#234 - Richard Cadena

0:02 Hello and thank you for joining me today on Geese of Year Episode #234. Today's podcast is brought to you by Elation Elations Industry Standard 6 PAR series has received a cutting edge upgrade. The Six Plus PAR offers more output, A wider color spectrum and overall superior quality of light. Available with either seven times or 14 * 20 Watt LED's, the Six Plus PAR integrates seamlessly with original 6 PAR fixtures and available soon is the 6 Plus Bar, an upgrade of Elations Mainstay 6 Bar LED Batten. Available with either six times or 12 * 20 Watt LE DS, the Six Plus BAR features more output and an overall improved quality of light and houses the same LED engine as the Six Plus PAR for a perfect color match.

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1:50 Discover how Main Light can equip your next event by visiting Main light.com today and get a direct quote through their comprehensive online ordering platform back. I'm back.

2:30 And so again, episode #234 today. So yeah, yesterday was really good. 233 Episode 233 was Josh Allen, a guy who remarkably, I guess I didn't know as much about as I thought because I didn't even know that he lived in Scotland and so he was talking to us from Scotland yesterday. I hope you saw that podcast. It's very good. Josh is an interesting guy. He's involved in a lot of different stuff. I had no idea he was a Rep for ETC and for other companies. He had his own Rep firm at one point. You know the Josh that I know is the three LR Josh who I guess that's been around since God, I already forget it was just yesterday, but I think 2017. I hope I'm right.

3:16 Or maybe 2016 anyways. Good guy, check it out if you haven't heard 223. Great guy. I think he'll enjoy it. And so today it's actually Good Friday and hopefully, you know everyone's with their families and they're not working and recording podcast like I am. Actually Gearsource has been really busy today. It's the end of the month. So we're also doing a lot of that stuff. But yeah, so recording on Good Friday, by the time you hear this, it will be at least April. I think launch for this one is April 4th, which is next Thursday, I believe. So hopefully you'll hear that on that day and maybe within a few days of that.

3:59 But anyways, today's guest Richard Cadena, who's one of my favorite people. I like Richard a lot, very smart guy, way smarter than me. This is going to be tough. I'll have to really reach for Brain Cells on this one. Richard is an ETCP Recognized Trainer and ETCP Certified Entertainment Electrician with over 36 years of experience in live event production. And if you didn't know, he worked at High End Systems for a long time. That's where I got to know Richard. Richard is the author of Electricity for Entertainment, Electricians and Technicians 3rd Edition. Automated Lighting The Art and Science of Moving and Color Change, Changing Light. 3rd Edition lighting design for modern houses of worship. Focus on lighting technology.

4:47 He's written a bunch of books, basically, and they're all really smart books. As a freelance lighting designer and lighting consultant, Richard has worked on concert tours, television, theater, motion picture production, sporting events, and more. His latest projects include supplying battery and solar power for festival stages, lighting and basketball courts, lighting the basketball courts for the NBA playoffs, and lighting comedy clubs in Austin, TX. He's the technical editor for lighting and sound, I believe because the the symbols all got messed up on my screen here so I can't even read it.

5:27 He's I think it's for Plaza or lighting and sound. I'm sorry I got that one wrong. Media and a columnist for the same lighting and Sound America Lighting and Sound International and protocol magazines. He is a member of IATC local 2O5 in good standing and Richard is also in demand as a speaker and trainer. So if you are on Live Peace, I'll see you later. If you're listening to this or watching this on April 4th or after that time, then stick around. Cuz here comes Richard. Richard. Hey, Marcel, what's happening?

6:10 You are man. Good to see you. Hey, thanks. You're happening. You're happening. I I read your bio and stuff like Jesus, you know I had to take sips of water during your bio. It was so you know, and something funny happened and I'm really embarrassed cuz I couldn't remember the actual name of lighting in Sound America. And like, the characters got all jumbled up on on the the thing that I'm reading from. And I'm like, it says L and AMP semi, colon, SA Media. And I'm like, what the hell is that? Like, what am I supposed to say? So how did you read that? Yeah, I followed through that a little bit. But who the heck is calling Richard Kadena? It's probably your publisher.

6:55 Your publisher with another check. No, my stockbroker, there you go wanting to, yeah. Yeah, buy more, buy more. Something you know, AI stock, I guess. I don't know. Exactly. You know, I I definitely want to actually spend some time talking with you about AI, cuz if anybody had an opinion, I thought it'd be you. So it's one of my sort of highlighted topics that you didn't mention. I'm absolutely gonna. I've I've been having it having a good time with it. I probably use it differently than most people, but it's it's a lot of. Same with me, it's. Really interesting. Yeah. A lot going on there. Oh, I mean, yeah. So we'll, we'll get into that. I want to, I want to talk about a lot of stuff with you today. We haven't caught up, probably since probably since COVID I. Don't.

7:39 Yeah. I mean, no, we had, we did one, what, a year ago or so. But yeah, I think so. Yeah. Really. That recent? I think so. Jesus, maybe not. We talked about doing 1. I think that, I think that's what. Happened. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I think we talked. About doing one and then you got busy. It's hard to, it's hard to, It's hard to sort of poke a hole in your schedule like you're you're a very busy guy. Man, it's you know, you know how it is. It's either drought or flood. You know, Yeah, yeah. Feast or famine, Yeah. So starting from the top here. So, I mean, here's a funny story, by the way. So last week, was it last week?

8:22 No, it was the week before I had a a Austrian front of house engineer for a death metal band on Thomas. What the heck is Thomas's last name? I forget. But anyways, somehow Sarah got the notes mixed up. And so I'm reading from his notes and I'm like, OK, whatever. And so I put together the the sort of talking points that I wanted to go through and one of them was, So you just got off a Willie Nelson show, huh? And this guy, this guy's a death metal front house guy. And I'm like, this is weird. But hey, he said he did. It, yeah. He went, he went to Austin and he did a Willie Nelson gig and I'm like, that is bizarre, but that was obviously Richard Cadena. That that was me, me and and some guys from Ever Everlast or Everlast.

9:14 Sorry, not Everlast. OverDrive Energy Solutions. Yeah. So this was the 2nd year we did that festival. And you know, what we've been doing is we have been going in setting up solar farms and charging up big giant banks of batteries with inverters and powering stages with them. And these guys have been doing it for three or four or five years. And last year was my first show with them, the Willie Nelson, Willie Nelson's Luck Reunion Festival in Austin. It's not actually on his ranch outside of Austin. That's cool. Yeah. Oh, it's very cool. Yeah. And he's still performing. He's still performing.

9:54 Yeah. I mean, he's, he's lost a step in his voice, but it's somebody was talk. Somebody was saying that he's trying to tear a rapper, 'cause he kind of talks his lyrics. Now you know that's funny. How old is he now? Yeah. Oh God, what is he? I forget. He's he just had a big birthday, so I guess he was 90. I guess he's 91. Oh my goodness, how old is Willie Nelson? Come on, she didn't want to tell you. Just said it on. The screen, it says he's 9090. OK, well, his birthday. His birthday is coming up in April and he'll be 91.

10:35 Yeah, because they had a big birthday celebration last year at Hollywood Bowl and Snoop Dogg and everybody, you know, because that's what a. 90 year old guy wants at your birthday party, right? Exactly. I mean, I guess that's the whole weed culture thing or whatever. Right. Yeah, except he quit weed. And it was a big, big story in the news. He quit smoking weed. He's 90 years old, you know. Oh, Willie Nelson. Well, because because what's his name? Snoop did that, that like sort of spoof Super Bowl ad right. I'm off smoke or something. I'm, I'm, I forget how he worded it. And it was, it had nothing to do with smoking weed. You know, he's like, what are you kidding? I ain't stopping that. Anyways, go on.

11:19 So it was on his ranch and it's a festival and it's called Willie Nelson. It's called luck. Reunion. Yeah, yeah. And there it's, you know, it's there's there's the main stage, which is a stage line. I think it's a 360. It's the you know the big stage and we we powered the lighting and audio on that stage plus two other smaller stages plus a lot of vendors and the food court with with the batteries and inverters and where did last. Year come from who owns all that, the batteries and inverters and. Well, we we rent some of it and OverDrive owns a lot of it. So they build this stuff. I mean some of it. You'd be surprised how small a battery bank you need to power a small to medium sized stage. We literally can put them in Pelican cases. And yeah, so if you look at one of the stages and the stages maybe, you know, 25 by 20, something like that, it's not huge, but it's got LE DS moving lights and it's got a fog machine.

12:23 It's got a, you know, speakers on a stick. And if you look off stage left, there's a Pelican case that is powering the whole thing. And we charge, yeah, we charge that up and it'll run. You know, the stage runs from Dorser at 11 and they start playing about two and they run till 11 at night. And at the end of the night, we take that Pelican, put it on a golf cart, run it over to the solar farm, charge it back up or we swap it out if we have a spare and go the next night, that is. And yeah, yeah, so. And how much power is in that Pelican case? That's a 5 kW, so and you know that's the output. The the storage is a different story because, but what you can do is you can add another Pelican case that's just batteries to add the runtime, but you're limited by how much current you cannot put by the inverters in it. So there's an inverter, there's a battery bank, and then you just you can series the batteries, you can parallel the batteries.

13:30 So if you needed more output you you parallel them. If you want more runtime, you series them and as one battery drains down then the other charges it back up and you have an app so you can watch it the whole time. And you you make sure that you're not going to run short, You know if you're running short, you just go over there and between sets 'cause there's constant, you know the band will play for one hour, then they'll bring another band on. They don't have like a 5 minute turn around, but you have time to swap out or to add another battery if you need to. But and the first year we had no idea how it's going to work out because we didn't know what they were going to plug in or how long they're going to go. Nobody gave us you know equipment lists or run times or anything.

14:11 So we were it was a complete dark throw Marcel and you know so we we got through it very well. But this year we had all of the data from, from last year because we Datalog, we record everything. So we know now exactly what to expect and how much to bring, and it was just so much more relaxed this year. And get this on the mainstage last year we had two big battery units. These are huge. They're the the ones we used last year. I would, I think they're about 8 feet long, they're about 6 feet tall and about 5 feet wide and they weigh 6000 lbs. So picture a tow package generator, you know, like 150 kva generator, you know, except it doesn't have wheels 'cause we we fork it around on a lull. Big giant forklift, right?

14:59 But last year we had two of those. And what we would do is we would use, we put them in series so that they would drain. And we we, you know, we used a lot of the energy from the batteries, Most, most of it is idle time, you know, 'cause they do a line check at 10 in the morning and then they have the show at 9:00 at night from 11:00. But during the day, it's, it's draining down, you know, And then at the end of the night, then we'd fork it over the solar farm, charge it up in the day and we'd swap them out. You know, we would alternate them, leapfrog them. Well, this year we got a different type of battery inverter that was actually a smaller package, but it had 4 1/2 times as much energy in it.

15:43 More storage. Yeah. So. So we ran the entire festival. It was only it's a two day event. So two nights Willie comes out and plays and and you know, the bands are running all day long. But for two days we ran that one battery bank. We had a whole backup right next to it, so that if one got two, if it gets down to about 2025%, we we then recharge it from the other one. We'd never had to touch the spare, never touched it. It's. Crazy. It's crazy, Yeah. So you don't have. You don't have generators as backup backups, do you? Well, you know what we did last year because again we were, you know, we were kind of in an unknown situation last year.

16:26 We had triple redundancy, so we had the main battery inverter. Then we had a diesel generator that was already tied into it, and it was programmed so that if the charge got to 25%, it would automatically kick on the generator and recharge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The automatic transfer switch, exactly. It's built into the battery. It's. Surprising with that one, Rich. CAD, Yeah, very good. Yeah, that's great. I. Got you with that one. Up. Yeah, yeah, but and so but and and people say, well then what's the point of having batteries if you can have a generator? Well, the point is that first of all, the battery bank you can charge when nobody's playing. So you don't have the noise, you don't have the diesel smell.

