Month: November 2010

Happy Birthday – more stuff en route.

Big thank you to the CrazieMob for all the gifts 🙂 They’ll definitely keep me busy for a little while.

So what appeared ?

In movies & miniseries there is :

Sherlock. This trio of episodes hit our screens earlier this year, with a new and modern combination of Holmes and Watson. It takes the intellect and personality and translates it into the modern world. And it does it in incredible style. Well worth watching if you missed it.

Tin Man. I wrote a little on this a little while back. It stars the utterly adorable Zooey Deschanel in the lead role of DG. I was caught by this one when I first saw it and I’ve been getting reminders from the first 2 of the 3 episodes. It’s a very high quality remake of the original story (need to read that) which is enhanced by the combination of Neal McDonough (‘Buck’ Compton from Band of Brothers) and the enchanting Zooey Deschanel. There’s just something about those eyes and those lips. If they asked “Can you get that for me ?” I’d jump through fire to avoid disappointing them.

Surrogates. This is a movie from last year, one of the better from that summer. It’s a Bruce Willis movie, set in a near future world where we don’t go out of the house any more, except in Surrogates. The surrogates are human-like robots that take the risk away. Except … (watch the movie for more !)

Titan AE. The AE stands for “After Earth”, picking up its story a good few years after beings of pure energy called the Drej have destroyed Earth. However … there’s a plucky youth out there with a destiny. It’s an animated movie, which means they have more scope to go play with spinning a fantastic tale. There’s great music along the way too. Fun movie.

Book Of Eli : Mentioned this one earlier, it’s a post apocalyptic tale of one man’s journey across America. Great performance by Denzel Washington, ably supported by Gary Oldman and Mila Kunis.

Music : 2 albums arrived through the post, with a third somehow being bought from iTunes 🙂

Best of Dubstar : the 2 fellas of Dubstar with Sarah Blackwood providing the vocals have a distinct sound. It’s quite boppy, well suited to dance floors, is dominated by its electronic beat but perfected by a totally pure voice that would be equally at home in a choir. However, that wonderful Sarah Blackwood voice is here gracing tunes like Stars, Anywhere and No More Talk.

Katie Melua’s Pictures : Another lady with an amazing voice. It’s not always backed up with great lyrics but with a voice this good, you really don’t mind that. You just close your eyes, open your ears and melt.

All About Eve’s Return to Eden : Kind of a greatest hits album. AAE are another band who have had their back catalogues mercilessly raided over the years, with concert albums and greatest hits albums outnumbering their studio albums. However … there’s a fringe benefit, it lets us grab copies of their rarer stuff.

Books :

Feersum Endjinn by Iain M Banks, Storm Front by Jim Butcher and Mass Effect Retribution by Drew Karpyshyn. Iain M Banks is best known for his Culture novels, however he doesn’t limit himself to that millieu. His novel The Algebraist was stunning (and not Culture), I’m looking forward to similar from this one. Storm Front is the novel behind the first episode of The Dresden Files, which was another of those series which was killed off far too early. If the book is anything like the series, I’ll fly through it 🙂

Finally, Mass Effect Retribution is another of the books in the Mass Effect universe. This is a sci-fi universe that’s almost 200 years ahead of us featuring spaceships, aliens and an implacable machine race that likes to annihilate civilisations. The books sit around the games, adding backstory to the characters and events inside the games. What’s a few lines of dialogue in the games stretches out to an entire book. It’s decent stuff, adding scope to one of the more interesting sci-fi settings. Wouldn’t mind living in it myself.

The books will wait though – I’m midway through the Warhammer 40k book Rynn’s World. It’s the story of the homeworld of a Space Marine chapter being invaded by Space Orks. It’s a bit of a blunt instrument of a book, with not much subtlety in there. That is the Warhammer 40k world to a tee, a desperate struggle for survival in an incredibly harsh universe. It does have that “one more chapter” quality to it though. I’m looking forward to discovering how they get out of the cataclysmic mess they end up in …

No cake yesterday. I sadly didn’t have any in the house. I don’t think it would have fit after the pizza I had anyway 🙂 Cakes tomorrow. And I’ll be fetching them early too or there may be some “cakes?” looks from a couple of young ladies with similar impact to a Zooey Deschanel quivery lip.

