Yes...I'm curious to see how things have progressed on this as well.

An update...

We're still catching things up work & money-wise from the 6 weeks that I lost when ill in February/March. I haven't had time to formally start on the fascia project, but hope to be able to do so this month. Dang bills kept getting in the way... :OP

We're currently listening to Paul's customized Rio, something about a lion, a witch and a closet...

This is the first that I've had the time to set up the Rio in the house and listen to it. Simply amazing sound quality, and an unbelievable quantity of MP3's! I wouldn't think that so many files would fit into the player, though I've forgotten what Paul upgraded the drives to.

I hadn't realized (though I guess that I should have) that one can add recorded/dramatized books to the unit. I suppose that this could be extended to inspirational tapes, etc.. Pretty neat stuff.

We're almost caught up on all of the jobs that were affected by the loss of time, and we're finally getting started on some new jobs, including the Rio fascia/buttons.

I'll update again about mid-June.

Greetings!

The one you are playing with is a 160GB unit - dual 80GB hard drives. It has about 1,500 CDs on it. You can see the complete list here. There is also a copy in the /drive0/install directory.

If you have any questions about the player, how it works, etc., feel free to drop a note on the board, or send me an email.

Sorry to hear about the illness.

Questions, comments, let me know. Also, now that you have an illuminated unit in front of you, you can probably see for yourself about the button castings, the illimination hack and how people were trying to get a more evenly dispersed lighting of the buttons / knob...

You can see the complete list here.

Youve got PDQ Bach mp3's!!
Brilliant!!

I always was a fan of the left-handed sewer flute.

In reply to:

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We're currently listening to Paul's customized Rio, something about a lion, a witch and a closet...

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That's a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe, is it not? Are those audio books or something? I haven't read those since fourth grade. Good books though.

Stu

You can see the complete list here.


Nice collection, but I was suprised to see all the ELP yet no Triumvirat.

Yes, wardrobe. I was goofing off, actually. I read the Narnia books and the LotR books through at least once a year (and I've read the first 4 Harry Potter books through 7 times, starting #8 to coincide with the next book's release. I sponsor a kid's Harry Potter/Redemption league at a local hobby shop, and it helps to be knowledgeable about the topic).

Focus on the Family's Radio Theater, and the BBC, both have independent audio versions of the books available. I'm not sure about the BBC versions, but the FotF Radio Theater ones are available through mail order and some religious book stores.

Greetings!

Let's see...

If I remember correctly, the Chronicals of Narnia on the player is the BBC Radio dramatization that I picked up on amazon.co.uk. They did not have a US version at the time.

I also have a Lord of the Rings set on there, along with an interesting bit of tLotR that Tolkien & his son read directly. The telling "Of Beren and Luthien" read by his son Chris is exceptional.

There are also both the US and UK versions of the 4 Harry Potter books. Book 5 will be added late June for the US version, September for the UK version (it is being released mid-September...).

I have some stray books too. All of the Douglas Adam's HHGTTG and the Dirk Gentlys. Some Ray Bradbury. Twilight Zone radio dramatizations. And a bunch of old Radio Shows (Mysteries, Science Fiction, Suspense, etc.). Those are classic...

Sorry. I have a lot of ELP and other prog, but I am not familiar with Triumvirat.

I know this is totally off topic, but do you listen to "Chronicles" in the order you have them on your player? It's interesting because he wrote them in a different order and they've only recently (or perhaps not so recently, but I have an older collection in the origional order) been put into chronological order. I actually thought they were interesting to read in chronological order, but there's something about mucking with an author's original work that makes me uncomfortable.

I also must say I'm surprised how people here have read those books. I never realized how popular they are. I suppose that's why they're going to make a new movie of them soon.

Greetings!

The set that I have presents them in chronological order (Magician's Nephew first - MN, LWW, H&HB, PC, VotDT, SC, LB), and has introductory bits that seem a bit strange out of place. I typically read them in the "conventional" order (LWW, PC, VotDT, SC, MN, H&HB, LB).

