LaxX's Xanga

Those nifty time tellers.

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:47:34 GMT

I don't know when I started getting interested in watches. It was definitely within the last few years, probably two years back. It all started with a picture of a Grand Seiko SBGR023. It's a very simple, classic look. A watch that can withstand the test of time. A design like this was in style 25 years ago, is in style now, and will be in style 25 years in the future. It's beautifully crafted, 100% hand made. Put simply, it is a beautiful time piece, one that I would love to own and pass down to one of my children.

It's late, I'll continue this tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:46:55 GMT

God I love my music. I've been listening to Matchbox Twenty all night and they are awesome.

The past 2 years have been very good for me with regards to music. I openned up and allowed myself to try music outside of my usual (used to be rock, rap, and chinese pop) and I've enjoyed almost everything. Everything means country and euro dance are included.

One genre I'm glad I've found is contemporary vocal jazz, especially female vocal jazz. I swear I don't know what I'd listen to most of the time if I didn't have some of the CDs I do. Katie Melua, Susan Wong, Lauren White, Erin Boheme... they are just so awesome. I've also been trying to get into non vocal jazz, but that's proven to be much harder for me. I just rarely enjoy music that doesn't have lyrics, though there are some exceptions. The Jenny Scheinman album 12 Songs is VERY GOOD. About as relaxing as anything can be. It gets alot of play from me when I'm on the LIRR going to and home from work.

There's definitely something about female vocals that just puts me in a trance. The soothing sound, the texture of their voices, it must be a combination of it all. I'd say overall, my playlist consists of at least 75% females. The only time I prefer to listen to male voices are rock and rap. I'm sorry, but I just can't listen to female rappers (of course there are exceptions), and I rarely listen to r&b. It's just not my thing as of right now. As for rock, it's impossible to not enjoy Metallica, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, Matchbox Twenty, and so many more. 90's music is the besttttttttttttttt.

And music is all that much more enjoyable on great speakers, great amplification, and a great source. I'm having an awesome time listening. I've been putting in at least an hour a night just listening to music and doing nothing else. It's so relaxing everyone should try.

Back in the Game

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:27:52 GMT

A little under 2 years back, I got into a little hobby called photography. I like to take pictures, but at the same time, I'm very lazy. Sometimes, I'll bring my whole camera setup and not take a single picture. It's a bad habit, and one I'm trying to fix. It's such a waste to lug a heavy backpack and not use it at all.

At the beginning of summer, I took a decent amount of pictures. By the end of summer, I wasn't taking any. I think I got a bit burned out as there were just too many events. So many opportunities and I was getting tired of not being in the action, sidelined with the camera.

This past weekend got me back in the game. A few months back, Alvin told me to sign up for a photography workshop called Digital Days. I was a bit hesitant at first, but then thought, hey, why not. It was this past Saturday and Sunday, and I found it pretty fun. Saturday was a 4 hour seminar that taught me nothing, but Sunday had a few models for us to try and get a few good pictures. It was fun, but very hectic. It's not fun competing with a ton of other people (some had real bad B.O.), and only having a 70-200mm and 85mm didn't help either. I'd have to stand pretty far back, so people kept walking right in front of me. I know they saw me with my camera held up, so I'm not going to take any excuses like, "I didn't know you were taking a picture", from anyone. Also, Sunday's workshop introduced me to Adobe Lightroom 2. It's a pretty nifty program.

Today, Alvin and I went to the Bronx Zoo. I thought we were going to go earlier in the morning, but something went wrong on his end and we didn't head out from my house until 12:45 or so. By the time we got there, we only had a little over 3 hours. I would have prefered to see a few more animals, but overall, it was good enough. It was fucking cold today.

The snow owl had Alvin and myself laughing for a good few minutes. He was HILARIOUS!!

O rly?
Ya rly!
Juggernaut helmet!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:27:29 GMT

And another chapter is about to begin.

