Simple tester checks Christmas-tree lights

EDN: Why is it that you always test 48 bulbs before you find the bad one in a 50-light string? The simple circuit in Figure 1 allows you to divide and conquer, greatly reducing the time it takes to find the bad bulb.

News From the Real World Podcast!

The latest in an ongoing experiment...



This Week's Articles:

• Should Universities Let College Athletes Major In Sports?
• TechShop to Open Pittsburgh Location in Bakery Square in February
• Kirk Douglas and 6 Blacklisted Actors and Writers Who Defied Hollywood
• Columbia University MFA Students to Get Equity Status
• From Denzel Washington's 'Flight' to 'Parenthood': Inside the Fight Over Trademarks
• Happy Teens Grow Up to Be Wealthier Too
• Shredded police documents found in Macy's parade confetti
• How That Football Field Was Blown Up in The Dark Knight Rises
• No students move following CU dorm segregation for gun owners
• In Midtown, Disney Offers a 'Pop-up' Look at 'The Lion King'  

Give it a look/listen - let me know what you think!

Leader searches look to be arduous at Penn State, Carnegie Mellon

TribLIVE: The stakes couldn’t be higher at Carnegie Mellon University and Penn State University this fall. Both presidencies are in play as search committees hunker down to determine who will lead the schools — both internationally known research universities and major economic drivers in Pennsylvania. Neither the job nor the search will be easy.

‘Bare’ Revived at New World Stages

NYTimes.com: SOMETIME in the early 2000s the composer Damon Intrabartolo enrolled himself in a camp for self-described ex-gay Christians as a kind of agent provocateur. With the pretense of seeking to cure his homosexuality, he intended to suss out, and possibly lightly sabotage, the program.

J-O-B Professor

University Job: Assistant or Associate Professor of Theatre (Production and Design), Concordia College, Moorhead, MN: Concordia College, Moorhead, MN invites applications for a full-time, tenure track assistant or associate professor of theatre (design and production) appointment beginning in August, 2013. The successful candidate will be an excellent design teacher with broad academic and professional experience. The candidate must have demonstrated ability to design scenery and direct for the mainstage, and collaborate as a member of an artistic team to realize a unified production. Potential for excellent teaching, scholarship and creative activity are essential.

So you want to be a stagehand.

soundforums.net: This clip just got posted at controlbooth.com, by 3 different people, I thought some of you might enjoy it.

Recording: In The Studio: Digital Audio Aliasing Explained

Pro Sound Web: As stated in Matthew’s article, all digital audio is mathematically represented; you don’t need to understand binary to appreciate that the audio being digitized is being turned into a number for the computer. The Audio-Digital Converter (ADC) is essentially receiving a graph. It may help to think of it as a camera taking pictures rapidly, and each picture showing a tiny portion of the wave ready to be reconstructed at a later date.

A Trip to Chicago Museums, Fabric Shop

sightlines.usitt.org: Chicago has a number of well-known museums and other attractions. One of the Regional Attractions offered before the start of the 2013 Annual Conference & State Expo in Milwaukee will introduce several venues that are not as widely known. Signup for the day-long event can be completed along with Conference registration.

Pre-Broadway Shows In Chicago Lured By State Tax Credit

huffingtonpost.com: The New York-bound musical "Kinky Boots" enjoyed a pre-Broadway run at a downtown Chicago theater this fall, but only after the state of Illinois lured producers with something that's scarce these days – money. The Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein production that's based on a 2005 movie, along with a second musical, "Big Fish," were the first to apply for a certificate making them eligible for a state theater tax credit. Lawmakers slipped it into a package of tax breaks approved late last year for corporate heavyweights Sears Holding Corp. and the CME Group Inc.

NEA Announces Arts Works Grant Recipients for Fall of 2012

Stage Directions: The NEA has announced the recipients of their Arts Works Grants for the March 2012 application deadline. A total of 146 theatres received grants ranging from $10,000-$100,000. Five theatre organizations received the recommendation for $100,000.

Too Many Vintage Hand Tools, Not Enough Use or Space

popularwoodworking.com: It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I have a messy house…with guests arriving on Thursday. I should be cleaning. But I started that chore in the study/shop with the intent of at least organizing the mess therein, and fell into the rabbit hole of looking through the three boxes of my grandfather’s vintage tools that I inherited in late 2007. (And then I fell farther into that hole and decided to take pictures and write about them… .)

