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May 17, 2011

Evernote Use Cases

I call this: computers,mac,pc,phones,tech,web — Posted by KP @ 9:44 pm

I made my first post about Evernote back in August, as I was preparing for the last Acting Company tour. If you’re not familiar with Evernote, I suggest reading that first, as it will give you a basic idea of what the app does. In very brief, it stores and categorizes any text, document, photos, or other media you want, and makes them searchable and available on the cloud (and as a result can also sync with your phone and between your computers).

I had just begun using Evernote when I made my first post, and since then have mentioned it in passing on occasion. My assistant, Meaghan, and I had been sharing Evernote notes during the tour, as well as keeping our own individual notes about various things related to the show. Now that the tour is complete and I’ve been using Evernote for about nine months, I finally feel prepared to really write about how I use it, not how I thought I would use it. So I went through all my notes to sum up which ones are/were most useful.

Like most things in my life, I find I can divide it into three categories: work, personal, and technology. So that’s how I’m going to break it up. Behold!

Work

  • Cast checklist This is by far the most useful single note in my Evernote. All it is is a list of the full names of the cast, with a checkbox by each one. Initially this can be used as a reference for remembering people’s first and last names, and checking spelling. Once you get to the point where you know everybody’s name, it’s basically used for taking a headcount, or marking off when things have been completed for each actor (such as if you were making labels for their valuables bags). I think it’s fair to say that Meaghan and I used this note nearly every day, very often multiple times per day.
  • Other checklists Some other uses of the handy checklist features of Evernote are for prop presets, pre- or post-show checklists, and one of my favorites, the list of things needing to be run at fight call, and the actors and weapons needed for each one.
  • Rule books and contracts I tend to also have these files on my DropBox, but this is something that is worth the redundancy, I think. I keep the PDFs of all applicable Equity rule books, contracts, riders, letters of agreement, etc.
  • Codes On the TAC tour we had a note filled with all the codes we’d accumulated over the tour: copier codes, combination locks for our road boxes, door unlock codes, bus door codes, computer usernames and passwords, etc.
  • Procedures How to do things you might otherwise forget how to do. An example of this would be on The Comedy of Errors, we used the house’s main curtain in our show. In theatres where that wasn’t possible or desirable we had an alternate set of lighting cues. In theory they were written into the show file. But I kept a note with the designer’s original notes of all the changes made to the original show file to create the curtainless cues, as well as a breakdown of the steps that needed to be taken to make the routine switch between the curtain show and the non-curtain show.
  • “People Who Have Gotten Screwed” I have a note with this title, which is simply a list of names (there were three by the end of the tour). The gist is that when somebody gets arbitrarily screwed (like there’s no way to make the schedule without somebody having a four-hour break in the middle of their day), the person who gets screwed gets their name on this list. The next time that kind of decision has to be made, if there are multiple people who could potentially be screwed, a person with their name on this list will be passed over for screwing.
  • Interview or initial hiring notes When somebody first calls me about a job, I use Evernote to take down quick notes about the name of the show, who’s involved, where it’s being done, the dates, and salary if known.
  • Quotes I kept a list of all the funny quotes that came up during the tour.
  • Directions and maps I’ve got some notes with maps and written directions for how to get to various venues and rehearsal studios.
  • Truck pack info I didn’t end up using this as much as I intended to (probably due to not being able to type on my iPhone with my gloves on), but I had a note for documenting our truck pack, which could be lists of the order items come on in, as well as pictures of various sections of the pack to show how the items fit together.
  • Travel info / itineraries Any time I got a flight itinerary (which sometimes was way in advance), I threw it in Evernote and didn’t worry about it again, knowing I would always know where to find it when I needed it.
  • Notes for reports On more informal shows, I take my notes for the rehearsal / performance report on my phone if it’s not convenient to have my computer out. It’s also handy for making lists of questions to ask the director, or for topics to bring up at a production meeting. Then when I get home or back to my computer, I can process them more appropriately.
  • Exit interview notes While on tour, I knew that at the end of the season I would be brought in for a meeting with the general manager to discuss what was good and bad, what had improved or not since last year, and so forth. I’m pretty terrible at remembering these kind of things six months after they happen, so from the start of the tour I kept a note with all these thoughts.

