I understand the physics that explain why high-quality analog audio/video cables are a good thing. Ok, at least I understood it in college. Bottom line is that they lower distortion. But I also understand there is a law of diminishing returns, which is governed by the limitations of the human ear and eye and the quality of your A/V components. Long story short, you want decent speaker cables and component or S-Video cables.
But digital cables don?t need to be super high quality. When you think about it, they?re just computer cables. I?ve been around computers my whole life, and have troubleshot a lot problems. I think the cable has been an issue twice, and it is always a source of amazement, and the last thing you?d check. (This doesn?t include the times when you attempt to pull out a FibreChannel cable by the wire instead of the tiny plug, and the wire comes out but the plug stays there, and you?ve broken it just like the 8 admins before you, because they are the worst designed cables ever.) The point is that all those cables carry the same type of digital signal that your digital audio, HDMI, or DVI cables carry. It?s bits of data, 1s and 0s, on or off. Nobody in the computer industry sweats over cable quality, because if the system can?t tell the difference between on and off, you probably don?t have a cable, but what we call a resistor. Don?t use those.
Agent Assassin has some A/V components that the average Joe would describe as terribly expensive and high quality (and what his roommate ? your truly ? would call ?good enough for the time being?). He has researched the living daylights out of these things, and the consensus among the smart people is to get stuff from Blue Jeans Cable. They make really good stuff, but don?t rip you off. (Like Monster Cable allegedly does. Not that you heard that from me.) Their website is also educational. There is a catch, though: you have to attach the plugs/ends to the wire yourself. If they do it, it’s $27 per cable, including the connectors they sell for $3.50/pair. It’s like they really hate doing this, so they’ll charge you an exorbitant fee hoping you’ll say no. It does seem like a pain, but so does shelling out $100 for them to do it for you.
Category Archives: Technology
Print to PDF
I recently tried to reinstall my copy of Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000, and it immediately informed me that without a printer, it would not install. Claims it needs printer settings to know how to set up the document. Now, anyone who’s written a screenplay knows it has a rigid format, so requiring a printer seems stupid. Especially since I don’t have access to one right now.
Enter PrimoPDF. It acts as printer driver, which fakes out programs into thinking there’s a regular printer. It can also be useful to print to PDF for sharing documents, or sending them somewhere else to be printed. Of course, Movie Magic Screenwriter has a built-in PDF creator, making it even less necessary!
Well, at last I’m free to unleash my creative genius. It shall be a daring tale of love, where an ingenue played by Emma Watson falls in love with a much older, but quite obese, American screenwriter…
Ink and the Free Market
Yes, we all know that the Free Market (ie: Capitalism) works. Most of us are old enough to have seen the Berlin Wall being torn down in the mid-80s as Communism took a deathly blow. And some of us may even have been old enough to see the Wall being put up by Nikita Khrushchev after the Cold War confrontations of the dangerous and turbulent 50’s. Yes, there was more to the 50’s than sock-hops and drive-in burger joints, although that is what comes to mind when I hear that decade mentioned. The Free Market gave us those, too.
The Free Market is both the problem and the answer. Any opportune and open niche is available for any individual, honest or dishonest, to fill. And to make a fortune doing so; that is how the Market works. We have to keep score on success and failure somehow, and money is a nice way to do so. It can be counted, after all.
Which brings me back to my original thought: why do I have to pay through the nose everytime I have to buy a new ink cartridge for my printer? It seems that before I have a chance to print my dissertation on the true Secret of the Universe on crisp white paper and using crisp black inkjet lettering, my family has used up all of the ink in the cartridge to print out the latest reams and reams of useless Internet information. Information that could be looked up at any time, mind you. It must be that paper gives the information a sense of permanence, at least until we toss the paper into the recycler. What is not in permanent evidence, however, are the rolls of bills that leave my wallet in ever-increasing numbers, as I pay for more and more ink cartridges to keep my printer functioning.
