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She was watching America’s Got Tallent on TV, and it just happened that a magician by the name of Landon Swank was up to perform in what I think is the semifinal episode. 

I love magic, and I’m talking about stage magic here – the art of illusion. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, so I had to stop and watch him perform.  It was so elegant, so beautiful.  He was in this stage set of a living room, and I was thinking about all the things he could have hidden in it.  All the tricks he could do with it.  But rather then the all too common trick-a-second, blink and you’ve missed it kind of magic that is so often done today, he took a different aproach – doing a slow, gentile, almost meditative sequence of effects in a story progression.

I’m not going to try to describe it, I’m sure it’ll be on his page on the official site:
http://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent/contestants/landon-swank/
and if not, I’m sure it’ll be on youtube.

It was beautiful – it wasn’t trying to say or do anything, other then “here’s a bit of wonder I want to share with you.”

I LOVED IT

As I walked out of the room after the segment ended, I noticed that I fealt totally different.  I wasn’t exausted and overwehelmed any more, I fealt comfortable, and ready move forward, and that, my friends, is the power of beauty.

Have you ever had an experiece like this?  what does it for you? I’d love to hear in the comments!

My life is about magic and love, and at this time of year they abound.

All of the lights are wonderful, as is the sense of coming together in the dark of the year to celebrate with lights and gift giving and merry making. It is some powerful magic.

And I LOVE the music, particularly some of the traditional “pop” holiday songs like Sleigh Ride, The Christmas Song, and many more.

So, as I did last year, I decided to create a musical Christmas card for all of you, however you celebrate (or not) the holidays.   I get to sing (something I don’t do anywhere near as much as I’d like to these days) and share with one of my favorite songs.

Just click here to hear me sing!

May your New Year be filled with the magic of the creations of your heart!

Much love!

Andy

You know it’s funny, how sometimes our lives seem to go in circles.

Except sometimes, the circles are really spirals, they bring us to a higher level of whatever it is.

This is something that came out very powerfully for me tonight as I thought about an idea that I’d been fantasizing about for many years, except this time I wasn’t just thinking about it as a dream, but rather as a goal. A gigantic, hairy, audacious goal, but a goal nonetheless. About a week ago in the first session of the Cash and Joy Provocateurs, Catherine Caine asked me to do just that. She asked each of us in the group to share our Big Harry Audacious Goal. It wasn’t something I had thought much about, but after just a moment I realized that there is one thing that kept coming up in different ways almost for as long as I can remember, and I knew that this was my BHAG.

I want to share it with you, but I also need to understand that while this goal is tremendous at the moment it’s very much what Havi calls “a tiny, sweet thing.” So it needs to be handled with care, and that’s what I’m doing here.

So what is this thing?

It’s an event, actually a series of events, each one with over 10,000 people in attendance. A sort of rally of transformation, alchemy, wonder, spirit and outright magic.

I can feel how my whole life is leading to this point, for me to be standing on the stage telling stories, weaving processes of spiritual alchemy, as we gently but powerfully allow the shifts within each of us to take the next steps becoming even more ourselves.

This isn’t just a speech, or a workshop. It’s a fully immersive experience. We use lighting, projections, sound and other tools of the theater to create an environment which envelops everyone who attends, and completely surrounds them. This environment can change and morph from one moment to the next as the stories and dreams unfold.

I could go on and on, I think I have shared what wants to be shared at the moment about this.

Let me answer some questions that you might be thinking before I go:

When will this happen?

I don’t know, it will happen when it’s ready, and I’m ready.

Where will it be? How much will it cost? Where do I sign up?

I’m thrilled that you’re interested, but I don’t really know that either.

Don’t you realize that this will never work? That events like this are too expensive, too hard, crazy, or whatever?

I truly appreciate your concern, and I’m not trying to do this next week. I know that there’s a lot to it, and that there are probably lots of places where things can go wrong (there are in every endeavor, large or small.) But please understand that the biggest mistake I could make is to not do this, it is the calling of my heart.

Can I help?

Maybe? Probably? I’m not in a place yet to look for partners, or people to help, or even know what kind of help I would be looking for. However, that will change, when the time comes, so watch this space. If you like, leave a note in the comments about your interest, and I’ll keep you in mind.

