Stone Temple Pilots - Post Concert Review

I enjoyed the Stone Temple Pilots on October, 25th at Lucky Star Casino in Concho, OK. It was a pleasant surprise as it was totally last minute. Much thanks to the friend who took me there. I'm not quite sure how the band feels about photos or video, so I will refrain from that for now. Here is a photo of right before the concert. I hope this is legit.




As you can see it wasn't the U2 show in terms of set up, nor in size of venue. But nevertheless, STP is a great band, and they have put on arena sized performances like U2. These Grammy Award winning artists put out songs like "Interstate Love Song", "Plush", and "Sex Type Thing". They were huge in the 90s (Wiki).

U2 & Black Eyed Peas - Post Concert Review

Overall, the U2 performance was awesome. In terms of impressiveness of stage design, it is the best that I have ever seen. It sounds like I have been to a lot of concerts, right? Well not as a much as some people. Overall, from what I have read “the Claw” is a one of a kind sort of thing. And I might hazard to guess, that it cannot be topped easily. The lights were amazing!

The band did a great job making use of the space. It seemed that all members except for Larry Mullen Jr. (the drummer) were out and about, likely using some sort of wireless mechanism to keep with the tunes. To me most of the music seemed good. The music is still growing on me. The lyrics even more so (they are vague, but so deep at the same time).

U2 and the Black Eyed Peas practicing and an Irish guy doing a sound check really made it the pre-concert scene intense.

I not a stage designer by any means, so I really cannot comment too much about it. The only thing that I can think of to top this show is to have Bono wear white, and have something like Microvisions’ PicoP projector give him different outfits. See: http://www.microvision.com/pico_projector_displays/. They did laser projection I think, but it was not as complicated as conceivably possible. At least as far as my engineering training tells me.

The Black Eyed Peas also performed as special guests. I remember liking their songs, "I've Gotta Feeling" and "Where is the Love", so it was a treat to see them live. After researching the B.E.P, I discovered that Fergie was part of them. I had heard of Fergie awhile back around the time she was a guest on John Garabedian’s Open House Party. So it was interesting to be able to put a name with a face.

a reminder to myself

You know, just so I stop thinking about it, I am going to put something here. I want to write a post about U2 (performance, stage-tech, and music), theatre (and the arts in general. including ballet. I think opera is my favorite of all. Possibly the favorite. I'll have to explain why. It has to do with being able to relate and understand (same thing really). I have trouble). Well anywhoo... it sounds like it could be a fun post, but time for some self-control, discipline, whatever you want to call it. Time to do Statistics.

Before the U2 Concert

OU - TX Game

I was a bit disappointed about the loss against Texas, but the Red River Rivalry was a very fun game to watch. I hadn't expected such a low score in the first half, and such a change for Texas in the second. It was so close for so long too, even though, well, both teams were playing poorly offensively for so long. Thank you, to whom I won't mention, for the nice time at the game watch party.

The U2 - Polymer Processing Laboratory Tour

I was really hoping that I would run into Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. to give them a tour of the Polymer Processing Laboratory. Alas, this may not happen.

A Day of Statistics - After the OU-TX game

So, my statistics test is coming up on Tuesday. It is going to be huge, well huge for me.

We are reviewing the book: Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences, 5th Ed. by W. Mendenhall and T. Sincich.

In the first chapter we focused on, chapter 2, which included measures of central tendency, measures of variation, box plots, stem-and-leaf diagrams, histograms, and measures relative standing. While we had homework problems in this area, a big emphasis was put on the use of SPSS for our analysis. It is a lot easier anyways.

We then proceeded to chapter 4 of the text, in hopes that we understood at least some probability from chapter 3. It was important that we understood Bernoulli trials as well as the binomial distribution that is related to it. Owh, and I completely forgot, we used the concept of expected value and applied it to discrete random variables.

In chapter 5 we examined cumulative distribution functions and probability density functions for continuous random variables.

Well anyhow, this is a little brief. It is study time! Which is kind of like dinner time except with out the food. Umm...actually, no parallels, except the excitement.

Following the U2 Setup

I have been following the U2 Concert in Norman moderately closely. I will be going to it on Sunday. Here is a brief rundown of what I have noticed:

Monday: Asp street near the stadium (northbound) was closed. The football stadium lights were on in the evening.

Tuesday: Around lunch-time a large yellow crane showed up followed by a truck with a large portion of the stage. In addition, forklifts were operating under a large section of the stadium parking garage. I also noticed security surrounded the perimeter of the stadium.

Wednesday: I noticed two 25 foot sections of the stage arrive. I took some pictures of the setup, one of which is below.















Thursday:

The stage set, or "the Claw", was visible of the side of the stadium. Men were working on top of the large monstrosity.

Friday:

The stage set was still visible above the side of the stadium, yet little activity was apparent. The north and south upper decks were covered with plastic.















Saturday:

A large spire, that I had not noticed before, protruded from the claw. Two semis, one apparently
full of stage equipment were blocking the west bound lane of Lindsey. A third an forth semi were heading towards, and away from stadium on Lindsey , respectively.

Purpose

This blog is an attempt to force me to start thinking about something interesting to talk about in real life, and to move me away from the Internet. Fail. Sort of. If you are following, I hope you enjoy. :)