Thursday, March 22, 2007

It's amazing that Trip Advisor is still a great resource

Trip Advisor has been around forever, and still has a web 1.0 feel, but I have to say it's a great way to find hotel rooms that rock.
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Monday, January 01, 2007

New Year's Day 2007

Resolution #1: Blog more.
I must have mroe to say, I mean I yap all the time about nothing, so I should start writing some of it down.

Big issues of the new year for me: I'm on freakin' WeightWatchers, the online version only, which seems to be working well for me, as I've lost 25 pounds as of today. I'm worried I'm becoming too obsessed with food.

So I guess what I want to blog about is the difficulty involved in traveling a lot and trying to not eat total crap. I travel for a living, and often have little or no control over what food I can eat -- or at least that's what I keep telling myself. I'm going to try to find those options, and share them here with the unreading masses.

I will also bitch about crappy hotels, crappy airlines, and crappy cities.

Happy New Year, let's hope this one is a more peaceful one than the last
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Friday, February 10, 2006

Hotel Review: W Chicago City


I just returned from a stay at the W Chicago - City Center.

I was working at the Chicago Auto Show, where everyone hopes to stay at the Hyatt ajacent to McCormick place, which is a hotel only attractive because of it's proximity to the gig.

I haven't really stayed at a W before, but was interested in the brand. The hotels try to be hip and trendy, two things which I'll never be, but I wanted to see how those qualities made themselves into a hospitality experience.

I really liked the hotel and would definitely stay there again.

The whole place is very dark, which is a nice contrast to the airport-level luminosity at most properties. Mid-90s-eqsque techno is the sound track de mason, and the staff is outfitted in black garb. None of this really impressed me (or anyone else) although, again, it is an interesting contrast to the bank teller uniforms of major chains.

I had read on trip advisor that their are some really tiny rooms on lower floors, so I requested Room 2001, which turned out to be just fine. It wasn't as big as a hotel room in a non-urban hotel, but it was perfectly fine, and the bed was fantastic.

Only made it to the bar one night, but it was fun and, of course, dark.

The staff was all very nice, and I would recommend this to a friend; I would suggest that you request a good room, and make it clear that you are willing to tip for the favor.
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Saturday, January 07, 2006

It's amazing the kind of ideas people come up with when asked to move a 500 pounds of lights atop 10' of truss!
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Friday, December 30, 2005

Thoughts about the GrandMA

I'm writing this blog assuming no one is reading, which is a comforting thought! I know that this blog will be split between some geeky lighting talk and more mainstream thoughts about travel. This post will be geeky!

We are involved in some discussions about the GrandMA -- my colleagues and I are in the middle of a transition from the Whole Hog II console, which we love. The GrandMA, while very stable and made by a company with real financial backing, has some issues. Here is some stuff we'd like considered for change.


Bugs and Inconsistencies:



  1. [BLIND] and [FREEZE] should not affect all consoles in multi-user mode. I assume this is a bug, forgive me for articulating it: it is impossible to conceive of the advantage of having one console put another into blind; it should be local to each desk.
  2. Set Time / Manual Fade should not affect all consoles in multi-user mode. This is obviously a bug, but just to be clear: if I decide I want a 5 second manual fade between my executor buttons, it should not effect the fade time for my colleagues on the network.
  3. [BLACKOUT] should not affect all consoles in multi-user mode. This may not be a bug, because I guess there is an argument that one person would want the ability to black out the lights under the control of other users, but I think this should be an option; I don’t want programmers being able to take control, at all, of other user’s fixtures, it’s too confusing.
  4. [HIGHLIGHT] should not override the Grand Master. It’s amazing to me that the grand master isn’t the last arbitrator of level before the output, but I guess [HIGHLIGHT] is its supervisor!
  5. Using [AT] to copy values from one fixture to another does not store modulated values unless “Store unchanged individual timings and modulators” is selected. I guess I could use a definition of what “Store unchanged individual timings and modulators” means! The situation: Fixture 1 is running a color chase. I type Fixture 2 @ Fixture 1, and fixture 2 is now happily doing the same color chase. I [STORE] the cue I’m in, press [CLEAR] the requisite three times, and fixture 2 stops chasing. The work around is to store it with “Store unchanged individual timings and modulators”, which doesn’t make sense, but cause the modulators have been changed.
  6. There is no [Select all] to grab the contents of the programmer. The workaround macro: “[CLEAR] [INVERT]” does not work after [STORE] which is particularly painful, because that is often when you want to re-grab the fixtures you just stored and do something else with them.
  7. Partial show read from two different shows creates undesirable results. Often, we need to pull preset information from two different shows, for example, get information for our Mac 2k Performances from one event, and information for our Mac 2k Profiles from anther show. As we merge the second show, we loose the preset information from the first show, or presets contain inappropriate information, like “gobo 3” winds open in the “gobo open” palette. This is repeatable and we can present you with show files.
  8. In large systems (12 universes or so), we notice a lag when we manually manipulate more than one parameter of multiple fixtures. This lag shows up both on the screen and in the rig; once recorded, the cues play back flawlessly.


