Not long ago, the kids in my neighborhood went back to school. I'm in a college town, and the campus is a-bustle with activity there too. I noticed it when I was in a super store shopping for window treatments and all I could see for aisles around me were parents finding the right decor for their grown-up child's new dorm room.

Some of those students will be taking classes where they'll learn about Theatre History (I don't think the professor who taught it to me is still around, but I admit it will be fun to go look and see one of these days, now that I'm back in the vicinity). One of the things which really fascinated me in that class was the shape and practical advantages/limitations of Elizabethan theatres. If you had a TARDIS or Doc Brown's '81 DeLorean, wouldn't you want to go back in time to see how they really mounted the first production of one of the great tragedies?

There are so many wonderful lighting images in Shakespeare, and they did it with so little technology! But now, with the global trend towards increasingly more miniaturized and portable lighting control, don't you just want to throw caution to the wind and take a laptop and a DMX USB Pro with you? I guess the fundamental problem with that (other than changing the course of history) would be that you'd also have to teach them how to use DMX to control their candles, and that might be tough. Michael Harvey has his own Globe-style theater to light, and LightFactory does provide him with the solution he needs in 2008.

With the summer drawing to a close and cooler weather around the bend, t-shirts are on my mind lately. You can wear them year round indoors, but only for half the year are they suitable for outdoor use too. Which is why it's a shame that I have to do this, but we're pushing back the deadline on our t-shirt design contest until September 25. The last newsletter got sent out too late to make the dates we had come up with stand up well. Hopefully, we can still manufacture the shirts that are resulting from this contest in time for LDI .

Half the globe away from here, but not that far from our home base, there was an event over the summer called World Youth Day. Read about how Enttec's DMX to Ethernet nodes played an integral part in making that happen.

To round out this edition, we'll give you some more handy product news, ranging from a little more detail about LightFactory license dongles to the Smart Patch Wizard on our RDM Controller, to a new item--the Rack Mount Plate for the Wings. Last month, we showed off the new Programming Wing; this product allows you to put one in a rack

Jeremy Kumin , Editor and Marketing Manager