Author Archives: Bruce

My brush with greatness (aka Penn & Teller)

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Heather & I were on vacation in Las Vegas the last few days, and one of the highlights was seeing the Penn & Teller magic show at The Rio.  In fact I was picked from the audience to assist with the very first trick they performed.  Here’s a rundown of what happened, first from my point of view and then a full description of what actually happened.

From my point of view

Penn started explaining that they needed somebody from the audience with a smart phone for their first trick, and that they were going to let that person use the phone to record video of the trick so they could see exactly how it was done.  I, along with hundreds of others in the audience held our phones up as Teller started walking up the isle.  He spotted my iPhone, came over, and asked if somebody else in the audience could call the phone while I was on stage.  I told him that Heather could do this, so he asked me to take my iPhone out of the case and come up on stage with him.  Penn asked me my name and also verified that somebody in the audience could call me.  I told him my girlfriend Heather could, so he asked Heather to make a quick call to verify it.  After my phone rang (and Penn made sure the audience heard it by holding it up to his microphone) they first started playing around with me a little.  They had me turn the video recorder on then held the phone up to record themselves and introduced themselves, introduced me, then panned across the audience.  They then said that as I’m on stage with some Vegas magicians that I undoubtedly wanted video of me and a famous magician.  At that point they brought out a short cardboard cutout of Kriss Angel and had me pose with it, which got lots of laughs from the audience.  After that bit of fun they had the cardboard Kriss Angel carried off stage and proceeded with the full illusion.

Penn picked up a large Starbucks coffee cup that had been sitting on the stage.  He placed my iPhone in the cup and had me look inside to verify it was there.  He put the top on the coffee cup but it fell so I bent to pick it up.  At this point I heard a loud roar of laughter from the audience but didn’t know why.  I gave the top back to him, he put it on the cup, then placed it on the stage floor in front of us.  After saying one or two things he promptly stomped on the cup with all his might, crushing it into a pancake.  Obviously the phone wasn’t in the cup any more.  Teller also walked up and tapped the crushed cup with his foot for good measure.

After a minute or so of vamping Penn asked Heather to call my phone, which she promptly did.  When the phone started ringing Penn asked the audience to point where the ringing was coming from.  Most of the audience was pointing towards the stage but I heard the phone back in the house somewhere so I pointed towards the audience. At that point the audience realized the ringing was coming from the house as well so they started pointing towards the center of the audience as well.  Penn drew everyone’s attention to an empty seat in the middle of the center section and asked the people sitting on either side to look under the seat since that’s where the ringing was coming from.  They pulled a styrofoam box  out from under the seat and passed it up through the audience to the stage and handed it to me.  Penn asked me to read the label on the box, which indicated it came from a seafood restaurant next door to the theater.  It was sealed with tape, which Penn asked me to pull off.  I opened up the box and found a fresh fish lying in a pile of ice.  Penn asked me what kind of fish it was but I didn’t recognize it so I just said something like “I don’t know.  A dead fish.” which got a great reaction from the audience.  Penn said it was a tilapia.  As Teller showed the fish in the box to the audience Penn handed me a microphone.  Teller placed the fish on a table that had been wheeled out as Penn had Heather call my phone.  Sure enough I heard the phone ringing from inside the fish and I held the microphone up close to the fish so that the audience could hear it as well.  Teller picked up a knife, cut the head off the fish, and there inside was a sealed plastic bag with my phone inside.

Penn & Teller have named this illusion “Cell fish”.

What the audience saw

The audience saw a little bit more than I did in one sense.  When Penn dropped the lid to the coffee cup he already had my iPhone inside the cup.  As I bent down to pick up the lid for him he apparently threw his hand up, causing the iPhone to fly up out of the cup behind us where Teller caught it in a big red plastic bucket.  This is what caused the audience to roar with laughter and why the phone wasn’t in the cup when Penn stomped on it.  Teller took the red bucket and suspended it from a cable that was raised up over my head, so the phone was suspended ten feet or so above me inside this bucket.

When Penn prompted Heather to call my phone this is why a lot of the audience pointed at the stage, assuming that the ringing was coming from the bucket suspended over my head.  But it was obvious that the sound was coming from the empty seat in the audience, so that’s the crux of the illusion as far as the audience goes – how did the phone magically move from the red bucket that was suspended above my head the entire time to inside the styrofoam box that they pulled out from underneath that seat?

I was actually able to find a couple videos on YouTube of this trick as the audience saw it.  Here are two of them – one has good video but lousy volume and the other has better volume than video so check them both out if you want:

How it worked (spoiler!)

If you don’t want to know how they did it then stop reading here as this explains exactly how it was all done.

When the Kriss Angel cardboard cutout was brought out on stage both Penn & Teller pulled out some fake jewelry to add to the cutout.  As they attached this fake jewelry (a large necklace and a glittery cross) Penn apparently slipped my iPhone into a pocket on the back of the cutout.  He swapped it for a fake iPhone that I think was already attached to the back of the cutout.  When the cutout was carried off stage my iPhone went with it.  Penn put the fake iPhone into the Starbucks cup then tossed that one into the red bucket as I was misdirected by the lid that he “accidentally” dropped onto the floor in front of me.  The audience thought it was my iPhone that flew through the air into the bucket, but it was obviously just a prop.

As Penn & Teller explained what they were going to do to the audience, a stagehand off stage retrieved my iPhone from the Kriss Angel cutout, put it in a plastic bag, and then put it inside the fish, which had been slit open on one side.  I never saw that side of the fish until after Teller had cut the head off, so I wouldn’t have known that the cut was already there. This fish simply was laid flat in the tray that was wheeled out to Penn & Teller.  It wouldn’t have been visible to the audience while in the tray.  The box that was found under an audience members seat and brought up on stage had a similar looking fish packed in ice, but that fish was physically attached to the box.  When Teller flips over the box as if he’s dumping the fish out onto the table he’s only dumping the ice out for effect. The prop fish in the box remains (and he hides it in the way he puts the box & lid down), and the fish containing the phone is left on the cutting board with all the ice.

