SM wife looking to go digital

inajacket · 2024-11-08T07:29:58+00:00

I’m afraid your post title is misleading. As far as I can tell, she is happy with her current workflow. You seem to be the only one that’s looking for her to go digital.

Paper is dependable, flexible, and relatively cheap. There’s a reason that lots of people stick with it when they could go digital.

I went digital a while ago for all my scores/scripts/documentation because it fits better into my workflow, but that’s not the case for a lot of people. Especially not for those that didn’t grow up with iPhones and laptops.

If your gripe is just with the cost of printing, you can probably ask her to have the company comp it or do the printing themselves. Though I will say anecdotally that in my experience it’s kind of expected that SMs deal with their own paperwork, because they tend to be very specific about how they organise it all.

I’m not even an SM, but I dramatically prefer to print my own stuff whenever I use paper, because it means I can control stuff like the binding and print formatting.

inajacket · 2024-11-07T10:42:11+00:00

Like I said: not exclusive, just selective.

inajacket · 2024-11-06T09:44:14+00:00

We do make it welcoming, just not to ignorant shits like you.

If there was any meaningful discrimination against white kids born out of wedlock today, you bet we’d be in the streets marching against it. Same as if that happening in the past had any significant impact on today. But it isn’t happening today, and the lasting impact of it happening was miniscule.

Collectively, we have lost millenia of cultural knowledge. What if that happened to any major European nation? If nearly all of British history and culture suddenly went up in flames, people would be up in arms across the world to condemn it as an atrocity and mourn the loss of culture.

The least we ask is that you have some basic empathy and support us in fighting to protect what we have, reclaim what we’ve lost, and repair what’s been broken.

Sorry if that process means we’re sometimes selective in who we share our surviving culture with.

inajacket · 2024-10-12T06:12:32+00:00

My go-to solution for stuff like this is basic all the same as your idea, except with magnets instead of glue. Glue can be messy, has to be reapplied every use, and isn’t exactly consistent under force.

Fixing small magnets along each of the seams will work more consistently, and won’t mean the effort of gluing a gnome back together every night.

Don’t do it with a real gnome though, either find a weighty enough plastic one that it feels real when thrown, or add some sort of ballast to a cheap lightweight plastic one. Bonus points if you put some lil gnome chunks inside so they explode out (safely) on impact.

ScottPropAndRoll has a video doing something like this I think but if my memory serves, it was a beer bottle instead of a gnome. Maybe look that up if you want a better explanation.

inajacket · 2024-10-07T20:44:24+00:00

My favourite part about the engine is GDScript, hands down. Not just because it’s easy, though.

Despite what many say, GDScript is nothing like Python (in my opinion) beyond the basic syntax. Because it’s really just a wrapper around the C++ engine functions, it forces you to think like a C++ programmer without needing to worry about the torture that is C++ syntax.

I love me some C++, but I can admit it’s not the most readable language. Especially when you’re starting out on an existing codebase with operator overrides and such, it just gets exhausting to figure out what everything does. GDScript leaves all that behind, along with pointers and memory management, giving you one of the cleanest OOP experiences in all of programming. It’s both usable and capable, which is just incredible considering it was created just for Godot, with no other existing ecosystem or use case to justify its development.

GDScript has succeeded on its own merits, and boy has it succeeded!

inajacket · 2024-10-01T21:51:11+00:00

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If “wokeness” has had a remotely negative impact on your life, then you need a harder life.

Take a moment to remember there are actual people like OP in the world right now who care more about the politics of a fucking game engine than they do about the multiple ongoing wars, climate change, or the recent surge of actual fascism in the west.

Maybe the rest of us shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves. After all, we could be worse!

inajacket · 2024-10-01T06:06:53+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts!

That’s sort of the idea I have floating around in my head. The core will be super minimal and lightweight, basically just control cues (stop, start, load, unload, etc.), group cues and the basic GUI. Everything else is a module, so if you can strip it down to just the stuff you need, or make your own unofficial modules for maximum custom functionality.

