I feel like reminiscing today.

Let me take you back to the mid-Noughties, back when I was a virtual [1] shut-in. There was a time when, after leaving university, I barely left the house, except maybe to get a few things from the nearby supermarket. Sometimes, walking to the shops was the highlight of my week. I was *that* tragic! I didn't have any friends in meatspace that I hung out with. I had no social life. I didn't really have anything to keep me occupied [2]. On the surface, it seemed, I had no purpose to my life [3].

But I had to keep myself busy. My mind needed - and still needs - stimulation. I took a path well-trodden by many a hermit and other social cripple - television. But I didn't just watch television. I found myself reading and posting to various online newsgroups discussing various aspects of television, particularly the historical aspect. One group that caught my attention was a group that discussed television station presentation - that part of a television station's output that's neither programme nor advertising material. Quite an odd and obscure thing to have an interest in. That's what I thought at the time. But I was delighted to discover that there were others like me that shared my passion. I thoroughly enjoyed watching and listening to flashy graphical displays and cheesy station jingles from years gone by [4]. But I wanted to contribute my own clips. I wanted to give back (and hence raise my `social standing' within the group). Unfortunately, I didn't have a video capture card nor did I have much of an extensive tape collection. So, for a while, I was content to just read and write posts.

One group member that had an extensive tape collection (and posted a lot of station IDs online) was James. He wanted a website as an online presence for his private 'archive'. The centrepiece of that website would be a vast array of video clips of station IDs, advertisements and programme extracts, which would only be accessible to those people that had made a contribution to his archive i.e. the website would have a user system in place. And he wanted someone to do it for him for free. Unfortunately no `professional' web developer was willing to give up their time for nothing, so he turned to someone who had nothing better to do and was really keen on making a contribution to the `television historian community' - me. Unfettered access to his clip collection before everyone else had a peek was enough of a reward for me! So I worked on James' website, and in the process, befriended James. He told me of Betamax, EIAJ, 1-inch and 2-inch quadruplex videotape formats, of telecine chains, of tube and CCD cameras, of his campaign to save the archive of a television station he once worked at as a camera operator. How it fascinated and inspired me! I managed to scrounge up the money for a cheap capture card and started to cap my own clips. I started frequenting op-shops [5], looking at the off-air recorded videotapes and started to build my collection. The website is still up, and I still `maintain' it in a way, but I don't really talk to James all too often anymore. Basically, I had grand visions for that website that really didn't go anywhere in the end - much like this blog. But it was fun in its heyday [6] and we did get a fair few visitors from all over the place and a few donations to the archive as well.

One day, circa August 2006, my younger sister Helena wanted to watch a DVD boxset of `Roswell' that her friend lent to her. She asked me to set up the downstairs DVD player in my older sister Kristy's former upstairs bedroom (having vacated the room the year prior due to matrimony), so that she could watch them without interrupting the parents' viewing habits. In order to do this, I also had to take the downstairs VCR upstairs as well, since there are no RCA inputs on Kristy's TV and the DVD player only has RCA outputs. What Helena and I didn't realise at the time was that, not only did we unwittingly create the beginnings of my awesome A/V system, I also stumbled across a fortuitious discovery that would not only move me to the next exciting phase of my Australian television fandom, it would also change my life forever. I owe a lot of what happened to me after this discovery to you, Helena Pelena, your friend and her `Roswell' DVDs ;) You should be proud of yourself :)

