Daniel McIntosh

Have you looked into Open Office? http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ Screenshots: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Aqua_Screenshots

Whilst perusing the Phonak web site I tried this simple hearing test There is no real scoring, just advice as to whether you may need to see a loss specialist. I tested with the MacBook Pro open speakers set to a couple of clicks below mid-volume. I believe I heard all the words except one– I was in my kitchen and the refrigerator compressor clicked on precisely when one was spoken. http://www.phonak.com/us/b2c/en/hearing/recognizing_hearingloss/hearingtest.html

It is indeed common practice in NY for mixers in need of an immediate replacement for themselves to pay half of the daily kit rental fee to the substitute.

In the interest of stimulating some controversy I'd like to throw out this topic. There are several members here who make a living day-playing and doing 2nd unit, add'l photography, playback, etc. Also, there are boom ops and utilities that work full time on movies and TV shows that have built their own kits and do most of the additional work on the shows they are on. Therefore, I find the idea of a mixer working full time on a show building an entire 2nd unit kit for another mixer to use to be a bit disturbing. This is not to confuse a car rig or a bag rig that can be broken off and sent out for a last minute grab. Additionally, a small number of NY mixers tend to call in another mixer for a playback scene and don't allow the day-player to provide the gear– though in the case of playback, I'm all for allowing the utility to take the bump and use the playback kit that's on the truck. I'm aware there may be exceptional issues; perhaps working outside the major markets, or on a very low-budget show. I'm sure there are others. I posit that a mixer working on a show is earning adequately and might think twice about doubling their kit rental for the day, or far worse giving production a discount for the second package, at the expense of the Second Unit-ers.

One commenter says this about Inside Job: My curiosity was piqued when a friend told me of the upcoming Wall Street documentary exposé ‘Inside Job’.... Admittedly though, you have to be quite naive to think that a genuine expose of Wall Street could even see the light of day in Hollywood, considering the corporate nature of media ownership. http://empirestrikesblack.com/2010/08/inside-job/

Crew, 90k miles? It's just getting broken in.

More funnies from xtranormal artists:

I have not seen the Pop-N-Work, but it appears that the roof does not have a hole in the point of the top for rain to sneak in like my Pelsue does.

FYI The low budget/new media section of the current Local 52 contracts states that the employer is authorized to hire a non-union person if the position cannot be filled with a member in good standing. I am not certain, but I don't think the employer is even required to run that decision by the union office. The same contract has a make-your-own-deal provision, and interchangeability of craft. This allows a production to offer unacceptably low rates and, when no one bites, hire a non-union sound mixer who's duties include operating the lighting board and constructing the set. I suppose if they couldn't find a hire within the other union locals that mixer might also be the script supervisor and a scenic as well. Etc, ad infinitum.

Look closely at the fine print- the Mr Microphone II has an included radio and appears to be hardwired (future proofed in the event of loss of spectrum).

Check out all the budding sound "technicians" acting in this Mr. Microphone commercial:

July 24th will not exist in Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea and Myanmar. Me thinks the entirety of those nations will go into time warp and awaken on July 25th.

Congrats to Phil. Crew, On Nikki Finke's listing, all the way at the end, are Outstanding Commercial nominees. No breakdown by craft- but maybe you worked on them. http://www.deadline.com/2010/07/62nd-primetime-emmy-nominees-to-come/

Though admittedly light-duty, this is a fairly versatile USB swivel adapter. I use it on a Lilliput monitor and for a keyboard input. It folds pretty flat. This small, lightweight USB adapter has a flexible swivel connector that bends and rotates 180 degrees, so you can conveniently connect USB devices to adjacent ports. http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=250761#

Mike, Minus the double exclamation point that could nearly quite be a beat poem

The TS-C does not output time code from the 1/4" jack- it will only accept incoming TC. The Lemo jack will output TC and will accept incoming TC. The other Denecke slate models with built in generators both input and output TC at the 1/4" jack.

