Production manager/lighting designer. Basically, I design and manage the stages and technology for a variety of events.

Some are fun, some are dull, the hours can be brutal and I spend far too many nights away from home but at least once a month (and often more regularly) I get to do something or work with somebody the vast majority of people would consider a once in a lifetime.

Tough job with none of the glamour people expect but I love it.

as many others have said, 50k seems low. Presuming this isn’t a massive hike from your current salary, what you’re actually talking about is doing it for the tax.

That means that vs a job on similar money at home with your kids, you’re looking at an extra 9 and a bit grand a year (plus the difference in salary)i.e. presuming you are on 50k here, a total for the three years of 28/30k minus whatever extra cost you have. Trust me, as someone who tours for a job, no matter how much it is claimed that your expenses are covered, you will have to spend money on stuff that you wouldn’t have to at home.

Cant say it would be enough to convince me. It would have to be an income that would change our lives as a family to convince me to change our family life (if that makes sense.

Black forks would somewhat ruin the orange and white theme I have going on….

Have to second the suggestion of the blue blazer. Great wee pub.

If your looking for something a bit more unusual, then panda and sons is worth a look. Speakeasy style place Doing mainly cocktails but always a good atmosphere.

The other standard recommendation is under the stairs, the food is really good.

Upon re-reading my post, it would appear my wife manages to get me to go to more cocktail places than I would like to admit!!!

I can only comment from my industry but I get sent CV’s regularly.

Firstly, Never include a photo. This is an instant in the bin for me. If you include a photo, no matter what I decide, you can accuse me of discrimination. It s a ridiculous world we live in where this is an issue but it’s not worth it for me to do anything with your CV.

Secondly, Write it yourself. CV writing services can write you a very good CV but it’s generally fairly easy to spot the professionally written ones. It’ll be obvious from your job history that you’re not a seasoned pro at writing CV’s and therefore I’m not expecting it to be perfect.

It may be industry specific, but show you have a live outside work. I need to know that someone I will employ has ways to relax and deal with Stress etc. and understands the concept of balance. That said, don’t show a full list of your race results from the last 5 years!

My best suggestion is to try and find some kind of event with an opportunity to meet people you might send a CV to. In my industry, a trade show is a great option. Don’t lead with “I want a job”, be interested and ask questions, follow this up with an email with CV attached.

I think one of the biggest pitfalls people fall into with CV’s is focussing so much on the layout/formatting/fonts etc. and not so much on the content. Yes it needs to look like something I want to read but your experience knowledge and skills are most important to me. (unless its a design job in which case it should probably look good!!!)

As I say, a lot of this may be industry specific but hopefully there’s something in this that helpful

I have 3 different sets at the moment (comes with the job).

Shure SCL2 are my basic, non molded ones that get lent to people, used when out and about, every day type. Not massively expensive but for non molded they are a decent sounding IEM.

Westone custom ES50’s are my work IEM, molded. These are comfortable and due to the 5 drivers have great range and dynamics to them. The detachable cable is also a plus as I have now gone through 3 cables (all my fault) and it also means I can wear them as plugs when needed. Overall review would be: expensive but worth the money if the quality of audio and comfort for long periods are deciding factors

My third set are a set of 1964’s V6 Stage. I’ve only had these a week so cant say much but they are a joy to listen through. not sure if they’ll replace my Westones for work but I did a long flight with them a couple of days ago and they were in and comfortable for a good 4 hours.

I think the Key is budget. There are good ones available at a range of prices and most serious IEM’s can be built into molds if you want to. Definetly worth getting good molds done if you are going for it and i’d strongly recommend trying as many sets as you can before you spend

Thanks all, Inverkeithing is kind of en route to work so I’ll pop into Sandy Wallace.

have a look at the adobe creative cloud. Essentially you can lease the software for a monthly payment. It gets him all of the updates as they happen and you can cancel at any time.

info etc can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/creativecloud.html

Scrambled egg sandwiches. Made with granary or seeded bread and thickly spread butter. and eggs of course

Thanks for all the info.

We’ve lined up to see a couple of apartments in Dunfermline. I think theres enough there to stop the Mrs going crazy when I’m working away and when I’m home we can head out in the car to do stuff.

Unfortunatly, the not driving thing is medical so me insisting would be seen as mean!!!!

I’ve just ordered roof bars and bike rack for the car so I can head out to play a bit further afield.

The singletrack collective helps again. You lot should get a van and drive around like the A team sharing opinions.

but the train service to Edinburgh is slow and infrequent.

I think we’re probably better off nearer her work than mine. I dont exactly work regular hours so rush hour etc aren’t really an issue for me but I imagine a long unreliable commute for her will mess with my “happy wife=Happy life” policy. Aberdour looks nice though. Might have to go for real life nosy.

With regards to places being a bit grotty, we’ve had our expectations firmly lowered by 8 years in Bradford and 3 years in Salford prior to that.

wow, thanks for all the responses.

Stirling would be lovely but I think its just a bit too far out of Edinburgh.
Looks like the right bits of dunfermline are probably going to be our best bet. We’re only renting to start with so I guess if we get it wrong we can move rewasonably easily.

