Just one of those things. It spans across countries, across cultures, across languages. The experience to go to a Red Sox game is more than the ultimate fantasy of a baseball game fan, but it has not any less of a significance for anyone - even if they happen to hate watching sports.
Sure, it has been commercialized to a stage that parallels political campaigns. From the way to the stadium with hundreds of shady characters buying and selling tickets, to the entrance with a number of fan merchandise, to the stadium itself covered in banners and every free inch of space around the walkways filled in with food stalls, and you have your mandatory hot dog and coke guys walking around and making an extra buck the entire night. But that's just how it is these days. If it wasn't for the money involved in it, it would have been left out like a blind dog by the street and would have never been perfected and polished to the stage where each and every game is a piece of art, giving spirit and inspiration to young and old alike.
The energy is undeniable. The thousands of people piling to get in feed expectations from the start. There is something about so many people in one place, all thinking positively about achieving yet another victory. Once you find your way to the stadium instead, after going through the maze of dungeon-like walkways, you are greated by an amazing site. A garden of eden amidst the concrete jungle of Boston. It illuminates (under the stadium lights) the healthiest green light. The whole field shines like an emerald, rewarding whoever decides to look at it and enjoy it an eternal bliss of serenity.
I refuse to go beyond this on expressing the experience. Sure, there was an actual game to follow, but it was the energy of the people around this amazing place that really created the experience for me and presented itself as one of those times where the power of the people really exists in unmeasurable, yet just as real proportions.
I leave on this note - no matter who you are, what you enjoy and how much you like (or not) sports, reward yourself with this experience at least once in your life. If you regret it, come and complain to me about it :)
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Printing Press
I got to go to a printing press today. That was pretty exciting. I work for a news paper company now and as part of the job, I got a tour of the printing company they use to print their paper.
It was a pretty interesting experience. I learned a lot. They led us through the entire process they use. First they get PDF files (CMYK) uploaded to them via FTP or other means. Then these files get checked and post-processed if needed. From these files, they create aluminium master plates (big sheets of aluminium), which serve as master for the printing machines. Each sheet fits 8 pages of the paper. There is also a plate for each of the major colours.
After these plates are created, they are fitted onto the printing machines. For colour printing, there are four printing machines going on at the same time, feeding into each other to get the colours overlayed on top of each other to produce the final product. The way the printing press works (from what they explained to us) is that the aluminium plates, produced in the previous step, have special coating on them where colour is supposed to be printed. The machines then apply water and ink to that plate. The coating attracts the ink and then it's impressed on the running pages. Before they run the press in full speed, they do multiple slower runs to adjust alignment of the different colours and setup the right amount of ink on each page (there are a sequence of about 20 knobs along the length of the page to adjust that). Once the machine runs in full speed, it is running amazingly fast and they can print more than 16000 8-page sections per hour. For bigger papers, they queue a number of printing machines in such a way that all the necessary pages come together in the end, where a machine is cutting and folding them to the ready product. It is unbelievable how fast and exact the machines are doing their job. The final step of the process is to combine all the different sections, which is done by another set of folding/inserting machines and to package the papers for posting.
Now I know :)
It was a pretty interesting experience. I learned a lot. They led us through the entire process they use. First they get PDF files (CMYK) uploaded to them via FTP or other means. Then these files get checked and post-processed if needed. From these files, they create aluminium master plates (big sheets of aluminium), which serve as master for the printing machines. Each sheet fits 8 pages of the paper. There is also a plate for each of the major colours.
After these plates are created, they are fitted onto the printing machines. For colour printing, there are four printing machines going on at the same time, feeding into each other to get the colours overlayed on top of each other to produce the final product. The way the printing press works (from what they explained to us) is that the aluminium plates, produced in the previous step, have special coating on them where colour is supposed to be printed. The machines then apply water and ink to that plate. The coating attracts the ink and then it's impressed on the running pages. Before they run the press in full speed, they do multiple slower runs to adjust alignment of the different colours and setup the right amount of ink on each page (there are a sequence of about 20 knobs along the length of the page to adjust that). Once the machine runs in full speed, it is running amazingly fast and they can print more than 16000 8-page sections per hour. For bigger papers, they queue a number of printing machines in such a way that all the necessary pages come together in the end, where a machine is cutting and folding them to the ready product. It is unbelievable how fast and exact the machines are doing their job. The final step of the process is to combine all the different sections, which is done by another set of folding/inserting machines and to package the papers for posting.
Now I know :)
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