If you’re a concert junkie like myself, you know about PollStar.  PollStar is a website with pretty much all of the road shows on the road at any one time, complete with pictures, tickets, locations, dates, and information about the tours.

I consider this post to be in the “Tools of the Trade” section, because it is a vital place to get information about what’s on the road.  Check it out, spend a few minutes there and see if your favorites have started hitting the road yet.

Good Morning!

I hope that all of JimOnLight’s readers had a great Thanksgiving, or at least had some good food over the holiday.  It doesn’t have to be turkey, of course…

Did you do something outrageous over the holiday?  My wife and I moved across town on Wednesday, and spent a majority of Thanksgiving day cleaning the old place and unpacking.  Were you on a cool gig, or did you work on something awesome?  Post in the comments!

I just read an absolutely fantastic article by Peter Maradudin about the amount of hours and money that go into being a lighting designer.  Please go read this article!

I have a friend who is out on his first tour right now, and he is having a really hard time adjusting to his schedule and sleeping on a rock-and-roll coach.  He’s on a Prevost, which I always thought was a nice bus, and sleeping came naturally - but he is having a hard time sleeping in his coffin-like bunk.

Nathan, the image below is for you.  Click for larger size.
Anyone got any advice for my friend?  Post in the comments.

Larry Zoll wrote an excellent article on Live Design Online that you should check out.  It gives a good insight into the world of designing as your sole source of income.  Check it out.  Thanks for that, Larry.

My wife and I bought a new DSLR a few weeks ago, and I took it on my trip to LDI.  I’m going to try to post one or two of these a day, and I have about 30 groups of photos of different booths and such - LDI 2008 was a great time.  I got to meet Mike Zinman of The Zinman Co, I got to hang out with old friends, and I saw a heckuva lot of great technology.  There’s some amazing LED technology out right now by companies like iLight and Traxon.  Don’t worry, I have pictures of their stuff too!

Here’s some general LDI images - if you were there, leave a comment!  I bet we passed right by each other eleventy times.

The Arri booth and the Strong booth to the right - that’s either Barco or Lasernet to the left (the green).

The “LDI guy.”

Vectorworks, and *I think* the back of Clay Paky’s booth.

AC Lighting’s area.  Cool LED CYC fixtures.  More on that later.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

I’ve been traveling around the world as a designer for nearly 12 years now. As technology has advanced and the world has become more interesting, my travel habits have evolved alongside. A 4 hour layover can be a drag, as can a 5 minute plane change somewhere like Minneapolis/St. Paul airport with its eleventy million moving walkways and big distance between terminals and gates.

I always try to get to the airport a little early, for example, to get coffee and snag a seat in the gate by a power outlet before the crowds snag them all.

What wonders and annoyances have you come to embrace over the years? Post in the comments, share with everyone!

When we’re spending all day at that console or at front of house with our programmer, there’s always that “little black bag” full of survival gear that we need to have to “survive.”

You know what I’m talking about.

It’s that kit that you never forget to put into your suitcase or laptop bag, and sometimes it’s a large portion of the suitacase or laptop bag - full of flash drives, console software, 1.44 floppies (if you’re a Hog guy like me), gum, granola bars, etc.

What’s your lighting designer/programmer kit made up of?

Mine is sometimes complicated, sometimes simple.  I have one large group of stuff that I try to modify for each away venue if I have the luxury:

• Chewy granola bars, the peanut kind
• 2 X 1GB and 2X 2GB flash drives, with my WYSIWYG and Vectorworks dongles
• USB Lava Lamp, because it rocks
  It’s the one that ESP Vision was giving away at 2006’s LDI in Vegas
• 2 yellowpads for notes, lots of fine point sharpies
• Nalgene bottle
• Coffee mug
• various cables - USB, FireWire, iPhone/iPod charge cable and adaptor, network cable
• iPod and iPhone
• laptop and charger, obviously
• 40GB USB HDD
• The Pill Pack:
  Ibuprofen for the headaches
  Naproxen for the backaches
  Melatonin for when you HAVE to sleep, under the FOH riser
• an LED gooseneck lamp - like the one they sell for clamping onto a grill
• converted LED Maglite
• Ginseng

How about you folks?  What’s your FOH kit like?  Please, post in the comments below.  I really want to know!
Extra points for images of your FOH kits’ contents.  Email me, I’ll throw them into a post.