Mountain Lion: Is It Any Good?

Well, it’s here, the long awaited operating system: OS X Mountain Lion (The word Mac is officially dropped from OS X). Even though it’s here, I don’t think it’s any good. However, Mountain Lion is needed to ever upgrade again, say the next operating system next year. That means if you want to ever get a new operating system, you need to get Mountain Lion. Anyways, here’s what’s new:

As more and more people are enjoying the iPad and iPhone, Apple decided to put their popular IOS features into the Mac. From IOS, there is Game Centre, Notification Centre, Notes, iMessages, Reminders, and enhanced iCloud. Personally, I don’t really use any of these features, so it makes no difference to me. Plus, Growl is a perfect substitution for Notification Centre, and I also have Anxiety as an alternative to Reminders. Even though Apple thinks making the Mac as similar as the iPad and iPhone, with Launchpad and the new Mail app from Lion, and now all these new apps, is good, I don’t really care for it very much.

Other than the IOS features, there is security updates, and other little details. For example, Power Nap can update mail, apps, and so on when the laptop is closed. The littler things include new autosave functions, sharing options, airplay mirroring, accessibility enhancements, etc..

I don’t believe Mountain Lion is worth getting, but again, isn’t it better to get Mountain Lion, use it, then upgrade, instead of getting Mountain Lion then an actually significant upgrade next year or the year after?

Anyways, putting the debate over getting Mountain Lion aside, what I really want to know is what Apple will name their operating system after Mountain Lion. It seems that Apple was running out of options: Pumas, Cougars, and other cats are also Mountain Lions. You could say Mac OS X 10.3 was Mountain Lion, even though OS X 10.8 is actually named Mountain Lion. I really can’t think of any other cat that’s better than Mountain Lion. Maybe OS X 10.9 would not be a cat. I wonder…

EDIT: Apologies, the images that are linked seem to no longer exist, please ignore them for the moment.

Behind the Stage

Old fashioned light board…

Over the last week I was learning the ropes of being a technician for live theatre. The picture above, is of a pretty old light board. New ones are touch screen and all that, but first: above the stage.

What everyone sees is the stage and a little booth behind the audience. However, on the series of catwalks above the audience and stage, is where some of the lighting, and all of the follow spots (spots) are. The spots are the hardest to use, compared to everything else a technician has to do. They are big and bulky. When the director wants the spots to be opened, they have to be opened at exactly that time on whoever needs to be lighted. That means that the spots have to be aimed before opening the cover (in front of the spots so they can be easily doused and used). Aiming is pretty much guessing, then lining up the front of the spots to the person. It all happens so fast that there is no time to properly aim before opening the cover. Sometimes the spot doesn’t open where you want it to be, and it looks really bad.

This is it, a follow spot.

Anyways, the other thing that’s cool is a light with a couple of mirrors. The mirrors can be moved using the sliders on the sound board, thus moving the light. Newer light boards can actually be paired with an iPad, and the light can be moved be dragging a dot using a finger. Where would we be without technology huh? Speaking of lights, everything on the catwalk is secured with aircraft grade steel safety backup cables. Those cables can support cars! One time at another theatre I heard the safety cable wasn’t secured and the light went tumbling right down. Luckily it landed in a aisle, but if it was a bit off, it could have easily killed someone. Safety cables are also used on all lights above the stage. Some of those lights on stage actually have multiple coloured films (gel) that can be changed to easily be able to light the stage in different colours.

The light boards controls which colour to use. Again, the old ones rely on a system of numbers and sliders, but the new boards can change the lights’ colour by using a finger to tap a colour on a colour wheel on an iPad. The light boards regardless of their age can also be programmed to do different things at different times. That way everything can be pre-configured prior to the show. During the show, simply tapping a button will activate a series of lighting effects.

But what’s more complex than the lighting boards are sound boards.

Old fashioned sound board…

Modern sound board… Thank god, less controls.

Ok fine, the sound boards do more things, but really is only a teeny bit more complicated than light boards. The sound boards allow technicians to combine multiple inputs into one speaker. Not only that, but it allows the technicians to mix the sound. That means adjusting the pitch, gain, volume, etc of every individual mic, cd, etc. based on each individual person’s voice, instrument, etc.

Well, the show is next week, stay tuned to see is I succeed or fail…

 

UPDATE:

It was a success!!!

