Messages

856

Tools of the Trade / Re: PROPS: Aerosol Cans

« on: Oct 10, 2010, 07:00 pm »

I would caution against using compressed air on the face.  When held at funny angles (or running empty) those cans can produce an ultra-cold burst that isn't terribly safe against the skin/eyes.

857

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROPS: The hardest thing you've had to do in the dark.

« on: Oct 02, 2010, 05:09 pm »

Ha!  In retrospect I think I meant to say "fast, silent and ... potatoes" but failed at the hasty rhetoric.  If you like it, though, by all means you can use either.  The glitchy version has a nice amount of redundant irony.

858

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROPS: The hardest thing you've had to do in the dark.

« on: Oct 01, 2010, 08:48 pm »

Morning Star back in '99.  We had to quickly set a feast/banquet table in a tight area for a family of 10 in plain sight of the audience.  Candles, real perishables, some prop food, special people got special glasses - all of it.  We had a crew of ... I want to say six or eight people and the preset for that particular shift was about a page and a half long.  The transition came during a moment where absolutely NOTHING was happening on stage and the LD didn't think it right to pull the audience out of the moment in a period piece by making them watch a visible crew.  So, we didn't get blue glow, we didn't get anything.  Just a whole lot of interns trying desperately to be fast, speedy, and not fling instant potatoes everywhere.

859

The Green Room / Re: BEST ADVICE YOU CAN GIVE

« on: Sep 28, 2010, 02:43 pm »

My current personal favorite:

If your choices do not dignify you, then you must dignify your choices.

860

The Green Room / Re: Elect the new SMNet feature!

« on: Sep 26, 2010, 11:34 pm »

OK, the IM system has been implemented.  (Controlled by the chat bar at the bottom of your screen.)  It still needs a lot of tweaking and I can certainly entertain feedback on it via PM.  Some things to know about it:

1. Multiple chat windows currently appear on top of each other.  Not much I can do about this, although you can drag the chat boxes around.
2. If you have multiple tabs of SMNet open in your browser, the newest messages may wind up only showing up in one tab of chat. 
3. Chats are updated every 10 seconds in order to keep server load at a reasonable level.  The "Who's Online" window only updates when you move from page to page or refresh the page.
4. It came with some widgets that let you share pages on Facebook & Twitter, along with quick bookmarks to the homepage and your message inbox. 
5. It's only implemented in the default theme.  Fans of Overview and Mystic Jade, I know the themes are kind of broken right now, I'll get to that as I can.
6. Old messages are saved for 24 hrs.
7. Works in IE8, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari (for PC).  Haven't rebooted into OSX or Linux yet to test, will do shortly.
8. Mute chat sounds using the little speaker button in the bottom right corner.
9. Invisible peeps show up in the list of Who's Online.  Working on this.  Right now. Fixed.
10. Most recent chats appear at the top of the window.  This is backwards from what I'm used to and needs a little adjusting.

More as I learn it...

861

The Green Room / Re: Elect the new SMNet feature!

« on: Sep 26, 2010, 06:35 pm »

OK, we've got a tie here! Looks like you guys get two toys. 

I've implemented the "like post" system already.  It should be pretty self explanatory for those who use Facebook.  The "Like" button is at the top right of each post, with a little red star next to it. 

A few notes.  You cannot "like" your own posts.  You can see all of the posts you've Liked in your profile, as well as all the "likes" you've received from others.

The IM system is a more complex and will take a bit longer to implement- I want to install it on my dev server first and make sure it doesn't crash the server before I make it live for you guys.

862

Tools of the Trade / Re: PROPS: Aerosol Cans

« on: Sep 19, 2010, 06:05 pm »

I'd actually suggested the same idea before the site got reset.  Seems to be a valid option!

863

The Green Room / Elect the new SMNet feature!

« on: Sep 19, 2010, 03:26 am »

You guys have had to put up with quite a bit of hassle with the outage today.  I feel bad. 

I'd make cookies but they don't work so well online.  So I guess I'll just have to give you guys a new feature to play with instead.  Help me choose which one?

This poll will run for a week. 

864

SMNetwork Archives / New spam prevention features

« on: Sep 19, 2010, 02:13 am »

With the growing popularity of SMNetwork in search engines such as Google, we are attracting increasing attention from the less savory parts of the internet - bots, spammers, etc.  I've been trying to keep up with the surge manually, deleting 3-5 suspicious accounts each week, but the attacks have become too frequent.  I've had to add in some automated tools to help catch the bad guys.

1. All new registrations are now compared against the Stop Forum Spam database, by username, email address and IP.  On rare occasion new members may find that I need to activate their account by hand - I'll normally do this within 24 hours once I'm sure you're a real person. (Sending a quick email to me at kscleaves at smnetwork dot org informing me of your humanity may speed things up a bit if you're stuck in activation limbo.)