17:08 And second of all, the way generators work, diesel generators work is the more heavily they're loaded, the more fuel efficient they are. So when you charge the battery you you load the the diesel generator full, so you get maximum fuel efficiency out of it and it really minimizes the carbon footprint of the diesel generator. Interesting and and and in addition to the generator we also had tied into grid. So we had two backups in case anything failed nothing. You know the show would go on. Well this year we had zero generators in the entire festival. We completely displaced all the diesel in the entire festival. With batteries and A and a solar farm, how big? How big was your solar footprint or whatever you had? Not, not, not, not big.

17:58 I think let's see you know I I didn't set it up this year. We had help so I I didn't get the exact count but at Lollapalooza for example we had 100 and 38240 Watt solar panels which so it was about a 60 kilowatt solar farm. I think at Willie's festival this year is probably a little bit less I'd say probably 40 kilowatts solar, something like that interesting. So and and while we're doing luck reunion, we're also doing the one of the stages at South by Southwest on auditorium shores. We had another solar and that's why we had smaller solar farms this year, because we split it between South By and Willie's Luck Reunion. So let me ask you something like is this so is is this an actual business?

18:48 Like, is this someone making money competing with generator companies? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Is it? Is it viable yet? Like, does it make financial sense? To the customer. And to the company. Yeah. It's very similar in cost. Now there sometimes there's more upfront cost, but you save on other. There's other synergies you get. So for example, because you can put the battery right next to the stage, you don't have as much feeder cable to run. So you can save on cable rental, on cable ramp rental, you save on labor, you know, things like that. And it's more than just that, but that's just an example. Are there any?

19:34 Are there any incentives yet, like for somebody to run a show like that? Are they able to? Does the state give them money or something for being? Not that I know of. However, we have have worked with reverb.org, which is an organization started by Adam and I always forget Adam's last name, but it he's the lead singer for the band Guster. If you're familiar with Guster and OK, well they were. If you went to College in the 90s, they were they were big and so you you probably know Guster and super nice guys and they started reverb.org to decarbonize stages. So what they do is they raise money for this kind of stuff. So they.

20:18 They organized the original luck reunion. I think they were. I'm not sure if they were involved in this one or not, 'cause I didn't see the signs everywhere like I usually do. But they also got us involved in Lollapalooza, and that was. So that was basically Billie Eilish picking up the tab and and and, you know, working through reverb.org and they said, you know, she said we want to to do this thing. So what we did is we provided power for all the floor, for all of the guest services on the stage and this is an enormous stage. So there was a floor package that that was a 400 amp three phase service and then there was audio world and video world which were 200 amps. There was special effects which is also 200 amps three phase. And then there was one other service that was just for the toaster.

21:11 If you saw, you know, the Lala, her her performance at Lala, then you saw the her stage entrance is from beneath the stage and she pops up on the stage. And so that was one service for that, you know. Yeah. So I don't know of any, you know, grants or anything like that, but just there there is there are organizations who who work on helping to put these things together, and reverb.org is one of them. Well, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of obviously noise about it like about becoming more sustainable as an industry and things like that. Like I actually, you know, Mickey curvish curvishly I'm. Sure.

21:52 Yeah, I was just listening to your podcast last week. Yeah. So he talked a lot about sustainability and you should probably connect with him because they've got all kinds of ideas and thoughts about making shows more sustainable and more. It's a great idea. Yeah. And and you know, solo tech obviously has the money to put behind that as well. So that might be an interesting conversation for you to get into. And specifically with Mickey, like, I think he's the guy kind of driving it at solo tech. I'll tell him you sent me. Absolutely. I could connect you to through an e-mail if. You'd like that'd be, that'd be. Great to say. Hey, I was talking to Richard and yeah, I'll, I'll do that after the podcast. So yeah, that's that's really interesting. So you know what, what are some of the things you learned this year that you that that will help you towards next year or that make it you know?

22:41 More the the big, the big learning curve is how our loads behave. Because typically when you're doing a show, the Master Electrician puts together an equipment list and then you go to the specs and you put together all the wattages and then you divide by the voltage to figure out how much, how much power you need. You know and and it. That's legit. Although what you find out by logging the data and studying it is that nobody turns everything on at one time. Nobody, you know, puts all their lights in full and what in full white? Well, and LE DS have changed that. LE DS have changed that too because. They're not on all the time. Like, like discharge lamps, Of course. Right. So, yeah.

23:21 So LE DS, like, they go on, they go off. They go on, they go off, Right. It's not a shutter or whatever, Right. Yeah. And that. And that's why we convinced Bud Rock Willie's lighting designers to go all LED. And he's old school man. He, you know, he, he, he's been using park hands. Yeah. So that was a big step for him. Yeah. But but yeah, So what we're trying to learn more about is the nature of the beast when it comes to how how does this stuff behave during a show? And what we're finding out is that it's a small amount of power compared to, you know, if you just add up all of the the loads that you're connecting, you know, and that goes for lighting, it goes for audio, it goes, it even goes for video. Although video is a bit more tricky because when you put content on the screen that's all white, it really sucks the power you know.

24:13 So you do need you need you need more overhead for video than you need for audio. The audio peaks are very very fast transient. So I I have been metering audio rigs lately. And what you find is if you meter them, you know a big line array in an arena will draw, you know, somewhere between 35 and 50 amps per leg and they'll hit peaks of about 100 amps or 150 a 175 amps if you have a normal meter. But if you have a really, really good fast meter that catches really fast transients, you'll get peaks up to 225, you know, Yeah, but it's just for a fraction of a second. But is that enough to trip things and? Cause problems or no, because the way circuit Breakers work is they take time to heat up.

25:03 So it you would have to it would have to be peaking for 5:00 or 10:15 minutes before we trip it. Oh, I see. So, so so no. That's why we can get away with 200 amp services for audio. That's usually what you know you're going to use for an arena show. Yeah. You know, so that's. You know what's using the most energy then? Is it the audio or typically on a show? No, no. It's definitely lighting. It's definitely lighting. Yeah. Yeah. Oh even with LED, well because the numbers you know, yeah we can LED's yeah. And the the lights are getting you know more power even the LED's are getting more power hungry.

25:44 You know that's true. I just at USITT they who was it? I think it's Lyceum now that has a a 1500 Watt LED follow spot. Yeah, that's got to be bright. So yeah. Oh, it's bright. It's definitely bright. Yeah, well, I mean, the fixtures just keep getting brighter and brighter too. The LED fixtures it's crazy it's yeah you know I I was talking this had to be a couple years ago I was talking to Robert Roth and he I said you know what what do you think is missing in lighting And he said everybody thinks that lights all need to be like you know these two or 300 foot throw like you know 8 bazillion lumen fixtures. How about something like mid size?

26:24 Something that replaces like an old Mac 700 or you know, a studio spot or whatever, like something you know that you could just use in your typical arena show. And it's kind of cool, 'cause I think a lot of companies have come out with that kind of thing, like the Ayrton Diablo. And Oh yeah, you know, every company has their versions of it. Right. But yeah, I was in Jules Fisher's office once. This is probably got 20 years ago and we're talking about Lumen inflation, you know because he had, he had plots from what was his big Tony award-winning show back in the 60s. I'm drawing blank now. But anyway he he brought out his plots, we started looking at him and and you know the the light levels back then on Broadway were so dim compared to today. You know, we just keep getting making stages brighter and bright, even though the cameras need less light. To make it look constant battle between the freaking LED screens and the lights.

27:23 And it's just like it's war that's going on that I think is, you know, really going to create blindness in all of our children one day or something. It's just insane. Mark Brightman still had the funniest line because he said, you know what's really annoying to me? EDM shows. And I said why? And he said, well cuz the music's kind of cool and the energy's great. I love the vibe and stuff, but if I'm high on Molly, the last thing I want is all these fucking lights just blasting in my face all night. You know, 8 freaking trillion white lights just blasting you in the face. Last thing I want when I'm high on Molly and I'm like, well, yeah, you got a point there, Mark. That that sounds like Brickman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't.

28:05 Seen him in a while. No, me either, you know, sadly. And and he'll tell you all about it, 'cause he's not super happy about it. But you know, a lot of the gigs go to younger guys these days and or girls and and you know, he's kind of been left in the cold on that one. Him, John Broderick, some of the some of the guys that you and I both know and love and and really appreciate as designers, you know? But yeah, really, really talented people. Super talented. Super smart, too. You know, like just, you know, Broderick is another one of my favorite people. And he, you know, he's just. Completely out of. Learning at this point. Oh really? Oh man, that's too bad. Yeah, he's been doing a a big art project. I can't remember the details.

28:49 I think it's his father-in-law passed away or something and left a whole huge amount of art. And so he's sort of become the the kind of curator of all of this art and and has been working on exhibits and different. Things. Well, I I know he's, he's always been into art because if you would go and watch his Metallica show, if you look at his sets, it always had it's very Dolly esque or it's very, you know, there's always something in there that that that reminds you of the old masters. Yeah, yeah. And he studied. Them. And yeah, he, he kind of emulated smart guy. Super. Like I've had, I've had four hour conversations with that guy that, you know, I had to peel myself away from, 'cause I was super interested, but I had to work you.

29:36 Know like the work keeps getting in the way, you know especially. Lately, 'cause he's retired and and loves to have a good conversation, so whenever you reach out to him, he's more than willing to have a nice talk. But, but yeah, so. To do that. It's a bummer with Mark too, you know, Cuz. Mark. Mark. I don't think he's bitter about it anymore. But he was, I think for a while. Yeah. Yeah, I. Agree. That's last time I talked to him several years ago, he he was kind of bitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What can you do, you know, Yeah, I think it's becoming a young person industry at this time for for, yeah, you know, which doesn't work out well for you or I. Yeah, I know, I I know so few people now. But although I'm meeting more and more all the time, I I just did a a class over at Pulse Lighting in Nashville and met some really cool people and and The funny thing is one of the guys in my class.

30:29 Yeah, oh man. And and you're going to have to edit this because I can't think of his name right now. This is embarrassing. But this guy in my class and he was he was taking notes furiously during class and everything and the very next week I went to Austin to work like reunion and I woke up in the morning looked at my Facebook and he'd messaged me and said hey man, where do you live? Because if we're ever in your area, you know, I'm. I'm touring with Old Crow Medicine Show and you know, I'd like to like you can come out, you know, like for you come out and see the show. Yeah. And I go Old Crow, I go are you playing it like reunion today He goes, yeah. So that's hilarious. We met up that same day.

31:13 Yeah. That's hilarious. That's funny. Yeah. I mean, doing those classes that you're doing must really obviously give you exposure to a lot of new people and help you make some new friends and stuff. Are you still looking for this guy's name? Yes, of course. Well, you're. Making this. Impossible. I'm sorry, James. You're you're making it impossible to edit this out at this point because it's half the. Podcast already. That's OK. He he knows I'm a scatterbrain. Yeah. Hey James, it's it's all good, Richard. I, I you know, I I was going to mention some his name from the podcast that I recorded yesterday and I decided not even to go into that story. Because I forget. His name. So you know, it doesn't take long. Like I'll.

31:55 I'll shake someone's hand and be introduced to somebody. I'll walk away. And on my walk away I'll be like, what the hell was his name like? I just met him 90 seconds ago. What was his name? Yeah, I know. I've. I've taken to writing it down in my in my on my phone. Yeah, yeah, me too. Like, if I don't put things into my calendar, like if I don't say hey Siri because I don't want bills going off here, you know, remind me tomorrow at 9:00 AM to do this or whatever. I just want oh, yeah, ain't going to happen. I've gotten so dependent on the A word now. Oh, hell yeah, hell yeah. Like I I do it all. Well, I can't use the A word because my my girlfriend who I live with, her son's girlfriend is named Alexa. And, you know, so there's constantly. Things going That and his name you have to change. His name is Alex.

