cygweb

I took the 18" cab apart for the first time in years to inspect the wiring and vacuum it out. The Black Widow (Model 1801-8) is in great shape. It's over 10 years old and the cone seems to be holding up well. I took the opportunity to aurally inspect the output of my MB-1 preamp, and it's clean. Connecting that to a Carvin F150 amp confirmed that the 18" cab sounds fine. That leaves my venerable ADA B500B power amp that's introducing distortion. I've never even looked cross-eyed at it; I'll be checking out its insides for the first time. At the very least, it can probably use a cleaning. The F150 will be an OK power amp in the meantime; I'm not playing out with the rig... yet. ;)

30.3MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 06m 17s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 14th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 8. Just five weeks left in the fantasy season; this is the time to prepare for your run to the playoffs. We're here to help.

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

Tomorrow at work will be the first time I present a dual-socket dual-core Opteron server as a competitive quote to a four-processor single-core Xeon server. It'll be interesting to see how that flies; we've only brought in a few Opteron-based servers at this point.

Update: It didn't fly. Despite the fact that we're running lots of test/dev on Opteron (via VMware) there's still uneasiness about application compatibility. I guess AMD's message, reviews, and success stories haven't gotten as wide of press as I thought. I've been asked to educate application managers about Opteron servers. We'll see how that goes.

Read via Ross that the Patriot News published an article about local bloggers. Perhaps they'll come calling 'round these parts when they cover local podcasters.

If PennLive were as diligent about hypertext as they are about ad layout, the online version of the article could have been even better. Here are the missing links (in order of reference):

• Jonathan Smith: GreenCracker
• Ally Eskin: Who Moved My Truth?
• Ernie McClellan (EJ): datSPOT
• Chuck Rollason: Chuck's Daily
• Kenneth LeFebvre: Along the Way ...
• Ross M. Karchner: Ross Notes
• Scott Buffington: Nitevilla
• Amy Kelsey: In These Shoes? I Don't Think So
• Terry Pinder: Terry In The Big City
• Julia Rietmulder-Stone: sunsetchaser.net

I'll be visiting the blogs I didn't know about already soon.

Dick's decision to go for a win rather than face the perils of overtime was supremely classy on a day when much of the press revolved around a particularly selfish player. On the last play of the KC-Oakland game, Larry Johnson punched it in for the game-winning TD. This is why we watch the game.

32.1MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 10m 10s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 15th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott, Don and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 10. We bid a certain player adieu, talk about some of the highlights of the week, I show what song I think of when Bears WR Muhsin Muhammad is mentioned, and we reveal our favorite refs.

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD. The mystery song revealed in the podcast is attributed appropriately, and only a short sample is played. Cool your guns.

I cleaned out the insides of my ADA B500B bass bi-amplifier earlier this week with compressed air and cleaned up the pots with contact cleaner. The low-end buzz I mentioned is gone. Now I'm re-tweaking my custom patches on my MB-1 to try to come up with some neat sounds.

Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (Widescreen Edition)

by Twentieth Century Fox Home Video

Like many other geeks, I went out and bought Revenge Of The Sith on its street date. I finally sat down to watch it last night, but since it was late and no one else was watching with me, I used the computer and headphones. Like many others I've read, I think it ranks above episodes 1, 2, and 6 (ROTJ); the fact that it was conceived to tie into episode 4 predestined it to some sort of success.

I usually use the second viewing of a movie like this to watch the special effects; I'm still marvelling at the fluidity of the digital characters. Sometimes the physics were a little "off", like in the Spider-Man movies, but for the most part it was great fun. For some reason, I didn't cringe as much as the first time during the Anakin/Padme scenes.

I think the end of the Anakin/Obi-Wan fight could have been written better. Obi-Wan says, "I have the high ground." Anakin jumps anyways and is defeated seemingly easily. Perhaps a better ending was lost on the cutting-room floor.

