I’m working on a new and improved theme for the lighting page.  It’s still a bit rough because I don’t have time to finish it today, but I think it looks promising!

I spent part of the afternoon wrestling with LAPACK integration in a C++ program, using the unofficial Boost bindings. I learned a couple of interesting things. test.C is a file that demonstrates them. 1. You need to create column-major matrices to pass to LAPACK. The subtle part about this is that the matrices are internally stored as column-major (like Fortran) but are accessed like row-major matrices (like C). In other words, even when you declare A as column-major, A(3,5) refers to the third row and fifth column of A. This was not obvious to me. 2. The LAPACK routines may modify the matrices that are passed to them. For example, when using gesv(A,B) to solve a system of linear equations, the matrix B is modified to contain the solution values–this is obvious. It is not obvious, at first, that the matrix A is also modified (and I don’t know what useful information it contains). 3. There does not seem to be any binding to the specialized LAPACK solvers for banded and tri-diagonal matrices. I would like to know why, since my matrix is tri-diagonal and it can probably be solved considerable more quickly.

Today I was reminded again of the need for a new kind of technical drawing software.  Here is the problem I am facing: I want to create a vector drawing of a three dimensional structure.  Right now, I can either create it in CAD and export a bitmap, or I can manually draw a 3-D representation using 2-D vector software such as Dia or Xfig.  For publication-quality graphics, the first approach is usually out.  The second approach works, but what if I spend an hour drawing, only to realize that I should have chosen a different perspective or viewpoint to show a critical feature of the drawing?  I have to modify the entire drawing just to change the viewpoint.  Or, what if I need to show two views to capture all the details? I have to create both from scratch. I envion a new type of tool, or CATD (Computer Aided Technical Drawing).  My vision starts with a 3-D CAD tool, which could be built around lines, points, and surfaces (like AutoCAD) or a solid modeling kernel (like SolidWorks).  The user should have the ability to choose surfaces to be transparent or solid, and create cut planes to show internal features.  However, the 3-D model is only the first step. Once the user has created the model and chosen a viewpoint that shows its important features, the 3-D model is projected onto a 2D surface to create a vector drawing that can be further manipulated.  Ideally, the 2-D vectors created from each “object” in the CAD model would remain grouped together for easy manipulation.  The final output would be a publication-quality PostScript, PDF, or SVG file. I don’t know if this is commercially available, but it certainly isn’t available as open source.  As a starting point, I propose creating a plugin for Blender that fulfills this purpose.  It would take the 3-D model, as displayed on the screen, and create a vector 2-D representation that can be imported into other software for manipulation. Ultimately, the tool should allow users to import different types of CAD models.  The text should be somehow integrated with LaTeX for seamless typesetting of equations and numbers.

I spent today organizing my personal finances in GnuCash. I also spent a few hours customizing a report, which unfortunately means hacking in Scheme, a “dialect” of LISP. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like LISP/Scheme quite a bit. What I don’t like is writing code in “normal” languages, like C++ and Python, all week long and then switching to Scheme. Scheme has a totally different syntax and requires a different way of thinking about a problem. Normal language: result = myfunction (argument1, argument2) Scheme code: (myfunction (argument1 argument2)) If you have never seen a LISP language, find one and check it out. Here are the links I always use:

Nothing too exciting this weekend in the lighting department. In a change from last time, two Studiospots were flown from a pipe just in front of the stage. I don’t think they’re real useful in that position because they’re too close to the stage to really light a person, and we normally don’t use enough haze to make the beams really visible. I used them to create patterns on the white backdrop, but you can’t see them very well in this picture. We did manage to get some good coordination between the lighting colors and the the background graphics. Here’s another example of how the camera changes the look of the colors. In this case, the  camera has increased its sensitivity to capture the darker portions of the image, which caused the blue and amber lights on the backdrop to appear much more intense than they actually were. In reality, they were light pastel colors. I need to experiment with my camera to find out if one of the metering modes will improve this.

I’m of the lighting operators/designers at Discovery Church in Orlando, FL. I’ve been doing lighting, off and on, since 2002. Unfortunately I didn’t get a digital camera until November 2006 so I don’t have much of a record of the early years. Now I’m trying to photograph everything I work on. It’s partly to help myself improve as a lighting designer, partly for fun, and hopefully somebody else benfits too.  I do try the occasional  “artistic” shot, but primarily I’m concerned with documenting the look rather than taking the perfect photo.  Thus, the performers tend to be blurry because I’m using a long exposure (and no flash, of course) to capture the whole stage.

I am a Senior Pre-Sales Cloud Engineer/Solutions Architect with SADA, an Insight Company. I help customers take full advantage of Google Cloud (Workspace, Maps, and Google Cloud Platform) by providing consultative advice and scoping professional services engagements. I work with mid-sized corporations to large enterprises across a variety of industry verticals, but primarily in high-compliance areas such as fintech and information security.

Previously, I was a Principal Consultant and co-founder at Rootwork InfoTech LLC, a professional services business meeting IT infrastructure needs of small to mid-sized organizations. I sold my share of the business to my business parter and co-founder Mike Soule, and he continues to operate the business. If your organization is “too small” to engage with the major IT services companies, but you need a high level of enterprise-grade infrastructure expertise, please reach out to Mike at Rootwork.