a name.  Last week, the City Council voted to call it “Veteran’s Riverway”.  It’s an appropriate name at that!

Not appropriate though, is the nearly two year delay to decide on a name.  I thought it should be called the “Sosnowski Byway” because my councilor dragged his heels for a very long time before taking action on this.

It seems like a small matter when there are much more important matters facing the city, but naming a road should not take as long as it did.  If the council can’t name it in an hour of discussion in what should be an uncontroversial subject, then I have no respect for that body.

I’ve always known Mike didn’t approve of the road.  This wasn’t a problem;  I didn’t approve either.  And my friend Leo Jodoin is constantly harping on that, “It’s not a bypass road!”

I suspected Mike snubbed the mayor when she dedicated the road and he didn’t show up.  That didn’t reflect well on him. 

Neither does this matter.

At least the courthouse is already named after Mike Ruane.  When I and my colleagues on the Commission attend the opening of the new Salem Depot, I’m not expecting him to be there. 

It’s OK, Mike.  Just don’t blame the mayor.

Comments on the Salem Depot Project

These are comments I’ve sent to Thomas Rovero of the MBTA, and the mayor’s office on the proposed Salem Depot garage. There will be another public meeting sometime in December.

From: David Moisan, Salem Commission on Disabilities

To Thomas Rovero, MBTA, Mayor Kim Driscoll, chief-of-staff Jason Silva:

Dear Mr. Rovero, Mrs. Driscoll, Mr. Silva:

I’ve attended the public design meeting on the new Salem Depot garage and have read the report posted on the MBTA web site. I believe it is a good starting point and a very welcome development.

There are, though, some concerns I have with the design. The word that comes most to mind is isolation. There are elements of the design that serve to cut off train and bus riders from downtown.

First, I’ll grant that a good part of the isolation comes from the original design of the traffic rotary on Bridge St., and the original use of the Salem Depot area as a maintenance area, interlocking tower and track junction by the old Boston and Maine railroad. It had been occupied for this purpose by the B&M for many, many years.

At one point in the past, the pedestrian passage to Salem Depot (when it moved to Bridge St.) was fenced off from traffic. But it was still a very dangerous place to walk, and very unfriendly in any event. Not what we want to represent Salem to train travelers.

Any design would have to work hard to overcome these problems.

But some things that were proposed at the meeting just accentuate this isolation.

The existing train platform, and the proposed half-full height platform is one example. Wheelchair or cane users, and on the weekends, all users, must go to the very end of the platform.

From the end of that platform looking north, you can see the Carlton School on Bridge St., a full mile away.

It actually seems closer to the platform than downtown!

I remember when the depot moved to Bridge St., trains stopped much closer to the tunnel portal. A few years later due to ADA requirements, the mini-high was built and trains moved further up north.

I support the ADA. The ADA is not the problem. But I didn’t like and still don’t like going what seems like miles from the Bridge St. entrance to get a train.

I’ve read the report on the train platform. I understand the great difficulties involved in making a high-level curved platform accessible. But I must agree with my chairman on the Commission on Disabilities, Jack Harris, and push as hard as I can for a full height platform that can be reached a short distance from the garage.

My second point is the bus berths. I ride buses from Salem Depot frequently. For I and many other people downtown, Salem Depot is the closest place to get a departing bus, since most of the bus routes skirt downtown when they leave the station and there are no closer stops.

The preferred design alternative has the bus berths on the north side of the station, with the garage between the buses and the Bridge St. entrance.

As with the train platforms, this is almost as far as Carlton School! Perhaps when I need to take the 456 I should just walk up Bridge St. to the school.

I much prefer having the bus berths along one side of the garage, or even two, as it is in one alternative presented in the report.

And they must be sheltered or at least have canopies like the current bus shelters. Some bus routes run at 80 minute or even 90 minute headways so riders will want to use the train’s waiting room; in dead of winter with kids in tow they’ll need to.

On the waiting area, I want to see it on the platform side of the station, in sight of both the train tracks and the bus berths. People will have an eye out for their train or their bus.

