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October 13, 2009

Geeking Out About Color

I call this: computers — Posted by KP @ 2:29 pm

I’ve been kind of obsessed with color since I started web design.

Picking the colors for the new site was a huge mental undertaking, and I think I’ve got something I’m kinda happy with for now. Let me introduce you to my colors:

#FF4F03 This is the primary color used on the site. Let’s just say I have the hex code memorized. It’s the link color, and the navbar and most orange things are based off of it in some way. That picture of the tech table on the front page is tinted with this color. It’s kind of everywhere.
                           #F02311 This red is used very sparingly, on the line that divides the main content from the sidebar, and as the text shadow and underline for the H3 headings. The most interesting thing about this color is that on colourlovers.com it has been named as “Sex on the Floor”.
#FB8400 This orange carried over from the old site, kind of by accident. I had finished the site but was still unhappy with the colors I chose for the H2 heading. When I was updating the blog colors it looked so much better than what I was about to replace it with that I kept it.
#666666 I like grays a lot. I also like grays that have hex codes that are easy to remember. You will see this is a pattern. This is my default medium gray, it’s also used on the H1 headings.
#333333 This is my favorite gray. It was used a lot on the old site. All the “black” text on the site is actually this color.
#4D4D4D This one is my 2nd-favorite gray. It’s around here and there, mostly for text. It’s most prominent as the H3 heading (with that “Sex on the Floor” color as text shadow).
#F6F6F6 This was a new one for me. It’s only used on the front page for the box that I call “topfeatures.” That box used to be a darker color but when I used the orange mentioned above for the headings it looked muddy, so I needed something that was not quite white but would allow the headings to pop.

As I mentioned, I use ColourLovers.com to find new interesting color combinations and to play with palettes. It’s a cool site.


August 17, 2009

Nike+iPod Review

I call this: mac,phones — Posted by KP @ 12:55 pm

IMG_0855This summer I have been trying to get myself in shape after six months of touring and a diet that consisted primarily of soda and bacon. I had done a decent job, in part by stopping eating soda and bacon, among other things, and also by taking long walks around the grounds of the apartments we’re staying at. Generally I would put on a playlist or a podcast, and powerwalk as fast as I could for a set period of time (usually around an hour, maybe more if it was a long podcast).

A few weeks ago I decided I needed a little more motivation to keep up with it, and I finally broke down and bought the Nike Plus. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a little chip you put in your shoe. It’s about the size of a quarter, and maybe a quarter-inch thick. The idea is that you buy this thing, and then you buy some $100 shoes from Nike, and the shoe has a hole under your foot where you put the sensor, and you go and work out, and it keeps track of each step you take and then you can do lots of interesting things with that data.

I don’t have a problem in principle with buying a pair of shoes for this reason. However, I do have a problem in that for most of my life I have worn Nikes and loved them, but in recent years they don’t fit me at all. I have no explanation for it. They feel like they are designed for a different species, they bear no resemblance to the shape of my foot and ankle. So though I have tried many times, for the moment it seems owning a pair of Nikes is out. Thankfully, there are ways to use the Nike+ sensor with other shoes. Some companies sell a little pouch you put it in that ties to your shoelaces. I decided to start out small and use a Post-It.
IMG_0871

I literally folded a Post-It into a little pouch and taped it shut so it has an opening at the top with a little extra length to form a flap. I was planning to try this method for about a day, but after two weeks my Post-It is getting a little roughed up but still working well. Once I have turned on the sensor and established a link with my iPhone 3GS (which thankfully contains the transmitter inside so an external one is not necessary), I put the sensor into the Post-It and insert it under the laces towards the front of my shoe.
IMG_0872

I don’t have a really accurate way to measure distances here — ironically I live on an athletic complex and there’s no track — so I can’t say if it’s exactly calibrated, but it seems to work well enough. If anything it’s underestimating distances, which means I’m getting a better workout than I realize.

When you start a workout you can choose a number of different goals — either a set length of time (useful when I want to go out before work and know I only have 45 minutes or whatever), a set number of calories to burn, or a certain distance to cover. You can also do an open-ended workout, but I think I would be too lazy if I didn’t have a goal to complete. You can also keep going after you reach your goal, and it will periodically remind you by how much you’ve passed your goal, making you even more awesome in the eyes of your iPhone or iPod.