Personal

  • Shopping lists Definitely my favorite in this category. Great for quick, disposable lists like groceries, and also for long-term shopping that I might not get to for a while, like things I want to get for my apartment.
  • Movie and book recommendations Any time I hear about a book or movie I might like, I go to my “Books” or “Movies” notes and jot down the title and maybe a reminder of what it’s about, or the author. This helps me not to forget things that I’m interested in, because when I’m in need of some new entertainment, I can just go down the list and head over to Netflix or to bn.com to see if any are available.
  • Insurance information I have a note with various information about my health insurance plan, and another covering my eye doctor visits last year. I haven’t needed to reference them yet, but it will be very handy over time to have documented when my last check-up was, the doctor’s name, etc.

Technology

  • All useful infomation My most prized note in this category sums up everything there is to know about my Mom and Dad’s technological lives. I did a total revamp of their house quite a few years back, and do periodic upgrades and maintenance on their computers and network. Naturally I don’t always remember all the details, so I have a file that has all their various usernames and passwords, router names and passwords, wi-fi network name and password, and computer names. I use this all the time when I’m over at their house.
  • Ink cartridge information This could be as simple as a line of text with the cartridge numbers, but I prefer to take a snapshot of the printers’ ink cartdrige, mostly because it’s faster to take the picture than to transcribe the information. Also it gives you visual confirmation of what the cartridge should look like, which is sometimes helpful.
  • Troubleshooting procedures When something goes wrong with my stuff and I find the directions to solve it online, I generally make a note with that information, if I feel like it’s something I won’t remember if it ever happens again.
  • Terminal commands and other shortcuts Ever find something online like “just type ____________ in the terminal to get this really useful option”? That’s great. Until you reinstall your OS or get a new computer, and then you forget all about that thing you cut-and-pasted two years ago. So I have a single note (which used to be a Word document I dragged around from computer to computer) that holds all of these.
  • Specs of my computer I have one that’s just a screenshot of the item description of the last batch of RAM I bought. I’m pretty bad at remembering my computers’ specs over time, so I keep them in various notes. This also includes serial numbers and MAC addresses.
  • Product keys I really keep all my product keys in 1Password, but when I first get something I often snap a photo of the product key if it’s on the box or the CD or whatever. That way I can be sure I don’t lose it or accidentally throw it out before putting it into 1Password.
  • Configuration info The one that saves me the most time is the settings for Coda, which is the web development software I use. There’s a configuration screen that allows the app to access the local and remote versions of this site, and every time I have to re-enter that information I screw it all up. So now I have it in a note, with a screenshot of how everything should be filled in.

Summary

These are the notes I’ve found most useful. Evernote can really be used for whatever you want. For instance, I don’t make any attempt to make it a task manager, as I have the much more powerful and dedicated OmniFocus for that. I wouldn’t say that I’m a power user of Evernote. I do have the $5/month Premium subscription, which allows me gazillions of gaziggabytes of uploads (I believe that’s the technical term) per month (which is more necessary when you’re uploading photos), but I rarely have really needed that subscription. I think about bumping back to the free version (Evernote is fantastic about not making you lose any of your stored data if you decide to go back to free), but I keep thinking “it’s just $5” and I like the app so much. And I really don’t want to lose the 150×150 pixels or whatever it is that the ads take up. But if you were on a budget, you could easily survive the workflow that I normally use on the free account.


February 20, 2011

(How Not to) Pick Your Wireless Carrier for Tour

I call this: On the Road Again,phones,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:08 pm

Just found it worth mentioning that we’ve been on the road about 3 weeks, have hit 10 cities, and this is the 2nd time that our crew members on T-mobile (3 people including our production manager) have been completely without service.

Yeah, I know they have cheap rates and flexible plans. Just something to think about if you’re going on tour. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen to other carriers, but our sad T-mobile subscribers have been experiencing epic communications fail so far at a rate exceeding anything I’ve ever experienced in recent years.

Of course if you’re on some really nice tour that only plays places like LA, San Francisco, Seattle, etc. then you’re probably OK. But if your itinerary sometimes contains places like Portsmouth, OH and Potsdam, NY you may want to pick another carrier.