There must be digital signage, and automated announcements. I’m aware the T is phasing in a new generation system; Salem must have it. We must be able to sit in the waiting area and hear , and see “The next train to…Newburyport…is now approaching”, similar to rapid transit announcements. Within the lifespan of the garage, there’ll be a similar technology for bus passengers so they’ll know how long until the next 455 comes. The design of the station must allow for these improvements.

My last comment is for the City of Salem.

As all of us know, the Courthouse project, and many other projects, are changing downtown.

The city is starting at a disadvantage; as noted in my opening paragraphs, the area of Bridge and Washington Sts. has never been made for pedestrians. Visitors, jurors and court personnel alike will use that intersection constantly.

The City must do what MassHighway has done for the recent Highland Ave. crossing reconstruction and put modern audible talking pedestrian signals at Bridge and Washington.

There’ll probably never be a footbridge or a tunnel in that area in my lifetime; neither are practical.

The city, and the MBTA will have to work very hard in the coming months to make this version of Salem Depot welcoming to commuters and visitors. They need to make Salem Depot part of Salem’s downtown once again, as it hasn’t been for over 50 years.

The design is a very good start. I’m looking forward to future meetings to make this the best it can be. I’ll probably be one of the first to go down the ramp into the new station when it opens.

Make me proud of it, and proud of my city.

Testimony on Salem’s Sunshine Ordinance

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Jerry Ryan asked me to describe what, if anything, SATV has done to bring City Council meetings online.  My response is in the video.

SATV now over fiber!

 

Yesterday, the Comcast techs finished their work.  Our three channels are now being broadcast over fiber.  It's more like 2005-era technology instead of the very latest but we're not complaining, it was the best we could get.  We have fiber links from City Hall, Salem High School, the School Committee room at the Collins, and Bowditch Middle School.  Our old coax net also went to the Hawthorne Hotel, Salem State College and several other places but we weren't able to get Comcast to recable those.

 

Last summer, the city council held a hearing on the poor quality of the video feeds from the School Committee in particular.   The spring before, they had installed a "new" modulator at our facility.  "New" is in quotes for a reason.  The techs didn't have a manual for the equipment and Sal asked me to find it online;  I'm always being asked to do that since I keep track of all our manuals on our Sharepoint site.

 

I found the manual on the Motorola site and learned that the equipment, new to us, was old to Motorola--it was end-of-lifed!  It could have caught fire tomorrow and Moto wouldn't have fixed it.

 

The council, and us at SATV who were present, gave the Comcast business rep a prolonged ass-chewing.

 

A year later, we have our fiber.  I wish our WAN and phones were fiber, too, but that's another day.

 

For now, my friend Leo Jodoin will be very happy!

[Cross posted to David Moisan's Blog.]

Images of SATV’s Annual Meeting 2009

SATV Cablecast renovation progress

We are moving along on our latest renovation project at SATV. You can follow our progress so far on my other blog. We should be back to normal programming by the end of this week.

Future of SATV's Audible Bulletin Board

I want to address a matter that came up at the end of February's Salem Commission on Disabilities meeting yesterday, concerning SATV and its audible bulletin board service.

SATV, like most other public access facilities, runs text announcements of upcoming community events. There's been a problem: These text announcements do not serve those who are blind or visually impaired.

For the past several years, SATV has had volunteers read announcements from a videotaped copy of the bulletin board as run. Their audio is then laid onto the tape, and this tape is run over the air just as a regular program.

Andy LaPointe, of our Commission, has been getting our volunteers. He has no trouble with this, and it's not uncommon for 10 people to show up at SATV after he goes on his radio show, looking to help. I and SATV like and appreciate this. Many volunteers have enjoyed reading announcements.

Unfortunately, while it's easy to have volunteers read announcements, our program coordinator, Dave Gauthier, had to do a lot of up-front manual work to get the audible bulletin board on the air. He has to record the existing bulletin board off the air on all three channels, import it into one of our Macs, cut it, and then run it to a third machine to do the voice overs.

