I just had to see how the iPhone Wordpres application worked. Can’t really see myself writting an entire post this way, but could be handy for the quick post now and then.

If the picture uploaded, this is a shot from LYF this last Sunday.

I was an early adaptor of the iPhone. Yes, I was one of the strange people who waited in line for the phone on the day that it came out and now I have upgraded to the iPhone 3G. In the past I have own Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries, but the iPhone with the open development platform and tons of add-ons in the iPhone App Store make this device a powerful tool.

All of the recent phones I have used were intended to help with my work. The Windows Mobile device was nice in that it supported Remote Desktop and could maintain Windows servers in the case that I didn’t have access to a laptop, but was missing a good SSH client. My Blackberry had the best texting and email composition of any mobile device I have used and had a workable SSH client, but the Blackberry really lacked in the area of web browsing and Wifi.

In the past, I was a system administrator and a developer. I was most interested in having access to a shell and maybe VNC or Remote Desktop to maintain systems; today I do audio, video and lighting. Some of the same tools are used, along with some new applications. Over the next few posts, I plan to detail the application I use specifically for production as well some applications I would like to see.

The basic iPhone without the additional applications is a powerful tool to the tech producer by itself, but even more so if you are a existing mac user. The iPhone handles all of the basics you would expect for general organization and communication. It is easy to check email, text and review your calendar. Most of the common attachment types are viewable as well.

With the iPhone also being an iPod, you have access to play music at events. I keep a few playlists on the phone that fit a few types of background music needed for the standard events we do. I have found it best to put the iPhone into airplane mode if you want uninterrupted music playback during an event. Don’t forget that you can also keep podcasts on hand at all times to help you keep up with what is going on in tech. Don’t forget to include devotional and sermon podcasts to keep you spiritually fed.

The inclusion of Safari makes browsing documentation and research easy even if you are in the catwalk or on a lift. I also find the built-in camera handy for quick documentation without typing. I can take a picture of a label on a product to have easy access to a serial number or model for future research or documentation.

I do hope that Apple plans on adding “To Do” list functionality in the future that syncs with Mail and iCal, but there are a few third party applications that can be of use in this area until Apple decides to add this functionality. I used the phone without applications as a powerful tool for the first six months until the App store was released which just put it over the top.

It is Christmas time again and I have been away from the blog for awhile. As a tech director for a church that does a Christmas program, the season means insanity from about November through the first few weeks in December. We have been working twelve plus hour days for about two months now getting ready for “Imagine Christmas – From the Beginning.”

This is my second Christmas program as a tech director. Last year’s program was pretty good once it happened, but leading up to it almost killed me. This year was a marked improvement in organization and execution. In the weeks before the program, I really dislike the Christmas Season, but all it takes is one performance and I’m in the mood and will be looking forward to the putting the program together again next year.

With each program we do, I get the opportunity to work with new people and do a program that is out of the normal Sunday service and I get to learn and improve my skills. Last year I learned much on the technical side of lighting and how to call cues and produce a more theatrical type program. This year I had the opportunity to learn as well, but in different kinds of ways. One thing that comes to mind is that practice really helps not only the performers, but the tech team as well. I knew that was the case, but it was really emphasized when the audio team really nailed the orchestra mix. The video team as well knew exactly where the action was and what camera to shoot it with. I also learned how hard it is for someone to come into a presentation like “Imagine” and light it well.

For the past two years we have hired out the lighting design; both groups did the best that they could and I do like seeing the different styles of lighting and how they can effect the look. I just don’t know if they fully understand the scope of dance, ariel and drama until the fixtures are hung. At that point it is (most of the time) too late to fix the issues.

For example the lighting plot had top light on the ariel actors. Top light is a very dramatic effect that I like. The problem was that the actor was performing about 20 feet in the air and that put them about 10 feet off the light. The shaft of light is just too small at that point and the aerialist would swing in and out of the light. Bottom lighting would be a better effect in this case.