January 1, 2011

Let Me Tell Ye: iPhone Alarms

I call this: phones,tech — Posted by KP @ 2:33 pm

Dear Steve,
Let me tell ye: I understand you had some problems with the iPhone alarm app a few months back when we switched over from daylight savings. That was pretty well publicized, so I think most people were prepared for some strangeness. I wasn’t, because I was in a place (Arizona) which does not switch over from daylight savings, but I took all the precautions, and I was a little surprised (and woke up late) because my phone fell back for no reason, which had nothing to do with the publicized alarm app. That was weird. It also happened to at least one of my actors, so I’m not crazy.

Cut to this morning, New Year’s Day. I got up around 6AM to go to the bathroom, and decided I didn’t want to get up at 7:30, so I re-set my alarms for 8:30 and 9:30 instead of 7:30 and 8:30. I crawled back into bed, and the next thing I know it’s nearly noon.

Now my first thought is that maybe a diet of vodka, beer, champagne and popcorn could cause a person to sleep through their alarms. I tried really, really hard to think about whether my alarms went off at any point, or whether I recalled snoozing them. Didn’t sound familiar. So I looked at my alarm app, and both alarms were still set. The only way I could sleep through four hours of alarms would be if I actually turned them off early on, and they never went off again. I didn’t remember the alarms going off once, much less snoozing them every nine minutes for 3 or 4 hours.

So I got out of bed (feeling pretty well-rested, thank you), and got on the computer to visit TUAW and see if they knew anything about this. TUAW has been annoying me in recent months, and I no longer read it unless I’m specifically looking for something, so I missed their post last night warning of this problem.

Apparently if you use non-recurring alarms between Jan 1 and 3rd 2011, your alarms won’t go off. Just great, let me tell ye. And I never use recurring alarms because I usually have to go to work at a different time every day.

Steve. Seriously. It’s an alarm app. How hard is it to get it to work? I’m not much of a programmer, but I’m pretty sure the gist of it is, “Is it this time? If yes, set off the alarm. If no, do nothing.” It’s also pretty much the simplest, most feature-deprived alarm app I’ve ever seen in my life. It doesn’t do anything, how complicated could it be?

I have two requests:
#1: fix this shit
#2: if you know about it (and once the Australians try to wake up, you will), send out a text message or push notification and warn people. I wouldn’t have been upset if I had a chance to prevent it.

Gotta go, I need to email my cast and tell them about this so they come to rehearsal tomorrow. I don’t know how many iPhones we have on this tour, but to say half the people on the tour have one is probably a good estimate. Why does it seem like it’s become part of my job to manage the phone alarm bugs of my actors, in the same way that one would say “just a reminder, the A train isn’t running this weekend”?

Get it together.
Love, Karen


December 25, 2010

Why it’s Christmas Day, sir!

I call this: computers,gaming,On the Road Again,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:26 am

Tis Christmas morning. I have an 11AM (my time) video conference scheduled with my parents for the opening of gifts and exchanging of Christmas wishes. As crazy as that sounds, it actually works quite well. This will be our third consecutive year celebrating in this way. There are maybe a half-dozen presents sitting on my couch right now, the remnants of a large package that arrived at the Guthrie earlier in the week. Some of the contents were meant to be shared, like food, and a cute, and rather beautiful ornament with a palm tree and flamingo that my mom sent so we would have something warm to look at during the blizzard. So that stuff has been in the rehearsal room pretty much all week.

There are a few wrapped gifts that I have no idea about, and those are waiting for this morning. One of them is totally a portable pack of tissues. I’m pretty good at telling my mom’s traditional stocking stuffers just by weight and feel, so I try to pick them up very lightly so as not to give it away. But I grabbed the tissues a little too forcefully and spoiled the surprise. I also got one for Thanksgiving/Christmas, which is the other holiday the Parlato clan celebrates on the Acting Company schedule, in which there is a tree, and presents, and family members all see each other face-to-face and have a big dinner together. The only difference is we celebrate it on Thanksgiving because that’s when I’m in town. That’s when the real presents are exchanged.