I discovered that - through the VCR - I could receive a not-too-fuzzy, reasonably clear picture of regional station WIN TV. Great. Then I had a brainwave. I was aware that WIN started screening from the beginning of that year, a whole bunch of classic Australian television series in the wee hours of the morning, since they are now the owners of that once-great formerly-Melbourne-based television production company, Crawfords, a shell of a company whose former Box Hill studios are now a Bunnings Warehouse and whose only show currently in production is tweeny-girly horse-based drama series `The Saddle Club' *shudder*, but thankfully have quite an extensive back-catalogue of drama and comedy series, starting with the 1961 courtroom series `Consider Your Verdict', followed by such classics as `Homicide' (premiered in 1964), `The Sullivans' (1976), `The Flying Doctors' (1986) and `Acropolis Now' (1989). OK, so the desire to watch these shows was already there, Helena Pelena. You merely provided the practical means for me to watch them. So don't you go taking *all* of the credit :P Unfortunately, I had no way of watching these shows - just to check them out - or recording them. Until then, that is. So, I slipped in a tape, set the VCR to record at 0300 and then the next day, I enjoyed my very first sample of the 1979 soap 'Skyways', set in the international airport of an amorphous Australian city (probably called Pacific), where in this alternate universe, there were three players in the domestic airline field - Ansett, TAA and Federal Airlines and fearless, ruggedly-handsome Federal pilot Nick Grainger (played by Bartholomew John) crashed his plane somewhere in the Tasmanian wilderness and the Pacific airport manager, Paul MacFarlane (Tony Bonner) and his assistant Louise Carter (Tina Bursill) were tearing their hair out trying to co-ordinate the rescue effort. Meanwhile, Eurasian air hostess Jacki Soong (Deborah Coulls) working for international airline, Trans-Asia, was involved in airport security manager Peter Fanelli's (the late Bill Stalker) sting to catch a drug dealer (none other than Jacki's estranged brother) hiding out in Thailand. All the while, Pete's girlfriend (and former prostitute) Faye Peterson (Kris McQuade [7]) was pouring drinks at the airport bar (and how they drank on that show - even *on the job*!), anally-retentive fuss-budget George Tippett (the recently late Brian James [8]) was despondent over how no-one came to his long service awards presentation and air traffic controller Simon Young (Ken James - no relation to Brian, I think) proposed to his girlfriend Kelly Morgan (Joanne Samuel). Quite an ensemble cast, I'm sure you'd agree.

I set my VCR to record again, and the following day I got my first taste of suburban cop-show `Division 4'. The episode I watched was #32 `It's the Little Things', which first went to air in 1969 (which means, yes, it's a black and white series). I won't go into too much detail describing the show, as I believe that Don Storey, creator of the single greatest, most thoroughly researched website on the subject of Australian television series from 1956-1977, does a much better job at describing the show than I could ever hope to accomplish (he is a demigod and I refer to his site frequently).

Then I watched 1981's resort-based soap, `Holiday Island', a show with quite a reputation - a negative one. I don't know why it got such a bad rap at the time - it's a soap, whaddya *expect*!? I believe most of the criticism was directed towards the half-baked attempt at trying to make Nunawading in the winter time look like a tropical island paradise - you could *see* the breath come out of the actors' mouths sometimes :O. They did *some* location shooting in Queensland, although if they had a larger budget, they could've done more. I believe it was the constant criticism coupled with production problems that sent `Holiday Island' to an early, 60-episode grave [9]. Let's see...in this episode, we had the resort manager Neil's (Nick Tate) no good brother Jason (Steven Grives, with his devilishly smarmy accent) hatch a scheme with the resort owner Emily Muldoon's (Patricia Kennedy) spoilt niece Kylie (Gaynor Martin-Wheatley, wife of famous tax evader music talent manager, Glenn Wheatley) to have Kylie `kidnapped', so that her rich old aunt would cough up the ransom money. They ultimately fail but, amazingly, their scheme never gets uncovered - not even in the final episode. Other threads: young Lisa Kendall (Alyson Best) develops a crush on a Russian tennis player (Alex Menglet) who is a guest at the resort...and Zack in his tiny shorts (Peter Mochrie) seems to have feelings for Lisa, so he goes first to Dusty (Marilyn Mayo), a savvy 40-something-old woman who's `been around' (if you know what I mean ;) propping up the bar at the Nautilus Lounge, then to crusty old former merchant sailor Banjo (Frank Wilson) pottering around in his shed filled with all kinds of flotsam and jetsam for some advice. Then you had handyman Wally (Tom Oliver, better known to the current generation as Lou Carpenter from `Neighbours') slapping the bikini-bottomed guests in the opening credits. And poor Caz Lederman (who played Jason's former wife and Neil's girlfriend Angela) was so useless, they got rid of her in a freak speed-boating accident towards the end of the series - the look on her face before the $10 explosion is priceless! Not to put down Ms. Lederman's acting abilities, it's just the writers must've found it hard to incorporate her into the story line.

More cop-show action - this time in the country - with `Matlock Police' (episode #34 `Jimmy Woodser' [10], went to air 1971). God, I love Michael Pate's gravelly voice - he must've achieved that resonant baritone by subsisting on a diet of smoked meats and smoking Marlboros all day long! Shame that this episode was shot in black-and-white. Unlike `Division 4' (and even `Homicide'), whose bleak, gritty, urban setting lent itself rather well to black-and-white, `Matlock's rural surrounds were begging to be captured in colour. If I were Sir Hector, I would've chosen to switch production of `Matlock' to colour before `Homicide' (in 1972), for artistic reasons (and not because Channel Seven had the funding to start shooting drama series on colour film, but not the 0-Ten Network). `Matlock' did get its much needed colour conversion in 1974, starting with episode #162. A bit too late, in my opinion, as the show wrapped up production the following year with 229 episodes under its belt.