Today I want to be very specific about what kind of comments I’m looking for. As I said, this is a tiny, sweet thing, which needs to be protected and cared for as it grows and solidifies. I would love your support, and if reading this sparks something super exciting in you, I’d love to hear about that too. If you think I’m nuts, you’re probably right, but please, keep it to yourself for the moment. I’m not looking for advice, criticism, or even really suggestions, I most love to hear how this resonates with you, in your heart, if there’s something you truly feel moved to share.

Thank you for letting me share my Big Hairy Audacious Goal with you. Don’t be surprised if I don’t talk about this much for a while, then again don’t be surprised if I do. I’m just excited to see how my tiny, sweet thing grows.

photo credit: young_einstein

Some aspects of this have been a wonderful gift to me throughout my life, I’ve developed my technical and creative skills, and had the opportunity to do some really wonderful things at a remarkably young age.

But this is all familiar territory for me, today was something new.

Today I realized that maybe being a “responsible adult” was not really what I wanted. It had never occurred to me to consider any other possibility, and even as I write these words my monsters (to use Havi’s term) are going crazy yelling at me: “how could you want to be anything but a responsible adult, what else is there that it would be reasonable to be?”

Today I unpacked the meaning of the words “responsible adult” to me.

I came to understand something really powerful in the process of doing this. I realized that in my mind “responsible adult” was nothing more than societal programming, the set of rules that I absorbed unconsciously from the time I was a tiny baby I’m watching the people around me and drawing conclusions about the rules that they operated by based on what I saw. One of the things that’s interesting to note, is that at the time that I was receiving this programming unknowingly I was not in a position to really understand or analyze what was happening. My two or three or four-year-old brain didn’t understand why people were doing what they did, and some of the conclusions it came to are really not useful to me.

For instance:

Urgency should be the key driver of my decision-making. If the phone rings, it needs to be answered immediately. If an e-mail comes in, it needs to be responded to immediately. If someone needs something from me it’s my responsibility to deliver it instantaneously regardless of what else is going on. This is not useful, at least not to me.

Another example:

The only way to be even remotely okay is to be perfect. Less-than-perfect is completely unacceptable. Once again, this is something which is so limiting since perfection, in the sense I’m referring to it here, is not something that I can ever reasonably expect to reach.

Here’s one that really hit home:

When I’m not able to do something easily and naturally, it means that I’m bad, I’m not good enough. Not only should I be doing things easily and naturally, I should be doing them in a way which is unique, but not too different from how other people do them, because that’s not okay either.

All of a sudden I started to understand why I felt painted into a corner so much of the time.

So what now?

Think the most important thing is to recognize that these things which have been part of my worldview till now don’t have to stay a part of my worldview. I find it hard to put into words, but just identifying and articulating is already changing them even as I write this post.

I’ve also become aware, that it would be helpful to encourage myself to be willing to do things in a more childlike way, at least some of the time. This is something I’ve known before, even something I’ve taught when I’ve worked with other people, but I’ve never really given myself permission to do it myself.

Wow, that feels really big. I can’t wait to see where it takes me!

Come play with me?

This is big stuff, when we talk about programming, and change work, and particularly our own internal process, it often brings up things both for ourselves and other people. If my processing my stuff has triggered you in a way that’s uncomfortable, I’m truly sorry and that is not my intention. This is also not advice, sometimes I do give advice here–talking about how to integrate storytelling into life and business, or maybe about how to make technical things work better, for example–but this is not advice. This is nothing more, and nothing less than me sharing my process.

I would love to hear your responses, or any parts of your process you want to share that were sparked by this in the comments below. So come play with me.

photo credit: wadem

Abby is a wonderful interviewer, and I tend to talk intuitively, off the top of my head. I had no agenda other then to try to be helpful, and mention a couple of things I’m involved in at the end.

I knew that we would touch on spirituality, because it touches almost everything that I do, but I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole we’d go.  We got into some really deep and amazing stuff about living the truth of Who You Really Are and how that relates to having a business, and just to being human.  We talked about the power of perspective, and how our internal map of the world acts as a filter that stops us from seeing things we don’t expect to see.  I shared The Great Secret Of Creating Better Sounding Interview Recordings.  And Abby burned herself. (she’s ok though, fortunately.)

If this sounds like fun, click here to check it out!

