No wacka-waving here …

Had another of those holidays where we actually go away and don’t help someone move house, or remove fence posts, or rewire a house.

It all kinda came together a little oddly.

‘ Let’s go visit family in Wales’ said Mr and Mrs C. ‘ Let’s spend a few days in the rest of Wales first as a small holiday.’ ‘Let’s see if a couple of friends what to join us.’ ‘How many have we got joining us’ – ‘over half dozen and we don’t know at least one of them.’ ‘Oh’.

Mr and Mrs C were making their way from Caernarfon in North Wales past Cardigan Bay to Swansea. Mr Ben and Mrs Mr Ben had decided to spend the same week camping in Snowdonia. Sgt Stubbs had agreed to come along with Mr and Mrs C and test the capabilities of his liver. Wife number one and I decided to spend several days in North Wales. Jon-O was to come up for the weekend and young Kevin was to spend the weekend finding out what Mr and Mrs Ben saw in camping.

And all this arrangment took place via the medium of Facebook – modern looking people that we are.

Mrs C mentioned that for the couple of days in Caernerfon they would be staying at the Menai Hotel.So we duly switched on the Internet and hunted down said hotel in the glorious town of Bangor.

Wife number one had been looking after most of the organisational arrangements but on the train up, I did remember something about Mr Ben going to Caernerfon before coming to say hullo to us but didn’t think much of it.

We arrived in Bangor and carried the bags up what would turn out to be a comparatively shallow hill, past a local Morrisons and reached the B&B&B of the Menai Hotel (that’s Bed and Breakfast and Bar to the uninitiated).

As we signed in, we casually asked if Mr and Mrs C had signed in yet.

“No one of that name will be signing in at all.”

Oh.

Headed up to our room, we sat for a moment wondering the absence of Mr and Mrs C. Then we remembered the free Wi-Fi and the mention of Caernarfon and did a little searching.

Who knew that there was Menai Bank Hotel?

Anyways, Mr and Mrs Ben and young Kevin turned up to say hello. Young Kevin was a little nonplussed to be back in Bangor as he’d already spent a couple of days exploring Bangor town – only to find, to be honest, that there wasn’t much to find there.

We meandered down from the Menai Hotel on to the high street and noticed that post 6pm on a Sunday is a very bad time to try to find any kind of something to do.

Even the fish and chip shops were closed.

The choice was between Yates and Weatherspoons.

We choose the former and there was a minute or two of ‘have we made the wrong choice?’. Then the football game finished and the pub emptied, leaving us to enjoy a very good pub meal in relative peace.

It was still early when the others returned to their campsite to set up beds for the week. Wife number one and I wandered down to the third B of our hotel to see what they offered. I noted the chocolate fudge cake for later consumption, there was a single dart board, digital jukebox and two pool tables that even had a selection of different sizes cues.

The next morning, we ate a continental breakfast of toast, Alpen and tea then made sure we had our all weather gear handy. Today the plan was to scale the tallest mountain in Wales names after a lord with the intent of meeting Mr and Mrs C, Sgt Stubb and Jon-O at the top.

Yep, we were planning to brave Snowdon. Though while we were looking at the what we thought would be easy Miners Track, the others were going to take the train to the summit.

It seems a little like cheating to take the train up a mountain but hey …

By the time we had left Bangor, reached Pen-y-Pass, saw the lack of parking spaces, started to drive down Llanberis Pass, parked under a rock, caught a double decker bus back to Pen-y-Pass and posed for the obligatory pre-walk group photo, it had passed midday.

The timer started and we began. It took about five minutes before we doffed the all weather coats and fleeces and put on sun glasses. It was a little surprising, though welcomed, to be out walking in North wales and not be rained on.

We walked past several of the lakes on the mountain and frowned slightly at the presence of grey clouds obscuring the summit itself. Mr Ben was on the track on the way up, and I don’t just mean on the Miner’s Track. As we reached Llyn Gladow, I was the first to spot the subject of his search, half-hidden in ruins.

It cheered up Mr Ben to see the sleek green lines of a land Rover part way up Snowdon. We continued up and, after a quick asthma attack from Mrs Mr Ben, by Glaslyn Mr Ben was even more pleased to find a white long wheel base Land Rover – which is a nifty trick to manage up a single stony track.