Modulator stuff



  1. [TOP] an effect does not exactly create an exact version of the effect in the programmer. This is a complex issue, and if there is a software engineer reading this, I know this will come as no surprise. Alas, modulated effects feel under-developed, as there are some things that can not be emulated, like the RAMP 50 shape. To put it simply: if I create an effect and [TOP] it, I want it to be in the programmer and on the stage exactly as it was as an effect. Too often it runs at a different speed, has a different shape, or looks completely different than what I was just working on.
  2. Modulating a Pan / Tilt effect with the lights moving in different directions uses positive and negative speeds to emulate the directions. This means that if you want to slow a pan / tilt effect down, you can’t just adjust all of the [MODULATOR SPEED] attributes, you have to use [ODD] / [EVEN] to set two different speeds, which is keystroke intensive.
  3. Editing a modulated effect is painful. I guess what I’d like is to be able to get it back into the effect editor once it’s modulated. I know this is a huge thing, but there are a few intermediate steps we could take.
  4. We’d like the ability to make quick keys to [MODULATOR SIZE], [MODULATOR TABLE], [MODULATOR SPEED], [MODULATOR SIZE].
  5. We’d like to be able to type negative values into [MODULATOR SIZE], [MODULATOR TABLE], [MODULATOR SPEED], [MODULATOR SIZE] dialogue boxes. Currently, you have to type “0 – 5” to get a -5.
  6. We’d like a pool to store modulated effects into.
  7. Partial show read from two different shows creates undesirable results. Often, we need to pull preset information from two different shows, for example, get information for our Mac 2k Performances from one event, and information for our Mac 2k Profiles from anther show. As we merge the second show, we loose the preset information from the first show, or presets contain inappropriate information, like “gobo 3” winds open in the “gobo open” palette. This is repeatable and we can present you with show files.
  8. In large systems (12 universes or so), we notice a lag when we manually manipulate more than one parameter of multiple fixtures. This lag shows up both on the screen and in the rig; once recorded, the cues play back flawlessly.


Wish list:



  1. [BLIND] should not affect the command line. I would like to be able to type “1 thru 20 at” and then realize that I don’t want to affect the stage output. I want to press blind and continue my thought. Currently, blind is inoperable when there is something on the command line.
  2. Color Mix Encoders should have attribute names as labels. “CM1”, “CM2”, “CM3” is extremely non-intuitive to me. Why can’t it say “Magenta”, “Amber” and Cyan.
  3. Timing Preset. We’d like pools to store time values.
  4. We need a better way to say “delay everything but intensity 2 seconds.” We do this all the time, our current keystrokes are: select all the fixtures, put dimmer on the encoders, hit a [delay] quick key, turn the selection group to “all”, press the screen above the dimmer encoder to bring up the dialogue box to enter a dimmer value, type “2” and [enter], change the selection group to “single”, press the screen above the dimmer encoder to bring up the dialogue box to enter a dimmer value, type “0” and [enter]. On the hog, this was about 4 keystrokes, now it’s like 20.
  5. You should be able to change views after pressing [STORE]. I know Paul brought this up, but this would be a huge help. After hitting store, I would like to be able to realize that I’m not looking at the right pages of pools and be able to change them using view buttons.
  6. The Intensity Values of HTP Faders should always be On. I know this is a hog thing, but we grew used to it. When you [OFF] [OFF] [EVERYTHING OFF], it’s a hassle to have to slam “ON” all your HTP handles. I make them auto-start and auto-stop, but I then have to go through the step of making them 0 time. This I understand may be particular to me, this is low priority.
  7. After pressing [UPDATE] the dialogue defaults to updating presets, we’d like an option to have it default to cues. We’d then be able to press [UPDATE] [ENTER] to update the cue onstage without taking our hands off the keyboard.
  8. We’d like to be able to write a macro to clone the next fixture to the current fixture. If I’ve focused fixture 1,put a gobo in it, and am in love with it, I’d like to be able to write a macro that grabs the next fixture of that type and closes all the values of the previous fixture. Something that would read: [FIXTURE] NEXT [AT] PREVIOUS. This would be a huge time saver.
  9. We’d like to be able to [at] information from one fixture to another and get the values only rather than the preset information. Maybe an option in the [AT] dialogue box?
  10. We’d like to do multiple paths in the same cue. Even if this can’t be concisely shown in the executor display, it would be great to say “in this cue, I’d like the VL 2500 to use path ‘snap’.”
  11. We’d like to limit MIB to have an option to work on the cue right before it’s required, rather than as soon as possible.
  12. We’d like to limit [AT] to just grab what’s already in the programmer, rather than all contents. We know you can filter [AT] by holding it down, but it would be nice to let the programmer be an accurate indicator of what we’d like to clone.

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