The Free Market gave us inkjet printing. Someone spent some capital dough in researching the technology and making it available to us consumers. And I for one don’t mind paying for the research that went into making it possible to get great printing on my desktop, in crisp black and white or in vibrant colors. But even I have a limit, and paying 29.00 for an ink cartridge is too much. It’s like those tolls in the New York bridges: they were initially there to recoup the cost of the structure, but they have been kept around as a revenue source long after the initial debt was repaid. I think we’ve paid enough for the cost of the technology (deep, deep down in the bottom of my heart, I feel this is true); corporations are now just squeezing us for profit (I also have proof of this; it is lying in some never-read pile of Internet printouts in a recycle bin).
Corporations also try to hook us into the inkjet habit early. They provide free printers to us at the drop of a hat; one free printer for a purchase of a computer, a free printer for the purchase of a hard-drive, a free printer with the purchase of a free printer (eg: customer must pay sales tax on this free offer!). Each free printer comes with a handy set of black and color ink cartridges which will give us a great printing experience. At least until the ink runs out. It’s like a dealer hooking you to heroin or cocaine with free samples. Both operate with the same amount of disregard for the junkie, the consumer.
I have tried refilling my ink cartridges, and that worked great for awhile. It was a cheap alternative if you did not mind the mess of working with ink and getting your finger stained a bit. The Free Market had provided an alternative for the consumer, and made someone rich by selling cartridge refilling kits. But then the ink cartridge manufacturers started placing circuit board chips on the cartridge to interact with the printer and stop printing at some “optimal” time before the ink ran out; this prevented users from refilling their cartridges. The text I read in the printer manual said that this was to provide a “quality printing experience” to the consumer. I guess prison rape could semanthically be called an “optimal bonding experience” in the same manner.
But the final laugh belongs to us, the consumers. Free Market incentives encouraged someone to create a chip-resetter for your ink cartridge, so that you can re-program your chip and continue to refill your cartridges. I have made use of this device and have been able to refill my cartridges easily and without much of a mess. The cost to me: about 2.00 per refill.
The Free Market offers financial rewards to those willing to do the research and also to those who are willing to stand up for their rights.
Tomorrow is Yesterday
The title sounds like a good name for a Star Trek episode. Wait, it is. Oh well, it still captures my theme for this message: that some of the answers to our current-day dilemmas can be found in the technology of the past. Case in point: the Digisette MP3 cassette player. Better than your iPod, let me explain.
I still remember the days of the big debate between two different types of automobile CD-changers. Some folks preferred the type which mounted in your trunk and would beam the sound to your FM radio. “No fuss, no wiring muss” was the battle cry. You could just plop this product in your car and it would work instantly. Instantly, through your dopey, static-filled radio. Audiophiles rightly decried this monstrosity and preferred the wired models. Sure, they were a hassle to install, but they delivered crisp sound to your speakers, sound that was carried on shining, 12 gauge copper wire. The difference was apparent to any ear, whether refined or not.
Which brings me back to the current dilemma facing iPod owners: you now own a device that carries your entire collection of music (and more), but you can’t easily play it in your car without using an FM transmitter or some sort of cassette adapter plugged into your car radio. Either of those solution introduces a tangle of wires and a headache both aesthetic and operational. Do you dare risk a car accident while trying to find your favorite music or trying to reach your windshield wiper controls over a tangle of wires?? And how about the poor quality of FM-transmitted music ?? How easily the masses forego the high quality of car stereo sound by selling their souls to the ever-increasing capacity of the iPods of this world !
The elegant solution to this dilemma lies in a product from the past, one of the first breed of MP3 players which is now, sadly defunct. The Digisette MP3 player looks like a tape cassette that has been dipped in aluminum alloy. It is heavier than its analog cousin because its innards contain a fully workable MP3 player and a tiny amount of flash memory. Add a MMC memory card (a totally redundant name!) and you have yourself a bit less of 1Gig of memory for the road. And I do mean “for the road.” Pop this baby in your cassette player, and you have yourself a good 10-hours or equivalent CD capacity, easily accessible through your player’s FF and REW buttons. Elegant. The player pops into your cassette player (out of sight, out of mind) without a single wire in sight. And the sound: it is played directly to your car stereo’s cassette playback head. It is wonderful. If you wish to walk away from the car, you can always pop this beauty into the belt-clip holder provided with the player and plug-in your favorite headphones for a similar, portable sound experience.