When you start your workout it lets you pick a playlist (you can also buy premade ones from the iTunes store, but I haven’t tried that yet), and when you reach certain milestones related to your goal it will duck out the music for a couple seconds to tell you (i.e. if you’re running for 5 miles, after every mile it will tell you how many you’ve completed, and once you reach the halfway point, begins counting down to completion, in smaller increments as you get closer). At any time you can tap the home button on your phone and it will read off your current distance, calories, time elapsed, and pace.

Once you complete your workout, you can sync your phone (I have noticed you have to hit “done” on the workout and have exited the Nike+ app before plugging your phone in or it won’t sync). iTunes will then ask if you’d like to upload your workout data and visit the nikeplus website.

The site can be a little weird at times (there’s also a beta version that looks cooler but is a bit buggy), but it allows you to see your workouts at a glance as well as examine them in more detail individually, and write a little summary of how you felt, the weather, what kind of terrain it was, and any other comments.

You can set long-term goals for yourself and it will track your progress, and you can join “challenges” which other people create to compete for specific stats. I am a member of one that is just for powerwalkers, and tracks who has walked the most miles over a period of a month. I’m currently hovering somewhere around 7th place, and I intend to walk a little bit longer today just to beat out my competition and move up a few places. The first goal I had was suggested by the web site, to burn 4000 calories in the first month. I did it in like a week and a half, partially because it was so satisfying to see the bar fill up so far past my goal (it also shows you how far into your goal you should be to complete it on time).
Picture 2

I highly recommend it if you need a little extra motivation to work out, especially if you have an iPhone 3GS or newer iPod Touch, as you don’t need the external transmitter, so all you need is the sensor in your shoe. Also, the sensor can be purchased alone for $20, or with the transmitter for $30, so it’s a much better value.

It will be much harder for me to keep up with this kind of activity in the city, but I plan to stay as active as possible, and will look for opportunities when I’m on the road as well. I’m not sure I can become one of those crazy people in Minneapolis I saw running in the middle of winter — not because of the cold, but because the sidewalks turn into a solid sheet of ice for months on end. Even tiptoeing around them I wasn’t able to stay upright. But thankfully the Guthrie housing does have a treadmill, and I’m sure the college campuses we frequent will have lots of nice areas to explore.


Fun with the ETC Ion

I call this: mac,summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:12 am

Reagle’s regular light board is the ETC Microvision FX, an example of which is shown here.
MicroVisionFX
It’s ancient. It usually works OK, when it doesn’t double-go, but for anything complicated, like color scrollers or moving lights, a newer console needs to be rented. La Cage is just that kind of show.

This time around we got the ETC Ion, shown here (except we don’t have the one with the row of faders on top):
ion

It’s very cool. It saves the show onto a thumb drive instead of floppy disk, and so forth. I haven’t had much time to learn how to use it (I can barely bring a cue up), but while we were in tech our lighting designer invited me to play with the scrollers. It was definitely the highlight of tech. There are a couple different ways the board can help you choose color. There is sort of a color swatch screen that shows you the gel numbers and you click on the one you want. The dials at the top can also be spun to change color, saturation, etc. But the one I got to play with was the color wheel.

Since I’ve been doing a lot of web design and graphics lately, I have been kind of obsessed with color. So when I saw that the board had a color wheel, the same as you’d find in Photoshop or wherever, and you can click anywhere on it and it will put that color onstage, I thought that was incredibly cool. Of course the specificity of the color it can produce is limited by the variety of gels you have in your scroller, but even in my random clicking I was able to get it to look pretty much like I wanted.

I made a short video to demonstrate this feature. Unfortunately the color wheel got pretty much washed out on the video, so I didn’t spend any time looking at the intricate differences in color since you can’t see exactly what the mouse is pointing at, but you get the idea.

Also, as a side note, I shot this video with the iPhone 3GS, and edited it with iMovie ’09, which is the first time I’ve successfully created a movie with the new iMovie format without having to stop before I smashed my computer. Even with something so simple I was frustrated by stuff that I apparently couldn’t do, but it at least gives me hope that I don’t have to hang on to iMovie ’06 forever just to get anything done. Just the ability to upload to Youtube without worrying about formats was worth it.


August 11, 2009

15″ Macbook Pro Now Available with Matte Screen Again!

I call this: computers,gaming,mac — Posted by KP @ 12:43 pm

A followup to this post, in which I debate whether I can handle buying a 17″ Macbook Pro, partially as a result of the fact that it was (until today) the only Mac laptop still offered with a matte screen.

