Mr Riot's Blog
"Does it still sound good if you turn it down?" - Mr Riot.
01/02/08
Welcome dear reader, it has been a while since my last blog. Much trouble and strife has ensued, with some lighter moments.
The low point of the new year was seeing rather too much of the chassis of the RiotMobile...There is a car park in Woking which has been suffering "improvements" at the hands of the county engineers. The upshot is that a corner is now way too tight for the RiotMobile to take in one, and as I was reversing for a second attempt, the plastic bumper hooked over a bolt in the central kerb, and the front of the car was ripped off. They obviously had this problem before - the bolt was holding on steel reinforcement on the kerb.
I now have "Meatloaf" back (we named it thus because it weighs a ton and goes like a Bat Out Of Hell) and I'm currently "negotiating" with the council via my insurance company. Thankfully the chief engineer has acknowledged that there is a problem, and they were already planning to move the new barriers back by THREE METRES to allow more turning area. Watch this space.Anyway this blog is supposed to be about music and performance. Our latest purchase is a neat little USB to DMX adaptor. For the non-techies, USB is the standard for connecting PCs to stuff, and DMX is a standard for controlling theatre lights and stage kit. The thing came as a kit of parts, and its been a decade or two since I last waved a soldering iron in anger - I used to be an electronics design engineer - but I managed to build it without melting anything I shouldn't, and to my surprise, when I plugged it in, my 'puter reported that there was a new device connected. Ten minutes later, the vendor's test suite was running nicely.
Now if only we had some DMX kit...:-)For my next trick, I'll be writing some user-interface software to dim lights, adjust pan and tilt, change Gobos etc. I think I'll probably do it in Windows Presentation Foundation - we're starting to use it at work, and although I don't think the tools are quite there yet, the technology seems solid.
I'll attach some screen shots to a later Blog.Finally, last night, most of the team here at RiotZine went to Camberley Theatre to see Pluck http://www.pluck.me.uk/ in their new show "Musical Arson". Pluck consists of two eccentric male violinists and a female cellist, who decided in the second half to take a shine to a male member of the audience. The sight of her making Doe eyes at him, draped across his lap, all the while keeping perfect time in Ravel's Bolero left the audience rolling in the aisles. Even if you're not into Classical music (and that applies to Caz) this show is well worth seeing, if only to hear "Purple Haze" played on a fiddle, which is then sprayed with lighter fuel, and set on fire!
Catch them at a theatre near you.