Unfortunately, at Glaslyn we also found the highlight of Miners Track – a steep scramble up to join with Pyg’s Track.

It was about this point that wife number one reached her stride and we began to range ahead of the other three.

For those still curious as to why two land rovers were up the mountain – at least one of them was providing transport for the team who were building steps up the steep near climb where Pyg and Miners meet. not bad for a day job “What did you do today dear?” “Well we put steps onto Snowdon.”

At the point where the track we followed reached the railway up and the path up from Llanberis, we pretty much walked straight into the cloud we’d been viewing earlier.

Back on went the fleeces, coats and hats.

We reached the summit a little over 3 hours after starting up for a view that could be measured in metres.

Then, in true English spirit we had a cup of tea.

However, in, not quite true, English spirit this wasn’t drunk luke-warm from a thermos – rather it was drunk inside the cafe at the top of Snowdon.

I had jokingly asked a fellow mountain walker on his way down if he’d left the kettle on for us – he said yes and that the sausage sarnies were very good. I didn’t go for those – instead wife number one and I shared a Welsh Oggie (it’s a Cornish Pasty) and a cream scone.

Then Mr B blinked nicely at the station master and we managed to buy tickets for the train journey back down the mountain.

Some of you might think that taking the train down is also cheating – bear in mind, firstly that we had made it up the mountain. And secondly, by the time we were down and had reached the bus stop to return to where we’d parked it had gone 6pm. After last nights close down of Bangor we were a little cautious – it turned out to be a good thing we were as the last bus of the evening up Llanberis pass was at 6.17pm.

Back in the car and we went firstly to the campsite in Beddgelert where Mr and Mrs Ben and young Kevin were staying for showers and clothes and tea from a wok then up to our hotel in Bangor via a quick stop at a local shop to purchase a puncture repair kit

Apparently Mr and Mrs Ben’s air mattress wasn’t Welsh sharp stone proof.

We left them in the bar and had our own showers and changes then all headed off to meet the others who had been up and down the mountain and had then gone underground to a slate mine.

Readers concerned that we had chosen Yates over Weatherspoons last night can rest easily that we meet up in Caernarfon Weatherspoons.

The food wasn’t as good though, and the chocolate fudge cake was sorely lacking (I do speak as an expect chocolate fudge cake consumer).

We were dropped back off at our hotel to leave Mr Ben, Mrs Mr ben and young Kevin with the fun task of breaking into their campsite which closed at 10pm (about as we were all ordering dessert) and then attempting to repair the air mattress. In the Dark.

Jon-O returned home the next morning via Bangor. A crafty bit of scheduling last night meant that yet again wife number one and I could enjoy a lie in then get picked up – this time in Morrisons cafe. Morrisons do a good coffee and bacon sandwich.

We travelled this morning with Mr and Mrs C and Sgt Stubb with the intention of meeting the other others (keep up) in the car park for Port Meirion.

Unlike the vague hope of meeting at a tourist exhibition yesterday (I doubt that Weatherspoons counts) we did actually manage this time and all headed off to look at the set of The Prisoner.

It is a very picturesque town but in our usual vein, we were there for ice cream and cake. Wife number one and I stopped for cake and tea while the rest made do with ice cream for now and a stroll past the concrete boat to a sea side tower.

Meeting back together we got distracted again by the cafe – this time for lunch proper (Welsh stew I think I had) then meandered through the acres of ground that lie in the Port Meirion estate, including the Dog graveyard and a tree stump with numerous coins embedded in the top.

Expensive way to stop people sitting down, I thought.

Choosing not to wait for the castle to open for dinner, we returned to our respective cars (myself and wife number one now back with the Bens) and departed. Back to Beddgelert for us and I finally succumbed to the lure of cream tea. It came with a piece of Welsh cake which I left til later as we had the debate of cream or jam first on the scone (it is quite patently jam first BTW).

It now being around 6pm, we decided to head back to our hotel. Via Argos

Why?

Apparently Mr Ben’s brand new puncture repair kit didn’t repair punctures all that well.