32:46 So it's just like constantly things are confused going what do you want? I just want you to shut up. Yeah, you'd have to. You have to change the trigger word, man. You can make anything. Or just get rid of all these. A people, you know. Yeah. Just get well, the people, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. No, it's hilarious. So this, this back to this Willie Nelson thing. So what did you find? Like are there any negatives to using this type of power? Like are there any things that you have to be like weather or is, I don't know, like is there anything that you really have to be more careful about? I mean like with anything there's positives and negatives.

33:27 Yeah, there. The I, I think probably the the biggest negative is these things are big and heavy. Although the new ones we're using are on a trailer, so you can just tow them. Yeah, literally an F-150 pickup truck. Yeah, you don't want to tow them down the road, 'cause they they weigh what they weigh 8000 lbs. Jesus. So they they barely, they're, they're barely trailerable. And then, of course you. Sorry, 1000 LB one is how how how many kW? That one is, that one is, well, it's it's 530 kilowatt hours. That's the one. That's 4 1/2 times as much energy as last year. I don't remember the the wattage output though. What size inverters are?

34:15 But that one unit would run a stage or you need multiple? Units. Oh yeah. So actually what we did on that one is we output 480 volts to a transformer to drop it down to 122 O 8 because the circuit breaker is, I want to say 150 amps. So if you were to run at 1:20, you could run at 12208 but then you're limited to 100 amp service. But if you if you run at 480 then you're closer to a 400 amp three phase service by the time you you transform it down. Yeah, I see. So that's how that's how that works. So yeah. Yeah. So I mean I would think that as it gets more common and and popular and and whatever you're just going to have like some of those big generator the the semi trailers, you know you're going to have things like that that.

35:04 That well, there already are Cat CESCES has has trailers that are full of enemy batteries. There's different battery chemistries and they have some that are that but. But you know, that's a, it's really made for the construction industry, for you know, when they're building buildings. It's not ideal for our use case. But in term, to answer your question, are there any negatives? I mean the biggest downside is you have to, you have to manage your energy and make sure you don't run out and have redundancy and then when you build a solar farm, you know you are at the mercy of the weather. If you have a full sunshine day, you get maximum charge, and if it's if it's cloudy you get somewhat reduced but but you'd be surprised how much energy you can get from the sun even on an overcast day.

35:57 But if it's rainy, or if it's snowing or something like that, then you know that's pretty much a washout. Are these batteries charging while they're being used, or do they have? To you Can you can do that? You can. They're so they're so configurable. They're so flexible, you can set them up to where, well, you know what you really want to do is you want to hook them up in series so that if you are charging one, then the other one's being drained and you can tell it which one to drain from first. And you can. There's there's so many different ways you can set it up. They're they're very flexible, very configurable. They're actually, in a lot of ways, the power is much better than a diesel generator. Because think about this, Marcel. When you have a diesel generator and you have a, you know, an EDM show and the audio's pumping, and then you hit that bass drum and it's going to, every time you hit the bass drum, it moves a lot of air.

36:53 So it's going to crank up the current. Well, in order for the generator to produce that current, the diesel engine has to ramp up the torque and that takes a little while, right. But with the battery, it's a deep well, you can get as much energy spontaneously as you want from this well of energy. So the I've had, I've heard engineers, audio engineers say they think the frequency response is better from the battery inverter than from a diesel generator. And you know it. It's there's just there's there's so many a good thing to say about it that's interesting that. Audio engineers would probably be able to tell the difference like. Would it, I would, but would.

37:36 Things be quicker, like would things like actually happen faster? Basically in in. Audio. Well, I know that you can get faster transient responses. Interesting. And that's what Audio's all about, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's really cool. That's so. I would guess that we're not that far away from, you know, generator sort of being a thing of the past. Like I must admit I'm not a fan of electric cars. I I have, you know a big horsepower you know, V8 and but I think on from a generator standpoint, it seems to me like there's a lot of efficiency and a lot of reasons, the noise, the pollution, the just the air quality like the fact that people are sitting there going oh. What's that?

38:26 Smell, you know. Right, right. Yeah. And and the health issues too you know if you so you you know that when I work for high end systems I used to travel to Asia a lot and this was back in the the 1990s when I was I used to run marathons and so and and see that's why my stories are so boring. I, you know, I I just, I don't have, I don't have any scuba diving vomit stories, you know? Anything like that? Well, I'll tell you. A few, I know. Some. I mean, I've got a couple. But anyway, but the point is that I used to go to Beijing, and when I was training, I would, I would go out the door and I'd go run 10 or 15, sometimes 20 miles.

39:14 And back in the 90s, you'd come back from your run and you'd be covered in soot from head to toe and you'd blow your nose and it'd all be black, You know, because they burned, they burned coal in their fireplaces, right? But then during the 2008 Olympics, they outlawed that. They said you can't burn coal and fire because they were trying to clean up Beijing. And if you look at medical statistics, what you'll find is there was a drastic increase in or decrease in lung related illnesses from after 2008. So there's a direct correlation between the air quality and the health of the general population. So that's what we're that's what we're going for in decarbonizing stages.

39:57 Now, you know, our industry is just a spec in the Galaxy of the problem. Yeah, right. Exactly. I mean, you shouldn't try anything. Yeah. No, really. What we're trying to do is raise awareness. When Billy Eilish says, hey, we're powering the stage off of sunshine, that makes people aware. And that's our goal, of course. Yeah, of. Course well. And if Metallica can go out and say, hey, we're the loudest, craziest band in the world and we run on batteries, I mean, that says a lot. That's a statement. Right. Well, it's Coldplay that's doing that, but. Yeah, no, I was just making that up. But I'm I'm just saying like that kind of thing helps move things forward or whatever, sure. Exactly.

40:44 That's the whole point. Yeah, but I think without getting into to a lengthy discussion about a very boring topic. But you know, I've paid a lot of attention to like these documentaries and stuff about the the cobalt mines in Africa. And you know, that stuff is really depressing. So I think and absolutely talks about it all the time, like when he says we can't just go all electric cars because we have to find more sustainable solutions for supply of these batteries. We have to make friendlier batteries, you know. Well, if if if they were friendlier, would that would that make a big difference you think? I think it would, Yeah, I think it. Would well here's, here's, here's something for you then. You know a lithium ion battery had obviously it has lithium and it's got a lot of those other chemicals in it that are hard to get.

41:30 But the battery chemistry is moving towards and this is what we use, which is lithium iron phosphate batteries. It's still classified as a lithium ion battery, but it's got way fewer of those rare chemicals that are causing the issues. Well, isn't phosphate hard to get right now? Isn't that one of the things? Well, but the amount it's the quantities that are in it. They're very, very small. So, and also you've seen the and read the stories about lithium iron Catching Fire and you know, those hoverboards spontaneously combusting and all that stuff. Lithium iron phosphate does not do that. It has a very low probability of thermal runaway.

42:12 So they're much safer. They're better for the environment. And so and that's the way science works is, you know, you start off with something crude and then you refine it, it gets better and better. Yeah. And and that's the direction that we're moving with the battery. Construction again, I love that. Like I said, I'm not. I'm not somebody who who you know is gonna be first in line for the next E car, but. But at. The same time, I bet that E car can blow you off the line, though. That's the thing. You know, that's the thing. Like, you know, what's his name? Joe Rogan. Your fellow Austinite is always talking about his, his Tesla. He's got the the is it called black? Is it the Tesla Black Edition or something? I forget what it's called, but it's the one with the little rectangular steering wheel and it's it's like zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds.

43:06 I think 1.9 seconds. Yeah, I know they're they're incredibly fast. Yeah. Insane, you know? And I haven't watched Formula E, but it sounds interesting, no? Now you lost me, my friend. OK, Sorry. I hate. I had to go there. I can't stand it, you know, it's just I don't even like the, you know, the the current hybrid Formula One cars. You know, the sound just isn't what it was. You know, in the 90s like that, I like. That you know, I I have AI have a formula boat, you know what is it an 8 cylinder or six cylinder? I don't know.

43:49 It's a gasoline engine. Yeah, I would love to have an electric boat because I love to sail. Just because it's so peaceful and quiet. Yeah, you know, I can't wait to get an electric boat. That to me, boats and airplanes to me, are something that I think makes a huge amount of sense. I think cars eventually make sense too. But cars, there's too much passion around the sound and the the sort of visceral feel of all of that stuff that, you know, too many of us were born in the 60s and and grew up with with muscle cars and stuff. It's just too hard to take those cars away from us. You know, maybe 19 year old kids growing up today are like, I don't care if it's got.

44:31 A lot of motor. It doesn't make any difference to me, but you know, obviously there's some pushback because all the E cars aren't doing so well right now other than Tesla. You know, a friend of mine, idiot bought a Fisker Ocean, the Fisker SUV. He just got it delivered a couple months ago and I was like, what are you doing? Like, aren't they bordering on bankruptcy again? Like, you know, he he went bankrupt. Chinese company bought it and came out with that Karma thing. And then I think they're bankrupt. And then he started another Fisker and now they're going bankrupt as well. But anyways, he, he got the car by the time he ordered it two years ago.

45:12 By the time he got it, there's no dealerships. So they deliver it to your door on a truck and you know, really bad delivery experience. And so he got it and then he needed service or whatever he calls Fisker and they're like, yeah, you got to call this guy on his cell phone or whatever. There's like 1 technician in the South Florida. Region. And so now just yesterday he called me and he goes, you're not going to believe this. And I said what? Your car died. And he goes, no worse. And I said what? And he said they just because they need desperately cash, they just dropped their price by $14,000, whatever model. So he bought this, this SUV, he bought a, a base model of it and paid like 40,000 bucks, but now it's 24,000 or whatever it is, right. And you?

45:59 Know what that reminds me of? What? When when Martin came out with the Mac 500 and 600 and High End dropped the price on the studio colors, Remember that? Were you? Were you? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I that was right when I. Was all these people. Yeah, all these people just bought a whole bunch of them and then we dropped the price and they were not happy. That's a tough one to swallow. Yeah, that's never an easy one to swallow. But I mean, he literally just took delivery on this thing a couple months ago and he's already down 15 grand or whatever. Yeah, he's like and plus, you know, like he can't get a temporary tag for it. He can't get A tag for it because, you know, for whatever reason, the car isn't can't be registered here except as a certain type.

46:44 And they have to. The company has to get you the tag, and it's crazy. Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen well. That's what I said. I said you got to do a search. There's got to be a class action suit going right now on it. Yeah, because it's a mess. But anyways, well, that's really cool. I'm glad you're doing that, cuz I mean, it takes a. Guy. That's a lot of. Fun It takes a bunch of guys like you, but certainly one really smart, really noisy. Guy writes lots of I got to tell you the guys that started OverDrive Energy Solutions, Neil Vasavada and Boxer partisan, those guys in LA, those are really the guys who put this thing together and then they picked up a guy named Sean Jacob who was the Carpenter for Roger Waters. He's a guy who who flew the pig and yeah so but he is off the charts brilliant.

47:36 He's he's got a master's degree in electrical engineering but he's working as a Carpenter. Go figure. But but yeah, but these guys, I mean, when we do these events, I mean, I just feel so like we're. I'm just surrounded by brilliance. They're They're really, really, yeah. It's a great team. OverDrive is specifically for our industry like it's a power company for the industry. That's cool. Exactly. Interesting. And how long have they been around about? 4/5. Years. And they've always been batteries. It's all been built. On batteries, the whole thing, yeah, they started the company. They started the company with that idea. Yeah, I think Neil started the company and then you brought in some other people.

