Freestyler

Today was split between lab work and more TSC training, I was about to introduce the posting with "this morning..." but then I realise nothing actually happened this morning and the day actually started at about 12pm. Even so it was fairly productive, we have nearly finished the lab project, no thanks to the site that we are supposed to be crawling is periodically down, presumably someone disregarding the rules imposed but as no one seems to be doing anything about it, we will have to continue using my crude test site.

Typically, just before I had to leave for training, the site came back up and the spider set of happily counting lots of links. It got to over 200 before I left and had to stop it so I'm going to try again early tomorrow morning in the hope that everyone is still in bed!

The afternoon was spent being trained on a program called freestyler, a free program that can be used to send DMX instructions to lights from the computer. As the name suggests, it is free which was one of the attractions but it is also fairly powerful and endlessly customisable thanks to inbuilt fixture builders, sequence constructors and override buttons. As with any new program, the best way to learn is the hands on approach and because it is free, I will have a chance to play with it at home and although I don't have a room full of lights to see the output with, there is a free plugin called Magic 3D Easy View which allows you to build a virtual model of the setup and see the results of your tinkerings. To be introduced to a program like this during the more important weeks of term is very dangerous, I have previously managed to waste a lot of time on programs like Google's SketchUp creating pointless models of the house etc so it is going to take a lot of restraint not to play with it too much and actually get some work done over Easter.

Nevertheless, if I can get a reasonable understanding of how it works then I will be able to fill a lighting position when they have to be used in one of the many rooms at the end of year carnival. All of the seniors despise the thing since they were introduced to the hardware version of it, 'the perl' (a lighting desk). This program is supposedly more flexible and allows you far greater control over what the fixtures do and is probably a lot easier for novices to learn as there are inbuilt macros for some of the fixtures with pictorial representations of what the light should be doing. They don't always work but it seems a lot easier than trying to remember hundreds of numbers for different colours and patterns.

weds
lab
training freestyler complicated and cumbersome but powerful v. good for free