It also seems be be nap time … and here’s the proof:

I have comfy shoulders

Argos was open (contrary to Bangor tradition) and we found on the same business park estate an open Tesco. Why the two ladies wanted to go clothes shopping at 7pm on a Tuesday in North Wales, I have no idea but they weren’t going in my holiday bag so …

My credit card yes but I have to draw the line somewhere.

We stopped at the bar again to allow Mr Ben to show off his pool shark tendencies then they left early to avoid a repeat of last night.

Apparently the catering truck driver was a little miffed when he had to drive through a hedge because some idiot had parked his Land Rover on the approach to Beddgelert campsite in an attempt to break in and repair an air mattress.

I say attempt as the air mattress wasn’t repaired, of course.

Slightly less of a lie in the next day and a distinct lack of orange juice and marmalade at breakfast but we made it to Bangor to see young Kevin board the daily train to London (the one that Jon-O boarded the previous day and the one that wife number one and I were scheduled to be on the following day

Mr and Mrs C had kidnapped Sgt Stubb and were even then subjecting him to a day along Cardigan Bay. Brutes.

The four of us left decided that what people don’t do enough of is visit power stations. So with some slightly suspect map reading from the Sat Nav we made our way to Dinorwig – the Electric Mountain.

Actually it’s a slate pile with a lake top and bottom.

When we got there, it turned out we would have to wait over three hours to get on a one hour tour. There was a shop selling cake – the decision wasn’t difficult.

In fact the biggest reason was the horizontal rain that started up as we were at the wrong end of the car park. The slate museum was not very far away at all and we could have gone there and come back.

This was true Welsh rain though and the shop had caramel shortbread and chocolate cake.

Two and a half hours later, the craft fair, gift shop, art exhibition and two science bits (some banners and a machine to demonstrated the power of an empty tube with a hole in the lid) we were wondering if we’d made the right decision.

Three hours and five minutes later when the opening video presentation to the tour was audio less, we were really wondering. Then it was CountryFile explaining about the tour and things were really getting to a point.

Luckily at that point, they decided to drive a bus into the mountain to keep us entertained.

Actually into the tunnels under the mountain so we could see for ourselves what a power station using pumped water looks (and sounds) like. If you have an interest in big machinery and don’t mind being underground, it’s interesting.

Otherwise, Snowdon is just across the road …

Our interest sated, we checked the map to see what no longer rain-swept part of North Wales, we wanted to visit in the late afternoon hours of Wednesday.

“Anglesey” said Mrs Mr Ben randomly.

So we did.

We didn’t go to Holyhead – deciding to stop in Rhosneigr instead.

Nice if you have an interest in kite flying (the kite was back at Mr Bens house) or wind surfing (so was the turtle wax) but nothing else, on the island appealed.

That said, the fish and chip shop in Rhosneigr does a brilliant chips and fish – and even has Vimto in a can!

Bypassing Llanfairpwllgwyngyll on the way back, we stopped for a quick Kodak moment past the Menai bridge then returned to the bar for the final time to try the food at last and have one last game of pool.

Not bad but again the chocolate fudge cake was disappointing.

One final lie in then a brisk walk down to the station to catch the regular train for our return to the Big Smoke. Mr and Mrs Ben staying on to visit the slate museum and drive along the coast scaring sheep.

More photos can be found at Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomhares/sets/72157622211736733/

More photos can be found also on Facebook – if you know where to look …

One day I’ll take a day off and not do anything …

It has been a busy month.

While the current show has been proving to be something of a handful … of which details will follow … I have already helped out yet another person whilst on a day off.

Actually, that’s a slight misnomer.

This time, it was one of my work colleagues who had had the electrics fail to her boiler.

With wife number one being the trained sparky that she is, I volunteered her to my colleague.

What started as a simple site visit to replace a short length of cable ended up involving an additional electrician, and three days of testing different ends of wires in an attempt to map out the ring main (and finding out that it was actually two radial spurs) and finding out just how much damp had seeped into the walls (and then into the wall boxes).

Then with my colleague encouraged to not be present in the flat for a few days (we figured three weeks camping in America was far enough away), began the process of gently pulling up floor boards to see how much damp had made it into the floor supports.