48:18 Interesting. Yeah, that's cool. I'm gonna have to reach out to those guys. Maybe I'll get them on the podcast. Yeah, Neil would love to be on the podcast. Yeah, well, if you can connect me on an. E-mail. Maybe. Box. Yeah. OK, that. 'D be fun. So one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. So you've moved all of your stuff over to Sub Stack now and it's funny because I obviously pay a lot of attention to that kind of stuff. But I would assume that 90% of our industry have no idea what the hell sub stack is or why somebody would need it or anything. Yeah. So why sub stack was that so that you were able to monetize it or or was there other reasons, was it just a good platform?

48:59 No, not at all. So I used to have a newsletter before the pandemic and I I just collected e-mail addresses over a period of time. And I I was up to like 3000 e-mail addresses or something like that. And I would just like, you know, once a month I would write a newsletter and I'd try to put three or four articles in it and I'd send it out. But then during the pandemic I stopped doing it because, you know, everything was turned upside down. And then at the beginning of this year or at the end of last year, I should say I decided, OK, it's time I need to start that newsletter again. I started looking around for a better platform I was using.

49:41 What was I using? I can't remember now but it was OK. But it wasn't spectacular. But I kept seeing this sub stack thing and really what made me look at it a bit closer was a friend of mine he named David Foer. He used to play drums in a band called Bubble Puppy. They had a. Huge hit, he says. Why do you come up with these band names? I thought I knew a lot about music until you started mentioning all these band names. Yeah, you're a little bit too young to remember Bubble Puppy. They were on American Bandstand in the late 60s early 70s and they toured with Steppenwolf and they had a they had a hit called Hot Smoke and Sassafras and yeah and and they were one of those psychedelic rock bands. And David's a friend of mine.

50:30 We played in in a band together in the 90s, in the in the 80s actually in in Austin. And he started writing a sub stack about his experience with Bubble Puppy. And so I of course subscribed and started reading it and I thought wow, this looks like a really interesting little platform here. So I started looking into it and as soon as I logged on and and read about it, I'm like oh I'm in this is this is it. It's great because it basically handles everything on the back and all you have to do is blog. You don't have to worry about you know any of the details. It's just it's it's very it's very well done and it also has you can not only can you write but you can vlog you can post videos you can and you have the option to monetize it.

51:21 Now when I set mine up, I thought, well, I'll just do it for free. And then I thought, well, what would it hurt to, you know, add the option if somebody wants to to, you know, pay or whatever. Yeah. And now I have like, I think there's 17 paid subscribers, which I really appreciate and that's really cool. But really, yeah. But really the main point is I want to get information out there, you know And the reason I chose the the top, I call it Stagehand 101 because when I restarted this thing at in January of this year 2024, so that when you're looking back 10 years from now, you'll know what today is. But, but when I started it, you know, I all of last year and the year before, as I go around teaching classes, one one of the most consistent things that I heard was that we had a talent drain during the pandemic.

52:19 And a lot of the people coming in the industry today have very little experience. So I thought, OK, well, let's back up a notch and let's start at the foundation, let's talk about those very foundational things, you know, how to be a stagehand. So that's what I started writing about and it's been a lot of fun. I really enjoy it. Well you know, as a as a thought, like one of the things you could do is you know, record all of your classes, which you probably do already anyways, but then actually get someone, maybe overseas or something to do some really cool editing for all your classes and put those behind a pay wall. I've already actually done.

53:00 I've been doing that for probably 7 years. So about seven or eight, Yeah, seven or eight years ago I had a class over at Full Sail University and you know, they have a nice stage and they have students there who know how to run video cameras and they even had a jib. So we did A33 camera shoot and I ended up with 2121 hours of of raw video, which I then edited into 72 short modules, about 10 to 15 minutes each. And then at the end of every module, I put a quiz. So that's that's on my APT XL website. So if you go online, you can, you can pay for that course and it's, it's, it's a ETC.

53:47 Recognized course. Yeah. So if you take the class online, you get the same renewal credits etcp renewal credits that you would get if you came to my class in person, Huh? That's really cool. Yeah. I mean, yeah, but you know, at the end of the day, like, I think so many people, probably yourself included, have like not really imposter syndrome. But but like, I'm a crook if I charge people, you know, and I just don't agree with that at all, like, because you're investing more time into this than most people in our industry invest into their careers, period. And you have every right to get paid for that content. I mean, I don't see why you shouldn't.

54:28 So you know, to me it's a freemium model and always should be a freemium model, you know where you give away 50% of it and if you want the other 50% you have to subscribe and you. Know I'm sure that's my goal. I'm sure you'll make your way there. Yeah, you know who who does a really good job of it on Sub Stack, and you may have already been reading his stuff, is a guy named Lenny Rakowski or Rakowski or Rakatski or something. But if you just search for Lenny's podcast, he's got like a million subscribers or something. Wow. And he's a tech guy. Tech like programming tech, coding tech kind of guy and just a super smart guy, really, really smart guy and a really interesting podcast if you're interested in that kind of tech. I mean for.

55:12 Me, I absolutely. Have to be, yeah. But. And he's just done an incredible job and now he's spun it into a podcast, he's spun it into, you know, YouTube channels and all kinds of other stuff too. And you know, that's basically his gig now and he's making a load of money from it. I think he was one of the original coders from Airbnb or something. Just a super, super smart dude. But he's done a really good job. You know, I wouldn't call it monopolizing, but but finding a way to monetize his content through sub stack really good. Probably better than most people, so. Well, thanks for the tip. I will definitely check that out. Yeah, yeah. I've not heard of it before. What is what's Academy of production technology you just mentioned it I think and.

55:57 Yeah, you know that that was my grandiose idea way back in the day. So I've been teaching classes since I would say man, late 90s. You know Steve Irwin and I attempted to do online training before. Yeah, we're we're too far ahead of the curve and and it didn't really catch on. But then in what really made it catch on was in 2006 I believe it was when they started the ETCP certification program. Then people needed to prepare to take the exam, and that's when the classes really started to take off. And back then, even before then, I think a couple of years before then, you know, I had put together a, you know, what I thought would eventually become a, a, a like, a real Academy. And over the years, I've learned that it's really more challenging than than you might think. So it's really just my my business training, you know, which turns out to be me.

57:07 So that's a better way to do it. That's a better way to do it. Look at how many health experts are out giving you better information than doctors. And yeah, they've got disclaimers that say I'm not a medical doctor. Seek advice from your medical doctor or I'm not a lawyer. Seek advice from your lawyer. Those guys are making more money than the doctors and the lawyers. You know, these guys who, and they're also they're better people to take information from because they're not necessarily bound by the same, you know, restrictions or whatever it is, right? They can talk, they can promote, they can do things that maybe a lawyer or a doctor. Can't do so, yeah. So a few years ago I I, I kind of put more emphasis on building my brand as my name rather than the Academy. But I still you know, a bank account when when somebody pays me, you know, you can either write it, write a check to me, or you can write it to Academy of Production Technology, you know, and when you go online, write a check. How?

58:03 Old are you, man? Right. You mean she's? Surprised how many how many people still write checks, especially the unions. You know, I I have the Gearsource checkbook here and I don't even know where it is anymore. Like, I have no idea. I don't. I don't need a check. I be like, oh shit. Yeah, you know what? If somebody wants to write me a check, bring it. I'll take it. I'll take cash. Check now. You can just take a picture of them and and deposit them, but you know, other than the, other than the government, you know, I don't know that I've I've seen a check from somebody in years like you. Just, oh, I get a ton of them. I really. Yeah, I get paid by check all the time. Yeah, that's wild, huh?

58:44 Yeah, I know it's. Go figure. Show figure. Yeah, well I love what you're doing. Like I love all the all those components and and you know, I also know how hard it is to do by yourself. And you know one thing I would definitely recommend is I've got this lady named Sarah who who you know is a godsend. Find yourself a Sarah. You know find yourself someone who is as passionate about what you're doing as you are. Like Sarah's just in love with our podcast. She's in love with our industry. She loves all the people. She's, you know, she she's as enthusiastic as she seems when she's getting you signed on. And yeah, and you know, because we're set up the way we are, she's 100% remote. I've never even met Sarah and I've known her for, I don't know, three years now or something. Really.

59:31 Wow, that's crazy. She lives. She lives on Crete and she's British, but she lives on Crete and you know, she's got this great lifestyle in Crete and she just happens to have this fully remote gig as a producer for a podcast. She used to work for Formula One Sarah. Did. No kidding. Wow. Yeah, she used to travel the world with Formula One and settle down. Got married to a guy, a Greek guy on Crete and she lives there, has a beautiful life. And so, yeah, but I mean, find yourself that person. And. It'll just explode your business. It'll, yeah. And this this industry attracts people like that, doesn't it? Who are just really passionate about what what we're doing.

1:00:12 Yeah, it's great. I mean, you know, it really is obviously a great industry from a standpoint of the people and the the passion and the stories and all of that stuff. And I love that about our industry. There's some things that maybe I don't love about our industry some days, but but I do love that. But yeah, I mean get you know, you deserve to to obviously not only prosper from this, but to to earn a really good living and to have a lifestyle and all of those things. But also I think the world needs a little bit more of your information. And to do that you got to create a platform that can go wide enough that can get all that information out where you don't have to be involved in every single one of those aspects. And that's that's obviously the penultimate goal for any like information based business like yours right is, is. To Yeah.

1:01:01 And I agree. You know, for for many, many years there was only on the job training. I mean, yeah, you can go to university, go to college and learn some aspects of it, But the kind of stuff that we're learning now and that we're doing now, you know a lot of it's not taught in colleges or universities and so and it's it's not getting any any simpler. Marcel's the technology is getting more and more advanced all the time and it just takes more training, you know. And yeah, you're right, that information needs to be documented, needs to be broadcast, it needs to be disseminated better and any any tools like that that help get it out there are really a bonus, so.

1:01:47 You know, and you're you're, I think, producing more practical information too. Like the the problem is, you know, there's school, what school teaches you and then there's what you actually learn on the gig, which is totally different. And so, you know, filling that gap I think is really super important. Preparing people, especially now, like right now, there is such an opportunity to take regular people who are coming either out of, you know, theater, college or whatever it is, or they're just coming off the street and saying, yeah, you know, I think I'd try out this touring thing. Who preps them for that stuff, right? You know who teaches them not to shit on the bus until they shit on the bus and get beat up for it, You know?

1:02:27 You know who teaches them these things, And I mean more so the safety things and stuff. You know, I'm just kidding about the bus etiquette. But that's also important, you know, It's important that you learn that stuff. But. You know, yeah. And you know, the The funny thing is that like you, I was a musician. I always wanted to be a musician, but my parents always wanted me to be an engineer. So, you know, I kind of acquiesce to them. So when I went to college, I studied electrical engineering. But I was my, you know, my head was always in music. But it was fortunate because when I did get into the lighting industry, all that stuff I learned in college helped out so much. But it's all theory, you know, If you ever take engineering classes, it's all math.

1:03:09 It's all theory. I mean, very, very little practical application at all. So what I had to do and when I started working in the industry is connect the dots between the theory and the real world. And still to this day, I'm still trying to make those connections. And those are the things I like to write about when I connect, you know, things like today or yeah, actually this morning I sent out a sub stack about why you know, how to coil cables and why some some cables get destroyed, you know? Somebody said tequila makes them all wobbly or whatever. Yeah, right. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. Post or the OR the person coiling. It. Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:49 Is it the cable? Yeah. Person coiling it on drinking the tequila. But yeah, but. Those are the kind of things where you know, you you, you take a real world problem and you go, how and how does this happen? What's the theory behind it? And then you think about it, you make the connection and then you write about it. So that's that's what I try to do, you know. And so this is way. Off topic? I'm sorry, but OK. I was recently at Vault Lighting in Lai. Don't know if you've been to their shop, Matt's Shop don't. Think so. It's Matt. God, I'm gonna screw up his last name. Shimamoto. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And wonderful guy.