Over the long term, this kind of manual effort is not doable. It didn't help that last December, the machine that runs Channel 3's announcements died and had to be replaced.

Dave, and SATV, cannot continue the service as it is right now.

I realize Andy and many other visually impaired people depend on our bulletin board. I appreciate all the support I and SATV have gotten over the years for this.

Unfortunately, with only three full time employees, SATV often has to make difficult decisions about what we can and cannot do for our community.

Oftentimes, the Commission on Disabilities has on the one hand been accused of wanting things from the community that are not realistic, but on the other hand is accused of being insensitive to the needs of the disabled. This is the nature of our board, and I would not have taken the oath if I didn't know the balance we have to take.

As a commissioner--and an experienced IT and video professional--I know well the challenges involved in making our programming accessible to people with disabilities. Ten years ago, I produced a promo for the Independent Living Center of the North Shore and Cape Ann and sent it off to a facility in Maine to be closed-captioned. Very few public-access programs are captioned for the hearing impaired; it's simply too much of a burden in time and money for the average producer or even the average access facility.

And I speak as one who wants to do this! SATV isn't required by the ADA to provide accommodations for the visually and hearing impaired. But we want to do this! SATV has hosted the Commission since 1994, and is very aware of the needs of the disabled community in Salem.

It is always frustrating as a technical professional to realize that the things we want to do and the things we can do are often not the same. I had hoped to develop an automated process to "read" announcements and assemble a voice track to go out over the air, but it is not possible with the equipment we have.

SATV is always hoping, though. We are upgrading our cablecast equipment this summer and it might yet have the features we need. It is a talking point I will use when I speak with our vendor.

In the meantime, we've been airing TIC Network audio for the visually impaired over Channel 3, and I'm glad to say that that will continue for the forseeable future.

UPDATE: We are talking with the vendor of our cablecast system to see what they can do for us. We'll either have a technological fix (most likely) or we'll look at our process again and see if we can't improve it.

2007 Election Night Photos

Pictures from Election Night at SATV

Our director, Dave Gauthier.

The Election 2007 hosts, just before airtime. Mike Allen, standing, Bill Burns, George Ahmed, Mike Sosnowski and Claudia Chuber.

My crew position at the graphics console.

Claudia Chuber's excellent spreadsheet.

Webcasts and SATV

[SATV studios, before the Haunted Happenings Parade]

SATV gets a mention in a Boston Globe article in the North local section of Sunday's paper:

Salem Access Television is currently offering some limited on-demand programming on its website, said its executive director, Sal Russo.

The organization plans to expand that feature next year, when it has completed computerizing its cablecast playback operation, and to eventually offer Web streaming, he said.

"The initial reason to do it is to make your programming more available to your community members who cannot watch it when it's on the channels," because of their schedules, Russo said. "But the ultimate benefit is that anyone can see it once it's available on the Web, which is a good thing."

I've written about our cablecast operation before. We've done experiments with live streaming, the most recent being the Haunted Happenings parade, but we've never been able to offer this full-time.

There is a lot of material we could air over the web if we had the means to do so. Right now, we're using Ustream.tv for live programming, after looking all over for a streaming provider we could afford. I want to put the Salem Commission on Disabliities meetings online and am trying to move things forward with the city on that goal.

We have Windows Media Services on our SBS box. It works great. We just don't have the bandwidth to self-host our operations. (Per usual best practices, our web site is hosted at a third party.)

For us, and most other access facilities, we can only move in baby steps as our funding permits. I'm not comfortable relying on a Web 2.0 provider like Ustream, but that's the best we can do. The facility in Newburyport uses blip.tv so we're not alone.

Our engineer is supposed to arrive to start construction on the new cablecast in January. I have promised to be the first to take a sledgehammer to the old, and fervently hated, wooden cabinets.

Original article: Webcasts bring local access cable TV shows to the world - The Boston Globe

[Crossposted to David Moisan's Blog]