Dr. Milo T. Pinkerton III's Journal

So far, SO eeeevvillll...
Well, things are shaping up nicely. I've done a bunch of virus squashing in the last few days! I did Morgus and his wife's computers on Tuesday and Filbert's computer on Wednesday afternoon while installing a new DVD writer. Both Morgus's wife's computer and Filbert's computer turned out to be rife with Trojan Horses, Adware and Spyware. >300 infected files on Morgus's wife's machine and >1000 on Filbert's! But both computers were curable and are no longer throwing up annoying popups from the moment Windows comes up. Incidentally Morgus's own computer had NO viruses when I went to upgrade it to XP; being an antiquated Windows ME build inherited from his previous computer, and with him using Firefox since before getting broadband, he was naturally NOT a malware target. Of course all that's changed now but you can bet I left it locked up tight. And XP is a hell of a lot better than rotten old ME (they asked me about whether there was a newer version of Windows available, and I took the opportunity to WARN them both about Vista!)

Sheesh if I had the time I'd make a faux "I'm a PC" commercial with an "Alcoholic's Anonymous" feel to it... cause that's what using a PC is like these days, really. "I'm a PC..." "Ohhh. So sorry. Want to borrow my handkerchief? It's OK. Let it all out."

Last night's rehearsal for the next chapter of my friend Charlie's comedy series Dice Jockies went great; as usual we really punched the script up with funny additions. Easy when you've got such creative & comic types all on the same page. (Don't know when we're going to be able to shoot this, however! The next few weeks are going to be action packed for me.)

After rehearsal I went by the House of Shock to check out their rehearsal for this year's main stage show. As usual I did all the audio and video for the show and have been getting a lot of compliments already for the incindiary 'news' segment we brewed up. Well, I didn't write it but the production was easy and fun. Should raise some hackles in various quarters...

After that I returned to my lab and did some more work on my moving lighting setup. The midi to DMX translation is working great, and my custom system's unique ability to switch scenes with selectively channels (per scene) programmed NOT to overwrite the previous scene's settings going to work out great! (in other words, you can have a 'color' scene that doesn't effect the X-Y settings, or a one-axis 'move all lights upward' command that doesn't effect the gobo setting, etc.) The only other thing I could see adding would be providing for a timed axis translation dependent on the midi velocity (I'm using note-on commands to trigger scenes) or just do like everyone else does and put the scene change speed in the scene itself (most boards call this a 'fade' but it's irrelevant for my lights as they don't dim.)

I was hoping to be able to translate my existing lighting cues directly into moving light cues, with allowances for editing. Color would be translated directly and my special effect lights would provide motion cues. However, this isn't working out perfectly; the existing lights are addressed individually and so you get a bunch of colors at the same time. So there ends up being too much information; if green and blue lights are on at the same time, the moving lights get commands for 'Green' and 'Blue' in some random order and there's no telling what they'll settle on. I need to thin the data stream algorithmically and so I'm gonna have to write a new script to do that in Cakewalk Application Language (which resembles LISP and I REALLY HATE LISP!!!)

C.O.G. rehearsal was scheduled for tonight but called off unfortunately due to Dr. Z's horrible scheduling. Which is almost just as well as I need time to do some programming work on upcoming C.O.G. covers for October and also brew up a presentation for Sunday afternoon at the annual Fear Fest visual FX expo (where I'm doing a talk on sound for picture.)

Now I need to break free of this blog and start working on my office. They're just finishing up the walls and after a month in the warehouse, I'm looking at finally being able to move back in. Whew!

Current Music: Dr. Horrible - 'Brand New Day'

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