Gently in the sense of crowbar.

Three weeks later and it transpired that my colleague hadn’t gone far enough away and she opened her front  door to find an absence of hallway floor and someone checking to make sure that using the service pipe to hold the floor up hadn’t done anything too damaging (read expensive).

Maybe we should have sent her further.

Still, she now has totally checked electrics, brand new floor (including joists, support mounts and laminate), space to finish the decorating in the bedroom and a big hole in the bank account.

Luckily for me, most of these was carried out in my absence also.

Unluckily for me, that absence was due to the current show.

The first day of show didn’t start particularly well for me. what with a 9a.m. start. It finished worse with a 4.30a.m. end.

Yes that is the right use of a.m. in this instance.

A full day loading the sound kit in followed by most of a night lining up the projectors for what is proving to be a recurrant theme of having to work with projectors …

[shop talk]

Sound wise it’s a full Meyer MSL4 rig on mains with E3 delay lines. Our Control 1’s are also being used as a little bit extra, though we’ve bypassed the MediaMatrix for this show.

The particular feature about this rig is that is near enough identical to the show that went out the night before – but that show heads straight off to Russia and the carnet already had all the serial numbers.

I did offer to go around and swap the serial number stickers over but there was something to do with maintenance records …

Control is from a Soundcraft Vi6 which seems very shiny. I’ve not sat hands on to it but our sound guy seems to like it (for a digital desk) and it sounds fine. It has it’s foibles but I’d be interested in having it back again.

Audio for the show is from a 18-piece orchestra on 3m high steel deck onstage with a standard layout of brass, strings and percussion. I don’t remember all the mics in use but it’s full of the usual suspects (Schoeps, DPA, Sennheiser and so on). There are also a coupe of shotguns, one each side of the pros and four more mics along the front to help pick up the tap dance sequence.

Two UPA’s are hung directly under the platform as an upstage source (and monitors for the dancers) with our Martin SB218 underneath for some low end. USW have replaced all our subs in the main house.

The stage, as already mentioned, is dominated by the band platform, faced in black with an open entrance way central to the platform. The musicians are often obscured by a black scrim and a curved screen made of vertical uprights. The screen curves from DSL to DSR and raises from just over head height on DSL to a few metres on DSR.

The floor is raised to allow for a revolve and several dressing items are flown in or brought on as part of the blocking and flown up. These include a large white silk which starts as water with a little careful lighting and some billowing to become a street walkway, several chandeliers of different sizes, various sizes of bunting and a disc from the same material as the screen.

Lighting is a mix of side, and overhead, with a little from out front. Pipe ends and boom are PAR64 and Source 4 in equal measures, some with CXi scrollers on. All of our MAC500 are in the rig, though they don’t do much. All of our Pirouettes are also up in the rig with their Rainbow scrollers on and which are only used once (quite probably our Alto’s could have done the same job). But then the show was premiered here so some of this was to allow for options.

There are also Martin TW1 doing overhead cover and VL3500Q doing the lighting effects (and not breaking as much as usual – I think we’ve only swapped a couple out so far) and very old cloud FX wheels which are just about holding together.

There’s a couple more VL3500Q on the circle rail and, as long as we don’t have them switched on with the shutters close, they are only mildly annoying for noise levels.

This is partly due to the projection though.

Onstage is a pair of CML projectors that are the usual rock solid dependent projection. The new toys though are the four Barco DML1200 moving head projectors on our pros booms. These have been a pain in the ass since even before they arrived. Control for the video is a Catalyst system with a Road Hog desk.

[/shop talk]

Now, normally, I’d keep the tech info out of the non shop talk sections.

This time though most of this is going to be featuring on the brand new moving head projectors installed for the show.

The show itself is based on the music of Richard Rogers, though with no lyrical contributions from Hart or Hammerstein and seems to be a girl in every port love story.

For us the show has been a matter of ‘ what will go wrong with projection today?’

The first indication of imminent doom was a site visit a couple of weeks before the show get-in day in which the idea of projectors. There were issues about the weight and size of the projectors which would be doing the curved screen. How heavy and big are we talking about? ‘Oh less than 100kg but we’ll need about a metre in every direction. What’s the load limit for your circle rails?’

