Worth A Look

Here are a few articles from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time:

Pennsylvania Considers New Tax Credit to Attract Game Production

TECHBurgher: The Pittsburgh Technology Council is endorsing a proposal from Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi to create a new Digital Entertainment Tax Credit as part of an expanded film tax credit. Just as the film tax credit has proven its ability to attract film production to our state, this new credit would create a powerful incentive aimed attracting investment in permanent gaming development centers in Pennsylvania.

Posted by David at 7/04/2013 11:07:00 PM

Viola Davis on the Crisis for African American Actresses

Women and Hollywood: We're in a crisis mode as black actresses. Not only in the number of roles that are offered but the quality of roles. And therein lies the problem -- we're in deprivation mode. When you only have two or three categories for black actresses...it's a natural instinct that if you throw a piece of cheese in a room full of rats that they are going to claw at each other, it's natural. At what point do we stop stepping on each other?

Posted by David at 7/02/2013 11:04:00 PM

Seven stages of the Guthrie Theater at 50

StarTribune.com: Tyrone Guthrie recalled in his memoir that “even the audience had stage fright” when his new theater opened “Hamlet” on May 7, 1963. This was a new and nervy proposition — planting a resident company of established actors performing the classics away from the hot house of New York. “It is a long way from Broadway and the people have a sort of Scandinavian freshness,” Guthrie told Life Magazine in a picture story headlined “Miracle in Minneapolis.”

Posted by David at 7/02/2013 10:27:00 PM

When unpaid internships are illegal

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

All In: A U.S. District Court Judge ruled in favor of interns and against Fox Searchlight Pictures because the intern's work on the movie "Black Swan" was that of an employee who should be compensated under the law and the Judge also certified a class action lawsuit. Chris Hayes talks with one of the plaintiffs in the case, his lawyer, and a labor expert on how this case could change the status of the intern class in America.

Posted by David at 6/30/2013 03:45:00 PM

The Science Of How Applause Spreads In An Audience

Popular Science: Sorry, Toastmasters. When people clap at a performance, they're not really driven by how much they enjoyed what they saw, according to a new study. Instead, they decide how long to applaud based on the applause they hear around them. The research is part of a larger field in which scientists try to figure out how memes spread among people. Clapping is like a small, brief meme that moves its way through the limited audience watching a performance. And it really is just as infectious as a great gif or a communicable disease. When the researchers graphed the times at which people started and stopped clapping, the graph had a sigmoidal curve, like graphs of people getting infected and then recovering from a disease, the researchers wrote in a paper published this week in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Posted by David at 6/28/2013 04:16:00 PM

Dog Days

It's been kinda slow here for the month of June.  Without a regular work schedule I did manage to get a little bit of a break.  It's even slower over at In Process, my tumblr of current goings on in the PTM world of the School of Drama.  There's been the odd shot of a really clean, empty room and a couple of shots of our brand spanking new 3-D Printer.  I was hoping for shots to be submitted from students away at summer jobs, but that has only generated a couple of pictures.

So that the thing wouldn't come to a complete standstill I started posting at least one link each day.  I started out with some resources and a couple of shop pages where we have a relationship with the company.  For a little while I just started different internet keyword searches and posting the first shop I could find.  After that I got the idea to try to post a shop for each state in the union, alphabetically.

Clearly I haven't been putting too much shoulder to the wheel, so some of the states get a cursory look and then a pass.  I'll come back to Arkansas later.

Today was H, and I think I may have found an escape job.  Attco, Inc. is a full service scene shop with offices in Hawaii. 

Wouldn't that suck?

After CSSI and TEN I've usually been of the opinion that I am not really interested in going back to a commercial scene shop.  Plus you know... Tenured Technical Director.  Still, I think I might set up a news alert on this company just in case something isn't going quite right in my already idyllic life.  If there has to be running away, this seems like a good place to run away to.

Ellipses...

Missing my dad pretty badly today on Father's Day.  Well, really pretty much still every day...  The NBA Finals this year are like a heavyweight prizefight: hay-maker after hay-maker...  Finally got to the Doctor Who on the DVR.  I never would have thought I would say it, but I might be done with Doctor Who...  Today I finally hung one of the cabinets I bought over a year ago for the garage.  One down, one to go...  Getting the summer projects going...  Looks like probably no Dinosaur workshop or Automation workshop this summer...  Is it cheating on the Penguins if I keep watching the NHL even though they're out?  I think it should be ok...  I think I am going to have to start looking for some friendly Ultimate games...  If I had to decide, I don't think I would call Snowden a hero or a traitor...  Kind of neat to see former students and classmates on TV.  If you aren't watching Tait Stages you should be...  The new Tweetdeck lets you shrink the window down to two columns.  I had been waiting for that...  Does the world really need two fish tank fabrication TV shows?  Do I need to watch two fish tank fabrication shows?  Maybe I will just pick one or the other...  Trying to make a change to the Technical Direction Shop Biographies project.  Be nice to have a standing wiki...  Fairly certain I don't want the NSA recording the nature of all of my phone calls, I'm really certain they don't need my browser history...  Now that Google bought Waze does that mean it isn't cool anymore?  I don't want to have to find a new nav app...  Mrs. TANBI is instituting a fairly rigorous schedule of entertaining.  She's good at entertaining...  I had the burger at Eleven.  I must confess I didn't like the burger at Eleven...  I'm supposed to be thinking about my next professional step should be.  Not really sure I'm getting someplace...  Sure would be nice to see some summer pictures on the Tumblr...  There's something knocking in the back seat of my truck.  It's driving me nuts.  I may be too easily driven nuts... 