1:04:30 Just him and his partner are beautiful people. Their shop is amazing. It's a stunning shop. But they've got this cable department where I'm like, are those guys doing what I think they're doing? Like they're literally washing every single cable before it goes back into the box. And the way they wrap them is surgical, like it is unreal. I've got pictures. I should send it to you, 'cause I was shocked. Like, every cable is this perfect little doughnut cable that is so clean you could lick it and you wouldn't taste anything, you know? I mean, it's unreal. Marcel, don't lick the. Cable. OK, well, you know, I've been known to lick a doorknob or two, you know, But. But, but I was just blown away by it like that to me is a level of quality that people will notice. And those cables show up on a ramp. Absolutely.

1:05:23 They're going to be like these must be from Volt, right? Yeah, these are from. Volt. Yeah. No I I've seen those before in a couple of shops. I want to say PRG has a cable washer and I think 4 wall might also and they also have cable coiler. Yeah. And and have you been to the four wall shop in Vegas these? Guys, do it by hand. I mean, it's like, oh wow. Thing to watch. The washing and the the coiling of the cables, it is a real thing to watch. It's unreal, like I like. You're saying they they coil them by hand. They coil them. Oh, wow. Yeah. OK. Let's see, that process is done by hand. It's unreal. Yeah, it really is amazing. Sorry, what were? You saying before have you been to the four wash shop in Vegas?

1:06:04 It's it's beautiful it's and sorry I'm cables bite my tongue OK edit this out now have you been to the Christie shop in Vegas, Marcel. Because they have a robot that goes around and can get stuff off of the high, high racks. You know, forklift kind of I. Think I've only been to the office. I don't know if I went into the shop because I don't remember seeing that. That's cool. But, but the point is that a lot of the stuff is being modernized and you know, which we need because of course the amount of gear these days is mind blown. You know, I did a gig in New York City, right, just after the pandemic at the Jacob Javits Center and the gear showed up totally unprepped, you know, because they didn't have the labor to do it back then. It was just coming out of the pandemic, you know, So we need ways to better handle gear and kind of automate it so that it gets done even when you have fewer people in the shop. Yeah, well.

1:07:10 Even just like standardized RFID codes and things like that, right? Just. Really obvious, simple answers like manufacturers shipping things with standardized RFID codes that everybody can use and maybe they can top load this file into your readers or whatever. Maybe the answer is AI. Of course it is. That's the answer to everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's get. Into that 'cause I wanna talk to I wanna talk about AI and and you know for for starters like have you have you seen this new Sora video? No. Do you know what Sora is? Sora Sora is the the video generation AI that Hollywood's freaking out about.

1:07:56 Like it's it's what's right. Yeah, I've heard it. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's what's behind a lot of these these strikes and and just a lot of the actions that are happening. And like, what's his name? Tyler Perry stopped construction on his $800 million studio because of Sora. But if you Google Sora balloon head, there's this video that they generated that's just a guy who's got a balloon for a head and it's 100% AI generated. It's unbelievable. It's mind blowing. It's it's like, holy shit, this is where we're at already. Like where are we going to be a few years from now? You know? Another cool thing to listen to is Rogan's talk with Kurzweil couple of weeks ago, maybe 2-3 weeks ago, and Kurzweil just saying, you know where we're going to be by 2029 is just like so much further ahead than we are right now. Ray.

1:08:57 Ray. Kurzweil's the guy. He's he's brilliant. So he's. He's a smart dude. He's a smart, smart dude. But yeah, yeah, I mean, Sora's a wild one. Dolly's a wild one. You know, a lot of the sort of custom GPTS I look at are pretty crazy, you know, as far as being able to write legal documents. Like, you can get a special legal GPT that is very much formatted for because you know where I think a lot of people get stuck and go, this stupid AI stuff is ridiculous. You know, it writes garbage. You know, my, my, my, you know it. It's writing blogs for me and they're just terrible. You know that. You can tell they're written by AI. Well, that's because you don't know how to prompt it. You know the the prompting is the magic for for these AI systems.

1:09:43 But so you know, first of all, like are you using any AI? I would guess helping you to write your blogs and stuff. You're using it. I use. ChatGPT a lot. Not to write blogs, but so the first real practical use that I found for it is actually to write JavaScript write applications. Because I used to do the several years ago, I had the idea well, you know write an app that has to do that that will help people study for the ETCP electrical Entertainment electricians certification exam. So things like, you know, how how to practice Ohm's law calculations and power formula calculations. So I taught myself JavaScript and you know, I I used to like when I was in high school I took some programming classes in College in electrical engineering that make you take programming classes.

1:10:42 So I I've programmed before, but not JavaScript. So I taught myself to write JavaScript. I wrote a couple of apps, but it took me a month to write a very simple app, you know, and and then when I started reading about ChatGPT and in particular I heard in New York Times podcast about how clever it is writing code. So I thought, well, I'm going to give it a try. So I sat down, I gave it a couple of prompts and within 30 minutes I had an app that would have taken me a month to write and it was far better. Yeah, so, so I've written a couple of like that that are on my website. So if you go under a PT xl.com resources, then there's some, there's some apps that will help you, you know, basically be a better entertainment electrician or power.

1:11:26 That's really cool. Power guy. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah. So that was the first thing. And then another thing I use it for is just research, because if I want to know for example like when I was doing writing this cable article, you know I was talking to Harry Box who wrote the Set technicians handbook which is the Bible of for gaffers and grips in in Hollywood. And and he's really the guy when it comes to you know that that particular topic. So I I shot him an e-mail and I said hey man, you know on page 266 of your book you talk about coiling cable.

1:12:11 I said where did you get that information from Is it just field experience or did you source it somewhere He goes, well, you know originally I I think I sourced it from a cable manufacturer. He goes, I think it was Carol cable. But I can't find the original source right now. So I went and you know now I could go online and I can Google Carol cable, coiling cable or coiling cable techniques or something like that. But it's. I find it's much more efficient if you go to ChatGPT and you type in the same prompt, because it will then search all of these different sources and it'll give you what you're looking for much quicker. And it's usually. Now, it's not always 100% accurate, but if you know anything about coiling cable you can spot it right off the path, You'll know whether or not it's well and. You can also, you can also in your prompt you can tell it not to make shit up and you can tell it what results you want back, what you want them to look like.

1:13:04 Like you could say what was his name? Harry, you could. Say, Harry Box, yeah. Yeah, you could say acting like Harry Box, tell me about this or that and it'll research his book for you and find that information or whatever, right. It really is incredible and it's all down to the prompting and I'm still learning a lot. Yeah, me too. One of the things when I went to the paid version is you can talk to it, you can just communicate, you can just basically talk to it like you're talking to an employee. Exactly. Let's. Say you have an employee who maybe is from overseas or something, and you have to really explain things to them, Tell them exactly.

1:13:45 I want it to be yellow. I want it to be 7 lines long with bullet points. I want it to be this. I want it to be that. I want it to be in 20 point font. You know, it'll give you exactly what you've asked for, pretty much with the occasional mistake. But it's really incredible. I I I'm blown away by the uses. But I didn't know you could tell it not to make stuff up. That's good to know you can. You can and you can also say don't apologize, you can tell it not to apologize. I've found some really great, you know, in I can show you this later. But in your setup on ChatGPT, you can put some things in there and I forget what they call it, but you can basically put in some formatting things that will tell it never, you know, never lie to me, never do this, never do that, always do this.

1:14:31 You know you can put some rules in basically, and it'll always use that formatting in your responses, but have you written any custom GPTS yet or anything that you're? No, that's something I'm definitely interested in doing. I don't know how to do it, but I've read that you can do that. People make it look so easy. Like I've watched so many YouTube videos and stuff on it and I'm an idiot when it comes to that stuff. You'll have an easy time with it. Me, not so much, but it it really does look extremely simple to do it and especially for fairly basic functions. And then now they're, I don't know if they've launched it yet, but they either did or they're about to launch like a GPT shop, like a store where like an App Store where you can go and you can actually monetize these GPTS that you're creating so that people can go on this App Store thing and pay you $0.99 for, you know, this, this GPT that you've created, custom GPT. So you know, not that that's a business I would get into, but. Right.

1:15:42 But yeah, getting into the bigger picture of AI and you know, I had this conversation yesterday with with Josh Allen from Three LRI. Don't know if you know Josh, but really great designer, really smart guy. And you know, obviously our industry is pretty freaked out about, you know, watching jobs go away. You know, right, Programmers, lighting directors, you know, whatever it is, you know, whatever job it is. But, but you know, some of the writing is on the wall on some of those things I think and then other things, you know, it's probably going to be an awful long time before you see that go away. But do you have any thoughts on that like as far as? I do.

1:16:29 You know, boards that program themselves, Like instead of having a programmer there at rehearsals where you just talk to the board and you say now I want to look that's, you know, sort of pinkish, but kind of bluish and does this and does that. Yeah, well, I have a different take on the jobs thing. And I think it's important because obviously we need jobs. We need money. We need to be able to to, you know, feed our families and put food on the table. But, you know, there used to be, back in the 1930s, there was a college professor at Yale named George Eisenhower. And he's a contemporary McCandless. And he was brilliant. He was way ahead of his time. And he what he tried to do was to make robotic lighting in the 1930s.

1:17:12 He he attempted it and failed and because the technology wasn't there yet. And then in 19 in the 1950s the the producer movie producer what's his name escape Italian producer was was going to make this movie, I think it's called Under the Big Top, about a circus family. And they have not, you know these giant tents like Cirque du Soleil with 90 foot, you know, poles. And they wanted to be able to, I'll think of the producer's name in a minute. But they they wanted to be able to refocus the lighting without having to climb up these 90 foot structures. So he called Eisenhower and he said can you make a motorized fresnel.

1:18:04 So he took a a strand feather light Fresnel and he motorized it, pan and tilt and so they could refocus it from the ground level. And it worked. And so then in the 1960s they took those same lights and they put them in Rockefeller Center, Studio 8. HI. Think it is where they they shoot Saturday Night Live today. This is back in the 1960s. Now, Eisenhower had written a couple of books about this which I read, and I want it back in, I want to say the 2000s. I wanted to talk to him about them, so I I tracked him down.

1:18:45 He was living in a nursing home. He's 91 years old at the time, and I called him up and he was very friendly, very nice guy. And I had a long talk with him and he told me a story about that. He said that when they put those motorized Fresnels in Rockefeller Center, in the studio there, that the stagehands were in fear of losing their jobs so mysteriously overnight. The gearboxes were filled with sand, so they broke them, you know. And so the lesson from that, the take away from that for me is that today we have lots and lots of automated lighting and none of those jobs have gone away.

1:19:29 They've only multiplied. Now the job has changed. And I think that's what's going to happen with AII believe that jobs are going to morph. I think that more jobs will be created and that the jobs will change. And as you know, either you're, you can adapt to it, in which case you'll stay employed or you'll get replaced by younger employer, younger people who will come in and just automatically gravitate to the stuff, you know. But in term, yeah, thank you. But in terms of how it's going to change, I mean that's I've been predicting. Voice control for for automated lighting for too many years and you know Larry Cotton actually did that at high end systems back in the 19. Let me think about this, was it the, yeah, it was in the 90s, the mid 90s.

1:20:22 He had a status queue that he had a headset and he could give it commands and it would, it would take his command and it would, you know, do things like change the colour of lights. The problem was you go into noisy environment and it just didn't work, you know, So you had to be in a room by yourself to make it work. Well, the technology is far more advanced today. Yeah, you know, yeah, but so, so I can. Once you get once you get neural link, you'll just think about it, yeah? Right. And then boy, that would be something. Yeah. Or whatever. Oh my gosh. God, this would be better in red. Yeah, you know. Yeah, boom. But I can you know if you think about, I think all the components are there think think about this.