They’ve obviously been doing this trick for a while since there’s a ton of video of it up on YouTube.  Just search for “Penn & Teller cell fish” and you’ll find them all.  Well here’s mine to add to the mix:

August 2010 Vacation – California

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The following is Heather’s journal of the vacation.  All the photos I’ve published from the trip can be found here:

Friday, August 20 – Heading to San Francisco

We arrived at Logan and went through very little drama during check-in or the TSA screening process.  Finally, we found ourselves at the JetBlue gate waiting for our flight to take off.  As it got closer to departure there were more and more people waiting at our gate and another JetBlue flight waiting to depart at the same time.  Rumors were going around that our flight was a crew member short and we were waiting for someone to arrive from NYC.  As is customary, there was very little information announced by the gate staff to discourage these rumors.  About an hour past our departure time, we were finally called to board and as we were seated and going through the departure introductions, the captain came on the speaker and apologized for the delay.  He explained that both of the flights waiting to depart at our gate area had been a crew member short.  JetBlue had one crew member to spare down in NYC and had flown them up.  The two flights determined which flight was going to get the crew member needed by coin toss and our flight had won the toss.  With that auspicious start and explanation, we headed off to a week of sightseeing and driving the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway.  At the Hyatt Embarcadero in San Francisco they had a beautiful light sculpture that ran the full height of the lobby.  I’m not sure if it was because it was so late at night, or that I was not able to sleep on the plane, but it sure was sparkly and pretty.

Saturday, August 21 – San Francisco

On Saturday we slept in and upon waking wandered down the Embarcadero.  The weather was a bit of a shock.  There was a cold fog and slight wind that stayed with us for much of the trip down the coast.  I had read about bikes that you could rent and take for a ride over the Golden Gate Bridge.  This turned out to be a pretty popular activity for both tourists and locals alike.  We ended up renting a tandem bike and with a map and quick instruction of where we needed to head (both provided by the rental company) we took off on our adventure.  Figuring out the tandem bike was a bit of an adventure in itself.  The pedaling, balance and length were difficult to manage multiply these issues by the hills, wind and jetlag and this mode of transport wasn’t as easy breezy as advertised by the bike rental company.  Traveling by bike did afford beautiful views of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island and Sausalito.

After starting out on our adventure we noticed that the exact same yacht that was in St. John during our February vacation (the “A” owned by Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenk and designed by Phillip Stark) was now anchored just off of San Francisco.  We decided that we needed to contact Mr. Melnichenk to coordinate our next vacation destination.

The bike path to the bridge was nicely marked but we had to get off the bike several times to push it up the hills.  The Golden Gate Bridge was impressive, one side was marked off for bike traffic and the other was for pedestrian traffic.  Once on top of the bridge the views were spectacular and the wind was fierce.  The bridge is an awesome marvel of architecture and even more impressive when you are biking/walking across it.  Looking down at one point, I think I saw a seal playing in the water but it was hard to tell exactly what it was from so far up.  On the other side of the bridge the bike rental company had said it was a coast down to the town of Sausalito and then a ferry ride back with the bike to San Francisco.  They forgot to mention that there were some pretty impressive hills between the bridge and Sausalito.  We took them in stride and then headed back on the ferry to San Fran where we had already made a reservation to see Alcatraz that night.

Alcatraz cellAfter returning the bike we headed over to the pier to catch the ferry to Alcatraz.  The tour run by the national park service is pretty impressive.  Bruce had been to Alcatraz as a kid and was impressed by the improvements and renovations.  They now start the tour as if you were a prisoner entering Alcatraz.  After getting off the ferry you follow the path up the hill entering the prison via the shower room.  They had an audio tour that featured several of the prison guards, prisoner and inhabitants of the island.  You have to remember that it wasn’t just prisoners on the islands. The guards and their families also lived in accommodations provided right on the island.  The personal stories of the guards/prisoners and people who lived on the island were my favorite and really added to the experience of touring the prison.

Sunday, August 22 – Monterey

Upon wakinMuir Woodsg today, we picked up our rental car and headed over to the Exploratorium.  Both Bruce and I had been there before and wanted to see if it was as remembered.  I loved this place as a kid and have to say that I enjoyed it just as much during this visit.  After the Exploratorium, Bruce suggested heading over to Muir Woods to walk among the redwoods.  I remember doing this also as a kids and Muir provides a comfortable walk among these impressive trees.  They are so majestic you are stunned into silence as you walk around and marvel the beauty.  We were also lucky enough to see a deer rooting just off the trail, so beautiful.  Wanting to be sure we were driving during daylight hours, we headed off to Monterey and checked into Casa Munras Hotel and Spa.

Monday, August 23 – San Luis Obispo

We started our day in Monterey walking along the bay down the recreational trail to cannery row on our way to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  There were harbor seals everywhere along the walk and the Aquarium had a really nice restaurant where we were able to sit down to lunch while enjoying a nice view of the bay.  The next portion of the Pacific Coast Highway was through Big Sur.  I wanted to drive to give Bruce a break and also to test my skills hugging the coast on the twisty road.  The vistas were breathtaking and much of the trip was just a two lane road, hill on one side and plunge down to the Pacific Ocean on the other.  There were lots of designated scenic vistas with parking areas to pull off and check out the sunset.  I enjoyed myself immensely just driving and checking out the scenery on our way to San Luis Obispo.  Just prior to arrival in San Luis Obispo, there is an Elephant Seal beach that we pulled off to check-out.  The seals were in lounge mode and moved very little while we were there.  Every once in a while we would see a flipper kick up a bit of sand, but basically they were very large lumps on a sandy beach.  We stayed at the Apple Farm Inn in San Luis Obispo and went into town for dinner and to check out the mission.  It was such a beautiful night, warm and a chance to eat under the stars and relax after the day.

