Sam Nicholson

Summer 2014

Sam came across YSTV and URY at Fresher's Fair 2010 and decided YSTV looked more fun, and hasn't looked back since. He was the Deputy Computing Officer from 2010 through to 2011, then made the step up to Computing Officer for the 2011-12 year. Commonly asked whether he was really a fresher in his first year, he spent much of the latter half of his first year and most of his second in YSTV, somewhat to the detriment of his Electronics degree.

Disappeared off (whilst back to being the Deputy Computing Officer) to do an Industrial Placement for the 2012-2013 academic year and returned for 2013-14, as an ordinary member for the first time in a while. Ordinary membership became boring around the Autumn 2013 by-elections, where Sam returned to the Deputy Computing Officer job following the departure of Greg Ebdon. At the 2014 elections he decided to leave the Computing team to fresh new talent, and replaced Matt Johnson in the role of Deputy Station Director.

Finally became Technical Director for a brief stint between the 2015 elections and the end of that academic year, before finally graduating and going to work for BBC R&D in London. Also lived in 84 Thief Lane for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years, and was the last one out at the end, having taken the longest time to pack up on account of having a car and doing all the tip runs.

• Shortly after taking over as Computing Officer was involved in the unfortunate Drive Crash incident
• Has since implemented a backup solution to prevent a similar accident happening again. Unfortunately it did anyway, see Drive Crash 2: The fscking
• Dreamt up the new Tally system with Michael Chislett, which was subsequently replaced with a more wireless (and at time of writing, undocumented) system by Tom Cheyney.
• Started the continuous live channel idea that led to the start of replacing Spider and SchedSeven with Best Tech award winning Tarantula (and wrote a sizable chunk of it - no, it's still not finished!)
• Designed and built the balanced Studio Comms system Wedge - it's not a great deal better than the system it replaced.
• Wrote the Raspberry Pi VT server PiVT, and then completely rewrote it when the original was found to be rubbish.
• Did most of the computery bits for Kenobi, which won a Best Tech award.
• Produced Battle Of The Bands 2014 with Robert Walker
• Only got the studio declared hazardous and nearly closed once by YUSU while DSD due to a small misunderstanding about taking the lighting rig out!
• Filled AutoDerp with screws after Robert dropped a box on it and broke it, then again when it fell over - also hit it with a hammer, which helped...kind of.
• Helped install the new lighting rig after managing to avoid almost all involvement in the YuStart campaign (Helen and co. get the credit for that!)
• Produced Elections 2015 with Matthew Ingram.
• Produced Woodstock 2015 with Helen Hobin and Robert Walker (aka WoodFest/GoodStock/Gooda, Wooda, Shoulda).
• Somehow convinced the BBC to offer him a job to essentially continue being a YSTV techie, and get paid for it!
• Wrote confusing third-person autobiography!