1:21:06 So just like you've used Dolly right And you you give it a prompt and you say create a a red stage wash with and then take two profile fixtures and put them in in you know straw yellow and focus them downstage center and it will create that picture. Well, how? How difficult would it be to instead of a picture, it's actually hooked up to Vectorworks, which then tells the console, which then tells the lights what to do. So you basically are giving a prompt instead of typing out commands on a keyboard. Well, how? About even more advanced than that where it says create a look similar to, you know Michael Jackson when Peter Morse designed the Dangerous tour back in you know 19 whatever.

1:22:01 And you know, add in today's style of fixtures. But a similar look to this song or whatever. Like, I mean you're just going to be, you know make a look that looks like, you know, Roy Bennett. You know, give me a Roy Bennett look. Give me a Peter Morris look. Give me a Mark Brickman look. You know, that's common. That's all common. Yeah, no, I agree. And I I had the idea probably three years ago, if you took a bunch of college kids and you paid them, you know, I don't know, 15 bucks an hour and a six pack of beer to sit down and watch YouTube videos and grade the. You're giving college kids beer?

1:22:43 Richard, well, I mean, it's 21. What are you promoting here? What are you promoting? And but no, if you if you said OK, which of these videos do you like the best? You know is it Pink Floyd, is it Madonna, is it U2? And then you, you sort sort them by by that and then you say, OK, what is it about that video that you like? Do you like the color combinations? You know, and then you get you, you get down to this granular, you know, sort of place where you can choose the best color combinations, the best focus positions and then you can use those as your building blocks. And now when I made that suggestion and I I think I wrote about it somewhere, you know, I just had this idea and of course it was, it was not received well because lighting designers are going, oh, you know, you can't do that. And maybe they have a point.

1:23:40 I'm I'm willing to accept that some of these this may be totally off the rails, but I think in order to advance art you have to take chances and there's going to be a lot of failures, but that's how you move. The ball forward, Well, the genie's out of the bottle too. You know this. This isn't. You can't just stop it. You can't just I. Totally agree. You can't stop. It at this point. So you got to either figure out a way to, you know, either protect, you know, lighting designs or protect this or that. But I mean there's nothing there's no intellectual property in a in a lighting look or whatever, right. It's it's just another lighting look. He programmed the lights to do a certain thing. Anyone could program the lights to do a certain thing. So it's tough and you know believe me I'm I'm for the lighting designers on this one.

1:24:30 Absolutely. But I think that you know it's coming. It's going to happen like think of artists right now artists like you can just go to ChatGPT today and or Dolly and say now create that image in the vision of and you know insert artist here and it'll completely change it to be their style of of painting or drawing or whatever. It is. Yeah, right. But at the end of the day, it's another tool. And that's really what advances art is tools, You know, if you think about, for example, Diego Rivera, when he, you know, he was a great mural muralist. But what what he was trying to do back in the 30s, they didn't have the techniques, but he invented his own technique. That's his tool to do that.

1:25:15 The same with who was it? Michelangelo, I think, who invented his own pigments? I think it was to paint with because they they didn't have anything that had enough saturation. So he would mix his own paints. So this I I look at it as a brilliant tool. If the right person is, Roy Bennett would embrace it. Or if Peter Morris would embrace it, or, you know, Mark Brickman would embrace it and really take it to the limit. That's how you get, that's how you create. You know, just mind blowing art that nobody's ever seen it's. Going to be interesting because, you know, one of the things that I think is going to be a very slow roll on this is the manufacturers putting in the technology to basically use AI in these consoles. And because you know who's gonna be brave enough to do that? It's it's gonna require a lot of courage to go out and say, hey, we don't need lighting programmers anymore, you know? You can program.

1:26:21 I don't think it's gonna be thoughts. I don't think it's gonna be the program. I mean, I don't think it's gonna be the manufacturers. I think it's gonna be individuals. It's gonna be people. I I'm drawing a blank on his name. There used to be a guy. Well, there he's he's still around there. There's a guy who who used to work for Amazon and at if you work for Amazon they allow you to have side projects. And his side project was coming to the standards meetings at the ESTA standards meetings and he would, you know invent technology. He he created pages like there's a Raspberry Pi page how to how to build RDM device or something like that And and that he just, you know we're talking about people who are passionate before.

1:27:12 That's what it is. Somebody who's passionate about doing what we're talking about, those are the people who are going to make it happen. But still the the until the consoles like until you have an AI supported or AI driven or AI powered console, you're not gonna have someone who can just talk to a console and have it, you know, do things for you. Well, yeah, maybe you're right. And that that just reminded me, Marcel. I just came back from Seattle at USITT and guess what? Vectorworks has integrated an AI into Vectorworks. So when you, yeah, you can build a a 3D model and then I I hope I can talk about this, this might be a bit premature, but anyway, did you sign in India?

1:28:03 No, I did not. OK, then you're good. No. No. But what you can do is you can you can give it prompts to create renderings so based on your stage design and you can you can scale it. Either you can do it you can tell it how creative to get or how true to the your design to stay. You know, there's there's some levers you can, you know you can some sliders you can move around to get different results, but you know, that's that's the start I think of being able to say create a look with a blue wash and yellow beams and then it'll if it can translate it in Vectorworks to DMX and send it to the console then it's a done deal. Well, and also what about like being able to design the rig and then design all the, you know, infrastructure cabling and everything else you know without having to do any of that work. You know, basically saying, you know, I mean, to me, you're gonna get rid of a lot of the redundant stuff. And you know, I was talking to Josh Allen about that yesterday. Like he said already, in a lot of his spec work, he's able to remove just 10s of hours on just, you know, writing specs and these long, long, long specs for a cruise ship or whatever, that now you can just use AI to do it because it's pretty straightforward stuff, but you

1:29:35 have to write it and. Right. So yeah, yeah, anything you can automate like that, it makes sense. Totally makes sense. Yeah, yeah. It's just, I know, like at LDI I wasn't there this year for the first time, but at LDI. There was a good one. Yeah, I know I've heard too much about it. It pisses me off. I was so mad when I wasn't there cuz everybody was posting best LDI ever. And she's like. Ah, you know, yeah, but, but there was a control company and I don't know who it was, but they had a big sign up on their booth AI. You get rid of your lighting designer or something like that, like, I don't think. It was that blatant. But no, they did a they did a demo at the new Technology Breakfast and they basically said you don't need a lighting sign anymore, you just tell your AI. And yeah, that was not well received. It didn't.

1:30:28 Go over. Well, apparently they had a line up at their booth of people in there protesting and stuff. But yeah, it's common, folks. It is coming, right? I totally agree it's coming. There's always gonna be a need for some knowledge and stuff, but yeah, yeah, I mean the stuff that you're getting to need a lot of money to do, that's redundant. Imagine that going away and figure out, yeah, but then you can do more projects, right? Cuz you're spending less time on the tedious stuff that you don't wanna do anyway. Exactly, exactly. That's where I look at. That makes a lot of sense now. And the other thing is, like, you know, God knows, someday we're going to have freaking robots standing there.

1:31:09 You know, the lighting director is going to be something that looks like a human in a concert T-shirt or whatever, but it ain't a human, You know, It's common. I mean, it sounds crazy, but it's all common. It's it's weird like that, you know? Yeah. Another thing, Speaking of consoles, I actually just this morning I saw a thread on, I don't know, everything, lighting, whatever the one of the groups on Facebook and poor guy. I felt bad for him cuz he put this post out as a question and sometimes our industry isn't very. Friendly, I think I saw that question. Yeah. So about the fake console in a church. Yeah, Yeah.

1:31:52 What are your thoughts on that one? Probably the same as mine, I'm guessing in most people. 'S yeah. I think it's a really bad idea to buy any stolen IP. And that's basically what you're doing. You know, I went to Pro Light and Sound in Shanghai right before the pandemic, and you can walk through, You can buy a grandma console for 600 bucks, You can buy a Sharpie for 600 bucks you can buy. And it looks like, you know, some of them look identical. Some of them look a little off, You know, you can tell. But bottom line is it's stolen. It's, you know, they're they're not building that from the ground up.

1:32:33 So what you're doing is you're you're literally taking money out of people's pockets. You know there was a company in England and I'm, I'm going to forget their name. But they were very creative and they they made this thing called the the Elody. It looked like a little like a little flute almost silver thing with LEDs on it. And it had touch sensors and you could line them up and instead of programming them like like or sorry, instead of typing in their DMX addresses, you put it in address mode and you walk down the line, you touch them in order and it would automatically address them in the order you touch them.

1:33:17 And it had sensors. So if you flipped it over then it knew its orientation. So if it's chasing this particular direction, if one was upside down it would it would correct itself. And they also made the, I wish I could remember the name of this light. It's very, very popular. About about 15 years ago you saw them everywhere. They were throwback to the 9 to to the LE DS. You know when LED started getting real popular, they came out with an incandescent 9 light fixture on a stand and it was super popular and. The BB3 or B5 or B1 or whatever that company. The B something NO9B something. Or, you know, as soon as the podcast is over, I'm gonna remember the name of it.

1:34:01 But anyway, the point, the point there is that. Is usually the one that's texting me right now going It's the B something, you idiot. Yeah. Come on Eric, bring it. Yeah. No, but the point is that they went out of business because they got all of their that fixture got copied so much that it took all the profit out of it and they didn't survive. So what that means is that there's now one less company that is creating really inventive new products that were different than anybody else. They're gone now and that's what happens when you when you buy those, those, those counterfeit products. Well, it's no different than than drugs, except drugs is an evil business.

1:34:45 But you know, when when we're talking about pharmaceutical drugs, not, not the other kind or both, you know, no. But the, the problem being if you take away the incentive for drug companies to to make profit and they've taken it to an extreme, obviously. But you know, if you take away the incentive, then you're going to lose the the innovation. And the same thing happens in our industry. You know, every time someone steals a design from Claypacki that sort of knocks them down a rung on wanting to spend the kind of money they do on, you know, coming up with new technology or coming up with great ideas or whatever. And I hate to see it like and I'm not going to mention who exactly the company is. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

1:35:28 But you know, one year at LDI, Claypacki came out with this this fixture, I think it's called, I don't remember, but it's a bunch of small square fixtures and and they kind of do this thing, you know, they're, they're all LE DS and they're in a in a line and they kind of do this this wave thing, it's probably called the wave or something. But you know within one trade show like from LDI to whatever was after LDI, it was copied by another company and it was brighter and it was cooler and it it, you know, was probably cheaper and all of that stuff. And you know for me, like again where's the incentive to spend money on on R&D if that cycle where you get to get an ROI on your R&D just goes away.

1:36:20 You know it's it's sad. So, but, but yeah, the whole fake console thing, like honestly I learned about it because somebody put a fake console on Gearsource and immediately we got contacted by somebody saying, hey, that's a fake. And I'm like what? He goes, yeah, that's a grand ma two fake. And I said no, it can't be, it looks exactly like an MA2 console. And he goes, yeah they do, but it's a fake. And so we went to the seller and we said is this a fake? And he goes, yeah, of course when you get it off of our site, will you like, what are you doing? And he goes, oh, I didn't know I couldn't sell it. And I said, but you called it an MA lighting MA two. So even if we did accept fake consoles, you'd have to say it's a fake console.

1:37:03 But we. Don't accept them. So you know, we actually put it into our terms and conditions after that like no counterfeit products. You know, if we find you selling a counterfeit product, you're going to be responsible for anything that that costs us. If we get sued, if you know we have to ship it back to you, it's all on you and. Yeah, I had dinner with Brad from AVO last week and he he, he told me he could spot him across the room. But they he was telling me that that they've even gotten some fake consoles in for repair at the AVO shop and the repair technicians didn't know that they were counterfeits. And Brad walks in and goes, yeah, he's Brad goes that console over there, that's a fake. And they're like, what do you mean? What are you talking?

