The start of Lead 222 Houston. Be doing worship events all week.

If you know me at all, you should have an idea of how this post will go. Let me also say that if are a Windows fanatic without a open mind you need not read any further. Let me give you a little history about myself and my history. Today I’m not as directly involved with IT as I was in the past, and I have been exclusively Mac for about 2 years. Before that I had been a network administrator and a software developer in the Windows world mainly and some Linux. In fact Linux and open source software lead me to OS X. In my new position, I had a need to get a Windows tablet to run some of the software we use in production. Don’t tell my Mac friends, but it was a little exciting to check out Windows Vista.

Not much has seemed to change in the PC world. I called a friend of mine to ask what the cool tablet PC was and he recommended an ASUS, so I ordered it. It arrived last Friday and have been using it this week. The pen interface on the tablet is nice and Vista graphics have improved, but I find myself nagged by the same issues I had before I switched to OS X or Linux. Over the years, I have had around five or six notebooks running Windows and none of them have been able to suspend and resume correctly. All I want to do is be able to close the notebook and resume it later. I didn’t think that it would be that hard, but it seems to only work about 50% of the time. All I’m going to say is DRIVERS are a nightmare. Some knock Apple for its control over the hardware, but I know that it adds to stability and tighter integration between the hardware and software.

Vista has had some visual improvement, but under the covers it seems to be much the same. I have not had much trouble finding my way around and the newness went away very soon. Now it is just another tool in the production arsenal.

In case people didn’t know I am a man. I state this fact only to tell you that I don’t read manuals.  In previous posts I mention that we upgraded our lighting console to Jands Vista consoles.  One of the reasons that I picked the Vista T2 was that the on site training was included.  Well, this week Steve Irwin came out and did some training for the volunteers and myself.

As stated before, we chose the Vista because it was easy to use and much more familiar to computer users. That being said, it is also a very powerful and expandable lighting platform.  While I was doing pretty well handling the programming needs of regular services, I was glad to get some expert training.

The best part of the training was seeing the volunteers finally get why I was so excited about the Vista.  Both JT and Greg each had their moments when they saw things that excited them.  At first I thought that I would get the training and then teach the volunteers. I t was much better to have JT and Greg learn from Steve because they asked questions that I would not have due to their different experiences programming.  JT for instance does more concert style programming for student events; where I do more cue to cue style programming.  With Steve’s vast experience in lighting and programming, he was able to show us how we could use the Vista in both scenarios.

Just this week, I have already applied things from training that are making me a faster and better programmer.  Steve was able to train on the console, but also extended the training by giving many general programming tips along the way.  At the beginning of this week, I was wishing that training was not going to take two days out of my crazy week but at the end of the week, I’m glad that it did.

Today we made some time as a communications team to get out and have some fun.  We were also saying good by to Richard and John as well.  Even though it was hot it was good to hang out with good people.  

I want to say thanks to John for his service and wish him the best in Alabama.  I’m also pretty sure that he will really miss the Digico.

Sugar Creek has received some press about our shift to the Digico CS-D5 audio console. Here are some links:

Technologies for Worship Magazine
Church Production Magazine

Just though that some might be interested.

To the average viewer this last Sunday was a normal day. From a production standpoint we had a few errors. It is always my practice to review the issues on Monday and see what we can do in the future to prevent these types of issues. Sometimes these issues are hardware failures or operator mistakes that are going to happen and are hard to prevent. Sunday we had one of each. I really don’t loose any sleep over them. The ones that bother me are the ones that could have been prevented with some preparation. We also had a few of these this weekend.

Now some of them we could have not really foreseen, but hind sight is 20/20. Let me give you an example. A mic cue was missed. Being that I have mixed many services, I know that errors happen. Sometimes you get distracted with muting some channels and you forget the open up the next mic. Now being that I understand the error, I know that it can be helped by the producer reminding the audio team of what is coming up. This Sunday I was bothered when I reminded the audio team of the next mic cue and even let the engineer know what mic was being used. When the cue didn’t happen I was a little hot under the collar. After the service I debriefed with the Audio Engineer and found out that the cue was missed due the host using a mic that was on the praise team VCA that was muted. This is not the a normal mic we would use at that point in the service, and lead to the A1 missing the cue and taking a second to find the issue. Oddly enough this mic was used because we were out of 9V batteries. Such a simple thing can lead to preventable errors.

In my past, I raced cars and spent much time studying NASCAR crews and their processes. If you have ever walked through the pits during a race weekend you would see about 5 sheets of paper taped to the cars. Almost all of the teams have long checklists with everything that needs to be completed on the car before the race. I would bet that these lists started much shorter and have grown from experiences such as I had this weekend. I think that it is time to start a Sunday checklist that can be used in preparation during the week and on Sunday mornings. As we all know mistakes are made, we just need to make sure that we learn to prevent them the first time.

 

Tonight I’m at a choir concert at Lamar Consolidated High School
Auditorium. Much to my suprise when I looked up, they have a line
arrary system. Two lines with seven cabinets hanging under a single
sub setup in a stereo configuration. Just seems like this is the only
speaker configuration that people what these days. I guess that I
will find out in a few if this was installed because of its function
or to be trendy.

UPDATE:  The choir concert was acoustic, didn’t even used the sound system so I guess I won’t know about the line array.

This week we are installing a couple of new DSP units in the worship center. BSS London Blue 80s are the new brains for our audio system. In the process of testing everything last night we found the the protection circuits are bad in three of our EAW MH-662iA speakers. This has been limiting some of the high frequencies from the main center cluster. Now we have to figure out how to fix them. So again I will be excited to hear what the system is going to sound like after we get this fixed and our system tuner James Young is done with the DSP upgrade and room tuning. Going to be a fun Sunday.

PERSONAL: Just a quick personal note, it was awesome to see Brittney (my daughter) worshiping on stage Sunday in the Edge service. It brought me great joy.

 

My Saturday Night

Originally uploaded by idatasys

Paul Wibur performing and Pat Boone is up later. I know that you wish
you could be having this much fun.

–
Rick Russell

This Sunday I will say goodbye to the first lighting console that I ever programmed on.  We have not had too much trouble with the Avolites Pearl console other then floppy drives going out.  So why make the change?  We have just made a switch in the way that we program.  When I started working with the lights it was very manual and not much programming.  Over the time that we have gone to the other extreme.  Today we program cue to cue for all three services.  Avo has a theater stack mode, but it is not the most user friendly to work with and I started looking for something different.  I spent much time reviewing products and got as many recommendations as I could.  All roads seemed to lead to one place, Jands Vista products.

There is lots to love about the Vista product line.  You can start with a PC or Mac based solution with just 128 DMX channels or have a large console with 8 or more DMX universes.  We decided that it was a full range solution that we could standardize on campus wide. It also gives us the ability to make changes from our workstations.  We had a way to program the Avo on the computer, but it is very slow process.  Vista is almost as fast to program on your computer as it is on the console.

So we bit the bullet and purchased a Vista T2 for the worship center and a Vista S1 for both the new gym and the LYF center.  Now our lighting operators should be comfortable in all the rooms with lighting on campus.  All should be in on Monday and ready to go for next Sunday.  Just remember, is it Jands Vista and not Microsoft Windows Vista.  Friends don’t let friends use Windows let alone Windows Vista.