The past few months have been a roller coaster of emotions for me. I've had my fair share of ups and downs and for the most part, those feelings were new to me. Everyone who knows me knows that I'm an emotionless person. But I've been anything but emotionless, I don't think any of my friends can argue with that. So thanks to those of you who've been/are there when I needed to talk to someone.

Now on to other news. Since then, I've been trying to get in shape (more in shape actually as I don't have a set goal). For the most part, I hit the gym 3 times a week, use the elliptical/jog a few days a week, and try to keep to better eating habits. I think it's paid off decently. I'm not worried about losing x pounds per week. I'm fine as long as I feel good. I'm enjoying it for now, but I have a feeling this feeling won't last long.

As for work, I'm currently programming at a small finance firm (not for long, two more days). The experience cannot be compared to my previous job. Sitting on the trade floor (the view is amazing), hearing the commotion about our current market, and most importantly, no cubicle, has been nothing short of awesome. Sadly, things come to an end and it's time to move forward.

In comes my good friend Pat. He's always been there for me, always looked out for me. He tried to hook me up with a job last year when my previous employment went poof (bankrupt), but that didn't work out due to circumstances. This year, an opportunity arose and he asked if I was interested. I figured I had nothing to lose so I passed my resume over. Two weeks later, I'm on the phone discussing a start date.

A few weeks back, Pat and I were talking and he brought up something I've thought about before. He said that I was a lucky guy when it comes to my career and how things tend to fall into place. I can't argue with that. Finding a job has been smooth for me. Keeping the job... well, that on the other hand has been VERY difficult for me, lol. I suppose it's out of my control, but I'd like to stay at the same company for more than a year for once.

No more business casual. Hello jeans and a t-shirt. That's a very welcome change. =]

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:19:18 GMT

A man’s gotta do
what a man’s gotta do
Don’t plan the plan
If you can’t follow through

Monday, May 12, 2008

Mon, 12 May 2008 19:49:15 GMT

I think this is one of the funniest pics I've seen on the internet before. I can't stop laughing when I read it.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:18:29 GMT

Starcraft: The Board Game (SCBG)

So Dave and I picked this up yesterday afternoon and drove home quite excited to break the box open to see what was in store for us. Upon arriving at his apartment and cracking the box open, we were a bit overwhelmed with the innards.

What's that under there?

It comes with 180 game figures (Battlecruisers, Ultralisks, Dragoons, and Tanks were definitely cool), 9 sheets of Cardboard printouts, 6 Reference Cards, 6 Character sheets, a 45 page instruction manual, and I can't remember what else. Of the 180 pieces, there were 3 broken flying units, one blue and one red Battlecruiser as well a yellow Scout. Their plastic bases were broken, so it's not too bad, just a little crazy glue to get them back up. Aside from that, it was pretty impressive.

Wowza!

We started reading the instruction manual and were feeling pretty confident about playing... a mere 6 hours later. I don't even know what to say about the game. It's fantastic. The amount of strategy involved is just amazing. It's something you have to play to believe.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:25:48 GMT

Good, but very sad, article of a hobby I enjoy so much.

45 Years of Stereophile

John Atkinson and J. Gordon Holt, November, 2007
***************

It was 45 years ago this month that the first issue of Stereophile, just 20 pages in length, went in the mail. It had been founded by one J. Gordon Holt. Gordon had been technical editor of High Fidelity magazine in the 1950s, and was tired of being asked to pander to the demands of advertisers. "I watched, first with incredulity and then with growing disgust, how the purchase of a year's advertising contract could virtually insure a manufacturer against publication of an unfavorable report," he said in a 1974 article looking back at those dark times. And if a company didn't buy advertising, they didn't get reviewed at all. The Stereophile, as it was then called, was Gordon's answer to audiophiles' need for an honest, reliable source of information. "Okay, if no one else will publish a magazine that calls the shots as it sees them, I'll do it myself," he later wrote.