The other struggle that I have is with the video lighting. Being that the lighting designer is not familiar with the camera and needs, the design doesn’t usually account for color temp changes of the lights used. In this program, the key lighting came from two main sources. Spotlights that were 1200 watt and a HMI based lamp that were about 4200k temp. The other was High End Studio Commands 1200 watts that were 5200k temp and didn’t mix well with the cameras that were balanced to the spots.

This year, as last year, proved to me that creatives are passionate about what they do and the most heated discussions are about differences this time of year. That will never change. My list is long for what I would like to change for next year’s performances, and I can’t wait to get started on the planing even if I still don’t have the worship center put completely back together.

At Sugar Creek Baptist Church we just opened a new Family Center. In this new building we have about four rooms with media support and the two larger rooms have Yamaha digital consoles. I was very excited about have features such as offline editing, on board effects, and networking. I have been very surprised at how much I like the the M7CL-32. In our worship center we have a Digico CS-D5 which has been great. I was very pleased at how easy it was for me to pick up the M7CL and how some of the features were similar to the Digico. Now I have only mixed on the LS9-32 once, but as of yet I’m not a big fan of the console. I seem to have to keep my head in the board too much while mixing. The touch screen really helps with the quick changes.

I have one large disappointment with both of the consoles. This last Thursday, I finally got some network wire pulled to both of the consoles and tried to place them on the network. All was going well until I went to adjust the subnet mask. Come to find out, the firmware only supports class C subnets (255.255.255.0). So let me tell you what that means. With that mask you can only have 254 devices attached to the network. Well that is fine for many groups that might be using the console, but for use in larger churches or conference facilities it is just too small. The part that I really don’t get is the interface is built to change the subnet options, it is just disabled. Very frustrating. So now I’m going to have to build a dedicated network to access these consoles. Yamaha please fix this issue!!!!

Today I got a call from one of the volunteers in the tech ministry. I love hearing from the team and I really like it when I can be of service to them. Most of the time it works the other way with them serving the tech ministry. In case you don’t know, I live in the Houston, TX area and we had a not so fun visit from hurricane Ike last week. This volunteer and her husband operate a school that was hit pretty hard by the storm and they have been working very hard to get it opened back up. The phone rang just as I was sitting down to dinner so I ate quickly and gave her a call back and was very surprised at her request.

I have learned over that past year of working with the volunteers, that there are parts of ministry that I’m not great at and I’m having to step up and do my best and learn from my mistakes. After listening to her voice mail I was assuming that this was gonna be another one of those times. When I called, we chatted for a few and then she asked if I knew anyone that could help her with some networking and phone issues that the school was having. Do I know anybody? I think so, being that was my job up until the beginning of ‘08. Was I in the right place at the right time? Yes I was, but is that due to chance? I don’t think so. God put me in right where I need to be to help and He provided a ministry opportunity that was right up my alley. Glad to have the opportunity to serve.

My friend and co-worker Brandon who for some reason likes killing baby seals (strange) posted about a new game coming out in a few weeks called Guitar Praise. Here is a link to Brandon’s post. While I think this is a great idea and I have no problem with christians picking up on a great idea and including God honoring music, they missed the mark as usual for a majority of the gaming market. Unlike Doom, Unreal Tournament, or World of Warcraft, this game is social as much as it is fun to play and would have much great adoption if it was console based and could be used in the living room. I had the same comment about DDR when it came out on PC with christian music. Who wants to play DDR in front of a 17 inch monitor? Usually the home computer is not in the living room with the family like a gaming console is. Sure I can hook my laptop to my TV in the living room, but what a pain when my Xbox is right there.

The price on the game is $99.95 which also seems a little high. I can get Guitar Hero III for the WII with on wireless controller for $69.95 on Amazon. We need games like this, but they have to be competitive with the market to have an impact. Is the creator doing it to make money from the christian community or to honor God and have an positive impact on society like the music they have included intended? Great idea, very poor planning and implementation. If you are thinking of creating a game like this please think about it’s use and go to the extra trouble and license/code it for the consoles so that it can really have a positive impact.

