Dr. Milo T. Pinkerton III ([info]doctorpinkerton) wrote,
@ 2008-10-23 10:33:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend  Next Entry
Current music:Black Sabbath - 'The Wizard'

Oh good, it's raining
Yes, rain away... get it all out of your system! The plants could really use it, but I need clear skies by Sunday for our last show at the House of Shock haunted house. I'm intending to make our last show there this season a great show with all the trimmings, and I hope you all can make it! You can actually see us for free if you tell the ticket takers that you're not going into the haunted house.

Along those lines, I've finally gotten the show computer stable with the new lighting control system and am trying to program the moving lighting fixtures for most if not all of the songs we're playing this weekend. While seriously worthwhile, this task is a lot more work than I ever anticipated, due to me being completely unable to write a filter to translate our existing polyphonic lighting cues to a monophonic stream of cues for the moving lights. There's simply too much data to be thrown away to produce a usable stream of commands (less elementary than teaching drumbot); on the other hand, the moving lights look better without so many frequent cues anyway. The system I've devised lets me 'play' the moving light cues from a keyboard, so once I get proficient at that it shouldn't be that bad... just a lot of songs to cover in our repertoire! But first, I'm going to take on the ones we're performing on Sunday.

Also in the pipeline - finally finishing the MAME 'Gyruss' cocktail project for the upcoming Houston Arcade Expo in a couple weeks. I'm going to try to quick sell it (unless anyone here wants it!?)

I'll leave you with three seemingly unrelated links to ponder. ]

First:
Scientists postulate a working simulation of the entire human brain within a decade.

Second:
The U.S. Military is paying for a 'pack behavior' robot system to hunt human targets.

Third:
Self replicating fabrication machines have become a reality.

What a great idea it would be to conflate and combine these wonderful technologies! Personally, I'm looking forward to meeting a pack of intelligent, self-replicating robots - the more the better! My first command to them of course will be to BOW to the COG!!! I wonder what their response will be?


(10 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]redneckgaijin
2008-10-23 05:11 pm UTC (link)
Just be careful, good doctor, not to build robots that are more intelligent than you are.

Which reminds me, has your toaster rebelled against you recently? }:-{D

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]doctorpinkerton
2008-10-23 06:02 pm UTC (link)
You mean my video toaster or my toaster oven? Well, neither has rebelled this year... though I have noticed them hanging around together quite a lot recently. Hmmmm...

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]shatterstripes
2008-10-23 05:34 pm UTC (link)
Man, if I had money sitting around to spend on frivolity, that MAME cabinet would be tempting. I'm a little far away for quick and easy sales, though.

'Playing' the lights sounds fun - are you gonna be controlling them in realtime, or are you going to just be hitting a key to say 'bring up light set #16' and whatnot? Directly synching light changes to sounds could be fun, especially if there are any bits where you stand in front of the keyboard and play DRAMATIC CHORDS.

I suspect the most likely response to your command would be "BOW TO ME". Or if they were friendly robots, they might offer to destructively extract the contents of your mind...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]doctorpinkerton
2008-10-23 06:09 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, if you amass enough funds for frivolity, you'd probably be a lot better off getting something up there, what with shipping expense and all.

As for the lights, they're going to be preprogrammed like everything else in the show, but COULD be controlled in realtime. The applet I wrote lets me set up scenes that separately change movements (in either X or Y or both), colors, and gobos (light silhouettes). All these parameters can be stored in a scene, but I prefer to have separate scenes to do the different commands, i.e. "leave your positions and gobos where they are but all change to yellow." "Now every light aim at the center of the room." "Now every light change to a gear shaped gobo pattern." etc. That should make for an interesting and flexible light show on top of our existing lights.

As for the robots, I wonder if 'friendship' is something they'll deduce an interest in quickly, if ever? I would presume an interest in survival would be far higher on their list, at least initially (until they became completely dominant...)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Great googly-moogily!
[info]cybrludite
2008-10-24 01:15 pm UTC (link)
Geeze. I've been out of the stage-lighting biz for too long. When I was doing that in school, back in '92, we were lucky to have a board the we could program our scene settings into. All par-cans, fresnels, and elipsoidals with slots for the gels & gobos. You wanted to change them, you had a tech in the attic or the walls manually swap them out... just a sec.

HEY! YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN! Mutter, grumble...

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Great googly-moogily!
[info]doctorpinkerton
2008-10-24 02:44 pm UTC (link)
Intelligent lights are really cool (I remember first seeing them used in the early 80's when they were the property of the very highest level productions), and it's only been very recently that the price on them has fallen to the level that basically ANYONE could afford. I intend to add some more in the future, but for now 4 should be a good start.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tikibilly
2008-10-23 08:22 pm UTC (link)
Where did you finally get the woodgrain vinyl? I'm getting my list together to finish off the MultiPac from Arcadeshop. Normally, I'd got with good ol' Bob Roberts, but he doesn't have the reproduction Midway "FUN IS OUR BUSINESS" coin door plate.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]doctorpinkerton
2008-10-23 10:46 pm UTC (link)
I didn't - but that's an old picture, although that's the 'good side' of the cabinet, which doesn't need replacing at all.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]fizz_gig
2008-10-24 02:21 pm UTC (link)
As a word of advice from one abnormally sane scientist to another, be careful what you wish for!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]doctorpinkerton
2008-10-24 04:53 pm UTC (link)
OK, self-replicating robots gain intelligence THEN PICK UP INSTRUMENTS AND PROCEED TO ROCK OUT - definitely what I would call 'best-case scenario'!!!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(10 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…