[Male narrator] It's 1 am on Monday morning and it's pretty quiet down there at the construction site.
But the ever-present eye of the Hospital Construction Channel is there, watching.
Well, at least it is when I remember to plug in the camera, unlike Monday of last week, which was rather embarrassing, actually.
Look at all those guys down there, just itching to get to work early on a Monday morning.
Unfortunately, though, the building is far enough along now that we won't be able to see most of what they're doing.
Because of that, this week is a special episode
and instead of the usual music as we've had in all the past weeks' episodes, this week it'll just be me, talking — rambling on for 16 minutes or so.
So, I hope you don't mind me rambling on, all during this episode. If you do, just turn down the volume and play some music and ignore me.
If you were with us last week, you saw them finish the bulk of the glass on our side of the building. (Other than the glass that will be installed eventually when the lifts come down, and a few other places that are blocked from our view.)
But most of the glass on this side is done now.
A milestone for them, certainly, but it means that, going forward, there's not going to be as much for us to see from this side any more, at least for a while.
The weekly time-lapse format that I've been following for the past 118 weeks has worked out reasonably well, I think.
The base time-lapse camera provides a time-line and a context to put the highlights or the detailed clips into
and it kind of let's me tell a little bit of a story to a certain extent, sort of weave things together.
But unfortunately, now with most of the glass in place, there's not as much to see. Most of the work that's visible from the outside is now going on on the other side of the building.
And unfortunately, I haven't been able to secure any place over there to mount a camera permanently facing that side.
If you've been watching these weekly videos, you know that I sometimes do go out on little field trips and record clips from various sides of the building, and I can certainly still do that.
But the current format doesn't really work so well for that, because they're on the other side and I can't put those clips into context
I would just have to keep saying things like "behind here" and so forth, with an arrow pointing, which doesn't seem all that great.
So, yes, I'm afraid it's time to temporarily suspend these weekly time-lapses, at least for a while. So, this will be the last one, for now, anyway.
I'm not currently planning to continue with straight-up time-lapses with no highlights
because all that can be seen now, really, is the tower cranes moving back and forth, and most of the time you can't even see what they're lifting.
And over at the Medical Office Building site across the street, they aren't high enough yet to be seen above the surrounding buildings.
So it doesn't seem like an ordinary time-lapse like that would be all that terribly interesting.
Eventually, there will be some upcoming events that we can see from our side of the building.
One is the glass enclosure of the main lobby, which will be here.
Another is the "dichroic fin" (if I'm saying that correctly) architectural feature that will go up the side of the building, here.
I'm assuming that eventually they'll be doing some work along the side here, although it's kind of hard to see sometimes.
And eventually the office building across the street will rise high enough that we'll be able to see it above the surrounding buildings.
And of course someday, eventually, the lifts and the tower cranes will come down, but that's a long way off yet.
I haven't been able to get any estimates of when any of those things might occur
but when they do, I might resurrect these weekly time-lapses from time to time in this format and maybe do a week in this format here and there to cover weeks when those events occur — we'll see.
Sometimes I might even cover several weeks in one episode, like I did in some of the early weeks.
Okay, while I was talking there, the first of the few highlights I was able to get in this final week started up.
You may have noticed that there weren't any highlights on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, an illustration of why I think it's about time to end these weekly time-lapses for now.
In this highlight we first saw tower crane number 2 lift another crate of glass panels, one of many it has lifted.
and now it's lifting this yellow device
which is actually a new glass installation machine that we haven't seen before, but we will get to see that machine in use, coming up shortly, so stay tuned.
Now, to be clear, this channel is not ending or closing down.
I do intend to continue to wander around from time to time and take video from both of the construction sites.
I'm still figuring it out, but I'm thinking I'll probably post occasional compilations, perhaps I'll call them something like "assorted construction clips from Week X" or something.
Probably won't be weekly, and there probably won't be any long time-lapses, for the most part.
Because to do a long time-lapse I would have to stand out on the street for a long time
and obviously I can't spend all day, every day, standing out on the street waiting for things to happen, or recording for hours and hours, that just doesn't work.
By the way, we're now watching the second highlight I got this week.
It looks like they're cutting the excess tops off of some of the soldier beams that were holding the retaining wall back from back when they were excavating
and those were protruding up through the top, and they're cutting those off.
Anyway, as I was saying, I'm not sure exactly what sort of material I'll have and how often I'll be posting videos
but basically, I expect them to be a little more free-form, if you will, and not on the rigid weekly schedule that I've been following up till now.
I expect this will probably evolve over time, just like the current weekly time-lapses did, so we'll see what develops.
Okay, now we have the best highlight of this week — we get to see that new glass handling machine in use.
It looks to me like this machine has "ballast", I guess you would call it, basically, that they can move back and forth to balance and shift things.
But remember this video is sped up by 20 times and so of course it doesn't actually, really move that fast.
They had a heck of time getting this suction cup off the class.
It looks like they were planning to release it with that rope, but it didn't seem to work out and they eventually had to find another way.
They were tugging on that rope for quite a bit, I didn't show it all here, because, you know, it wasn't all that exciting, tugging on a rope.
Just know that they tried for some time to get it to come off, and they finally had to use an alternate means other than the rope to release it.
This particular activity that we're watching now is a good example of something that's not directly in view from our normal time-lapse location
I actually had to go out on a field trip out into the street to get this.
So because of that, I couldn't really show the context very well in the weekly time-lapse format, another case where all I could say was "behind here", with an arrow.
