Is it Something or isn’t it?

Nothing is the absence of anything. Almost nothing I would characterize as something slightly more than that. I mean it's only like a tiny sliver more than nothing, small enough that it's difficult to call it something. I suppose for those who deal in absolutes it would be something. I guess I feel that there is a certain expectation there when you say "this is something". The danger of course is that if you present it as something and someone calls you on it and says "Hey that's almost nothing", you have to make a choice there as to whether or not you want to make a argument based on semantics. You could for instance say that anything more than nothing is something and you'd be right. However you could hardly blame a person for being somewhat disappointed when you offer something but then what they get is almost nothing. See what I mean?

3 things you should know about Almost Nothing

1) Almost nothing made Jerry Seinfeld extremely wealthy.

2) Thousands of amazingly brave young people have died and are dying in Iraq for almost nothing.

3) The top 10 percent of the population have all the wealth leaving the rest of us almost nothing.

Do some research!

Why not do some research on the concept of almost nothing. It takes almost no time and will cost you almost nothing. This is important because in the future you will find that you must be satisfied with almost nothing most of the time. We all might as well get used to it now because almost nothing good is going to happen in the future unless we are able to take almost nothing and turn it into something. That is going to require a new way of thinking. You're not going to get away with doing what everyone else does if you want something more than almost nothing.

Tags: Almost, Nothing, Something, Disappointing, Semantics

Sometimes I think that the world would be a better place if everyone wrote songs. It's a great creative outlet and will help you take out your aggressions in a positive and cathartic way. Let's break it down into steps so that it becomes easier to write a song shall we? I think it's always a good idea to oversimplify things that I am good at. That way you think I am really talented when you can't produce a great song by following my instructions. Not to worry, you won't write an epic hit your first time out.

An overview

I am first going to show you how to have an original thought. Now I know that 1/2 of all new songs are remakes of old songs and most new music all sounds the same but what the hell! Let's be different! If you get any major label attention you can always substitute any word longer than 5 letters with the word "baby" or "ooooohh" or some other such moan oriented utterance.

Materials you'll need

Some paper, a pencil or pen, a tape recorder might be nice, a guitar or keyboard might come in handy as well. You'll also need a quiet room where you can be alone this will prevent your friends from laughing at you.

Step 1: Get Inspired

Watch a movie or read a book and jot down some interesting ideas or phrases. One of them will likely become the title. I know this doesn't seem original but wait. I have more to say and if you just shut up i'll get to it!

Step 2: Messing with the context

Take each phrase and re write it in a different context. See what I'm doing here? What you want to do is mix your contextes. So that at times the song is about the movie or book and sometimes it's about something entirely different. It doesn't matter if it rhymes or not but if you're trying to sell it to the masses you simply must take drooling idiots into account. Drooling idiots make up about 75% of the population. So if you're going for the big time go broad and make it rhyme.

Step 3: Find the Phrase the Pays

Okay now you are going to take your phrases and arrange them into three groups. One of them will repeat so make this one your best and most thought provoking. This will be what is known as the chorus. Then take the two next best ones, these will be the seeds of the 2 verses and then take one that seems like an incomplete thought, this will be the bridge. Now re-write them on a new page in the following order

Verse
chorus
Verse
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus

You have now written out your lyrics.

SO there you have it you've written your very own song lyrics. Wasn't even that hard. By the way if they don't make any sense don't worry! If you get to the point where you're setting them to music just sing them in a way that people can barely understand what you're saying. If you don't know what I mean go download any Radiohead music that was recorded after OK Computer. It's almost completely unintelligible and yet it still sells!

Tags: Song, Lyrics, How to, Write, Your, Own

I remember what Ebay Used to be.

Yesterday's Ebay used to be a great place to sell those items that you no longer use. The fees were manageable and it was quite a hassle free experience all round. Buyers and seller alike were held accountable for their actions in a free and open marketplace where almost anything could be had and usually the price was more than fair.

Today's Ebay is like some sort of horrible joke. If you're a seller, the joke's on YOU!

Let me tell you about the fees!

Does the phrase "Highway Robbery" ring a bell?

The Ebay fee structure has always been setup so that they take a cut of whatever you sell your merchandise for. This cut has steadily increased since the inception of Ebay. The last item I sold on Ebay sold for about $800usd. By the time it was all said and done between Ebay and Paypal i was out nearly a hundred bucks. That is selling this item on Ebay cost me a hundred bucks. This despite the fact that they did no more work for me than they did for the guy who sold a DVD on Ebay for 10 Bucks! It's out of line and it's the reason why savvy sellers have already abandoned Ebay.

Feedback is now a one way street

Buyers can ruin your good name with absoute impunity.

In the good old days both buyer and seller had equal rights in terms of the feedback system. If a buyer took a long time to pay or didn't pay at all, as a seller it was your right to leave them negative feedback. Not anymore! Now sellers cannot leave negative feedback for buyers. This means that you could be a model seller, provide great pre and post sale service and the buyer can turn around and leave negative feedback against you and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!

Ebay protects the buyers, not the sellers. This is an error in business practices because it's the seller that pays all the fees.

Ebay's great service will bend you over!

So you can take chargebacks where the sun don't shine.

The other wonderful thing about todays new Ebay is the lack of flexibility in receiving payment. Unless you have a merchant Visa/Mastercard you MUST use paypal. Paypal service is not free. Ebay owns Paypal for those of you that weren't aware. They even try to rook you into paying money for a shipping label with the customer's address on it. I mean it's a digital picture of a shipping label that you have to print out yourself! As if I can't write that on a piece of paper with a wide tipped magic marker! If you don't use their shipping label service they may even use it as an excuse to delay the customer's payment to you. In many cases they hold your money until you provide a tracking number for the shipment. Sending the item via trackable shipping is also an added expense for seller whose customers want to save money by choosing cheaper shipping options that don't normally include tracking service.

