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Hi all,

Been a while since the last blog eh? Well I'm sure you're not holding your breaths, you know with billions of nuggets of information streaming at you non-stop from Facebook etc.

Had a great Christmas season. Better than I expected.

Had a gig in January where the new lighting software failed to launch. we discovered that this was because "Good old" Microsoft had put out a major update to windows 10 and it rendered the driver useless....Man! Don't tell me I should have Apple instead. I've heard too many bad stories about that company from many sources and besides, I don't have a spare grand and a half to spend on one laptop with the same hardware inside as a £300.00 Windows version.

Anyhoo, we sorted it out in the end and with a recent School disco I got to try it out. Wow! I wish I'd done this earlier! And I would have, but I needed a guiding hand/Guru to show me what the hell I needed to do. My friend Stuart from After Dark discos stepped in after seeing me at a gig with sound-to-light effects going a little bit too quickly to match the mood of the music some of the time. Liike I say, I was aware of this after updating all my lighting - I used to have more control before, but I needed someone who knew the subtle art of DMX (digital multiplex) ie: how to program your entire disco lighting rig from a software program on your laptop.

It's a bit like when I was working out how to run a digital music studio and how to get it to communicate with my keyboards and other modules (Back in the nineties - Aah, the memories!), but not quite as complicated. It's all based on channels and which ones to assign to your equipment. Once you've worked that out, the rest isn't too bad. It's mainly about writing new lighting sequences and how long each light flash/effect will last for in the sequence. A bit time consuming setting it all up, but worth it for the after effect.

So I'm looking forward to an even greater lightshow this year with the new set up - More intelligent you might say.