1:37:45 He's like, that's a fake, you know? So yeah, what? What was that? Defining, I think he said the color was slightly off or something like that. I can't remember. Remember the track spot made in Austin, TX, China? I do. I I just covered that. Bellevue's initials on the inside of it too. Like they actually copied his little autograph inside it that he. Used to do, yeah, yeah, So. And I wrote about it in my automated lighting book. But that was I was actually, I found that at a trade show in Beijing before, when everybody's setting up, I was wandering around and there's one hall that's all Chinese manufacturers. And I and I walk down there and they're setting up their booth and I saw something looked like a track spot sitting on the floor.

1:38:26 So I went and started looking at it and I opened up the cover and it had all Richard's name in there. And but the the the funniest thing was they didn't know to replace USA, or they knew to replace USA with China, but they didn't know to replace Austin, TX. So it ended up saying Light wave Research, Austin, TX, China. On I know, I didn't realize you were the one who found that. I just remember seeing the the pictures of it and stuff. Yeah, that's so funny though. That's such a role reversal. You going into their booth and taking the cover off the light and taking pictures of it and stuff, because that's what they used to do. Like we used to have to put security guys at booths to keep those guys out. You know, you'd have all these these people from other places coming with cameras, big huge cameras and stuff, taking pictures of your fixtures and wanting you to take covers off and stuff and it's like get. Out and as soon as you kick them out then you get an order for one fixture.

1:39:17 Exactly. Yeah. Well, and we used to always get those orders all the time. Like, people would come to us all the time and say, hey, can you get me one of these? Whatever. And I'm like, no, no, we can't. We can't get you one. Yeah, it's it's crazy. But yeah, I mean, that's obviously still a thing. And it's amazing to me that they're so blatant about it and that nobody seems to do anything about it. Like you would think, well, you could clamp down on that When you're MA lighting, you're selling an $80,000 lighting console that they're selling a counterfeit of like. Yeah, well, I think it's a cultural thing. I mean, it's just a different way of thinking. It is. You're right. Yeah, you're right.

1:39:58 I mean, I remember one of my first trips to Asia, I saw, I think it was in Hong Kong. And you know, there was a, like a, a flea market almost, right. And you had a table with Nike shoes that were real, that were like $30 or whatever. And then you had a table of the exact same shoes next to it that were like $7.00. And I was like, what's going on? Are these Nike? And he goes, yes, yes, yes, these are Nike. And I said, so why are these more money? Because those are Nike. And I said, but these are Nike too. And he goes, but not the real Nike, you know, with like a wink and stuff, right? And I'm like, oh OK well give me 4 pairs of the cheap ones, then I'll take.

1:40:38 Those. Yeah. Same with DVDs. You could get a a a movie. You know of any DVD of any movie back then for for pennies, you know, Oh. My God, terrible. Yeah, so I was. I was one time with my ex-wife in Italy. Do you know Kiara, who used to be with Komar? Chiara was like Bruno's, you know, right hand basically she Italian lady, really nice Italian lady that worked for Bruno for many years. But we went out one night for dinner with Chiara. And you know, there were these, I think they were Albanians that would set up like a a blanket on the ground in the high sort of tourist areas, right? And they'd they'd open up a blanket and they'd have a bunch of fake stuff.

1:41:24 And my ex-wife always wanted a Prada wallet. And but, you know, when you look in the shops, they're like $1500 for a, you know, a little wallet, right. And so she goes, oh, that's that exact wallet that we were looking at in Milan. And Kiara goes, yeah, it is, you should buy it. And she goes, I can't spend $1500 on a wallet. And she goes ask him the price. And it was like it was in Lira, but I think it worked out to like 30 bucks And and Kiara goes, Kiara had the same wallet in her bag, but she had the actual Prada one. And she goes, Barbara look and she's comparing. They're both looking at them. Every single thing about them was identical, identical. So she bought the wallet.

1:42:11 I think she talked him down to you know, 25 bucks or something, bought the wallet and she was so happy. You know, with this fake Prada wallet, again, it's still stealing. Yeah, you know, and and it's still terrible. I feel less bad about it knowing that Prada has like, you know, 98.5% profit margins or whatever, You know, right. I mean, they're they're doing OK, you know, they're not hurting. But at at the same time, it's still stealing whether it's a an MA console or a Prada wallet. So I guess I. Yeah, I remember when when the what was that website where you could you could steal music, download music for free. Something stir What the? Hell, is that Napster?

1:42:54 Napster. Right. Napster. Yeah. And a lot of people said, well, it doesn't cost a musician anything. Well, no, but it's taking money out of their pocket. You know, it's hard enough being a musician as it is, Yeah. But to steal their intellectual property is. Yeah, that's one thing I never, ever, ever did. Not once. And part of the reason was, again, my ex-wife worked in the record business and it was absolutely taboo. Like if she heard me listening to something that I didn't buy, you know, I was in big trouble. And to this day, I mean, I I pay Apple Music. You know, whatever it is, 15 bucks a month or something for unlimited music. And you know, the artists are still getting ripped off on streaming. But at least I'm paying.

1:43:38 You know? It's legit. But I I won't steal. The best we can, right? Yeah, I won't steal a song from anybody, you know, I even feel bad going and listening to somebody's new song on YouTube because, you know, chances are they're not getting paid for that. But right. Yeah, What are you gonna do? You know, we can just try our best. So have you got? Any. Yeah. And not not by counterfeit, sorry. Yeah. Have you got any new books going on? So I'm working, I'm working on the the 4th edition of Electricity for the Entertainment Electrician and Technician, and I so wish that I'd made the title shorter. If I had, I known that it would be 4 editions. I'd have called it Entertainment Electrics, you know, but it's so that that should be.

1:44:22 I just finished about 25% of it. I'm supposed to turn in the rest of it by September. Yeah? So early next year they'll be another edition of Electricity for the Entertainment Electrician and Technician. So if anybody has any suggestions about what they'd like to see in it or what they you know, any changes, now is a good time, let me know. Well, have ChatGPT. Read your last book and say give me some suggestions for things that I can put in the next. It's a. Great idea. There you go. You know, it's those are things like, again, some people might say that's bullshit. You know, that's cheating. If ChatGPT writes it, it's not writing it. It's helping with research. That's exactly right. It's a tool. Yeah, you're gonna write it. It's just gonna help you with research.

1:45:03 It's gonna give you some ideas of stuff to put in there and it might write some of the mundane stuff that is just repeated or whatever. But yeah, yeah, now that's cool. And you know, so again, I would guess that these books you're writing, cuz not because you're getting rich off selling books, because I don't think anyone really does that, do they? I know not in our industry, I. Don't know too many people who who make money on books or get get any kind of an income off of books. But so you're really just this is another authentic just Richard trying to make a. Better. Well, I mean, So what there, you know, Yeah, I I do. I do like helping people and I think it does help people. But if, if I'm 100% honest, that book sells my services as a trainer, Yeah, of course when people read the book, they go, oh, it'd be cool to go to one of his classes or they'll call me up and go, can you come teach a class? And that's really where I earn my salary. You know, legitimize you.

1:46:07 Being an author legitimizes you as a speaker or a trainer or whatever. Yeah, that makes. Sense, Absolutely. Sense. That makes a lot of sense. Like, I know a lot of public speakers who get paid. You know, I don't know a lot, but I know a few public speakers who get paid $100,000 to go speak at A at a convention or or a corporate meeting or something. And. Yeah, I charge slightly less than that. Do you? Oh, OK Well, I might have yet my next convention. But, you know, the reason that they're able to get that is because they wrote a relatively successful business book or book on whatever that is, right. And you know, by the way, I have a weird fetish for listening to to keynote speakers. I love keynote speakers.

1:46:51 I I always have. And so one time I was an, here's a story for you. One time I was at either LDI or Infocom. It might have been Infocom in Vegas, and I was staying in the horrible Westgate Hotel. So I was walking over from the Westgate to it might have been the Hilton still at the time, but I was walking over to the Convention Center and there's that last ballroom there. And the door was sort of open. So I could see that there was something going on in there. And there was about to be a keynote. And so I look at the door and it says like, you know, garage door convention or something, right. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm a garage door guy. So I just went walking in the door. It was open. So I went walking in and I grabbed a chair and sat down and it was Do you know who Jeffrey Ma is? Yeah, I think I do, actually.

1:47:40 The movie 21 is about him. Yeah, OK. He was like the card counter guy that got thrown out of Vegas or right. Him and his buddies from MIT became very, very proficient at counting guards. And so Jeffrey Mon now has a very successful business basically helping people with helping, whether it's sports teams or businesses or whatever, predicting the future based on numbers from the past and stuff. Right. Wow. Including the probability for in basketball. For example, if you go to this player 1st and then to this player, you know what is the probability of getting a three-point shot versus going from this player to this player. And they look back at all of the numbers that happened in the past and they give you, you know, the different results from a probability standpoint doesn't mean it's guaranteed, it just means there's a better chance that this is going to work than this is going to work.

1:48:43 And, you know, so obviously in gambling that's a big deal. And you know, although, like, he talks a lot about the fact that that he doesn't like games of chance like roulette. You know, because roulette, you could roll, like if a lot of people will watch it go black four times or five times in a row and they'll be like, OK, I'm putting the house on red because chances are it's going red. Actually, there's a 50% chance. That it's gonna go black again. You know, it really is literally a It's completely up to chance. There's no likelihood probability, nothing. It's just 100% chance.

1:49:23 And that's why he played Blackjack, because in Blackjack you could actually, and he played in very specific situations like single deck or whatever. I can't remember exactly, but you know you knew and and they had a number. You know it's all a weighted number on, you know now it's a 7 or whatever and they knew how much to bet based on what the next card was likely to be in all of those different things and they just couldn't lose. They literally couldn't lose. But anyways, he as a speaker was unreal. It was so entertaining and I missed my first couple of meetings because I sat in there for an hour and a half and watched this guy speak.

1:50:03 That's great. I'm just addicted to public speakers I love. You know my my favorite speaker of all time is Tom Peters. Now he's retired. But several years ago, this was when I'd I'd been laid off from high end and I'd been laid off from Martin and I was kind of trying to figure things out and he came to town and I went to to see him and he was stalking the stage and he was you know spittle was coming out of his mouth as he was talking and and it's just fascinating and and brilliant, brilliant guy. I wish he was still active, but he's, I guess he's. There's so many really good ones, though. There's like so many great ones out there. You know, one of the guys, I'm actually going as much as I can, but I'm going to his, the virtual side of it.

1:50:49 But a lot of people think he's a complete douche. But every once in a while he says some pretty smart things. Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone is the guy. So he's a big real estate entrepreneur. But he went from nothing to something. You know he he was a drug addict broke starving and went and started selling cars and and just said how can I sell more cars than the next guy How can I go 10X on the income that I'm making selling cars. And he started this whole 10X thing and and now he's basically a billionaire and and so he he's he got fairly famous because he did that show. Something about a I forget what it was called but something about a billionaire or something or other basically take a a guy's money away. He couldn't use his name.

1:51:38 He couldn't use his money. He couldn't use any of his his stuff and he had to be dropped into a town and create a business worth. I think it was $5,000,000 within 60 days or 90 days or something with zero money, no name nobody could know who he was. You know nothing like that. He just had to create a business from nothing and he did it. He made a business that was worth 6 or 7 million within that time. Incredible. But anyways, he's doing a, he's doing a three day thing next week and I I got a free virtual invite thing to it. So I'm gonna pop into it a few times. But he's really good. I mean, there's a bunch of them. I still like Tony Robbins. I was listening to Tony Robbins when I was, I don't know, 1819 years old.

1:52:22 Like, I was one of his earliest fans, probably, and he's gotten a bit corny today, but he still has some really smart stuff every once in a while, You know, I've gotten to a point where I just, I grab Nuggets. Like, I don't listen to everything that anyone says. I kind of. Grab Nuggets and then go on. To the next guy. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. That's cool. What else did I want to ask you about? There was something else here that I missed. Your books. We talked about your books. What are the books you have today? Just list them. Just. And are they all on Amazon too? Yeah. So electricity for entertainment, electricians and technicians, automated lighting, the art and science of moving and color changing lights.