Well today I read on TUAW that the 15″ is now being sold with a matte option again.

This is good, since if I decide the 17″ is just too big, I have options. On the other hand, if you look at the other post you will see that although the screen was the dealbreaker, there were other reasons I was still considering the 17″, mostly related to the idea of having a more desktop-like experience while living on the road.

That being said, I have lived my entire professional life with a 15″ Mac laptop, and have rarely used a larger computer or external monitor for work purposes, even when living at home. Of course a larger screen would be nice, but it has never been necessary, and the balance of the 15’s size being large enough to work on for long periods, but small enough to walk around with makes it possibly the ideal form factor.

I could use a larger screen and higher resolution for seeing more of a spreadsheet on one page, coding my website with code on one side and a larger preview on the other, those are legitimate purposes, but the main reason I felt I needed a larger screen was for gaming on the road. I was starting to get a bit of cabin fever gaming in 15 inches for a year on end, and getting ready to go back for at least six months more of that.

Gaming isn’t necessary, but it also is part of my life that I enjoy and I think it is a professional concern, as there have been times when circumstances have prevented me from enjoying certain activities that are normally part of my lifestyle, such as listening to music on my commute, having alone time in the car at Reagle, and when these things are taken away they start to affect the delicate balance that keeps me sane and calm. Somehow I have found a way to enjoy doing a job that most people refuse to do because it’s too stressful, and my continued ability to do my job well requires that I take care of my mental health and give myself opportunities to unwind so that I can go to work happy and with a positive attitude that will filter down to the rest of the people on the production.

I don’t know if an inch-and-a-half of additional screen real estate will make the difference, but if so, the ultimate benefit is that I would not resent my job for taking me away from things that I enjoy, and on a day-to-day basis, I think that’s a huge deal.

On the other hand, I have to consider how much the size of the laptop will negatively affect my work and free time. On the road I find myself actually using it on my lap — or balanced precariously on something else — a lot more often, since I’m often in improvised situations where I have to make a desk out of what’s available, and I will probably be writing the show report from a couch, either at the venue or on the bus.

I looked into how much Tekserve charges for Macbook Pro rentals, and it’s $100 per day, or $200 per week (and upwards from there). As much as I’d love to have an opportunity to run around with a 17″ for a while before dropping $2,500 on it, I don’t think it’s worth nearly 10% of the total cost to have just a week to decide if I like it.

Anyway, the decision is still far away (I hope), but I need to keep paying attention to all the ways I use my computer during the day, and how many of them would be impractical with a larger machine.


August 7, 2009

The Sorry Jar

I call this: computers,gaming,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:04 am

In our rehearsal room for La Cage, we have some very apologetic people. So much so, in fact, that our director decided early on that every time someone says “I’m sorry,” they owe him five cents. Naturally, being stage managers, Paul and I were put in charge of keeping track of the debt.

BACKSTORY:
I have been working more with Google Spreadsheets lately, which I have grown to love as a result of my involvement with the game Battleground Europe. As a member of the Axis high command, I was first introduced to Google Docs because all the data that keeps the officers organized is contained in some very complex and fascinating spreadsheets. Whenever I meet somebody who has better paperwork than I do, my first instinct is to steal all their tricks, so I had great admiration for the Italian gentleman who created them, who goes by the name of Lince. When Lince retired from the high command, I offered to take on the management of the spreadsheets if for no other reason than to get a chance to play with them and learn from them. Lince and I are still in the process of training (the time difference from here to Italy being a bit of an obstacle at times), but I have learned so much already.

So back to my story.
We began on the first day keeping track of the Sorry fines on a couple of post-its, but of course this wouldn’t work. I also wanted a solution that would be able to be edited in real time by Paul and I, even simultaneously. Google Docs is the simplest way I know of to do this.

So I created a little spreadsheet that has all the actors’ names (and mine, and our director’s), and a column for each day of rehearsal. It totals how much each person owes, and at the bottom displays the total money raised.

You can take a look at it here to see how we’re doing.


July 31, 2009

Entertaining Notions of the 17″ Macbook Pro

I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 1:01 pm

First, an astronomy lesson.

