Time it takes to scroll past an article you don't care to read: 0.5 seconds

Time it takes to make a negative comment on a post you don't care to read: 30 seconds

Conclusion: 29.5 seconds wasted AND you get to come across as a jerk.

PS: Stop in Vancouver, BC one day Cory. I owe you a pub night for all the great entertainment you've provided over the years.

I'd love to have access to something like TechShop in Vancouver.

Demo reels for film and television types?

Are they made of Urschliem?


See Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker's short story "Big Jelly"

There are similar examples of this to be found at your favourite watering hole. I was introduced to the "Volcano" by one a bartender I used to work with. IIRC, in a shot glass, pour in 3/4 of a shot of Baja Rosa (or Baileys), followed by 1/4 of a shot of Sambuca. Sit back and enjoy the action before tossing it back to enjoy the flavour.

Oh man, I haven't had a good evil laugh like that in quite a while. Each and every paragraph brought more pain and suffering, along with hours of work, upon Monster's attorneys.

Next time I'm down in Seattle I'm going to have to drop a case of beer off at their shop.

"I suppose thats Canadbureaucratism eh?"

We prefer to call it Canaucracy.

The nicest collection of vintage microphones I've seen is at The Warehouse Studio here in Vancouver. It's Bryan Adam's studio, and chock full of choice goodies. They have a Neve console that, when receiving an automation upgrade, was signed by Rupert Neve!

I'm all for technology but part of me has to wonder if drivers can handle another distraction. Cell phones are bad enough...

And why was someone so unstable allowed to own a gun? Oh right, in case the British invade...

US Customs are a bunch of clowns too, no doubt there. I provide every bit of information I have for the equipment we send to the States, and the majority of our shipments still get delayed. And I mean approximately 10 to 15 pages of documentation for a small sound system. I'm pretty sure the customs folks who inspect FedEx shipments down in Memphis actually enjoy delaying shipments.

I don't know about the other brands mentioned, but Precor has iPod docks available for their equipment already, complete with a composite video cable to connect the iPod to the equipment's integrated LCD screen.

To those who are doubting the usefulness of CC distribution for bands that don't have a massive fan base, consider Tone. There was a post here several weeks ago ( http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/22/firstever-electronic.html ) about a Danish artist who released an album under CC. Would anyone here have heard a whisper about her otherwise? Now, I understand that the big deal for that post was the recognition of a CC release by a music collection society. Regardless, I would imagine her fan base has grown considerably. I'd pay good money to see her play here were she to tour.

It's easy to get caught up defending the status quo. Try considering the possibilities of what may come. Labels only exist because some savvy businessmen found a new way to cut in between artists and fans. Let's cut them out.

While I fully support the debunking of audiophile myths, in this case I wonder about the experiment itself. A solid conductor would have some capacitance due to skin effect. This would probably be audible as a pop or click sound (discharging at a frequency determined by the length at gauge of the conductor).

However, any stranded wire should be comparable to Monster Cable. We've found that standard 14 gauge, 2 conductor, FT4 appliance wire serves as suitable speaker wire for almost every application. It's just butt ugly is all :)

Granted, on a 70V/100V audio system you could probably just string a bunch of twist ties together with masking tape and it would be indistinguishable from Hi-Fi cables.

I wonder if those high school officials know that the players on their baseball teams carry around bludgeons (baseball bats) and are quite skilled in using them to hit round things, like baseballs or skulls. Ban baseball.

And if someone broke a lens on a pair of glasses, they'd have a weapon capable of severing an artery. Ban glasses.

Water. Comprised of an explosive agent and an accelerant, both easily found in nature. Found in the lungs of drowning victims. Can corrode many metals. Toxic in sufficient quantity. Ban water.

One time I tried to make a robot jizz bullets. Lets just say that job is best left to the professionals.

What I found odd about this is that all three were right feet, with sneakers.

Are people mutating into mermen/mermaids and casting off their right foot in the process?

Agreed. After a while you just get a feel for "close enough". Or, get a couple cheap stick on levels and put them on important axis' of your drill.

They're only going to hurt their own economy.

I'm just wondering if there's an equally awesome north american distributor of fine audio gewgaws.

@#2: Come to Vancouver, BC. The city police here are quite polite and professional. Just watch out for the RCMP. They might tase you for being confused.

Ditto the last several posts. Velcro. If you really use a lot, you can buy large spools of Velcro (approximately 500 feet or 152 metres). A little coloured tape around the end of the strip you use can help make it easy to identify and unwrap as well. And you can sharpie labeling info onto the tape as well.

I like the look of those Wrap-n-Straps as well, and there are also re-usable zap straps on the market.

Well, since they're looking at using materials that transmit acoustic vibrations at different rates depending on angle of incidence, they're going to have some heavy math to do in order to account for the phase shift caused by modifying the time domain before retransmitting the vibrations. Also, it may very well fail when dealing with reverberant echoes if the directionality is too specific. I'd put my money on #2's spellbook over Duke's researchers.

Now if only someone could develop a little robotic version of this that traveled along the existing wire, widening holes and pulling a twine behind it for adding additional cables. More often than not, one has to pass through more than one stud, all buried behind drywall and well out of reach of any bit.

All us low-voltage folks need tools like that. I recommend checking out some of the stuff made by Labour Saving Devices, like their Roy Rods and Magne-Pulls.

Sure they do. 5 year olds are a serious threat to the sovereignty and safety of the United States of America.

It's always a shock to be reminded of the depths us humans will sink to for money. Garbanzo: don't give up on the US. Do what you can to make it a better place.

What can you tell me about using the Interwebs to become sexually attractive to the opposite sex?

The trick Mr. Dunlavy pulled in the previous comment is one used by studio engineers when dealing with demanding musicians who've long since blown their hearing by playing in loud rock clubs with no protection for their ears. You can appease a client simply by turning a knob that does nothing and waiting until they like how it sounds. This has extended into the software realm with the creation of plug-ins for major DAWs that do nothing but pass an unmodified audio stream. They do, however, have plenty of knobs and buttons and blinky lights to placate clients who insist on fiddling around with things or making uninformed demands.

As a commercial audio installer I'll back up what everyone is saying. We use appliance grade, oxygen free cable. Simply select a wire gauge which won't have too high an impedance for the job you're using it for (larger cable/smaller gauge = lower impedance).

Many of our customers are purchasing high definition LCD televisions for use with standard definition cable service. For them, the larger picture area and decreased physical profile of the television is what sells the unit rather than the available resolution.

Quite a few of them simply aren't willing to pay for HD signal distribution either, and for good reason. One RF video amplifier can drive signal for 50 TVs, with only one wire needing to be pulled. With this method, each screen demodulates the signal itself and allows each TV to be tuned to a different channel with many channels to choose from. For HD, there just isn't a solution that simple to the best of my knowledge.

Keep in mind that these are commercial clients, not residential Best Buy customers. However, the lack of knowledge can be found regardless of the market. The best any of us techno-weenies can do is to share our knowledge with everyone in the hopes that educate even a few un-savvy folks.

When they showed the SWORDS on Future Weapons I just about made a mess in my underoos. Anyone know of a commercial variant?

Forget any kids I know. I'd bet it'll be fun for big kids too.

One of the comments on the linked apartment therapy story brought up a good point. Cable management (be it for mounting a flat panel display, desktop computers, or even just kitchen appliances). Not everyone can bash a hole in the wall and run their cables internally (if only we could all afford to own property). This is one of the first features I would look at when selecting mounting furniture or brackets, because it can be the biggest source of frustration when setting everything up.