I’d love to hear your comments about the interview, but rather then posting them here, post them over on Abby’s blog and I’ll respond there.  That way all the responses stay in the same place. Let me also say, this gets into deep stuff, and if it pushes buttons for you, please know that is not my intention at all.  I’m sharing my truth as I experience it, and yours may be is guaranteed to be different in some ways, and possibly conflicting.  That’s ok.  Whatever YOUR truth is, live it.

photo credit: turbojoe (away)

This is a key point that my friend Catherine Caine understands.  She created the Awesome Website Extravaganza, it’s the easiest way I’ve seen to go from 0 to an awesome website without the added searching and flailing around that most of us go through.  And I would suggest that it may be even more useful for people who already have a website, but aren’t quite satisfied with what it does for them (like me.)

I’m not going to go into all the specifics of the program – you can click here to read it yourself.(edit – sorry, the AWE has closed.)

There are some things that Catherine has done here that I think are particularly brilliant.  The first one is that she has worked very hard to include everything we need to know to move forward on a given topic and nothing extra.  This focus is extremely helpful.

The material is also broken up into bite size bits – 1 topic, 1 module – and within each module several short videos.

I’m writing this having only completed one module, the first one, on finding your right people.

But I’m so excited that I didn’t want to wait.  In fact, this is going to be the first of a series of posts about the AWE.  Of course I’m not going to be repeating all the introductory stuff, but just talking about my experience in the journey.

Let me first say that:

I didn’t think that the AWE was for me.

I have a website, and I’ve got the tech stuff under control, and I’ve got a good handle on the rest.  And I had considered buying individual modules (which are available separately).  Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that.  Catherine asked me to create the “how to” part of the audio module (which I’m having a great time doing) and part of the deal is that I got in to the course.

So I started the first module, mostly to see how they worked and see what Catherine had made.  Let me be clear here:

I didn’t think I needed this!

I’ve been doing lots of work around my right people, and how to be myself online.  I really thought I had it handeld, and there wasn’t going to be much for me to learn here.

Boy was I wrong.

I hadn’t realized how nebulous some of my thoughts about finding my right people really were.  Catherine lead me into her world with the videos, and a number of important things about finding my right people catalyzed in my brain.  It’s not the kind of stuff I can explain without going on and on, so I’ll spare you… but let me just say that it’s been super useful.

Then it got better.

I opened the worksheet for the module, and I have to say that I was kind of intimidated by it at first – it was like 5 pages of questions (with big spaces for answers – but it still intimidated me…)  I hemmed and hawed for a couple of days, and tried to convince myself that I didin’t need to do it.  But I’m so glad that I did.  So I finally opened the worksheet again this evening.  It took me about 20 minutes to do, but it was 20 minutes of being in total flow.  The questions, guidance and examples made it easy for me, which was kind of a shock.  These sort of things are often really hard for me, but this time it wasn’t.

And the result was amazing – it was a total gelling of all the stuff that’s been floating around in my head about who my right people are.  I was able to define and more importantly, feel who my right people are with a level of clarity and precision that was, well, awesome.

I hadn’t realized that I had some stuckness around this issue, but now that it’s gone, it’s so clear to me that it was there.  I feel amazing from doing this.

Ok, here comes the disclaimer

Yes, I’m an affiliate for this program.  And if you join, you will be too.  Everyone who joins the AWE is an instant affiliate, which is really cool, because if you react like I did, you’re going to want to share it.

I’m writing this because I’m just so excited about what this one module has done for my brain, that I can’t wait to see what happens as I continue!!

Why I think you need this even if you have a website.

Remember what I said earlier, I really didn’t expect to get anything useful out of this module.  I thought I had it handled.  But I was wrong, I gained so much perspective and clarity that I know is going to make an incredible difference for what I’m doing online.  I suspect that many of you would have the same experience.  So even if you know all the tech stuff, and don’t need those modules, join for the ones you do need.

Check out the website.  See if it resonates for you.  I think it will.  And I hope to see you in the AWE forums.

EDIT – Sorry to say that the AWE has closed, but I highly encourage you to vist Catherine’s new site – Http://cashandjoy.com

*Salem was the site of the witch trials of 1692, and because of that has been built into a major tourist destination around both the witch trial history and the rather large Wiccan and pagan community that has made the town theirs in recent years.

