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June 5, 2007

My credit card is smoking!

I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 8:41 am

As predicted (say what you will about spreading rumors, they’re usually right about these things), the Macbook Pros were released today. No big surprises, they include the new Santa Rosa processor from Intel, which to put it in terms I can relate to, is still “faster than a G4.” The coolest thing about the Santa Rosa, I guess, is that it increases the amount of memory the computer can use, from a maximum of 3GB to 4GB. Now, Apple, they love to be sneaky. They have two memory options: 2GB, which is two sticks of 1GB RAM, or 4GB for a bajillion dollars (or $750). So if you someday want to buy more RAM from a more reasonably-priced vendor, you don’t have the option to buy a 2GB stick from Apple now and plug another one in later, you just wind up having to take one or both of the sticks out to put in your new RAM, and I hate to see RAM go to waste. So I bit the bullet, and not having anything else to spend ridiculous amounts upgrading, I got the whole 4GB. Which again, in terms I can understand, is apparently going to be faster than the 1GB my Powerbook has.

The other not-unexpected update is that they do indeed have the LED-backlit screens, which are supposed to provide more even backlighting, lower power consumption (which is always an issue for me), and while doing all this cool stuff, are also better for the environment because they contain no mercury. I have been rather miffed at Apple since it became known that the 15″ Macbook Pros have a screen flaw in which the anti-reflective coating creates a grainy or sparkly effect. You can see this, as far as I can tell, on every 15″ Macbook Pro — not the regular Macbooks, not the 17″ Pros. If you take a large white object, like a blank Word document, and drag it around the screen, you will see the grain stay still while you move it around. See this thread on MacNN, where I first learned about it. Since then, I have taken every opportunity to examine a 15″ MBP and have never found a screen without it, although on the glossy screens it’s a little less distracting. A large part of my excitement is not about the LED screen being better, but about it being different, and hopefully not from the same manufacturer who made the crap in the last model. Apple has been aware of the problem, although they have not offered any kind of replacements or recall, and it’s apparently never been fixed in the new units coming off the assembly line. I’m willing to put up with being the guinea pig for whatever’s wrong with the LED screens as long as it’s a new problem.

So, all that being said, I woke up bright and early to make sure I got my order in so I would be near the top of the list for getting this thing shipped out. I popped out of bed and went first to TUAW , where I figured I’d find word of the release (or not). Indeed, it had been released, and I read up on it a little before heading over to apple.com. There isn’t much to consider:

  • 2.2 vs 2.4GHz (this is a decision you’re stuck with forever, and faster is always better)

  • How much RAM (2GB or 4GB)– as I said, I decided not to waste RAM by buying two smaller sticks, so I got it all now — this is also good if you ever have problems because if you have non-Apple-supplied RAM, they’ll always try to blame it on your RAM.

  • Glossy or matte screen — Glossy is beautiful, but matte is more accurate in terms of colors, and less succeptible to reflections. I got matte.

  • Hard drive:
  • 160GB, 5400rpm (standard)

  • 200GB, 4200rpm (slooooow, but bigger)

  • 160GB, 7200rpm (fast, a little more expensive, may consume more battery)

    • I originally chose the 160GB, 7200rpm option, but when I went to check out it said “Estimated shipping: 4-6 weeks.” I decided to go back and see which component was causing this delay, and when I found it was the hard drive that I wasn’t so sure about anyway, I quickly changed it to the stock configuration, which resulted in a shipping estimate of “1-3 days.” Much better. I can replace it someday if I run out of room (which voids the warranty, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it).

    I threw in one of those USB phone jack things that allows you to still use dial-up if you so desire. Since I spend a lot of time in places without internet access, this might someday come in handy, though I couldn’t even tell you when the last time I used dhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifial-up was. In some hotel, probably. Normally I just dial up through my cell phone, but I suppose someday I might be in a basement with a phone line and no cell service, and then I’d be cursing myself for not getting one. I’ll admit now, I spent 50 bucks on this thing and will probably never use it, but I did save $150 on the hard drive if you look at it that way.

    I did not get Applecare, and here’s why: the computer comes with a 1-year warranty. I can add Applecare at any time before my warranty runs out. So if in May of 2008 I decide I want Applecare, I can pay for it then and extend my warranty by two years. But if for instance after a year I decide my hard drive is running out of room and I’m going to buy one at Newegg to replace it, then I’m going to void my warranty. If upgrading the hard drive is more important than being under warranty, I don’t want to have already paid upfront for a 3-year warranty I’m going to void. So I didn’t see a reason to throw away hundreds of dollars for something I may not be able to use. If I’m still using the MBP with its stock components as that year runs out, and plan to keep it that way, then it would benefit me to pay for Applecare when the time comes.

    When all was said and done, the total price was $3298 before shipping and tax (almost all the difference over the $2500 starting price was due to the RAM upgrade).

