The new season of Top Gear premiered on Sunday. As such you can find it in the usual place, with a twist. Just like my music archive, I’ve decided to consolidate and organize my video archives. You can find instructions in the private downloads section. If you don’t know the password, e-mail me and I’ll get it to you. Otherwise you’re stuck with torrents, newsgroups, IRC or some clandestine ftp site.

Wordpress 2.1 is nice from what I can tell. I’ll be back with more posts after the latest project from work is done.

Categories: BJ, Entertainment
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I’m not sure what castrated Consumer Reports, but their rating system is absolutely horrible when it comes to electronics.

Maybe I’m just irritated that Bose rates so highly on their headphone tests. I had the chance to listen to some Bose Triports via my ipod/amp combo (which is normally used with my Sony MDR-V6 or Modified Shure e2c iems) and couldn’t stand the sound. Listening to a muffled dog being mutilated by a rusty chainsaw would have been preferable. It does however accurately portray the sound signature. Of course, this is a definite step up from the stock iPod earbuds, but the same could be said by some Koss KSC75 headphones (15 bucks from your local radio place, and the Koss’ are actually good.)

I do have a theory. Consumer Reports hates bass. They hate it with a passion. I agree with their winners in some of the categories, but I also feel that the Grado sound isn’t right for me. They’re too bright. The highs sparkle in those little cans but they don’t sound as transparent as my MDR-V6s (which I think are the most neutral headphone except for slightly recessed mids you can get for under 100 bucks).

My biggest problem isn’t the general review, but the inability to tell true crap from colored sound.

Here’s a test of your headphones. Can you hear the pre-echo in the beginning of The Pot on Tool’s 10,000 days album, and still enjoy the sound quality through the rest of the song? Can you hear the quiet spoken word portion on Vicarious at about 5 minutes - 5:30 in (there are lines from a movie in there)? My modified e2c and V6s pass the test. Grados pass the test, but I don’t like their sound signature. The triports, iPod earbuds, Skull candys etc distort before you can hear the pre-echo, and don’t have enough detail to hear and understand the whisper. That’s the difference between crap and decent. I’m sure I’ll have more revelations in the future, but for now I’m happy.

Oh and the e2c mod. I noticed there was a little donut like surface that you put your waxguards on. I also noticed that the sound signature of the e2 was very dark and seemed to muffle the highs. So in a fit of experiementation, I dremelled the leading 1/16th of an inch or so of the tips off. This took the little donut hole looking thing out. The result is very nice highs, while it retains its wonderful low low bass reproduction.

Maybe I’m just venting cause I’m a basshead.

Categories: BJ, BJ's Life, Entertainment
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See variety article here.

I can’t wait. This is, by far, my favorite fantasy series. I hope they can preserve the gritty detail without becoming exploitative.

Categories: BJ, Entertainment
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Just search google.

I’ll do everything I can to help him win, but he isn’t going to make it past the Republican primaries. His chances of winning overall are better than if he were running as a Libertarian, like he did in 1988. Too bad the Republican party has been hijacked by neocons.

I do however predict a large unified grassroots campaign for the guy. I’ll help. The media will hate this man.

Oh Ron Paul, I am both happy and sad at these prospects. I am happy that I can put my heart behind a candidate and saddened that the floppy eared, limp brained denizens of the US will listen to Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC and give their vote to a lobbyist entertaining traitor to the US constitution.

I’m going to be a frothing lunatic.

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Here’s a little Youtube video that explains the whole loudness thing.

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My initial impressions of the iPod were a little lackluster. I received the 80 gig iPod as a gift along with a set of Shure e2c in-ear monitors (iems from here on out). I loaded some music on, plugged in my earphones, and pushed play.

The shures give a very warm sound, with a distinct high end roll-off at around 10khz. I liked the tonal quality except for the lack of bass below about 50hz. Iems are finnicky when it comes to bass as you have to make sure you have a good seal with your ear (for those unfamiliar, the experience of wearing iem style earphones is much like wearing a rigid earplug. I actually like the shure e2c, specifically because I don’t have to force them as far in my ear. The larger body of the e2c rests against the inside of my earlobe and keeps the entire thing in place. It seems my ears are perfectly shaped to take advantage of this). I double checked the seal and played some bass extension test tracks on my PC. The e2cs weren’t the problem. So I turned on the eq of the iPod…. Ouch. Horrible, horrible clipping.