The real problem here is that anytime someone buys from you using a credit card they can simply wait until the item arrives and then deny they ever got it. Once phone call takes the money out of your paypal account and puts it back in their credit card! I have heard many stories about sellers who shipped product and ended up with no money and no product! Even after they contacted the shipping company and obtained proof that the item arrived and was signed for, neither Paypal or the credit card companies did anything to help.

This is why many sellers demanded to be paid with money orders. This was the only way to protect your self from scammers. Ebay has basically made this impossible now with their new policies.

Tags: EBAY, Policies, Bullshit, Robbery, Unfair, Chargebacks

Begging For Dollars

In these uncertain times, downsizing, companies closing down and mass layoffs are on the horizon for thousands. Our governments don't seem to care so perhaps a tax free income appeals to you. Perhaps you don't have a choice. If you have to resort to begging for money on the street to pay the mortgage, I feel for you. I have luckily never been there myself, but I do live in the downtown of a fairly large city and as a curiosity, I have observed the panhandlers and buskers. The ones that do well have some things in common. So I thought I would share them with you here. The thought here is this. Why wait until you're homeless to beg for income?

The Three D's
If you really want to make the big bucks as a beggar you've got to look and act the part. If you don't, people will notice and you don't want to waste valuable time doing nothing without being paid for it! It's like a government job! If you're asking for handouts remember the three D's:

Derelict
Dejected
Disheveled

Before you go out panhandling ask yourself the following:

Do I look like a derelict? Do I feel dejected as if society has no place for me? Is my appearance sloppy, my clothing old worn and torn? In other words do I look disheveled enough that people will take pity on me to the tune of a handful of spare change?

First Impressions
First impressions are very important. Wear Ratty clothing, the more holes in it the better. People won't give money to someone who is wearing better shoes than they are. You're going to want to bathe but it's a good idea to wear clothing that you may have worn the day before or slept in the night before. Don't iron your clothing either, that's a dead giveaway. Irons need electricity and if you want to appear homeless it makes sense that even if you own an iron, you don't have a place to plug it in! You also want to avoid mouthwash for two reasons. First, the perception is that if you can afford mouthwash you can afford a sandwich. Second, people might think you're drinking mouthwash to get a buzz and people are less likely to give you money if they think you just want to get drunk


The Skinny
If you're overweight, don't be a panhandler. People will have a hard time believing you're hungry. Go on welfare or join Amway or something like that if you're overweight. I am not making fun of overweight people here. I am just pointing out that people won't give you money unless they think you need it for food. It's ironic because it's a fact that thin people are considered more attractive. Attractive people find work easier. So in reality it's the overweight people that really need help. Unfortunately if society doesn't like the look of you, you're screwed! Busking might be a better way to go for the overweight individual. More on this later.

Ask Nicely
How you ask for money is very important. Avoid calling people "buddy" or "big guy" or "Sir" or "Ma'am". Stick with something simple like "could you spare a few dollars for a bite to eat". It's always good to be somewhere where there are lots of people so you aren't putting any one person on the spot, unless it's a guy who is walking with a woman. If it's a new relationship he might toss you some coins to appear generous because he thinks she'll be impressed. Just ask those annoying people who sell roses in bars! They play upon this scenario with ruthless efficiency! Don't get mad when people turn you down or ignore you, concentrate on the next person. You're going to be rejected 96.5% of the time, so don't let that get to you, it's a business like anything else.


Busking
If you have a problem with begging, busking might be a good alternative. If you sing or play a musical instrument, juggle etc, you can do this on the street to earn money. Some places prohibit this so check the laws in your area. Some cities actually require you to get a permit or a license of some sort to engage in busking. If you are good at your particular skill people will be impressed and will be less likely to care how you look. You can wear better clothes than a panhandler as well. A street performer is a few rungs up the ladder from a common beggar as well, so you can take a little more pride in what you are doing. However if you are rail thin and have the ability to look like you're near death for lack of food, you can't really beat begging.
Role Model
There's an older native north american gentleman on the corner most days. He's about a block from my apartment. He has about three teeth and he doesn't even have anything for people to put money in. He just sits on the pavement with his arms extended, hands cupped and his head down. His long hair hanging down obscuring his face. I don't think I've ever actually seen his eyes. Perhaps this is part of his business model. Maybe he appears less threatening because he never makes eye contact? Anyhow he wears the same torn jeans and the same blue fleece hoodie every day. I have never heard him speak.

I bet you he does quite well.

Tags: Panhandling, Begging, Guide, Money, Free , Tax

So you want to learn to play guitar?

This can be a very rewarding and empowering experience if approached in the right way. This site is designed to help you make the right choices and avoid wasting your time and money. There's a myriad of choices out there, guitars come in all shapes sizes and colors and it is very difficult for the uninitiated to choose wisely. In many cases the sales staff at your local guitar shop can guide you but it doesn't hurt to have some background knowledge, just in case you run into a salesperson who doesn't have your best interest at heart.

What you're looking for is simple.
A well-built guitar that is comfortable and easy to play. When you hold the guitar in a playing position the neck should feel comfortable in your hand and you should be able to easily wrap your fingers around the neck, touching your index finger to your thumb. Unless you have unusually short fingers you should be able to find the right fit for you. Fortunately most guitar shops will allow you to play a number of guitars to see what will work for you.

Without getting into a complicated explanation you want to have a look at the strings. Ideally you want the distance between the fretboard and the strings to be the same all the way up and down the neck. If the the gap between the stings and the fretboard increases as you get towards the body of the guitar this can be a sign that there are problems with the instrument. If you are looking at purchasing a used guitar privately, it may be a good idea to take an experienced player along with you to ensure you don't waste your money on someone else's junk. Have a look at the links at the top right of the screen for more information to guide you. Good luck!

Buying a Guitar for a Child

There are several things to consider when purchasing a guitar for a child. First and foremost, are they ready? In teaching guitar lessons I found that many younger students simply do not yet have the attention span to focus on learning the guitar. The danger there is that some unscrupulous guitar teacher will take advantage by allowing you to pay for lessons even though your son or daughter may not be getting anything out of the time and money spent on lessons. Please keep in mind that young minds are sensitive but not very selective! Kids absorb an alarming amount of information in learning who they are going to be and so it may be perfectly fine if they are not ready to learn to play guitar.