They even let me help rase the sails.

More pictures of our lovely evening

Letting Go and Letting God

“But wait, there’s more!”

Then, all of a sudden, I felt very strongly that receiving from the divine is, in fact, a form of recognition, of worship.

And that realization changed everything.

Barbara has had an amazing carier in musicals, but that’s not where I was reintroduced to her – somewhere I got one of her more recent concert performances – she’s been doing her own cabaret shows for at least the last 30 years or so – and at age 82 she’s still brilliant – maybe better then ever.  Just listen to this – recorded a few years ago in Melbourne:

Listening to Barbara I feel like I’m not hearing words or notes, but more like pure story and emotion.  She doesn’t tell you a story, she weave’s it around you.

Here’s some more

And the grand finale (at least for the moment)

On Friday one of her songs came up in shuffle on my iTunes – and it just stopped me – I stopped working and just listened. She does it to me every time.
Now that’s brilliant!

photo credit: Denis Collette…!!!

I’m working (behind the scenes so far) on re-imagining how I talk about and share what I do and make. In the mean time, an opportunity has come up, and I want to share my excitement about it with you.

Maybe it’ll be useful for some of you as well, or maybe you’ll just help me be excited either way is fine.

I’ve known about Mark Silver and The Heart of Business for a while now, and I’d enjoyed some of his stuff, but it didn’t click with me.  I wasn’t ready.

Mark is a Sufi, a practitioner of mystical Islam.  He approaches business as a mystic.  To me, this is very cool.

So, not that long ago, I was struggling how to find a right price to charge for something,  I remembered Havi having written about using a wacky resonant pricing exercise that she adapted from Mark’s work.  So I decided to try it.  I downloaded the exercise from Mark’s post and tried it – it just felt right.  In fact it felt wonderful.  It also introduced me to

The Remembrance

A simple, Sufi practice which is the basis of much of what Mark teaches.  I’m not going to explain the practice here, if you are drawn to know more about it check out Mark’s Getting To The Core workbook, which you get free when you sign up for his newsletter (which I love.)

This practice has been the perfect gift for me at the perfect time, Mark calls it “having tea time with the Divine,” which as strange as it sounds, is really right on.

In fact I’m doing Mark’s Remembrance Challenge right now and loving it – it’s just perfect for me, where I am right now.  Though I’m certainly doing it imperfectly.  (It’s also free on his site if you’re interested)

The Sacred Invitation

I ran across this page on The Heart of Business and signed up for the “No More Square Wheels” teleclass Mark was offering as a free preview class for his 6 week Momentum program.  I was “sure” that I wasn’t going to take the class.  Money is tight right now, it just didn’t seem like an option.  But I wanted to learn what I could from the preview call, which I expected to be mostly content, and a little pitch at the end.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that page was a sacred invitation to me to take the next step into myself and my business.

You see, the call was yesterday – and it just blew me out of the water.  I sat and listened, and felt as Mark would pause, and just breathe as I let what he said sink in, and he felt into what he was called to say next.  (at least that’s how it felt to me…)

He wasn’t talking about a class

He was talking about an entirely new (to me) approach to what business is, what it means, and how to do it.

It felt so right to me.  Exactly what I needed to create the business and life that I feel called to.

And let me be clear I was not “sold” anything – the “pitch” Mark gave was simply an explanation of what the course covers and how it works.  That was really it.

I knew, though, long before that point, that this was what my heart was calling for.

But like I said, I knew I couldn’t afford the class now.  Then I told my Dad about it, and he very graciously agreed to pay for it as a gift.

I am so thankful that I’m now enrolled in this class, and I’m bouncing off the walls excited about it.

And by the way, you can listen to the recording of the “No More Square Wheels” call by clicking here.

So why am I writing this post?  Because my heart is singing with excitement about this and I needed to share it.

Have you ever had something resonate with you like this?  Are you thinking about taking this class?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

You may or may not know about Binaural Journeys, where I create meditation audios that use a cool combination of sound technologies and my voice to help people relax very deeply, and make changes that they want to make in themselves.

The Setup

I really created Binaural Journeys out of the inspiration for a particular meditation. Then I went looking to figure out how to let my Thing out into the world. What I found was a very traditional style of Internet marketing, taught by a wonderful person who was really helpful. So I got my Things online, and started sharing it with the world. Some people bought it, and those that did have almost universally loved it, but something wasn’t right and it took me a long time to learn what. That was the epiphany.