    There were lots of other goodies to buy — the extra battery was one I actually put in my shopping cart before removing it — but I remembered that everything I buy has to be shipped or carried back to New York at the end of the summer. I will definitely upgrade Photoshop to one of the CS3 suites (I should order that now, actually). I will be getting one of the new Airport Extremes with the faster wireless-n to match the MBP, but right now I have an Airport Express that I use up here (which I’m hoping Apple will update some day), and I think that can wait until I get home. I would also like a second power adapter so I can leave one plugged in at home instead of taking the whole thing apart every time I leave the house with the computer. Also, I do plan to make an order with Newegg for an external hard drive enclosure with a nice hard drive, so that I can back up my new baby, and all these very important show files that I’ve been (knock on wood) not backing up since I got here. I was waiting on that purchase until I knew what size HD the computer would have. I should get on that right away, too, especially since my computer will be running all the video sequences in Singin’ in the Rain. See this post for more on that.

    All in all it has been a great day in my computing life. My order should arrive sometime while we’re in tech or dress rehearsals, which is not ideal, but it does mean that the days will get progressively easier from the moment it arrives. Stay tuned for updates.


    May 31, 2007

    The Rehearsal Report

    I call this: mac,summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:40 pm

    Time to give the rehearsal report it’s own featured post. To your right, you will find a picture of my template for the report (click to see it full size). I keep this e-mail-in-progress saved in my Drafts folder in Entourage. At the start of each day, the first thing I do is select it and duplicate it (Command-D), so now I have two — one to work on, and one to stay as the template. It’s already filled in with all the information that doesn’t change: first the addressees (a group defined in the address part of Entourage, in this case “SITR (that’s Singin’ in the Rain) Report”. So who gets the pleasure of reading my reports? It can vary slightly by show, but in this case:

    • The director
    • The producer
    • The assistant to the producer / costume supervisor
    • The choreographer
    • My assistant
    • The musical director
    • The conductor
    • The orchestra contractor
    • The tech director
    • The lighting designer
    • The sound engineer
    • The assistant sound engineer
    • The prop master
    • The assistant prop master

    On the subject line, I fill in the day of the week, i.e. “[Thurs]day”, and stick the date in between the two “//”‘s. Same thing with the date in the main body of the e-mail.

    I’m a fan of plain-text reports myself, because I like the idea that they can be read on a Blackberry, Treo, etc. and retain a semblance of proper formatting and legibility. Yes, fancy reports with tables and stuff look great on a full-size computer, but I prefer to know that everyone can read it the same way. I actually switched to using simple HTML this year, which displays fine on my Treo, so I think it should be acceptable to mobile users.

    I break up the report into simple categories. Summary is basically what we did today, i.e. “Blocking for “All I Do,” scene I-4 and I-5, choreography for the ballet…” that kind of thing, or if there was a production meeting, Equity meeting, anything else of note (although a production meeting will then get its own separate e-mail outlining everything that was discussed).

    Tomorrow’s agenda is the span of day, time of the meal break, and on a show like this which publishes a weekly schedule of what’s being worked and breaks down call times, I only go into further detail if it differs from the published schedule.

    General is just what it says. It might be an actor who dropped out of the show, upcoming conflicts for actors, a problem with the air conditioning in the studio, anything that doesn’t fit in the categories below. One of today’s general notes concerned these lightweight plastic chairs in the downstairs rehearsal studio, which for the second time in as many days have spontaneously had a leg snap off while an actor was sitting in them during a scene. Thankfully neither actor was hurt, but from now on we’ll only be using the folding chairs from the upstairs studio. I put it in the report the first time it happened only because we rent the studio and I wanted to document that the chair was broken during normal use, and not because anyone was standing on it, throwing it, etc. just in case the studio later complained about it. Putting things in the report is like having a receipt for something. If it was in the report on the day it happened, there’s proof that it happened and when, in case a question ever comes up.

    This leads into another category which comes after General, but hopefully doesn’t have to be used: the Accident Report. Any time somebody gets hurt during the work day, even if it doesn’t require any medical attention, it gets put in the report, just in case. It doesn’t require any more paperwork unless they decide to see a doctor, at which point they need a C-2, but having it in the report on the day it happened allows them to later prove that it was a work-related injury if it becomes a more serious problem at a later date. For instance, my one and only appearance in the accident report at Phantom was when I was on the deck and through a series of unlikely events, was more or less punched in the side of the face through a masking curtain by the actor I was about to page the curtain for. Some combination of my headset and glasses created a small cut on the outside of my right nostril. When I had a moment between cues, I went to the office to check it and get a tissue, and that was the end of it. But imagine, if you will, that the cut became infected, resulting some days or weeks later in the amputation of my nose. No worker’s comp if it wasn’t in the report. Thankfully my nose is just fine, although on the third day the cut started to heal on the edges and the center turned pink, at which point it looked like a zit. I should have been entitled to payment for emotional damages after that.

    The other categories below (Music, Set, etc.) I should think don’t require explanation. The video category is only included on shows that have a video component of course, of which this happens to be one. I keep the “nothing today” label in there, and type over it when I have something to say. Today I actually had something to say in each category, which is pretty rare.