Tuesday, August 24 – Santa Barbara

Today we headed out with very little planned so we went headed off to Santa Barbara with a few small side trips to check out on the way.  Pismo Beach of Bugs Bunny fame was a trip as well as checking out Solvang a small Danish settlement with windmills and lots of artisan stores and eateries.  It was so hot (it felt well over 100) that we found a quick restaurant to eat in and then headed out to Santa Barbara.  As we were checking out Santa Barbara online, we found that they had a whale watch that promised to be impressive and offer the chance to see some blue whales as well as other whales we do not see on the east coast.  We purchased tickets for the next day and checked into the Agave Inn.  We went for a walk along the boardwalk in Santa Barbara as well as the downtown commercial street that had several sections blocked off as pedestrian only with a large farmers market.

Wednesday, August 25 – Newport Beach

Today started out looking very foggy and we headed down to the whale watch.  The whales typically are feeding off a couple of miles off the coast of Newport Beach around the Channel Islands. Unfortunately, we were not there at the right time and the whales were further off in some choppy water.  On route to the feeding ground we ran into some Common and Risso’s Dolphins.  They were so cool and different in their personalities.  The Common Dolphins were playing around the boat and jumping in the wake.  The Risso’s Dolphins seemed to prefer being left alone and the boat had to chase them as they dove down and resurfaced further away from the boat.  The visibility was not good that day and ultimately the whale watch turned around before we were able to find any whales.  We stopped back at a painted cave in the Channel Islands which was pretty and an interesting looking geographical feature.  The whale watch company provided us with coupons to use at a future date.  We ate dinner in Newport Beach in the attempt to avoid rush hour traffic as we were headed through Los Angeles.  Driving through Los Angeles turned out to be fairly easy.  That night we stayed at a friend’s house in Newport Beach and we arrived there pretty late that night.

Thursday, August 26 – Newport Beach

Today we went down to check out the Sawdust Festival artisan festival.  We headed to have breakfast before the festival and had a strange run in with a guy in a power suit coming out of the local Starbucks.  We were sitting on a patio waiting for a breakfast to be delivered and he came out of the next door Starbucks.  He took a sip of his drink and said “OMG that is good!” while looking at us.  It was the strangest encounter and Bruce thought that the guy must have been talking into a Bluetooth, but we didn’t see one.  After taking a quick spin around the festival, we headed over to Huntington Beach.  It was super cold going out on the pier but there were quite a few volleyball games on the beach.  We stayed there about an hour watching the games and then headed down to the check out the dog beach.  As we got there, there was a group of 5 greyhounds being led down to the beach.  We went over to chat with them for a bit and then proceeded to marvel at the sight of all the different dogs frolicking in the waves and playing with each other.  It was such a great thing to see.  We headed back to the house and went to dinner with Marian and her son Aaron at the Cheesecake Factory.  It was nice to have a night to sit down and chat with them.  They were so generous to offer up their place to stay.

Friday, August 27 – San Diego

Today we headed out to see the San Diego Wildlife Animal park.  It was a hot day and we started our visit watching a Cheetah presentation.  They pair the Cheetah with a dog so as to help the Cheetah remain calm in situations where its initial reaction would be to run away.  The interaction between the Cheetah, and dog companion, were really cool to witness.  It is a beautiful animal and to be able to see it up so closely was impressive.  The next adventure we had there was to ride a safari vehicle through several of the gated off areas.  We were able to feed both giraffes and the rhinoceros.  The tour they do here is really informative I would absolutely recommend that you do this tour at the park.  We stayed at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina in San Diego.  After checking into our hotel that night, we headed over to Old Town to have dinner.  In a small-world coincidence, we ran into a former co-worker of mine from Boston, Corey McAveeney.  We had worked at an insurance company together several years ago. She was in town for a conference and staying at the same hotel as us.  We ended up sitting down and having dinner with both Corey and her husband Dmitry.  They were celebrating their one year anniversary and it was so fun to catch up with old friends.  Such a nice night in San Diego.

Saturday, August 28 – San Diego

Our final day in California and we planned on heading to Sea World and then to the San Diego Zoo before catching our red-eye flight back to Boston.  We ended up having such a good time at Sea World that we spent most of the day there.  I had never been to Sea World before and most of the animal enclosures seemed sad and dated.  The best part of the park for me was the various shows they put on with the animals where they demonstrated behaviors and skills.  We went to 3 different shows (Shamu Show Believe, Sea Lions Live and Blue Horizons).  My favorite was the Sea Lions Live show.  It is so amazing to see how intelligent Sea Lions are.  Their personalities really shine performing in front of an audience.  We also had the opportunity to feed some of the animals at the park.  We went to the sting ray area first and I thought I was going to have no problem feeding them.  When I got there they were so slick feeling and the fact that I had to stick my hand down under their bodies to get to the mouth freaked me out and I had to give Bruce the rest of the bait fish.  One of our last stops was to the sea lion and harbor seal area.  The behavior of these animals trying to encourage us to give up our fish was a so funny to watch.  The Sea Lions would bellow loudly shake their heads up and down in a “yes” gesture as you looked them over trying to decide which one to bestow with a fish.  The harbor seals had their own style.  They would raise a flipper and gesture wildly in what I can only describe as a wave motion trying to encourage you to toss them a fish.  What characters, they had obviously observed a multitude of visitors in perfecting their tactics.  There was one harbor seal in particular that both Bruce and I noticed immediately.  He had cataracts in his eyes and was a bit slower than the others.  If he was surrounded by the other harbor seals in the tank, he definitely was not able to get the fish thrown to him; his reactions were not as keen.  If he was able to separate himself from the pack, he could hear the fish splashing in the water and was very quick to react and get his share of the take.  None of the animals in the tank wanted for food.

