The rig had 15 Ehrgeiz LED Fusion bars (each with 20 individually controllable RGB LEDs) and a range of par cans, fresnels and blinders on 24 dimmers.

For control, I chose to use GrandMA onPC with a 2Port node. (Much better than Light Jockey, which I used last time). The iOS remote was quite fun while focusing! For easier live operation, we also used a Jands Stage 24 in wide mode to get 48 executor faders, using the DMX input of GrandMA. That’s more faders than a GrandMA full-size!

I programmed a range of effects on cues in HTP mode and some speed masters to allow easy on-the-fly control. With 48 faders, there was no need to ever change pages! I also created a simple Quartz Composer composition on my MacBook Pro to control a GrandMA executor with audio input from the drums.

I’m quite impressed that we basically created our own console, sort of equivalent to a GrandMA full-size, for a tenth of the price!

(Well it is missing lots of things – like encoder wheels, executor buttons, touch screens, etc. But for our purpose at least, none of that was an issue – it was great! Still quite difficult to learn and teach others how to use though.)

Here’s a little bit from my Google profile trying to show where ‘Australia’ is. (No, that marker is not anywhere near where I’ve ever lived)

* I’m not sure if this was around before Xcode 4 or not – I only just found it now.

Let’s have a look at Coda. Buying direct from Panic is US$99 (around AU$99). On the app store, it’s AU$119.

Another example is Omni Graffle Pro. At the Omni Store, it’s US$199, or even better, as a student I can get it for US$119. On the app store it’s AU$249 – more than twice the price that I can get direct.

I think I’ll be avoiding the Mac App Store as much as possible, especially for more expensive professional apps.

Why doesn’t it say ‘Closed’, as the store isn’t actually open yet…

I’ve created a new page with all my free design resources for download (all 2 of them!… there should be more coming sometime though). On that page, you can find some new whiteboard vector textures. I made them by slowly brushing off whiteboard marker from my whiteboard. It creates the dirty cracked look, as seen in the ‘Stock’ graphic above. There will be many more of these whiteboard ones to come (I’ve got a stack of .JPGs to process).

I hope you find them useful!

Now that I’ve disabled Comic Sans, I’ll never have to suffer through it again!
(at least not on my computer)

On your Mac, open Font Book in the Applications folder, find Comic Sans, and click the checkbox disable button down the bottom. If that isn’t satisfying enough, you may also enjoy deleting it completely. (although I think I have to say I wouldn’t recommend that.)

One of the main changes is the background images. The last version was designed before more people had huge screens…

For this latest design I tried to make the backgrounds more tile-able (well, at least not too bad), by using large pixel-style designs. This had the added benefit of compressing the files much better. As a result, the page is now 75% smaller! (and significantly quicker to download) UPDATE: …and bandwidth usage has also reduced ~75%

Another goal of this design was to improve the portfolio page (something I’ve been planning on doing since I first created this site). It is now a bit more organised, has some more detail, and looks nicer. I chose a darker graphic for the background so the bright images and text would stand out more.

There’s also a bunch of smaller improvements to the About and Contact pages. The ‘About Me’ copy is now much better written, and the contact page is less cluttered.

One of the things I’m not 100% happy with yet is the home page. It’s starting to fell a little cluttered, and not clear what visitors should do next. There’s no clear “Call to Action” or anything. I suppose that’s because I don’t really have one at the moment. (I’m not looking for work — too busy with study)

Overall, it’s a huge improvement that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and I’m very happy with it!

So… what’s next?