    I try to keep a lighthearted tone in the reports without wasting anybody’s time with stuff that’s silly or serves no purpose. A few things I’ve learned in life about reports are to think about whether what you’ve written is going to cause unnecessary panic, or if it will make people try to get involved in things they don’t need to get involved in. If there is time, there are some things that are best left to a private e-mail or phone call to the proper department, and when they have had a chance to come up with a response, then tell everyone else what the situation is and what’s being done.

    I have learned from talking to producers and general managers that most of them like a lot of detail in reports, even if they have a lot of shows to follow. Especially in cases of running shows where the producer or GM is no longer actively involved at the theatre, the report is their link to what’s going on. The stage manager’s artistic opinions (whether the cast gave a good show, pacing problems, performances of understudies, etc.) are also welcome, because there’s no one else there to make those judgments, and otherwise the artistic staff won’t know when there’s a problem. When I was production coordinator of Bingo, being 1,200 miles away and having only the report to make me feel like I was there, I got firsthand experience in what someone in the office wants to hear from the stage manager. I have also been thanked by the creators of shows for the detailed reports, because it serves as a kind of diary for the creative process — some have told me that they’ve printed all the reports and saved them as a keepsake.

    I write detailed reports, but I find they don’t actually take up too much of my time. I achieve this two ways:
    1. Begin the report at the start of the day, even if it’s only to start filling in what scenes/songs you’re working on. Instead of taking notes throughout the day, type them directly into the report. By the end of the day the report is usually done, but I tend to wait until I get home to send it, just in case something comes up at the last minute.

    2. Always finish the report before you start drinking. If you’re going out with the cast and/or crew after a show or rehearsal, take a moment and finish the report before you go. You don’t have to send it, just make sure it’s in sendable condition. It can be really hard to remember what happened that day if you wait until later, not to mention proofread. Then you can go out and relax and not have to put your brain back in work mode when you get home.


    May 20, 2007

    Packing

    I call this: computers,gaming,mac,summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:58 pm

    OK, I’m really going to do something productive now. I’m going to think about packing. My task is made a bit easier because I have a crate up at Reagle with a lot of my stuff in it. At the end of my first season there, I found I had accumulated a lot of stuff that there was no point bringing back to New York — apartment things like a hairdryer and Brita pitcher, stage management-y things like pencils, paper and blank CDs. It was silly to throw the stuff out, and I had been told early on that I was welcome to come back the next year, and I wanted to come back too, so I asked if it would be OK if I bought a storage crate and kept some stuff in it. If something else came up and I couldn’t return, they would be free to give the contents to the next stage manager. They were happy to accept it, probably because they figured if they had my stuff I’d be more inclined to come back!

    As luck(?) would have it, the Broadway show I had booked for last spring/summer was canceled before rehearsals began, so I found myself back at Reagle, and my crate was waiting for me. At the end of that second year, it expanded from just essential supplies that would be of use to anyone, to my own personal box of goodies. Does anyone else want my hairbrush? I think not, but I do, and the likelihood that I would be the PSM in possession of the box the following year seemed high enough that I packed just about everything in there.

    What’s in there? I don’t know. But I learned from my mistakes last year — having unnecessarily purchased or brought from NY things I had forgotten were in the box — and at the end of last summer, made a complete inventory of what I was putting in the box, with a hard copy in the box itself, and saved in a document in my “Reagle” folder, cryptically titled “What’s in my storage box.” Let’s see…
    Household Supplies:

    • 2 sponges
    • can of apple cinnamon air freshener
    • 2 boxes Snuggle fabric softener [this was one of the things I bought by mistake]
      Bottle of unopened hand soap [probably that, too]
    • Bathroom clock radio
    • Corkscrew
    • Approx. 4 sq. ft of bubble wrap
    • partial box of large trash bags, mostly full box of kitchen bags
    • hairdryer
    • hair brush
    • nightlight
    • Approx 200 Q-tips
    • GNC Women’s Ultra Mega vitamins
    • Alarm clock w/ 9-volt battery
    • Deodorant (degree)
    • razor & 1 spare blade

    Office Supplies

    • Approx. 30 business-size envelopes
    • 4 6×9” manila envelopes
    • Approx. 20 crappy yellow pencils
    • Approx. 15 ballpoint pens<
    • 1 red roller-ball pen<
    • 1 blue, 1 orange highlighter
    • 1 glue stick
    • Unopened pack of post-it page markers
    • 1/2 roll of packing tape w/ dispenser
    • disposable wipes for electronics
    • spool of 7 CD-R, 7 DVD-R
    • iPod firewire cable [that I can’t even use with my nano – why did I keep that?]
    • Significant amount of blue construction paper
    • Approx. 500 sheets white paper
    • Package of photo paper
    • Perhaps 150 business card templates SINGLE SIDED
    • AEA Stage Manager packet
    • 11 thank you cards w/ envelopes [think anyone notices I keep using the same ones?]
    • Approx. 6ft continuous cable wrap
    • 4 binder clips
    • 1 keyring
    • 25ft coax cable
    • ethernet cable
    • 1 6-outlet vertical power strip