Our Solar System

mbpsize

As you can see, with the new unibody design, the 17″ Macbook Pro is now slightly smaller than Jupiter.  If you count Saturn’s rings (which also do not fit on airline tray tables), you could even say it’s smaller than Saturn.  Which brings me to the point of this post.  For the first time in my life, I’m letting myself even entertain the notion of maybe for some reason in the future considering one.

I love love love my current 15″ Macbook Pro (I forget it’s official designation, I guess it’s 2nd gen, 2.4gHz Core 2 Duo).  I bought it the day they released the model with the LED backlight.  June 2007.  First of all, when it died on the road this past spring, I had to face the possibility of needing to replace it.  I was not happy about this, in that “oops! my computer’s broken, I guess I need a new one!” kind of way.  The problem is that  Apple in their infinite catering to the non-Pro users of their Pro lineup, have done away with the option of getting the 15″ with a matte screen.  Apparently, despite the fact that the Macbook Pro now comes in three sizes, only the 17″ is now Pro enough to include the features professionals need like a matte screen or Expresscard slot.  The nomenclature is all screwed up now.  It used to be if you wanted an OK laptop you got a Macbook (or an iBook).  If you were a professional, and needed more power or options (which you were willing to pay for), you got a Macbook Pro (or Powerbook).   Now the division between those two things has nothing to do with where the word “Pro” appears in the lineup, it’s inexplicably between the 15″ and 17″, as if all the professionals of the world are giants who only fly first class.  OK, rant done about that.  But it’s the first step in understanding why we’re even having this discussion.

First of all, the timeline.  I’m not shopping for a new computer.  As I said, I love the one I have.  Aside from the fact it completely up-and-died on me an hour before a performance in Phoenix, it’s been otherwise rock solid, and with its new logic board and battery, it’s in many ways only a few months old.  The only feature it’s lacking is the new touchpad that can do zoom gestures, and it still has a separate physical button, which I find just fine.   It’s just over two years old, but lately I’ve started to think long-term about its life.  It just love it so much.  I do not love the current model, so an upgrade essentially would be a downgrade.  But someday, there will be a feature much better than the glass touchpad, that will start to make an upgrade a must-have.  Maybe it will be processing or graphics power.  Maybe built-in GPS (after a year with an iPhone, I go to Google Maps on my laptop and I’m like, “‘Enter starting location.’  Oh that’s easy — here.  What do you mean, you don’t know where here is?!  Do I have to do everything for you!?”) .  Maybe Blu-Ray will become useful for something and Apple will start including it.  Anyway, although I see no reason to upgrade now, my average satisfaction with any computer I’ve ever owned is about three years.  After four years I become willing to sell my body or carry out hits for the mob in order to raise the money necessary for an upgrade.  There’s also the unfortunate possibility my current computer will have another catastrophic failure, get run over by the tour bus, or be stolen, and I will have no choice but to upgrade.

But since in all likelihood its desired retirement is about a year away, I have (quite responsibly, in my opinion) begun to make plans to ensure that whenever that time comes, I will be ready for it.  Mostly that involves having a large pile of cash saved up over a long period of time, rather than having to scrounge it together and go into debt when out of the blue I realize I need to upgrade.  This includes decisions about which jobs I take, what I buy at the supermarket (no Pom juice this week), ways to pocket more of my per diem on the road, and careful consideration of any expenses that are not rent and food.   So I am very proud of myself that hopefully I will be able to afford an upgrade before I even know I want one.

So as I said, this upgrade is still a ways away, I hope, and the current lineup of Macbook Pros is not necessarily a reflection of what my options will be when the time comes.  But instead of looking at the current lineup and praying it changes because I don’t want any of them, I have recently begun to think if I had to make the decision today, maybe the 17″ is an acceptable choice.

Some thoughts:

