Week 132 (North Patio, Part 1)

The North Patio is something very special to me.  It was not part of the initial drawings, but was an element of the design that grew organically as the studio took shape.  By opening up some space beyond the booth windows, it helps to balance the scale of the nature that surrounds the building with the rooms that can look out into it.  Moreover, it provides an excellent place to enjoy the beautiful north elevation of the studio, which is not so easy to appreciate when you are knee-deep in meadow.

The construction of the North Patio is relatively straightforward, except for the fact that in addition to the 1000+ sq ft of water run-off that it creates itself, it catches an additional 3000+ sq ft of water run-off from the north-facing roof facets.  All of this had led to some extensive drainage planning and implementation, most of which was completed (for the patio) last week.  This week, then, is the small matter of just preparing the forms into which the concrete will be poured, and then pouring and working the actual slab.  Here’s where we started the week:

And here is where we finished:

Naturally, there’s much more to this story, and the many other tasks that were completed this week…

Continue reading “Week 132 (North Patio, Part 1)”

Week 130 (QR Wires Dressed, Part 1)

For several weeks the QR has been knee-deep in one sort of wire or another, like a meadow that’s grown well past the capabilities of the average lawnmower.  Here’s where we were three weeks ago, with about half of the wiring pulled:

And here’s where we are this week, with a good bit of the wires were dressed and the floor swept clean:

And I do mean clean:

Continue reading “Week 130 (QR Wires Dressed, Part 1)”

Glee? Not for me…

Last month after the buzz reached a fever pitch, I finally sat down to watch an episode of Glee.  I have not watched it since, but I have been thinking about why not.  I came across this blog posting, which begins:

The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox’s Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it’s surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned. But it does, and week after week, those zany Glee kids rack up the potential to pay higher and higher fines.

Indeed.

I’ve watched enough television to know that sometimes a deliberate distortion of reality is part of a show’s appeal.  The Office clearly (and hilariously) offends virtually every HR law on the books, but we’re in on the joke no matter how straight the actors play it.  In its day, Ally McBeal did the same thing with courtroom antics.  On the opposite side of humor, the TV drama 24 created a “hero” who could always be relied upon to use torture as an excuse to continue to protect a regime that condoned such illegal and reprehensible actions.  I never watched 24, but from all the advertising and imagery that surrounded that show, it was pretty clear they knew and the audience knew that the show was stepping over all sorts of legal, ethical, and moral lines, and that was quintessential to the drama.  Glee appears to be entirely tone-deaf when it comes to the subject of copyright:

In one recent episode, the AV Club helps cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester film a near-exact copy of Madonna’s Vogue music video (the real-life fine for copying Madonna’s original? up to $150,000). Just a few episodes later, a video of Sue dancing to Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 hit Physical is posted online (damages for recording the entirety of Physical on Sue’s camcorder: up to $300,000). And let’s not forget the glee club’s many mash-ups — songs created by mixing together two other musical pieces. Each mash-up is a “preparation of a derivative work” of the original two songs’ compositions – an action for which there is no compulsory license available, meaning (in plain English) that if the Glee kids were a real group of teenagers, they could not feasibly ask for — or hope to get — the copyright permissions they would need to make their songs, and their actions, legal under copyright law. Punishment for making each mash-up? Up to another $150,000 — times two.

[…]

It’s hard to imagine glee club coach Will Schuester giving his students a tough speech on how they can’t do mash-ups anymore because of copyright law (but if he did, it might make people rethink the law). Instead, copyright violations are rewarded in Glee — after Sue’s Physical video goes viral, Olivia Newton-John contacts Sue so they can film a new, improved video together.

If Glee decides to bring copyright into its storyline, and treat it as intelligently and as sensitively as it attempts to treat other social issues, then perhaps I’ll watch.  Until then, no Glee for me.

Week 127 (RPG Soundwalls)

Last week we got enough good weather to make a start on the masonry walls that will ultimately separate our air conditioning condenser units from the rest of the studio environment.  By making the blocks that face the units out of RPG DiffusorBlox, we can dramatically reduce the noise pollution of the condenser units, bringing greater peace both our neighbors and our own environment:

Continue reading “Week 127 (RPG Soundwalls)”

Week 126 (Framing the Annex)

Three weeks ago we started putting down wall plates, and now the Annex is mostly framed!  Here’s a view from inside the Annex Control Room showing that not only are our framing members all up, but we’ve also got the IsoMax clips installed into all the rafters for the resilient channel:

Also of note are the two layers of sheetrock we’ve installed on the back side of the western half of the rear wall.  If you have been following the blog closely, you may have noticed that unlike virtually all of the walls in the Main building, which have resilient channels on at least one side of the framing or another, we are not doing this in the Annex: we don’t need to. Continue reading “Week 126 (Framing the Annex)”