Dave Rat Blog - Home and Away

Yay, home at last and not for a second unhappy with the awesome adventures of travel. Happiness is found in contrast. Life is change and the same with non living things as well and nothing ever stands still.  Everything is either growing or dying, building or crumbling, brightening or dimming.  Nothing nowhere nohow is in a perfect state of stability.  Only the illusion of stability exists when we look at things for relatively short time frames in relation to the life span of the entity in question. If we take this concept that everything is in a constant state of flux, to heart, and apply it to our own humanly selves, we could look at it as we are faced with a decision: To grow or fade, to learn or stagnate.  To stop doing new things is to turn the corner toward fading. Without sadness we would not know what happiness is, without challenge is boredom.

Anyway, babbling ramble aside, looking forward to being home is partially what drives me to find adventures abroad. The adventures make 'away' worthwhile and home too long leaves me longing for adventures and round and round again.

On my way to Rat this morning after awesome fun surfing (but brrr 40 degree cold), I heard an interesting interview about our ability to focus

In my sound seminars, I talk about the importance of keeping the bigger picture in focus while paying attention to the details and I though this was a very interesting observation of human nature. Perhaps this explains why we as sound engineers tend to get so caught up in trying to make perfect sound while overlooking the true purpose of the live event we do sound for.

Here is a link to some more info:

In Plain Sight

and now let's travel back in time to last week in South Africa. Our current and very cool cool Monitor engineer, Mark Vanderwall lined up a crew outing to Lion Park!

And while waiting for the tour and looking at things I saw these

 The craftiness of creating with whatever tools are available is very cool. The ancient art of basket weaving but using telephone wire and creating a wide variety of colorful items. 

More telephone wire art

So once we got going, as expected we saw Zebra

And lions coming closer

And catching bits of flying meat from our caged truck

And really close, this is not a zoomed picture!

As if that was not close enough, say bye bye caged truck and hello to a purring cheetah!

And the little ones are just too cute and no where near as scary.

And here's the crew, caged truck and all

Yay! super cool and check it out if you are ever down in Jo-Burg

Lion Park

But tour is not all fun and games, we are out here for some serious business of making a ton of noise and gathering masses of humans together for good time.  Check out this massive 100,000 capacity venue.  It holds around 85,000 for a rock show and it was either sold out or really close to it.

And from above, actually this is a little mini model version

From the inside

And was super happy to have a good sized L-Acoustics K1 system.  Here you can see them strapping in the sub arrays as well. 32 K1, 30 V-Dosc, 32 SB28's plus dV-docs and Kara underhangs, some deck staked dV-dosc, 3 delay clusters each with 8 V-Dosc and 3 SB28 in cardioid config and a shit ton of dV-Dosc hung around the upper perimeter decks.

And just to be safe and since there were no noise restrictions, I lit that PA up and drove it hot.  Hey, it was just delivered the week before and it was a brand new K1, no better person to break 'er in than I!

Ok, I get the idea that they do not want carts parked there but the stadium also owns carts as well. 

"what? we sold all our golf carts again!, aaargh"

The band right before peppers was Die Antwoord

Flea went out and played a song with them but I did not grab a pic, was too mesmerized or in shock, not sure which, they were as interesting as catchy as disturbing

http://www.dieantwoord.com/

 Next up off to Cape Town, not really but this blog is already so long, I'll split it in two.  Also, I really need to get some actual work done too

Oh, and as a closing note, Robert Scovill's blog post is an interesting read I recommend

http://www.splnetwork.com/blogs/run-your-lives_the-lawyers-are-coming

Rock on!

Dave Rat Blog - Next Stop South Africa

Ooooh, since we fly so much in our world travels and occasionally run into humans carrying overwhelming or irrational fears of flying versus the realities of statistics, I did a bit of keyboard research and found this

Airline Accident Rates

But taking the ponder further, What are the odds of winning the lottery? Being eaten by a shark or dying in a plane crash?

What are the Chances?

And a last little bit while we are sync'ing some perceptions with reality I found this quote that seems naturally logical to me to be appropriate:

"Notwithstanding that fear, the odds of being in an airplane accident are incredibly small. Accidents occur at a rate of one per 1.2 million flights, and the odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million [sources: Clarke, Ropeik]. The odds of dying in a car accident are around 1 in 5,000, so you're much more likely to die getting to the airport than you are flying in the plane [source: Ropeik]"

from the Discovery web page:

Odds of Surviving a Plane Crash

Well alrighty then and saying bye bye to Perth, soon to hop aboard an Air South African 11 hour flight to Johannesburg. Yay another new city! Oh and for all those that whine or whinge about plane flights and fears, are scared of swimming in the ocean because of sharks or generally let fears clip adventure from their lives, it's your lucky day, look what I found! The perfect solution (pun intended)

And ordering info:

"as and aid in relieving wind in babies and infants"

Ok, and back to actually important things like whether or not a music at a rock show is loud or not, whether we can spot a wild kangaroo and taking a swim in a new ocean.

So after all the sound concerns for Perth:

Turns out I had plenty of headroom and was quite happy with the sound levels and it was another fun show. 

And as always, if seminar friends show up at the gig, I welcome them on the mix riser if there is room, or even if there's not room.

Then back to the hotel

A good night's sleep and thank you James for rocking us the cool ride for a day off adventure to Margaret river

Ahh, and I get to jump into the Indian Ocean!