Last year my big gift was a super-warm coat from Eddie Bauer. It’s still awesome. I have yet to be cold this year. This year I couldn’t really figure out what I wanted until a few days before, when I decided to get something not very exciting, not something I can take on the road, but practical: a 2TB hard drive and enclosure for my desk at home. I was doing a little too much juggling of files between all my hard drives (aside from my Time Machine drive, which is half a terabyte, all the others are either 160 or 320GB) and it was starting to get dangerous in terms of losing track of data and deleting something. So now I have a place that can hold everything, and it’s also at a different location (usually) than my primary drives, so it’s safe against theft or other destruction. Of course I got an enclosure that’s very Mac-like and attractive. It has USB, FW400 & 800, and SATA. The HD is from Western Digital, which is my go-to brand in the superstitious art of deciding who to trust with your data (Fujitsu is the other brand I’ll buy if I have to, and in fact is what my Time Machine drive is). I only had a week to play with it and dump all my files onto it before leaving town, but so far it seems great.

For myself for Christmas, while ordering gifts for everybody else, I finally bought myself an account for Eve Online. I’ve gone through at least three 14-day trials trying to learn the damn game enough to where I could even decide if I liked it or not. I like the idea of a game that’s impossible to learn, but once you crack it open the possibilities become kind of limitless. The last trial I just finished convinced me that it was indeed fun, although there’s so much I have yet to learn, it’s really hard to tell long-term. The other thing it convinced me of is that it has really low bandwidth requirements, and at least in the small battles I’ve been involved in, can actually run in virtualization so well that you forget it’s not Boot Camp.

It seems like the perfect game for somebody on the road with questionable internet. If nothing else, you can log in for a few minutes a day to set your skills training, and still be progressing all day long. If I were home with a real computer, I don’t necessarily think I’d prefer it over Fallen Earth or Battleground Europe, but it seems to me like a game I can play without feeling like I’m fighting against my screen size, processor speed, lack of peripherals and bandwidth. Great FPS action is nice, but it requires all those things or else it totally sucks and you spend all your time pissed off that you got killed by lag or your connection dropped out just as you were supposed to do something really cool.

Also, despite my ranting about Parallels (I still think they’re greedy bastards), out of curiosity, when I started playing Eve pretty seriously a few weeks back, I tried it in Parallels 5 to compare it to Fusion. Perhaps not surprisingly, it ran a little better. I also really prefer Parallels’ UI, and the feature “modality” which shrinks your windows screen into a tiny semi-transparent floating window that you can keep an eye on and click things in. So having discovered a game I could actually play — and enjoy playing — without ever booting into Boot Camp, I decided that tipped the balance a bit, and I went back to using Parallels. After a few days of wonder at the miracle of virtualized gaming finally being playable, I took my $10 coupon that had been clogging my inbox, and bought Parallels 6 for $40, which honestly is at least close to reasonable. My beef with them is not that they charge for yearly upgrades, but that they charge more than $40. Out of principle I had refused to buy it at all, but honestly I installed Parallels 6 and it was so much better than Fusion that the experience of being able to fully play an MMO while not only booted into OS X, but with enough power left over to use OS X normally, with the MMO running in the background in full screen… well, it’s amazing. So I didn’t even do the whole trial of Parallels before I put the money down. If you’re interested, the upgrade price is $40 until the end of the year. And as I said in that link above, I needed to buy 8GB of RAM to make Parallels really run flawlessly, so that’s another requirement of getting this to work. It was a great investment, though.

Eve really wouldn’t have been worth buying except that it works so damn well virtually. It’s really low-maintenance tour gaming. So I guess you could say Parallels was the other part that made my Christmas gift possible, though I think of it more in terms of being a LORTmas gift. LORTmas is kind of like Chanukah, actually, in that it’s not celebrated only on one day. I celebrate LORTmas every Thursday at midnight for our two months’ time at the Guthrie, when that sweet, sweet LORT B salary drops into our bank accounts. As I interpret it, the point of LORTmas is that it’s a time when if you want something you don’t really have to think about it, you can just say, “Of course I can afford that, it’s LORTmas!” Which ends up being great fun because sometimes you say that about enough things that you lose track of how much extra money LORTmas actually creates, and you’re like, “Where did my rent money go?” But that’s all part of the LORTmas spirit.

