rowan.depomerai

It’s been quite a pleasant festive season so far. I’ve spent time with lots of different friends and family, from work dinners to parties with uni friends, and spent Christmas day with my parents, sister, brother-in-law and nephew. A veritable festive feast of duck and turkey plus lots of playing with 15-month-old Sebastian’s presents (and a bit of playing with my own ones) made for an enjoyable day.Right now I’m on a train up to Sheffield to see my aunt and grandad,which will be grand.

I’ve had some pretty decent presents, with special mention to my secret santa. As with many groups of friends, my closest uni friends and I have a bit of a secret santa tradition, and with a customary limit of £5, it’s normally populated by complete tat designed only to put a smile on the face of the recipient rather than be of any use! But this year saw some good efforts, and I got a CD I actually wanted (the new Counting Crows). Not only had santa managed to find this for under £5, but even had enough spare to buy me a newspaper, in a nod to the year when I received a newspaper and a mars bar from a rather forgetful santa…! Got to love eBay…

New year will be an evening of comedy with some of the same friends at The King’s Head in north London, no doubt accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol. I hope you too have had a great festive period and that 2009 is a great year for us all!

Last time I  told you about the efforts we’ve been making at BBC HD to get an A/V sync test to your TV in order that you can measure the synchronisation between audio and video in your home TV setup. You’ll be very pleased to know that we’re done and the test has made it to air! Andy Quested has posted in his blog about how you can use the sync test – and its counterpart the test card – to line-up your equipment. I therefore won’t repeat that here, but I wanted to give you a bit more detail about what we’ve achieved and how. Read the rest of this entry »

As a year draws to a close, its always tempting to look back over the last 12 months and consider how they’ve been. 2008 has been an eventful and enjoyable year for me, and I’d like to share a few snapshots of what my year has been like. These aren’t necessarily the best photos I’ve taken, or even the most important events of the year, but they’re a set of windows into the last few months which I hope you’ll enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »