The Best MultiTool Today

Tested: If someone wanted to buy the single best multitool available today, I would tell them that the Leatherman New Wave is the one to get. It has a versatile mix of tools, great ergonomics and solid construction, and the price tag is fantastic for the amount of functionality you get. It’s just $61 on Amazon today, and ~$51 if you downgrade to the nylon sheath (do it; you won’t miss the leather). You can pay almost twice as much for a multitool, but the extra investment doesn’t buy you a tool that’s much more useful or practical than this one.

Oklahoma! at Point Park Conservatory

Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh City Paper: OK. So Oklahoma! has been revived at least 3,578 times this past year. And why not? Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration was a smash hit when it debuted on Broadway, in 1943, and the musical, arguably their finest, continues to make some enchanted evening.

Sound Reinforcement Or Reproduction? It’s All About The Intent

Pro Sound Web: One of my first jobs in the pro audio business was to make cables, do simple repairs and be a general “tech” at the USC film school audio department. I was one of those destitute students who asked around about “anything I could get” in terms of work. And this was it. It was a good experience for a number of reasons, foremost of which was that THX guru Tomlinson Holman was one of the main teachers at the film school, and he was often around the department. I had taken a class from him and knew who he was.

Stage review: Play shows nothing is as funny or tearful as family

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Christopher Durang's embraceable comedy, "Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike," starts by running riffs on the well-known work of others, his favored mode for most of his career, and then sneaks in some emotional resonance. You hardly see it coming, this sentimental frisson. Up to then, Mr. Durang has entertained us with comic irreverence and parody, all flitting by like brightly colored birds in an aviary of wit. But at some point you feel that froth goes only so far, and just about then (or perhaps a little after) the play grasps hold of something more substantial.

Exhibition celebrates Yale’s Ming Cho Lee, 'dean of American set design'

YaleNews: Yale's School of Architecture and School of Drama are teaming up this fall to present "Stage Designs by Ming Cho Lee," a retrospective of the award-winning designer and Yale professor's work in theater, opera, and dance. The exhibit, free and open to the public, will be on view Nov. 21–Feb. 1 in the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, 180 York St., in New Haven.

Pittsburgh Ballet opens with American dance icon Twyla Tharp

TribLIVE: Ballet seasons often begin with classics, familiar and beloved, such as “The Sleeping Beauty” or “Coppelia.” But Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre is taking a different turn to open its 44th season by presenting two contemporary works by the American dance icon Twyla Tharp. The dancers couldn't be happier.

Live Sound SynAudCon Web-Based Training

Pro Sound Web: Through continuous animations, demonstrations and analogies, SynAudCon web-based courses take the straight forward approach of keeping complex topics simple and thereby reducing your learning curve.

The Art of Sculpting Ice

Tested: Steve Cox and Son Justin of Creative Ice, a Seattle Ice Sculpting company, transform big blocks of ice into detailed pieces of art for clients like the Seattle Mariners and REI. Their tools: chainsaws, picks, mills, rotary cutters, and even CNC robots.

Kickstarter's most-successful category - dance

SFGate: If you were to guess which category on Kickstarter had the highest rate of successful funding, without peeking, you might guess "Technology" or "Film & Video." Big names like smart-watch maker Pebble and actor Zach Braff have made waves with their multimillion-dollar campaigns.

Dispatches from LALA Land: California Women Got it On Lock

HowlRound: In just one September weekend, Los Angeles theater patrons had at least three totally different productions of Shakespeare plays from which to choose. The Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company's all-female Hamlet was running at The Odyssey Theatre; a three-person adaptation of Richard II opened at The Theatre @ Boston Court; and Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum presented an outdoor Taming of the Shrew. Each production offered an alternative way of doing Shakespeare: Hamlet was performed in Elizabeth dress on a traditional set; Richard II was a modernist/dream-play take on one of Shakespeare's most psychology-driven plays; and director Ellen Geer turned Christopher Sly and his tricksters into modern urban archetypes who watch/present Taming of the Shrew in Elizabethan dress.

TCG Finds Not-for-Profit Theatres Bring in $2 Billion to U.S. Economy

www.broadwayworld.com: Not-for-profit theatres contributed nearly $2 billion to the U.S. economy and attracted 36.7 million attendees, according to Theatre Facts 2012, released by Theatre Communications Group (TCG). Based on the annual TCG Fiscal Survey, Theatre Facts is the only in-depth report that examines the attendance, performance and overall fiscal state of the not-for-profit professional theatre industry.

Five Apps That Will Increase Your Productivity

www.lifehack.org: The success of smartphones and tablets over the last five years or so has been helped in no small part by the huge number of apps available to users. These handy little add-ons make life easier; there are apps for grocery shopping, banking, social networks and pretty much anything you can think of. The thing is, how many of these apps are actually productive? Do they enable you to perform your job better? Does it give you the ability to work on the move in a way that hasn’t been possible since, well, ever? Take advantage of modern technology to increase your effectiveness in, and outside, the office. Here’s five apps which have been proven to increase the productiveness of people at all levels of business.

Press Release: Carnegie Mellon Alumnus Writes "Night of the Living Dead - The Opera"

Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University: There is good news for Pittsburghers who can't get enough of all-things zombies. The world premiere of "Night of the Living Dead — The Opera" will be held Oct. 31 — Nov. 3 at Pittsburgh's Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Stephen Catanzarite (DC'90) wrote the opera's libretto and will speak on campus at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 29 in the Gladys Schmitt Creative Writing Center (Baker Hall 260).

AutoCAD 2014 for Mac Now Available

AutoCAD Insider: AutoCAD 2014 for Mac Now Available: Today we're pleased to announce the availability of AutoCAD 2014 for Mac and AutoCAD LT 2014 for Mac. It's been about 18 months since our last release so we're pretty excited! Our shifted release timeframe allowed us to better align with Apple's rhythm, so right out of the gate we'll be compatible with their latest OSX version.

Drag performers of decades past reunite for one last ball.

Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh City Paper: Thanks to vehicles like RuPaul's Drag Race, drag has gotten pretty mainstream. But it wasn't always so. And audiences can witness living proof of Pittsburgh's rich, if largely hidden, drag heritage, especially its African-American incarnation, on Oct. 26. That's when "One More Time, An Old-School (Drag) Ball" reunites — perhaps for the last time — retired performers whose careers date back up to a half-century.

USITT Presents: Workshops with RC4, Studio Gear, Figure 53

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Registration is now open for three new USITT Presents training sessions in four locations around the nation in November and December. "Wireless Dimming & DMX," a one-day class with RC4 Wireless, will be held November 20 in Los Angeles and November 25 in Houston. A three-day "Automated Lighting, Media Server & Console Class" on Studio Gear's Hog4 console will be December 6 - 8 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. A one-day session, "QLab 3 - Techniques & Concepts for Programmers & Designers," by Figure 53, will be December 30 in Washington, D.C. The classes are offered at deep discounts for members of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) and at low cost to non-members.

Preview / Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre turns to Twyla Tharp to open season

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: A triple threat of 20th-century standouts in fashion, music and choreography will open Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's 44th season when the company presents "An Evening of Twyla Tharp" at the Benedum Center next weekend. For the first time since 2010, audiences will be treated to a revival of Ms. Tharp's "In the Upper Room" (1986), a stamina-testing marathon of movement set to a Philip Glass score. This time it will be paired with another Tharp classic, "Nine Sinatra Songs" (1982), last staged by PBT in 2006.

Marking and Measuring – the Importance of Visual Alignment

Popular Woodworking Magazine: A toolmaker I met at WIA, Tim Manney, showed me something interesting that got me thinking again about visual alignment. Tim makes a tapered reamer for chairmaking. It’s a unique tool that serves a single purpose – accurately reaming the holes for chair spindles, which is complicated due to the compound angles involved.

Towards a Participatory Public: The Meeting of Theater and Community Amrita Ramanan

HowlRound: When I was seven years old, my mother signed me up to audition for a community theater production of The Pied Piper of Hamlin at our local recreation center. After a relatively painless audition process in which all of the kids within my age group were gathered in a room and asked to say a few lines from the script, I received the role of a rat. Not just any rat, but the “head rat” that would ultimately lead the other rats to their watery grave. After receiving news of the role, I left the room with mixed feelings. There was something energizing about the opportunity to be part of this new experience, but the tediousness of the long rehearsal hours and the additional work I needed to contribute in addition to everything else I felt I was balancing in my overextended seven-year-old lifestyle felt overwhelming (can you tell that I was dramatic?).

Sunny Sound for 'Cloudy 2'

c2meworld.com: Put a group of award-winning motion picture sound professionals in a room with a bunch of fruit and vegetables and what do you get? The answer is the soundtrack to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, the newly released sequel to Sony Pictures Animation’s 2009 feature. In the original Cloudy, inventor Flint Lockwood’s food replicator goes out of control, raining giant food down on the inhabitants of Swallow Falls. Cloudy 2 picks up the action soon after, with Flint and the gang setting out to save the world from the food animals—“foodimals”—that the machine is now creating, including fruit cockatiels, shrimpanzees, hippotatomuses and the giant tacodile supreme.

My Community Roots

HowlRound: My fifteen-year-old son Jonathan asked me how does he explain what I do to his friends. I tried to explain that I am a cultural organizer, but that doesn’t really mean a lot to him. I told him that I am an arts administrator, but I don’t think that resonated with him either because he knows that I do more than just administrate. Finally, after a few confused faces from him, I said that I am a “creative,” and went on to explain that I find creative ways to approach the ordinary and extraordinary. I don’t know that it made much sense to him, but it made sense to me in terms of the breath and diversity of what I really “do.” - See more at: http://www.howlround.com/my-community-roots#sthash.I1USLmjr.dpuf

Stuff To Ponder: Bring Back The Claques

Butts In the Seats: A few months back, Gizmodo posted a video by VSauce on the subject of clapping as a form of expression. At about the five minute point in the VSauce video, they talk about how in the early 19th century people hired themselves out as professional “claques.” They would learn operas and then applaud and laugh at the correct places as a way to prompt the rest of the audience. Today, television shows have signs that prompt people when to respond.

Why Women Collaborate, Men Work Alone, And Everybody's Angry

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: It's a study of rare quality that can aggravate chauvinists and feminists equally. But the work of Peter J. Kuhn and Marie-Claire Villeval for the National Bureau of Economic Research may be able to do just that. In their new paper, "Are Women More Attracted to Cooperation Than Men?," the economists found that, yes, women are--and it has to do with relative competence, the degree to which you think your ability matches up against that of your colleagues. In short, men tend to overestimate their abilities and downplay those of their coworkers, while women shortchange their skills and defer to their peers.

At AES: Theatrical Sound Design Meets Reality

Prosound Network: Many of the problems and solutions in live sound are universal, applicable in one way or another to any variety of situations, from concert sound to house of worship installations to sporting venues. With that in mind, the annual AES Convention had plenty of live sound-centric offerings to take in and enjoy, from an on-stage interview with Dave Natale, go-to FOH engineer for The Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Lenny Kravitz, Fleetwood Mac and dozens more, to Audio for Corporate Presentations, to Miking for PA and more.

Art as Therapy: Alain de Botton on the 7 Psychological Functions of Art

Brain Pickings: The question of what art is has occupied humanity since the dawn of recorded history. For Tolstoy, the purpose of art was to provide a bridge of empathy between us and others, and for Anaïs Nin, a way to exorcise our emotional excess. But the highest achievement of art might be something that reconciles the two: a channel of empathy into our own psychology that lets us both exorcise and better understand our emotions — in other words, a form of therapy.

Registration for 2014 USITT Conference Now Open

Stage Directions: Online registration for the 2014 USITT Annual Conference & Stage Expo in Fort Worth, Texas, is now open—and offers big discounts for people who register by Dec. 12. The show takes place March 26-29, and highlights of the conference include a keynote speaker Jaston Williams, an expanded Sound Lab and the presentation of USITT’s 2014 Distinguished Achievement Award in Scenic Design to Eugene Lee, production designer on Saturday Night Live and winner of three Tony Awards and three Drama Desk Awards for set design.

Seattle Mariners Move Eight Million Pixels

c2meworld.com: The biggest LED video screen in baseball burst onto the scene in the Seattle Mariners’ Safeco Field last April and the fans were knocked over by the size and the super high resolution. ANC Sports teamed up with Panasonic on the project, and the firm’s CTO, Mark Stross, gave us a look at how this behemoth is set up and controlled. - See more at: http://www.c2meworld.com/distributiondelivery/seattle-mariners-move-eight-million-pixels/#sthash.RBmdmLzi.dpuf

Loudspeaker operation: The superiority of current drive over voltage drive

www.edn.com: This is an overview of the destructive effects that voltage drive has on the performance of electrodynamic loudspeakers. A more comprehensive treatment of the subject can be found in the book Current-Driving of Loudspeakers: Eliminating Major Distortion and Interference Effects by the Physically Correct Operation Method by Esa Meriläinen. Today, practically all available audio amplifier and loudspeaker equipment works on the voltage drive principle without significant exceptions. This means that the power amplifier acts as a voltage source exhibiting low output impedance and thus strives to force the voltage across the load terminals to follow the applied signal without any regard to what the current through the load will be.

Dolby Confirms Lastest Atmos Titles, Their Mixers and Sound Editors

www.hollywoodreporter.com: Dolby has officially confirmed that upcoming Atmos titles will include Fox’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Rio 2, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and X-Men: Days of Future Past; and Warner Bros. releases 300: Rise of an Empire and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey received an Atmos mix a year ago).

Sonic Nirvana? Thinking Outside Of The “Technically-Oriented” Box

Pro Sound Web: Whenever I’m at the local Guitar Hut, I like to listen to the people who come in and talk with the pro audio sales guy about gear. These conversations are often filled with nebulous audiophilic adjectives like “warm”, “sweet” and “punchy”.

eCigarettes to Be Banned from Workplaces?

Occupational Health & Safety: Cigarettes, pipes, and all smoking devices have been banned from workplaces by a number of states in recent years. According to Workforce.com, smoking in the workplace has been banned by 29 states and the District of Columbia. With the advent of the eCigarette, however, comes a new debate: Do they fall under the category of "smoking"?

Automated trophies supplied by AutomationDirect at competition

2013-10-22 14:02:14 | Packaging Digest: AutomationDirect has supported competitive robotics at the local, regional and national levels for many years. This year, in addition to sponsoring the annual Georgia Robotics Invitational Tournament and Showcase (GRITS) competition, AutomationDirect also provided the very unique trophies awarded to the winners.

Stage review: 'Measure Back' confronts audience

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: As if we needed another reminder that war is hell, the audience for the Festival of First's drama "Measure Back" began the two-hour evening sitting on cement blocks. It might have been too literal to begin with, being staged in the Baum Building, once the office of a well-advertised Pittsburgh dentist and inspiring a schoolchild joke from the 1950s: "Did you hear there was an explosion Downtown?"

Musical embraces the spirit of Queen

TribLIVE: Freddie Mercury would have loved “We Will Rock You.” The flamboyant lead singer of Queen, who died in 1991, will be there in spirit when the rock theatrical opens Oct. 29 at the Benedum Center. “These are Queen's greatest hits set into a story in a theatrical context,” says Rick Hip-Flores, musical director and conductor for the show. Hip-Flores will conduct an eight-piece rock band that will accompany the action onstage.

I Don’t Want to Talk about Innovation: A Talk about Innovation

HowlRound: I’m reading Dave Eggers’ new novel, The Circle. It takes place inside a Google-like company by the same name. As the book begins, the Circle’s latest hire, Mae, tours the sparkling, communitarian campus, “400 acres of brushed steel and glass.” “It’s heaven,” she thinks. The walkway wound around lemon and orange trees and its quiet red cobblestones were replaced, occasionally, by tiles with imploring messages of inspiration. ‘Dream,’ one said, the word laser-cut into the red stone. ‘Participate,’ said another. There are dozens of these word-bricks, but Eggers just names a few: “Find Community.” “Imagine.” “Breathe.” And yes, you guessed it, “Innovate.”

10 reasons to fear LinkedIn’s new service

Salon.com: LinkedIn released a new product today called Intro. They call it “doing the impossible”, but some might call it “hijacking email”. Why do we say this? Consider the following: Intro reconfigures your iOS device (e.g. iPhone, iPad) so that all of your emails go through LinkedIn’s servers. You read that right. Once you install the Intro app, all of your emails, both sent and received, are transmitted via LinkedIn’s servers. LinkedIn is forcing all your IMAP and SMTP data through their own servers and then analyzing and scraping your emails for data pertaining to…whatever they feel like.

Stage review: Rock musical goes way way back

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: A half-century or so ago, a professor of mine described Dionysius, the irresistible force of passion who rules Euripides' "The Bacchae" (c. 406 B.C.), as "like a libidinous youth or rock musician." Granted, rock musicians seemed more unruly and anarchic in those days. But that lecture was prophetic, because Hawksley Workman, who can't then have been even a gleam in his parents' imaginations, demonstrates exactly that point with invention, wit and the shudder of dark myth in his narrative rock musical, "The God That Comes," the last performance piece in the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's monthlong Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts (the same folks who gave us the giant Rubber Duck).