RAPID

Today I went down to the convention center to the RAPID Additive Manufacturing show.

After passing a long line of people waiting for the Megabus, I took this picture under the convention center:

I got into the show for free with my school ID - woohoo!  The show floor was pretty cool.  About half the vendors were scanning companies and half people that do fabrication or sell fabrication tools.  There was one company with a 6' tall dino skeleton.  I showed them a picture of me 14' project, which they thought was cool, but not as cool as theirs since theirs was made of 1" plate aluminum.

There were a bunch of 3D printers.


But i didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at them since we have already purchased one.

There was this one company: Mcor Technologies.  They had a 3D printer that was pretty different.  Instead of using resin theirs uses paper.  Not only that, but they've combined it with an inkjet printer so that you can print in full color.


That will definitely be worth checking out for the future.  Someone should tell them to come to USITT.

Mexico, June 2013

How about some pictures from Mexico?

Mrs. TANBI and I got some time away and actually left the U. S. of A.  We spent a couple of days on the Mayan Riviera.

Here's the view from the lobby...

The resort is actually pretty far from the beach.  It's there, just at the edge of your view.  The bulk of the rooms are actually cottages spread out around this lagoon.  To the far left in the image you can see the hotel proper and a hint of the first of five pools (there was almost never anyone at that pool).  To the left of the small bridge is "the island" which is home to most of the pools and one of the restaurants.  You could even take a boat ride around the lagoon although we passed.

There was a fair amount of nature around.  Lots of different kinds of birds in all the trees and turtles and fish in the lagoon.  Here's a small iguana...

and here's a bigger one...

There was also a kitten that seemed to live on the patio of one of the restaurants, and we also ran into a raccoon one night on one of the bridges.  Also we saw something that we decided in the end was a lemur one day while we were out walking.

Here's the beach...

We went to the beach one day.  It was nice enough, but neither of us remembered to bring our reef shoes and under that beautiful surf are intermittent (and pretty much invisible) stretches of fairly sharp rocks.  Were there no alternatives it would have been ok, but there were a bunch of really nice pools, so most of the time we did that instead.

Here's a water level view of the main pool...

We spent most of our pool time off of one of those little niches on the right...

Lounge chairs, sun umbrellas, many, many towels, and cocktail service.  Very nice.  Mrs. TANBI's feet on the left, my goofy toes on the right.

Here's the bottom of Mrs. TANBI's feet...

Actually, the nicest pool was at the spa, but I didn't bring my camera there and pretty much never brought my phone anywhere.  We pretty fairly had the spa pool to ourselves on two afternoons.

The trip had an unfortunate amount of rain in the second half and that really reigned in any plans to go exploring away from the resort, but we managed to have a great time anyway.

Here's my best sunset photo from the trip...

Maybe next time we'll get better weather.

Ellipses...

I wonder if PRISM keeps track of my blog and if I have any fans at the NSA.  Probably not... We're back from Mexico.  It rained a lot, but we still had a good time...  I am desperately trying to spend a huge amount of money by the end of the month.  I am pessimistic that I will be able to make it happen...  There was a moment in the Tony opening last night when NPH traveled about 80 feet out of view of the audience in less than 15 seconds.  Pretty impressive...  The folks that aren't upset about the NSA surveillance, I don't think they really understand what's possible.  People should read more science fiction...  Hilary Clinton is on Twitter.  She must not have a lot to do in retirement...  I was really very happy with pretty much everything in the first season of Orphan Black...  I was going to do movie reviews here, but I'm up three movies and I haven't written about them...  While I was away I read Ready Player One.  If you grew up when I did you should absolutely read it...  Might be time to make a summer to do list - although last summer I tore up the list as soon as I made it...  They've heard from the IRS folks and it does sound like rather than being political, the keyword searching was mostly pragmatic...  The Bulls are out of the NBA playoffs and the Pens are out of the NHL playoffs.  Might be time to catch up with the Cubbies...  The 1314 folder in my inbox now outnumber the remaining 1213 folders...  I seem to spend a whole lot of time watching MSNBC lately.  I used to really dislike it; I wonder what happened...  Do you think if I put a cookie sheet behind my wireless router that I could improve reception in the opposite direction?  Might be stupid enough to work.  Maybe not...  Still not making really good use of my mornings.  I should do something about that...  Any ideas on how to get a cat to the vet for a checkup if I can't even get her in a carrier?  Really can't even catch her...  My alma mater did pretty well at the Tony's last night...