I then rounded off my week of retro-Australian drama series with the 1983 serial `Carson's Law' (a show of special significance for me - I'll get to that later). Wow, what a treat this show is. Definitely underrated. The quality of the scripts, the attention to detail is astounding. It doesn't feel like an 80s show at all, mostly because it is set in 1920s Melbourne. Most of the show's action centres around the extended Carson family, whose business is the law (hence the name of the show), which has brought the family - particularly its tyrannical patriarch, Godfrey (Kevin Miles) - much power and prosperity. Of course, the real star of the show is Godfrey's daughter-in-law, Jennifer, played by none other than Lorraine Bayly, who runs a `rival' law firm of sorts - a female lawyer in that time was as rare as hen's teeth. Basically, `Carson's Law' was created *for* Lorraine Bayly, who shot to `superstardom' playing Grace Sullivan in `The Sullivans'. No Lorraine, no `Carson's Law' - it's as simple as that. Unlike `Skyways' and `Holiday Island' whose storylines and themes are simplistic, I don't think I can do justice to the show by attempting to summarise the basic story any further, so I won't [11].

All in all, I find these shows to be rather interesting cultural artefacts. These shows (to a lesser extent, `Carson's Law', for obvious reasons) in their own small way, captured the zeitgeist of Australian society in their respective time-periods. I guess it was the escapist nature of these programmes that appealed to me - I felt I needed to escape, sometimes [12]. This spurred me to continue my recording caper to the point that, some two and a half years later, I had amassed some 110-odd E-240 VHS cassette tapes or 18 *days* (or 440 hours) worth of footage.

Even when I only had a handful of tapes, I soon realised that I had some very valuable currency that would enable me to expand my collection even further through trading. I had something that other people wanted and I could make copies for them and they would send me shows from their collection in return. I had set up for myself a YouTube channel, where I posted assorted clips of stuff that I had capped from my videos - mostly advertisements, but some of the clips were opening titles of some of the shows in my collection. Before too long, a number of people approached me, wanting episodes of said shows. Some had nothing to offer me, others had something. I ignored the former and established trading partnerships with some of the latter. One trading partner had a profound effect on my life in many ways. I'll never forget the date: 9th of March, 2007. I received a message from Hadas, who hails from Israel (land of milk, honey and Uzis) and is probably the biggest `Carson's Law' fan in the universe. I replied. Then she replied. Two-and-a-half years later, we still haven't stopped replying :) We have transcended the normal tape-trader relationship. She helped me come out of my shell. Last year, she came to Sydney for five days and I showed her around. Unforgettable experience. She undertook a master's degree in creative writing. That inspired me to return to uni last year to undertake a degree programme in electrical engineering. Shortly after starting the course, I decided that I would try to be more social than I was last time. So I joined the Programmers' Society, the most anti-social club there is. But they really are a wonderful bunch of people who have accepted me and I fit in rather well.

So I finally found something that more than adequately `filled the void'. A challenging course. A social life of sorts. Something had to give. Slowly, I wound down my tape trading and recording exploits to the point that I more or less ceased these activities. It's not that I no longer have an interest in these shows - I think I have demonstrated that is definitely not the case - it's just that now I engage in activities that, to me, are more fulfilling. I'm happier now than what I was two years ago, that's for sure. I'm a better person now. Things are easier for me.

Having announced my `retirement' from the tape-trading game, I will say that if you are trader of shows such as the ones I've mentioned and/or you would like to trade, please drop me a line, as I would still like to hear from you! Bear in mind that I'm not really looking for new material at the moment, as I still have a backlog of other shows that I have yet to watch.

Tom

[1] Virtual?

[2] Except, erm, look for gainful employment, perhaps? (or, at least, try to pass off that I was. But how could I take on a job, when I lacked the basic skills needed to interact with *people* in general, let alone staff and customers? I could write a book on this alone, but you don't want to read the depressing rantings of yours truly, no matter how cathartic writing it would be for me...)

[3] You *could* take the nihilistic, grand-scheme-of-things view of the universe and realise that there isn't a point to *anything*. We're all gonna die, the universe is gonna end and nothing we do has an effect on the universe at large. But I find that view too depressing...