I finally realized that I wasn’t presenting my Thing in a way that would appeal to my Right People. I realize, that my Right People were the kind of people who are like me in a lot of ways, and that one of those ways is that they have a tendency to not like things that feel like traditional Internet marketing–“squeeze pages,” sales pages written like direct mail sales letters, and so forth.

More importantly, I realized that I really don’t like those things.

I realized, that the way I was presenting this online was not congruent with Me. And I also realized that was a big problem. I realized that that was part of why some people I know didn’t react to my offerings away that I had hoped it would.

Most importantly, I realized that this was the thing that didn’t feel right to me.

So I’m starting over, doing things in a whole new way. It’s a little bit scary, because it’s different, but I’m different to; and I’m convinced that this is what I need to do.

So there are changes coming.

I also realized that in addition to changing how I present Binaural Journeys, there was something else I needed to do. That is, to be more myself here. In addition to the artist me, the storyteller me, the technician me, and the other parts of my life that you’ve met, here I also have a side of me which I’ve been reluctant to share: the Mystic, the one to whom spirituality and connection are so important. So I realized that that’s part of what I need to share as well, and that I need to accept that that’s something some people may not be comfortable with, but it’s part of who I am, and so if this site is going to continue to have my name in the url, I need to make that a part of what I share as well.

Has this ever happened to you?

If you’ve had an experience like this I’d love to hear about it in the comments!  As you comment, please keep in mind however that this is my realization and my process, and I’m not looking for advice about it.  Though I would love to hear just about anything esle you have to say

photo credit: libraryman

As promised in my post on Tuesday, today I’m going to give you a look behind the scenes at the technology that I used to create the projections for The Planets.

This basically breaks down into two sections, creating the media to be projected, and actually running the show.

Creating The Media

On Tuesday I mentioned the DigitalSky 2 software which I used to create the 3-D space visualization sequences. The system is extremely sophisticated, and in fact has its own scripting language. By writing scripts I’m able to “fly” the camera through the 3-D model of the universe. It can also manipulate what objects are visible, and increasing or decreasing their size. In order to create the effect that I was looking for, I often had to increase the size of the planets and moons in view. This is because the distances in space are so gigantic, compared to the size of even the largest planets and moons.

The other major elements in the piece are mostly NASA images. There is a tremendous amount of maturity are available here, which was a great blessing, though as you can imagine, it could complicate the process of selecting material. In general I was looking for a combination of the most spectacular, beautiful and highest resolution images available. Fortunately, many images were available at far above HD resolution. The higher the resolution of the image, the more choices I have in how to use it. With the largest images, I’m able to show a small portion of the image, and then slowly move across it. This is the so-called “Ken Burns effect.” This effect allows me to take a static image, and give it motion.

Projecting The Show

When I set out to do projections for any piece were I’m collaborating as a part of a live performance, one of my primary goals is to not do anything to get in the way of the performers. One of the things that this means, is that I don’t want to create projections as a movie. It would’ve been very easy to create the projections and burn them onto DVD, and then just hit play at the beginning of each movement. The problem with that, is that then the conductor would have to follow the timing of the projections in order to stay synchronized. To my mind, that’s an unacceptable compromise to ask for in most cases.

My answer is a software package called  QLab. This amazing Macintosh software allows me to create each “visual event” of the show as a separate cue. By doing that, I’m able to essentially “edit” the projections in real time, during the performance. I read the score as the orchestra performs, and trigger each cue at the appropriate moment in music. This allows the conductor the flexibility to adjust the tempo as it feels right, and I’m still able to keep everything in perfect synchronization.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind-the-scenes of The Planets. Do you have questions? Please ask in the comments, I’d be happy to do my very best to answer them for you.

This post is going to be a little bit weird–maybe a lot weird–depending on your perspective. I promise, that this really is useful to me, which is why I’m sharing it. Of course, it may, or may not be useful to you. Please take whatever you find useful and leave the rest.

Monsters???