As for the movies, I did not know they were remaking it. I know that there are a rather interesting set that is out on DVD. Granted, by today's standards, the production is, uh, low budget. Think Dr. Who meets C.S.Lewis, and you are on the right track. In fact, Tom Baker plays Puddleglum in the SC...

As for the movies, I did not know they were remaking it.

Yup. Co-Director of Shrek is directing it seems, and they're planning on doing all seven books. I'd guess they're going to do them in the origional order since they're starting with LWW.

Something worth thinking about. There may be a market for you just making handles, especially if the metallised ones can match 303s colors. One hesitation for me in buying a 303 fascia is the lack of a matching handle.

Also, are metalised buttons a possiblity?

Yeah, several studios have been asked to do animation tests before the project awards, and I've been assigned to be part of the team working on the test at our studio. I'm hoping that we get the job -- I think it would be a really cool project to work on. Sure beats working on Scooby Doo, IMHO.

You worked on Scooby Doo? Neat!

Sure was a bad movie, though.

The character modeling and animation was somewhat sub-par, IMO. But it was low budget to begin with.

Bruno

I got in at the tail end of Scooby Doo, and only worked on it for all of about 5 days. I just hate the character. Couldn't stand the cartoon, either. When we got the nod for Scooby Doo 2, I discarded all dignity, and pleaded with my boss not to put me on it. I spent some time on Stuart Little 2, and MIB2, before getting stuck on Daredevil (which was a nightmare, but it's far more tolerable working on something I'm ambivalent about than working on something I hate).

Fellow animator? What exactly do you do?

My background is math/CS, but I did some animation as an intern back in '97 -- nearly all broadcast design type of animation (in Houdini). I dabbled in FX a bit after that (one short freelance gig, also in Houdini, a piece played on the Madison Square Gardens jumbotron, during Rangers home games). I'm currently a pipeline setup TD (as explained in this thread) at R&H.

Couldn't stand the cartoon, either.

Heretic!

Wanna do character TD? LucasArts is desperate for a good one!

If they need a good one, then it's not me. I've never done character stuff. LucasArts isn't the only one looking... the whole vfx industry is looking for good people.

The empeg project is still in the works, but it's going to be delayed somewhat until I can reorder materials and set the molds up.

We ran into a cash flow crisis in June that forced me to reschedule all of our current projects. All of the projects are still in the pipeline, but I'm having to spread them out a tad to make better use of our available resources.

Everything dollar-wise is in the business, and unfortunately I compounded the problem by not doing things like charging a nominal fee for sample molds/castings sent out to prospective clients, and by having a large number of other projects set up without a group purchase that would cover my expenses on the set up before I started in on the projects. Newbie goofs, but critical.

What happened was simply my running out of resources to keep my family afloat. Somehow _everything_ came due in June! It's almost ridiculous, if it wasn't so astounding. It looks like things will be okay, but I've been informing clients that things were going to be slow for a while until things get back to normal here. (I'd already contacted Paul with a detailed letter outlining what was up.)

I'll post back here with an update, probably sometime in the next 5-10 days. I've got to get things running smoothly, especially for the family, and it'll take at least that long.

Thanks for your patience, but really sorry for the wait.

Sorry to hear about the difficulties! I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say: No worries; take care of what's important (family and livelihood). We'll still be here when things settle down for you.

[Cross-posted from Mach's "Solar Powered Buttons" thread.]

Things hit a bit of a wall here when I got ill for a few months (chlorine gas poisoning, lots of fun), but we're slowly bringing the shop back up to speed. I'm a one-man operation, so when I did the "gas thing" all of our projects fell behind. Which affected our income, etc..

I've got a few days of intense work this weekend and we should be back on schedule with the projects that ended up on hold, like the fascia/buttons. Pending some client's payments that are in the mail, I'll have the materials to pour the first molds end of next week.

I like the smoked idea, and will be trying a few different fillers to test their effect on the clarity of the buttons.

I probably won't be doing any soft-surfaced/hard-center buttons, but for the record, some soft urethane resins will bond permanently to a compatible hard urethane resin. I've done some experiments involving scale WW II tank road wheels that turned out rather well.