Sure, the memory does not allow you to carry the Virgin Records library in your pocket. But the provided PC interface allows you load up a gaggle of MMC cards with your favorite tunes for a swappable library of surprising capacity. I use mine to listen to hours and hours of podcast material in my car; it is an invaluable ally against the poor FM reception I encounter on my way between Orange and San Diego counties.
Good luck trying to find this beautifully designed and amazingly geeky technical wonder. Although it fits my needs (and probably yours) to the fullest, it does not fit with the model that Steve Jobs and all of the iPod copycats are foisting on you: “Bigger is Better.” Don’t believe them. Size does NOT matter when you can’t use it where it counts the most: in the back of your car. The Digisette may be small, but that is its charm. It can do the job you really need, not the one you think you need. And it looks right at home in your car cassette deck. Just remember to buy a couple of spare batteries for it; you may be listening to it for hours and hours on end…….
7-zip: Fast, Free (De)Compression
When I installed Windows XP, I noticed it could treat .zip files as directories. This is nifty at first, but slows things down, especially if you have a directory filled with .zip files (like, I don’t know, your Downloads directory???). It has to decompress them all internally, throttling your CPU and blocking UI events (like switching directories to stop the slowdown). In contrast, if you try to actually decompress a zip file using the built-in wizard, it takes f o r e v e r. I have a hunch they’re making it a low-priority background process, so you can do other things while it’s decompressing. Problem is, 99% of the time, I just want to work with the files it’s decompressing! I didn’t see an option to speed it up, although I haven’t looked very hard, because it should be easy enough to find. Conclusion: Microsoft is stupid.
I found a nifty utility called 7-zip that has made my life much easier. It decompresses things right away, using a context menu. Just right click on the file in Windows Explorer, and choose Extract Here (or Extract Files…). It works right away, no waiting, and handles a multitude of file types (originally 7 different kinds, hence the name). This includes .rar files and mulit-part files (where the files have sequential suffixes, .1, .2, …, .n), using the same, easy interface. It’s completely free, open source software. You don’t even have to deal with WinZip’s nagware.
The Sounds of Thunder
Recently I became the second member of The Crack Team (that I am aware of) to purchase a Sunfire Subwoofer. I got the Sunfire Signature which is 13″ x13″ x 13″ and cost $1000 (a steal!) used from someone I found through the www.Audiogon.com website. That website is a classified site for high-end audio equipment. Now, don’t let the diminutive size of the Sunfire fool you. It has a Bob Carver designed 2700 Watt Amplifier. Yes, that’s correct… 2700 Watts. It will output greater than 116 dB down to 16Hz and the throw on the 2 drivers is over 2 inches!! As an engineering feat it is simply amazing.
The 1st thing I did when I got home at 10PM that night was hook it up and fire up the DVD player. Master & Commander starts off with a bang (literally) and was used to test out the sub to see what I had gotten myself into. About 3 minutes into the movie Russel Crowe engages the enemy in a battle at sea with cannons blazing. The surround environment in this movie is awesome but the Sunfire added a new dimension to the movie that the old Onkyo (don’t laugh) subwoofer couldn’t touch. You felt like you were in the room with the canons due to the ground and walls shaking. Now granted, I did have the volume on the receiver and the gain on the sub set to a level higher than I would normally have them and I hadn’t calibrated the sound yet but the point was to see what it could do. It performed beyond my wildest dreams and the sub was only up to about 50% of its capacity. I would fear for the structural integrity of my home if I ever dared turn the gain to its maximum of +15 dB.
Since it was late I decided to go to bed. The next morning on the way out to lunch I ran into my neighbor from the house next door (separated by about 15 feet). She asked if I had enjoyed the movie the night before and said that she and her husband had originally thought they were hearing thunder until they realized what the sound was. I would like to thank my neighbor for validating $1000 well spent.
TiVo vs. Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD
Some of you might already be thinking, “This is a no-brainer.” Of course, you might have different answers. I was pretty die hard TiVo before I switched, so I thought I’d give a rundown of the pros and cons of each.
