Pounding comes in all forms

I’m writing this through a constant pounding in the temples – nope, not my choice of music but a lingering cold (sniff).

I’m going to skip over last weeks shows for the most part. It was heavy on Russians, heavy on cloth’s that, quite frankly, smelt of animal piss (we couldn’t decide between horse or rat), light on schedule, tight on power (the Glaciators nearly ended up on sound power) and heavy on magna-lock doors.

Y’all know that I’m not a huge fan of doors that impede movement through at any point; doors with non-working press to open buttons, particularly when on crutches, or magnetic locks blocking the mast of MEWPs …

But several of the doors are looking a little worse for wear, as is the architrave around them.

When visiting a theatre, if a door doesn’t seem to budge, don’t think that the answer to the door is a firm boot (unless the fire is getting closer …)

And if the door magically splinters when you softly (with a boot) try to open it, at least have the courtesy to inform a member of in-house staff.

Moving swiftly on, this week starts with a brief run from an Isreali contemporary dance company who may well be the first company to supply security guards.

[Shop talk]

Grey marley was surrounded on three sides by lots of 8′ x 4′ black masking flats screwed to the floor providing lots of entrances that weren’t particularly noticeable.

Lighting was wonderfully simple – four bars of PAR64 with CP62 doing top light. And when I say four bars, I mean, we now know how many PARs we can fit on 16m bars (42 in case you are wondering – there should be a HHGTTG joke in there).

A few SL’s on a fifth bar doing a tight corridor on the front edge of the stage.

And a few Source 4’s out front for the bows.

Wonderfully simple.

Sound was driven from our aging O2R and was all playback from a pair of DN2100 dual deck CD players. A single XTA 448 provided the speaker management to our MediaMatrix/EAW/JBL rig out front and to two pairs of our old favourite E12’s onstage, powered by D6 amps. One pair was hung from the onstage perch positions for sidefill, the other pair were on stands so they stood just over the upstage flattage wall.

A single UPM-1P was on a shelf on the front edge of the stage.

Yep, that’s an awful lot of AD/DA conversions in that.

I’m also not entirely convinced that the Denon CD players were actually needed – certainly the whole sound requirements could have been run from a computer based playback preferably running AES or SPDIF into the Yamaha.

[/shop talk]

The show was, for me, nothing spectacular. There’s just something about watching dancers in street garb to a backing track that just seems ‘not quite finished’. There may be moments that make you go gosh but there’s an overall incoherence, a sense of disconnection, between the dancers, the music and the visuals that misses the ‘oomph’ factor – that little ‘wow’ hook that live performance is capable of.

Maybe it’s just the performing equivalent of ‘you don’t get music/cartoons/food like you used to in the old days’ …

Well, the head’s still pounding so I feel there may be some pain-relieving substance in my future. At least my voice is coming back – spent a couple of hours sitting around the centre of London after I missed the last night bus on Saturday, waiting for the Sunday train service to start.

Cue three days of near silence on my part.

Yep, wife number one was happy …

After sales service should not be an after thought part 3

Well, it’s the 22nd and while I’m not writing this from the new laptop – I could be!

Yep, it’s up and running – with no thanks to CCL.

Citylink turned up early for the collection (but hey, at least they turned up) and CCL had it back by the 10th.

On the 16th, I called CCL to find out what was happening (so much for that seven day service) and was told that Vista had been re-installed and the laptop was fine.

“I should probably arrange a delivery,” said the guy at CCL.

Ya think??

It did actually arrive the next day.

And still had the same not loading properly error.

SIgh.

Obviously, the laptop being fine is just it switches on without beeping.

After we had scheduling ANOTHER pickup (here we go), and with the weekend free, we decided to try HP Recovery, a partition on the laptop that holds re-installation files.

The process took about an hour, and would delete any user created content (files and programs) – of course, we hadn’t been able to get to a position to put any user-created content on the laptop so that wasn’t a problem.

The hour came and went and the laptop …

… worked.

That simple.

I’m not certain what CCL were doing to it – I know the day before it first got dispatched to us, they were able to install AIM and AOL search (gee thanks). Beyond that, I would have thought that actually loading into Vista and having a look at the desktop might be in order, seeing as how that was the reported error.

I dunno, I’m just old-fashioned like that.

Of course, it took another couple of hours to install all the security updates that MS had released since the laptop left HP (and to remove Norton, AOL and the rest of the bloatware).

I really have to say that CCL have not been a shining beacon of online sales – the telephone system leaves you hanging for ages (though, to be fair, it is a local geographical number and not an 0845 or 0870 number), the technical support wasn’t and there’s an air of laissez faire about the whole thing.