    Hmm… Looks like I brought the contents of my personal pencil case home with me and just left the bulk supplies for the company. WTF was I thinking? That’s heavy, why didn’t I leave it there and replace the stuff when I got home? I don’t have any of my favorite pencils, or scissors, or scotch tape, or anything like that. Well now I have some Staples items to add to my shopping list (which is a memo on my Treo called “Reagle Shopping Day 1.”) The other puzzling omission is the two binders for my scripts — a large one for my blocking script, score, and technical documents, and a more svelte 1″ binder for my calling script. While the Reagle office supply closet always has a good supply of cheap binders for my temporary needs, I only use these for my main scripts, and I know I had them — a white 2″ one, and a 1″ blue one. I’m sure I didn’t bring them home (what a crazy idea anyway) because I don’t even have a white 2″ binder in my apartment right now. I’m inclined to think it’s a typo, but I remember being very thorough about this list. They would have been the last thing packed after the final performance, and maybe I just felt it was so obvious I didn’t write it down. I sure hope they’re there, they’re expensive.

    I like to pack really light, so it’s always a huge to-do the night before when I decide the suitcase is just too heavy and/or won’t close, and stay up all night obsessing about reducing the weight in such minute detail you’d think I was planning to launch it to the moon.

    The Kit
    I love-love-love-love-love the container I currently use for my kit. I got it at the Container Store, which is like a porn shop for stage managers. Here it is. Ooh, it’s so sexy! I have the large one. It’s not here at the moment to be experimented with, as it’s currently living on my desk at the Riverside Theatre, but the big challenge is that it just barely fits in my suitcase. It actually has to be at a little bit of an angle to fit, which requires some creative packing to make use of the space around it. Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure I brought it last year. I think I used (gasp!) a ziplock bag, and just brought the things that couldn’t be easily obtained at the theatre (i.e. no paperclips, push-pins, screws, etc.).

    In New York the design of this case is wonderful because it’s so thin and easy to carry while navigating crowds and packed subways and stuff. It’s a fact of life that sometimes I work in places where I don’t have a place to store even something that small, and the need to carry it everywhere makes portability very important. But in Waltham it just sat in my trunk most of the time, and I do believe I had more success last year with a bare-bones ziplock bag that stayed in my backpack. I guess that’s the plan again.

    I won’t decide exactly what to take from my kit until the night before, when we load out of Riverside and I have it back at home, but here’s my rough guess:

    • Leatherman (Charge XTi) and flashlight (Surefire 6P) in combined holster
    • lithium batteries for said flashlight, as they’re way too expensive when not bought in bulk
    • maybe a couple binder clips, since I only have 4 in the box up there
    • LED keyboard light — my Powerbook has its own backlit keys, the light is for my script
    • laser pointer (don’t use it often, but it’s great for pointing out exact positions at a distance — which light I’m talking about, position on stage, etc.)
    • stopwatch
    • this weird tool I have with tiny blades and screwdrivers — I can’t even describe it
    • maybe a pair of earplugs — was PSM for a rock musical years ago, still keep multiple kinds of earplugs, guitar picks of all thicknesses, and a drum key in my kit. It used to be a necessity, now it’s my favorite thing to be comically over-prepared for. The earplugs are light and sort of health-related, so I may throw them in just in case we’re using the little-known Metallica orchestration of The King and I.

    A lot of the things in my kit are there on the assumption that I am essentially stranded on a deserted island and have to be able to fix any problem with its contents. When working in a professional and well-equipped theatre like Reagle, where people are employed to do the things that aren’t my job, there’s a lot less I have to carry since I can just do what a rational person should do — if an actor breaks a shoelace, I’m sure a wardrobe person can help me. I don’t need to be able to produce a spare shoelace at a moment’s notice.

    The last thing that is show-related is my headset, which will not travel with my kit or computer supplies because it gets packed gently in my suitcase between my clothes. I have a little leather pouch I use to keep it clean, but I have to be careful not to crush it. My headset of choice is the Telex PH-88, which I first fell in love with when it was at the calling desk at Phantom. Now they use one of those huge Sennheiser things that feel like wearing a football helmet — ugh. Anyway, when I first arrived at Reagle, Lori asked if I owned a headset because she was preparing to place an order for some replacements if I wanted to get one. I spent the first show of the season swapping between the Telex and the Clear-Com CC-26, which I have always liked for it’s very light weight, but as they get older the booms tend to get floppy, and I have this nervous habit of always having to hold onto them to make sure they’re actually in front of my mouth before I talk. I decided to go for the more expensive but more sturdy Telex, and I was able to get in on the discount pricing with the theatre’s order.

