Years ago, before tvs had dvi (pre-hdmi) connections I bought a mid range (at the time) Marantz SR7400 receiver with a great feature called ‘auto surround’. It’d apply a matrix encoding to 2ch audio signals. I found it to be essential for tv viewing.
Fast forward to this past February, when I switched to a lower end Sony receiver which lacked ‘auto surround’, and in my opinion a quality matrix sound mode. It sounds wooden, and hollow compared to the Marantz. Fail; or so I thought.
Yesterday I picked up this Auzen sound card and I couldn’t be happier. I have it sending a DTS Connect (matrix encoded) signal with Neo7 processing applied to it. The result is audio that easily rivals my old Marantz. I’d say it surpasses it actually. I was giving serious thought to the ‘new receiver?’ question, so I’m very happy because I don’t need to switch out the Sony until I want the newer HD audio codec support.
I’m using the toslink ’cause my current receiver is not good enough for the analog outputs.
Friday night started off with a pasta dinner at my place. Jen brought a delicious red wine that was made in Nova Scotia with local grapes. It had a sweet/spicy flavor and went great with the pasta. Later that night we watched Harold & Kumar 2; which is hilarious.
Yesterday we started our day with breakfast at Jak’s Kitchen and then went to a science museum with Jen’s parents, aunt and nephew. It was a pretty fun afternoon. The ‘trees’ display was a bit of a let down, but the steam locomotives made up for it. We met up with them, minus the nephew later that night at Pub Italia for dinner and beer. I drank a few Asahi and had some tastes of other kinds.
It was a great day slash night.
Today we went for a bike ride along the river near Parliment and stopped at a spot Jen knew about. We skipped some rocks and watched a fish jump about 30cm out of the water; it was probably trying to strike a bug on the surface. We then went for food and came back to my place to relax and watched a Planet Earth episode titled ‘Fresh Water’.
My legs are dead.
The last few days have gone by pretty quickly. Working from my new laptop has been a wonderful change. Everything came together perfectly with this final machine (third model, forth laptop). HP dv5/z series kicks ass.
Last night Jen gave me a great gift. It’s a hand drawn and painted Exploding Dog comic. I’m not sure if it needs a custom matte for a frame or if something pre-sized is available; it’s like a square peice of paper. I can’t wait to see it on my wall.
We tried to see the new Batman movie at an IMAX theatre, but it was sold out. Sad face. We’re going to try again next week.
I don’t really have much to say other than Jen’s coming back from her East Coast trip tomorrow; and I’m looking forward to seeing her.
I was on vacation a week ago and spent the majority of it inside due to rain, so I decided to address some ergonomics issues with my work area. After a few days of consideration I had come to the conclusion that a business laptop would be the best course of action.
This let me use my trusty desktop box in the living room as a HTPC (home theatre pc). I setup the file support for Media Center so I can watch anything I download, which is very very nice to work with. So nice infact that I decided to call up Rogers for their analog cable service. If I have a good HTPC, I atleast want to catch the Power Block on SpikeTV (weekends). Since that has been taken care of, my only addition in the near future will be an LG combo Bluray/HDDVD/DVD rom drive so I can watch my HDDVDs and occassionally rent a Bluray movie if I want to mix things up.
Back to the laptop. I had gotten a pretty nice, low end Compaq model that was based on Intel’s 965 mobile platform. After I had setup all the software, and spent a few days doing work on it (this past week) I decided to calibrate the screen. It turns out the X3100 GPU from Intel can’t hold a color profile. It’s a design “flaw” or “feature” depending how you look at it; either way Intel decided to go non-standard with this chipset which gimped it for me.
Returned.
I picked up a new AMD based Toshiba laptop last night. So far, so good. I decided to go with a 17″ screen. I think the slight increase in resolution and desktop area will be beneficial for work.
Jen and I drove to Sudbury on Friday afternoon. We both took the afternoon off of work, so we wouldn’t arrive late at night. We were going to visit Chris & Shauny, who had moved into their first house a couple of months ago.
The house is awesome. It’s the perfect size for a young couple without kids. It’s a nice two story with a sweet 2 car garage (with work area), an ideal place for Chris’ projector and a nice yard that’s begging for a nice grill.
Saturday, Chris and I went for a bike ride on the ‘pole line’ trail that connects a few different recreational areas with a mix of bike and atv trails. It takes about 3 hours at what I’d consider a casual pace. A few sections were really chewed up and shitty to cross (large muddy areas), some where fun.
We left Sunday morning after having a filling breakfast of bacon, eggs & toast. Simple, fast and tasty. On the way home we stopped at the local saltwater/reef shop to see if they had any sea cucumbers or starfish in stock. Both seem to be hard to find in Ottawa. Luckily both were in stock and I had options. I got a really cool starfish that’s mostly orange with black tips and a small black dot pattern in it. The sea cucumber is a filter feeder kind; I’m not sure what the proper name is right now. It’s the same kind Chris has.
Today I was ready to go back to Windows. VMPlayer was being the usual bitch that it is, and had crashed my system. My usb dac suddenly disappeared from the system when I took it back from VMPlayer and that was my breaking point; mid-day.
After work I decided I’d try to get the upnp functionality going before I really threw in the towel. After a brief change to my MediaTomb config I discovered that it didn’t work with my Xbox 360. Oh no! A quick search on Google pointed me toward TwonkyMedia as a possible solution so I installed it. A little while later, I was enjoying a movie on my projector.
I’ll wait for Parallels to officially support Fedora 9, before giving up.
My new Vaporite vaporizer arrived yesterday. I got it from a shop in the states at a killer price for the usual combo of a grinder, etc. The grinder is awesome. Jen’s getting it. It’s easily the same quality as the ones I see in the local head shops at $90, which is a joke in my opinon.
So, back to the vaporizer. Anyone that visits and puffs will be hitting this thing; it’s that awesome. The Vapor Daddy really sucks, because the Vaporite is much better at a drastically lower price. I feel scammed a little by the head shop that sold me the Vapor Daddy. Wouldn’t they try it? No more impulse buying in that shop.
