Digital Hatred

I’ve occasionally gone on about the strange civil war that periodically rages in the planetarium industry circles concerning digital vs. analogue projection systems.  For some odd reason, there are a handful of planetarians that simply do not accept that any sort of digital projection belongs in a planetarium.

I go on and on about my take on this in my Planetarium Definition (long version), but the short of it is: digital is better, for a variety of reasons.

Today, this was posted to the dome-l mailing list:

…the “industry” reps bombard us with the story that “digital is the only way to go”, and imply that anyone with a differing view is some kind of moron, who will be “left behind”… And so some planetarians try to shout us down & shut us up…

Is someone a moron for not exploring and embracing technology that brings increased flexibility and capability to education and presentation?

This analogy was brought up:

Beta-Max WAS way better than VHS video.  But too many people had too much invested in VHS, so Beta-Max lost-out.  Politics, NOT technology…

In actuality, because of its technical superiority and flexibility, Betamax tapes, cameras, and machines were widely-used in professional capacities until well after 2000, and finally in 2002 Sony stopped producing recorders, primarily because everyone was in the process of switching to digital.

Just sayin’.

This just happened: Peter and some Wolf or something

A woman and toddler came rushing into the theater lobby just literally mere moments before I was about to shut the door for the 2:30 music show.  She asked if this was the planetarium, and I told her it was, and she said–half a question, half a statement, “We’re here to see Peter and some Wolf or something…?”

I said, “The show is just about to start, may I see your tickets please?”

She says, “We need tickets?”

(Warning: Incoming Guest Service Rant)

Now, I try to be a patient person, and give folks the benefit of the doubt, but come on people, help me out here…  YES you need tickets.  Do people just assume that shows are free (or something)?

So they rushed off to get tickets, and of course there was a line, so of course the show started really late, which maybe isn’t a big deal to some people, but I look at it like this: the buck needs to stop with an employee.  That is to say, if a visitor has some kind of an issue, then the issue needs to be dealt with by an employee, not handed off to other visitors.

In this case, the visitors that ran up at the last second passed the buck to me, and by me waiting past start time for them to go buy tickets, I passed the buck to the guests already in the theater, who are waiting for the show to start on time.

I could have been a jerk and told them that the show was about to start, that they weren’t going to make it, and they could come to the next showtime on the schedule, but since they asked specifically for Peter and The Wolf (only one show today), I wanted to try to accommodate them.

I hate having to pass the buck back to visitors, and as a rule I try to avoid it.

TwiSixtyFive #81-82

Added Nick Frost (@nickjfrost), hilarious and awesome comedic actor, and William Gibson (@GreatDismal), bleak and awesome cyberpunk author.

Also, enjoy this freeform brainstorming from Simon Pegg (stuff like this is why I enjoy twitter):

• I’m gonna write a film about jet bikes. I like them, they go fast on the sea. I play the main character, Jet Bike Steve. That’s all so far.
• JBS is not a cop. I’ve done that. He’s a pirate but a good pirate. He goes round fucking up the yachts of fat cat health insurance execs.
• My Jet Bike is called the Barack-uda. @nickjfrost plays my partner Thor, his Jet Bike is big and called Anne. This shit is writing itself!!!
• There will be multiple installments, the first being Jet Bike Steve And The Bikini Thief. Coming summer 2011. Prepare to get wet. Rated R.
• The Barack-uda will talk like K.I.T.T. from Knightrider but with a geordie accent. “Fook me Steve, we’re gannin’ reet fat noo!”

Gold!

TwiSixtyFive #81

@SJGames, Steve Jackson Games, makers of such fine playables as Munchkin, Car Wars, Toons, and one of my favorite metalarps, Killer.

Happy Birthday, SR

Today in 1905, Albert Einstein published his paper, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” which described Special Relativity.

When asked if he thought it would be a big deal, he replied, “It all depends on how you look at it.”

*ba-dump-dump*

TwiSixtyFive #80

Since the video featuring him allowing himself to be magically killed by a Tantric mystic:

…is making the rounds right now, I looked up this guy on Twitter and he does have a pretty active account, @Sanal_Edamaruku.  I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see a show like the one he hosts on North American TV, where liars and cheats are called out live on-camera, instead of more of the fraudulent (and in my opinion, dangerous) ghost-hunting docutainment that’s so popular right now.

Seriously, Discovery Channel?  Seriously? The same network that airs Mythbusters?  I cringe at the thought of how pissed off that drivel makes the Mythbusters crew.

Spring

First day of spring, eh?

Snow and icicles and wet and stupid.

Silly climate, don’t you know that today is the equinox?!?

Also, yeah, it’s been a while, the long excuse is my daughter’s been in and out of the hospital and we’re getting ready to move and I’ve been busy at work with testing and installation of a new projection system (more on that later).

The short excuse is I’m lazy.

Still working on TwiSixtyFive, though, and as today is the 79th day of the year, I’m a little ahead with following 104 people.  I’ve found that there’s a pretty central core of “my style” folks that I care to follow–strangely they all seem to follow each other–and I’m to a point where it’s going to be a little difficult to find more people to follow.

Well, I say difficult, but only as difficult as a 45 second search through Twitter listings will be.  See short excuse above.

Anyway, in the meantime, here’s a hopeful-sounding track from Ulrich Schnauss.  It sounds like Spring to me, even though the weather hasn’t caught up.

TwiSixtyFive #6

Neil Gaiman.  If you don’t know the name, check him out, seriously.

TwiSixtyFive #5

Rainn Wilson.

Looky, ‘smee!

Oh yeah, I’m famous!

Damon Bradshaw, theater specialist with the [Blank Blank] Planetarium in Kansas City, says technically there is no official astronomical term “blue moon.”

and

“There are 11 days in a year that the moon has to make up for,” he says. “So roughly every three years there’s an extra full moon in a year — instead of 12 there are 13.”

and

“Occasionally if the moon is low on the horizon and you are looking through a lot of atmosphere, it might appear bright orange or red,” Mr. Bradshaw says. “Certainly there could be circumstances where there is smoke or dust in the atmosphere that could change its color a little bit.”