    The computer stuff
    As I may have mentioned, I’m planning to buy a Macbook Pro over the summer (hopefully June 11 will see the announcement of new models). My trusty Powerbook will limp through one more trip to Reagle, and hopefully by July will be enjoying retirement recording TV shows while I’m at rehearsal. Yes, it’s a bit disappointing to not have been able to make the transition before the season started, and to lug two laptops home at the end. On the other hand, you should see what the difference in sales tax is when buying a computer in Massachusetts. More than makes up for the inconvenience.

    So… the Powerbook, of course, in its MacCase sleeve (I might need a new one to fit the slightly longer MBP, I think — but the old one is stained from when a certain director spilled his smoothie into my computer bag, so I guess it’s OK). The power cable for the Powerbook obviously, especially since the elderly machine has its original battery, and starts threatening to shut down after five minutes of use. Also in the main compartment of my computer bag will be my script for Singin’ in the Rain, without a binder. I carry an assortment of cables, many of which are in cute little retractable spools: firewire, USB, mini-USB, ethernet, phone cord, iPod, Palm sync/charge cable. My Canon i70 printer, which is the same age as my Powerbook, besides needing some serious percussive maintenance over this past winter, is still going strong after years of hard work. Along with that is the Airport Express. See this post for the whole story on how they’re used. My Nintendo DS Lite and charger — I had a lot of fun last year playing Animal Crossing with the kid playing Chip in Beauty and the Beast. We actually inspired two people on the crew to buy the game, too. Everyone else in the building thought we were dorks. …What?

    Low priorities
    And finally, if there’s any room in my bags left over, I might not have to walk around naked. I pack exactly eight sets of clothes (including the one I’m wearing on the travel day). That leaves me a one-day grace period to do the laundry every week. One of those is my “nice outfit” which is not intended to be part of the normal clothing rotation, as it’s too nice to wear on an average day. It’s only for occasions when I know I can sit in my ivory PSM tower and not get dirty. Opening nights, parties on the day off, etc. I usually wear a sweatshirt of some kind on the travel days (so the sweatshirt doesn’t have to fit in the suitcase, of course), that way I have one heavier thing to wear should it ever be cold. This year I’m sure it will be my 1-up jacket. I love that thing. I also pack a lightweight windbreaker for rainy days. I bring only one pair of shoes, due to space and weight constraints. This depresses me because one of the best things about Reagle is that I never have to dress in all black for three whole months. On days I don’t have to wear black I enjoy wearing a nice bright pair of white sneakers, but because white sneakers aren’t classy enough to be worn with the “nice outfit,” that means my one pair of shoes must be plain black sneakers that are subtle enough to pass for dress shoes if no one looks too closely. I just bought a new pair to cheer myself up about this (and because the old ones had a huge hole in them).

    Usually a few stray items also find their way into my suitcase. A small notebook mouse went up the first year so I could do a little bit of computer gaming. The sad state of Mac gaming and the age of my Powerbook made that a joke, but this year it might make the trip again for the new computer. I might bring another cheap little mouse I got for free instead of the good one — then I can leave it there.

    Well that should more or less cover it. It certainly is nice to have a consistent experience and know exactly what I can expect to have available to me up there, and where I can obtain all the other things I need. It’s a big difference from my first year where I packed a lot of stuff not knowing whether I would need it.


    May 12, 2007

    Treo 755p released for Sprint

    I call this: computers,mac,phones — Posted by KP @ 8:39 am

    The new excitement in my life is the announcement of the Treo 755p smartphone from Sprint. Now I’m not a Sprint customer and never have been or in all likelihood ever will be, but what’s exciting here is that Sprint and Verizon both use CDMA for their phones, which means they usually wind up with the same hardware sooner or later. The phone is very similar to the 700p, but a little smaller and with an internal antenna. It also uses Mini-SD instead of a regular SD card, which has many people up in arms, but I don’t really mind, since I’ve always been too cheap to buy an SD card for my camera, and take the one out of my Treo whenever I want to take a picture. At least now the camera can have the dignity of its own memory card. The phone also comes in two colors, midnight blue and burgundy. Colors are often different between providers, but I hope Verizon has similarly attractive options.

    Although Verizon has not officially announced the phone, a thread on the very good TreoCentral forums contains a report of a completely unofficial claim by a Verizon rep that it’s in beta now and is scheduled for release in July. Oh looky-there, my contract is up at the end of June, how convenient.

    I was actually planning not to renew and stick with my Treo 650 month-to-month until things with the iPhone shake out, but more and more I think the iPhone is a bad idea for me, given how my phone is my only phone for personal and business use, the iPhone is new and unproven on basic things like battery life, reception and availability of software, and I don’t trust AT&T/Cingular’s coverage in NYC. On top of that I will be in Massachusetts until the end of August and in no position to judge call quality in NYC for several months. So right now my plan is to get a 755p as soon as it’s released, which will be a big improvement over my 650, and I will probably not be tempted to get an iPhone until their second version.

