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The Golden Egg

The Golden Egg

Nikola Tesla was down on his luck. It was 1886, and he had just lost his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, to his financial backers who believed that Tesla’s ideas were impractical. He had no money, and he was forced to work as a manual laborer to put food on the table and have a place to live.

Tesla was one of the most brilliant inventors of all time. Before he walked off his job working for Thomas Edison, and before he started his own company and lost it to his investors, he conceived an idea for building an AC induction motor. At the time, there was no such thing.  

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The Golden Egg

Nikola Tesla was down on his luck. It was 1886, and he had just lost his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, to his financial backers who believed that Tesla’s ideas were impractical. He had no money, and he was forced to work as a manual laborer to put food on the table and have a place to live.

Tesla was one of the most brilliant inventors of all time. Before he walked off his job working for Thomas Edison, and before he started his own company and lost it to his investors, he conceived an idea for building an AC induction motor. At the time, there was no such thing.  

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Tracking Made Easy

There are many concepts and principles every automated lighting programmer should know. The most important is probably the principle of “tracking.” It is actually a very simple concept, yet is often the most difficult to teach and learn. However, once tracking is understood, its impor-tance to automated lighting data becomes clear.

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E-mail Me

I’m convinced that, should we all disappear under a radioactive mushroom cloud, the only things that will survive are cockroaches and spam. And I’m not entirely sure about the cockroaches.

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Fashionable FX

The Fourth of July just passed, which is Christmas and New Year’s all rolled together for the pyro industry. But no sooner have the last em-bers of a glory star fallen to the ground, than the live special effects business starts figuring out how to make an even more complex magic act foolproof enough for Bon Jovi and Pfizer.

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Backstage Graduates

Different paths lead to promising technical theatre careers.

In the live event production industry, many succeses are earned in the school of street smarts. You’ve heard the awe-inspiring story just about a million times. Well, here it is again — a million and one. A budding technical star moves to the Big Apple or Hollywood with nothing more than raw talent, a wad of cash saved from a low-wage job in “Nowheresville” and a lifelong dream to design for a large-scale, high-profile production. He or she takes a chance, hoping to become the next best thing in the world of glitzy lights.

Other aspiring talents, however, choose a different direction to reach the big time. From Hollywood to Broadway, many successful designers and technicians are also graduates of production schools. While they still have to pay their dues in the real world like everyone else, graduates consider the extra education and experience showcased on their portfolio as a leg up over the competition.

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Geez Louise

Geez Louise, well I’m back and all settled in good ole Maryland. Aside from getting all my stuff into my new apartment I’ve been actually doing a lot or prep work for the Bonerama tour. I’ve been really working at adapting my old cue list to all the new ones I wrote. So what happened was that I took out “The Notebook” and began brainstorming all the ideas I had for the tunes. After getting down the initial ideas I like to go through all my old cue lists and compare what I wrote to the cues I already had programmed. Now, some cues work exactly with my old ones and then others require a bit of changes. I’ll also go through and create some new custom looks I feel would fit the show well. Another thing I’ve been doing is getting baggage for all my utilities like tools, cables, notebooks, etc. all gathered and placed in a certain way so I’ll be efficient as possible for loading in and out.

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Geez Louise

Geez Louise, well I’m back and all settled in good ole Maryland. Aside from getting all my stuff into my new apartment I’ve been actually doing a lot or prep work for the Bonerama tour. I’ve been really working at adapting my old cue list to all the new ones I wrote. So what happened was that I took out “The Notebook” and began brainstorming all the ideas I had for the tunes. After getting down the initial ideas I like to go through all my old cue lists and compare what I wrote to the cues I already had programmed. Now, some cues work exactly with my old ones and then others require a bit of changes. I’ll also go through and create some new custom looks I feel would fit the show well. Another thing I’ve been doing is getting baggage for all my utilities like tools, cables, notebooks, etc. all gathered and placed in a certain way so I’ll be efficient as possible for loading in and out.

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What’s all the noise?

I've come to the inconvenient part of the load in. The part where all the lights are up and working, but I'm sitting on my ass waiting for the set to be built.

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