After exiting the park we headed to Old Town again for a final meal and to stroll around for some exercise prior to take-off.  A nice burrito meal washed down with a margarita for good measure completed an excellent week in California with Bruce. The only thing of note during our flight back from San Diego happened while standing in line to check our bags at the airport.  We noticed about ten young men, all with crew cuts, checking in nearby us.  We noticed that the men all were escorting crates with dogs in them, and I was able to read “Lackland AFB” on some of them.  After we got home we looked Lackland up on Google and discovered that it trains military working dogs and handlers for all branches of the military. We both hope that the men and their dogs are safe and successful wherever they are deployed.

Building a simple “drop box”

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If you’ve ever had a need to drop something onto a stage, be it snow, confetti, a prop brick or rock, or something else altogether, then you’ve likely wanted something called a “drop box”.  As the name implies, it’s a box (or other container) that is used to remotely drop something onto the stage.  While not necessarily suited for snow (unless you want a comedic effect of a bunch of snow all falling at once), it can be useful for dropping many other items.  Building one of these is actually very simple, easy, and best of all inexpensive.

The key to remotely triggering something to drop, unwind, etc. is to have a way to essentially pull a pin electronically.  A common approach to doing this is by the use of solenoids, but solenoids come in all shapes and sizes, and unless you know exactly what you need it can be a daunting task to get the correct one without wasting time & money.  A less expensive approach, which can work just as well, is to use a car door lock actuator.  This is the device that locks and unlocks a car door that has electric locks, and you can find them easily and they’re very inexpensive.  You can find them for sale on sites like Amazon.com for as little as $5.00 each. You can also find them at many car part stores, and if you have access to an automotive junkyard you might be able to get some there for free or very cheaply.

A car door actuator is designed to run on 12 volts DC, however for your needs a regular 9 volt battery is likely enough.  When voltage is applied one way the actuator quickly extends to a fully open position.  When voltage is applied the other way it quickly contracts to a fully closed position.  The distance it travels is approximately 3/4″.  Below is a photo of actuators in fully open and fully closed positions:

To build a simple drop box you just need a couple pieces of wood, a tin can, a hinge, and an actuator.  Attach a hinge to the back of a tin can and mount it on a block of wood.  Attach the block of wood to a long strap of wood so you have something that looks like this:

The left image shows the can in the “up” position.  It will be held that way by the actuator.  Gravity will then drop it into the position shown on the right, dropping the contents of the can out onto the stage floor.  The wooden block that the hinge is attached to also serves to stop the can from swaying back and forth, but instead keeps it vertical.

Put the tin can in the “up” position, then mount an actuator on the horizontal strap of wood so that it just holds the can when fully extended.  Make sure that you mount the actuator so that the can drops free when the actuator is retracted.  You might also want to staple a scratch piece of cloth to the bottom of the wooden block that the hinge is on.  This will help to muffle the sound the can makes when it drops.  Add a clamp so you can hang this from a lighting grid and you’re all set:

The one thing I have not done yet is to add a safety cable.  I strongly recommend that you attach a short flexible cable between the clamp or wood strap to the tin can, and I will be doing that shortly after I post this. And as with anything you hang over a stage or audience make sure the whole thing has a safety cable attached to the lighting grid.

All that’s left after this is to wire it up for use.  As mentioned before, a simple 9 volt battery should suffice.  However if you want to get fancy then just wire a DC transformer to it and you can control it from a standard theater lighting system.

Obviously the actuators can be used for all sorts of things. If you need to drop a bunch of balloons, confetti, etc. then just build a larger box with a hinged bottom and use one or more actuators in the same way to hold the bottom closed.  If you need a flag to unfurl just wind the flag around a wooden dowel like it was a window shade and attach a similar dowel along the bottom edge to give it some weight.  Hold the bottom dowel in place with the actuator, and when released the weight of the dowel will unroll the flag.  The possibilities are limited only by your own creativity with making use of the actuators.

Here is a brief video that demonstrates my drop box in action:

Feb 2010 Vacation (St John, Disney, Kennedy)

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The following is Heather’s journal of the vacation.  All the photos I’ve published from the trip can be found here:

Here is a recap of our trip to St. John in the USVI, Walt Disney World and Cape Canaveral, FL.  It was a wonderful trip (albeit much too short) and getting to spend time with Bruce was very special.

Saturday, Feb 6

Waking up at the crack of dawn in Boston we made our way in the bitter February cold to the airport.  The check-in, TSA screening and flight was uneventful.  We arrived at the airport in St. Thomas an hour later than expected due to the major snowstorms going through the Mid-Atlantic States.  It made me thankful that we had a direct flight.  We rented a 4-wheel drive Jeep from the Budget rental company at the airport and headed to Red Hook to catch the car ferry to St. John.  The ferry runs hourly on the half hour and the boat was pulling in as we got there.  The ferry was very easy and after backing the Jeep on to the boat we were on our way.  We got out of the car to catch some breezes  on the upper deck and had our first view of St. John.  The weather was sunny, mid-70’s, slight breeze and not a raindrop in sight all week…absolute paradise especially given the freezing weather we had just left.  Upon arrival in Cruz Bay we headed to Starfish Market at The Marketplace to get some provisions for breakfast the next day.

The drive to Concordia from Cruz Bay took about 45 minutes along Route 20.  What a beautiful drive and Bruce was especially thankful that he had the fortune of driving partway behind a large construction vehicle that took up most of the road and honked loudly warning oncoming traffic that it was approaching the switchback.  Above and beyond having to “keep-left”, the switchbacks on St. John are brutally steep.  As you come up some of the hills the road seems to just disappear from in front of the car.  We were tired upon arrival and decided to eat at Café Concordia that night to keep it simple.  The meals there were a tad expensive, but the food was good and a bonus that it was steps away from our tent.  Bruce had a salmon dish and I had a flatbread with Manchego and prosciutto along with a couple of iced teas to wash it all down.  So good after the long drive and we could not have asked for a better view looking out over Salt Pond Bay as the sun set, absolute paradise.  We unpacked our bags and settled in for the first night to the night sounds of crickets and gentle waves lulling us to sleep.

