WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.960 Damn the man. Hello. It's great to finally have you on a meet the team. I'm very excited. Thank you. How are you doing? 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:10.400 I'm doing well today. How about yourself? I'm doing pretty good. Good. Good. How's your eye been? 00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:16.480 Eyes are good. I don't have glasses anymore. Recovering well. I can almost see your face. This is great. 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:23.040 So some people might know you here as the logistics person, but that's recently changed, right? 00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:28.480 That's right. Yeah. So I'm now no longer in logistics. I'm now a department of just me, 00:00:29.360 --> 00:00:35.120 and I got a new title. What am I? Infrastructure and technical specialist, 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:40.960 which is a very strange kind of made up term for the stuff I do. I don't know. 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:46.560 So you're your own boss then? Sort of. Yeah. I don't have anybody to really report to. I mean, 00:00:46.560 --> 00:00:50.640 I'm still technically working under Colton as well while he's still working at the company. 00:00:50.800 --> 00:00:55.040 So what do you do here? What comes along with that title? 00:00:56.080 --> 00:01:02.560 No, it's kind of complicated. There's a lot of weird things. So I guess one of the major things is I 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:08.320 run tech for the WAN Show and sort of all of our live streams. That's what I used to do a lot. So 00:01:08.320 --> 00:01:13.840 live streaming is kind of my bag from the tech side of things. Infrastructure is also assisting Jake 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:20.640 with a lot of things, Jake Tyvey. So you're networking your systems administration. I'm doing 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:26.640 the whole sort of build out for Labs from the networking and server kind of side of things. 00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:32.560 Also helping with the massive amounts of data storage that we have here and keeping all of that 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:40.080 running. I'm also in charge of the SolidWorks PDM administration, working with the hypervisors and 00:01:40.080 --> 00:01:46.880 the kind of like virtual machines that a lot of different departments use here. I do repairs. 00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:51.840 So repairing all the things that Linus drops or other things that go wrong. 00:01:52.880 --> 00:01:56.960 Somebody took apart a laptop the other day and just sort of gave me a bucket of parts. And so I 00:01:56.960 --> 00:02:04.240 had to put that back together. What else? I don't know. Jeez. I shoot short circuits. I do all sorts 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:09.200 of other little things. Basically, if you need a hand with something, then I'll come and help you 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:15.440 with that too. Oh, he was doing some custom design stuff. So Andy wanted some custom cables for the 00:02:15.440 --> 00:02:19.600 cameras. So design a model 3D printed those and I'm putting those together for him as well. 00:02:19.600 --> 00:02:24.640 Lots of lots of different stuff. Oh, that's right. Also tech support. Yeah, for the whole company. 00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:31.920 Pretty much just just me, maybe some Kalinan in there, but he hates it. So yeah, it's a lot of 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:37.120 stuff. I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff. How did you learn how to do all of this? Like, I don't know. 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:43.440 A lot of experience. Most of the jobs that I've had have always been on really, really tiny teams. 00:02:43.440 --> 00:02:49.040 So a lot of the things I've had to learn myself, I've also just had an interest in tech for a long 00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:55.520 time. So when I was in high school, I did sort of night courses at a local university to learn 00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:59.920 drafting and CAD and that sort of thing. You know, I've worked like the last seven years as the 00:02:59.920 --> 00:03:05.440 technical director of like a very large recording studio. And recording studios are super small 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:10.320 teams. I think it was just like two of us and the owner and eventually some other people. 00:03:11.680 --> 00:03:17.440 Our studio was sort of set up for recording orchestra. So it was this massive main room. 