8 Habit List Usage Ideas

www.productivity501.com: Here are several usage ideas for the Habit List: Negative Items – If there is something you are trying not to do, you can add it to the list as negative item. For example, “Didn’t watch TV” could be one of the items on the list.

#NFTRW

Stage preview: 'We Will Rock You' invades Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The razzle-dazzle, Queen-sized rock experience "We Will Rock You" invades Pittsburgh for the second stop on the show's first U.S. tour.
Calling on the words of Freddie Mercury, Ben Elton described the experience as "dynamite with a lot of laser beams," paraphrasing a lyric by the late great frontman from the song "Killer Queen."
"We Will Rock You" is not a Queen nostalgia trip or a "Jersey Boys"-style bio-musical. Mr. Elton wrote an original story for the show that has been playing in London since 2000. Original band members Brian May and Roger Taylor have been involved in every note and orchestration, including auditioning and working with a cast that's 24 strong and with the eight musicians in the show.

Shakespeare contest seeks old and new to celebrate 20 years

TribLIVE: Some of the students in Pittsburgh Public Theater's Shakespeare Monologue & Scene Contest have gone on to become professional actors, such as Gillian Jacobs, co-star of NBC's “Community.” Others go on to college to become another type of professional — teachers, doctors, lawyers and accountants.

Review: Dancers' skill shines in engaging, energetic Tharp masterworks

TribLIVE: Contrasting masterpieces by contemporary choreographer Twyla Tharp provide an exhilarating opening for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's 44th season. The evening's magic is an amalgam of Tharp's genius, brilliant performances and effective music.

Classical ballets are filled with idealized visions of romance and supernatural characters and events, but Tharp's creations breathe with modern sensibilities, including her deftly eclectic movement vocabulary.

Latina/o Theater Commons: Advancing the Field

HowlRound: In August 2012, I wrote about the genesis of the Latina/o Theater Commons. Since that time, our initiative continues to grow and expand. As we approach our first national convening this month, I offer the following overview of our efforts to date.

Slaves of the Internet: Get paid

A Futurist's Observations: A recent New York Times article, brought to my attention by editor Neil Marr, describes the impact on the author, and of writers in general, of the present internet-inspired activity of asking writers for content with no expectation of compensation. Usually, the people asking will state that the writer will gain in intangibles like “eyeballs,” people who will read their material, clicks to their pages, media stats that will rack up by their name… and that this is far more valuable than filthy things like money.

10 Ways to Rethink Your Lists

Real Simple: Lists seem to be more central to our lives than ever before―from our own obsessive to-do lists to the structure of the human genome or Google’s cataloging of the World Wide Web. But the urge to collect and classify is hardly new, nor is it always magnanimous. For every Ben Franklin listing his rules of civilized human conduct, there is a Joseph McCarthy listing his enemies of the state.

'An American in Paris' Is Planned for Paris, and May Head West to Broadway

NYTimes.com: A new musical adaptation of “An American in Paris,” the 1951 film where Gene Kelly danced and dazzled to the music of George and Ira Gershwin, will have a world-premiere production in Paris in December 2014, then aim for Broadway in the spring of 2015, the producers announced Thursday.

‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ Its Production Heritage

NYTimes.com: “Fiddler on the Roof” — created by Jerry Bock (music), Sheldon Harnick (lyrics), Joseph Stein (book) and Jerome Robbins (direction and choreography) and based on the stories of Sholom Aleichem — was a blockbuster success when it opened in 1964, smashing all box office records in its day. The initial production played 3,242 performances, the longest-running show on Broadway for years. There have been four Broadway revivals and countless national tours; some 200 schools across the country put it on each year.

Julie Taymor and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

NYTimes.com: As the director Julie Taymor started imagining her new production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she made two choices early on: She wanted children to populate the fairy world, and all the fairies to stay earth-bound. “I had no interest in flying,” she said. “That was definitely something I didn’t want to do.”

On Becoming a Playwright-Producer

HowlRound: As many (if not most) of us working in theater know, being posed with that seemingly baseline conversation starter—“what do you do?”—can send us into the stratosphere of far fetched examples, false oversimplifications, and instantly regretted comparisons that receive glazed over stares or polite nods from the questioner who, more than likely, works in a non-arts sector. Occasionally, the questioner will proclaim their admiration for art and, even more occasionally, will ask substantive questions about the work or the field at large. I can’t say, however, that these wobbly interactions are limited to conversations with non-theater makers.