    And on a somewhat unrelated note, rumors are flying about the release of new Macbook Pros coming up with LED-backlit screens, probably in June at the Worldwide Developers’ Conference (WWDC), which would be June 11. Now that I finally have the money saved up, it looks like it’s going to be a very exciting summer for me, after a long two years of not upgrading any of the computer-like devices in my life.


    April 10, 2007

    Pimp Your Mac with Theatre-Related Icons

    I call this: computers,mac,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:09 pm

    If you’re a visually-oriented Mac user like me, perhaps you like to make your frequently-used application and folder icons distinctive so that you know at a glance what you’re looking at. I’ve downloaded lots of icons from the web, but often I find there’s not one appropriate for my needs. Which makes sense, since nobody (else) bothers making icons for stage managers, or bearing the logo of some obscure new play or musical nobody has heard of. So I’ve taken to making my own to make things easier to find.

    So here are some of my favorites, available for download in two packages.

    Package #1 – Basic Folder Icons

    Only two here. One is my basic Stage Management folder. I keep this one in my Finder sidebar, so I have a quick link to all of my subfolders of show files and general paperwork. One of those subfolders is my Equity folder, which holds the PDFs of the rulebooks for all the contracts I’ve worked under. Very handy to have around.

    Package #2 – Show Folder Icons

    When I’m doing a show, the folder for that show is one of the more important items in my computer, usually making its way into my sidebar for the duration of the production. As such, I like to have a nice, very noticeable icon (preferably that doesn’t look anything like the icons for other shows I’m currently working on.) This is a collection of folders for shows I’ve done or am currently working on (only the one’s you’ll ever hear of). Sorry the one for The Fantasticks has that weird orange border. Never quite figured out why it was doing that. Of course the logos are copyright of their respective shows — I wish they were mine, I’d be a millionaire.

    The shows included are: 42nd Street, Crazy for You, Carousel, The Fantasticks, The King and I, The Phantom of the Opera, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Singin’ in the Rain, The Sound of Music, and The Will Rogers Follies.

    Oh, and there’s also my icon for Adium (which is a highly customizable instant messenger app, if you’ve never tried it). It’s the Adium mascot, Adiumy, as a stage manager/tech person, with a cue light overhead to indicate Available, Away, Idle, Invisible, etc. Yeah, I know it doesn’t make any logical sense that the same lightbulb keeps changing colors. I really did want to have all the bulbs visible, cause I’m a perfectionist, but 128 pixels is 128 pixels, and it has to look better much smaller than that.

    How It’s Done
    To make simple icons, I use a shareware app called Can Combine Icons, which is incredibly easy to use if you just want to combine two icons or images, and it comes with a full library of standard Mac icon images to get started with. Some simple image manipulation and color changing is also possible, which works great when you want the folder color to match whatever else you’re putting on it. It’s only 10 bucks, and for how much I use it, and how you can create a professional-looking icon in literally seconds, it’s well worth it. I should caution though, that it doesn’t seem to have been updated in a long time, and I’m not 100% sure of its Intel-compatibility (though I can’t see why it should be a problem), and some comments on VersionTracker indicate the developer may be slow to generate registration codes now. But it’s one of the best apps I’ve ever purchased, so I can’t complain. And of course there is a free trial.

    To change an icon for an application or folder, click on whatever icon you want to use (perhaps one you’ve downloaded here), and press command-i. This will open the item info window. In the upper left corner is an image of the current icon. If you click on that, it gets highlighted. Press command-c to copy the image. Then do command-i on whatever item you want to apply the first icon to, click on the icon image in the resulting info window, and press command-v to paste the icon. If you want to go back to the default icon for that item, command-x for “cut” will remove whatever custom icon you’ve added.


    April 4, 2007

    This week’s Apple news

    I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 3:57 pm

    Quick wrap-up of some interesting things that happened this week:
    Steve Jobs will lead us from the evils of DRM
    Some time ago, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter saying that he felt the future of digital music was to remove digital rights management and let consumers play their purchased music however they want and on whatever device they want. Well it’s actually happening. The iTunes Store will be selling DRM-free, higher-quality (256kbps) music published by EMI for $1.29. If you already own the songs you will be able to upgrade to the non-DRM versions by paying the extra 30 cents. You will still be able to buy songs in the original format for 99 cents if you choose. Some people are mad about the price increase. I think freedom to do what you want with music you own is worth more than 30 cents, so I’m happy. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before all the major labels convert.

    Complete My Album
    In more minor iTunes news, there’s this new feature available now on the iTunes Store that will be helpful for people who own songs from an album and don’t want to pay the full price when they later decide to purchase the entire album. If you go to the Complete My Album icon on the store, it will show you your albums and how much it will cost you to complete each one. Cool way of doing it, I think. Unfortunately, you only have six months after purchasing the song to be able to apply it to the album cost. That’s kind of lame.