Control your holiday lights with a magic wand

EDN: This circuit allows you to turn on your holiday bulbs with a wave of the magic wand. The strings flash in sequence. At the heart of the idea is the magnetic wand. It gives the appearance of real magic.

The World's 25 Best Design Schools

Business Insider: As we enter the golden age of design in startups, highly talented user-interface and product designers are becoming ever more important. Some companies leading the charge are Apple, Path, Pinterest, Square, and Airbnb. What those companies have in common is that design is at the core of their businesses. But which school is best suited to get you the design job you want?

From the Edge Meets La MaMa:

Briefingroom on LiveDesignOnline: Works from a US national exhibit of edgy theatrical designs assembled for the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space will be shown at La MaMa’s La Galleria in New York from December 6 through 16. From the Edge, a collection of works from 36 politically compelling productions across America, was commissioned and sponsored by USITT, the United States Institute for Theatre Technology.

Chesapeake Energy Corporation Receives National Award for Arts Support

Greater Oklahoma City Chamber: The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and Allied Arts congratulate Chesapeake Energy Corporation today on being named one of the ten best companies in the nation for private-sector support of the arts. They were selected by the Business Committee of the Arts (BCA), an organization founded in 1967 by David Rockefeller to bring business and the arts together. As a division of Americans for the Arts, the BCA recognizes exceptional commitment to the arts through grants, partnerships, volunteer programs, gifts, sponsorships and board membership. Allied Arts, Oklahoma’s only United Arts Fund, nominated Chesapeake for the prestigious award, citing the company’s support of a variety of art genres both in Oklahoma City and in Chesapeake’s operating areas across the country.

In 'Blood Potato,' an Iraq Vet Comes Home to a Troubled Community

backstage.com: Iraq vets returning from combat have become our Lost Generation, their stories serving as inspiration for countless writers and artists. But finding someone who can translate the power of those stories without becoming hackneyed or moralizing is rare. James McManus’ unsettling new play “Blood Potato” smartly avoids the trap altogether. Here, the troubles don’t begin in the military. They started long before, in the rust belt town of Donora, Pa.

David Mamet on His Inspirations for ‘The Anarchist’

NYTimes.com: ON the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was in a hotel in Toronto. The morning paper had a reprint of a Chicago Tribune interview, run that Sunday, with Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Weather Underground in the 1960s.

J-O-B Concert Manager

University Job: Concert Manager, Wellesley College: Responsible for the scheduling, promotion and management of all aspects of the Music Department’s professional concert series, all other faculty concerts, all student concerts sponsored by the Music Department on campus and other occasional concerts hosted by the Music Department. This includes concert planning, production of program materials and related logistical and financial matters. Responsible for evaluating the success of the series and conducting long-range planning. Represent the Music Department in communications with musicians/agents/managers, including negotiating contracts, planning program content and superintending logistical arrangements for concert production. Schedule, promote and manage ensembles in residence. Initiate and/or promote interdepartmental collaborations for series. Create and administer the Music Department’s concert series budget. Oversee student assistants.

Church Sound: Church Sound: Track Down The Buzz In Your System

Pro Sound Web: Buzz in an audio system might be the most annoying sound you’ll ever hear. A close second is the first unexplainable rattle emanating from your new car. Buzzy audio has been the source of many an email I’ve received, and today you’ll learn the process for tracking down that audio buzz and stopping it.

Hollywood Mavericks

Details: Last year's Margin Call, the Oscar-nominated drama about the 2008 financial meltdown, was the first project developed by Before the Door—one of a new wave of production houses designed to curb Hollywood's habit of chewing up and spitting out emerging talent. And it offers a nice bit of symmetry: After all, it was the movie industry's own too-big-to-fail practices that made ambitious, tightly knit creative partnerships like theirs possible. "We arrived at the moment when studios started making fewer movies, but there were these new platforms to watch them on," says Neal Dodson, who founded the company in 2008 with fellow Carnegie Mellon theater geeks Corey Moosa and Zachary Quinto. "People didn't know how to make them at the right price, and we pretended that we did until we actually did."