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:22.720 And then on the weekends, we would have concerts in there. So you kind of have the main stage 00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:29.280 where the band is and then about 100 people. And we sort of took that from just live concerts in 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:36.400 there to doing full seven camera live switched live streams, which we then record and do everything 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:42.000 like that. So I was also the systems administrator for the studio and dealt with all their networking 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:51.920 and their video editor and like director and lighting tech and so yeah, kind of large mixed bag of 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:56.640 stuff. Jack of all trades kind of guy. Wow. I mean, it sounds like you used to have like a pretty 00:03:56.720 --> 00:04:02.800 nice gig. Why did you end up leaving that and join us here at LMG? I don't know. You kind of 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:09.680 the music industry in that kind of world is very difficult. It's not a whole lot of money in it. 00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:18.800 There's not a whole lot of I guess the ceiling for the career is kind of difficult. There's not 00:04:18.800 --> 00:04:24.160 really very many studios and there's not a lot of positions, right? The guy I was training under 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:31.120 the head engineer there. He's the engineer for 5440 and Backman Turner Overdrive and kind of those 00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:37.280 types of larger bands, right? So that's kind of the education that I got and working with artists 00:04:37.280 --> 00:04:42.880 myself. But like where do you go? You go to a different studio where you have people who have 00:04:42.880 --> 00:04:49.200 been doing this for 40, 50 years who get to do an album, right? And then with the proliferation of 00:04:49.200 --> 00:04:55.920 home recording devices that like you can do it just as well at your home as you could in our studio. 00:04:55.920 --> 00:05:02.480 Like, yeah, you don't get a two to five million dollar treated room. But I mean, that's the problem, 00:05:02.480 --> 00:05:09.440 right? Where do you go? Where do you see yourself? And I kind of wanted to make the shift here because 00:05:11.120 --> 00:05:15.760 I don't know, larger team. I thought my skills were applicable. I applied to be an editor. 00:05:15.840 --> 00:05:22.800 I never got a response. And then, you know, the logistics manager position opened up. And so I 00:05:23.680 --> 00:05:28.880 took that. And now it's kind of turned into something weird. So you know how to edit videos, 00:05:28.880 --> 00:05:34.080 too? Yeah. When I started here, I did a couple of weeks editing short circuits. I did the 00:05:34.960 --> 00:05:41.680 dark plates one for the PS5, which was kind of fun. It's weird. They've got a mark on here 00:05:41.760 --> 00:05:47.040 that seems to kind of help you put it in the right spot. But I don't see a corresponding mark 00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:50.480 on the inside of the dark plate. My broadcast experience actually really worked for that because 00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:55.760 short circuits like a three cam, three camera multicam style thing, which is really off the cuff. 00:05:55.760 --> 00:06:00.960 And so editing those, I managed to get it down to like an eight hour day after a couple of weeks 00:06:00.960 --> 00:06:05.040 to do one of those, which is good. What's the biggest difference you would say between 00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:11.520 here and any other job you had? So I used to wear like 13 different hats at my last job. 00:06:11.520 --> 00:06:17.520 And the issue is when fires would happen, I would have to leave that fire and go fight a 00:06:17.520 --> 00:06:23.280 different fire. And then when I came back, that fire was still burning. And it was just like 00:06:23.280 --> 00:06:30.000 12 hour days, seven days a week, all the time, never stopped. Here, if there's a fire, I can go 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:34.480 fight a different one and somebody else can come and put that there. So there's a lot more support. 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:41.680 And each individual person is like not as critical. You know, I'm here to support Jake 00:06:41.680 --> 00:06:45.440 Tyvee and Jake Bellavance. I basically just work with all the jakes. It's weird. 