If your child is too small to get their fingers around the neck, you may want to let them grow a little more as well. It is difficult enough to learn to play an instrument, let alone a giant guitar! Because of this a number of guitar makers make small scale guitars with younger, smaller students in mind. However it is a far better idea to let the child grow into a full size guitar. Once the young student reaches a point where it is possible for them to play a full size instrument, steps can be taken to make the guitar easier to play. For instance an Acoustic guitar can be strung with electric strings. Electric strings don't have anywhere near as rich a tone and the guitar won't be nearly as loud, but it will be easier to play. You can also have the guitar set up by a professional guitar technician in order to make the guitar as playable as possible.

Long story short, timing is very important and forcing a child to try and learn the guitar too soon may discourage them from playing at all! Keep in mind when buying a first guitar for a child, that one of two things is likely to happen. 1) After gaining some mastery of the instrument a student may decide to buy a higher quality instrument and will likely want to trade in this guitar against a newer better one. 2) The student decides to abandon the guitar, in which case you may decide to sell it to help finance something else like skateboarding or hockey! This is why it's a very good idea to buy a brand name guitar and keep it in good condition in order to maximize resale value. It's also a good idea to avoid guitars with crazy paint jobs for the same reason!

Electric of Acoustic?
Is it better to learn on one or the other?
Many new guitars players have chosen to pick up the guitar because they have become inspired by a popular musician. In some cases pop musicians play acoustic guitars but it's more than likely they play an electric. I have to tell you that many experienced guitarists that learned to play on electric guitars will tell you that they wish they had learned to play on an acoustic.

Acoustic guitars are considerably harder to play, and a basic acoustic guitar doesn't have the wide array of sounds available to an electric guitarist via effects stomp boxes. However when it comes learning to play, the acoustic guitar has some distinct advantages.

The simplicity of the acoustic guitar is its strength. This allows the student to focus on fingering technique and relative pitch. It is more important to gain strength and dexterity than it is to make cool sounds that involve little talent! You might as well buy some turntables. You can get some cool sounds out of turntables, but they are not a musical instrument!

Having said that if a student simply won't have any desire to play an acoustic guitar, if it's electric or nothing there are some things to take into consideration. Avoid guitars with locking systems that keep the guitar perfectly in tune no matter what. Tuning your guitar is excellent ear training and helps develop your sense of relative pitch. So avoid guitars with fine tuning bridges and locking systems.



Alternate picking.
When your are playing scales attack the string on the first note with a downward motion and then attack the string for the second note with an upward motion. Mastering this method of picking will dramatically improve your playing speed.

Don't press harder than you need to.
Having a good touch on the fretboard is very important. If you press too hard when playing chords you can actually make the chord sound out of tune, even if the guitar is tuned perfectly. This will also reduce fatigue when playing lengthy guitar solos. This is one of the harder things to master so don't be surprised if you don't get it right away.

Record yourself every so often to mark your improvement.
Even the very best guitarists were beginners at one time. It can give you some encouragement to know that even if you're not the best guitar player who ever lived, at least you are better than you were a few months ago.

Learn as many chords as you can!
Once you've learned a few chords you will find that you can play some classic rock songs. These are great at a party or around the campfire. This also causes you to learn new chords as you go as new songs introduce you to new chords. This is great because you apply what you have learned right away.

Take every opportunity to jam with players who are better than you are.
This is a great tip for guitar players at any level. You learn things just by watching them and at the same time it gives you something to shoot for. Don't be intimidated by a better player. You're playing for your own enjoyment, it's not a contest!

When doing scale drills, sing the notes as you play them.
This will develop your improvisational skills. As you begin to develop your lead guitar skills, you will begin to think about what you're going to be playing 5, 10, 15 seconds from the present time. Being able to hear the pitches you want to play and associate them with places on the fretboard will allow you to unleash your creativity in your lead work.

Record yourself playing the rhythm guitar and them play it back to practice the lead.
That's all for now If I think of anything else I'll add it here!

Tags: Buying, Purchasing, First, Guitar, Student, Learning

Well it might be true that the RIAA thrives on conflict but even they cannot deny that the masses want their media content online. Be it music, movies, software, television, you name it, it’s online. This is just the entertainment business responding to the demands of their customers, namely, you and me! The internet is the most convenient way to find the content you’re looking for, after all it was designed to be that way from the very start. So why are some factions of “Big Entertainment” resisting this change? I’ll tell you why. The big media companies are scared to death, I mean shaking in their expensive designer boots, scared of a level playing field.

Big Media doesn’t want to compete with you and me, and in the past they haven’t had to. It was nearly impossible for the average person to get a show on TV or get an independent film out to the widest possible audience. Not anymore. Sites like YouTube have made it possible for anyone to make a show on their own terms and put it out to the entire planet. So things are changing but lest we forget that the huge multi-national conglomerates that own the media companies also own your internet service provider!

And so, in case you haven’t noticed most internet service providers now impose limits on your monthly bandwidth. The upshot of this is that if you make the internet your primary source of home entertainment it’s going to get more and more expensive. Some service providers offer several plans at various prices, all the plans in reality feature the same upload and download speed. The only thing that really changes is how much you can download and the cheaper the monthly cost the more you pay per gigabyte when you go over your limit. Sometimes these plans are so out of whack that you can find yourself paying more being on the cheapest service that you would be on a service that is several rungs up the service plan ladder! Not only this many service providers have software in place to slow down your connection if they think you are downloading things you shouldn’t be. This software is so heavy handed in it’s application that it causes problems with online gaming and other perfectly legitimate uses of the internet. This process called “throttling” is prevalent in the ISP industry.

