Opening night and ensuing saga...

The opening reception was lovely. Of course my parents were there, and look how happy they look! They don't get what I do, but amazingly, they are the first to buy memberships, donate cash and show up with flowers. They even come to Balcone Art Society General Meetings, go figure. I am lucky. But we can't talk about art, because, as my mum says, "It's just not my thing". Which makes me crazy because how can that be?! When I was learning welding at school and doing math for cantilever tables, my dad couldn't understand why I didn't get my Engineer's ticket, as both he and my brother did.

Anyway, I was a 1/2 hour late for my own opening, for reasons that will be stated under the "saga" part of this entry, but the silver lining was that I had completely avoided waiting on the first guests, and man, do I hate that part. I was shocked that there was a steady stream of people, and that I didn't know at least 1/2 of them, which is always a good sign because you can always count on your posse to show up, but people who come out of genuine interest are special. I had so much fun. Nathan and I let loose and apparently really needed to, on account of the "saga", and a small, yet lovely group accompanied me to the greedy pig for a late sup.

The pics you see here are of the gallery installation, for some reason, a.k.a. the rain, no one took pics of the exterior projection, even though it is clear that people went for a look. Perhaps some will show up.

These two photos absolutely amuse me.



The Saga...Well, the exterior projection has not been without glitches, and it has been, if I didn't take my work so seriously, a comedy of errors, first starting with only 1.7 GB hard drive space and a project that was to begin at 6.7 GB. Of course, this most irritating surprise was not discovered until the hour before opening, and required poor Nathan to re-write the code that was designed to automatically add new material, protecting the hard drive from crashing. Thank goodness Nathan is able to work such magic and we were only 1/2 hour late for our own opening. Not bad considering we were prevented from running the final tests remotely during the previous week. And, because, we were unable to run the final tests remotely in the final week before the opening, has, not surprisingly, led to a number of evenings of mishaps. So far, Friday went well, except the the project was not interactive, Saturday we were down, Sunday, and Monday --spot on. However, on Tuesday, everything came to a halt. Sadly, Tuesday was also a day of personal drama, and isn't that always that way, a major thing goes to shit when you are least able to deal. Thankfully, I have amazing friends and Nola ran me around town during the day in my little red Jetta on account that I was falling over with dizzy spells, and Alan, drove me down in the evening to a failed attempt to preform a fix. At 9:30, defeated, I took a cab home.

Today was fantastic. Nathan and I had a tranquil afternoon at Shawna's, where we were able to preform all sorts of tests to rule things out. There seemed to be one video clip that was initiating a bug in the player. Apparently, and frustratingly, this particular bug was eliminated in the next version of the player, but unfortunately, the old operating system on the mac we were given to use does not support this new software, so work around the bug we did, or rather, Nathan did. Then we discovered that when the projector turned off last night, it went into "stand by" mode. A tricky thing that happens after hours and hours of playing. Next we retested by sending a new video, and as we had no way of attributing exactly what was triggering the bug, Nathan decided to re-visit a remote access channel so that we can reboot from afar. However, Shaw doesn't allow for those ports to be open unless you pay for the "business" level of service. So, as a shot in the dark, we removed the sound clips, and that seemed to do the trick for tonight. After dinner at Hon's and driving Nathan home, I went back to Gastown to send one last file, crossed my fingers, held my breath, and the thing did NOT crash. So it is only a matter of checking it daily to make sure it runs. With that in mind, I will be sitting in the gallery, keeping vigil, should you wish to come by while I am there.

Oh ya, and the books are ready too. I will deliver them sometime in the afternoon.

Rina Liddle signing out.