    Lower prices on Cinema Displays
    Always a good thing, given the high price of quality flat-panel monitors. The prices are:

    • 20-inch: $599
    • 23-inch: $899
    • 30-inch: $1799

    Personally, if I was in the market for one, I would be cautious, because a price drop usually means something better is around the corner, and the discontinuation of the standalone iSight would seem to indicate that soon all Apple monitors will have built-in iSights. Even if you’re not interested in an iSight, you never know what crazy improvements they’ll come up with. But if I had unlimited funding, I might be interested in one (or eight) because of this…

    8-core Mac Pros
    I don’t get as excited about processors as some people get (at least when I know I’m not going to be using them), but I do know that quad-core is all the rage, and two quad-cores is naturally double the rage, and as a result people have been hoping for the announcement of an 8-core Mac. Congrats.

    So it uses two of the “Clovertown” 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 processors which should give it a rating of “really fucking fast” on my personal benchmark against my 1.25GHz G4. It can take up to 16GB of RAM, and I’m not sure if this is new to this model, but the video cards can support up to 8 monitors (I assume that would mean 4 of the 30-inch ones). Damn. If I had a million dollars, I’d buy one of these and 8 23″ monitors wrapped around my entire desk, just because I can.

    So how much does it cost? Well the starting price on the Apple Store is $2499 for a Mac Pro, but that’s not for the new chips. I configured a system with the 8-core chips, 16MB of RAM, and eight 23″ HD monitors, and it came out to $19,473.90, including tax. As this is only slightly below my average annual income, I think I will have to settle for the Macbook Pro I’ve got my eye on.


    March 30, 2007

    Creating a wireless network for the rehearsal room

    I call this: computers,mac,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:37 pm

    I’m about to start rehearsals for a new show, which has got me thinking about getting all my goodies set up to take with me to rehearsal. One of my favorite ways of making things more efficient in the rehearsal room is to set up my own wireless network for the use of the stage management team, creative team, or even the actors who want to use a laptop or other wireless device on their breaks.

    Unfortunately, below a certain level, most theatres and rehearsal spaces don’t offer much in the way of internet access. If there’s wi-fi, it’s probably by accident, that the hotel across the street might has an open network or something. And it seems to be one of Murphy’s Laws that the signal never reaches to the area of the room where you have to set up your table. It’s even hard to find a phone line (or one you have access to) to use dial-up. Most of the time I use my cell phone as a modem, and connect by Bluetooth from my laptop. This gives speeds about the same as dial-up, but also wears down my phone’s battery, and can sometimes interfere with incoming calls.

    Should I be lucky enough to find an ethernet connection somewhere in the building, that’s where I will set up my network. The key piece of equipment here is Apple’s Airport Express router. It’s not the most fully-featured router, but it’s tiny! At just a little bigger than the power brick of a Mac laptop, I can shove it in my bag — or as I usually prefer, in my printer carrying case — and forget it’s there until I need it. I also carry a retractable ethernet cable which likewise stays out of the way until it’s needed.

    In a perfect world, the place I like to set up the router and printer is:

    • not in the rehearsal room, where the printer will make annoying printer noises
    • close enough to get a strong wireless signal through the wall (~50 ft.)
    • in a location occupied only by people who won’t steal stuff

    Once I’ve found my location, I plug in the router and printer. Finding two outlets, one of which is big enough to fit the brick of the router, is sometimes the hardest part — stealing a power strip from somewhere is often the result. If the ethernet connection is a jack, I use my own cable to connect to the router. Then with the USB cable I carry, connect the printer to the router. The printer I use is the Canon i70, which is no longer made, but the i90 is the current equivalent. The only thing I really dislike about it is that it doesn’t have one of those little slots for a computer lock to be inserted. I leave the printer lying around unsupervised much more often than my computer, and yet there’s no way to secure it.

    So now that everything is plugged in, it’s time to set up the software. Using the Airport Admin Utility, I create a network, which I usually call something very simple and easy for other people to remember. I always create a closed network, meaning that it won’t show up to random people as an available network. Each person has to know the name of the network and type it in manually. I generally don’t bother with encryption, as I have had more headaches trying to get it to work for everyone, especially when some people are on PCs or other devices. If I really want security I will set it to allow only the hardware that I specify, which means every time I add a new person having to get the MAC address of their computer or mobile device. If all has gone well, the router will be displaying its happy green light, meaning it has an internet connection, and everyone should be able to access it for internet and printing.

    Being able to give reliable internet access to everyone in the theatre or rehearsal room makes everything much easier. The last two shows that I was PSM for were workshops of musicals in development. Every day, every hour, sometimes every half hour, there were new pages of text, new songs, new arrangements e-mailed from the copyist, and all of it had to be distributed to be worked on NOW. The musical director would decide to change the key of a song, the composer would transpose it on his Powerbook in Finale, e-mail me a new PDF, and I’d send it to the printer. The whole process could take less than five minutes, and nobody had to get up from their chair, except to go out to the lobby, grab the pages from in front of the printer, and hand them out. Theoretically the composer could have even sent the file to the printer himself, although I never bothered with the few seconds it would have taken to add the printer for anyone besides my assistant, and I would have needed the PDF for my records anyway.