Congrats Mrs. TANBI

Tonight Mrs. TANBI graduated in the 20th class of Leadership Pittsburgh's Leadership Development Institute.

She is now an official emerging leader, which is something I have known all along.

One speaker at the graduation said LDI is the equivalent of many MBA programs.  So that's way cool.  I am very impressed.  Everyone should congratulate Mrs. TANBI on the achievement.

Peaked Too Soon

This evening I got to do the coolest thing.  I hooked the laptop up to the TV and watched The College Ultimate Open Semi-Final live.  I think this should count as national TV as I assume someone actually gets ESPN3 as part of their cable package even though it turns out we don't.  I had to use the Watch ESPN streaming feature on their website (which of course requires that you actually have cable - a rant for another day).

If you missed it there is going to be a rebroadcast on ESPNU later this week.  That running is scheduled to record on the DVR, but why wait when you can see it live online?

Pitt was one of the two teams playing in the semi I watched: Pitt Vs. Oregon.  The other Semi is Carlton vs. Central Florida (which is probably over now...it is, Central Florida won).  I can't say I am a rabid Pitt Ultimate fan, but it was nice to be able to root for a Pittsburgh team and I will happily root for them in the final tomorrow.

For me though, the reason watching this game on television was so cool is that in the spring of 1989 I actually played in it.

1989 College Nationals was in Wilmington North Carolina and I was a junior in college.  I played for Carnegie Mellon's "Mr. Yuk" and it was my third and the team's fourth (and last) trip to Nationals.  We'd played really well in pool play.  I had actually thrown two goals: one a total rainbow hammer to Greg Wolff against Indiana and the other a much longer than I thought it was flat flick to Ron Papineck against North Carolina.  That year I was arguably the 7th starter or the first or second guy off the bench, a dedicated middle who could handle a little and would work real hard and smart on D.

We drew returning champions Santa Barbara in the semi-final.  I remember they had this fake up the line, dump over the mark break pass at the staple of their offense.  Midway through the first half I discovered that off a turn you could totally stymie their play by just standing in the break behind the mark and giving them the easy pass up the line which it turned out they didn't want.  They were so disciplined that they'd let the stall go up to 8 or 9 before they'd abandon the called play.

Yuk actually lead something like 8 to 3 at halftime.  After that we collapsed, or they really rallied, or both.  I think we lost like 15-12 in the end.  After the game we talked about easy things we forgot to do that could have got us another couple of points.  We never sent our handlers deep, we never threw our zone, really aggravating stuff in hindsight.  These days the teams actually have coaches, with clipboards, they probably would catch things like that (although I guess what would make one team better would probably make both teams better).

I think there was an ESPN in 1989.  I doubt there was an ESPN3 or an ESPNU.  Would have been nice if there had been though.  It would have been nice for my friends to have seen me play in the National Semi-Final (and would be great to be able to go back and watch a tape now).

I guess it will be enough to be able to do it vicariously.

Ellipses...

Just write something already...  We have so much Doctor Who on the DVR watching it is suddenly a thing...  Just about time to start paying attention to hockey again...  I feel like I know exactly what happened in that Cincinnati IRS office - and it wasn't a conspiracy...  Have you been watching Orphan Black?  You really should be...  Company last weekend and this weekend.  Mrs. TANBI is back in prime entertaining form...  I am really, really, actually close to true inbox zero - nothing in the INBOX, nothing in TODO, and nothing in FOLLOWUP.  That's never happened before...  Still waiting on that FIOS channel for the Roku.  Wouldn't say no to a Slingplayer channel either.  Truth be told I think maybe coding that second one really ought not be that hard...  I've got a vacation coming up.  I was going to spend some money kitting up, but I appear to have missed the window...  The President's security speech pretty much made sense to me.  Don't recall hearing much on domestic surveillance though...  That sidewalk chalk they said would last 30 days is going to last much more than 30 days...  Verizon is having a free on demand weekend - but nothing that's included is anything we don't already have access to.  Might be a little bit of a misnomer...  The Qdoba queso burrito tastes pretty good, but its a little bit of a mess to eat...  After hearing about the locker rooms at West Point I have come to the conclusion that we've arrived at the point where we can't assume we're off camera anyplace...  Working on trimming down my portfolio at work substantively.  After that I will have to figure out what to do with the time...  Not at all happy about hearing the current agenda of the House financial services committee lately, and really disappointed in the committee Democrats...  The US College National Ultimate Championships are on ESPN3 tomorrow (we don't get ESPN3) and on ESPNU on Wednesday.  Guess I was ahead of my time...  Today we debated turning on the heat, four days ago we debated turning on the air.  Don't have to convince me that Climate Change is real...

All David Honor Roll

Haven't done this in a while.  Here are the Spring 2013 All David Honor Roll students:

Jessica Bergson
Akiva Krauthamer

Dan Miele

Andrew O'Keefe

Jennifer Oughton
Camille Rohrlich
Isaac Rudich

Great work everyone.  Keep it up next semester!