Now Reading: The Perfect Stage Crew

I happened across it in the school library last week while poking about for interesting metal art topics. (Paper required for class, not much info yet.) It was along side a rather large volume on stage lighting but, my schedule being what it is, I opted for the thinner volume.

Kaluta, John. The Perfect Stage Crew: The Compleat Technical Guide for High School, College, and Community Theater. New York: Allworth Press, 2003

This is your crash course in everything for theater crew - useful information one can actually find when needed and put into practise. His writing style...well, choice quote time:

   I'm a teacher, but I'm not an English teacher. So I've used italics and grammar in a personal, creative way to indicate imphasis and to change the stress or point of a sentence. My editor has fixed most of these, but if you catch a poorly written phrase just let it go. I'm very sensitive about my writing, so please don't write in with corrections unless you just hafta. Just read the line again, with a different inflection, like they taught you in drama class. When confused, try reading passages aloud. This is best done in public, in a muttering voice. At least people will leave you alone. If you read the book over and over again, everything will eventually make sense.
   Actually, that might not be true. You're going to have to read it, then try the technique a few times, then maybe it'll make sense.

I would characterize it as accessible. It's increadibly useful, yet entertaining at the same time, and in such a way that the entertainment doesn't get in the way of things. (In fact, it's mostly on topic anyhow and serves to underscore and reinforce stuff.) The other key to the usefullness is that Kaluta focuses on actually doing things, not just telling you how it should be done. No hobby horse of tradition and nomenclature here, just experience.

I'm getting my own copy.

Power, Simplicity, and Updates

I'm loving my new site structure more every time I update something. Create a new page, edit a couple others, rebuild and upload! So much better than updating 25 pages by hand.

Anyhow, I've just got around to building a power supply for my guitar effects pedals. It uses a Dell PA-9 laptop supply, a simple regulator circuit, a metal box that was a required project for my metalworking class. Good, small, cheap, and pretty nice looking, too.

The View From Underbridge

The View From Underbridge
Originally uploaded by The One True Stickman.

So on the way home Tuesday I went poking around to see if there was anywhere down behind Mill Creek in SoPo. one might be able to get a decent shot at the western sky. Lo and behold, there's this spiffy little corner under the SoPo end of the Casco Bay Bridge called Thomas Knight Park.

"In honor of Thomas E. Knight, master shipwright, who with Nathaniel Blanchard in 1850 established a major shipyard at the southeastern end of Portland Bridge" quoth the Big Brass Plaque.

It's a pretty nice park for being under a bridge and all. Quiet, if rather windy, and would afford a good view of any ship coming through the bridge. It was a pretty nice sunset, too.

Dude, Maybe It Was The Hairspray

I think I finally figured out Global Warming. Really, after this record warm January, who can possibly argue with the facts?

See, it all started with the cavemen. (Oops, I'm sorry - Ancient Dwellers of Subterranian Geological Domiciles.) Some of the cave paintings dating from the last ice age bear surprising resemblance to certain modern urban art forms, leading scholars to believe that this may be the earliest known use of spray paint. (The Eskimos of only a few hundred years ago were known to have an aversion to aerosol cans, possibly because of the great decline in native terrain caused by ingorant and indiscriminant works by rogue cave artists. This may also be where we get the term "New-Age Art".)

Then came the cows. I think they actually (*ahem*) evolved prior to the A.D.S.G.Ds., but did not come into great prominence until the... (Ah, so sue me) Cavemen began breeding them. Since bovine, modern and ancient, are great consumers of Green & Brown Grasses and great producers of Greenhouse Gasses, the atmosphere degraded to the point where the ice-cap receded even further from the equator. As they say, it was all down-hill from there. (Unless, of course, you were an Olympic cross-country skier living in what is now Texas.)

So in my conquest to combat this terrible trend (or fry trying), I propose we taking cow-tipping to a whole new level and outlaw graffiti. We must do all that we can in this urgent matter - if we don't, we'll all bake in another few million years and that would really be tragic.

We Welcome You To A New Age

TT2Site totally rocks. Let me say that again: TT2Site really totally rocks. I finally got NateNet totally rebuilt - a few minor headaches and growing pains with syntax and stuff, another password reset thanks to another ISP server rebuild, a brief run-around with site copy and we are off and running with the new system, folks! Adding an item to the menu is now slick as anything compared to the previous chore of changing every single page on the site by hand. Not to mention the coolness of the rest of the template/structuring stuff - all the power of dynamic content with no client or server-side scripting. w00t.

As promised, more projects pages and knowledge and stuff will be forthcoming, now that I have the most of the technicals out of the way of creative and productive work. If I could only get school and work and the rest of life out of the way.

Newsflash: Superbowl Now Obsolete!

Thanks to Google Video, we now have all the best commercials without the hassle of watching an entire football game to see them. People like me who don't care much more than a dust mite about football can still get in on the entertainment value of big corporations spending multi-millions to make a buck (so to speak). Not that I care much about the corporations, either, but sometimes a few of their pennies turn out to be worth something.

Hey, Look! It's A Flying Clock!

(Ooh, and there goes a toaster, too!)

Time really gets away from one at times. Like when school starts and you're back to the usual work-a-week world. Oh well.

The real reason for todays post is to bring you the very sad news that an important age in communications has come to a close. Western Union has stopped sending telegrams. I'm not really sure what else to say now. *sniff*