[4] The `good old days' before YouTube and their ilk when webspace wasn't cheap and plentiful and most encoded clips were of low-resolution and low-bitrate, so that even people on dial-up (which was the majority) could join in the fun.

[5] and, when I finally got my driver's licence, Trash and Treasure Markets in Prestons.

[6] Here's a coincidence for you. James and I launched our clip-based website in February 2005, the same time as another clip-based website (YouTube) also launched. Which site is more popular and successful today?

[7] How's this for irony: in episode sixty-something of `Skyways', Faye, who had only married Peter a few episodes prior, meets her untimely end in a parachuting accident. In 1981, Bill Stalker met his untimely end in a motorcycle accident. Kris McQuade, on the other hand, is still very much alive and in the `business'. I last saw her alongside Rob Brydon in `Supernova'

[8] http://www.theage.com.au/national/familiar-face-on-stage-screen-20091111-i9z7.html

[9] Do *I* really think it, or am I just spouting the collective opinion of thousands of viewers and critics, while summarising the show's problems in a pithy sentence, making `clever' use of alliteration?

[10] http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Henry_Lawson/19155

[11] Funny, that. I give more detailed descriptions of the `crap' shows (`Skyways' and `Holiday Island'), yet only brief comments on the good stuff (`Division 4', `Matlock Police' and `Carson's Law').

[12] That, and soaps have continuing storylines, so you kind of have to continue recording, so you don't miss an episode...I began to understand the appeal of `Neighbours' and `Home and Away', shows which I don't follow, by the way.

Last updated: November 23, 2009 at 01:48:29

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Never make promises you can't keep
November 17, 2009 at 14:03:44
Categories: meta

Case in point, this blog... ;)

Last updated: November 17, 2009 at 14:04:38

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I'm not dead...
March 17, 2009 at 20:49:42
Categories: meta

...just busy living my life :)

There's so much I want to write, but the thing is I tend to plan what I write and not just write off-the-cuff (bar this post), so I simply can't find the time to write. I do have a few ideas that I'd like to share with you briefly, just to give you a bit of a sneak peek:

• I'll definitely be going through the rest of my A/V collection.
• I'll also give you a tour of my growing video and DVD collection, as well as my burgeoning can collection.
• Following on from my 4D Cartesian drawing discussion, I'll be introducing you to my four-component complex number system based on division by zero. In the meantime, why not have a captain at Flatland - it's the novel I wish I wrote!

Tom

Last updated: March 18, 2009 at 15:10:08

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Tom's Vanity Press - now with RSS!
February 9, 2009 at 16:03:06
Categories: meta

I've decided - albeit reluctantly - to create an RSS feed for this blog. Not all too keen on the concept. Don't really like the idea of my content being syndicated to other sites. However, I will concede that it does - under the right circumstances - allow you to better keep track of my posts, which is why the feed only contains a link to the five latest posts and a brief excerpt from each of the posts.

So if, Bob forbid, you actually believe my blog is worth your time, feel free to add me to your live bookmarks or favourite content aggregator by clicking on "Subscribe"!

Tom

[1] Expecting a footnote?

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MacGyver, eat your heart out!
February 8, 2009 at 19:22:20
Categories: audiovisual classic_tv

Now what, pray tell, is the etymology of *that* expression? What a gruesome act that would be - to eat one's heart out! What am I supposed to do? Go down to the kitchen, get out a carving knife, stab myself in the chest, yank out my still-beating heart and shove it down my throat before collapsing on the floor, blood a-squirting everywhere? Ponder on *that* image, why don't you, next time you decide to use that cliched idiom, budding writers everywhere! I did, but I'm still using it regardless. Sue me. Anyways...

Continuing from my previous discussion, I thought I'd take a step back in time and focus on one aspect of my A/V set-up that has seen a major improvement - my reception of television programmes. Now, being someone who enjoys watching his TV from time-to-time - in particular some shows that screen out-of-area and late at night (that's for another post!) - it is of utmost importance that my reception is of the best quality that I can afford, which is why I bought a digital set-top box [1]. However, the box alone will not rectify any reception problems you might be having. In fact, you'll probably need to invest in a better antenna due to digital TV's increased demands. But I'm as skint as a skink, so I can't be blowing my limited funds on such luxuries as, say, an outdoor aerial [2]. So, for a long time, I've been trying to make do with what I have, repositioning my antennae in all sorts of weird and wacky ways - turn the antenna this way, pull the rabbit ears this way, balance the antenna on a pile of Britannicas, you know the drill - all with little or no success.