Are you a Leopard user? You just got a free motion background for Pro-Presenter. We were sitting in production meeting last week and I had my laptop up and running. About midway into the meeting my laptop kicked in the screen saver and Stephen loved it and thought it would be a cool motion background. He asked if I could make it work for a song on Sunday. I started running different ways through my head of how to capture the screen saver to a video and make it into loop. I forgot about it until Friday night and then I started working on it. It took me a little while just to find where in OS X the screen savers were stored. I knew that OS X had started using Quartz Composer files for some of the screen savers and the one I was using, Arabesque, was a Quartz file. Quartz happens to be an integral part of Quicktime and the QT player can play Quartz files. Most of the time, if QT can play it then most likely Pro-Presenter can play it as well. Sure enough, I just dragged the file into the background library and it worked. Now we have a new background and it was under my nose all of the time. By the way, the screen savers are stored in /System/Library/Screen Savers.

Quartz Composer is a very powerful compositing and graphic creation program. What is even more interesting is that Quartz files are dynamic. Arabesque is a random composition and when you used in Pro-Presenter it is random as well. This could be good or it might not be what you intended. I’m very interested to learn a little more about Quartz and see how we can use it in media ministry. A few ideas that come to mind are maybe a news ticker across the bottom of an announcement loop or a countdown clock that is longer then 99 hours. Let me know if you come up with some Quartz Composer ideas.

To be honest I don’t have a clue.  Safari is fast, easy to use and well integrated into OS X.  Is it because I’m an Apple fan boy that it continue to use it?  When I first switched to a Mac I was a die hard FireFox user and it was not until Safari 3.1 came out that I got hooked.  But sometimes I just want to kill the thing.  Today, I was doing a little web development and trying to track down an issue that just turned out to be Safari page caching.  What a waist of time!  I jump over to FireFox and didn’t have any issues with page changes.

Safari has one major advantage, spell checking.  I can’t spell rikc (sorry Rick), so spell checking is a must.  Now on FireFox, I used to use the plug-in Spellbound, but it seems to be unmaintained and who wants to install Aspell and a plug-in to get spell checking.  It already comes with Safari and uses the integrated dictionary.  As someone who does some web development, Firebug or something like it is a must.  So having Web Inspector in Safari lead me to thinking I had the perfect browser.  Being that I own an iPhone, I have enjoyed the bookmark syncing as well.

At Sugar Creek we started using a new event management system that only works in FireFox or Internet Exploder (not a spelling error).  Now I’m having to run both browsers.  Not an Apple issue (come on ServiceU get your act together so I can use this in Safari and my iPhone), but just another reason that leaves me on the browser fence.  Safari is so close, just a little more and I will be a committed Safari user. Until then I’ll have to keep dancing between the two browsers.

Decided to see what it is like in the room with the drum shield down.
The results will not be in until Sunday, but the drums sounded much
more natural. This is the first time that I have liked the cymbals.

We all know that stuff breaks at the most inopportune times.  Currently, I’m flying solo in the production department and my favorite video switcher decides to go on the fritz.  I don’t know if you guys are like me or not, but I just can’t leave well enough alone.  Just not smart enough to follow the old “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” saying.  I decide that this was a prime time to clean up the video racks, a project that has been on the list for a while.  This turned out to be never ending project that ended up eating all of my week and most of my weekend.  As of tonight, I’m very happy with the results.

Most of the work that was done had to do with cables routed on the outside of the rack.  Yes you know what I’m talking about, the cables that get thrown in last minute with the intent of cleaning them up later.  The Video booth just seems to attract these kind of cable runs.  Most of the time I consider myself in the middle of the road on cable routing.  Definitely not the most anal person that I have ever met, but I do like clean cabling.  The cabling in these racks certainly made me understand how detrimental sloppy cabling could be.  I think that a root canal might be more fun then debugging issues in these racks.

So it is beautiful now, right?  Well not yet, but we made big headway and removed 99.9 of the poorly routed cable.  We also removed about 50% of the cables inside the racks.  Yes there is still much work to do inside, but we made it 100% easier to find issues in the racks.  Next week I think that I’m going to tackle underneath the desk at the front of the booth.  May the force be with us.

More pictures here