Sunday, Feb 7

Waking up with the sun we started a routine that we carried out each morning on the island.  I would wake up, head to the bathroom, douse myself with bugspray so as to not get eaten alive and then set the table on our porch for a leisurely breakfast.  Bruce would get up, head to the bathroom, douse himself with bugspray and then try to capture the wildlife through his camera lens while eating breakfast and enjoying the view.  He set up some very creative lures throughout the week and we have some great pictures of the visitors enticed to our porch by his sugar-water, mango and banana pieces.  We came to St. John to snorkel and snorkel we did on our first day.  We drove by Cinnamon Bay coming in and headed back there for our first day.  The parking was easy and our tour book indicated that the beach was great for beginners.  First, we stopped by Maho Campground to buy some sandwiches and drinks for lunch and then checked out the charter options endorsed by Maho.  Cinnamon Bay is absolutely gorgeous and we tucked ourselves under a Maho tree that provided shade for the entire day.  After getting out our snorkel gear, we headed in to see what we could see.  Not 30 feet into the water we spotted a turtle munching away carefree on the grassy bottom.  He was a good size and I was very excited for what this meant we were going to see the rest of the week.  We continued on snorkeling our way around a point to Maho beach and saw plenty of coral and fish on the way.  There were a lot of people on Maho beach from the campground and we decided to head back to Cinnamon Bay as it was much less crowded.  Swimming back around Bruce noticed a guy standing in the water looking at the hillside facing Maho campground.  Soon he noticed that there were two very large iguanas scrambling up the hillside and knocking sand down as they moved.  Very cool and I regretted not stopping to look at them more as we didn’t see anything that big for the rest of the week.  Getting back to our towels we dried off and opened up our lunch.  We were not alone on the beach for long as 3 resident chickens began to circle hoping for a handout.  Little did they know that I was not a rookie and realized that if I handed out anything that would have been the end of our peace and quiet on the beach.  They soon wandered off looking for easier targets.  After a nap and more swimming, we headed back to Cruz Bay to purchase some more food to stock up our fridge.  We also stopped in to the National Park Service Visitor Center to ask about signing up for their guided tour of the Reef Bay Trail.  They do a guided tour where you hike down the length of the trail and then get picked up at the bottom and ferried back to Cruz Bay eliminating the need to climb back up the rather steep elevation.  Unfortunately they were fully booked up so we didn’t get to sign up for that tour.  Getting back to Concordia we started our second daily ritual of taking a dip in the pool to cool off from the days activities and then taking a shower using the solar shower.  We found that the afternoon was the warmest time of day to take advantage of the solar shower.  That night we dressed up and I tried my hand at driving and “keeping left” as we headed to Coral Bay to Island Breezes for dinner.  In my opinion they had the best buffalo wings and burgers on the island.  This perhaps was influenced by my consumption of an absolutely beautiful island concoction called a “painkiller”.  It is a yummy mixture of dark rum, OJ, pineapple juice, coco lopez and topped off with just sprinkle of grated nutmeg.

Monday, Feb 8

Today we decided to stay even closer to home.  After breakfast and cleaning up the tent we packed up a lunch and hiked down from the campground to Salt Pond Bay.  It was a relatively easy trail and we ended up getting to the beach so early that we had our choice of spots to set up.  We found a shady spot with a picnic table and set up camp for the day under a nice shade tree.  At Salt Pond we had the fortune of seeing a group of cuttlefish and a rather large barracuda.  A lot of the week I felt that ignorance was bliss.  The group next to us later asked if we had seen the 4ft specimen and only then did I realize what I had been looking at.  Bruce had a chance to test out his video equipment while snorkeling this day and we had a fun time exploring the different reefs mostly off to the left-hand side of the beach.  A quick nap under the shade tree and we hiked back up to Concordia later in the afternoon for a refreshing swim then shower.  We made dinner on our deck and watched the best sunset of the week.  Bruce had read somewhere that Concordia had mosquito netting for the beds and we asked at the store.  The mosquitoes were eating me alive and it was hard to sleep being woken up by their incessant buzzing in the ear.  I was so grateful that he did this as it made for much more comfortable sleeping.  No need to go to bed coated in bug spray=happy girlfriend.

Tuesday, Feb 9

Today we switched it up by heading out for a hike.  We wanted to do the Reef Bay trail, but didn’t want to hike down and then back up the 947 foot 2.4 mile trail (we are on vacation).  After some research we headed to the Lameshur Bay trail instead.  This trial has about 467 feet of elevation and is 2.6 miles long down to the Reef Bay sugar factory.  There are some sugar mill ruins that we inspected before setting up for lunch on the beach.  At some point during lunch Bruce looked behind us on the beach and noticed that there were mongoose (plural of which is mongoose-dem on St. John) loitering behind us as we ate.  We proceeded to finish our lunch and get both video and pictures of the “shy” creatures.  Heading back out from the beach got plenty sweaty during our hike back.  As we were driving out, we noticed two people hitchhiking and pulled over to give them a ride.  Their names were Scott and Anna and they were the glass blowing artists in residence at Maho campground.  During our drive together they informed us that Friday night was prime rib night at Maho, advice that we took full advantage of later in the week.  We got home and after dinner and watching the sun set from our porch, then we headed down to listen to the steel drum artist playing that night at the Café Concordia pavillion.  We had several drinks (one of which was a “mistake” given to Bruce by the bartender) and then stumbled back to the tent.

