Entertainment

Television Series

Entertainment, TV / By / / 1 minute of reading

Below is a list of some of my favorite television shows, in no particular order, with links to IMDb… This is a quick list, off the top of my head… I really don’t watch a lot of TV, but these are the past and present shows that I have enjoyed watching… Alias The West Wing Everwood Star Trek (the original series) Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Star Trek: Voyager Northern Exposure The Rockford Files M*A*S*H Get Smart Kung Fu Numb3rs Eureka! The Big Bang Theory Life Firefly Dollhouse Community FlashForward The Event Persons Unknown White Collar Top Gear (BBC) “American” Top Gear (History) Person of Interest Elementary The Blacklist ZERØ HOUR Continuum Sense8 Manifest Stumptown Emergence Instinct The Rookie Blindspot The Good Place Magnum, P.I. The Big Bang Theory Young Sheldon Stranger Things Atypical Westworld Ozark Hanna Bosch

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Good “Schiit” at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest

Audio, Entertainment / By / / , , , , / 4 minutes of reading

Last weekend I was able to attend one day of the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, which is held here in the Denver Tech Center, not far from me, along with fellow MacinTech members Rick Hyman and Jon Flowers. I went through many of the vendor displays in the “CanJam” exhibit focused on Headphones and mobile/personal audio devices, and one of the most interesting things for me was from the Sennheiser booth. I have a set of Sennheiser HD600, which they had on display along with an HDVD 800, their $2,200 headphone amp, as well as an HD650, an HD800 and HD800S. What I noticed is that they were using balanced cables for all of them, where there are separate ground wires for each side, along with isolated, balanced amplifier modules. Even in the noisy exhibit tent, all three of us could hear a marked difference between their demo units and my headphones, which I had brought with me. Even with the same model headphones plugged into the same amp, but with the standard cable using a shared ground, there was a noticeable improvement in the clarity in the high-end, better control in the bass, and a more open “sound stage” with the balanced cable. Because the HD600 has a replaceable cable, it’s easy to upgrade to a four-wire balanced cable, and I found an “inexpensive” one from ZY for about $75 through Amazon.com. Sennheiser’s balanced cable is about $240, and “premium” cables go for about $330, which is more than I paid for the headphones! To use balanced headphones, though,

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Audiophile Headphones and High-Resolution Audio

Audio, Entertainment, Music / By / / , , , , / 8 minutes of reading

After we got the Bose Quiet Comfort 20i noise-canceling earbuds for Jeannette, I decided to sit down and compare them with my Bose Quiet Comfort 15 noise-canceling headphones, my Shure E3 in-ear monitors, and my Yamaha YHD-1 orthodymanic headphones. I was actually somewhat surprised by the differences between them, and I thought that they all sounded fairly good by themselves. I think that the Bose earbuds and headphones were very similar. I thought they my Shure E3 had better clarity, though the Yamaha sound was more open and natural, but lacked a little low-end. While researching the earbuds, I ran across numerous articles on high-resolution audio as well, which is loosely anything that is more than the 44.1KHz sample rate with 16-bit depth (16/44) used by CD recordings. While many of the articles proclaimed how 24/96 or 24/192 sounded so much better than the overly compressed 16/44 recordings. I also found a number of articles like this one proclaiming that HD audio is like the modern-day equivalent “snake oil” marketing hype like tubes vs. transistors or oxygen-free speaker cables… Kirk McElhearn points out that at 16-bit, you can record up to 65K volume levels, and that 44KHz is the minimum sample rate to capture frequencies up to 20KHz, the standard for high-fidelity audio. If you think back to the time when we went from 256 colors, to 65K colors to 16.7M colors, the difference was dramatic, with 16.7M colors more life-like and photo-realistic. While we were mostly content with 65K colors, and probably can’t detect all 16.7M colors, the optimal color bit-depth probably lies somewhere in between

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Noise-Cancelling Headphones

Audio, Entertainment, Music / By / / / 3 minutes of reading

Jeannette’s office is being remodeled, and will be moving to more “modern” open, low-walled cubicles. She’s already worried about the noise distraction, so I’ve been looking into noise-cancelling headphones/earbuds for her. Since the dawn of time (or as long as they have been in business) I would say that I’ve not been a fan of Bose. Having worked in an audio shop while in college, we did some repairs to some of the original Bose 901 “direct/reflecting” speakers, which appears to be an array of 4″ paper cone drivers like you would find in a clock radio… While the reflecting concept was interesting, they didn’t seem to have a very full range. I preferred more open systems like the Magnaplanar or a time-phased array speaker like the Dahlquist DQ-10, upon which my home-built speakers are based. I have an older pair of Yamaha YHD-1 orthodymanic headphones, which are open back, and have a nice airy sound. However, since they are open back, they aren’t good at blocking ambient noises! When I decided that I needed noise-canceling headphones years ago, I bought a set of the original Bose Quiet Comforts, which I really liked. The sound wasn’t perfect from an audiophile perspective, but the noise-cancelling worked noticeably better than any others that I tried. After using those for several years, the sound on one side became intermittent, but I couldn’t tell if it was the cable or the electronics… When I was moving into our new open office building a couple of years ago, with low walled cubicles,

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Madisen Beaty Joining the cast of “Measure of a Man”