00:06:47.600 --> 00:06:53.760 And so if Jake's having a bad day or something happens to him, I can step in and cover and, 00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:59.520 you know, vice versa. And so having that like support network and the diversification of skills 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:06.560 is like so nice. It's so much more stressful. I mean, it's still really hard. Like we don't stop. 00:07:07.520 --> 00:07:12.640 But there's just that support, which is great. What's one thing you wish you could do more of here? 00:07:13.280 --> 00:07:19.520 Oh, man. Okay. So I was talking to Colton and a couple other people about this and it ended up 00:07:19.520 --> 00:07:25.840 not being something we needed. But at the studio, you know, we were charged like $160 an hour plus 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:30.800 room fee plus fees for engineers and all that sort of thing. And so if you go and try and find 00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:35.360 like a cable or something and it takes you five minutes, you've just cost your customer a load 00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:40.160 of money, right? You can't have any kind of failures or downtime or have any inefficiencies, 00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:47.120 right? And everybody here like our video video production schedule is so intense that there's 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:52.800 not really a lot of time to like sit back and look at procedures or anything like that. And for the 00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:59.920 longest time, I basically just wanted to like make everybody's job easier here. The problem is that 00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:05.040 I don't know, it's not really something that can be fixed or needs to be looked at too intensely. 00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:10.160 And I think they're working on some other steps to fix that. I basically just want to make everybody's 00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:15.600 job easier and their life easier because our schedule is so nuts. What do we do? We make 18 00:08:15.600 --> 00:08:21.840 videos a week or something like that. And so any tiny little issue or failure or complexity that 00:08:21.840 --> 00:08:26.320 doesn't need to be there really, really screws everything up, makes everybody stressed. 00:08:26.320 --> 00:08:31.200 I mean, you already do a lot to help everybody. I try my best, you know, if you have a problem 00:08:31.200 --> 00:08:35.280 with your computer, we want to get it fixed as soon as possible because especially with the editors, 00:08:35.280 --> 00:08:41.120 like, oh man, I couldn't imagine the pressure there. And I can't, I did that. Yeah, it sucks. 00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:48.800 Yeah, working here is hard, but we do good. You do a lot of stuff here at LMG, but you also do a 00:08:48.800 --> 00:08:56.640 lot of stuff outside. Is that correct? Yeah, I do. I mean, there's a lot of design stuff and other 00:08:56.640 --> 00:09:02.560 things like that. I do a lot of OST work and sound effect work for indie games and other projects 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:08.240 like that. I'm a musician myself. I used to be a touring musician, did a tour of Canada, all that 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:14.160 sort of stuff before I ended up in the music industry. I've not really done a whole bunch of 00:09:14.160 --> 00:09:21.440 the video stuff. I take product on white for a couple companies. I developed this cute little 00:09:21.440 --> 00:09:26.320 pumpkin pincushion suction cup thing that we've launched on Amazon, which is pretty excited. 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:33.440 It's like a little jack-o'-lantern. What else? What else? Design games myself, do some programming, 00:09:33.440 --> 00:09:38.240 that sort of thing. Never really been a big artist, so I've always been looking at like, 00:09:38.240 --> 00:09:43.920 what is a concept that I can execute that has really shitty art? And that's always been hard. 00:09:43.920 --> 00:09:50.640 So trying to learn Blender and add some extra skills that I don't have. Yeah, design things, 00:09:50.640 --> 00:09:57.760 working on a modular audio controller system, which has been a hellish project, mostly just 00:09:57.760 --> 00:10:02.640 because the interconnects are like beyond my skill level of electrical engineering. 00:10:03.520 --> 00:10:09.840 So that's been a nightmare. Yeah, otherwise I think that's about it. 00:10:10.800 --> 00:10:16.800 That's all? I do cross-stitch. I'm working on one that says crippling anxiety, and it's got some 00:10:16.800 --> 00:10:24.480 nice like flowers around it. That's fun. I always forget stuff. I mean, just a new flavor of the 00:10:24.480 --> 00:10:31.040 week, every single week, and it's hard to remember. Time isn't a thing, I don't know. 00:10:31.040 --> 00:10:38.080 So if you wanted to, let's say, build a game from scratch, you could basically do everything. 