How Does an Employment Litigation Attorney Become a Broadway Producer?

www.theatermania.com: Larry Kaye spent nearly two decades as an employment litigation attorney with his own very successful private practice. And then he gave it all up. What could possibly compel him to give up such professional success and strike out on a new and distinctly less-steady career path? It was the allure of the stage, naturally.

How do I become … a theatre producer

Money | theguardian.com: It was when he was stuck on a Welsh cliff top with a cast of mutinous, unpaid actors that Alastair Whatley might have buckled under the challenges of theatre producing; instead, he found a Chinese restaurant and begged a free meal for 20. The actors, finally fuelled, agreed to perform, and a year later Whatley returned to the restaurant and paid off his debt.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

Here are the top five comment generating posts of the past week:

Dispelling Hearing Protection Myths

Occupational Health & Safety: You've heard the excuses a dozen times ... the reasons why a worker doesn't want to wear the required hearing protection in noise-hazardous areas. Some of the excuses ("they bother me" or "they're uncomfortable") pale in comparison to the risk of losing hearing for life. But other excuses have just enough credibility to sound almost plausible. Is a worker justified in not wearing hearing protection when he claims it affects his work output or that he's safer without the hearing protection? Let's walk through some of the common reasons workers offer for not wearing their ear plugs and dispel some of the myths preventing good protection.

Posted by David at 10/26/2013 12:00:00 PM-- Comments Here

You need more downtime than you think

Salon.com: Every now and then during the workweek—usually around three in the afternoon—a familiar ache begins to saturate my forehead and pool in my temples. The glare of my computer screen appears to suddenly intensify. My eyes trace the contour of the same sentence two or three times, yet I fail to extract its meaning. Even if I began the day undaunted, getting through my ever growing list of stories to write and edit, e-mails to send and respond to, and documents to read now seems as futile as scaling a mountain that continuously thrusts new stone skyward. There is so much more to do—so much work I genuinely enjoy—but my brain is telling me to stop. It’s full. It needs some downtime.

Posted by David at 10/25/2013 11:37:00 PM-- Comments Here

Festool Introduces Cordless Carvex Jigsaws on Tool Box Buzz

Tool Box Buzz: Festool continues to release new tools and the latest to come out is their all new Carvex 420 Cordless Jigsaw. The new cordless jigsaw is available in both a barrel grip and traditional handle grip. The new jigsaws have been designed to offer the same features currently offered in the corded 420 series on a cordless 18V platform. From what I’ve read and see online, these are VERY impressive!

Posted by David at 10/26/2013 12:30:00 PM-- Comments Here

Movie blood recipe and history, from Hershey’s to corn syrup and beyond.

www.slate.com: When it comes to adaptations of Carrie, the blood literally comes in buckets. For the newest version, director Kimberly Peirce was determined to get the climactic drop of pig’s blood just right. As she described it in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, she tried three-gallon, four-gallon, and five-gallon buckets, and she tried a three-foot drop, a four-foot drop, and a five-foot drop. Trying all these different configurations required take after take after take. When she asked Brian De Palma, director of the classical original Carrie (1976), how many takes it took him, he apparently replied, “What do you mean? We did one.”

Posted by David at 10/26/2013 02:00:00 PM-- Comments Here

7 Artists Who Create Strange New Worlds Using Nothing But Thread

gizmodo.com: There's something otherwordly about the optical illusions a single string—or 3,000 of them—can conjure up in our brains. It's almost as if a simple fiber installation holds a gateway to a whole other dimension—when, in fact, we're just looking at lines in space. Here, we take a closer look at seven visionaries who can create entire new environments using the most delicate materials.

Posted by David at 10/25/2013 02:00:00 PM-- Comments Here

The Art of Self-Immersion

Stage Directions: Cynthia von Buhler turns even casual artistic whims into bold new adventures. Throughout her career she has been an illustrator, children’s book author, painter, sculptor, band manager and performance artist. Her latest endeavor, Speakeasy Dollhouse, is an immersive theatre experience that takes attendees back to the 1920s and the mystery of her grandfather Frank Spano’s murder. While it emerged initially as a one-off show inspired by book research, the production has evolved into an elaborate, weekly, multi-room production that plays inside gangster Meyer Lansky’s former hangout in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It’s a time-travel adventure for audiences that allows them to immerse themselves as deeply as they like and come back for more.