  • Matte screen. I covered this in my rant. If I go with anything other than the 17″, I will have to settle for the glossy screen. Not cool. I’m not always trying to fit my computer on a tray table. Percentage of the time I spend looking at the screen… hmm, maybe 100%.
  • Screen size Speaking of gaming. The biggest reason I’m thinking about this is because of a discussion I had with someone who also plays Battleground Europe, and happens to be a lighting designer who travels a lot, and also plays on a Macbook Pro, except on a 17″. The thing that makes me miss being at home the most is the screen size — it’s just not the same gaming experience playing on a laptop, largely because everything is so small and it’s hard to aim effectively when everything is compressed to just a couple pixels. A 17″ is not going to compare to a desktop monitor, but that extra 1.6″ and 1920×1200 resolution (which is the same I play at home) would help a lot in easing my frustration with being on the road so much. The larger screen and resolution would also help with the graphics work I do, and make for a more comfortable user experience in general.
  • OK, the size So the thing is big. My primary bag (see review) is designed to accommodate up to a 17″ MBP, so no problem there. The sleeve I bought to go with it would have to go (even if I replaced it, I don’t think sleeve+Macbook would fit in the slot). Some of my other bags are designed for 15″, but at least one of them was really designed for the Powerbook and never quite fit the extra millimeters of the MBP anyway. The 17″ would be more inconvenient to carry around casually (and my casual laptop-and-little-else bag is custom fit for the 15″ and would need to be replaced), but it depends on what the circumstances of my life are. There is no “casual” mode when I’m on tour or doing summer stock anyway. There’s one bag. It has all the stuff in it all the time.
  • A lot of the sacrifices I’m talking about making are adjustments to the idea of never being home. Of course as soon as I invest a lot of money in making that lifestyle more comfortable, then I’ll book a Broadway show and never need to leave New York again. But should I be so unfortunate as to have that happen, at least I could afford to buy a different Macbook Pro every month!
  • 8-hour battery life This is kind of inconceivable to me. I refuse to believe it’s even remotely possible. If the thing lasts for five hours for more than a year, I will still consider it a miracle of science. But at any rate, the 17″ reportedly gets an hour more battery than the 15″ due to the extra room.
  • Extra USB port Not a huge deal, but I could do my gaming without needing a USB hub, which is one less thing to unpack and plug in every day. I would also imagine it would provide slightly better performance than my $5 Radio Shack hub.

So these are the considerations currently floating around in my head. Of course whenever the decision needs to be made the current Apple product lineup will need to be compared, as well as what my job prospects are looking like at the time. I wish I could borrow somebody’s 17″ for like a month. If I had no dignity I should tape blocks of wood to the sides of mine and count how many times a day they piss me off.

UPDATE: I had to go to the Apple Store today, so while there, I took a look at the 17″ which was conveniently next to the 15″. It’s huuuuuge! In both the good way and the bad way. I picked it up a few inches off the table, and it’s noticeably heavier than my current machine. I actually sometimes get nervous that I’ve left my MBP behind when I’m carrying it because I can’t tell it’s in my bag. I don’t expect that would ever happen with the 17″. It’s definitely not small, but I’m not opposed to the idea of getting one.

UPDATE: New Post


July 30, 2009

Apple Releases 2TB Time Capsule. Karen wishes for 320GB hard drive.

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

Today I read this article on TUAW about Apple’s release of a new Time Capsule (router with included hard drive for wireless backups) with a 2TB capacity. Suddenly I feel like a Luddite because the scale of everyday storage capacity is starting to exceed the amount I work with exponentially.

The largest hard drive I own is 160GB. I have three of them. One in my laptop. One that was the backup drive for my laptop and once got knocked on the floor. And the one I bought to replace the one that got knocked on the floor, even though to this day it appears not to have been damaged. One can never be too safe. Of course one could also back up to multiple locations, but one doesn’t have the time for that, or a 2nd enclosure for the other drive, and one is too cheap to get a nice one, and too techno-elitist to get a crappy one.

Anyway. All this to say, I would love to upgrade my laptop drive to a 320GB 7200RPM drive, but I must admit to being a little bit wary of doing the installation myself (my Macbook Pro is out of warranty and Apple Care, so that’s not really a factor, I’m just trying to keep this machine happy for another year or so). However, my computer is now just over two years old. The logic board was replaced four months ago, the battery three months ago. At this point it feels in many ways like a spring chicken again. Which makes the hard drive even more likely to be the thing that fails, though I must say it has always inspired confidence, and doesn’t even make any kind of noise, as one that’s as old as it is, and moves around as much as it does could be expected to make. I check its SMART status every now and then, and it just keeps chugging along. Except it doesn’t chug. As I said, it’s silent. Fujitsu. Damn fine little machine in there. Western Digital tends to be the HD maker I trust, but I think that may need to change for these future drives. I’m impressed.

Yes I said “drives.” In order to back up said drive, I would then need to purchase a second drive at the same time, of 320GB or bigger. So there’s a bit of cash involved beyond just the cost of a single drive at Newegg. The plan currently is that I would only do the installation at home, where I have all my stuff, tools, spare parts, etc. in case I ran into unforeseen complications (I did bring my precision screwdriver kit to Reagle just in case I got inspired).

