Recently my honesty and integrity has been called out and attacked by three individuals over at avs. Two of these individuals are members here at the Shack - prof55 and MississippiMan. The other is pb_maxx. Who is not a member here at the Shack to my knowledge. This all stems from several long running 'feuds' with regards to the diy screen arena.
Feud number one involves MississippiMan, whom I'll refer to as either MMan or Maurice (his name) here on out. Maurice has been the bearer of bad information at avs since the diy screen forum was founded there at avs. His background is this. He installs in wall speakers and paints screens. His webpage is [url]www.invisiblestereo.com[/url] Both Bill (wbassett) and I started at avs around the same general time - I believe Bill joined a month or two ahead of me. We both joined looking for a diy screen that would match in performance a commercial screen but at a much lower cost. At that time the diy screen paint was Black Flame - a concoction which is now called Silver Fire and is in it's third rendition I believe. I was very interested in Black Flame as it sounded just the thing I was looking for. I believe Bill was looking into it as well. Both Bill and I were approached by Maurice via the pm system at avs and offers were made to paint screens for us. Keep in mind that I didn't know Bill and Bill didn't know me at the time. The offer was pay a fee for Maurice to paint our screen, pay his airfare, put him up in a hotel, and we would get a commercial quality screen. We both thought that this was a bit fishy. Pay all this money for him to come and roll a screen for us?!?! It would have been pretty near a thousand dollars for me. I'm not sure what Bill's would have cost. Since these pms occurred both Bill and I started reading more about the various paints and what would make a good screen. Bill also started talking to Mark Fairchild of R.I.T. Mark's bio can be found here [url]http://www.cis.rit.edu/fairchild/[/url]. Sometime around this time Bill started questioning Maurice and started up a couple of new diy threads at avs - the laminate thread and off the shelf neutral gray thread. These two threads, along with Black Widow, are three of the top threads at avs' diy forum. How does this concern Maurice? Well, with the help of Mark Fairchild, Bill started picking apart a lot of what Maurice was saying. Bill's statements were based upon facts. While Maurice's have been based upon thin air. Maurice usually uses his "XX years of experience in the home theater field". You can put just about any number in the XXs. I've seen him say as many as 30 and as few as 7. Who knows? Bill (as well as others) also caught Maurice posting Photoshop'd images and saying they were his builds. I believe prof55 provided much of the ammo for this. So what is the basis of the feud with Maurice? Well Maurice runs around throwing numbers out (gain values, viewing cone angles, etc) and stating that his mix is neutral. Yet it's never been measured. And back when I started here I wanted to test his formula out so I mixed it up and took some readings. I thought it looked purply/bluish and I asked Maurice for advice regarding this. His reply was to pm me the formula that I already followed. I asked him for a sample (either of the paint or of a small panel) and he responded positively. And yet nothing ever arrived. There will be more to the Silver Fire drama a bit later. This should suffice for now. I wanted to touch on one more thing with regards to Maurice. Since I had been a member at avs, he has promised many different shootouts involving many different mixes. Rarely, if ever, do they show up. How many have I done? How hard have I worked at getting the color balanced correctly in each shot. The one shootout that I do recall Maurice finishing was a comparison of Black Widow and Silver Fire. The few people that responded all said BW looked better.
Another player in the feud is pb_maxx or Pete as I'll call him. Pete is supposedly the brains of the bunch. He's the guy who actually came up with the formulas. I used to have a lot of respect for Pete but it's pretty much gone over time. The first thing that used to gnaw at me was his lack of typing skills/grammar? He refuses to ever capitalize anything and his posts are always difficult to read. That wasn't that big of a deal though because looking back in time most geniuses were eccentric. My big problem with Pete is that lately he's seemed to jump on the bandwagon and start saying things that are simply unfounded. Here's a couple of examples - these have been taken from the thread at avs where the attack started by prof55 began and are in regards to my Silver fire sample measurements:
[QUOTE]it would seem to me that if you wanted to post fair results... you'd ask for a little bit of assistance and try to get the mix correct... as others have done.