Here’s the idea:

The most important thing about monsters

Here’s the key

Approaching my monsters

Thanking Your Monsters

It had been my intention to blog about the creative process as I was creating the piece. As you may have determined by now, that didn’t happen. Instead, I ended up putting virtually every free moment I had into creating the projections. It was worth it.

The performance was really extraordinary, and received an extended standing ovation with the conductor being called back for additional bows three times.

More importantly, the audience was truly engaged by the combination of music and imagery. I was able to talk to a number of members of the audience after the show, and was really blown away by the response.

At some point, I will have some extended excerpts from the piece to share with you, I am dealing with some technical issues about how to convert them into a format that I can upload.

What I do have, that I can share with you now, is the trailer that I created as a preview for the orchestra’s website.

I’d also like to share with you my program notes, which I think will give you some idea of my thought process and creative process.

Creating imagery for “The Planets” is a daunting task for a projection designer. Holst’s amazing music was written about the astrological planets, that is to say, the significance that the planets have in classical astrology. In Holst’s time, the beauty of the astronomical planets
(the actual objects in space) was just beginning to be discovered through powerful telescopes, and was not widely known.

Today, we are fortunate to have an amazing and almost endless catalogue of images of the universe. Images, from ground-based telescopes  and spacecraft such as Hubble and the Mars Rovers provide an incredible wealth of scientific knowledge and also of visual texture and beauty. It is in this second capacity, as artistic images, that I draw on them for this piece. I also draw heavily on the 3-D space visualizations which it is possible to create using modern computers and the amazing DigitalSky 2 software. This software was created here in New Hampshire by Sky-Skan, and is used in
planetariums all over the world.

Each movement begins with imagery of the planet that it is named for, from there we go wherever the music and the visual rhythm of the
imagery lead. In some movements we explore the planet and its moons, in others we fly to the very edge of the visible universe. I’ve made a choice not to be bound by the science of what these objects are, but simply to allow the music to lead my eye wherever in the universe it is drawn. So I invite you to approach experiencing this
piece as I do, as a feast for the ears and the eyes, and let your heart take flight.

I’ll have another post going up on Thursday where I’ll talk about some of the technology behind the show.

And by the way,  I’d love to bring The Planets to a performance hall near you!  If you know of a local performance of The Planets that might be interested in projections, please let me know!

After a couple of the public shows, I gave the audiences a peek behind the scenes. Here's my Mac desktop on the dome, warped by the mirror.

I have to say, I had an amazingly good time – the teachers and students were wonderful – and the kids had amazing questions.  But I’ll talk about that another time…  What I want to talk about today is the geeky end of the whole thing – and how it’s possible to set up a portable, inflatable digital planetarium.

The Dome

The dome, made by Go-Dome, is inflated much like a bounce house at a fair, except that it has no floor – it just sits on the floor of the room it is set up in.  You roll it out on the floor and it inflates in a couple of minutes.  The kids (and adults) really enjoy squeezing through the airlock to get inside.

The dome set up and ready for an audience.

The Projection and the Mirror

The projection technology I used is very cool.  It was originally developed by Paul Bourke, an Australian academic who works on 3d, dome projection and related ideas. The problem with digital projection in domes traditionally is that it either requires many projectors, blended together, or a very very expensive custom fisheye lens.  Paul realized that a single projector aimed at a 1/2 hemisphere mirror would cover almost the entire dome.  He then figured out the warping process that’s necessary to pre-distort the images to be projected, so when the are distorted by the curvature of the mirror, they come out right on the dome.   If you’d like to know more about this process in detail, check out Paul’s pages on spherical mirror dome projection.

I used a commercial implementation of Paul’s technology from Discovery Dome.  It encloses the  (fragile) mirror in a case which opens up.  The projector goes under the mirror facing forward, the light bounces off a flat mirror, and then off the spherical mirror on to the dome.  This keeps the projector out of the way….

Here's a look at the back of the dome - the funny looking thing towards the upper right is the spherical mirror setup. I'm to the right behind the computers.

The Computers

All of the images were generated from my MacbookPro, and I used a Macbook for control of certain things on the projection computer – more on that later.

The software I ran is an open source project called Nightshade, which is a fork of Stellarium specifically for use in domes.  By using a combination of live keyboard commands in Nightshade and running scripts written in Nightshades scripting language that I wrote, I had a very powerful and flexible planetarium that I could use interactively to take the shows where ever the kids questions lead.