If you have a hole in your Star Wars DVD collection, go and fill it. If you bought episodes 1 and 2, you've got nothing to lose!

I've yet to fully listen to this podcast from CBC Radio 3 that Tim Bray pointed to, but I had to blog about it. It is the most impressively produced podcast I've seen anywhere, from a container perspective. They've made excellent use of bookmarks and multiple embedded images in the 128kbps AAC file they produced. This was the first bookmarked file I'd seen and used on the iPod Nano; when I first saw the little ticks on the progress bar I thought the darn thing was broken. ;)

I'll comment on the content after I've had a chance to listen. These comments concern podcast #25.

Update (11/16): I'm listening to it this morning. This is some great music and a great format. Subscribe!

30.9MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 07m 35s

This is the 16th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 11. We talk about Gruden's "half-Vermeil", I reveal another song I associate with an NFL player and his coach, and we forget to reveal our picks for the week 11 games. We review the current NFL standings and start thinking about the playoffs.

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD. The mystery song revealed in the podcast is attributed appropriately, and only a short sample is played. Cool your guns.

I've been playing with Byrne Reese's Media Manager plugin for the last month and a half, and with the recent RC3 release, it's definitely time to give it some props. I've only got a few items in my queue so far, but I'll be adding more regularly now that I'm starting to tap the power of the plugin.

I linked two of the items to my prior blog entries and used to the plugin's excellently-integrated navbar in the MT entry-editing interface to replace my hand-coded product links with sharper-looking image/title/review boxes:

• September 29, 2005: Cyg's Review: King's X - Ogre Tones
• August 18, 2005: New OLP - Healthy In Paranoid Times

Also, as I referenced on the MM blog (and Byrne responded positively to), I've created an MT template that produces a valid RSS 2.0 feed with entries that correspond to the items in the Media Manager queue. It's here; feel free to customize and re-use. Thanks to Byrne and company for this great new MT plugin.

Today was a day of raking and burlapping here. Once I apply some Scotts Winterizer to the lawn and dig out our shovels, we'll be ready for some snow. Ryan's finally at the age (5) where he has both the size and the patience (remarkably) to be a good leaf bag holder. We worked on the yard for close to two hours together.

When I'm working/reading on the computer for an extended time, I'll usually listen to the in-house "hi-q" version of the ICYG stream. A little game I'll sometimes play is to say to myself, "I'll stop listening when a song comes on I don't want to hear." That's getting harder and harder; part of that is that I recently tuned the songpicker algorithm to favor those who are logging listening time. A lot of my submissions come up as a result, but so do many of several other members'.

ICYG is the future of radio.

Speaking of the future of radio, imagine this. You're in your car and you have XM or Sirius (or equivalent). You think of a song you'd like to hear, so you tell the radio. It confirms your selection and the backend service queues it up for play on one of thousands of available jukebox channels and tells your radio. As soon as the current song is done, the radio does a nice auto-fade to the channel your request is queued on, and in a few minutes you're listening to it. After it's done, the channel continues to play related artists' songs, hoping it's piqued your tastes.

Wow, a radio that might actually let a user program it. A lot more fun and easy-to-use than having to carry your music in the car on a long trip. Whaddya think?

Melissa and I went and saw HP4 Sunday night. Like the other movies, it was a lot of fun. Unlike the other movies, it's rated PG-13. The subject matter isn't necessarily more grave than in the last two films, but the fact that a character dies makes the film a bit weightier.

The tri-wizard tournament that drives the plot is a great excuse to infuse new blood into the series, in the form of students from two other wizard schools. It worked for me. The tournament itself was pretty cool. I thought the Christmas ball in the middle of the movie was a good chance for the film to explore teen angst, but I don't think the secondary characters were fleshed out enough for us to care who Harry, Ron, and Hermione went to the dance with. There just seemed to be something missing. It was still fun, though.