ZEDUCTIVE for his part (which i commend), asked for assistance.[/QUOTE]
Ok first off, I did ask for assistance. This has been public knowledge for quite some time now. I even asked for a sample direct from Maurice. And it's Zductive. And Zductive didn't get help from them, he got it from harpmaker.
Then there's this post the next day:
[QUOTE]all three of those SF panels that were tested were done at the EXACT same time and in collaboration with one another.
[originally posted by mech: I have yet to test it fully as it has a blue push and I've been in contact with MMan trying to figure out whether it's right or not. Apparently there have been no spectro readings of it yet but here's my temporary RGB from my loaner spectro - 170 174 182. It looks and pushes blue. Keep in mind I'm going to do another mix as something doesn't appear right with mine but here are a couple shots]
and yet he never did...
[originally posted by harpmaker: MM had cautioned me that using any other paints could mess up the SF mix so I simply added more Delta Ceramcoat Cardinal Red to my SF mix to make it closer to a neutral gray. As Cardinal Red also contains some blue in it, I had to stop before I reached a true neutral gray as the blue quotient of the mix was being increased as well, but my final SF mix doesn't have such an obvious blueish color to the naked eye any more]
why stop before you got to a nuetral gray? ...but at least he tried to correct his mix.
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what i find interesting about the first test panel... is that rather than correcting the mix that he knew was visually and most likely incorrectly done. he continued to use that mix and that test panel in all of his testing to purposefully skewer the visual results and test data in his favor...all the while for almost 2 year now, hiding behind his scientific position... that silver fire is not nuetral. and yet he had the data right in front him... namely harpmaker's sample and zductive's sample that fell within his own definition of nuetral gray.
...so what hope would i have of any of this new testing being objective unless they came from someone nuetral...[/QUOTE]
The three panels may have been done at the same time. But I collaborated with no one except Maurice. Harpmaker and Zductive collaborated and adjusted the mix by adding red to the mix. I added nothing. Remember these last two statements. They're gonna be important! ;) Then there's the statement "rather than correcting the mix that he knew was visually and most likely incorrectly done. he continued to use that mix and that test panel in all of his testing to purposefully skewer the visual results and test data in his favor". I find this rather confusing and amusing at the same time. Bear with me for a moment. Let's say Art at Home Theater Review gets a screen sample and it's off. Is he supposed to do whatever he can to try and fix the screen or report it 'as is'? Back to Pete, again it's been publicly stated for quite some time that I asked for both assistance and a sample from Maurice. It has been these two post that I have realized that Pete is no different than Maurice. They both lie, cheat and steal to make a buck.
The third part of the feud is most interesting. This involves prof55 (Garry Stoner) who is the moderator of the diy screen forum at avs. Garry is the owner of Liquiscreen, a commercial screen paint company. You can find ownership details here at the Iowa Secretary of State: [url]http://www.sos.state.ia.us/Search/corp/%28S%28b0xy2mbogihdisfbupcezyf1%29%29/corp_summary.aspx[/url] The diy screen forum used to be moderated ad hoc at avs. When they decided to hire a specific moderator for that forum prof55 quickly volunteered. Keep in mind that a lot of this information comes to me via 3rd party - Alan Gouger (one of the owners of avs) told me these things via a phone conversation once. Alan did not know that Garry was the owner of a commercial screen paint company. He seemed a bit shocked that this was the case. It was an unwritten rule early on that the commercial folks had to be in the screen forum. Later that became a written rule:
The DIY Screen section is for discussion of screens made from materials not originally intended for projection screen use. This is a DIY forum for people to share DIY ideas. If you are a full or part time dealer or installer of home theater screens, this is the wrong forum section for you - please do not post here.