I’ll see how I feel both technologically and financially when it’s almost time to head home in about three weeks. I also have a phone interview in a few hours for what could potentially be a rent-paying job for the fall, so if I book that I think I can handle a couple hard drives. I actually have been entertaining a number of potential jobs, but hadn’t really thought about it so specifically. It needs to be this one. Momma needs a bigger hard drive!

My concern about the upgrade also is that while I can see that my hard drive is creating the bottleneck in speed, I worry that 7200RPMs will damage my battery life. Which it might. But although I like the freedom at work to sit at different places without having to find an outlet, I do spend most of my time plugged in. Paul has been Super Electricity Assistant this year. Wherever we sit, he’s right on it with a power strip and extension cord. Usually with the power strip gaff taped to the table too, and the cables nicely dressed.

For the external drive I would need more space. Originally when I bought my backup drives it was back in the days B.T.M. (Before Time Machine). Back then you just cloned your drive and that was it. I specifically wanted a drive that was an exact duplicate of the one in my machine, so that in the event of a complete hard drive failure, I could physically swap them and carry on like nothing happened. The way Time Machine works, by keeping multiple backups as far back as your hard drive capacity allows, encourages that your HD be many times the size of the drive it’s backing up for maximum effectiveness. Not to mention it would be nice, since Time Machine does not store its files in a way that’s bootable, to have room for another partition that could be an actual clone. Or even a third partition for storing stuff totally unrelated to backups (like large video files, movies, anything big that doesn’t need to actually be stored on the computer).

The only problem with all of this is that going bigger than 500GB wrecks my whole backup system, because that’s currently the biggest any 2.5″ hard drives come. I like using a laptop drive for my backups. It’s small, light, runs without external power, and serves not only as a backup of my files, but as a backup for the hardware itself. Being on the road all the time, the ability to have a spare hard drive in my computer bag that travels with my laptop 24/7 is a great security blanket.

If I lived at home most of the time, a Time Capsule would be a nice idea for a second, non-portable nightly backup (either an actual Time Capsule hardware, or a hard drive plugged into an Airport Express). I don’t have a Time Capsule, because as is just my luck, I upgraded to the Airport Express “wireless n” router just before the Time Capsule came out. In fact I think I missed the cutoff date to turn it in for an exchange by like 2 days. So needless to say, I really won’t need a new router for some time. And as you can see, I have no idea what I would do with 2TB of storage if I did.


July 22, 2009

Quick Tip for Traveling Mac Users

I call this: mac — Posted by KP @ 12:25 am

I just discovered this little gem, and I’m rather ashamed I never thought of it.

If you’re traveling you may very well need to charge some of your small electronic devices over USB. It’s certainly easier than bringing a separate AC charging cable, if you even have that option. One of the things that’s kind of annoying about the Macbook family of laptops is that their USB ports are non-powered when the computer is in sleep mode. So if you want to charge, say, your iPod overnight, you either have to leave the computer on, or find another outlet and use the AC adapter. The other annoyance is that if you plug the device into your computer, then the computer will get all fancy and want to mount it, and sync with it or something. Then you need to be mindful of ejecting it before you unplug it.

However, if you have an Airport Express (or really any Airport), you can plug your device into the USB port there and use it strictly for charging. This doesn’t solve all the world’s problems (in fact, I had stopped touring with my Express after the first leg because I found that I rarely found an opportunity to use it, and never needed it). But this little added functionality might make it worth bringing again. You’re still carrying another device, and still using another outlet, but if you’d be bringing an Airport Express with you anyway, this allows some flexibility in how you set up your little mobile home-away-from-home. It might also be useful at home depending on how you have things arranged.

I do use the Airport Express when doing summer stock, as I am now, to create my own wireless network in my apartment, which is equipped with ethernet, and occasionally to set up a little network at rehearsal so I can keep my printer outside the room and send things wirelessly to it, but this is generally more trouble than it’s worth so I haven’t done that this year. In fact my printer should be plugged into it at the apartment but for some reason it doesn’t want to detect the printer, and I just haven’t cared enough to further explore it. That’s OK though, because at this very moment I have my wireless mouse plugged into it so that it can charge in peace without getting un-powered when I go to bed.


