July 2008 Archives

This is the online home of the technical teams for the Evangelical Free Church of Crystal Lake, IL. Your author, Tim Gibson, is the Director of Technical Ministries. Please come back here often for updates.

Big changes to the blog. Hopefully starting this week. I'm working on it. Stay tuned....

Really not much going on right now. Lots of little things: new projector for Route 66, playing TV dominoes, and working on inventory.

Jen's back is acting up again, so the training for tonight has been re-scheduled for Tuesday, August 5th at 7pm. Please keep Jen in your prayers. She has an appointment tomorrow morning.

That's about it.

So this past week I have been working on the system processor for the audio system. This is the piece (actually pieces, there are 3) of equipment that control all the EQ, delay, crossover, and levels for the speakers. I had noticed a while ago that the choir monitors did not sound very good. I found out why: the same settings were being used as for the floor monitors. Since they are different models, this is why they didn't sound good. So last week I set up a CD player and laptop in the choir loft and for an hour played different songs and made adjustments. The choir monitors now sound a lot better.

When I was finished I looked at the settings for the FOH speakers. Most everything looked fine, except there were a couple interesting settings that made me go hmmm. So today I played the CDs through FOH and made some adjustments. These changes are much more subtle with one exception: the level has changed for the subs. We now have a lot more headroom on the console; so I moved the settings down on the individual channels. Be careful, we can now deliver a lot more low end. :)

I probably played the CDs for longer than I needed to, but hey what would you do with some cool songs and great speakers? :) :)

So the past few months I have been evaluating our needs as a tech ministry. I put together a list of large dollar items that we will be needing in the next several years as we outgrow the existing equipment. Lord willing, we will be able to purchase all of these. I have submitted this vision plan to the Stewardship Board and it might be included in the fundraising campaign this fall. Please pray that the Lord will provide the funds as we need them.

1. Digital Audio Console
2. Projectors & Screens
3. Matrix Switcher for projectors
4. Cameras
5. Lobby TV system
6. Lighting Console
7. Video Mixing Workstation
   

So most of you have probably heard on the news, that Bill Gates is now officially retired from CEO of Microsoft. His last day was last Friday. Although instead of talking about the technology aspect of this story, I wanted to talk about the other part.

Gates will now devote most of his time to heading up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He and his wife founded it in 1994 for the purpose of using their money (and grants) for 2 main purposes:
1. To help their local community in Seattle
2. address the global health crises.

Their 2 values are:

1. All lives--no matter where they are being lived--have equal value.
2. To whom much is given, much is expected.

Now I have no idea if they will be heaven or not, but those values are definitely ones I can agree with. Warren Buffett has even agreed to give much of his money to help these causes as well.

So whether you're a user of Windows, Mac, Linux, or whatever, you have to be a fan of his foundation. Let's hope and pray that they are successful in their objectives to enrich their community and rid of the world of some health problems.