The projectors we are talking about are these little beasts:

Barco DML1200

Various options for mounting and positioning these were mooted and the decision was made pretty quick to not hang them on the circle rails, less due to the chance of overweight and more for the time that would be lost in having to contruct boxes to enclose them in a theatre with no dedicated workshop to minimise noise leakage.

Loud fans then? ‘Oh, only slightly more than standard moving lights.’

Ah.

Then there was the meeting with the supplier of these behemoths as he tried to work out the best place to install these things.

After having worked out the best places for projection angles, there was the casual mention of ‘oh and if we can, it would be nice to run in some cables ahead of the get-in’. Seems fine, what sort of cable are we talking here? ‘ Five way co-ax video cable. From the control room through the innards of the building (that’s about 100m) to the likely mounting positions. For each projector. Which includes two more to go overhead.’

That’s six 100m long looms of six cables each to be run from the control at the rear of the first circle, through a hole, down a three storey ladder, along a narrow corridor, through a fire hatch, through a boiler room past all the dead fluorescent tubes and fire extinguishers, through another fire hatch, over a corridor, past another hatch then up onto stage.

And we have a good cable run for this sort of thing.

Then it took the better part of a day to rig the scaffolding required to take the weight of these – which to be fair did include painting them black rather than the building service rainbow supplied. And the rest of the day to haul them up into place – where, typically enough, the clamps would never line up – and all this assembly while the rest of us installed lights, sound and set around them.

Then we switched them on and the trouble really started.

Now, I could go off on a long meandering tale concerning these but my fingers are already starting to hurt from the typing. Suffice to say, that the DML-1200 are new to the market and still have a couple of ‘features’ (bugs) that possibly (almost certainly) should be addressed before being used in a show in anger (and anger is the right word).

The chief feature is that the units do not seem to hold onto all the data needed to project images. Each day the projectors would be lined up, have their resolutions checked, and looking lovely before the show.

Each day.

So far for several weeks.

One would hope that anything that projects would be able to hold onto positional data and projection information.

Apparently these can’t yet.

“oh but they should do” say the suppliers and manufacturers.

But they don’t now.

And as a measure that we know it’s the projectors to blame, we had one day where the same switch on and align routine was carried out four times.

The first time they didn’t line up properly; the second time, one side did line up and the other was fixed in a rainbow shaped image. The third time, there was something like electrical snowstorm coming from all four of the moving heads. Then we had the afternoon show – sans DML1200. Then we did the same routine a fourth time and all four lined up perfectly.

Our operator is tearing her hair out – one day everything will line up first time, next day it takes two times using the same procedure. Then three will be fine and one will be off. Then two.

It’s not even consistent in it’s failing.

My only recommendation with these is not to use them yet.

A moving head projection that can also be used as a light is a great idea – but give these units some time before attempting to deploy them.

Not that projection was alone in it’s issues.

We found out the day before press night that there would be no lighting operator from the company after press night – a last minute change.

This is a potential issue for a summer show when all the full time staff have holidays booked  over the course of the run (as we were informed that we would be needed as duty techs – not show staff) and most casual workers seem to drift towards Edinborough. Apparently there’s some festivalt that happens there during these months.

Since, the control was from our still new ETC Eos (yep we’ve ditched Strand) which does have it’s little foibles but does actually work most of the time.

[shop talk]

Things on the Eos that I’d like changing:

- No control on the gooseneck lights is dull – and there are expansion areas that could easily take controls if the wiring is there to dim the dratted things

- Information is shown on tabs – but the tabs don’t hold their position when the console is switched off. If you want to show playback and live channels tabs at the same time, you have to piddle about with tab, expand and page buttons. Really, can this not be added to the save file for a show?

- The encoder wheel for intensity sticks – something I’ve never noticed on any other desk. It isn’t possible to do a smooth fade up or down with it.

At least they are consistent, I guess.

[/shop talk]

It doesn’t take long to pick up a show however, and a few of us now can run the lighting for the show.

The show is harmless enough but isn’t particularly engrossing.

I’d like to say I’m looking forward to seeing the next show – but it’s flamenco …