Jonathan Sanderson
@jjsanderson.bsky.social
1.7K followers 370 following 800 posts
Family roboticist/STEM engagement academic/digital tinkerer/film maker/general-purpose geek. Enthusiastic about (but not necessarily good at): bicycles, photography, sustainability, kites, parenting. Newcastle, UK.
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jjsanderson.bsky.social
We also had about five minutes of animation per episode. And our cast and crew were awesome at nailing it on the first take. Plus we were motivated by bragging rights.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Yes, we shot less than the episode running time. To be fair, I cheated: it was a reshoot because school terminology guidance changed between initial shoot & broadcast. Reshoot weather matched original, so we don’t bother reshooting establishers, wides, reverses, etc.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
For reference, we shot How2 multicam studio, vision-mixed with one or two floating iso cameras. Edit was entirely linear online. I once made a low-budget education drama shot two-camera on location, with a linear edit. One episode had a shooting ratio _below 1_ 😂.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Interesting thread about what we’ve lost with the sidelining of old TV production techniques. From my perspective as a sometime factual ents guy, I put a lot of blame on Avid. Nonlinear offline editing made it possible to ‘fix it in post’. Huge advantage… but also huge excuse for avoiding decisions.
andreworton.bsky.social
The death of multi-camera TV: a thread. I know most of you will know the technical parts of this (and may have read it in the other place) but bear with me. 1/ 🧵
A shot from the studio rehearsal of Doctor Who: The Daleks' Master Plan episode 'Volcano', showing several actors ont he TARDIS set, with various video cameras around the scene.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Yes.

This is apparently news to @elinoroberts.bsky.social, who takes sock-pairing seriously in this house. But it applies to a pair of anything, so yes. I really do.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Oh, they’re absolutely brilliant, obviously. 😀

There’s a reasonable collection of them here: nustem.uk/required-pra...

…and Alom has a perhaps slightly different list here: alomshaha.com/portfolio/ph...

There were a few others, but there’s no single archive of them all.
A-Level Physics Required Practicals - NUSTEM
nustem.uk
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Oh, I see. Hah! Nah, typos are a fact of life, embrace the chaos.

I’m trying to popularise ‘bloops,’ sadly without much success. ‘Blurt’ is good too, though.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Meh, that’s what reviewers are for, right?
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Ooh that’s useful, thanks.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
The physics a-level films Alom and I made are still - fifteen years later - widely used. That’s absurd.

Anyone wondering why there aren’t more of them would be surprised at the story there. I still don’t know what happened myself, and I was in the room.
alomshaha.bsky.social
What’s depressing to me is that lots of us predicted this was going to happen YEARS ago but none of the education publishers / institutions acted on it and instead left it to random people to produce and profit from educational content with no quality control. (Some of it is very good nowadays)
alomshaha.bsky.social
On train listening to obviously smart teenage boys discussing homework on “how is conflict presented in Romeo and Juliet” and one boy says to another “I’ll send you two good videos on this” and I am not sure teachers are fully aware of how young people revise etc these days.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Come to think, I had unconditional acceptances from Cambridge, Imperial and Nottingham… and a rejection from Sheffield. I quite admired them for that. 😂
jjsanderson.bsky.social
That said, occasionally ‘unconditional offers’ are made. Which are precisely what they sound like.

I’m not sure how commonplace they are. ‘Not at all,’ I think. I had some, but (a) that was in 1990, and (b) I was applying after I had my results, for reasons.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Sort-of. Prospective students are typically made a ‘conditional offer’: “We’ll take you if you get at least these grades in the exams you’re about to take.”

It’s fairly nuts, but not quite ‘We like the cut of your jib, you’re in’ nuts.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
This shelving unit isn’t how I’d intended to spend my Saturday, but it’s quite satisfying and will solve several problems I hadn’t quite realised I had. Tomorrow I hope to fit wall mounts for bicycles, off the right of this shot.
A freshly-assembled IKEA Ivar shelving unit in my garage, with assorted not-yet-unpacked boxes and some bicycles visible.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
This epic endeavour deserves wider exposure.
gingerbeardman.com
Quiz! What early 90s computer and/or video game magazine am I reading? I would guess it’s ST FORMAT. Can we find it? Would be fun to read it again.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Trying to set up something apparently a bit complex in Apple Home. So far I have Zigbee hardware, Docker on a Raspberry Pi, an MQTT broker, HomeBridge, and now I’m reading about the limitations of stateless switches and HomeBridge virtual devices. All of this for [checks notes] a light switch.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
The stories of Tim Hunkin's exhibit builds are invariably sparse, charming, and filled with the quiet pain of nothing ever working properly until it does. All the hidden bits of making, laid bare. www.timhunkin.com/a269_making-...
the Secret Life of Machines
www.timhunkin.com
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Möbnion ring. Not so popular, because there’s only one side to get crispy, and they’re terribly hard to cut in half.
Reposted by Jonathan Sanderson
elfsternberg.bsky.social
Why are ICE officers so bad at their jobs? This paper gives the reason: they were ALWAYS mediocre, incompetent, or dishonorable cops. Signing on to the secret police, being willing to do the "ugly" jobs, gives them a career advancement path those qualities blocked under more moral systems.
timfrye.bsky.social
So many echoes from this article for US politics....
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Oh blimey. That sounds… serious. And fascinating. And possibly quite hard. Respect. I hope it’s awesome; I’m sure you will be.
jjsanderson.bsky.social
Yeah, Marathon Plus are lead overshoes in bicycle tyre form. But Efficiencies do feel very different, much more like something you’d want to ride rather than fit and never look at again. 😀