My sincere apologies for the long wait. Had to catch my breath... ;O)

(BTW, our website is temporarily unavailable. It'll be back up soon.)

Everything dollar-wise is in the business, and unfortunately I compounded the problem by not doing things like charging a nominal fee for sample molds/castings

I definitely don't want to throw a damper on this. And I might conceivably be a potential customer. However, I want to make sure that you get the full scoop on the economics of this. Earlier you mentioned that it would be a few thousand dollars to get everything set up. I'm not sure what the total market size is for this, but I can't imagine that you would sell more than 100 or 200 sets at the very very most. If necessary, someone here might be able to set up a website for people to log their orders if you provide an estimated price. I'm as excited about these buttons as anyone, but I don't want you to sink further into the money-pit by laying out several thousand dollars if you are only going to sell 27 sets!

I figure he's good for 150 - 200 sets, depending on the price. At, say, US$20/set, that's a couple bills plus profit.. should be fine.

Cheers

[One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to blockquote these replies!]

"I definitely don't want to throw a damper on this...

You're not. :O)

It's all in how you look at it. Being a small specialty company, we don't have the income that a larger company has to invest in projects; i.e. net profit from a large inventory base of products.

So I have to look at things from the viewpoint of how many hours of work that I'm actually going to be putting into a project. Unlike other employed folk, I don't always get paid for my labor. It's true that a client who commissions a job will be paying for every hour put into their project.

But when it's a project that I initiate on my own, like the fascia/buttons, I will never get back the labor that I put into the job. It's one of those "circle of life" things. For example, I do models of historical forts. The first one took over 200 hours of research and development. At $35.00 per hour, I _know_ that I'll never see that labor again.

But (again!) I will see sales from that job that will produce enough of a net profit to help keep the company going. It just takes a large adjustment to get use to working "for free" in order to get paid for your labors.

Specialty casting is an expensive route to getting things done, but it has it's place. To have the buttons injection molded (die cast) overseas would reduce the price per kit to a very small amount, but the dies alone will run in the neighborhood of $15,000.00 to $35,000.00! And that's just the "molds" (the "dies")!

The company that produces them will want you to order enough to fill at least one overseas shipping container, like the ones that dumped all of those Nikes and rubber ducks into the ocean. That's a LOT of button sets. Anyone got $40,000.00+ laying around? {grin}

So in comparison, specialty casting is the way to go for this project.

On the 'Net I also have to be careful to quote pricing that reflects what it would cost if someone asked me to do a similar job. If I just told what the materials cost, I might later find myself unable to charge a competitive price on potential jobs ("But back in August 2003, on the Empeg forum you said..."). Hence the quote in my earlier post.

However, several things have reduced that amount by a large margin. One is the loaner fascia and buttons. Because they are in great shape, and need little modification, I will not have to do a lot of sculpting for the masters. And I've been allowed to play with Paul's unit! Whoo-hoo!

It looks very much like Eutronix will be marketing the sets for us, with direct sales through us at trade conventions, via our website, or for the odd special or otherwise weird request. One important note in this regard, we do not sell our own products below the established retail price. The price at our website will be the same as the retail price at Eutronix. But I expect that most sales will be through Stuart's crew because they have the manual. Cool either way.

And speaking of our own website, it's temporarily down and will be back up soon.

[One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to blockquote these replies!]

BBS FAQ

I will never get back the labor that I put into the job. It's one of those "circle of life" things.

Cool. We all appreciate your contribution.
Most (or all) of the products here are to some extent "labor of love" or "give to the community" type of things. Not that Mark, Steve, Brian, PCATS, etc. don't make a little change for what they do; but let's just say I don't think they're billing $200/hr for these services. For many, it's just a way of making a hobby into a small (sometimes very small) business.
It looks like your casting company is somewhat in the same spirit -- 'cept it must put food on your table, too!
Consequently, we're used to occasional very large delays. Sometimes we get stuff in days; sometimes it takes months (heck, I've been on Brian's illuminated button list for well over a year!).

Thanks.

Casting is our main bread and butter, that's why getting ill set things back.

I do have a couple of small things that I do on the side, too, so that's helped.

We also do a lot of praying around here.