Morgan joined the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and took Heather down to Arlington cemetary to place wreaths on the graves for the holidays…
More pictures here.
February 15, 2009
Randomness
For those of you who haven’t seen me bald, here ya go:
And here’s a couple pics of the place setting for Thanksgiving. We had so much fun we forgot to take pictures of all the people!
Fishing with Rodney
This was awhile ago, but Rodney (Heather’s father) and I spent a morning fishing on the Potomac last fall…
New Computer!
Well, it’s finally here, at home and in use. It’s good to have a capable machine at home again that can edit pictures, as Heather’s old Dell Inspiron 5100 just wasn’t cutting it. It’s a beast of a machine, Intel I7 920, EVGA x58 mobo, EVGA GeForce 9800 GT, 6GB Corsair triple channel XMS DDR3 RAM, 1TB Western Digital server class hard drive… I skimped a little on the video card, as the latest and greatest cards are an extra $200 or so on top of this one. Here’s some shots taken by Ryan Yorde as I built the machine.
More pictures here.
February 3, 2009
Still Waiting…
My computer is scheduled to arrive on Thursday. Stand by for updates in the next week or so…
December 28, 2008
Broken Computer
Just a quick update on things:
My desktop computer at home died, which makes it hard to blog. This stinks, but I do get to build a super awesome machine to replace it, as soon as I make some money. Intel I7, mmmm.
Preparation for our Christmas eve service consumed December, and all the time and effort that went into it paid off because it went really, really well. Pics, audio, and perhaps video to come sometime in the (hopefully) near future.
I lost our camera in an airport last November along with a good bit of camera gear, but the silver lining to this story is that it was insured and we’re now the proud new owner of a D90 and some other goodies. It’s a significant upgrade to the D70 we had…
I’m in Williamsburg with my family and my in-laws blogging on my new iPod touch. I’m not really an Apple fanboy, but this thing is awesome.
That’s it for now! Sorry about the lack of updates, I’ll try to work on that!
October 14, 2008
In Pursuit of Perfection
Warning: This post is technical in nature. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, don’t worry, you’re still a normal person who just hasn’t ascended into “geekdom”.
In my last few months in my new job, I find my anal-retentive tendancies will not let me be satisfied with “good enough” and I’m always listening and watching for ways to improve on what we have at CFC. Approxamately a month ago, our main audio system’s DSP started flaking out and we had to replace them or be left with a sound system that looked good, but didn’t actually put out any sound.
That would be a problem.
As much as I like looking at the huge EAW cabinets, I would rather listen to them and enjoy the sonic properties for which they were purchased. So we replaced our old BSS Soundweb Original units with the newer BSS Soundweb London units, threw in an EAW UX8800, and started programming. As the original program had been tweaked a number of times, it was definitely time to take a fresh look at what was done, why it was done, fix a few problems, and iron out the wrinkles. The result was a much more dynamic system with significantly increased clarity and imaging. Since I don’t have any system evaluation tools such as EAW’s SMARRT, everything had to be set the old fashioned way: by listening. After tweaking crossover values, fixing the system delay’s (which cleaned things up tremendously), and playing with parametric EQ’s, we settled on a “good enough for now” setting that has worked up until now.
Thanks to a women’s conference I worked this weekend, I had the time to sit back and evaluate several aspects of our audio/video/lighting systems and came to a few conclusions. First of all, the lighting on the front of the stage isn’t even, which severely affects one of our camera positions, and two, thanks to Kathy Triccoli, I discovered that the new system is particularly harsh with sibilant’s, mainly the “esse” (“s”) sound. Kathy is a powerful and dynamic vocalist that when paired with the Shure KSM9 reveals all the flaws within a sound system. Couple that with the new track I discovered from Meredith Andrews, and I am now determined to identify the offending frequencies in the system and smooth them out.
There will definitely be some more system EQ work, but what I’m delving into now that is new to me is the concept of “de-essing” using the sidechain of a compressor. If you’re reading this, know what I’m talking about and have any tips, please share, as I’m always in need of good mentors.
For all you other readers that are now completely lost, you can now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Meredith Andrews…
You need to check this girl out. She has some serious God-given talent and a voice that will rock your world. Listen here. (Be sure to listen to the accoustic version of “You’re Not Alone” at the bottom of the list, it’s absolutely stunning) Check out her blog. That accoustic track is joining a small list of “test tracks” that I consider are exceptionally well recorded songs that I use to check the sonic properties of sound systems. If you follow contemporary Christian music, you’ll definitely be hearing more from her…