That interactivity is where the 2nd computer came in – running scripts in Nightshade requires going several levels deep in a menu and taking more time the I wanted.  That is for all the scripts except the demo which runs from a keyboard shortcut.  So I wrote a shell script to give me a menu of my scripts and rename whichever one I wanted to run “demo.sts.” so I could run it with the hotkey.

The only problem is that when Nighshade is running, it takes over the displays completely – no way to have a terminal open to run my script in.  So I brought the Macbook – I used it to SSH into the Nightshade computer and run my shell script.  So I used the Macbook to select scripts, and the MacbookPro right in Nightshade to do everything else.

It’s kind of a hack, but it worked great.

Try it yourself

By the way – If I’ve gotten you interested in trying to do something like this on your own, you can home build your own planetarium.  I particularly like the instructions on the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope site. You can use this with Nightshade, or with the MS WorldWide Telescope – which I highly recommend.  In fact I would have used it in my shows if I had known about it at the time – it’s not a replacement for Nightshade (in my view) but a great compliment to it, and an amazing piece of work.  Lots of fun on your desktop to – you don’t need to run it in a planetarium.

Here I am in front of the dome at the end of a long day of shows.

On to the Planets

Now I’m moving on to another astronomically related projection project – I’m creating giant projections that will accompany the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Holst’s suite The Planets.  The Performance will be on June 6th at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH.  I’m going to be blogging about my design process along the way, so keep an eye out for that, coming up soon.

Planetariums are magical places for many of us – I’d love to hear stories about your first or most memorable planetarium visit in the comments!

This is a massive choral work by composer Karl Jenkins, and is the single most powerful piece of music I have ever experienced.

You can listen to the opening movement here:

Sorry – the service that provided that (lala.com) has been shut down.  All I can suggest now is that you buy the album, but it’s totally worth it.

Click here to buy from iTunes!

Or click here to buy the CD or MP3s from Amazon

And just to give you a peak behind the curtains:

Here’s a photo of all of the computers and the main projections that made everything happen.

I have so much I want to say about this, and at the same time, I don’t want to say anything quite yet.

So I’ll do something different, and ask you to begin the conversation in the comments, then I’ll chime in there as well. There is so much here to talk about!

I’m not sure whether I should give Havi Brooks credit for pointing this out in her Item! post this week or not.

I think she would appreciate it, so I will. I mean, she does have her own duck after all.

With a title like "Crush It" I couldn't resist

In any case, I started to hear lots of positive thoughts about this new book, so I went audible.com and downloaded the audio book. Audio books are my preferred way of reading almost everything, but in this case I strongly recommend you get the audio book even if that’s not normally your preference. I will get to why I say that in a minute.

This book is about passion. Of course the subtitle tells us that it’s about making money from our passion, but more importantly, it’s about how living from your passion is the way to be happy. Gary himself as the ultimate example of this. I found his passion both enjoyable and contagious, now some will say that he’s over the top, and he is over the top. The thing is, this is the real Gary. I have no doubt about it in my mind, it’s who he is. He talks about this in the book, and how important it is to be genuine to you are and your own style.

The book is really about how to create a brand around yourself, who you really are and your passion, mostly using social media. This is illustrated very well by Gary’s own story, and examples from other people who have been successful. As I read this last sentence, I realize that “creating a brand around yourself” can sound like something a used car salesman would do. This couldn’t be further from the truth. What Gary teaches is all about real honesty with yourself, and with everyone you relate with. It’s about being genuine at the deepest level.

So, why do I recommend the audio book rather than the print version?

When Gary went to record this book, he was so passionate and so into what he’s talking  about that he couldn’t stay on the script. For me, many places where he riffs off of what is in the printed text are some of the best parts of the audio book, it gives you everything that’s in the printed book plus bonus insights.

For me though, the single best part of this book, particularly the audio book, is the power with which Gary’s passion comes through. I found this really inspirational, it was really helpful to me at a time that I was a little bit down about what I was doing online. Now as I say, Gary style is over-the-top and this will bother some people. But, it’s who he is and though it took me a little while to get into it, I ended up really loving it and loving him.

So, if this sounds appealing, check out Garry Vaynerchuk’s Crush It, either in audio or print.

What do you think about Garry, and Crush It?  I’d love to hear in the comments.

