Recent content by Mark Harris

So your first stop is to check out the website for the licensing authority for your state/country. That should tell you what requirements you have to meet. Then, as mentioned, find a company that does the stuff you want to do, and and meet with them and ask to learn. This is not an area you can...

My question to the director would be "what's your plan for when (not if) the actors/dancers swing too hard on the lamp and it falls over?" If actors are climbing on it, it should be fixed, IMHO

I suggested something like this at our community theatre and the technical boss was not interested. He prefers a PTT system (currently using Uniden walkie talkies - it's a small theatre) so that you don't have continual noise in the headsets. Problem is, he starts talking before he's finished...

I have a friend who has designed for years in community theatre. He is very particular about this practice and I asked him one day "Why are you such a pain in the butt about filing the gels? The blues go there and the reds go there, et cetera." He smiled paternally at me, shrugged and said, "I'm...

Nothing's changed at Apple, but you could try running Darwin on a PC... yeah, maybe not for mission critical stuff ;-)

That's good, but I've been using Windows since it came as a run-time for Excel on DOS machines, and it really is too unstable for me to consider it in a real-time situation, without (as you say) considerable maintenance. Plus, I can't really afford to devote a separate PC to lighting at our...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, as I understand them (and I've never used them), they're pretty specialised pieces of hardware and any Windows component will by customised to the hardware. Not the same as running a show from a PC with a USB dongle! *see your dead horse beaten and takes it outside to...

Go for it! ;-)

I saw this the other day when I was trawling the net. It looks interesting but I wouldn't risk a lighting show on Windows. Mac might be a possibility, but I'm not running Yosemite on mine yet. I was more interested in design and plotting features, esp. paperwork. I work in small community...

Hi mozsey. Did this project ever go anywhere?

I don't know if this is still relevant, but I use Inkscape for plots rather than GIMP. I have a template for the theatre I work in most often, with bars and waylines marked, and have created symbols for the lights we have available. +1 for using layers though - it makes "Select all" much easier...

Did anyone ever find a copy of this? The page has disappeared from the net and, while the web.archive has a copy, it didn't cache the software as well. His AudioCue software is available on a couple of shareware sites, but I can't find this one, which sounded interesting.

From 'best practice' to 'anal retentive' in one easy jump! :D Thanks for the site ref.

That was my argument too. I didn't win. Oh, well. ;-)

Good thoughts. I'm only looking at between shows (3-4 a year), not long term. Cheers.