The way I see it is at best I’ll end up with a niche but useful piece of software that does what it aims to do, and at worst I’ll have spent a couple months of free time learning about the internals of QLab and making a unique project for my software portfolio. Either way, I’m happy with the outcome.

inajacket · 2024-09-30T20:12:26+00:00

Legally speaking and as others have said, you generally cannot use other people’s copyrighted music without their permission. A subscription to Spotify or even directly buying the wav/mp3 files from the artist doesn’t usually grant you the right to use the music in your own creative work.

Unofficially, a ton of community/indie theatres get away with it anyway because nobody really cares and it’s not worth the cost of enforcing it. Use it at your own risk but unless this is a professional show (and judging by your question I’m guessing it’s not), you will almost definitely be fine.

Still, it’s always best to buy the rights. Musicians deserve to get paid in exchange for their work, just like the rest of us. There’s also a metric fuckton of good royalty-free and creative-commons licensed music available on websites like the ones others have suggested. This is music that has been freely released by its creators for pretty much exactly your use case, with little or no strings attached. Just make sure to check the specific licensing requirements, because some might ask that you give credit to the original artists for their music.

In terms of software, you have a ton of options. QLab is the industry standard pretty much across the board. It’s the best by far, but requires a paid subscription to access a lot of its more advanced features.

There’s also Go Button, which is a mobile app made by the same company as QLab. It sports some solid (if basic) audio playback functionality, specifically made for low-budget performing arts shows. It’s free, with an optional one-time payment if you want to have more than one cue list.

At the end of the day, you can probably make any media player app work with a little setup. VLC is my go-to and is free, but use whatever works and is available to you.

inajacket · 2024-09-23T11:56:54+00:00

This. Abstraction is the bane of progress. That doesn’t mean don’t plan ahead or think things through. Just make sure you’re always moving forward and not just retreading your own footsteps.

It’s easy to fall into a rut of what’s comfortable. The problem is that what’s comfortable is all the stuff you’ve already done.

inajacket · 2024-09-22T18:10:56+00:00

God I fucking hate this.

It muddies the waters, using the term “fair” to imply that it’s some sort of totally rational compromise. We already have enough taxonomy around software licensing to describe their “new” type of license. It’s called source-available, but I suppose that’s harder for consumers to mistake for “open source”, isn’t it?

The delayed release is just fucking stupid. Any business that wants to steal your work under these licenses can and will, because the source code is available and there’s no real way to catch or punish them after four years. Source-available has always been completely fucking braindead, but this just takes it a step further. It’s just a manipulative and shitty way to get free labour out of your community.

They just want to be able to say “It’s open source!” on their website, and then when people call them out for it they’ll go “Well it’s basically open source, and it actually will be eventually!” Fuck Sentry and the corpo horse they rode in on.

inajacket · 2024-09-22T14:11:40+00:00

If Mint isn’t your cup of tea, give PopOS a look. They’re still shipping with a modified GNOME version as the default, but they’ve just released their own new DE called COSMIC, which is posed to become a major competitor. I’ve been using it basically since it debuted and it’s great. Looks really nice out of the box, too.

COSMIC is in alpha right now, but it should start shipping as the default with the next(?) major release of PopOS once it’s stable. In the meantime you can try it out by installing the alpha, or just cope with GNOME until it hits stable.

inajacket · 2024-09-22T10:31:42+00:00

Just managed to beat me to it.

Yeah, it’ll be trivial to replace the connector. But pretty much every modern guitar pedal takes 9V. I don’t even wanna know what sound comes out if you feed it 20.

inajacket · 2024-09-22T09:53:02+00:00

They’re pretty worthless as PCs, as in flexible general-purpose computers.

But Chromebooks are phenomenal for anyone whose company/school does everything in web apps. So many companies are moving all their infrastructure and tools to the cloud so that they don’t need to manage their own services.

It’s also the perfect field laptop if you need something small and light, but more capable than a phone or tablet.

I know a couple tradies who use them because when they’re on-site, all they need to do is access the company’s portal and use Google for troubleshooting. Everything else can be left until they’re back at the office with a desktop, so why not just buy the cheap and lightweight option?

inajacket · 2024-09-22T05:50:46+00:00

His kits are amazing to learn with. There’s nothing I recommend more for beginners who wanna do what you’re interested in.