At this point I assumed the iPod was the problem and in a sense it was. There is however an easy fix. Modern CDs are mixed and mastered hot. To read more about it go here. (Wikipedia Article) The EQ in the iPod is digital. The iPod manipulates the digital waveform and boosts certain frequencies depending on the EQ setting. If the digital file doesn’t have any headroom (which non have considering how loud modern recordings are), you’ll get terrible terrible clipping (if you have the included earbuds you probably won’t even notice. Yes, the earbuds are that bad). The best solution I have found is a program called mp3gain (link). This program psychoacoustically analyzes mp3 files and will balance your mp3s gain tag to give you more headroom. It is a lossless reversible process. This means that if you don’t like the end result you can reverse it. Here’s a link with a short tutorial on how to use it. (Tutorial). Quick note though, track gain does it by song, album gain runs the program by album. I suggest doing album gain so the sound levels are consistent with the original CD. I also suggest using the 89 db default setting, unless you have a more difficult to drive pair of headphones, in which case you need an amp anyway :p. If you have to turn your iPod above 60-70% BEFORE using mp3gain, then you either need new ears, lower impedance headphones, an amp, or a lesson in not listening to your music too loud. If you do need to turn your ipod up that high you probably won’t like the additional headroom mp3gain will give your files. My suggestion is to get an amp.

OK, back to my experience. I mp3gained my collection and and now sitting pretty with all the bass I could ever hope for. Well, almost. let’s just say I have this, and this on order.

I’ll post some initial impressions when I get the pa2v2 and Silver LOD in. On another quick note, they don’t have rockbox working with the 80 gig iPod yet…

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Categories: BJ, Sophia
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So all the Clarkson posts are gone. I made a backup of the DB before I pruned them. I’ll restore them to another URL in due time, but for now this blog is all Atchley, all the time.

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Sorry, my brain is addled right now from writing some client side html parsing scripts.

Christmas and New Years have come and gone. Sophia made out like a bandit. While entertaining, the gifts seem to have increased her ability to hit something hard while falling over. There’s a metal Jack-in-the-box that seems intent on maiming poor Sophia. There’s some sort of gravitational field around it that only affects her head. She’s quick to bounce back though. I’d punish the toy for hurting my daughter by melting it down or making a mouse launcher (reverse mousetrap) out of it, but she genuinely loves the little thing.

So let’s run down the things that have happened since I last made a real post here.

• Bekah (my sister) got married to Jonathan Griffin. He’s the other half of the awesome post HERE
• Heather is pregnant and due on August 2nd
• Adrian (Spencer’s Wife) is also pregnant and due in August
• Jennifer (Heather’s Sister) is pregnant and due in August
• I sang acapella in a trio for a Christmas church program and was actually good
• Christmas

There are quite a few people who need to find something better to do when it starts getting cold outside, but my friends are not those people. Some people rear end others, light fires, plow snow, etc … Now that I have created pun material, I will move on without a single comment.

Christmas was fun. My parents surprised me with an 80 gig iPod and some shure e2c headphones, which then led to a PA2V2 portable amp, silver cryo-treated line out dock, and a Car CD changer dock interface. I surprised Heather with a 47 inch Flat Panel 1080P Monitor for the living room, which led to about 110 bucks in cables and adapters. Everyone surprised Sophia with half the world’s production of toddler toys in the last year, which led to an Ikea toybox, bruised ankles, and baby laughter. Sophia surprises us daily with her favorite words, Bwa-Bu, Baba, Mom, Mama, which lead to two adults speaking a long lost language very similar to English but fundamentally monosyllabic. Bekah surprised us by getting married, which led to frantic scrambling to figure out her new last name (J/K :)). My Dad surprised himself by buying a new water heater, replacing shingles on the roof, and hosting half the worlds population at his house for Christmas, which led to … tears, manly man tears of course.

Categories: BJ, BJ's Life
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