On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 04:19:23PM -0400, William Ferrell wrote:
> On 6/25/06, Jay R. Ashworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 02:13:48PM -0400, William Ferrell wrote:
> > On 6/25/06, Jay R. Ashworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 01:36:00PM -0400, William Ferrell wrote:
> > > I've relocated to Florida (Palm Bay), and am trying to set
> > > up shop here as a KJ.
> > Well, no shit. Welcome to sunny (where, by sunny, right now I
> mean
> > 'rainy') Florida.
> >
> > Indeed. It's quite a bit nicer than Colorado's weather though.
> I'll bet.
>
> Heh. Yeah. You joke until you realize that last year it SNOWED
> IN JUNE there. That sucked, and filled me with much annoyance.
> Colorado natives can NOT drive correctly in snow. They all just buy
> four-wheel drives to compensate.
Hee.
> At least the wrecks are entertaining as long as you're not involved in them
> :P
I'll bet.
> So I found out further down, and forgot to go back and edit this. Nice
> to have a portable skill, though, isn't it?
>
> It is, yes. I love freelance software development. Because I'm
> single (dammit) and have no local "ties" really I can just up
> and "take a vacation" to some other exotic spot (though for now,
> Florida is plenty "exotic" compared to my previous port of call)
> and keep on working; clients rarely (if ever) need to actually meet
> face-to-face.
Indeed.
My chops are mostly system and network admin, and help desk, which are
slightly less portable. I used to be a coder, but I much prefer to
design (which is just as well, since so few *coders* are decent
designers...)
> > Same here. I've got a Python module built that can automatically
> > handle song rotations ( i.e. you hand it names, songs, etc., and
> > it timestamps each submission (and new singer), counts total
> > performances by each singer per night, and performs weighted,
> > balanced rotation management to keep the "average wait time per
> > singer" down.
>
> How does that play in Peoria? Most of the KJs in my market use strict
> rotation, and most of the circuit singers don't well tolerate anyone
> who doesn't. Including me. :-)
>
> I've been to many karaoke shows here in Palm Bay/Melbourne now, and
> I am consistently annoyed with how rotations run, because nobody
> runs them like I do. :)
<chuckle>
> Nobody seems to run a rotation the same way either, and the net
> result is people end up waiting too long. The guy who runs most of
> the shows I attend now does something really funky -- instead of
> smoothly blending new and old singers together into rotations, he
> does it in batches. One old singer, three new ones, one old one,
> four new ones, etc. That has the effect of putting people off and
> making people wait longer than necessary.
I suppose it's time to start figuring out what can be optimzed for, and
what that optimization pessimizes. Do we have a wiki yet? :-)
> The management system I wrote was initially just strict rotation
> (FIFO), but that doesn't fly.
Flies just fine here... why doesn't it fly other places? Oh, wait:
you're about to explain. :-)
> The new one was designed with these
> principles and goals in mind:
> 1) A singer who arrives early (or at least on time) at show start
> and stays until the show closes should get to sing more songs (and
> with as "even" a wait between songs as possible) than someone who
> turns up later.
Straight rotation handles this: the size of the full singer list
follows a bell curve; the early rotations may be 4 to 6 singers, even
though the largest one is 24 singers.
The tighter a show you play, the more benefit the early arrivers get.
> 2) A singer who shows up an hour before the show closes should have
> at least a *chance* to sing one song if at all possible.
This is *usually* not a problem at my most common show; attrition is
pretty hard after the Big Rotation.
> 3) Apart from respecting 1 & 2, singers should sing on a
> first-come-first-served basis, mixing new singers with old once the
> first rotation is finished.
Hmmm...
> The end result of all this juggling is that a person who shows up
> right at 9:00pm at show start will still get to sing three songs
> if I have forty singers in a night, while someone who shows up at
> midnight (show closing at 1:00am) will sneak in and get one song.
> Everybody else waits a uniformly average amount of time ( i.e.
> everybody waits about the same amount of time, give or take a few
> minutes, between their songs). That wait increases as people get
> added, but it's uniform; there's no "special treatment".
"Special treatment" is like "special interest". It depends on your
viewpoint.
> It always went over very well in Colorado, mostly because the
> computer *displays* the whole process (you see your name appear in
> a different color if you're a new singer, and you see the colors
> staggered) between every song and people can see where they are
> on the rotation. When someone sees the list grow and change, they
> understand they're not the only singers and don't bitch about wait
> time. When they see that when they're new, they bump somebody, they
> don't get upset when a new singer bumps them later.
Yeah; having the computer do it probably helps a lot. "The Computer
Says So" has great weight these days.
And, of course, running a visibly tight show helps a *lot*.
> When I ran this rotation method without showing it on screen
> anywhere, people constantly asked when their turn was, how long
> the wait was, etc. Since I started showing the whole thing in a
> grid, those questions all but stopped. It may actually just be
> showing people how it's working that makes it effective, not the
> method itself, but it does help keep things flowing fast. Keep
> in mind that because the machine helps run some of this (some of
> my Javascript stuff implements some of this), the shows I run go
> very *fast*. As I'm calling for applause for the singer who's just
> finished a song, the computer/player is already ready for the next
> song, the computer's displaying the new singer's name, and I'm
> announcing the next singer right away. There's still filler music,
> but the only actual delays come in waiting for singers to get on
> and off the stage, and some occasional videos mixed in for good
> measure.
I've told you, I think, about the show I used to go to back in 96-97;
they had *two* laserdisc players, and we'd often crossfade; singers
would pass one another on the steps. We got 16-18 singers an hour in
there. Which was good, because we might get 40 singers in a night.
> Overall it works, and I think here it'd be accepted just fine. I
> hear lots of complaints from people about how shows are run here,
> so I think what I do is different (and better) enough that it'll
> please people here. If not, I can package it and sell it :P
That's my goal, yeah.
> Glad you jumped early enough, though, perhaps, not as early as you'd
> have liked.
>
> Well, I could have saved a lot of money had I not moved here, but
> I'm here now so I must make the most of it. As far as she goes, I
> just have to start over with a new kind of relationship with her;
> one that, sadly, will be more guarded than it used to be, at least
> for awhile. There's been a lot of trust lost, and that can be hard
> to regain. It's not as if I intend to make it "hard" for her to get
> a friendship going again, it's just that it might *be* difficult.
> Who the hell knows?
An excellent question.
At least you get to ask it. :-}
If you're in the mood for some vicarious romance in the meantime, and
you're a House fan, you might check out
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2371900/1/
and, if you're a fast enough reader, it's sequel:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2778397/1/
Worked for me... right up until the end, when I smacked into the Real
World again, of course.
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274
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