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Writing

Notes from the
production desk.

Why these tools exist, what they solve, and the things that go wrong on a show floor.

A wall of small video monitors in a dark control room, a few of them lit 12 November 2026 Video device routing on macOS, in plain terms Audio on a Mac has had a routing culture for twenty years. There are virtual devices, aggregates, matrices, and a shared vocabulary for talking about them.… A reception at night with guests in silhouette watching a large lit screen 29 October 2026 Building an event photo slideshow that runs itself The photographer is working the room. Guests are watching the screen to see whether they made it in. And nobody is free to sit at a… An abstract particle field glowing violet above a reflective floor 15 October 2026 TouchDesigner on a Mac: sharing frames both directions TouchDesigner is happy to be either end of a chain — generating content for something else to place, or receiving live sources to react to. The… A network switch in a dark road case with port lights lit 1 October 2026 NDI on a show network: what the switch needs from you NDI has a reputation for being heavy on a network. It is not, particularly. What is heavy is an unmanaged switch, a venue Wi-Fi bridged into… A sweep of projected light bending across a large curved surface 17 September 2026 Corner pin or mesh warp? Let the surface decide A four-corner pin and a mesh warp both make an image land where you want it. They are answering different questions, and reaching for the second… Packed flight cases in a dark venue after a show 3 September 2026 What to save before you leave site The rig worked. The client was happy. In four months the same event runs again, probably in the same venue, and the only record of how… A streaming operator position at night lit by multiple monitors 20 August 2026 OBS on macOS: getting clean sources in, and clean signal out OBS is excellent at the middle of the job — scenes, transitions, layout, recording, streaming. It is weakest at the two ends: getting good sources in… A silhouetted operator in front of several differently lit screens 6 August 2026 Multi-screen playback from one Mac: the honest limits The spec sheet says the machine supports four displays. The spec sheet is describing a desktop — four monitors showing windows, mostly static, occasionally scrolling. It… An ordered grid of glowing connection points in darkness 23 July 2026 Routing audio between Mac apps without the virtual cable mess You need the output of one application to become the input of another. On macOS this is a solved problem in the sense that there are… A small aluminium computer on a dark rack shelf with one status light 9 July 2026 Running a show on Apple Silicon: what actually changed The marketing story about Apple Silicon is performance, and the performance is real. The parts that change how you build a live video rig are less…