So what is all this subterfuge about? It’s about what will be, dare I say what must be! One day in the not so distant future there will be a levee imposed on the internet. It will be a fee that you will pay to your internet service provider as part of your monthly bill. This money will go into a giant pot. Anytime you download a movie, mp3, software or whatever it will be counted. This information will be used to determine what cut of the pot all the content creators will get from everyone downloading their stuff! It’s simple and the right people get paid. The better or should I say the more popular your content, the more money you can make.

In the meantime if you want to avoid bandwidth limits and throttling look to the smaller internet providers. They are less likely to impose these limits on your internet experience.

Tags: Levee, Downloading, Free content

Many high end audio enthusiasts spend countless hours and a fist full of dollars in order to get the ir stereo system to sound as good as possible. The right source, the right preamp and amplifier all way out to a great pair of speakers. Next the pain staking search for interconnects and speaker wire begins and in most cases it never, ever ends.

Oddly enough when you walk into the listening rooms of most audiophiles you see some very strange things. Big glass coffee tables, bare hardwood floors, high backed listening chairs in rooms that have reflective surfaces like windows to the left of the system and something less reflective to the right like drywall. All this despite the thousands spent on equipment and accessories. The most overlooked component of a stereo system is the room itself. A $10,000 stereo in the right room can easily outperform a $25,000 system in the wrong room. If you don’t address the room you’re listening in you are literally wasting your money!

Ideally you want a rectangular room with the seated position a third of the way into from the rear wall and your speakers a third of the way out into the room. If when you do this you are sitting closer than 7 or 8 feet from the speakers, try towing them in towards your listening position. The only problem with this is that there might be a lack of bass sitting that close. This setup is less than ideal so you can try and make the best of the situation by moving your listening position and the speakers further away from each other. There are two things you’re trying to avoid here. First you don’t want reflections from the wall behind you to make it back to your listening position, so the closer you are to that wall the more of a problem this will become. This is also why high backed listening chairs are a bad idea.The other problem occurs when you back your speakers into a corner. Bass frequencies are not as directional as midrange and high frequencies, when the speakers are too close to a wall they tend to be amplified causing the bass to be boomy and lack dynamics. This is especially true when speakers are right up in the corner of the room. The problem can sometimes be so bad the the extra bass actually masks the midrange and the system can sound dark and murky.

So, what can you do in small room? Well there are quite a few things you can try. A bookshelf behind your listening position will break up the high frequencies and prevent them from reaching you. There are also sound panels you can buy to diffuse the high frequencies as well. If you have too much bass in a room a large cardboard box full of chopped up foam rubber and shredded newspaper. If this works you can either buy some bass traps or decorate the cardboard box to match your decor!

Another problem that plagues rooms both large and small is first reflections. When sound hits a hard surface it bounces off and speeds up. These sounds then travel to your listening position arriving just before or just after the direct sound coming from the speakers. This will rob you of focus and detail. If you were to place a mirror on the side wall and move it to a position to where you can see the speaker while sitting in your listening chair, this would be a good place to put a sound absorbing material to prevent these first reflections from reaching you.

So now that we’ve eliminated reflections from the side walls and the wall behind you, all we have left are the floor and ceiling. Since there’s not often many things we can do with the ceiling lets make sure that there’s carpet on the floor. If there’s no carpet it might be time to invest in an area rug. All this is designed to stop stray frequencies from bouncing around your room and arriving at the wrong time. The overall goal is to limit all but the direct sound coming from the speakers.

Bottom line you can get a much bigger bang for your audio buck by addressing problems with the room you’re listening in!

Tags: Listening Room, Stereo Setup, Speaker, Placement

I have seen several forum posts regarding making DVD Audio from CD’s and/or the value of increasing the bit depth and sampling rate of .wav or .aiff audio to make 24 bit versions of the files. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that even though the resulting files have more data representing the audio the apparent quality won’t be any better because you can never improve upon the source material. In a perfect world this would be true. Unfortunately when it comes to optical media like CD’s and DVD’s there are other factors at work.

Working in a Hi Fi stereo shop for some years I began to notice that inexpensive CD and DVD players seemed to be better at reading scratched media than their higher quality counterparts. Upon doing some research on the subject I realized that cheaper players employ more error correction. This is because they use cheap transports and other cheap components that don’t read the media and interpret the data as well as higher quality players, and so more error correction is needed. In other words whenever you play a disc some of the data that is encoded is lost and either replaced by silence when it’s just a sample or two or dither noise when more than a few samples are lost. It’s this dither noise that causes the “harshness” or “digital grit” that audiophiles complained about when the CD format was first introduced.

High end audio manufacturers soon realized that by making more rigid transports and dampening the vibration caused by the spinning disc the laser could to a better job of reading the disc. They also found that by reading the disc more than once and comparing the results(oversampling), and taking steps to ensure that the samples play back in the correct order(jitter correction), less error correction will be needed and the sound is dramatically improved.

When you take the 16 bit 44.1 Khz file you extracted from the CD, resample it up to a 24 bit 96 Khz file and burn it as a DVD Audio disc, you are not actually improving the quality of the audio. However by having more samples there to represent the audio even if twice the samples are lost, there are still tons more left available to recreate the original audio. If you are a person that listens to music as an activity, and by that I mean you’re sitting the correct distance from properly towed in speakers in a room that has been optimized for listening to music there will be quite a noticeable difference. If you’re listening to music as you do housework, or listening on plastic computer speakers this is not something you even need to consider.

Tags: CD, DVDA, DVD Audio, Conversion

The “Repack”

Sometimes, for what ever reason a customer returns something that isn’t broken. They got cold feet or their spouse disagreed with the decision to make this purchase. More often then not this customer will get a refund minus a restocking fee. This fee usually ranges from 10% to 20% of the purchase price of the unit. The rationale here is that the product is now technically used and can’t be sold again as new. This is completely fair as long as the unit is actually sold to the next customer at a discount! My second day on the job I was shown how to do a “Repack”. Basically I was shown how to place everything back in the package in such a way that it looked factory sealed. This was done so that the item could then be sold again as new and for the full price. Some even go so far as to open the box from the bottom when they remove product for demonstration purposes. I have actually seen demo equipment that’s been on the sales floor for over a year, cleaned up, repacked and sold as new! You can sometimes spot a repack. Manuals will be dog eared and creased, tie wraps around cables won’t match. If you’re thinking you can even look at the box if you can see two layers of tape on either the top or the bottom there’s a good chance it’s a repack!