EDIT: OK, here’s the ornament:

I hope you’re all enjoying the holidays! Back to work for us tomorrow!


December 23, 2010

Dropbox is the Shiznit

I call this: computers,mac,pc,phones,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:57 pm

Over the past six months or so, I’ve written a couple posts which mentioned my interests in incorporating cloud computing into my stage management life a little more. I talked about the wonders and terrors of cloud computing in general, and mentioned in passing about the software Meaghan and I are using on this tour.

Over the summer — I don’t think I talked much about it — over the course of three productions, I quietly and tentatively began using Dropbox to store my folder of show files on the cloud. I used to use MobileMe’s iDisk for this purpose, but being slow as all hell, and just as likely to corrupt and delete your data as to save your bacon when you need remote access to a file, I would periodically back up to MobileMe, but never actually trust it with the primary copy of the show files.

At the urging of several of my colleagues (and readers), I tried out Dropbox. As I said in one of my other posts, “It’s just like MobileMe, except it works.” So while it’s redundant, it’s also completely life-changing. Over the summer I went from cautiously putting my show files on it while keeping backups elsewhere on my hard drive, to using it as the primary storage point. I also back up to a Time Machine drive, of course, so in theory there is an isolated copy that’s at most several days old, even if Dropbox totally fails and deletes an important file both from the server and from my local copy.

The Acting Company tour this year is the first production I’ve done where every file related to the show (except the backup of our SFX files, which is over 2GB) is kept on the Dropbox, and is shared with my ASM. The files are also stored locally, so we also have offline access to the most updated files on our hard drives, for those times when we’re in a basement theatre or the bus has driven into a patch of wilderness, without ever having to think about making manual backups or syncing.

For all intents and purposes, as far as the show is concerned, it’s like both our computers share a single hard drive. And our iPhones can access that drive if they need to, as well. It’s like the most exciting thing to happen to stage management since the headset. Only once have I seen a situation where we both tried to edit the same file at once, and it seemed to have been handled safely, if a little clumsily, with a copy being saved in each of our names. For the most part, Meaghan has things she keeps paperwork on, and I have others, so the odds of us needing to edit the same file at the same time are surprisingly low. We tend to reference each other’s paperwork a lot, but not necessarily collaborate heavily on the same thing. In a different situation the limitations of this system might get more annoying.

Also, here in Minneapolis, Meaghan has been using the Guthrie-provided laptop. She can’t install Dropbox on it, sadly, but can still access and upload files through a web browser, which is not nearly as convenient, but still a great option to have when you’re using somebody else’s computer that’s locked down.

My favorite story comes from the New York rehearsal process of R&J: we made a change to the script, and some hours or days later, I went to add the new text to our Word file of the script. When I got to the appropriate page there was a happy purple bubble pointing to the already changed text telling me that Meaghan had made such-and-such an edit on such-and-such a date. After last year’s extensive re-writes, which Nick and I took turns updating by emailing the file back and forth to each other (and having to be very meticulous about who had the absolute most current file), I was actually stumped for a moment at how this had happened. But it’s so simple. There is really only one copy of every file, so there’s virtually never an issue of “my copy”/”her copy.” We’ve been working this way for three months now, and I can’t imagine how stages were ever managed before this!

So I just want to say to any stage management team: Dropbox. Do it. It will change your life. In the good way!


November 11, 2010

AT&T vs. Sucky Hotel Internet

I call this: phones,tech — Posted by KP @ 12:46 am

OK, AT&T. You win. The Holiday Inn Express in Palm Springs, the Hilton in Northridge, the Sandman Inn in Santa Barbara, the Hilton Suites in Phoenix, and the Hotel Arizona in Tucson have finally broken me. Take your $10, and be happy.

My iPhone provides so much more of a reliable internet connection than the wifi at any of these establishments, that I have exceeded my 2GB data allowance for the month for the first time since giving up the unlimited plan.

I could have made it, I think. I was on day 28 of my month. If things had gone well, I might have just snuck in under the wire. But trying to stream TV shows on my night off sent me over the edge. It’s physically impossible. And it’s really pathetic that I could connect with a freaking phone and watch shows without interruption. On AT&T, no less! So I decided that the internet this month has been so sucky that I deserve to be able to watch a show I want to see on my night off, and I don’t care if I have to pay ten bucks to do it.