Wednesday, Feb 10

Back to snorkeling…today we decided to head out to the Waterlemon Cay area.  We checked out the ruins of an old suger mill at Annaberg before heading over to participate in a Waters Edge Walk led by a park ranger from the National Park Service.  The ranger pointed out animals and plants native to the island near the shoreline.  There were several small boys on the tour and I’m sure it’s because of them that we saw so much.  They pointed out queen conch, sea cucumber and even our first sting ray of the trip.  I say leave it to young boys to find all the animals hiding in the shallow water in the grass.  The ranger also pointed out the Machineel tree nearby and discussed its caustic properties.  She said you should never locate yourself below this tree especially during rain.  She also let us know that she had noticed a Machineel tree located at Salt Pond Bay with a picnic table underneath it last time she was there.  Yet another reason for me to believe that ignorance is bliss.  Thankfully we did not have any ill effects from our day possibly spent beneath this caustic tree at Salt Pond Bay.  After this walk we headed over to a rocky beach to access the water closer to Waterlemon Cay.  We had lunch then started our swim out to this cay.  One side of Waterlemon was full of fish and coral, the other had mostly died out.  Waterlemon was probably where we saw the best coral of the week.  After Waterlemon Cay, we decided to head to the grassy beach area and saw some more cuttlefish and two rather large rays.  Just as we were about to leave a lady yelled that she was looking at a turtle and we went back into the water to chase the turtle around for a bit.  Wrapping up our snorkeling we headed over to the East End of the island to check out Sloop Jones and his t-shirts.  On our way back we stopped at Vie’s Snack Shack for some yummy conch fritters with hot sauce.  The goats across the street from the snack shack were particularly vocal and it was fun to watch them chase each other.  Dinner that night was at Skinny Legs, it seems that they have some sort of New England connection as they had Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins and Celtics banners displayed prominently on the walls.  They also had a great t-shirt store called The Jolly Dog adjacent where we found a lot of nice shirts including the “Dip” shirt that Bruce purchased outlining all of the dip signs that had been modified by locals on the island, very whimsical.

Thursday, Feb 11

We awoke early today to head over to Cruz Bay to catch our charter on the Stormy Petrel.  Rick and Rachael were our guides for the day.  Rick even let me pilot the boat on our way over to Spanishtown, Virgin Gorda where they had to process our paperwork through British customs. On the way to Virgin Gorda Rick pointed out a dolphin in front of the boat as well as a rather unusual yacht called simply “A” which we later googled and found to be owned by Russian Business Tycoon, Andrei Melnichenk.  From there, we went to the Baths at Virgin Gorda. What an amazing place! The current was incredibly strong today everywhere we went and we needed to take a lot of care just to get onto the beach at the baths.  People were being pulled off their feet as they attempted to get to shore.  Rick led us through the baths while giving us an overview of this incredible rock formation.  From there, we went to the Cooper Island Beach Club Restaurant for lunch. They called our lunch orders in ahead of time so that they were ready when we got there. This island has roughly 15 people that live there and they run the hotel, restaurant and gift shop.  The beach was lovely and the food was absolutely delicious.  Both Bruce and I had the Chicken Roti wrap with mango chutney…so good!  Properly fueled we headed to The Indians to snorkel.  The current was again a factor here and a lot of the passengers onboard elected to not snorkel too far from the boat.  We then headed back to Cruz Bay to go through US Customs.  We did a brief bit of shopping at Mongoose Junction and then headed back to Coral Bay and dinner at Shipwreck Landing before heading home.

Friday, Feb 12

We headed out today with the idea that we would rent kayaks from Maho and go out to Whistling Cay to snorkel.  Upon arrival we discovered that our plans were to yet again be effected by the storms in the mid-atlantic.  The waves were so strong on the beach at Maho that they were not allowing anyone to take out kayaks.  The guy at the rental shop suggested that we check out Haulover Bay on the East End of the island instead.  He assured us that this beach was protected by Tortola and was not going to be as affected by the current.  This was a very easy access beach and we had the entire beach to ourselves for the most part.  We snorkeled over to the right hand side of the beach to rest for a bit on an isolated stretch of sand.  We sat in the gentle surf for a bit and I collected some nice shells for my nephews.  After watching some pelicans taunt us by posing close enough that Bruce could have gotten some good shots, we headed over to the other side of the beach.  The center of Haulover bay was fairly deep and soon we were unable to see anything.  I kept referring to it as primordial ooze and it took us a good 20 minutes to snorkel across it.  As we got over to the left-hand side of the bay we found some excellent coral, lobsters and huge schools of fish.  Just before we were going to get out of the water we spotted a 5-6 ft long nurse shark swim slowly by.  From turtles to nurse sharks the progression of our snorkels throughout the week was just great.  I don’t think I breathed while the shark went by and I was certainly shaking a bit after it had passed.  It swam by so gracefully.  That night we headed over to the absolute chaos that is Prime Rib night at the Maho Bay campground.  Bruce and I were absolutely floored at the number of kids/people running around.  We were unprepared for a cafeteria style dinner service and it was in full swing when we got there.  After the dinner, we headed down to check out the glass blowing demonstration put on by Anna and Scott, the hitchhikers that we had picked up earlier in the week.  We stayed for two of their demonstrations where they made a swordfish and attempted to pull a flower together that just didn’t work out.  I was fascinated as I had never seen glass blowing this close.  It is amazing the steps they go through till they get to the finished product.  The glass seems to look like nothing at all until the end couple of steps when it emerges into its final shape and then goes into the annealer to cool down slowly overnight.  We then headed back over the rough Maho road to Concordia to hop into bed for the night.