The Warranty Shuffle

Things always seem to break down just as the warranty expires! In some cases, if a shop has a good relationship with the distributor they can ask to have something fixed under warranty even though the warranty has recently expired. Sometimes this works out for you and the shop passes the savings on to you. Sometimes they tell you that there’s nothing they can do because the warranty has expired. Then after having it fixed under warranty, charge you an arbitrary amount in order to make some quick cash!

Tags: Repack, Warranty, Lies

Here are some examples of jargon, buzzwords that mislead or are meaningless.

Musical

Quite often when a salesperson wants to convey that product X is better than product Y that costs quite a bit less, and there is no real difference, they will claim that product X is more “musical” I guess it’s not really a lie, I’m sure the extra money they want you to spend is music to their ears! Whenever you hear the word musical used in a description of an audio product just substitute the word bullshit and you’ll do just fine.

Noise Floor

A huge amount of products are sold on the premise that by reducing the amount of noise present you’ll hear more music. The idea being that if you get rid of noise, small details will become more apparent to your ear and the music will sound better. Hey it makes sense right? Less noise equals more music. The unfortunate thing is that more often than not they’re SAYING they are lowering the noise floor when in reality they are using a device that is widely used in the recording industry called a compressor. A compressor is like a super fast robot that turns up the volume when things are quiet and leaves the sound unchanged when the music gets louder. This has the effect of making anything processed in this way to sound more detailed and live. However it limits the dynamic range of the music so the difference between the loudest sounds and the softest sounds is in some cases dramatically reduced. A good example of this is commercials on TV. Ever notice how they sound louder than the shows you are watching? The people who produce these commercials employ compression to achieve this effect. It is also used to make dialogue in movies crystal clear despite all manner of other sound effects happening at the same time. When you employ compression to Jazz, opera and classical music all of which avoid using compression in the recording and production of the music, it works astonishingly well, the subtle aspects of the music jump out and tickle the ear drums. The problem comes when you want to listen to some good old rock and roll. Crunchy overdriven rock guitar is already as compressed as you can make it and still have it be pleasing to the ear. Compress it any more and it turns to mush! Long story short, if you like to rock out with your system occasionally be very careful with products that claim to “Lower the noise floor”

High Bandwidth

This one isn’t used as much as it used to be, but you never know when it will creep up again. All this means is that the product in question can reproduce very high highs and very low bass. Since most audiophiles are at least pushing 40 years of age it is unlikely that many can hear a frequency higher than 18 or 19KHZ. This is because most people begin to lose the ability to hear the very highest frequencies by the time they reach age 40. You would also require a room that allows you to sit up to 28 feet away from the speaker to most accurately reproduce 40Hz let alone 20Hz!. That’s a pretty big room as most sound experts will tell you that it is good to have the speakers away from the wall at least a few feet and it is also ideal to have some space between you and the wall behind you! So keeping all this in mind a sound system that can reproduce sounds from 20Hz up to 50,000 Khz is not worth paying extra money for! In fact it may cause problems! You see your speaker system will try to reproduce any signal you send it and this can have a negative effect on the overall sound you’re hearing from the speaker. For instance if a woofer has to slow down to try and reproduce something at 20 Hz it can’t simultaneously reproduce the rest of the signal as faithfully and so this becomes a detriment to the sound. Basically it’s like part of the music you can hear is being masked by a sound your speakers can’t even reproduce!

High Resolution

I have seen some speaker wire and interconnects described as being “High Resolution”. Good quality speaker wires and interconnects can have a positive impact on the sound but they can’t raise the resolution! A CD plays back at a higher resolution than an MP3 because more information derived from the original recording is present and available to recreate the music. An up sampling digital to analog converter takes digital information and converts it to a higher bit rate in the digital realm before converting it to the analog sound you hear, thus raising the resolution. Cables merely transfer a signal from one place to another with varying degrees of accuracy they cannot raise the resolution of the sound.

Tags: Bullshit, Buzzwords, Misleading, jargon

Shopping for High End Audio? Choosing the right components can be a daunting task at the best of times. So many conflicting theories and ideas about what sounds good, and what sounds less than good. Salesmen spewing out well rehearsed phrases and using sales techniques that are designed to sell you expensive product which will ultimately do nothing to enhance your enjoyment of music! The purpose of this web site is to expose some of the tactics used by the Hi Fi industry to rook you into a cycle of diminishing returns where good money chases bad money right down the drain!

“Sales Tactics” deals with the ways in which stereo salesmen confuse you into buying things that may not be right for your system in your room at home. Some of these you will recognize, some will have you scratching your head and saying “So that’s why they do/say that!”. The second section “BS Buzzwords” is reserved for confusing jargon. These are the buzzwords and catch phrases that are often used in Hi Fi ads to get you interested in certain products. These words when you really analyze them, are often misleading or meaningless.

We’re not trying to ruin what can be a fun and rewarding hobby. However, once you put all the BS aside you can concentrate on what will really and truthfully help you enjoy your music.


Sales Tactics

Tell em’ what they’re gonna hear!

Let’s see if you find this familiar. You’re in a stereo shop sitting in front of a stereo system. Before he puts the music on, the salesman describes for you what you’re going to hear. He then puts on a selection of music, and before you can really even begin to enjoy it, he then describes what you’re hearing. The salesman then turns the music off and proceeds to tell you what heard! This is a very old trick that uses the power of suggestion to lead you to the foregone conclusion that you should buy whatever the salesman is trying to sell you. This may even be a subtle form of hypnosis! Once the music has started to play, if the salesperson begins to talk simply turn to them, look them right in the eye and say “would it be alright if I just listen to the music”?