This is why I tolerate AT&T’s tethering plan. I know what happens when you tour. You get screwed over by every hotel you enter — blocking ports (this one blocks my favorite MMO, and AIM, of all things, and God knows what else), terrible bandwidth, and things that load so slow that whatever you’re trying to do just plain times out, even if that thing you’re trying to do is check your email. And then there’s the Herberger Theater, which blocks email ports. There are times when you are so frustrated by lack of bandwidth that paying $10 per GB for a connection that works and is yours alone is actually worth it. I knew this day would come, and I am not upset at AT&T. I kind of wish I hadn’t hit this limit on something so frivolous like a 500MB TV episode, when I have plenty of other TV shows on an external hard drive, but it was more about expressing my freedom to do whatever the hell I feel like on the internet, when I want to.

So there. Are you happy now, AT&T? I’ll be giving you your 10 bucks, and I said something nice about you. Mark this day on your calendar.


November 8, 2010

RAM and Virtualization

I call this: computers,mac,pc,tech — Posted by KP @ 6:09 pm

For as long as I’ve had a Mac, I’ve had an install of Windows on it. Back in the day it was VirtualPC, then when Intel Macs came out it was Boot Camp and Parallels. I’ve had some trouble with Parallels over the years, but overall I’ve preferred it to the competing VMWare Fusion every time I’ve tried Fusion out. There’s just one problem: Parallels charges like $50/year for upgrades. And there’s always the same features touted: “faster, and you can play 3D games! No seriously, this time you can play 3D games. Not like last year when we said that and none of the games you play would actually work. This time we really mean it.” Anyway, working or not, for an $80 app, $50 for a yearly upgrade feels like a lot relative to the cost of the initial purchase, when the functionality doesn’t really increase in the same proportion. It’s not like 5/8ths of the app is new features.

This year, right around the time Parallels 6 came out, demanding $50 for what sounds like pretty much exactly the features I have now, VMWare sent out an email advertising a deal whereby a person owning a license for Parallels could buy Fusion for ten bucks. Think about that for a moment. You could spend $50 to upgrade an app you’ve already paid for three times before, or you could buy an entirely new app that does essentially the same thing for TEN BUCKS.

First of all, I haven’t been very happy with the performance of Parallels lately. I had 4GB of RAM in my Macbook Pro, and Parallels was running like crap. I’d tried all sorts of configurations, some worked better than others, but just opening the start menu took like 10 seconds sometimes. I wanted to upgrade to 8GB, but it was still pretty expensive, and I was broke.

When the VMWare deal came out, I jumped on that, of course, cause I’d pay $10 just to have someone find the person who decided on Parallels’ pricing model and kick them in the face. To get an app with it as well would be awesome. So I installed Fusion and it felt basically the same. It’s hard to say since I don’t have too much cause to use either, especially with the obvious RAM shortage I’m having.

Finally, I decided it would be really nice to be able to actually use these apps, and I once again researched the cost of RAM. I always buy my RAM from Crucial, at least for my Macs, because I just trust them. RAM is a hard thing to shop for. You really can’t tell what you’re getting ahead of time, and it can even be hard to tell after the fact if your RAM sucks. So all you really have to go by is the reputation of the company. Crucial was still a little out of my desired price range, but then I realized that Amazon actually sells Crucial RAM. Their price was better than buying it direct, and I had some gift certificate money to spend as well, which brought it down to a reasonable cost. So as we were going on the road in a week, I rushed to make my purchase.

The RAM arrived when we were in tech for Romeo and Juliet. I had it delivered to the office because I knew I’d be at the theatre 18 hours a day from then until we went on tour, so our company manager dropped by with it at some point during our day. I was going to wait until lunch to install it, but decided on a 10 that I had to try it. At the start of the 10 I shut down my computer and began taking it apart. When I was finished and had rebooted we still had four-and-a-half minutes remaining on the break. I was pretty impressed with myself.

Honestly I don’t notice the speed all that much when going about my normal OS X activities. 4GB is still plenty for day-to-day work. However, there is a HUGE improvement in running Windows simultaneously. It almost feels as smooth as if it’s running natively. I have 3GB allotted to the virtual machine.

