life – Kiel the Coder

Burnt

I haven’t written a word in months because my work schedule has eaten away at my mornings and evenings. The workload has been insane since last year. I do miss writing; it’s a good outlet for maintaining my sanity.

I have ideas rattling around that I’d still like to explore, and I think this blog is still a good place to do that. But I can’t bring myself to stay on a computer any longer than I have to after putting in 12 to 14 hours everyday. I’m mentally exhausted at the end of the day, and I don’t want to spend any more time away from family either.

Our industry ebbs and flows, it always has. It’s hard to track from one year to the next when the busiest times will be. I’ve had distinct memories of suffering through March–trying to close out fiscal year business–but I’ve also had other years where end of summer turned into a death-march–trying to get things lined up for 4th quarters. The whole of 2023 was brutal and the project schedule continued right into 2024 without any let up.

I’m taking 15 minutes to write this for 3 reasons:

I miss writing
I’m waiting for a callback
The techs I’m supporting across 3 jobs today are all busy working on something else

I do think things are getting better. I would like to spend time thinking about project planning and schedules and to figure out how to stay out of this situation, but that’s asking to fix a lot of things that are out of my control. I can only control my actions.

Thank you for reading.

Fixing Home Movies with FFmpeg

My dad converted a bunch of old taped home movies to MP4 and gave them to me for Christmas. I copied them all to my Plex server since I thought having them on-demand would be pretty cool. Unfortunately, a lot of them ended up rotated 90 degrees and–surprisingly–there’s no way to tell Plex to rotate on playback.

I kept thinking there’s got to be an easy way to fix the rotated movies so they play back correctly on my TV. And then I remembered the Swiss Army Knife of video playback tools: FFmpeg.

Salary

This is a taboo topic, so I’m probably not going to broadcast this one across social media.

I’m very fortunate. I earn decent money doing something I find interesting: programming. I don’t love sitting in front of a computer all day, but that’s where most of the programming happens, so I’ve learned to deal with it. I take frequent breaks, stand up, stretch, get in some push-ups, sit-ups, go outside. It’s taken me years to recognize this important balance between getting work done and maintaining your health.

The Future of AV Programming: Part 2

This is one part in a series of posts about my journey through the AV world. I’ve broken these up into bite-sized portions that shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to read. I’m hoping to explore the future of systems programming in the Audio/Visual sense. Let me know if I wander off into a tangent somewhere, I tend to forget where I’m going.

Last time, I talked about my aspirations of one day becoming a professional programmer. I hadn’t touched on the AV industry at all since it was largely unknown to me then. I had a few interviews lined up the week before graduating, and I ended up accepting an entry-level position at an AV company. They were primarily a TANDBERG reseller who also did occasional system integration work.

Continue reading “The Future of AV Programming: Part 2”

The Future of AV Programming: Part 1

Hi. My name’s Kiel. How you pronounce it is all on YOU, but to me it’s Kyle. I’ll accept anything with a K sound since at least you tried.

I sort of fell into AV programming 12 years ago, but let me start back at the very beginning.

Continue reading “The Future of AV Programming: Part 1”