The issue you hold in your hands is No.334, and the 252nd I have edited since I took over from Gordon as the magazine's editor in May 1986. Gordon remained with us as Chief Tester until his resignation in August 1999, and I believe Stereophile still hews true to the goals he established in 1962: to review audio components by doing exactly what its purchasers will do—listen to them—and to publish the truth about what its writers hear and think. Gordon called 'em as he heard 'em: we still do and always will.

To celebrate Stereophile's 30th anniversary, Gordon gave a speech at a dinner the magazine hosted at the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. The text of that speech was reprinted in our September 1992 issue, and it makes for disturbing reading:

"We seem to have come to a tacit agreement that it's no longer necessary, or even desirable, for a home music system to sound like the real thing. We speak in hushed and reverent tones about reproducing the ineffable beauty of music, when in fact much real music is harsh and vulgar and ugly. We design the all-important musical midrange out of our equipment in order to try—vainly, I might add—to recreate the illusion of three-dimensional space through what is essentially a two-dimensional reproducer. And whenever we hear a loudspeaker or a CD player that shows subversive signs of sounding more 'alive' or 'realistic' than most, we dismiss it out of hand as being too 'forward' or 'aggressive.' As if a lot of real music isn't forward and aggressive!

"The idea that all we are trying to do is make equipment that gives the listener some sort of magical emotional response to a mystical experience called 'music' is all well and good, but it isn't what High End is all about. In fact, high fidelity was originally a reaction to the gorgeously rich-sounding console 'boom boxes' that dominated the home-music market during the 1940s!

"We've lost our direction....The High End in 1992 is a multi-million-dollar business. But it's an empty triumph, because we haven't accomplished what we set out to do. The playback still doesn't sound 'just like the real thing.' People, let's start getting back to basics. Let's put the 're' back into 'reproduction.' Let's promote products that dare to sound as 'alive' and 'aggressive' as the music they are trying to reproduce."

Strong stuff. Fifteen years later, Gordon is comfortably retired in Boulder, Colorado. I e-mailed him Labor Day to ask him about that 1992 polemic. My questions are in italics, followed by Gordon's unexpurgated answers.

Do you still feel the high-end audio industry has lost its way in the manner you described 15 years ago?

Not in the same manner; there's no hope now. Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes. As Art Dudley so succinctly said [in his January 2004 "Listening," see "Letters," p.9], fidelity is irrelevant to music.

Since the only measure of sound quality is that the listener likes it, that has pretty well put an end to audio advancement, because different people rarely agree about sound quality. Abandoning the acoustical-instrument standard, and the mindless acceptance of voodoo science, were not parts of my original vision.

I remember you strongly feeling back in 1992 that multichannel/surround reproduction was the only chance the industry had for getting back on course.

With fidelity in stagnation, spatiality was the only area of improvement left.

As you were so committed to surround, do you feel that the commercial failures of DVD-Audio and SACD could have been avoided?

I doubt it. No audio product has ever succeeded because it was better, only because it was cheaper, smaller, or easier to use. Your generation of music lovers will probably be the last that even think about fidelity.

Judging by online forums and by the e-mail I receive, there are currently three areas of passion for audiophiles: vinyl playback, headphone listening, and music servers. Are you surprised by this?

I find them all boring, but nothing surprises me any more.

Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?

Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.

Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio.

Yet you achieved so much, Gordon.

I know I did, and my whole excuse for it—a love for the sound of live classical music—lost its relevance in the US within 10 years. I was done in by time, history, and the most spoiled, destructive generation of irresponsible brats the world has ever seen. (I refer, of course, to the Boomers.)

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:31:28 GMT

The moon is pretty cool. A few weeks back, I stayed up for the perseid meteor shower and didn't see anything that night. A few nights ago, I was outside and thought the moon was rather bright and with such a clear sky, I figured I'd go snap some pics. I knew about the eclipse, but I was too tired from rearranging my room I didn't wake up in time to see it. =[

Monday, June 25, 2007

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 04:11:50 GMT

Fucking awesome.

Picked up a new lense today and had a session with it around Times Square today with Teddy. It was pretty fun I think we both learned a little.