Note that the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and I get a tiny commission from Amazon if you decide to buy through one of them.

Overall, I loved this experience. We had what I would consider an optimal viewing experience since the museum was almost deserted during our weekday visit, I can imagine that during busy times, such as school vacation weeks, it could be much more difficult to see everything. It is important going into this exhibit to understand what it is: it’s an exhibit of many costumes and some props used in making the films, they are displayed in small stage sets which do a great job of giving them context and creating an environment. It’s important to understand though, this exhibit is not about the making of the films. There is no look behind the scenes or education about the filmmaking process. The optional audio guide is primarily the voices of the artists who created the various costumes and props telling stories and talking about aspects of the process, while these clips were mostly very interesting, they were too short for my taste, I wanted more.

The creators of the exhibit done a terrific job of creating environments for the objects to live in that help you to feel the context, and I found this extremely effective. The objects and costumes themselves ranged from interesting to magnificent and extraordinary. We spent close to an hour and a half touring the exhibit at a very leisurely pace, looking at objects in detail and listening to each audio guide recording. Both of us enjoyed the experience very much. My basic recommendation is, if you have a chance to see this exhibit and it’s appealing to you, do it.

Spoilers begin here

in my post yesterday I talked about how important I think the opening of an exhibit is, at least to me. The opening of this Harry Potter exhibit was terrific. After our tickets were taken and we got our audio guides, we were instructed to wait in a queue line. (We were the only ones in the line.) Shortly, a British sounding gentleman in costume led us into a sort of courtyard area. At the front of it was a small stage, on the stage was a stool, and on the stool was an object which could only be the sorting hat. We were each called up to sit on the stool, the sorting hat was placed on our heads, and we were each sorted (both Gryffindors.)

Then the doors were opened to a building façade, and we were led into a dark room with about eight beautifully backlit posters for the films. We quickly discovered that these were not really posters, but rather large high-definition video screens mounted sideways. Shown on the screens is an excellent montage of moments from the films, clips interplay between screens driven by sound effects and the familiar and powerful musical score. I really enjoyed it. As the montage built to its climax, the whole right wall of the space rolled up like a giant window shade leaving us looking into a bright light, as were called forward into this newly revealed space we discovered that the bright light is the headlight of the Hogwarts Express locomotive. Another British gentleman quickly ushered us through that space and into the exhibit itself. Quite an opening.

The next thing we saw was a short hallway filled with portraits some of which were video screens containing animated ghosts — I thought that this was mildly interesting but because the video screens looked so different from the stationary portraits I did not experience any suspension of disbelief, or sensation that I was looking at anything other than a video screen.

From the air began the incredible array of tableaux of costumes and props in appropriate settings which I described above. About two thirds of the way through was a full size, walk-through set of Hagrid’s cottage. This served as a transition into the darker characters and the Forbidden Forest. Here in addition to costumes were full-size models of some of the creatures which were created primarily in computer graphics. All very cool.

Then we came around a corner into a small sort of anti-room with walls covered in notices in individual frames just like in the film, this was the entrance to the Great Hall. The Great Paul was not a full set, but rather a set of tableaux arranged to suggest the space (of course creating a full great Hall would’ve required more space than the entire exhibition probably used.) In this space were displayed the most lavish costumes, primarily from the Yule Ball scene.

At the exit of the Great Hall was another short hallway of the portraits some of which were video screens, the ghosts in the video screens were all applauding. I was somewhat disappointed to discover that this was the end of the exhibit. After the incredible themed opening experiences, I was expecting some sort of grand finale which never came. I’m sure the intention was that the Great Hall would fill that purpose, but it just didn’t work for me. I had actually been wondering in the back of my mind as I walked through the exhibit what the finale would be. I thought I had figured it out, nowhere in the exhibit was there a reference to Dumbledore’s office, and I thought that somehow we would find ourselves they are with something cool happening as a finale. Instead we got a gift shop. Now don’t get me wrong, it was a very nice gift shop, with lots of cool things, but it wasn’t the finale I was looking for.

Overall I would still give the exhibit a rating of eight on a scale of 1 to 10, which from someone who is as picky as I am is actually quite a complement, and better than I expected it to be.

Have you seen the exhibit? Would you like to? I’d love to hear it in the comments.