I initially read the thread title as Mulsim Forks and wondered if religious bike parts were the new niche of choice

That said….. If someone can give me a valid reason, religious or otherwise for wearing a balaclava into a bank, I’d be interested to hear it.

angle grinding metal

mrs MB’s body butter stuff

Two very different smells (thankfully) but both awesome

if you are using chrome as your browser, install “mediahint” and you will have access to the full US netflix library.

Lots of films and TV!!!

We’re currently mid way through a long prank on one of our event managers.

Every Tuesday, 2 of my staff are in a few hours before everyone else. The event manager whom we shall call Anna (because thats her name) never shuts her imac down.

The prank goes as follows…..

before she gets in and through the wonders of remote access, we turn on the voiceover function in system prefs.

She sits down to work and her computer starts talking to her. She tries to phone us to come look but due to internal caller ID, we ignore the calls. She comes through to our office and asks one of us to come see whats going on.

As soon as one of us leaves with her, someone else goes on and turns the voiceover off.

By the time we arrive at her office, the mac is back to normal. She swears blind that the computer was talking to her and we suggest in a not very subtle way that she is losing the plot.

I wonder how long we can keep this up?

seatpost is a bontranger ssr. There’s about 15cm still in the frame.

I think i could have done with a slightly bigger frame but I got this one as a freebie so cant complain. May look a bit silly but actually v comfy to ride

everyday’s a school day! thanks folks

thanks, any guesses what i was doing wrong?

dammit, slightly deflated by my lack of IT skills, photo is here

tie the handle of the milk to a rape alarm (preferably a multi tone one) using fishing wire, and hide sound activated disco lights in all windows of the house.

The neighbours will hate you but I’m pretty sure the theft would stop.

black toast

How do you make your living? Lighting Designer/Production manager

Are you happy doing it? yep

Would you considering a change of career? I consider it most days whilst on the road and I also think I wouldnt change it for the world most days!!

Does it pay enough for you to mtb comfortably? pay: yes free time:no

Presuming you haven’t committed the crime of including animations in your powerpoint, most TV’s with a USB port will loop images from the usb. Export the powerpoint as a batch of images and set the TV to slideshow them.

Can’t give you any science behind why (because as far as I’m concerned it might well be magic) but playing them in VLC sorted it out for me.

Thats the badger Jeffus, Thank you very much.

yeah, seems to fit quite happily. What are you going to make the sleeve out of?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/92514334@N03/8417164615/

not the greatest photo but might help

its a white Wheeltech hub. No model number or anything on it. I’ll try and get some photo’s up.

Christmas 2010, we were asked by a client to turn a big barn of a venue into a nightclub for them. They shelled out the best part of quarter of a million on a one night event with celebrity guests, massive stages, guest bands and DJ’s. SInce this was the biggest event they’d had, we provided a 9 camera live shoot with links to screens and recording for a highlights edit.

As soon as the event ended we were asked to destroy all footage and they stood over us as we did it. Turns out a couple of the Directors were dancing (spelled G.R.O.P.I.N.G) with people they shouldn’t have been and they didn’t want the footage going anywhere.

A huge amount of money spent and nothing to remember it by. The following year, they did not want the cameras element of the quote!

well thanks for all the advice folks.

I finally got through to the DVLA who would only commit to ‘turning it around as fast as the system would let them’ but couldn’t tell me more than that.

The rental car company have however advised that they will be able to do the DVLA check and so long as my license is away to have the changes made it shouldn’t be a problem.

phew.

one hire company call coming up.

thanks, I’ll try calling the hire company.

I’ll send off all the stuff this morning and prep the company credit card for a bashing at the hands of the rail companies. Its my bad, the extra cost will come out of my commission and I shall pretend to take it like a man whilst all the while beating myself up for not keeping on top of my admin at home.

Ah well, life goes on.

thegreatape: surely that leaves the insurance compromised as I gues I technically do not have a valid license?

I think its going to have to be the train

No, I work for a Production Company.

We have a pre production meeting on Saturday for a charity event. Usually we’d either fly or train it up but they were trying to keep costs down so I said thats fine, I’m happy to drive. I then discovered my license issue.

If theres no way of doing it fast then we’ll have to do train or the like but if I can, I’d rather just get it sorted and stick to the original plan

I can just see the look on the accounts departments faces when I tell them I need to hire a chauffeur. I’d rather not see that look in real life if I can avoid it!!!!

Another vote for virtual box here.

A previous boss of mine (live event tech company) managed to leave the sunroof open on his new Lexus and came back to find that 2 of the crew had filled it to half way up the windows with polystyrene beads (brought in to fire for an effect). I’m told he was still finding the beads 2 years later.

£10 seems like a reasonable price.

Too many people fail to realise that although the LBS may be run by like-minded friendly people, they are not there to be your mate, they’re there to make money.

Every service related business will have a minimum price and TBH its very rarely related to how complex the job is. Its the point below which its not worth doing the job.

I do at least 4 trips a month and if its my choice (which it generally is) its either BA or Virgin.

BA’s timekeeping can be a bit rough but as others have said, all airlines can and do run into issues. Its not about the problem, its about how they deal with it.