Yes – if I don’t get the cakes quickly, there may well be 4 irresistable young ladies ganging up on me ! (Or is that wishful thinking on my part ? Back to the book !)

Muahaha – it’s not often I admit straight up that a post will be an All Sorts, even though they usually end up as that.

In an hour, another year will have gone by and there will be another ring on the tree. I’ll be celebrating that with a pizza tomorrow night and enjoying another movie (or two). I’ll see what turns up tomorrow. I’ve been good so far. The only parcel opened so far is the one that was started by the Postman.

That led to a bit more “evaluation” of the new hifi 🙂 Awesome. Blu-ray arrived called The Book Of Eli, which tells the tale of one man’s walk across America with a book. It’s an unusual film, well worth watching. Not that many films make my dvd/blu-ray list nowadays (blu-rays are too pricey still) but this was a fairly quick addition. (Lol – not as quick as RED and Iron Man 2 but close).

It’s added itself to my Reference Sound movies. What’s a Reference movie ? It’s one that shows off a particular aspect to a very high degree of quality. For Star Wars, it was the surround effect of the Tie Fighters whizzing around in space. In this one, you can hear the bullets go past you. Plus there’s some more really smart things on show with the sound coming through. Very clean soundtrack with lots of surround effects to put you in the moment.

Will have to watch the Blade movies again soon, as they are also fantastic for the sound field they set up. Perhaps not as good as Book of Eli turned out to be, I had a pleasant Wow surprise there tonight.

Yes, I’ve been won over by the new hifi. Since going back to the older Novatech cables, I’ve watched 3 movies with no sign of the audio skipping out. Good signs. The set up is proving very effective at pulling out the detail from what it’s been given. That detail shows in things like hearing guitars as a string instrument or drums having a proper rumble to them. I’m now listening to The Trick To Life by The Hoosiers and looking forward to finishing with listening to occasional individual tracks from Katie Melua’s Pictures as that’s sounding good so far. (I listen to individual tracks before listening to the album as a whole – let’s me pick out favourites better)

So – birthday tomorrow. Another year older. Don’t think I’m much wiser, although a job change has led to me learning a lot more over the past year. Still no joy with finding someone to share the toys with me, although I did get the customary greeting of “PETER PIPER !” from the Little Canteen Girl 🙂 I’ve been missing those because she’s been hiding in the kitchen area lately where she doesn’t get as much chance to have fun with the customers. Yesterday pm had a
LCG : “I bet you’ve been missing me”
Me : “Of course !” (and I’d have added a little more in jest if I thought quicker than Snailpace around pretty ladies)
A photographic memory (photo but not “perfect”) can be a good thing sometimes, those memories will have me grinning for a while.

Not been on the games that much lately. Another sign of age has been that the old injuries have been passing reminders and the new injuries haven’t healed up so well. At the moment, it’s the shoulder bugging me. I know I need to get it looked at – however a huge distrust of doctors and hospitals is getting in the way. And it’ll need a hospital trip for definite to get it sorted out. I can do emergency maintenance on it to stop my arm being numb but that’s not a healthy thing to do.

Certain games are better for the arms, other games are worse. I think it’s to do with the amount of rest period you can have in the game. Online games tend to not come with a pause button, so you keep on going until you get to a certain point where you can break. That leads to more stress on the limbs compared to offline games where you can be a bit more relaxed.

Nah – been reading instead of gaming lately. Just finished the Lost Fleet series of 6 books by Jack Campbell. I’ve mentioned these before and finally got to reading the last book. After struggling through 300 of 1000 pagess of David Weber and then giving up for a few months, the last Lost Fleet book got read through inside a week. It’s good stuff and very easy to read. I’m now into a Warhammer 40k book called Rynn’s World, about space Orks invading.