July 1, 2009

iCal, iChat and Your Parents

I call this: mac,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:05 am

Here’s a tip that you might find useful:
I live about two hours away from my parents (something like 40 miles as the crow flies, but that’s New York for you), but as you probably know, I’m out of town for a good chunk of the year.

When I was going on tour, naturally my parents were very interested to know where in the country I was on a given day, whether I was traveling or had a performance that night. My folks are Mac users, but they had never gotten into using iCal. Before going on the road I published the two calendars I was using for the tour (one for each show) on my MobileMe account, and set up my Mom’s computer to subscribe to the calendars.

Every morning my Mom could open iCal and see where I was and what my day was like, and it would be updated in pretty much real time as our schedule changed. By using time zone support, it also gave her the correct local time (i.e. if I had a show at 8PM in Colorado, she would see it listed at 10PM on her calendar).

There are several advantages to this. First of all, it automates the process of “So where are you? Do you have a show tonight?” This is not to say that I was avoiding actual human contact, it actually made our conversations more interesting because it would cut to the chase: “How was your show in St. Louis last night? I was looking at pictures on their tourism website yesterday. Did you see the arch?” The other advantage is that they can see at a glance what my general day looks like. Is it a day off? Is it a crazy one-nighter where I probably won’t have a free moment? Are we on the bus all day? This helps them to decide when is the best time to call me.

Now that the tour is over, I’ve kept up this practice with my summer stock schedule. It’s a little less complicated than being on the road and crossing cities and time zones every day, but it still helps to keep them involved in what I’m doing. If having your parents know your every move concerns you, keep in mind that I’m only sharing my work calendar. Parties and other personal appointments go in a different calendar!

While I’m at it, I should also mention how much iChat has helped me to keep in touch with family while on the road, out of town, and even from the relatively short distance when I’m at home. One of my first blog posts was about how I bought a webcam for my parents so we could video chat (mostly to save money on phone bills). Bear in mind the tech specs in this post are way out of date (it references the recent release of Mac OS 10.4.9, and a camera purchased at a store that is no longer in business, for starters.)

Video chat is still my usual form of communication with my parents (when my internet connection allows, which even worked well on the bus, until the bus internet started to suck). It became especially important when I was on top of a mountain in Colorado and my aunt had to go in for a serious operation. In the middle of the load-in day I was able to go to the back lounge of the bus and spend an hour video chatting with her the day before the operation, and that made me feel a lot better about not being able to see her, compared to how it would have been if we had simply talked on the phone. I felt like I had actually been there, which was very helpful emotionally during the five days it took her to wake up after the surgery.

One of the things that often sucks about doing theatre, especially touring, is the inability to take a day off work whenever you feel like it. Often you have to miss weddings, funerals, and other major life events. If you’re going to be in a situation where you know you will be stuck if something important happens, I recommend setting up your loved ones with a web cam if they don’t already have one. Even if nothing dramatic happens, they won’t give you the “we never see you!” thing quite as much if they can see your lovely face!


June 30, 2009

MobileMe Caution for Stage Managers

I call this: mac — Posted by KP @ 11:41 pm

If you’re like me and are a member of Apple’s MobileMe (formerly .Mac) service, and use your MobileMe email address for business (or even excessive pleasure), you may need to know about certain policies they have to discourage people from using their accounts to send spam (as if a spammer is going to pay $100/year just to get an email address).

  • There is a maximum of 200 outgoing emails a day.
  • Maximum 1,000 recipients a day
  • Maximum 100 recipients per message
  • 20MB limit per message

The policies are outlined on this page.

I haven’t had a massive problem with this, although my SMTP server did stop working this morning. It being the day of the first rehearsal, you can imagine how many emails I’ve been sending to my cast of 59, plus the production team. Thankfully I was able to immediately switch to the smtp server used by my @thegobutton.net addresses, and didn’t think anything of it until I coincidentally heard of this policy a few hours later. I’m not sure if it was related or not, but given the size of the cast and the nature of my job, especially in preproduction and the early stages of the rehearsal process, it’s definitely within the realm of possibility that I will be hitting these limits at some point.

Currently the general email list (cast, plus the people in the office, director, designers, music staff and department heads) totals 75 people, so under different circumstances hitting 100 wouldn’t be that hard.

I still think the MobileMe service is a good value, especially with recent features they’ve added like Find My iPhone, but since I just learned of this potential problem, I thought I should mention it since it’s at least something to keep in mind when sending frequent group emails.


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