Plus, the communication between them and Citylink was pretty poor. If Citylink really can’t specify a delivery of pickup time then CCL need to adjust their service (and marketing) accordingly.

(A citylink driver of course showed up early for the final pickup, despite us emailing CCL to cancel the pickup)

Not encouraging and I don’t recommend them.

The laptop – well, it seems to be doing nicely.

I’ll post a review in a few weeks once it’s bedded in properly. It’s doing a lot better than the company we got it from.

After sales service should not be an after thought part 2

Following on from my previous post on the (still ongoing) saga with CCL Online, I should really apportion the credit (read: blame) where it’s due.

For while CCL Online need to work on their after sales service, they are a computer retailer and not a delivery company.

For that, they choose to utilise the services of City Link (at least they do at the time of writing)

CCL guaranteed a next day pickup between 12-2pm. City Link failed to arrive and we chased up CCL

The second time, I asked for a pickup slot between 10am-12pm as we were headed workwards afternoon and evening. City Link did show for this collection: at 3.30pm.

Calling City Link the next day we first got someone saying that the pickup had been rescheduled for the same time that day.

Unsurprisingly, no City Link driver turned up.  An hour or so after the scheduled time slot had passed we called the local Beckenham branch of City Link to find out where the driver was. The lady who answered cut us off. We called back and spoke to a Marcus who said that the driver wasn’t answering his phone but he’d give him a personal call then get back to us.

Except he didn’t.

So around 4.30pm we called again (fourth time today!), speaking this time to a Tom. Tom told us that no pickup had been scheduled, that City Link doesn’t try to re-schedule missed collections and that, contrary to what CCL had told us, they don’t guarantee any time slots for collection.

So again we called CCL and again we have scheduled a pickup.

I think at this point, it’s probably easier to rent a car and take the dratted laptop down to the Beckenham City Link ourselves.

The story continues …

after sales service should not be an after thought

So, wife number one and myself finally took the plunge and went to purchase a laptop.

Between two different college courses, two different work venues, and a Wifi connection at home not doing much, we figured we’d get enough usage to warrant the cost.

We chose a HP Pavilion TX2550ea – mainly because of the tablet abilities.

And we chose to purchase the tx2550 from CCL Online. CCL online have been rated best online retailer by PC Pro magazine for the last three years running and you can pay extra for a ‘laptop checking service’ – someone switches on the computer and checks it works before they send it out and if it doesn’t work in the first seven days, you’ll get the extra money back, they’ll pick up the laptop and replace it like for like.

Nice.

I bought from their website on the 26th September (and the money went on my credit card); the order was processed on the 30th September and it arrived about 4.30pm on the 1st.

Then it started going downhill.

Wife number one begins to watch a recorded episode of CSI:Miami while I go Garfield on the box. (see this post)

The documentation that comes with it says that setting it up for the first time can take ten minutes or more (the documentation online says it can take over an hour!) but I plug in the battery, start charging it up and switch it on as per the quick start guide.

Vista starts to do it’s thing and I set up my account with password and it starts to Prepare My Desktop!

Then I get the MSOE.dll missing error from Winmail and the screen goes to a lovely shade of blue.

Not the BSOD blue but a nice pastel hue. Wife number one finishes watching the second half of CSI: Miami and I’m still looking at the same blue pastel hued screen. I have control of the cursor, Task Manager works but there’s no proper desktop and the Start menu is AWOL.

By now it’s gone 5.30 and CCL’s telephone support have finished for the day.

So I spend several hours logging into Safe mode on the laptop, trying to fix Winmail or creating accounts in the hope that a different account will be able to load properly.

Fail.

So around 11pm that night, I use their online enquiry form to inform them of the problem.

At about 3pm the next day, having not heard from them, I call them up, knowing I need a returns number and thinking it doesn’t leave much time for a guy to come pick it up (that next day swop out as part of the laptop checking service). After being trapped in a queue for 20 mins I finally get through and arrange after several minutes to have a pickup with a 2 hour slot the following day.

Okay.

The pickup slot comes and goes and an hour after the pickup was due, I call CCL Online again to try to find out where the pickup driver is.

After 15 minutes in the phone queue, I elect to leave a message, including my sales order number and ask them to call me back.

Nothing.

Then, of course, it’s the weekend and they aren’t open at the weekend.

I leave another message via their website giving them a new slot to pickup from on the Tuesday (as we weren’t around on the Monday) and ask them to call me on the Monday to confirm the time.

At 5.25pm on the Monday, I still haven’t heard from them and duly get trapped in the queue system again. No answer.

Currently, we are waiting to see if the pickup does happen on the Tuesday – 6 days after the delivery and 4 days after the first requested pickup.