Reading is a very relaxing to do while iTunes is running through my library. Speaking of which … Tis random tracks followed by the Doctor Who series 4 soundtrack which will accompany the first battle for Rynn’s World 🙂

Ok – so I think I have an answer for the sound saga …

Clues here : Problems with Audio-Visual Amps

Different kit but the symptoms match. So … I’ve gone back to the old cables to see how much difference it makes. I have another potential solution too – put less demand on the cables by having a slightly less pretty picture.

What’s the kit ?
Sony BDP-S360 blu ray player. Was fine when it was sending picture to the telly through one wire and audio to speakers through another.
Samsung 32″ series 530 telly that can do 1080p. (Translation – has more pixels for a sharper image)
Onkyo TX-SR508 surround sound amp.

Problem – the system can send audio and video down the wire but the thing that is causing the issue is Copy Protection. HDMI is a fantastic cable, it carries audio and video in super high quality with just the one lead. However … it’s so good, the moguls have demanded unnecessary Stuff be put in to protect the content. Which means, unless your gubbins can Trust your devices completely, they will limit the playback quality.

Sad. Very sad. And caused by the freeloaders who refuse to pay for the content they consume. Those pirates also make stuff more expensive for the rest of us.

What appears to be happening is that Copy Protection handshake is getting lost in all that Picture and Sound, so the “I’m a telly – TRUST ME!” message isn’t getting the chance to be heard. The solution is better cable or making the signal less busy (i.e. less detail).

The answer – I’ve gone back to the £5 cables I got from Novatech almost a year ago, instead of the £6.50 “3d capable” super “HDMI 1.4” “4x resolution capable” cables from A N Other supplier who are now firmly on the Black List …

I’m hesitating to think that my problem is cured … but I think just one audio blip (which could have been the dvd layer skip) throughout the whole of Return Of The Jedi is promising. I see much more “evaluation” of the system over the next few days.

It’s obligatory. And I won’t enjoy a second of it. Honest … muahaha.

Problems aside, it’s been a very worthwhile upgrade. It’s let me hear stuff like a sampled phone conversation on the Snow Patrol Songs for Polarbears album which says why they changed their name from Polar Bear to Snow Patrol (see “early years” in the link). The magic of proper hifi is the detail and clarity it can pull out of the source.

And the sound on the Star Wars movies (A New Hope and Empire in particular) is fantastic. The only question is “What next ?”, which has 2 answers :

1 – My resolve to not open stuff until Birthday weakens and I watch some of that.
2 – Great Sounding Dvd’s to watch ! Blade is looking favourite, or a blu-ray.

Like avoiding pizza until Saturday, despite my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tendency (not so sure about Ninja but the rest fit), I’ll work through my blu-rays 🙂

Ok – after a week, the Onkyo amp is officially on Probation.

What’s the problem ? First movie played back just fine but when watching Attack of the Clones, the sound was repeatedly blipping out. There’d be a few minutes good and then a half a second where the sound cuts out. Revenge of the Sith tonight was better, only a couple of blips through the movie. Music afterwards was bad though, a couple of blip-outs per track. I suspect a few causes at the moment :

New cable isn’t up to the job. I got my new HDMI cables before watching Clones.
Heat – this is what I don’t want it to be because it’s cooler now than it will be in the summer.
Other cables went loose and are interfering.
(edit – add in “insane copy protection interference” to that list)

I have a big suspicion that it’s a heat problem because the top case of the amp is a little too warm for comfort. This is really not what I want the problem to be though because that’s a definite Return Of Goods scale issue. I have the amp sitting in reasonably open space on a wicker basket, so there should be no problems with cool air getting in to it.

I have my doubts about the cables too. When I first got the amp, the iTunes sound came in through proper wires. You can trust wires, they usually stay in where you put them. Not so much with the optical fibre method which I switched to on Monday. Point proven tonight, where for 20 minutes or so after finding out why the music was cutting out (fibre plug had come half out) the playback’s been fine.