“Audiophile” Recordings

You ever notice that most “Audiophile” recordings are very sparse arrangements featuring very few instruments? When I think back to my days working in a stereo shop and remember the music the owner used to love to use to sell equipment. It was always, a single vocal, and a single guitar or a Holly Cole song featuring her voice, a standup bass and some sparse piano. Another shop in town used to use a recording of Japanese Taiko drummers, nothing but drums. There is a very good reason for this. The more you have going on in a recording the harder it is to accurately reproduce. So the thing to do is bring your own demo music with you and make sure to bring some more complex layered music with you and use that as part of your comparison. Always bring a good selection of music that you listen to when you’re out shopping and auditioning audio. Ask yourself, why would you ever evaluate a stereo system with music you’ve never heard before? You see I know from experience that the sales staff in Hi Fi shops will tweak the systems to sound great playing their chosen demonstration music. So if you use their music to evaluate a system the whole presentation has been staged, it’s a foregone conclusion and you will be misled.

Fatal Comparison

When you walk into a High End Audio shop for the first time, the staff checks out your shoes, your watch, your clothing in order to “qualify” you. This process determines what is likely to be in your wallet! Then the fun begins! If a salesman decides that you can afford the best stereo in the shop, he’ll let you have a listen to that system first. Nothing else you hear that visit will compare. Every other system you do listen to during that visit to the shop is reinforcing the idea that you should buy the highest priced system in the shop. If you have so much money that you don’t care that’s fine. If not, you may want to shop around or at the very least leave the shop and come back on another day with fresh ears and simply refuse to listen to any system or component that is out of the range of what you’d like to spend. Another good practice is to ask what things are selling for before you listen If the price is out of line with what you’d like to spend, ask to move on to something more affordable. If the salesman refuses, they are wasting your time and it is time to leave.

“Bad Recordings”

The function of a stereo system is to playback music whether it be a Vinyl Record, a CD or whatever. So then assuming that you’re listening to music that you enjoy, if the sound of the playback is Bad, bright, dark, or in any way less than ideal, it’s the fault of the stereo system NOT the recording itself. Whenever this happens during a stereo demonstration the salesman will attempt to blame the recording and then insist that he play you a “better recording”. If you are in fact buying a stereo system for your personal enjoyment, shouldn’t it sound good playing the music that you actually listen to? If the salesperson insists on using their demonstration music simply say “ I have a better idea, let’s try to find a system that sounds good playing this music, because this is what I listen to”!

Tags: Audiophile, HIFI, Bullshit, Tricks, Dishonest, Dealers

The Reality of this point in history?

For years now, for some inexplicable reason I have tended to gravitate towards the practice of sleeping all day and working all night. I never quite new why until recently. I used to think it was because I used to perform in bar bands for so many years that it seems like nothing for me to be awake and functioning at 4am. Seems plausible right? Well the other night I went for a walk around 4am, there was almost nobody on the street, all the doors on all the shops were shut tight and locked until morning. The traffic lights meant nothing to me I could cross the street with impunity. There was something eerily peaceful about it. And then, like a bolt of lightening it hit me.

All the doors were locked, I could walk all I wanted to and there was no place to go. There was no communication possible. It's not that there were no rules, it was that there was no one there to care if I broke them. In that split second in time, I felt like the universe was finally being honest with me. It was saying:

"you're on your own"

"all the doors are closed"

"You will always be trapped outside"

"there's nowhere for you to go"



Is This how everyone feels?

Or is it just me?



Doesn't it seem like there is some unseen force that's going to somehow negate anything positive you try to do? You see people on the street during the day and they just feel like non-player characters in some sort of bizarre video game? It's like you're ok, or at least that's how it seems but there is something very wrong and you can't quite put your finger on it? It's like you forgot something, and if you could just remember what it was it would explain everything. If you could just remember, there would come the realization that this isn't actually your real life. You would suddenly realize how to get from where you are, to where you've always wanted to be. Are you awake or asleep? is this a nightmare or a dream? And if it's a dream, maybe it's a lucid dream that you can control, but for some reason you're afraid to even try.

And then you realize that somewhere along the line you lost the ability to impose your will on your surroundings. Somewhere along the line you stopped trying to make the world work for you and you started to learn to live within the narrow beam, a line on the ground that you walk like a slave to governments and organizations, and churches and banks, and traffic lights......

Are you a slave with delusions of freedom? Or a free person that feels like a slave?

Ask yourself this,....Is there really any way to know for certain?

Tags: Life, Society, Community, Lonliness, Seperation, Detachment

Think Microsofty
It's about that time. My yearly subscription to Apple's Mobile Me is due and now that i've replaced most of the MobileMe services with cheaper or free services from places like Google etc It seems I am paying over $100usd for an email account! Seems kinda pricey for a single email account with 5 aliases!

In for a penny, in for a hundred bucks!
Hey no problem, just opt out of all those other services and just keep the email service right?

WRONG!

You have to take a minimum package that costs you over a hundred bucks. Nothing is optional except,..of course if you want to spend MORE money on their services! Apple used to offer email only accounts but suspended this practice some time ago. Unless you were grandfathered in on that old system, you're out of luck if you don't want to pay for these extra, basically useless services.

Wildly Intelligent, but not very smart

I think Apple has lost sight of the big picture. Nearly every day I get colourful ads from Apple. I have no choice but to look at them because that's part of the deal with having an email account from Apple. I really don't mind, it's always cool to see the new products coming out and the promotions and deals that are being offered. The problem is that if I don't renew my MobileMe account I don't see those ads, and the thousands out there just like me also don't see those ads.

Pretend you're Apple's CEO Steve Jobs

Correct me if I'm wrong but those ads are very effective in helping to sell new products, so don't you want as many people to see them as possible? Wouldn't it be smart marketing to have me pay some token fee like say $!9.95 a year for an email only account so that you can keep sending me those ads? I mean where's the downside? I pay you money. You stay connected to me so you can try and sell me stuff! If you're into making money that's gotta be a whole lot easier than counting cards in vegas! In fact that could almost be considered marketing genius.