If this is PC Pro’s idea of good customer service …

I was expecting to have to spend some time on the laptop – but I was expecting to have to remove all the bloatware. I wasn’t expecting to have to chase the company down because it didn’t work, particularly having paid extra for a service that is meant to check that it does work.

Checking around the tubes, I see that people either really love them or really hate them

… guess which way I’m leaning right now …

I’ll keep you all informed as to the progress.

A little Reich Music

Last weeks show is best described as old school ballet with a new school choreographic slant – an American ballet company from the big apple doing excerpts and small pieces (no big corps de ballet), mainly pas de duex, and mainly choreographed by ballet’s rising star – but also pieces from Sir Frederick Ashton and Jerome Robbins.

[Shop talk]

No surprises here – black masking all round with a Cyc and full black alternating far upstage.

Lights were lots of side and top with our MAC500 doing some spots and Pirouettes doing back light alongside PAR64 pairs.

Sound was orchestral mostly – a couple of piano pieces. A pair of C414s served as a stereo pair, set to omni. C3000’s in the pianos and C1000’s on the harps. A little touch of reverb from an SPX990, and the orchestra were very happy with the sound through our Midas/MediaMatrix/EAW system.

And though video had been talked about, and tested, the only projection on the night was the titles on a downstage scrim before each piece

[/shop talk]

American ballet companies are always a joy to work with and this company were no exception.

The company to follow them were also a joy to work with, this time a mostly Belgish company putting on an evening of Steve Reich music – these included Pendulum Music, Piano Phase, Four Organs, Eight Lines (playback), Drumming – Part 1, Music for Pieces of Wood, Nagaya Marimba, along with 100 Metronomes (which I believe the credit goes to György Ligeti).

Check Steve Reich’s entry on Wikipedia for more info

Of course, there was some dancing onstage (possibly in the audience also, I wasn’t watching them…) but the evening was as much about the music as the dancing (not that anyone really admitted to it)

So, onstage, we had two baby grands, two marimbas, four electric keyboards (Hammond organs in transit to New York as it happens), eight bongos, five pairs of tuned claves, 100 metronomes, and a bare stage.

[Shop talk]

Yep a bare stage – the only soft masking was a full black downstage to hide a instrument change and a white cyc upstage, along with a white cyc with a discrete design upon it.

And yes, that meant we had to move a good portion of our equipment about. There does seem to be this thing that wanting to reveal the area behind the stage to the audience means not showing things that customarily live there. This company wasn’t as bad as some but we have had previous companies ask for exit lights to be switched off, colours on 3 phase distro painted black, stage braces hidden, scaff obscured and blinking lights (such as amps, and DMX nodes) covered over.

One day, someone will accept that these sorts of thing are found at every stage and not be bothered by them

One day.

Anyways, lighting was mostly overhead washes from PAR64 and fresnals with more PAR64 on bench bases or low flown up/down bars.

A trio of Robert Juliat HMI profiles lit a particular strip of dance floor and a Studio Colour dominated an LX bar to do an overhead wash …

Sound was driven from a DM2000 with a Lexicon 300 and A/DD/A unit linked via AES, as was the backup CD. Our EAW were replaced with d&b E12 – a pair for each audience level.

We do like these speakers – weighting only 16kg, they are easy to rig and strike and they sound great. The sound engineer for the company has been using the Q-series recently but he liked the sound of the E-12 units. The D6 amplifier is also very nice to work with.

I have two minor quibbles with them and both relate to the lightweight flying frame – because of it’s thin design, it’s uncomfortable to pick up and it doesn’t seem to lock the tilt movement properly.

I’d still love to have them permanently though …

Onstage speakers were our Max 12 on sidefill and piano monitor duty and a pair of Max 15’s upstage provided the zero point for the two playback pieces.

Each of the piano’s had a pair of C414 clamped just over the soundboard and the leader had a tiny camera focussed on his fingers and connected to a small LCD screen on the other piano on the other side of stage. The keys were four DX7 using a Yamaha sampler for the organ sound and connected to the system via BSS AR133 active DI’s. Each pair of claves had a DPA 4060 assigned to it, plugged into a Sk5012 radio transmitter. Two more 4060/5012 combos were on the marimbas and two more on the bongos.

Pendulum Music was slightly pared down from the original, only two SM58 swinging over a pair of cones powered from a little amp the company brought with them.

The metronomes weren’t miked, BTW

[/shop talk]

I’m glad I was able to see this one – some of the pieces seemed more of a technical exercise (Pendulum Music I’m looking at you here) and I’ve never been overkeen on minimalist music but there were some nice pieces performed and the whole evening was well crafted by a choreographer who has a good connection with the composer.