Movie blood recipe and history, from Hershey’s to corn syrup and beyond.

www.slate.com: When it comes to adaptations of Carrie, the blood literally comes in buckets. For the newest version, director Kimberly Peirce was determined to get the climactic drop of pig’s blood just right. As she described it in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, she tried three-gallon, four-gallon, and five-gallon buckets, and she tried a three-foot drop, a four-foot drop, and a five-foot drop. Trying all these different configurations required take after take after take. When she asked Brian De Palma, director of the classical original Carrie (1976), how many takes it took him, he apparently replied, “What do you mean? We did one.”

In Defense of 'Homeland's Pedophile Dr. Graham And Portraying Unpleasant Characters

ThinkProgress: In last week’s episode of Homeland, I thought the real standout of an episode that otherwise was a retread of the show’s Carrie-Brody obsession was Erik Todd Dellums’ performance as Dr. Graham, the surgeon who runs a crude hospital in the Tower of David, and who lives and works for a criminal gang there in part because he’s a pedophile. As he puts it to Brody, “We’re here because the world outside can be judgmental and cruel. We’re here because this is the place that accepts us. We’re here because we belong here.” As I wrote in my Vulture review of the episode, “He’s such an upsetting, specific creation that I was almost tempted to up my rating of this episode by a star.”

Recreating the Past with Model Cars and Forced Perspective

TwistedSifter: For the last 25 years, Michael Paul Smith has used model cars, forced perspective and custom-built miniature displays in real-world settings to create Elgin Park, Smith’s version of a mid 20th century American town Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and currently living in New England, Smith’s model-making skills are the accumulation of numerous jobs he has had including: textbook illustrator, wallpaper hanger, house painter, and architectural model maker.

Project Manager/Assistant Project Manager (New Jersey), Employment

PLASA: 4Wall is a nationally recognized design and integration company that provides equipment and services for theatrical, themed and architectural installations. 4Wall operates from its five offices in the United States – Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, DC and Nashville. The Project Manager will assist with all construction activities as required to successfully complete assigned projects on schedule and within budget.

David Byrne: 'The internet will suck all creative content out of the world'

Music | The Guardian: Awhile ago Thom Yorke and the rest of Radiohead got some attention when they pulled their recent record from Spotify. A number of other artists have also been in the news, publicly complaining about streaming music services (Black Keys, Aimee Mann and David Lowery of Camper van Beethoven and Cracker). Bob Dylan, Metallica and Pink Floyd were longtime Spotify holdouts – until recently. I've pulled as much of my catalogue from Spotify as I can. AC/DC, Garth Brooks and Led Zeppelin have never agreed to be on these services in the first place.

Questions for the Future of the Arts

Michael Kaiser: The Royal Opera House recently announced it would soon begin beaming performances to American movie theaters, mimicking the broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. We have also seen several high profile theater productions transmitted in a similar manner. The rationale given for the value of these broadcasts is that they build new audiences, although the jury is still out on this. From my unscientific observation, it seems we are merely substituting one source of entertainment for another for the same, traditional audience.

A Litany of Multiple Voices: Notes on Political Theater

HowlRound: To begin this particular musing it is important to say something up front: I am the sort of person who believes that the things I read are written just for me, that they are speaking to me in specific moments of my life. Most recently, I’ve become fixated on a poem by a man named Richard Siken entitled A Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out. I like its disjointed storytelling and its strong voice, but I also love it for the moment that it entered my life.

Festool Introduces Cordless Carvex Jigsaws on Tool Box Buzz

Tool Box Buzz: Festool continues to release new tools and the latest to come out is their all new Carvex 420 Cordless Jigsaw. The new cordless jigsaw is available in both a barrel grip and traditional handle grip. The new jigsaws have been designed to offer the same features currently offered in the corded 420 series on a cordless 18V platform. From what I’ve read and see online, these are VERY impressive!

Dispelling Hearing Protection Myths

Occupational Health & Safety: You've heard the excuses a dozen times ... the reasons why a worker doesn't want to wear the required hearing protection in noise-hazardous areas. Some of the excuses ("they bother me" or "they're uncomfortable") pale in comparison to the risk of losing hearing for life. But other excuses have just enough credibility to sound almost plausible. Is a worker justified in not wearing hearing protection when he claims it affects his work output or that he's safer without the hearing protection? Let's walk through some of the common reasons workers offer for not wearing their ear plugs and dispel some of the myths preventing good protection.