Perhaps somebody's MENSA card got lost in the mail?

Tags: Apple, Mobileme, Mobile, Service

There are many reasons why you might get a hum or buzz from your stereo system or home theatre. So let’s so through some possibilities and see if we can kill that buzz once and for all. We’ll start by turning on all the components in your system.

Can you hear the hum on all sources?

By Source I mean anything that plays media or allows you to receive media. Some examples are CD or DVD players, Radio Tuners, Turntables, Satellite Receivers or Cable TV boxes. Is the hum constant when you switch from your DVD player to your Satellite Receiver or cable box? Is the hum still there when you switch to the radio? If you have hum all the time no matter what source you are using, the hum is likely the result of a ground loop. If the hum is only present on one source, try plugging that one piece of equipment into a different wall plug that is on a different circuit in your home and see if that fixes the problem. If this doesn’t help, try using a different set of audio cables between the problem piece of equipment and your receiver.

Still hearing the buzz?
Here’s another thing you can do if you have cable TV. Try removing the cable the comes into your home from the back of your cable box. If the hum goes away, the solution is simple, you need to make your way down to your local electronics shop and buy a device called a groundbreaker. This works very well and about 90% of the time eliminates the hum when you reconnect your cable box using one of these devices.

If none of this has helped, try checking all the cables in your system, if they are the ultra cheap cables that seem to be packaged with your average stereo equipment, you may want to try better quality cables. A higher quality cable will have better shielding that will be better at preventing noise from entering your system. There are also a wide array of power bar products that can help to kill the buzz.
Another possibility is that your have old or faulty wiring in your house. In large cities where there are many homes in close proximity the collective electromagnetic interference from all the electrical devices being used by your fellow citizens can kick up a lot of noise in your audio and video. For this type of situation a full blown power conditioner may be needed. There are many such products on the market.

There is also the possibility that something else in your home may be the culprit. Try unplugging lamps, switching off anything on a dimmer switch, neon lights and lava lamps are often problematic. Also try turning off anything with a motor or a fan as these can cause electromagnetic problems as well.

Other potential sources of hum and noise:

Faulty Power adaptors Ceiling Fans Air Conditioners, purifiers, ionizers Ceramic Heaters Humidifiers, Dehumidifiers Power Tools in use nearby Wireless Electronics

Once you have ruled all these things out only one possibility remains. You actual stereo or AV receiver may be at fault. Sometimes problems with the circuitry in your Stereo or Surround receiver can be the cause of unwanted noise!

Tags: Eliminating, Buzz, Hum, Noise, Home Theatre, Stereo, System

Kidney Stones Be Gone!


Here’s a simple remedy that will hopefully save you from the excruciating pain of Kidney Stones. It doesn’t work for everyone but it’s pretty harmless so you might want to give it a try.


What you’ll need

A six pack of Coke

One bunch of Asparagus



You’re more than likely going want to do this in the morning or you won’t be able to sleep! Also if for any reason you shouldn’t be drinking Coke or eating asparagus, please search elsewhere for a remedy!

Instructions

Drink 1 can of Coke every 20 minutes for 2 hours.

As soon as possible after you’ve finished the last can, boil the asparagus. Don’t overcook it. Use a blender to puree the asparagus, you might want to add a little butter to improve the taste. Eat the pureed asparagus, all of it!


This works best if done on an empty stomach in the mid-morning. This will allow you to have more time to expel any by-products. Drink a large quantity of distilled water immediately after eating the asparagus. The water will flush out your body. The qualities of Coke may dehydrate you, so the water helps to protect you from this. Try to capture the silt that passes and bring it to your doctor, this may aid in preventing future kidney stones. It’s probably best to wait between a couple hours before eating for best results. If the kidney stones are not all passed the first day, repeat the process in approximately 48 to 72 hours. If you have a scheduled surgery, repeat the next day!

Please Note:
We strongly recommend that you visit your doctor to confirm your stone is gone.
Sometimes your pain will subside, yet the stone will still be there. It's possible
that is has simply moved and become stuck elsewhere. If that is the case,
additional procedures will be required to prevent a kidney infection, or UTI
(Urinary Tract Infection). If you are not 100% sure of the stone’s passage,please
visit your doctor to confirm your kidney stone has passed.


This remedy is in no way to be considered a substitute for proper medical advice. Also don’t assume you have kidney stones just because you have some of the symptoms. Consult a licensed medical practitioner whenever possible.

Tags: Remedy, Kidney, Stones, Simple

Flax - The Seed of Good Health
There is a simple food item that you can add to your daily routine that can really benefit your health. Flax seed boasts a plethora of nutrients that can really improve the quality of your life while at the same time helping to prevent disease in the future. Many experts claim that regular injestion of Flax seed can:

• Help prevent Cancer

• Help Fight Cholesterol

• Help prevent Diabetes

• Fight Constipation

• Help Reduce Inflammation

• Ease Menopausal Symptoms

• Help prevent Heart Disease

• Boost the Immune System

There are quite a few ways to add Flax to your diet. You can use your coffee grinder to add it to your cereal or other food items. It has a nutty flavor. Remember that the seeds must be ground up before your body can absorb the nutrients. You can also reap health benefits through use of Flaxseed oil. This can be used in place or in addition to any other oils you use. You can add it to any oil based salad dressing. You can use it in place of oil, butter or margarine in a rice cooker to prevent the rice from sticking. You can even use it in your Wok to stir fry meat and vegetables. All in all flax is a very versatile food item that can have a positive impact on your health.

Tags: Flax, Seed, Good, Health, Oil

Well, American Idol has been on for a few years now and it still boggles my mind that people are so excited about this show. It may be a clever amalgamation of reality TV and a game show. Some of the singers may actually be talented people. Having said this I wonder how many of my favorite singers would actually even make it on the show, let alone win the competition! I mean I do listen to some pretty obscure stuff, but I do count some pretty Iconic people amongst my personal favorites.

