further north

Up in Glasgow right now, after a brief visit to the Norfolk broads...

passing through London

Had a great SOF meet in San Francisco, and am now spending a day knocking around in London before heading out into the country to catch up with various folks.

...off on a break

I'm flying off on Saturday - first stop San Francisco, to spend a quiet hour or two in Grace Cathedral and also to have a crazy dinner with folks from the Ship-of-Fools community. I think this time I'll take the BART into the city from the airport, as it's a bit cheaper than a minivan-cab.

clarity of audio for speech

One of the most satisfying achievements with running sound systems is getting good reproduction of the spoken word: a sound reinforcement system that is transparent so you wouldn't notice it unless it wasn't there. We were discussing things at church this morning about improving the sound of presenters who like to move around. At present we are using a fixed SM58 running through a pair of ART300As flown overhead. Sound quality is not bad, provided that presenter works the mic. Any kind of omni-directional microphone would be asking for trouble in a reverberant space with loudspeakers present. On a note of pondering - maybe in the future loudspeakers will give way to individual headphones for everyone? Bob Clair, audio guru from Clair Audio wrote several years ago that the future is in headsets - one day you will go to a theatre or music show and have a headset that lets you have some control over what you hear. I'm not sure about it myself. Might take a while to catch on. There will certainly be issues of audiences feeling separately isolated and distant from the audience crowd that complements the collective concert experience. Possibly the people best skilled in mixing audio for such applications will be those with a background in mixing audio for in-ear monitors, as used by performing musicians - where part of the skill is adding `ambience' to the audio so that the musician doesn't feel isolated from the audience due to the earphones' sound-blocking nature.

Actually, on the topic of sound-blocking headphones - I've noticed that the Shure E Series of sound-isolating earphones are available at reasonable prices, and aimed at portable music player users. In Melbourne recently a pedestrian was killed by a tram as she crossed in front of it, oblivious, due to wearing earphones. I think wearing earphones that effectively block outside noise will be a pretty dangerous thing for pedestrians to do. Good for travelling on the bus or train, though.

Michelle Shocked re-releases

Michelle Shocked, having set up her own record company, Mighty Sound, is re-releasing her old albums, with added material. Just the other day I got Captain Swing, which has a great collection of tunes combined with some great acoustic versions from tours in the late 80s. Great music to put on late at night. I continue to be drawn in to her most recent `new' release Deep Natural, which is really fantastic, and even more so with the extra instrumental CD included.

Democrats' landing game

The Australian Democrats need all the help they can get. This game is a fun diversion in the mean time.

A not-too-serious rant about Macs

Ok. I'm into exploring new and creative expressions of church. I'm inspired by cool video imagery, music and liturgies that relate to people at a deep, honest level. I read people's weblogs and contribute to online discussion on various topics surrounding spirituality, theology and life in general.

But there is a snag. At this point in time, and much as I like them, I am not a Mac user. I use a cowboy outfit called Windows which in various guises has served me well over the last ten years.

Yes I know. The credibility factor does tend to drop when you turn up at the big alternative worship event and pull out an IBM Thinkpad from a battered rucksack. The air around you is thick with contempt from fellow worshippers, and as you plug in your conventionally-shaped black power supply to the nearest outlet you can't help feeling that perhaps turning up here wasn't the best idea.

With the evolution of the Apple computer, the aesthetics of personal computing begin to be apparent. Macs really are nice to use, and the current OS is just beautiful to look at (in my opinion). The issue for me with Macs is that they are too self-contained. I've heard all the sales talk about why Macs are better, but the persuasive pitch seems to assume that the machine is isolated in time and space and unrelated to anything around it that isn't coloured white and expensive. I know Macs' connectivity is excellent, but some stuff that I run is only available for Windows at present. And can someone please recommend a good Star/OpenOffice equivalent for Mac? I don't want to buy MS Office.

If there is any point to this rant it is to ask if non-Mac people are considered serious players in the creative church game. Take Linux users, for example. Some of these people have simply given the finger to the big names and have gone out on their own, relying on sheer coding ability and nous to create stable systems that can do all sorts of things. Surely this spirit of adventure has a place in the church of the future?

Is the pursuit of cool going to be a downfall in church? Given that Macs and PCs are on par, performance wise, why are PCs looked down upon? Why are Mac users obnoxious towards PC users? Are we jettisoning PowerPoint on a Windows machine in favour of Mc...sorry MacKeynote?

That being said. I'd quite like a Powerbook, Anyone got a 12" one? Is the small screen manageable?

Mt St Helens webcam

Mt St.Helens has been looking good today. The nearby webcam has been capturing the recent activity quite nicely, although doesn't tend to work so well at night!

Just setting up this new blog site

Just signed up with blogspot to handle the log part of my site better than my main site, which will remain as something of a front end.