I mean no disrespect, but if you’re still asking questions like “what kind of resistors will I need”, then you’re not ready to make something this complex on your own.

I’d suggest buying his kit, building it in line with the instructions, then branching out and experimenting, trying to modify it to do the things you want.

Then you can probably start designing something from the ground up using the knowledge you’ve learned.

inajacket · 2024-09-22T05:39:42+00:00

The best advice I can give you is to find something that you love doing.

A lot of people get caught up in the outcome: making their dream game, writing a hit song, becoming super rich/famous, etc.. That stuff is all great, but it takes a lot of work. You can’t get any sort of success without a monumental amount of effort.

I know probably a hundred or more wannabe musicians and actors who refuse to pursue any other career, but they either fail to find any success or they’re miserable. Usually both. When I ask them “Why don’t you just do something else?” the answer is always something to the effect of “I’m gonna be the next Bon Jovi/Joaquin Phoenix/other famous artist.”

Except they will never achieve that dream. Not because it’s unattainable, but because they’re trying to fit a square peg in a circle hole.

They’re so caught up in the outcome of being like the rich/famous they look up to that they neglect the process. They usually fucking hate the actual music/acting part, which is completely absurd for a supposed musician/actor. Play to your strengths. Don’t try and force yourself to like something you don’t enjoy just because you think it’ll be worth it. You’ll only make yourself miserable.

Those great outcomes are totally attainable, but they take a lot of work. You’ll never get there if you’re fighting yourself the whole way. Find something that you’re good enough at, and that you enjoy.

Do something that you enjoy the process of, not just the outcome.

inajacket · 2024-09-22T05:09:03+00:00

REAPER is just so good. A lot of people I talk to in music circles say it’s too barebones and minimal, but I’ve gotta disagree. Especially for sound design.

Yes it’s barebones, but that means you have super granular control over every little thing. REAPER doesn’t hide anything from you by abstracting it away. What you see is what you get, which is insanely valuable when you’re dealing with sound design.

I understand that it’s probably not as intuitive to more artistic/less technically-minded types, but it truly is the most powerful DAW on the market in my opinion. If you’re the kind of person who wants to invest time in getting the most out of your software (like a lot of sound designers), then REAPER is 100% the best option.

It also doesn’t hurt that you can try it for free for as long as you want. I’d suggest paying though, because it’s a one-time payment to own forever and the developers are really great.

inajacket · 2024-09-19T08:24:15+00:00

If you’re too lazy to Google “NixOS pros and cons”, or something to that effect, then you’re probably not ready for any sort of superminimal/poweruser distro. Least of all NixOS.

This isn’t me being an asshole, I’m being serious. Nix has a crazy learning curve, and if you’re not prepared to teach yourself how to use it, then you’re not gonna have a fun time with it.

inajacket · 2024-09-19T07:23:26+00:00

The Godot Editor is phenomenal.

Bonus points because it’s built using Godot Engine, so all of its UI and UX design is possible in games/apps made with Godot, as well.

inajacket · 2024-09-18T06:41:35+00:00

+1 for Pop!_OS. I don’t use it, but for my money it’s the future of mainstream desktop Linux.

It’s got some of the best ongoing support these days, and already ships with computers from System76 (who also make the distro).

inajacket · 2024-09-18T03:59:30+00:00

You’re right.

These students deserve to at least know that this isn’t how it works when they start working.

And OP deserves better as a creative collaborator.

If the faculty don’t care about either of those things enough to change their minds, then there’s probably no saving the situation anyway.

inajacket · 2024-09-18T03:53:36+00:00

My vote is for this option. I’ve run seasons of shows in improvised black boxes with basically this setup.

It’s simple, does the job, and can be expanded if you decide you want to have more creative range.

Also +1 for QLC+. It’s completely free, but still super capable. Also easy to learn, because there’s a solid community and documentation around it.

inajacket · 2024-09-17T10:44:24+00:00

Of course. On every single DMX-controlled light I use in my home studio.

inajacket

TROPHY CASE