Gaming-wise, I don’t ever expect it to compete with running in Boot Camp, but you can actually get things done in games. Especially if you’re playing MMOs or something that doesn’t require instant reflexes all the time, it would be perfectly serviceable for doing more leisurely tasks.

As far as Parallels vs. Fusion, I don’t really have enough evidence to do a side-by-side comparison. I was also running last year’s Parallels and upgraded to this year’s Fusion, so that’s not really fair. I would have to buy Parallels 6 to really say anything. I will say that the one thing I miss from Parallels is Modality mode, in which you can have a tiny, semi-transparent window showing your Windows screen floating over your Mac stuff, and actually click in it and do stuff. If you’re doing background tasks, such as installing software, in Windows, you can keep an eye on its progress without it taking up your screen. There doesn’t seem to really be an equivalent to that feature in Fusion, which is a shame. Honestly, as software, I’ve always liked Parallels better and would never have been inclined to switch, except for the exorbitant cost of keeping up with the latest versions. The only reason I have v. 5 is that it was offered as part of a bundle, where for $50 I got Parallels plus like 10 other apps. If that happens again I’ll probably end up with a v. 6 license at some point, but I feel the official upgrade cost is pretty insulting.

It’s not really my intent to make this post a comparison of the two apps. The point is equally valid for both: if you’re struggling running virtualization because of RAM issues and are considering investing in more RAM, do it! It’s totally worth it! It will change the way you use your virtual machine.


November 7, 2010

Hipstamatic: Acting Company Obsession

I call this: On the Road Again,phones,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:10 am

We are obsessed. Most of us. With the app Hipstamatic. In very brief, this is a $2 camera app for the iPhone that takes faux-vintage photographs. There are a ton of such apps, I already owned a couple of them, but Hipstamatic has been sweeping through our company like wildfire. We have several bloggers, and many more Facebook photographers, and most are capturing life on the road through the distorted lens of this app.

I think the reason is that Hipstamatic prides itself on being random and unpredictable. The viewfinder doesn’t actually show you exactly what you’re framing in your shot (like a real camera), and you can shake the phone to completely randomize the lens, flash and film effects put on your photo — you won’t know until after you take it what it’s going to look like. It’s not the best for accurately documenting things, but the casual photos it creates are much more interesting to look at.

Here’s an example of our truck loading into 42nd Street Studios in the rain last month, as captured by one of our actors:

I finally broke down and installed the app last night (I own the other app by the same developer, SwankoLab, which I’m honestly not that thrilled with, so I was resistant). On my journey of exploration, I went out to the stage, which seemed like an interesting subject. Here are a couple of our set:

Our office door:

Even the most mundane subjects seem more interesting. Check out my hotel room as I write this post:

This will probably get old after a while, but I think it will also result in some photos coming out better than they would have otherwise. I can’t wait till we get to the Hotel Arizona in Tucson. There’s something just not right about that place, and nobody understands what I mean. I think the vintage look of these photos will help to capture the mood it gives me.


Let Me Tell Ye: Daylight Savings

I call this: phones,tech — Posted by KP @ 9:58 am

Phoenix this morning at 6:38 (or 5:38 depending on who you ask)

Today is daylight savings “fall back” day in the US. Except in Arizona (except in the Navajo Nation part of Arizona, which follows the rest of the country).

Now I think daylight savings is stupid, because I’m not a farmer, and I can afford electricity, so I was very glad to find myself in Arizona for the time change, so I could avoid all the drama associated with it. I sent an email to my cast last night reminding them — don’t touch your clocks! Don’t let your mother, your Facebook friends or anyone else remind you to “fall back” tonight. You simply don’t have to do anything, and you will be telling the correct time. How difficult could that be, right?

Well let me tell ye.

There has been some kerfluffle in the press about the iPhone’s daylight savings bug. Basically the clock updates correctly but somehow the alarms get messed up. It only happens if you use a recurring alarm, and since I usually have to be at work at a different time every day, I don’t use recurring alarms, so I thought I was in the clear.

