The evidence

Well, the Christmas cake is eaten, the snow has melted, the kids are back at school, and I've just cut together all the footage from my secret filming shenanigans. Behold!

A few questions remain:

• The Wise Men reside in the loft. How did they open the loft hatch? They must be wise indeed!
• How is it they always know where the manger is? A small internal star? Incredibly precise maps? Sat-nav?
• Where did the Wise Men learn how to operate heavy (Lego) machinery?
• Why did the living room camera fail to record? Sabotage???
• What will they get up to next year?
• What should I do with this evidence now? They have committed no crime, and to try to stop them would seem (at best) unsportsmanlike.

I'm not sure I have answers for any of these, but if I come up with anything, I'll post it here.

Concern mounts

As Christmas nears, and we plan to go touring the country visiting relatives and the like, I have some concerns regarding certain 'visitors' to the house around this time of year. I refer, of course, to our Three Wise Men from our Nativity set. These fellows, when left to their own devices, can get up to all sorts of mischief. They will use any means necessary to reach the rest of the crew. Last year I found them fashioning a rudimentary belay system to better manage the stairs - as you can imagine, with all the new housemates, I'm a little concerned as to what they'll get up to!
To that end, I'm planning on rigging the house with cameras to catch these 'wise' men red-handed, and hold a formal court proceeding if any property damage should occur. I'll post what I find on here early in the new year.

...and we shall name him: MiniSalt

or: What I did in my holidays

So, back at work after the Saltmine SummerSalt Short Break (henceforth referred to as MiniSalt).

My thoughts? Well, I have to say, I really enjoyed myself.

The work started on Monday morning, collecting (we thought) everything extra that we needed to keep me plyed with toys for the duration: two very nice Sony cameras and the relevant control units, a backup Panasonic camera, multiple preview screens and exciting vision mixers.

This was followed by, well, some typical Saltmine faffing before our departure to the Pioneer Centre which happened more or less on time.

So, after arriving at the centre, what followed was the most intense get-in I've ever experienced. We had roughly 5 hours to transform two empty halls into the adult and youth venues.

A brief summary of what went into my (the youth) venue will suffice:

2 dimmer racks, 2 MAC 250s, 2 Studio 250s, 8 par cans, a zero88 Frog 2 for the control of these.

Standard sound rack (MD, CD, graphics, compressor, effects), speakers (Shermans), 2x radio mics, Soundcraft LX7

Laptop for presentations/worship songs, scan convertor, dvd player, preview monitor, Edirol vision mixer (after we couldn't find the shiny Panasonic EX-50 Mark was certain we'd packed; it was later located in Dudley and came up on Tuesday), projector, 14ft screen.

So, that was our venue. Also there were drapes thrown up, a yamaha P120 stage piano (although how it can claim to be a stage piano when it has built-in speakers, I don't know), and a gazebo erected in the corner for merchandise.

On to the main (adult) venue. Oh, they were having fun up there. By the time we'd set up our venue, they'd managed to sort out the staging (lots and Lots of steel deck), had some of the tech in, and were hanging lamps off the truss. Also there were involved conversations about starcloth going on between the members of STC.

We ran some cables, hung a few more lamps, raised the truss and then went for dinner.

Now, I'm sorry to say that food is something the Pioneer Centre didn't manage particularly well. I don't know if it would have got better if we'd been there a little longer (at Ellesmere it took a few days for the kitchen staff to warm to us), but the organisation wasn't great, they didn't seem to have the right quantities of everything, and I'm reliably informed that the vegetarian options were poor. Still, there was generally enough of it, and I wasn't there for the food.

After dinner, a frantic period was spent setting up computers, focussing lights, and then back over to the youth venue ready for the first night. It was something of a baptism of fire, as we hadn't determined whether LiveWords was installed or not (it was, but it took us a while to work this out), we weren't quite sure where all the music they wanted was located, and of course, we weren't sure what the kids would be like. Suffice to say that frantically typing out lyrics to a DVD into a two-line powerpoint file that I could mix with the DVD itself wasn't exactly fun, but worked OK. The kids were generally fine, but were obviously quiet as they usually are on a first night.

More later.