Saturday, Feb 13

Our final day on the island, we woke to watch the sunrise over Drunk Bay.  We made breakfast for the final time and packed up for our trip to Orlando.  We checked out of Concordia and filmed our final drive back to Cruz Bay for posterity.  When we arrived at the car ferry we thought that we were going to be left on shore waiting for the next ferry, there certainly did not look like there was any space left on the boat.  Somehow the car parkers were able to get two more cars on besides us, the parking guys on this barge know their stuff.  We were not able to open our car doors, but we were on the barge.  We drove around St. Thomas for a bit and then found a place to pick up some lunch.  After lunch we found a scenic point that overlooked the airport.  We stayed there watching the planes take off and land until we finally had to admit that we needed to catch the plane and return our rental car.  Saying good-bye to St. John and this portion of the vacation was hard.  It was such a special week to have had with Bruce.  The flight from St. Thomas to Charlotte was uneventful.  At the Charlotte airport I had promised Bruce that the last time I was there, they had some excellent BBQ restaurants.  Unfortunately, we were not able to find one when we looked around.  From Charlotte to Orlando we ended up sitting on the plane for over an hour while they attempted to “redistribute the fuel”.  We arrived in Orlando past 11 and then waited for another hour plus for the Not-So-Magical, Disney Magical Express service to whisk us to our hotel for the night.  We ended up walking into our room at the Coronado Springs around 1am and getting into bed around 2am.

Sunday, Feb 14

Valentine’s Day and for some reason we were up by 9am and ready to start our day.  We found the breakfast at Coronado Springs and then headed to the Magic Kingdom for the first part of the day.  We went on several rides including the Haunted Mansion and the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.  We went to an exhibit that had debuted at the 1964/65 World’s Fair called Innovations.  They had a comedy show modeled after Monster’s Inc called Laugh Floor that was very funny.  Then I was nostalgic to see the Disney that I remembered as a kid so we went to see the Country Bear Jamboree show followed by the Hall of Presidents.  The animatronics at Disney is amazing and yes they even had Obama up and giving a speech.  We headed by bus to Hollywood Studios next where we saw several more shows including Muppets 3D and the Indiana Jones stunt show.  The Indiana Jones show had way too much of a cheese factor for me.  We next headed over to see the final viewing of Fantasmic!  It is a show that Disney runs on two days a week.  This show was incredible with all the latest water/projection/laser and fire effects.  Very well integrated and just an amazing story to watch being performed.  Some of the effects really took your breath away.  The park closed after the show and we headed back to the room.  Bruce had very thoughtfully ordered some chocolates and a carmel coated apple and rose which were waiting when we got back to our room that night.  What a great guy and a great first day ending to this part of the trip.

Monday, Feb 15

We woke up early today to take advantage of the early opening of Animal Kingdom for guests that were staying at the Disney Resort Hotels.  I knew the animals were going to be most active in the morning and wanted to take full advantage of that.  We went on a Safari Ride, to the Bugs Life Show, had unknowingly walked into a character breakfast that featured Daisy Duck and Goofy.  The Safari ride was a little too cheesy for my taste.  Too much “keeping a look out for the poachers ahead mates”, and not enough information given on the animals we were actually seeing.  We did go to a show entitled Flights of Wonder in which Bruce was picked as a volunteer to go up on stage and take pictures as an owl came swooping over his head and landed on a perch behind him.  Very cool and the other birds in the show were amazing to watch flying around.  Animal Kingdom was a little bit of a let down for me in that I had expected more information about the animals and not so much Disnification.  We headed back to the hotel room for a quick nap and when we woke up; Bruce got a call from his parents letting him know that his Cousin Caryl and her daughter Andrea were down at Disney.  We called Caryl and found out that they were at Epcot.  We just happened to be heading for Epcot for the second part of our day so we made plans to sit down with them.  What a small world and a nice surprise for the afternoon.  It was good to catch up with them.  We went on to ride the Mission: Space ride and then see a film on the Circle of Life.  We had reservations at the Morocco restaurant at Epcot and had a nice meal with a bit of belly dancing and Moroccan music entertainment played on a Kanoune.  We finished up the day watching the Epcot fireworks and speaking with a girl who was doing an internship at Disney.

Tuesday, Feb 16

Today we wanted to finish up the final couple of rides and attractions that we wanted to see at Epcot and Hollywood Studios.  We got up and headed to see Soarin’,  a new ride at Epcot which simulated a glider ride over the California coast.  Pretty neat ride that included scents that were sprayed into the air as you rode over different scenes such as orange groves and pine forests.  We then headed over to try out the Test Track.  All I have to say about that is that Disney has nothing on some of the switchbacks and roads on St. John.  We had a fancy lunch at Chefs de France in the French pavilion complete with a visit by Ratatouille.  After lunch we caught a boat over to Hollywood Studios where we went to check out Star Wars and then proceeded to wait almost 3 hours in line for the new Toy Story ride.  It was a great ride that was super interactive and much too short.  We went to go see the Fantasmic! Show for the second time and finished our night with dinner at the Brown Derby.

Wednesday, Feb 17

Bruce woke up and went to get the car at Hertz while I stayed in the room to putter around a bit and pack luggage.  We had breakfast at Disney and then headed off to our next adventure at the NASA Visitor Center.  They had a 3-hr bus tour of the NASA grounds including the shuttle launch pads, the vehicle assembly building and a Saturn V rocket.  We also learned that during every space shuttle launch there is an armored personnel carrier left idling near the launch pad as an emergency escape for the astronauts.  If a problem occurs the astronauts ride a zipline from the top of the launchpad to a point a half mile or so away from the pad.  The astronauts then have a decision to make – either run into a nearby bunker or risk their luck driving off in the armored personnel carrier.  The Saturn V rocket we saw is one of three that were built but never used due to cuts to the Apollo moon program.  The grounds around NASA are protected by the Department of the Interior and are home to many wild animals including 12 nesting pairs of bald eagles.  Our tour guy even referred to the numerous armadillos we saw as “rats in spacesuits”.  We also had the opportunity to touch a  moon rock, and finished up our day at the visitor center watching an IMAX movie on the space station.