Borrowed from the historic photos thread:

Until 2005 the state of New Jersey paid for 70% of the installation costs for a PV solar array up to 10 kW on a NJ homeowners property. The installation contractor did all of the paperwork, the site was pre-inspected by the state for appropriateness, and then the funding was approved. After installation it was again approved by the state and the funds were released to the contractor. The homeowner then paid the 30% difference to the contractor, and the homeowner was then the owner of the system. The program is still on the books, but it is unfunded, and a new funding model has evolved through the use of "Green Tags". Green Tags are a commodity traded on the open market. Each kW generated gives the system owner a little more than 1 tag, which has a ceiling price set by statute. A 7 kW system generates 8 Green Tags annually, and these are issued for 15 years. These are then either posted to a bulletin board, or sold directly to a broker that one has established a relationship with. The end buyer is a NJ electricity generator (utility), who by statute must buy an amount of green tags to offset the utilities use of non-renewable resources. This funding model currently has life in two distinct modes: 1) A homeowner pays for a system install outright, and has 15 years of Green Tags to sell and attempt to recover the costs. 2) A homeowner utilizes a program offered by a utility or another venture that funds the install and then owns the system and the green tags. The homeowner would benefit from the reduced electricity costs. This mode could come in different, negotiated degrees of shared ownership and costs.

Nice looking unit. Is it possible to make the Power Star Remote backward compatible with the PowerMax Ultra? I don't know what is currently available at the "Fan Remote" port of the PMU- if not the power switch then maybe just the read-outs?

I'd like to toss in a rhetorical query. When was the last time on ANY shoot, even the most critical, time sensitive, once in a life-time, ad infinitum, event, did you see a back-up camera rolling? Let alone a lowly TV show? I'm sure someone here has seen such. And there are always several cameras rolling when a big stunt is filmed, e.g. a car driving over a cliff or a building demolition. And I concur that in 2 or 3 camera TV or film shoots you have an inherent "back-up" by nature. Also, posties here may inform us that sound file media is delivered unplayable more often that picture tape/files are delivered as such... I'm just sayin'.

Hey, I'm a Mac guy. Infantalizing hardware Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html

This may be the new norm. An episodic show that began last week in NYC has also made this request of the sound crew. I will attempt to find out how they proceed. This appears to be a golden opportunity to implement a Standard Operating Procedure for this type of work. Re-inventing the wheel will cause much waste of wo/man hours, and if production forces the A Unit to do it on a prominent show then standards may begin to be set without our collective input.

#1) I turned on my 744 yesterday and the time code read 25:xx:xx:xx (that's 25 hours). Using it as a master I plugged it into my DV824 and the 824 was displaying 25 hrs as well. It was in free run and when I attempted to adjust TC and increment it to 26 hours it would not go outside the normal 00hrs-23hrs parameters. Mind you this was yesterday, many hours (EST) before the time change (spring forward). #2) I have a CF card (SanDisk, from a local Pro Audio dealer) plugged in and when it became full I continued to record for a couple of weeks. Yesterday, intending to wipe the card, I checked the contents and all of the files were 6kB in length, with what appeared to be the proper name and other iXML data, but no sound. I formatted the card and recorded a 20 second test file and it was all properly recorded. Again mind that the 744 resides on my cart as a back-up recorder, with the internal HD as the primary back-up, and the CF card along for the ride. The recorder is properly set up to record .wav files to both the internal HD and the CF. A spot check of many files on the HD, including several with the same name as those on the CF, showed that the HD files were intact. May I conclude that if one records past the full point of the CF card that it begins overwriting data, or replacing audio with file names? This is all a bit unscientific; I can confirm that proper files have been recorded to this CF card in the past, put I cannot confirm that proper files were recorded to it since the previous formatting. Perhaps there was a hitch during formatting.

Some Hair and Makeup artists ("Vanities") are able to obtain very sweet deals. I have heard that a HM/U attached to a big star can command $1 million, or possibly even points, for a film. That is the way it is done, and I commend them for it. I once shot with a very big named supermodel in the early 1990's. While hanging with her hair guy in the bar one night in the hotel we were staying at in Laguna Beach, he let on that he was getting paid $15,000 for the 2 day shoot, plus per-diem. He said that it was a cut rate deal because it was for cable TV.

This from the mothership union in the US: The “reinvention” of the “New GM” has begun with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event was remarkable not only because the Brownstown plant signals GM’s return to the production of an electric vehicle but also because, for the first time in about 30 years, GM has opened a non-union plant in the U.S. http://www.counterpunch.org/benchich02242010.html The US taxpayers are part owners of GM. This is an opportunity for Congress to insist that all new plants be union shops.