Before I drove everyone away from the site with my morbid musings, I decided to lighten it up a bit and share some Caturday pics with you…
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Archive for August, 2007
These soul-less, animated bodies walking (or limping) straight toward their ingrained desires, like “Braaaaainnnsss.” Consuming, feeding, but never being satisfied. I love these guys in the movies, but what really scares me is that we are not so different. Just go to the mall and watch people shopping. Go to the gym and watch people working out. Go to McDonald’s and watch people eat. Watch your family when the TV is on. What are we after? Will we ever be satisfied? Zombies are so unreal and yet somehow they are still alive. Seeking, just like us. We practice hundreds of absurd forms of self-preservation to stave off the inevitable decay of our bodies. We identify ourselves with our body: “I am that!” (as I point to myself in the mirror) or “I can do this!” Yeah, right. Eventually all this will pass, and who are we then?
Alan Watts is a lecturer who is famous for interpreting Eastern philosophies in a way that Westerners can understand. I have listened to a number of recordings of his lectures before and always found him to be inspirational. Recently Tray Parker and Matt Stone (creators of South Park) created animations to some short clips of Alan Watts lectures. Here is one called Life and Music. Life and Music
As a self-proclaimed expert consumer and gadget geek I spend a considerable amount of time researching the latest electronics. One of the areas that I am particularly interested is Home Theater. Most people get their Home Theater information from Best Buy or the local Hi-Fi shop, but these are really poor sources of unbiased information. You see, Best Buy (as well as all brick-and-mortar stores) only sells certain products. The products that they sell are typically exclusive to retail stores (so you can’t try it out at Best Buy then go buy it online for half the price), and they must have sufficient space to profit ratio. Shelf space at Best Buy is at a premium. They don’t want to sell an item with a low markup unless they have to. So there are niches and entire categories of products that never make it to the shelves of the mega-chains or hi-end AV stores. These missing products can often provide a significantly better value and are often of much better quality than what you find locally…and they only exist on the Internet. Receiver/Amplifier One category of product that you will never find at Best Buy (at least not a good one) is the Full-Digital Amplifier. About 10 years ago these came out on the market as very expensive alternatives to analog amplifiers. The problem with them was that the processor (similar to a computer processor) was not powerful enough to amplify the entire audio signal without some attenuation. So the result was a significant loss at the higher frequencies. Digital amps (or Class-D amps) got a bad name and were only used when size and power were significantly limited (cell phones, MP3 players, etc). But, as we all know, computer processors have come a long, long way in the last 10 years. So 3 years ago Texas Instruments released a new Class-D audio amplifier on a single chip that could be used for high(ish)-power applications such as 2-channel audio and 5-7 channel Home Theater. Panasonic was the only company to jump on the bandwagon with a consumer product (SA-XR50) 7-channel Home Theater Receiver/Amplifier. The results were astounding. This unit was released with a retail price point of $575 and was quickly being compared to $20k + amplifiers. The units were smaller, consumed significantly less power and thereby produced much less heat. The only real draw-back is that the Class-D amplifier is more power-limited than analog alternatives. The units are plenty powerful for a regular Home Theater setup, but are not appropriate for larger rooms or high-powered audio solutions.
Join us next week for Part 2 of Home Theater on a Dime when we discuss HT displays. |
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