1:53:05 There was or is that is that it needs to be updated. My publisher wanted me to update it a couple years ago and I put it off just because there's it. It's so hard to keep up with that technology right now. You know, I kind of want to let the dust settle a bit before I tackle it again because it's a big project. The last time I updated it, you know, I told my, my, I I can see. What year was this, 2000. I can't remember now. But the last time I updated it, my, I, my publisher said, you know, how long it's going to take you. I said, oh, it'll take me a year. Well, it took me 3 because everything changed everything.

1:53:45 I mean, you know, LEDs were huge and power supplies have changed. The optics have changed because of LEDs. Of course the the light source has changed. There's so much going on in that area, you know that's that's now that book. I might just tell ChatGPT. Just rewrite this book for me, you know? No, it's it's. I was actually going to say it. It sounds like another perfect use case. I mean, you could create probably. Well, there's writing there's writing GPTS, custom writing GPTS. But I'm sure there's probably like book updating GPTS too. You know things. That that's what I need to update a. Book. Yeah, you should look for that because that's, that sounds like a really good use case for that.

1:54:29 Yeah. So what else is there? What other There's focus on lighting technology now. If that's an old book, I haven't updated it in quite a while. Yeah. And then there's also lighting for modern houses of worship, which again, I have not updated in a long, long time that that book was based on my experience. When I left Martin, I started freelancing as a lighting designer. I got a lot of and I hooked up with this company that was based in Nashville called Mass Max Productions, and they were doing a lot of church projects. So, So yeah. And what I quickly realized what we did, these, you know, mega churches lit these mega churches and there were audio guys. So they.

1:55:13 So I did all the lighting and what I quickly realized is that that's a great way to learn lighting because in a church environment, it's basically a combination of theatrical lighting because you have live people on stage and in a live audience. It's also, it's also television lighting because a lot of them have television ministries, so they have cameras everywhere and they're shooting video. And it's also kind of like concert lighting because they have a band on stage too. So it's it's a great way to learn lighting in general. And so I wrote a book about how to light for churches and and it's and really if you take out the references to churches, it's just a how do you light a stage?

1:55:57 How do you light a band, how do you light for television. You know it's all the same thing. So that that book is what I should do is take the ChatGPT and get it to take out the church references and just make it a lighting book. Well, and again, I mean, what has changed? You know, I'm sure some things have changed that make it a heck of a lot easier or different or, you know, whatever. You know, like it. Well, what the the physics hasn't changed. So you know, 3 point lighting is still very valid with the mechanless method and that's basically what that book was about. Interesting. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I, you know, Fausto or Saudi again, another old Komar guy. But Fausto and I are very close friends. I talked to him. Constantly.

1:56:38 Great guy. He's just a guy that I've always really appreciated, very smart guy. But he just went to Pro Light and and after Pro Light kind of gave me his, his, you know, download or whatever on on Pro Light. And he just, you know, he thinks that we're in a bit of a boring moment in our industry. Like you know, they're small incremental advancements at this moment. Whereas, you know, I think I'm still blown away by how much better everything is than it was when you and I were selling moving lights for a living. You. Know. Me too. Anything. Every brand. I don't care whether it's the cheapest offshore brand or the most expensive US made stuff or whatever, if there is any US made stuff anymore.

1:57:23 But you know, it's all so damn good. It's all really. It's so reliable. It's it's packed with features. It's affordable. It's bright. The color rendering is spectacular. Yeah, it's it's just mind blowing. It really is so impressive. And you know, they're just jamming so many things. Like, you know, I've said this before and I'll say it again, but I I went to the Ayrton headquarters in Paris a couple years ago and one of their engineers opened a light for me, and I can't even remember which light it was. But I'm sure they're all very similar. I couldn't believe how much stuff was packed into it. Like all it was just unreal because obviously with LED there's less heat so you can put things closer together.

1:58:08 And I was just blown away. I was like, my God and. Yeah, and you wouldn't be able to do that without computers without rapid prototyping. Yeah, those are tools, just like AI is. Yeah, and AI is gonna take us to the next level, of course. I mean, not to change your subject here, but no, it's all good. It all kind of ties together. Right, it does, yeah. I think AI to me, there's a couple of things. And I want your prediction on the sort of future of automated lighting, but for me, I think battery technology is going to be big. I think that's going to be a big part of it, wireless and battery technology going together. So I think we're going to see a lot less cabling in the future and a lot more you know either battery or or battery batteries built into the trussing and then you just, you know clip it to the trussing and it it gets its power there or whatever.

1:59:04 But so I think that's going to be a big one and and just wireless technology continuing to to improve and become much more utilized than it is US today. Those to me are going to be a couple of the big changes that we'll see in the future because it it doesn't make sense to have to run the amount of infrastructure that we have still at this point you. Know. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. And you know what? I think one of the next steps is going to be to take out the to change the power supply. Because right now what we do is we generate power we we generate alternating current AC, we send it to these fixtures that have a power supply that change it to low voltage DC.

1:59:45 So if you have a battery then you need to convert it to AC and then the fixture turns it back into DC. So we can skip that middle step because every time you convert it you lose a you lose some energy. So, so I think it won't be long before we have go back to DC systems. So now instead of having a light with a power supply in it, it'll have an inverter in it. Not, sorry, not an inverter. It'll have, yeah, it'll just take DC right into it. So if your battery bank is is not in the light, that's going to make your light smaller and lighter without a power supply. And if there's no transformer in it, you just plug it into DC and it goes.

2:00:25 Now people say, well, wait a minute, you can't do that because you know, the DC is low voltage and you'll have too much voltage drop. Well The thing is we we have inverters that can raise the voltage. So we can easily in in a very small package we can take 48 volts DC, we can make it 48,000 volts DC. That reduces the current, makes the wires much smaller. You can send it a long way. Then you have another inverter that drops it back down to 48 volts DC and you plug your light into it. So it's the technology is there today. It's just going to take somebody to somebody who has the initiative, and I do know some people who are working along those lines.

2:01:10 So I think it's gonna happen at some point that we go to DC back to DC. You know what's funny? I remember last time I had you on the podcast, I asked you a prediction and you probably don't remember what it was, but I do. I don't. I can't believe I remember what it was but it was one of the greatest answers I ever had to that question because I don't ask it often. But when I get smart guys like you on, I'll I'll ask because I I'm genuinely interested to be honest. I I want to know where people see things going. But I said I asked you what, what's one of the things that hasn't been invented that you'd like to see invented? And you said bending light. You know, you said bending light.

2:01:51 And I went what? And you explained to me, you know, what that meant. And I was like, wow, you know, somebody figured that out. Would you? And it was just such a wild answer. Bending light, you know? But yeah, yeah. Well, you know, sometimes, like I understand where Fausto is coming from, because if you look at the effects that lights produce, that hasn't changed a whole lot. So sometimes you have to really try to think out outside of the box. You know, yeah. So yeah, no. And yeah, I mean, for him, you know, I don't know if he's just bored of it or or if he really does think, because I don't think, I don't think we're in a boring spot at all. Like I do think we're running out of ways to to change you know the standard moving light or whatever you want to call it. You know Brighter LE DS.

2:02:47 I like that we're going to miniaturization on a lot of these lights right now like a you know the Mac one is is one of my personal favorites. I think it's a killer little product and and the packaging you know with the four bar and stuff, I don't know if you saw Ayrton and I cannot remember for the life of me what it's called but they just showed something at at Pro Light that is like their old Magic dot. I think it's that, that basic body, It's like that little tiny round ball fixture, but it's got a laser source in it. And you know, like, so some people would say, oh great, another Sharpie, you know, with a laser in it, who cares? But to me, it's the form factor, it's the size, It's the fact that this thing's this tiny and now you can get this extremely bright beam coming out of very small places, you know, out of a very small fixture. That's really quick too, you know, that's interesting, but so.

2:03:42 Yeah, when? When I wrote automated lighting, the art and science, I started tracking the the, the, the size, the intensity and something else of moving lights over decades. And you can see, yeah, you can see, you know how lights are getting smaller, brighter. I guess expense would be the other thing, cheaper for the amount of light output, and I always thought that's going to level off. It's got to level off at some point and I think it did for a while. It started plateauing out around 2000. But it takes off again. Yeah. Yeah. It's taken off again. Yeah, you're right.

2:04:24 Yeah, I mean, it's cool. Like, well, I've been seeing people doing this whole like, what is it lumens per oz or something like that or, yeah, you know, as opposed to lumens per Watt, they're now doing lumens per oz or lumens per pound or whatever. Like, that's cool. I like that. I think that's a cool idea because we were getting too big and fat and heavy for a little while there. Exactly. You know when moving lights are 150 lbs and and one Rd. case is as big as a Volkswagen? Like it just doesn't make sense. You know, it's just getting silly, right? Yeah. So one more question. I, you know, I've started this new sort of go to gear thing where on the site we're going to, we're going to start promoting, you know so and so says these are his three favorite pieces of gear or whatever.

2:05:09 So what are what are like 3 three things that you love that. Oh man, if you're designing a show, you know you got to have these three things. You're going to, you're going to put me on the spot. Well I'll tell you this, I Speaking of ChatGPT I I asked it the other day what was the most popular moving light fixture. You know stage light, automated light fixture. And the the number one answer was a Mac aura. And I gotta admit, man, you know, I use those a lot and I like them. It is a great it. Is a great light, yeah. I'm surprised though. I would have thought that it'd say like a Mega point or something like a Roby mega point or a you know? Well, I don't know.

2:05:53 Specs and stuff, you know, like those are the things that I always get people looking for. Yeah, I can't vouch for how accurate it is. Yeah, I just thought it would be interesting to ask. It is an interesting question. I've never thought of asking it. That kind of stuff. That's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. What else? So I think wow, this is this is tough. What kind of console are you on normally? You know, I I used to be a a hog guy but but lately I've been using more of a grandma console. So although I have to say I really like the new and I haven't used one on the show, the ETC Apex looks really interesting so I'd like to get get my hands on that one then you know. But you know a lot of times these days I'm working as a master electrician.

2:06:47 So you know a lot of my my favorite stuff now is is I I pay less attention to the lights than to the the tools you know the the the meters and stuff like that. But. But if I had to pick one more, let me think about this. It would probably be. This, these three or this question is going into our, you know when we book people it's going into the booking form. Yeah, I think it's already in there starting like this. Week or something, so good idea. You missed it by a week or two, but yeah, yeah, we're. Asking some new questions. Yeah, so I think I've in terms of just the effect and having fun playing with programming. I really like the Madricks, cuz if it's 3D pixel mapping stuff, yeah so you know you can do that with almost any pixel matrix, right?

2:07:44 So, but, but I would say the Madricks cool. Nice. Awesome. Well, did I miss anything? Are you promoting anything that we haven't already talked about or? You know, I have, I have classes coming up in Dallas in April and in Baltimore in August, so. How do people book those? On my website www.aptxl.com. You have so many websites. I have too many. You're right, I need to get through. I looked at the Archad dot me one and it really needs updating. See, you need clones, you need a bunch of people.

2:08:26 Yeah, you know, I I have a friend who's like a solopreneur similar to you, and he said that he's now got employees, but he said that his best employee is ChatGPT. He said he has figured out the prompting so much to this point now where you know he's talking to that thing 3 hours a day and it's giving him 10 hours worth of work every day like. It's just. Insane the amount of stuff that it's doing for him, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're scratching the surface, right? I'm I'm just, I've just been dabbling. We've only just begun, exactly. And there goes, there goes my simming career. It's over.

2:09:06 Well, Rich I. Appreciate you that wasn't bad. Yeah, I appreciate you and I'm so happy you made the time to come and do this. I always enjoy talking to you. We don't do it often enough. My pleasure. It's been fun. Yeah, cool. All right, my friend. See you later. All right. Be well. Bye. Bye. You too. The.