So I went to bed last night and set my iPhone alarm for 6AM so I could do some laundry in the morning. I set my hotel alarm clock for 6:38, as I generally like to have an alarm that will catch me should I fall back to sleep.

Well the next thing I know the hotel alarm is going off, and it’s 6:38. And I’m like, WTF? So I look at my phone, and it says 5:38. And I look at the stupid digital alarm clock on the table that has like 3 buttons, and it’s 6:38. So I’m like, “clearly it’s 6:38.” My phone has fallen back.

Now it should be noted that this is not the alarm bug. I have no doubt that the alarm would have gone off had the phone’s clock ever reached 6:00. The problem is that at some point in the night (2AM, I imagine), the phone’s actual clock fell back when it wasn’t supposed to.

It’s set to get the time automatically, which as I understand cellular phones, means that the network pushes the correct time to the phones. Whatever tower(s) you’re connected to (obviously somewhere in the middle of Phoenix) should tell your phone the local time. So why did it fall back? I have several theories:

a) AT&T’s towers don’t know what time it is, or where they are located. I don’t find this hard to believe.

b) The iPhone overrides the signal from the towers and triggers a time change without checking where the phone is located. I could also imagine this.

But I’m going to lay the blame squarely on this messed up daylight savings system in general, that even in places where it doesn’t exist, somehow manages to screw everything up.

Let me tell ye my general opinion of time. There is one time, the time we are living in. If I call someone in Australia, I can assure you we are talking to each other at the same time, despite the fact that technically I am talking to him yesterday. I think it would simplify things greatly if people around the world thought of things in terms of “what time is it right now?” rather than “what time is it here?” This association of the time with the position of the sun in the sky is so last millennium. I’m sure there are people in rural areas and less developed countries who do use the sun, but I would venture to guess that they don’t actually need to know if it’s 4:38 or 5:42, and if they do, they own a watch or maybe even a cell phone.

If there was simply one time, then areas could decide for themselves when it’s convenient to work based on the local daytime. Someone might work 9-to-5 in New York and 6-to-2 in LA, and both experience the same amount of daylight. A child could start school at 8AM in London and 2AM in Miami and both have the sun up when they’re waiting for the bus. These decisions about when to work are already rather arbitrary. Schools all have their own schedules, businesses may work 9-to-5 or 10-to-6, etc. What difference does it make what we call it? At least we would know that when everyone in the world says something is happening at 8:00, we would be talking about the same moment in time for everyone.

Let me tell ye, if I ever become President of the World, first we are building a rain bubble over Manhattan, and then we will all start using the same time and never change it.


November 6, 2010

Phoenix – Round 2

I call this: On the Road Again,phones,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:23 am

We’ve spent this week in Phoenix, AZ, where we spent a week two years ago with Henry V, playing at the Herberger Theatre, presented by Arizona Theatre Company (who will also welcome us to their other venue in Tucson next week).

One of the highlights of the Henry tour, it’s once again great to be here with Romeo and Juliet. Here’s our set, as seen from the spot booth.

Last night was our official opening here. We had done three morning shows for school groups, performing for thousands of students, but last night was the first show open to the general public. The artistic director of ATC, David Ira Goldstein, welcomed us and introduced himself to everyone before the show, and then provided champagne and conversation in the greenroom afterwards. Here’s a picture of him with the cast and crew (I’m in the middle in the green shirt).

It’s always nice to get such a warm welcome and personal interaction with the presenters who have brought us in.

Here’s a shot of our upstage crossover, looking from stage right to stage left. There’s so much room that we have a full-length black traveler between the back of the set and the crossover, with just a little hole in the middle for entrances within the set. This allows the crossover to be fairly brightly lit for quickchanges and general hanging out. You can see the line of chairs set up and draped with costumes. Behind them are the workboxes for props and carpentry, easily accessible.

And finally as a bonus, I have a new iPhone wallpaper. The booth that I call from is also the audio booth, and the console sits right next to me (unmanned, since all the show sound is run from our console backstage). The venue’s console is a PM1D, which is very pretty when it’s lit up in the dark. I found it made a very nice wallpaper. Click on the thumbnail to see it full size (it’s big enough for the iPhone 4’s retina display). Enjoy, use, steal, but please give me credit if you share it!


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