Block Party 2012

As with tradition, once again, our street comes alive during the 4th annual Block Party!

In Preparation…

As with every other year, there were live music, plenty of food, singing, dancing, fireworks, talking, and… fun! It was pretty awesome. All the equipment in the photographs above belongs to our neighbour two houses down. He is a professional musician. For the last years he has been performing and hosting the party. The party probably wouldn’t have been this successful if it wasn’t for the food. In fact, I wasn’t able to snap a photo before the food was all gone. But I can tell you that as with any potluck, there was a huge variety of food, in every colour. My favourite was the tortilla chip and dip, and the meringue pie. The pie was good, but the craziness made everything better. There is a lot of toddlers on our street, so that’s why there was the improvised stage (see above), and mini piano. This was the same as every other year, and  so was the fireworks, although quite unfortunately, one had a dead fuse. The others were small, but spectacular. The fun was definitely felt throughout the afternoon/night.

Speaking of fun, nothing really unfortunate happend this year, even though it was on Friday the 13th (oooohhhh). The purple spray paint wasn’t even used! You see, another tradition is spraying purple paint on the street wherever someone got hurt. Last year there was a biking accident… :-(…

Ok, fine maybe there was a small problem. It could be avoided though, if maybe someone could remind the city that delivering the barricades an hour late isn’t appreciated as much as if it was delivered a little earlier.

Behind the city barricades, we made improvised ones

Anyways, It is always a pleasant surprised to see this neighbourhood is so friendly to each other, young and old. I wish we didn’t have to move houses, but adapting to change is what separates humans from robots. If humans aren’t flexible, robots and humans wouldn’t have any distinction. Well, this is a great way to end the 7 years I have lived here. This might be the last block party I will ever have, but even if I do go to another, I believe none in the world will beat this.

The First Camping Trip

I can not rant on about how terrible our first camping trip was because it wasn’t. Actually, it was on the contrary. It was pretty amazing. The weather held up, or should I say started cooking us alive. Other than that, the fire burned well, and the food tasted pretty good. We are definitely going to go again, and maybe stay a little longer. We were quite lucky to not have forgotten something, or realize that we need something essential that we don’t have. I guess all the planning and searching for camping checklists payed off.

Here’s the break down:

The tent was put up on a slant, so because of the forces of gravity, we all slid down. By the time we woke up, we were all at the bottom of the tent. Luckily, we have a huge tent, so that didn’t matter.

The war with bugs was on. Luckily I didn’t get bitten, but I can”t say that for the others. Even with extra strength bug spray on our clothes, and around the campsite, the bugs started drinking hot chocolate and lemonade.

Then there was jeans in water. Future note: Always bring swimsuits along when going to the beach. Water tends to stay on jeans for quite a while. But then again, the sun dried it pretty quickly.

We did run out of firewood, trying to keep a fire going for four hours. However, we were able to buy some wood.

I also want to extend an apology on behalf of our family to a couple potatoes which we burned mercilessly in the fire.

Also, when we got bored at night there was an awkward game of charades, at one point or another, my chest started hurting from laughter. But that was quite enjoyable.

We did get lost on a trail (well, actually loop), but saw a huge Douglas Fir.

Again, the trip was a success.

I won’t bother going over the other details, but this experimental trip may lead to weeks of camping all the way along road trips. I wonder how that might turn out? Anyways, its another adventure, that went well.

Vacation

Well, summer has started with the bang of Canada Day. I’m personally staying around town, but still planning to have a good time. Besides all the same beaches and pools, what’s special this summer is believe it or not: camping with my family.

I expect this to be an adventure, one that I don’t know the outcome of, but that is exactly what an adventure should be. And as Jon Acuff has once said:

I decided to go camping together because our family don’t spend much time outdoors, and the few times when we do, are spent in the city. There is also the fact that my sister is jealous, because I go camping a lot. However, the most important reason is that is FUN. Think about it this way. You and I both have only a certain amount of time on Earth. So then, why not make this time fun? My family is split up over the globe a lot of times, so I want to put the time we have together to good use. I hope my family won’t argue too much about this idea. 🙂

We have everything we need, so all we need to do is get out there.

Stay tuned for the happenings of our first family camping trip.

But for now,

Good bye spring, hello summer!