Can you imagine a young David Bowie on American Idol? There are few people who even come close to being as prolific or respected in the music industry. He has got one of the most distinctive voices in popular music! I can’t picture him or anyone even close to him appearing on “Idol”. So if that’s the case, what’s the point of it? Some of the best singers in music history have voices that just won’t do the acrobatic tricks that most of the contestants on American Idol trill out like well coiffed poodles jumping through hoops!

When I think about popular singers in general even ones I don’t particularly like, few of them are American Idol material. Freddie Mercury of Queen perhaps, if he would have been willing to submit to some creative dentistry and severely tone down the “gay thing”. I mean we all seemed to like him just fine the way he was and to this day I am in awe of his voice, but that’s just not going to fly these days! I get visions of Simon, telling Freddy to lose the bright yellow suit, giving him tips like “be less flamboyant” and so on!

I think this is all an indication of the contrived nature of popular music these days. No wonder the kids aren’t paying for this stuff! Fake tits, fake talent, audio plastic, 100% creativity free! Every other song is a remake. I don’t blame the artists, why put your heart and soul into a piece of music that, if things go well, could be a really annoying ringtone! And shows like American Idol present this type of music as the paragon of popular music. It’s sad but there is an upside. I saw it at the skate park as I cycled by the other day. No less than five kids all wearing Pink Floyd T shirts!

I guess the point is this. Are Shows like “Idol” an indication that something is wrong with people in general. Is the popularity of the show a harbinger of doom for a music industry that is pretty much on life support as it is? Should more of us be seeking out new independent artists who still have the courage to at least attempt to make a living by writing honest songs and presenting them in an honest way? I have thought about this quite a bit, and if there’s a bright future for music on the horizon, it’s the independent artists NOT the mainstream major labels that we need to pay attention to. When I was a kid we worshipped our idols, perhaps the time has come to start ignoring them!

Tags: American, Canadian, Idol, XFactor, Britian's got Talent

I haven’t been around in Secondlife as long as some people, but I’ve been around long enough to see that things have been on a steady decline for quite some time. Land values continue to plummet and it wouldn’t surprise me to find that more land is being abandoned across the entire grid at this time than at any other time in the history of Secondlife. The removal of in-world casinos was the first blow to what had been a thriving economy and the grid never recovered. Philip Linden’s stepping down as CEO of Linden Labs seems to have heralded an even more lack-luster enforcement of the rules regarding avatar conduct and protection issues for content creators. Add to all of this the removal of the First Land program and the weekly stipends, and it seems like Linden Labs has been systematically trying to destroy the in world economy!

For those of you who are unfamiliar or new to Secondlife, all premium members used to receive a weekly stipend, mine was 400L as I recall. These stipends were of great benefit to the online economy as it enabled people to purchase items for their avatars without having to purchase lindens or find an in-world job. This was a tremendous benefit to the thousands of merchants in secondlife, the very people that create everything you see on every sim. Killing the stipends has created a society of scavengers who don’t buy anything in the game. This is because there are so many sims now that merchants have resorted to camping and freebies to bring people to their land. The hope here is that by giving items away for free the traffic rating of their land will go up and attract paying customers. This is seldom effective. It is a desperate move by merchants to try and continue to do business. If this is obvious to me it should be obvious to those who created Secondlife. However, rather than reward or provide help for those who make all the cool stuff in Secondlife, Linden Labs has abandoned them, but why?

The answer is that linden labs makes it’s money primarily from land tier fees. So as long as they keep selling sims they keep making boatloads of cash.

The other part of the plan is to keep a steady stream of new people coming into the game. So as a merchant if you buy land and because of the adverse conditions in Secondlife you pack it in and sell your land to avoid the tier fees, there’s always another sucker around the corner! There’s no point in making Secondlife a viable place to do business because it doesn’t improve the bottom line. These are not the ideals on which Secondlife was founded and I believe that this is part of the reason that Philip Linden stepped down as CEO of Linden Labs.

The same major problems that plagued Secondlife when I first arrived in the game have never been addressed let alone solved. Vehicles still have the same difficulty crossing sim barriers, transactions fail, inventory disappears into the void never to return. Scripted items perform erratically not due to bad scripting, but because of server side glitches and grid instability. In the face of all this Linden Labs just rolls out a never ending litany of new features, to sell the idea of Secondlife to new people as those of us who lose all faith in SL, either go back to basic accounts or leave the game altogether.

If Linden Labs really cares about the in world experience of their customers they will have to dramatically change the way they do business. Real and enforced protection for content creators must be established and maintained. The stipends must be restored. Creation of new sims must be reduced in order to increase and then stabilize the value of land. Long time problems and stability issues must finally be addressed and dealt with.

In the face of real world economic problems people will be less and less eager to invest time and money in activities that don’t deliver. It is my opinion that Secondlife is in serious danger of falling by the wayside in the increasingly competitive marketplace for online virtual worlds. If Linden Labs wants to stay at the forefront they have to up the ante, but how can they do this?

Well, up to date technology would be a good start. Everything from the SL viewer, to the game engine to the models for the avatars is woefully outdated software that is only used because it can be obtained for free. Current games employ the Havok version 7 software while secondlife has only recently begun using the Havok 4 engine. Even the databases are slow and outdated versions of freeware server software. It’s ironic that it’s against the terms of service in SL to resell freebies because in a way that’s exactly what Linden Labs are doing!

This is all the opinion of one secondlife user, but I know that I am not alone in feeling like Linden Labs doesn’t care about me as a customer, a Secondlife merchant or a content creator. As things currently stand, the second some competitor comes up with a viable alternative to SL I will be very interested in moving my business to a new world with new possibilities. I am not the only one. The clock is ticking Linden Labs, ball is in your court it’s up to you to fix your world before the people who make it what it is simply leave you behind.

Tags: Secondlife, Decline, Death, Dying, Virtual, World