2. Additionally, I've gone through and deleted 205 member accounts that verified positively against the Stop Forum Spam database.  I made quite sure to only delete members without any posts to their name.  If I accidentally deleted your account, I'm very sorry and I owe you a cookie.

3. Lastly, all visitors are checked against the similar Project Honeypot database of web truants, bots, harvesters and spammers.  If your computer (or someone on your network) has been behaving badly within the past couple of months, you may be greeted by a nasty grey and red screen saying that you have a virus.  If you're a real human being, don't worry, we don't mean to yell at you.  (Although we'd like to have a word with your system administrator...)  Just complete a basic math problem and you can go back to SMNetworking as normal.

I do apologize if any of these measures drive you totally batty or cause you to throw things at your monitor.  However, given that 6% of our member base was made up of robots and spammers until now, I think these changes are generally for the best and will help keep our tidy little community free of useless noise.

865

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROFESSIONALISM: Producer in the cast

« on: Sep 18, 2010, 11:33 pm »

I apologize that the previous replies to this post have been lost in the 4 day rollback.  Please see the most recent post on the Announcements board for details.

866

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: DEAR ABBY: Save me from my micromanaging PM!

« on: Sep 01, 2010, 06:38 pm »

In any case with correspondence, there is a certain level of trust between the correspondents and an assumption of confidentiality.  If that status quo is not in place within a workplace environment, IMHO this should be made plain to everyone who is likely to be involved.

Therefore, I would make it plain to everyone who corresponds with you that your email dialogues are not confidential and are subject to ongoing review by your supervisors.  Additionally, I would noise about and ask if others in the company are subject to the same requirements.  If they aren't, I would insist on fair and equivalent treatment of all employees at the same level as yourself.  (In other words, if the boss wants to review all of YOUR emails, then she should be reviewing the emails of the design team, the TD, the ME, the finance staff, the box office, etc.)

867

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / DEAR ABBY: Save me from my micromanaging PM!

« on: Sep 01, 2010, 02:09 pm »

This "Dear Abby" post is made on behalf of a member who wishes to remain anonymous.

Dear Abby:
The Producing Manager for the show I'm currently working on has   insisted that I copy her on EVERY SINGLE e-mail I send about the show,   to anyone.  If she hears that I sent, "Dear Joe, You left your sweater   in the rehearsal hall; I've put it in the props cabinet for safe-keeping   until you're back in, tomorrow," without copying her, I get yelled at.    Copying her on said e-mail, I would get yelled at for not using a   "respectful tone" and not being "friendly enough."  I've begun copying   her on all e-mails, like she has demanded, but now my in-box is getting   glutted with her suggestions, and "friendly critiques", and flat out   "you're doing that wrong," in response to EVERY e-mail I send, as well   as her answering questions I asked other people.

I've been a   professional SM for eight years and a student SM for six years before   that.  I'm a child of the computer age.  I know how to send e-mails, do   paperwork, and DO MY JOB, but she's making me anxious about sending out   even freakin' rehearsal reports.  As far as I can tell, she doesn't   actually need the information she's demanding, except that it makes her   feel important.  I want to tell her that some of this stuff is none of   her business (i.e. the sweater example) but she's proven, on past   productions, that she can and will make my life miserable if I upset her   view of how things should be, and it's WAY too easy to do that.  It's   getting to the point that I don't want to work at this theatre, any   more, but it's one of the few in town that pays approximately a living   wage.

Suggestions, oh wise gurus of SMNet?

868

The Green Room / Re: Funny definitions

« on: Aug 30, 2010, 11:02 pm »

Glad y'all liked the Whobits. 

Margin of promptness: The difference between the time you'll actually need an actor in rehearsal and the time you actually give them to arrive. Increases proportionately for habitually tardy actors and those with very long/operatic warmup needs.

869

Employment / Re: When is it OK to work for free?

« on: Aug 25, 2010, 02:11 am »

At the peak of my career, after 6 years in Chicago, I would pull in $500 for the entire rehearsal process (4-5 weeks if you include tech), and then about $75 per performance.  Now, bear in mind that this was non-union and that the designers would definitely pull down more.  However, the designers I was working with easily had decades more experience than I did. Like many here, I never worked completely for free after I graduated from college, but the payscale was definitely not enough to live on without a day job on contract after contract.

870

Employment / Re: When is it OK to work for free?

« on: Aug 24, 2010, 06:51 pm »

Dallas, that's pretty much the standard non-union rate in Chicago, and has been since I got here in 1998.  And I had to do laundry, run boards and maintain both set & props for nearly all of my gigs out here.

However, if things are still as they were when I stepped out of active theatre in 2002, the majority of the actors aren't getting paid anything at all, only the techs are making any sort of income.  However, most non-union shows out here rehearse in the evenings and expect all staff to also be working a day job (or at least they did a few years ago).