A Barking Dog

Just heading back to Seattle at the moment. I’ve got some notes with my highlights from the show that will be up sometime before Monday evening or so. I decided to delay my trip for a day and stop at the flagship Apple Store in San Francisco for the launch of the Apple mini (that’s right kids, small “m”). I decided rather than to try and get a room in SF in the early hours of the morning (wouldn’t have made it until 3 or 4 am) I’d stop at the TA in Santa Nella, CA, get some of the cheap WiFi they sell the truckers and grab a bit of shut eye before heading to the city for breakfast at the Pinecrest Diner, catch a glimse of the mini and perhaps kick the tires, attend the Garageband workshop then dinner at Brandy Ho’s, a visit to City Lights books then head back home.

I got the Powerbook, WiFi, Sirius is finally working (and I found out what happened to Dusty Street and Freddy Snakeskin), I’m all set for a swinging night at the TA. Now if I could just find my No Lot Lizards sticker I’d be set.

Quick pic from the Rigging Seminars workshop presented by Washington Association of Production Services and hosted by my buddies that own a bit of sound gear. Big thanks to Dansound, Dan Mortensen for organizing the whole thing.

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Just a reminder that if you want me to check anything out at the NAMM show, be it a manufacturer booth for info or if you have a booth with something you wish me to see, let me know. This year it appears that most of the newer pro audio stuff will happen behind the scenes and not on ths show floor. Friday the 20th is still pretty open so if you have anything you think I should check out let me know.

In case you missed it on /. there is a pretty good primer on audio compression at Sudhain Media.

A little bird just told me that the core part of the team that upset the mid range console market in the mid to late ’90s is making a comeback in an independent company. Chuck Augustowski, John Petrucelli and Taz Bgogal have formed APB-Dynasonics, Inc. I’m told the company will publically premier at NSCA.

Chuck and his team at Crest, pre Peavey, turned the mid range console market on it’s head. They pioneered the concept of good sounding, full feature consoles in the mid range market. I expect more of the same from this new company. In my book Chuck is one of the “Ass Slappin’ Daddies” ™ of console design and marketing.

Congrats guys!

Test of publishing to a moblog using a Motorola RAZR, Movable Type and Flickr.

How he do ‘dat? First, set up a Movable Type blog and enable remote publishing. Second, get an account at Flickr, the basic account is free. As in beer… Enable your Flickr account to post to your blog. Third, get a phone that can send the pix it takes via email. The RAZR uses GPRS to send the photo to Flickr via email, using the email subject as the post title with the photo and the body of the email being the photo caption/ story text.

All you deaf sound guys go get checked. From a press release at PSN…

Los Angeles, CA (January 7, 2005)–The House Ear Institute (HEI) and Shure Incorporated will partner to provide free hearing screenings to attendees and exhibitors at the 2005 NAMM Winter Show at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA. The free hearing screenings will be available in Booth #1196 in Hall E between 9:30 AM - 5:30 PM on Thursday, January 20th through Saturday, January 22nd and 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM on Sunday, January 23rd.

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Manager of The Doors in the late part of thier career Danny Sugerman has died from lung cancer at age 50. Pollstar has the story.

Don’t lame out and miss it… I’ve been to two of Harry’s workshops and well worth the time.

The following is from Dan Mortensen, Executive Director of Washington Association of Production Services, or Dansound as I call him…..

The Washington Association of Production Services (WAPS) will be presenting a one day rigging class in a little over a week. The class will be taught by Harry Donovan, who also offers a more extensive four day class through his company Rigging Seminars. This will be an abbreviated version of that class.

There will be two presentations of the class, on Monday, January 17, and Tuesday, January 18. The presentations will be identical. There is a maximum class size (set by Harry) of 24 per day.

We have had enrollment open to members for a while, and there may be a couple of places open; rather than letting the places go unused, I’m presenting this here in case there are some LAB folk able to be in Seattle on one of those days, and able to afford the class (costs are near the end of this post).

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