My setup:
+ TiVo Series 1 (but I’ll comment on DIRECTV HD TiVo)
+ Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD
+ Toshiba 57″ HDTV (thanks to Agent Assassin)
+ Time Warner Digital Cable
+ Automator remote by Universal Remote Control
The first issue was cable vs. satellite. Without going into that whole personal battle, it came to this:
DIRECTV:
+ HD TiVo, but it costs $500
+ No local channels without an antenna; I rent a house, so no aerial, and indoors mostly suck
+ Need DSL for broadband internet, already have cable modem
+ Can get crappy reception when it rains
+ Cost for HD DVR + service + HBO: $500 + $54/mo. (with contract)
TimeWarner Cable:
+ Charging me for an extra tuner, and a we’re-renting-you-an-extra-tuner fee! (Yeah, they’re jerks.)
+ Cable modem is a better deal than DSL, and no changes
+ Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD for $10/mo. So it’ll be over 4 years before I spend on it what the HD TiVo would have cost me (and it was $1,000 when I made my decision).
+ Get local channels, except for UPN and the WB. It’s TimeWARNER, and they don’t carry WARNER Brothers on HD? What’s the conspiracy, man?
+ Cost for HD DVR + service + HBO: $68/mo.
Ok, here’s the comparison:
Series 1 TiVo:
+ Way friendlier interface, but you knew that
+ TV listing data for a week or so out; the 8300HD prefetches only 2-3 days, makes you manually scroll out for more data, and caps at about a week.
+ Can select a TV show (Season Pass) and see all the upcoming showings, on all channels
+ Shows you what it’s not recording due to repeats
+ Better search feature, more options (by actor, director, just show movies, etc.)
+ If you’re willing to hack the box, or pay someone to, you can add more/bigger hard drives for more recording time. Do that to your rental unit, and they will literally kill you.
DIRECTV HD TiVo Advantages:
+ Can record TWO shows simultaneously, in HD
+ 30 hours of HD storage (vs. 20 for the Explorer)
+ Records digital audio
+ HDMI interface
Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD Advantages:
+ Can record TWO shows simultaneously, in HD (which HD TiVo will do, Series)
+ Records digital audio
+ HDMI interface
+ Interface responds much faster than TiVo (at least Series 1, maybe 2 is a lot faster. It better be.)
+ Compared to standard TiVos with cable, doesn’t need an extra tuner for HD viewing (where a standard definition (SD) tuner goes to the TiVo, and an HD one goes directly to the TV and surround system).
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the 8300HD, as I had heard awful things about the previous cable co. DVRs. The interface/features still leave me wanting, but it has more TiVo functionality than I was expecting. That said, now that the HD TiVo is only $500, it’s a tougher decision for those making it now. I’d probably be more displeased if I was switching from a Series 2, which allows you to manage you TiVo from the web.
DualDisc: Less for More?
I read an interesting article on the limitations of DualDisc, and the short of it is that both the CD side and the DVD side have less capacity than their standard counterparts. They have only 60 minutes of CD audio, and the DVD side has a single layer like the kind of recordables you can currently buy (DVD-5). In addition, Denon has said not to use them in their players until they can do thorough testing. I was considering picking up the Keane DualDisc, then I found out the limitations forced them to drop a track on the CD side! Luckily, they also offer a SACD, so I’ll be going with that. It’s a shame there’s so much marketing behind an inferior product, they seem much better off just including a bonus DVD with CDs to avoid the mess.
Tossing My Red Hat into the Sun
Over the past couple months, I decided to migrate this server from Red Hat 9 to Solaris 10. What follows is the logic and history behind that decision, which is still in progress. This is the first in a series of articles about moving from Linux to Solaris x86.
Continue reading Tossing My Red Hat into the Sun
Sony’s PS2 History Eraser Button
Ok, most know I don’t care for Sony products. If they work, they’re decent, but I and several friends have found they break all too often.
Sony’s decided to build on that success. c|net has an article about a recent Sony demo disk for PS2s that can erase your memory card, wiping out your saved games.