In the new scheme of things, this segment could probably stand on it's own, just as a separate video, who knows
because it doesn't really need to be part of the weekly time-lapse, it's still interesting.
In fact there isn't any reason, really, to make someone wade though the weekly time-lapse just to get to it.
So this is a good illustration of why I think it's time for me to change the approach for this channel
and move away from those weekly time-lapses, even though I've enjoyed doing them for a long time now.
There are few places here where you may notice that I cut out some portions.
That's because, as luck would have it, a few times there was a parade of giant busses and big trucks passing through
just as I was trying to record, blocking my view. That's one of the hazards of recording on the street.
On a little more personal note, another reason for this change
is these weekly time lapses take quite a lot of time and effort to make, I don't know if you know that
but there's a lot of pressure, self-imposed on myself, to get them out every week
and also to have enough interesting stuff to fill them up evenly throughout the week.
Making it more difficult, of course, is that I don't have any control over what they're going to do
and I have no idea when they're going to do it.
Some weeks there's too much going on and I have to throw stuff out that I would have liked to have included.
Other weeks there's not enough, and I kind of have to stretch things to spread them out over the week.
and I try not to be too repetitive, showing the same things again
but with the weekly format, of course, I can only show what happened that week, and sometimes that's limited.
I've managed to keep it going for 118 weeks, over 2 years and in that time, we went from this...
which is all the way back in week 1
all the way back to where we are today.
By the way, If I go back and look at some of those early weeks I did long ago
I kind of cringe a little sometimes, and I think to myself, "man, I could probably do that a lot better now".
The camera technology, the number of cameras, editing abilities and so on have progressed over time
and you can kind of see that progression (which is hopefully an improvement) if you watch the time-lapses in chronological order.
I guess that's to be expected, everybody improves if you do something for a long time.
But it's finally time for me to step back and take a break and do other things.
I'm hoping the new format, being a little more "free form", will reduce that pressure somewhat
and allow me to do different things without the pressure of trying to have something exactly every day of every week.
If I really wanted to continue in that format
I think I would have to form a company and start hiring people, editors and cameramen and stuff like that, and I don't think I'd want to do that
and anyway I don't think this channel would support that, at least with the number of subscribers I have today.
Maybe if they promoted the heck out of it, and got millions of subscribers, I don't know.
In the meantime, I do have other things that will be coming out eventually.
For example, I'm still working on a fairly big video about the rise of tower crane number 3, and hopefully I'll get that finished some day.
I also plan to have some sort of time-lapse compilation of all of the glass panel installation
because I've actually saved all that video, about 8 terabytes of glass panel video I have on a disk around here somewhere.
Now, here in this Saturday highlight, we see tower crane number 2 hoisting various poles and beams.
At the time, I figured that was probably all we were going to see, it being a Saturday
but in the last and final highlight after this one, we'll actually get to see them put a few of these poles into place
because they surprised me and actually did some visible work on a Saturday afternoon, which is a little bit unusual.
You'll see in the next highlight that I actually missed the very beginning of that work
because I had already shut the camera off, thinking they were done for a Saturday afternoon and wouldn't be working any more.
But they fooled me once again.
Some people have asked from time to time, and yes, once the construction is all completely done
I do plan to go back and make a grand, single, traditional time-lapse that covers all of the construction from day 1 through to the end.
People have also asked about tours of the building, and believe me I would love to do things like that
but I'm afraid that's not under my control, and I don't have a lot of hope for that.
I suppose once the building is completed and open to the public, then maybe I could go to some of the public areas.
Beyond that, I'm not too hopeful about any sort of tours happening, but I guess you never know, anything could happen.
And once the Medical Office Building, across the street, rises high enough that it's visible over the top of the buildings
then I might start some sort of regular time-lapses of that, perhaps even weekly, who knows, maybe some other interval, I don't know, we'll see.
Okay, well, here we are in the last highlight of the last weekly time-lapse (at least for now)
and they seem to be putting up those poles and beams that we just saw hoisted in the prior highlight.
I'm assuming this is going to be some sort of screen that hides the equipment on the roof.
Which means, of course, that there will be even less that we'll be able to see, with that screen up there, unfortunately.
You know, I kind of wonder if all these pieces are from a kit or something that they ordered online.
"Some assembly required", you know, it says.
Probably comes with those instructions, you know the kind of instructions that just have diagrams and pictures and there's no text.
"Insert post A into slot B"
I wonder, because you can see right there that they change their minds about the positions of a couple of the poles and switch 'em around.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed these weekly time-lapses for the past 2 years and 3 months or so
and I hope you'll stay with me as we enter the next chapter of the Hospital Construction Channel!
Oh, but maybe I'll see the subscriber count plunge now, ha ha, but if that's the case, so be it!
Anyway, thanks for watching, and hopefully you'll stay with me as we see what comes next.
I'm always interested in hearing what people like to see.
I can't guarantee that I'll be able to satisfy any particular requests
but I do like to know what people find interesting, so, keep those comments coming.
Over the years, I've sometimes included a few shots of some of the neighborhood characters, shall we say, down on the street
so it seems appropriate to end this week with yet another one of those.
This clip is actually from Monday of next week, so it would have been in Week 119, but since there won't be a Week 119, I'll include it here, in Week 118.
I don't know what the story is, but this person is obviously having a good time in the rain
so we'll close out this week watching them waltz down the street in the rain.
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