00:10:38.080 --> 00:10:43.120 If the art was garbage, yeah. I mean, because I know how to program, and I know how to 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:53.680 like game and audio. The only real issue is art, and so my current concept is kind of art light, 00:10:53.680 --> 00:10:59.120 or at least style heavy, and doesn't really focus on like complicated character models or anything 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:05.520 like that. I mean, doing games as a solo developer anyway is really complicated. My first project 00:11:05.520 --> 00:11:11.600 was a team of three, and it took us five years to make like a 30 to 40 minute experience. 00:11:12.800 --> 00:11:16.160 It takes a hell of a long time, so if you're doing solo development stuff, 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:23.280 keep it simple, and don't make an RPG ever. Don't do that. What's your favorite memory from the music 00:11:23.280 --> 00:11:29.040 industry? You mentioned that you toured a bunch, as well as making soundtracks and stuff. I actually, 00:11:29.040 --> 00:11:35.120 I still have a signed vinyl for this, so we were working with one artist who came to do a 00:11:35.120 --> 00:11:45.120 concert, and she brought on a guest singer who ended up being the singer for the My Little Pony 00:11:45.120 --> 00:11:52.320 theme song. Our audience is like rather older, so they're like 80 to 85, and they come see this 00:11:52.320 --> 00:11:59.760 folk singer, and you know, that's kind of every single week. This is the audience that we have, 00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:05.440 but there's this one guy who came, and he's like my age, and he's wearing a My Little Pony shirt, 00:12:06.080 --> 00:12:12.160 and comes up and talks to this woman and gets her autograph, and I just thought that was just 00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:18.240 the most beautiful bespoke cringe I've ever been a part of. So I bought their vinyl and had all of 00:12:18.240 --> 00:12:22.800 them sign it, too, so I always keep that close to my heart. It was like, it was magical. 00:12:24.080 --> 00:12:28.160 Yeah, sure, sure. I don't care. What are your passion for text art? 00:12:28.160 --> 00:12:37.440 Oh man, I think I blame my father for that, among other things. But yeah, that was, he used to run 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:45.120 his own VCR repair shop back in Englandland, and he actually repaired that VCR for Mark. I don't 00:12:45.120 --> 00:12:51.440 know if you saw that video. It's like one of the last people that can do that, and he's always 00:12:51.440 --> 00:12:59.440 sort of worked from home, and so I sort of grew up around having things in pieces and taken apart, 00:12:59.440 --> 00:13:05.600 and like getting brought in on that. And my mother was a, she used to program bank software, right? 00:13:05.600 --> 00:13:11.680 So computers were always there. I think I learned my ABCs on one of those crappy laptops with the 00:13:11.680 --> 00:13:18.960 orange screens, that sort of thing. So always been around computers, and because my father and parents 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:23.600 kind of knew computers, I was allowed to play with them from a young age, instead of it being 00:13:23.600 --> 00:13:29.440 like a scary box that the kids not allowed to touch. So, you know, if I broke it or installed 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:35.120 something and got viruses on it, it was like, oh, Dan, you better fix that. And it's kind of where 00:13:35.120 --> 00:13:40.400 you learn, right? So a lot of tinkering growing up, a lot of, I think, just exposure to tech in 00:13:40.400 --> 00:13:46.480 general was a big help. One of the things that really stood out to me when I met you is just 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:51.200 the sheer amount of different skills. I mean, obviously, as everybody's witnessed so far right 00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:56.960 now, I mean, clearly, you've been able to learn a lot throughout your life. Do you have any advice 00:13:56.960 --> 00:14:03.040 for anybody who might be interested in pursuing a certain hobby or skill? Like something in particular 00:14:03.040 --> 00:14:08.400 or just like, just any, any, any skill, any hobby. Somebody might be interested in, but they haven't, 00:14:08.400 --> 00:14:15.280 you know, put the time aside, or, you know, went full at it yet. Have undiagnosed ADHD. That's a good 