Recently this rule has been deleted by prof55. Why? Because he's a dealer and it was against forum rules for him to post int he forum that he moderates, as well as Maurice and Pete. After I made this post here:
[url]http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/projector-screens-diy-screens/20357-diy-paint-suggestion.html#post180838[/url]
someone informed me that the rules had magically changed at avs. And it was that post that prompted Garry to start this thread with his hand picked title by splitting it from another. In this thread Garry acts as if he's bi-partisan, but he's not. He has actually stated to folks that he hates me and I can say at times that the feeling was mutual. I can say now though that hate would be a bit strong. Lately I find him amusing - and I don't mean this in a spiteful way. Just amusing! ;) So all of this has come to me from others over the last several days and today I decided to go and look and see what it's all about. It was a typical avs thread, a bunch of chest pounding and demands - they always make demands at avs, they never make it happen. The post that is rather amusing is one by prof55:
[QUOTE]I'll rise to this challenge. And unlike MM, I'm going to name names. The following numbers for Silver Fire come from this source, and I believe these are the numbers to which Bill refers when he mentions "multiple people in different countries":
Silver Fire - mech
RGB 170 172 182
Lab 70.9 0.49 -4.76
Silver Fire - Harpmaker
181 184 187
Lab 74.5 -0.3 -1.85
Silver Fire - zductive
185 187 184
Lab 75.6 -0.89 0.96
Converting these numbers to color temperature using the Lindbloom CIE Color Calculator gives us these results:
mech
7207°
Harpmaker
6788°
zductive
6449°
Unless I am mistaken, two of these results are well within Bill's criteria for acceptable neutrality. But one deviates rather drastically from neutral, and coincidentally it is from the "one person" MM alludes to.
Personally, I find these test results rather telling, if not altogether suspicious. No dates are given for the data, and I have no idea what formula was used. But it was clearly successful for two of the three testers.
Another test was begun on 7/14/09 (by the same tester) using the current Liquitex version of SF. Figures were published for the color component only, which is obviously not neutral by itself, nor is it intended to be. No testing of the complete mix has been published to date, and considering the following quote, I doubt it will be:
"Anyone looking for a shortcut to the color component could go to Lowes and have them mix you up a sample pint of PPG 520-7, NCS 8005-Y50R, or Ben Moore Black Bean 2130-10. These are close. Keep in mind that in trying out Silver Fire, all you're ever going to get is close. Close to what? With measurements of thick artist paints down to the ml, I can guarantee you that we could spectro 50 different samples and get 50 different results."
Here, the tester advocates substituting different ingredients (since, in his opinion "all you're ever going to get is close"), then admits his own inability to properly mix the correct ingredients!
Is this your idea of an objective test?
Garry[/QUOTE]
So, what's so amusing about this post? Well the amusing thing is that Garry knew that Harpmaker and Zductive changed the mix to try and get it neutral. He also knew that I did not. At one point they're telling me to adjust the mix on my own to get it neutral and then the next they're throwing their arms to the skies because I gave out a simple shortcut to making Silver Fire. To answer your questions Garry, Zductive could be classified as a neutral by color temp. But it's not Silver fire as he adjusted the mix on his own. As for the objectivity in testing, really? A person who lies (remember owner of a commercial screen paint company moderating a diy screen forum) and cheats (owner of a commercial screen company posting in the diy screen forum in direct violation of the rules - as well as allowing other commercial screen paint vendors post in the diy screen forum in direct violation of the rules) is calling my integrity, honesty and objectivity into question?!?! Bill can probably add to this as well. His latest trip is that Bill and Don are there 'trolling for members'. It is the same thing that I was banned for - 'trolling for members'. How did I do that? Well I posted links to stuff that I have here at the Shack. I'm not going to make avs the repository of any of my information. And Shack links are allowed everywhere there but in the diy screen forum. Full disclosure - after being banned I did sign up again twice in order to see attachments and download things which I needed - the AVSHD calibration disk among other things. Apparently I posted one link to my gain tests (at mechman.net) in the diy forum while Maurice was making his bloated claims and they banned my ip for good.
So there you have it. Maurice accuses me without proof and yet he's guilty of it daily. pb_maxx accuses me and yet doesn't even know the facts - some of which he's put within his own posts. And prof55 accuses me and he's the most guilty of them all - for he allows it to continue.
As Bill likes to say, talking to these folks is like talking to a five year old....
If you haven't seen the thread it's [URL="http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1168997"]here[/URL]. Closed now as the crooked judge and jury has recessed. Go have a look as there is still just a touch of sunshine over there. GUIMeng seems to be one of the few with any knowledge.
There's your answer Garry. If I were playing Jeopardy it would be "What are the Three Blind Mice".