Entertainment, Friends, Movies / By / / / 1 minute of reading

As reported in “Deadline” and other sources, actress Madisen Beaty, who played Joaquin Phoenix’s first love in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated “The Master” last year, is the first cast member to sign on to indie drama “The Measure of a Man”, according to Deadline. Terry Loane will direct the adaptation based on the novel “One Fat Summer” by Robert Lipsyte. “Measure of a Man” follows Bobby Marks, a chubby and often bullied teenager, who finds spending the summer at a family lake house sheer torture, until he transforms himself into a confident young man. Beaty will take the role of Michelle, Bobby’s sister who’s used to the spotlight and getting her own way. David Scearce adapted the coming of age novel for the big screen. The eighteen year old actress may be best known for playing Doris Solstad in PT Anderson’s “The Master” opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams, but Beaty made her feature film debut under the direction of a different auteur in David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” She recently wrapped up indie “Jamie Marks is Dead” with “Shameless” star Cameron Monaghan and has a recurring role on new ABC Family drama “The Fosters.”

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Comics

Entertainment / By / / 1 minute of reading

One of my favorite web comics is xkcd. Sometimes the funniest part is in the “hover text” that pops up when you mouse over the graphic. You’ll have to click on the graphic here to go to the original in order to see the hover text. Here are some of my favorites: (The great thing about IT standards is that there are so many to choose from!)

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Madisen Beaty on ABC Family show “The Fosters”

Entertainment, Friends, TV / By / / / 2 minutes of reading

Watching our friend Madisen Beaty guest starring on “The Fosters” on ABC Family tonight. Madisen will be in (at least) the first seven episodes as “Talya.” Below is the text from “About the Show” from the ABC Family website: The Fosters is a compelling, one-hour drama about a multi-ethnic family mix of foster and biological kids being raised by two moms. Stef Foster (Teri Polo), a dedicated police officer, and her partner Lena Adams (Sherri Saum), a school Vice Principal, have built a close-knit, loving family with Stef’s biological son from a previous marriage, Brandon (David Lambert), and their adopted twins, Mariana (Cierra Ramirez) and Jesus (Jake T. Austin). Their lives are disrupted in unexpected ways when Lena meets Callie (Maia Mitchell), a hardened teen with an abusive past who has spent her life in and out of foster homes. Lena and Stef warily welcome Callie into their home thinking it’s just for a few weeks, until a more permanent placement can be found. Callie is quick to observe that the Fosters are an atypical family, and her blunt commentary hits a nerve with Jesus and Mariana who are struggling with their own identities. The twins have the opportunity to meet their birth mother, but they aren’t sure if they are emotionally ready, or if they want to share the experience with their adoptive moms. Callie also discovers that Mariana is harboring a secret that could land her in serious trouble. Brandon, a talented musician with a kind soul, lends

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Movies

Entertainment, Movies / By / / 1 minute of reading

Below is a list of some of my favorite movies, in no particular order… This is a quick list, off the top of my head… I’ll come up with a more thoughtful list some day… I rarely get the chance to see movies in the theater, so I mostly watch DVD’s from Netflix. I haven’t set up a home theater yet, but would like to someday. The Matrix Trilogy: The Matrix The Matrix Reloaded The Matrix Revolutions Being There any “Pink Panther” any “James Bond 007” The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: The Fellowship of the Rings The Two Towers The Return of the King Star Wars: Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones The Fifth Element Roxanne Sliver Gotcha! Target Enemy of the State The Italian Job (2003) A Murder of Crows Palmetto The Princess Bride National Treasure The Da Vinci Code Angels & Demons The Transporter Transporter 2 Inception Avatar Inside Man

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What Cables Should Cost

Audio, Computers, Mobile / By / / / 2 minutes of reading

Since my son Eric has gone to college, and taken his Sony PS3 with him, I didn’t have any way to watch Blu-Ray movies any more. While Christmas shopping, I realized that Walmart had quite a few Blu-Ray movies priced as low as $8 each, nearly the same price for the same movie on DVD. I decided that it was time to buy a Blu-Ray player. After reading a few reviews, and shopping around a bit, I found a decent deal on a Sony BDP-S370 on sale at Sears. When I hooked it up, I realized that I was going to need another HDMI cable to get the full resolution. I had my previous DVD player hooked up using a Component Video cable, but that seems to only support up to 1080i, not 1080p that I can get using HDMI. I checked the prices on the HDMI cables at Walmart when I picked up a few Blu-Ray movies, and found their best deal was a 6-foot HDMI cable from Vizio for $28. Instead, I’ve ordered online from Monoprice. They have 6-foot HDMI cables for about $3 each. So I ordered 4 of them, in different colors, so that I can tell them apart when I hook things up. I also found they had a Component Video cable for Melissa’s WII for about $3.30, and one with Composite and S-Video for $2.72. Even with the $7.75 or so for shipping, the total for the order came to only $26. So I saved a couple of bucks over Walmart’s cheapest price, but I’m getting 6 cables

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Watch “The Pluto Files” on PBS tonight!

Entertainment, Pluto, TV / By / / , , / 1 minute of reading

Tonight, 2 March 2010, is the premier of “The Pluto Files” on the PBS science series “Nova.” Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh, the first planet discovery by an American. In 2006, its status was changed to dwarf planet amid much controversy. This episode of Nova explores the history of Pluto and the decision and reactions to its change in status. If you miss tonight’s broadcast, the episode will be available on-line starting tomorrow, 3 March 2010.

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