00:14:15.280 --> 00:14:25.040 start. I think the next thing would probably be just start small and learn kind of what it is 00:14:25.040 --> 00:14:31.520 you're doing. So I find with any kind of skill, there's like an intended way. And there's always 00:14:31.520 --> 00:14:35.920 like a workflow or a methodology. And I've been trying to apply this with learning Blender, 00:14:36.640 --> 00:14:42.160 because I can do solid works like quite well. That's parametric modeling, and that's way different 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:49.280 than like artistic style modeling. The thing is that there's like different ways to approach 00:14:49.280 --> 00:14:57.440 a problem that you're trying to do. And having an idea of what you want to do and learning how to do 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:03.040 that is so much more important than just like, I'm going to make the donut tutorial or something 00:15:03.040 --> 00:15:10.960 like that, even if it's music, or if it's, I don't know, electronics, or, you know, any sort of weird 00:15:10.960 --> 00:15:18.400 soft skill as well. It's you kind of have to have in your brain the goal, even if it's small, or even 00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:24.480 if it's hyper complicated. And then you just start working towards that. You know, when you're doing 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:27.680 programming or like learning to do programming and stuff like that, a lot of people are like, oh, 00:15:27.680 --> 00:15:33.840 you have to make a calculator. And it's like, no, that's boring and stupid. If you want to have a 00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:39.280 program, if you want to have a piece of music that you want to make, if you want to have anything, 00:15:39.280 --> 00:15:45.280 you need that like, thing to work towards. And then that'll teach you how to Google the problems 00:15:45.280 --> 00:15:51.520 that you're having. You know, if you want to make a first person shooter, that's kind of like, well, 00:15:51.520 --> 00:15:56.720 how do I make a character run around? You got to kind of break it down. So have an idea, even if 00:15:56.720 --> 00:16:02.400 it's big or small, and then break that into smaller chunks, and then learn how to do those 00:16:02.400 --> 00:16:07.440 smaller chunks. And you're going to, it's going to be awful. It's just going to be so bad. But 00:16:07.440 --> 00:16:12.080 you've compartmentalized enough information where you can kind of start smooshing them together 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:18.160 and get a broader sense, like through the fog of what the final skill you're trying to learn 00:16:18.160 --> 00:16:22.960 actually looks like. And then you can come back from that start with a new idea that doesn't suck, 00:16:22.960 --> 00:16:27.280 and you'll be able to move through it even faster. Very insightful. Now for the important 00:16:27.280 --> 00:16:35.760 questions. Oh my god. If you could be any animal, which one would you be? A lobster. Why a lobster? 00:16:35.760 --> 00:16:39.520 I can't remember the quote. Have you ever seen the movie The Lobster? No. I don't know. Because 00:16:39.520 --> 00:16:46.160 I lived for a long time, and everybody picks dog. Sure. I don't know. I love that movie. 00:16:46.160 --> 00:16:51.760 Yorgos Lanthimos. Yeah, that guy's fucking nice. Where do you get your humor from? 00:16:53.520 --> 00:17:00.160 I think it's a combination of anxiety and Englishness. Maybe. I don't know. Englishness? 00:17:00.240 --> 00:17:06.880 What does that mean? I don't know. In England, compared to America, in America, everybody 00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:12.400 wants to play the hero who says the right thing. And England is much more like the main character 00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:19.440 is the idiot and the fool. So I always like spouting wrong information or saying things that 00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:24.320 everybody looks at me like I'm a fucking dumbass. I just find that entertaining. It makes me smile 00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:29.760 on the inside, even if it maybe ruins the perception of others of me. And it's silly. 00:17:30.560 --> 00:17:34.480 Have you seen that meme where it's like me when I purposely spread misinformation? 00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:39.680 There you go. That's me on my daily life. Anything else you want to say to Floatplane peeps? 00:17:39.680 --> 00:17:44.080 I'm not sure. I'm not used to them. I hope you guys have a good day. 00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:47.200 Well, thank you so much, Dan. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good one.