Perhaps my most outlandish, hare-brained reception improvement scheme was carried out in February of 2008 when I decided to build a small-scale, indoor 'guyed mast', as you can see here:

The idea came to me one night, when I was mucking around with the antenna in both pictures (it's got amplification and it currently lives on top of the downstairs TV) and the digi-box, when I noticed that, if I were to hold the antenna in a particular way, I would be able to pick up a stable picture of the digital channels serving the Wollongong area. Mind you, the picture would only last for a few seconds before breaking up in a shower of digital artefacts. Nevertheless, I was excited by this discovery, and I thought "What if there was a way I could keep the antenna in this position without me having to hold onto it all the time?". After all, I had no intention of holding the antenna in that position just to watch a show (or staying up at 3am to record any shows that might screen at that hour) - how silly and impractical would that be? Also, digital boxes tend to be very temperamental with regards to the signals they attempt to decode, so a stable construction that could hold the antenna in the exact position required would be of great benefit.

I went downstairs and I noticed an empty cardboard tube, probably used to hold Christmas wrapping or something like that. Then it hit me. I could somehow balance the antenna on this tube. I would need to cut a recess into one end of the tube, so that the base of the antenna could slot in. I would secure it into place using sticky tape. But how would my tube stand upright, supporting all of that weight? I took a page from the fundamentals of transmitter tower construction. Most of these tall towers stand upright and rigid thanks to the support of a series of taut metal ropes - guy ropes - anchored to the ground below - a guyed mast. So I fashioned some guy ropes out of two spare shoelaces and anchored them to the floor with some more stickytape, as shown. To make the construction just that little bit more rigid, I stuffed the tube with some newspaper.

Making the mast reminded me of that old TV show "MacGyver" [4] and the protagonist's amazing ability to get out of scrapes or to save the day by making and using something with just the items surrounding him. Say if MacGyver was trapped in an office somewhere in a fictional South American country, the building's surrounded by some Contra-esque militia, and he needed to get in contact with Pete Thornton back at headquarters. He could put together - "MacGyver up", if you will - a mast and transceiver made out of a broom, his shoelaces and some paperclips or something like that. Of course, MacGyver's mast would be *way* cooler than my version, but anyhow...

Unfortunately, the idea didn't quite work out the way I envisaged it would. No matter how I positioned the antenna, I still couldn't get a stable enough signal for it to be of any use. So I had to abandon the idea and continue watching fuzzy pictures of WIN TV. An utterly useless invention by any means [5], nevertheless it lives on in my memory, in pictorial form and in this post!

(...plus MacGyver's version would actually work!)

I even had plans of hoisting one of my indoor aerials on a pole outdoors and then run a length of flyleads from the pole to the TV, but that idea never went past the planning phase.

In the end, though, I decided that there was no alternative but to go to the store and buy myself a better antenna. I set it up, repositioned a side-draw, balanced the antenna on the side-draw and I haven't looked back since! [6]

TomGyver

[1] I'm going to have to in any case, come 2013 when, supposedly, they're going to shut down the analogue TV signals. Better to be an 'early adopter', I say.

[2] "What would we need an antenna for?", my folks would say. "We've got FOXTEL."

[3] Update 26/2: Sorry...my *sister's* old VCR! Older siblings can be really possessive of things sometimes, especially if they no longer have any use for them :P

[4] Where, may I ask, is "MacGyver" on the TV1 schedule? They're playing Richard Dean Anderson's 'other' show "Stargate SG-1" on sister channel Sci Fi, so why not play "MacGyver" as well? Many fond memories watching that show as a child. I know I can get the DVD boxset and watch it anytime, but still... They can cut out one of the "Law & Order" incarnations or something to accommodate the man with the mullet. Cut down on their "Groovy Movies", perhaps...

...and, while we're at it, what about these five-minute 'shorts' TV1 have been screening over the past year or so, featuring material from classic shows from their archives such as "The Facts of Life", "Webster", "T.J. Hooker", "Charlie's Angels", to name a few? Hello! Why not play the *complete episodes* of these classic shows like they used to, instead of filling up the schedule with more recent shows such as "House", "Monk", "NCIS" and the aformentioned "Law & Order" clones? What a bloody shambles TV1 has become over the years. Someone should blow them up :P

[5] Could my mast be classed as chindogu, I wonder? I mean, it can be used but it's quite impractical. However, the intent was for it to be useful - I didn't just make it for the sake of itself - so is it really chindogu?

[6] Until now, that is.

Last updated: November 23, 2009 at 16:08:10

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