    Even in situations where internet access is not available, just having the printer on the network can be a big help. Being able to send print jobs out of the room and have them waiting whenever I feel like picking them up is great for spaces where the noise of the printer is too distracting, not to mention the ability to let others also use it. And the best part for someone like me who often works in many different locations and is not always given storage space, is that everything is very easy to carry. I bought an unfinished carrying case from the Container Store, and shaped the foam padding to hold my printer securely, with a little extra room for its cables and the Airport Express. Then I throw some blank paper on top of it all.


    March 25, 2007

    Something cool I once did with my desktop

    I call this: computers,gaming,mac — Posted by KP @ 8:00 pm

    While my desktop these last few days is the highly-original default Aqua wallpaper that came with OS X Tiger (shown here), I did once do something pretty cool with it.

    I’m a big fan of the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and I’m kind of fond of having little bits of NES nostalgia in my life (like this USB NES game controller), so of course I occasionally like to decorate my Powerbook’s desktop the same way. So this one time, I decided that I would go all out. The result was this:

    What you can’t see from the image is that all of the “?” blocks are clickable buttons (using DragThing) that are actually hovering over the image on the wallpaper. They launched various apps, the pipes opened commonly-used folders, and the picture of Mario in mid-air launched a NES emulator, so I could play all those classic games on my Mac, with my original NES controller, of course.

    The Details
    The wallpaper itself I adapted from this one, resized and rearranged to fit my needs. The dock being squished over to the left side can be done with any number of utilities that can access those sorts of hidden OS X features. If I were doing it now I would use Cocktail, but I’m sure there are free apps that do it as well. I changed a number of icons to look more Mario-like. Unfortunately, I have acquired them over years and some may no longer be available, I don’t know. But I like InterfaceLIFT for a lot of my desktop customization needs now. For changing some of the system icons like the Finder, you need a separate app, Candybar. In brief, the green mushroom is the Finder, the red shell is SpamSieve, the flower is Photoshop, although I really wanted it to be a Fire Flower, I couldn’t find a decent Aqua-like icon of one, so I made do. The music note block, as you might have guessed, is iTunes. I made that one myself in Photoshop. If you’ve always wanted one, here it is. The piranah plant is the trash of course, and when empty it’s just the pipe. I made the pipe and added the plant from a very nice icon I found somewhere. The clock is a regular ol’ dashboard widget. And if you’re curious, the instant messaging app showing is Adium, which I highly recommend. I also designed the icon you see, of the Adium mascot as a stage manager, which you can download here.

    The whole thing was a lot of fun, but eventually I just got tired of it, and it wasn’t as useful as you might think. I felt really bad changing it because of all the work I had put into it, but it was time to move on. I kept it a lot longer than I keep most of my desktop looks, and I still have some pieces of it, like the mushroom Finder icon. I’m still intrigued by the idea of having a desktop picture with clickable elements that do things. This was my first attempt at that. Maybe if I think of a good way I’ll try it again someday.


    March 23, 2007

    Adobe CS3 Live Webcast

    I call this: computers,mac,pc — Posted by KP @ 3:06 pm

    OK, I can’t even believe I’ve put this in my calendar (with an alarm, no less), but Adobe is doing a live webcast of the launch of Creative Suite 3 on Tuesday, March 27, at 3:30PM EST. It will be hosted at this link.

    I for one will be purchasing some version of CS3, as I’m still using Photoshop 7. I’m curious to see what the upgrade pricing will be for that.


    Mac OS 10.4.9 and USB webcams

    I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 12:32 pm

    One of the more interesting things to happen in the Mac world in the last week or two is the release of OS X v10.4.9, which among other things, enabled the use of USB webcams natively with iChat and Quicktime and whatever else you might use them for, without the need to buy shareware drivers as was necessary before.

    If, like me, you never bought the now-discontinued iSight because it was too expensive, and you think, as I did, that this means you can now go out and buy the cheapest webcam you can find — you’re wrong. Not all webcams are compatible, only those which are UVC compliant, which seem to be only the ones that are almost, or as expensive as the iSight was. Bummer.

    Nevertheless, I needed a webcam, and this finally got me to go out and buy one. After perusing a number of Mac-oriented forums, and finding very little concrete evidence of which webcams actually work, I found this thread at MacNN, which seems to contain the most information. So with a list of theoretically compatible models, I went to CompUSA. The cheapest I found was the $79 Quickcam Pro 5000, but it’s kind of huge, and I wanted something that would work well for my Powerbook, but also sit nicely on a regular monitor, as I intend to give it to my parents once I buy a Macbook Pro. I found the best value for my needs was the Logitech Quickcam Fusion, for $99.

    I was very happy to discover that all I had to do was plug it in, open iChat, and there it was. It also works nicely for recording video with Quicktime Pro. It’s still an awful lot of money just to get a camera working, though. It would be cool if someone could come up with a hack to make the button at the top do something in OS X.


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