 

No waves this time

But were way more successful with the Roo spotting

Yay, beers are only $10! Not only that, a tiny bowl off peanuts were a bargain at $3.50.  Oh my, crazy prices everywhere for us spending the low value US dollar

Heck ya, motherboard for a badass laptop!

Ok, after the string of goofy me pics, I feel I should share something remotely soundish and useful.  Here is a copy of  an Excel spreadsheet I use to help decide whether Rat will buy equipment to add to our rental inventory and the aspects of cash versus lease versus loan.

http://www.daverat.com/Rental vs Lease-Purchase_blog.xlsx

and an older blog post that explains a bit more

http://www.ratsound.com/cblog/archives/376-Important-Things-and-Stuff.html

Cool cool. Off to professionally plane sit!

Dave Rat Blog - Last Aussie Show

Perth show today and the last of the Big Day Out gigs as we wind down the Australia adventure. 

Secrets to happy road crews:

Good food and comfy shelter (and delicious drinks)

Excellent food and a great place to sleep will easily win the dedication of a road crew. So happy to see the same amazing catering we had at the New Zealand show back up in Melbourne

Especially considering how fried we all were doing back to back gigs with a 4:40 am lobby call to the airport.

to fly from Adelaide to Melbourne

And straight from landing off to the hotel Simon Stav rocked Kim and I right into a seminar

 and then off to the gig

And yay look! Scotty has set up lampi world sideways like me. 

Some noise regulations are more strict than others

The Killers rock the Green stage side by side to the Blue

 right before Peppers

Then a quick nights sleep and off to Perth and straight into yet another seminar with many cool sound humans.  Oh and an awesome adventure to Perth's Little Ceasars (not the US chain) for some amazing food, thank you Andrew Gissing!

Kinda cool to see modern versions of old school punk flyers 

String those trailers up for a long haul!

So on another front, my current Google pondering searches found me reading more about something I read a while back that left a strong impression:

 Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

That includes the quite interesting:

The Urgent/Important Matrix

Wherein you divide all the things you do up into the four quadrants and if you do things right you can work you way into a low stress, highly productive lifestyle of quadrant #2.

I highly recommend as a read for those of you seeking a stronger grasp on guiding your life in a desired direction. So it turns out that his son has written a book as well that seems quite interesting and on point:

Stephen M.R. Covey's The Speed of Trust

"Identify a person that you work with and whom you have a high-trust relationship.

Jot down your first impressions to these questions:

1. What is it like to work with this person?
2. What is it like to communicate with this person?
3. How fast can you get things done?
4. What kind of results are you able to achieve?

Now identify a second person that you need to work with but with whom you have a low-trust relationship or with whom the trust-level is not where you want it to be. Now re-answer those same questions.

Describe the difference in these relationships."

Alright, enough business nerdery.  How about we take a look back at the rock show? Andrew also gave me a heads up on noise limit issues:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-19/big-day-out-hit-by-tougher-restrictions/4435530

Looks like the noise limits tonight could be a bit more strict and I was also sent the following:

"There will be compliance officers and police onsite to enforce the conditions of the permit , in particular the noise limits with threats of arrest to the key event people in case of non compliance."

At least they moved the set times up so that Peppers' show time ends at 9:30 rather than 10pm.  That would have really sucked to lose volume mid show. We'll see how it goes, I try not to stress too much on things beyond my control and will do my best to rock regardless.

Off to find coffee and head to the gig!

Oh, looks like Gold Coast is taking a water hit not long after we left

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/09/07/3415287.htm

Dave Rat Blog - Wander and Ponder

Wander and Ponder

Big Day Out show 2 done and missing doing our own shows a bit.  Festivals can be fun but I prefer doing our own tours at this point. That said, being in Australia easily makes up for it.

So after a show and three full days off in the Gold Coast, it is now time to rock Adelaide today. There was much healthy fun to be had in the Australian sun, but first something I google stumbled on when doing a search for spokeless wheels

Now here is a concept I don't see back home, giant tubes of dog food yum!

Off to adventure south a bit down the wild and wonderful Australia coast.

Oh what will we find

Perhaps exotic critters

and such perfect place for a swim, and of course I did!

Shhhh, he's sleeping

Watch out for speeding Koala's

Super cool $20 a day board rentals

Hey look, a board from my home town Oxnard!

Darn it, the waves look fun but there are so few people to share them with.

Oh well, at least its not stunning here

And  not just fun in the sun, I did a seminar with a great group of soundies at BSG, thank you Rosh and all for taking such great care of us!

Hey, I put up syllabus of the Waves to Wires seminar on the daverat.com site links/downloads page

On the Soundtools front, the new Senn to Shure adapters are done and ready to ship:

with more on the way with a DMX version of the  XLR Sniffer/Sender and Polar Pointer soon to come.

I did another seminar in Adelaide straight off the plane flight and kept everyone up to near 1 am  Really digging this go-go-go nonstop thing.  Thank you Andrew and Luke! I am so looking forward to trying to line up a worldwide seminar tour adventure.

Thought of the day:

Consistent work in a positive direction will bring positive results over time.

Or conversely, 

If you are not seeing desirable results then there must be flaws in the direction, consistency or persistence.

Bummer of the Day

A small handbag with cash and a very sentimental ring belonging to Kim has gone missing from her suitcase at the Marriott in Gold Coast. Super sucks but ya never know, if by some magic reason it turns up or anyone sees it somewhere, it would make a great story of happiness to see it unvanish

Ok, off to the Big Day Out gig in Adelaide and see if I can find and unravel some mysteries.