Thursday, Feb 18

We went to the Astronaut Hall of Fame where they had numerous astronaut memorabilia and also had the Mercury capsule flown by Scott Carpenter.  We then went back to the NASA Visitor Center and finished up a the last couple of exhibits, including a hall of images taken by the Hubble Telescope and a visit to the rocket garden.  We headed back to Disney to catch the Magical Express back to the Orlando airport and then back home to Boston.

Controlling PC/Mac software from a DMX console

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I seem to be working on more and more shows where video is used, usually controlled via something like a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation running on a Mac or PC.  Being able to control that remotely via a lighting console would be useful for a number of reasons.  Not only does it let you synchronize things more closely, but it makes it easier for a stage manager to call a show, and also easier for a running crew since they don’t have to worry about whether the next cue means pressing something on the lighting console, something on a keyboard or laptop, or both.

You can find commercial products available that let you simulate pressing a key on a PC/Mac keyboard via DMX, such as Rosco’s KEYSTROKE™, but unless you need to trigger lots of fancy key sequences then the approx. $400 US price tag may be a little much for you.  If all you want is an inexpensive way of pressing a button like the space bar via DMX then there are much more inexpensive ways if you don’t mind a little tinkering.

You basically need two components.  First, you need a DMX decoder that lets you toggle a switch or relay.  The only other thing you need is a module that lets you simulate pressing a key on a USB keyboard.  There are numerous ways of doing both, and depending on how much you’re willing to spend and how much you’re willing to tinker you can spend as little as $0 on a solution.  $80 or so may be more likely, but even that is a much better price to pay than the commercial products!

The DMX interface

If you have an old DMX device lying around you may be able to cannibalize it for its DMX decoder circuit.  If not then you can buy a one channel DMX relay for as little as $40 from places like ApogeeKits or All Spectrum Electronics. For a bit more you can get 4 or 8 channel DMX relays from places like Northlight Systems or Blue Point Engineering. Depending on how fancy you want to get a single channel relay is likely enough for most needs.  Do you only ever plan to control something like PowerPoint or Keynote?  If so then you only need to remotely trigger a single keystroke.  If you need more then how many individual keystrokes do you need?  So 1 may be enough for most cases, but 2, 4, or even 8 may provide you with additional flexibility.

The Keyboard interface

If you have an old keyboard lying around then you already have all the remaining parts you need.  With very little effort you can find many websites that discuss keyboard hacking, or taking apart a keyboard to make use of the guts so that you can make other devices send keystrokes to a PC.

If you don’t have an old keyboard lying around or don’t feel like cracking one open to cannibalize it then you can always buy a USB keyboard encoder, which is basically a device that emulates a keyboard.  This is the approach I chose for a few different reasons.  After hunting around for a while I came across the U-HID Nano, which at $35 fit both my budget and my needs perfectly.  This tiny module (only about 1.5″ long) is fully programmable via a Windows app and lets you specify up to 8 individual keys to emulate.

The U-HID Nano

Things to be Aware of

Depending on what components you scrounge/hack/buy there are various issues you should be aware of.  If you hack a keyboard to use as the PC interface then make sure you’re fully aware of how the keyboard behaves.  By default, Windows, OS-X, linux, etc. all treat a prolonged key press as a signal to repeat that key over and over until you let go of the key.  So if your DMX console sends a prolonged signal to your DMX relay you may find that it results in the computer you’re trying to control interpreting it as multiple key presses.  If you are trying to control an application like PowerPoint this way then you could find yourself cycling rapidly through slides when you don’t mean to.  You might be able to deal with this by doing some rather precise timing work with your lighting console or going into your PC’s settings to reduce the keyboard repeat rate, but neither of those are very “neat” solutions.  If you’re fine with that approach then more power to you!

This is one of the reasons why I decided to go with the U-HID Nano device mentioned above.  One of its nice features is that it supports a “pulse” mode for emulating keystrokes.  When it receives a signal on one of it’s control pins it sends a momentary key press rather than latching the keystroke down until the signal is removed.  In this way you can trigger a momentary key press by setting the DMX value of the appropriate channel to a non-zero value and you don’t have to worry about quickly setting the DMX channel back to zero or about the PC interpreting the key press as a repeated one.

If you go with a device like the U-HID Nano or hack a keyboard and decide to support more than one keystroke then the next question to ask is whether you want to use one DMX channel or more.  Since a single DMX channel provides 8 bits of data you could apply one bit to each keystroke. (It sounds like the U-HID Nano is almost made for this!)  Using a single DMX channel can save an otherwise scarce resource if you have a limited number of free/available DMX channels.  The problem here is that you can easily find yourself in a situation where you send keystrokes that you don’t want to, and you may find it very difficult to work with your DMX/keyboard module.   If you accidentally fade the DMX channel up/down in a lighting cue you’ll find it generating all sorts of unwanted keystrokes.

By mapping a single DMX channel to a single keystroke you make management of keystrokes much easier.  If you trigger a keystroke by setting a channel to a non-zero value then you won’t accidentally trigger more keystrokes if that channel then fades to another level.  An 8-channel DMX relay is more expensive, but if you only ever expect to need to send one or two keystrokes during a given show then a one or two channel relay should be plenty for your needs.  Again, since the U-HID Nano is fully programmable, you can change the keystrokes it sends in just a few seconds. If all you need to do is send a single keystroke so you can automatically cycle through PowerPoint slides then a single channel DMX relay and a U-HID Nano would make an excellent combination for less than $100.

My Setup

I actually had an 8-channel DMX relay from Blue Point Engineering sitting idle from a previous project I needed it for.  I simply wired all the common terminals of each relay together and then attached them to pin 1 of the U-HID Nano.  Each of the remaining pins then went to the normally open pin of one of the relays.

I also picked 8 keystrokes that I’m most likely to use and programmed one for each of the 8 pins on the U-HID Nano.  Using the configuration utility you can download from their website I set each pin to be a key switch with the down action set to “Pulse Primary” and the up action to “Clear”.  The completed box works like a charm!