What I said about wires holds true. Before, it was a little headphone jack. You’ll know what I mean by those, it’s how your headphones plug into iPods. Solid and reliable, unlike the gimmicky optical link that’s far too flimsy. I’d like to keep using the optical because it’s marginally better quality but may be forced to fall back to proper wire.

Crossing my fingers that the optical thingy was making the amp go “Hey ! New source, let’s check it”, which could be why the movie playback was cutting out. I shall have to test that Very Soon. (Star Wars A New Hope is next – but not tonight) I’ve power cycled (pull plug, walk away, count to 5, put plug back in) the amp and after 20 minutes it seems better. I’m a bit happier now because I have a supportable theory, I just really do hope it’s not a heat problem.

I have a few years of guarantee, so there shouldn’t be issues (except parking !) if I have to go as far as taking it back. I just dislike giving up like that. I see more evaluation time coming 🙂

(Techie PS bit – there’s no real difference between “proper” wire and optical fibre for domestic use. But there’s plenty for bigger scale data cabling. Optical is far superior when the distance is more than a few metres but again, the issue is in connections which are far more sensitive)

Firstly – Happy birthday Craziequeen !

Chipmunk ? I can get a bit excitable sometimes.

It manifests in a similar way to hyperactivity, in that I’ll suddenly become a lot quicker. I’ll react quicker, talk quicker (which isn’t necessarily a good thing cos I trip up over words more) and generally go for the harebrained solution that comes to mind first instead of thinking through what I’m about to do. I’ve hit on the word Chipmunk for it.

I have mixed feelings about Going Chipmunk. On the one hand, I have an energy and vitality that can be missing sometimes. But on the other hand, I can upset people by not thinking about what I say before I say it. And the wrong things come out. Hopefully I don’t do that too much. There’s a matter of focus too. At the moment, I’m itching to do “something” but when it’s come to testing Xbox through the new amp, that wasn’t what my subconscious wanted to do. It’s better than the alternative, which has me struggling to get the motivation to do anything.

Xbox play didn’t last long mostly cos my subconscious wanted to be listening to music 🙂 Which is what I’m doing at the moment (Robbie Williams greatest hits) while pondering what I do after blog post. I think it’ll be more book, as I’ve given up (for now) on David Weber’s Storm From The Shadows in favour of the 6th of 6 Jack Campbell Lost Fleet books. David Weber’s a fairly inconsistent author. Some of his books are action spectaculars, perfectly paced with plenty of the space fleet actions he’s good at writing. Others are deeply mired in politics which at the end of the day, are meaningless. I’m 300 pages into Storm and nothing’s really happened yet, apart from a bit of set up. Boring.

So I’m finishing the Lost Fleet saga instead 🙂 all the while doing more extensive “evaluation” of the new hifi gear.

What’s the main difference between hifi and the basic squawk boxes ? It’s the detail. Something basic will passably reproduce the more prominent bits of music. However, hifi excels in pulling out the bits in the background. That’s the intricate bits like the hundred different instruments in the orchestra. Tori Amos feet on piano pedals. Bits of voice on a Snow Patrol track that I never knew where there.

Had some late nights this week “evaluating” the bits with just … one … more … track 🙂 I think I have them trained now because I’ve found the “Pure Audio” setting that turns off all the processing. There’s still variation in quality because I’m listening to MP3’s which in pure music terms, just aren’t all there.

The alternative to book would be gaming. I’ve reawakened the gaming addiction but it’s being tempered by issues with my arms and fingers. I suffer from RSI in my wrist due to a long association with computers. It’s with me now and I manage it by keeping an eye on how much computer time I get. There’s also the shoulder issues which get better or worse depending on the game.

Or cleaning. Need to get the house tidied up “soon”. Something the Crazies haven’t done for a while is have a pizza + movie night, which is something we like to try and do around birthday or Xmas season. Could well be my place this time around so I can show off the new stuff. Plus rearranging stuff for it is giving more room. But before that, a good tidy and cleaning will be needed.

Gotta put down the Dust Bunny Rebellion. Or die trying ! Maybe I can put Chipmunk Syndrome to good use over the weekend.