The effects continue to be first rate. I think they probably cut this down from a 3-hour movie. I'm betting fans of the book think it could have been even longer. I haven't ready any of the books, and I saw the first two movies out of order, but I've enjoyed all of them. This series epitomizes character building, and it's great that a lot of the recurring characters continue to be played by the same actors.

Definitely worth catching on the big screen; some of the panoramic shots just won't translate well to smaller screens. A no-brainer if you liked the previous movies. One thing I liked about this one is that it didn't start in Harry's foster family's home. That schtick was getting a little tiresome.

The Superman Returns and King Kong trailers were attached to this film. At this point I think I'm going to dig KK better. I'm usually a nut for superhero movies. Perhaps the non-teaser Superman trailers will interest me more. I always was more of a Marvel guy. (C'mon X3!)

30.2MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 66 minutes (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 17th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 12. We talk about this great slate of close and meaningful games (except some of the late Sunday ones), I reveal another song I associate with an NFL player, and we look forward to the Indy-Pittsburgh game next Monday night. Don't forget to submit your picks/players early; there are games tomorrow! We worked to get this podcast out quickly so we can get ready to enjoy a great turkey dinner. Happy Thanksgiving!

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD. The mystery song revealed in the podcast is podsafe - thanks Brad!

We went out to my parents' on Wednesday for the beginning of Thanksgiving weekend. My sister Candace's family came out, too, so we got to spend a lot of time with them. Given time to "warm up", my little niece Hailey was very friendly and I had a fun time playing with her. We're going to a friend's wedding in Philly later today, so we came home last night sans Ryan, who is staying with Grandma and Grandpa until tomorrow. We'll go pick him up tomorrow afternoon and then come back home. No NFL for me until at least tomorrow night. Although I'm looking most forward to the Monday night matchup of the Colts and Steelers.

We read that Alias was cancelled. I think it was inevitable given the changing time slot each season, the change in characters this season, and the loss of Michael Vartan from the cast, just as his character was about to become a dad. I could deal with where the show was going, but I think the major changes that occurred each season in the storyline was just too much for more casual viewers to deal with. If someone watching one of the syndicated shows tuned into one of this season's shows, they'd be pretty confused. I think it's the nature of serialized shows like Alias to require a fan base that's going to watch every episode and want to roll with the changes. And that means the writing and characters have to be top-notch. Lost is doing that. Alias is not.

I picked up the R30 DVD/CD set and I've ripped and listened to some of the music on the CDs. The show was mixed with less crowd noise than Rush In Rio, so I like it much better. The audio is loud, but pleasing. I listened to about half of the show at work the other day without being annoyed at the recording. I've had issues with Rush's audio engineering ever since Vapor Trails. The R30 show I went to in Scranton was a lot of fun and I think that's been captured well from their Frankfurt show. The concert on the DVD is listed as anamorphic widescreen. Can't wait until I have some time on my good HDTV/stereo setup to check it out at full volume.

33.5MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 13m 20s

This is the 18th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott is busy with fatherly duties this week, so Don and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 13. Don also talks about this year's Grey Cup game (the CFL championship). With one week left in the BDFL regular season, we summarize the playoff picture. And Don and I talk about doing a hockey-related podcast.

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

We went as a family to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra show at the Giant Center in Hershey on Monday night. Melissa picked up their first CD last Christmas, and I was familiar with "Sarajevo 12/24", but other than that I didn't know much more. When Melissa suggested going a few months back, we were a little skeptical about spending $120+ for the tickets, but we figured that's pretty good for a concert these days.

I enjoyed the show. There were so many performers it felt like a mix between a rock concert and a Broadway show. The first half was a narrated version of "Christmas Eve and Other Stories", and the second half was assorted material I wasn't familiar with. I was familiar with some of the musicians; I'd read about Alex Skolnick and Mark Wood in Guitar magazine years ago.

Looking at their site and reading relevant Wikipedia entries, it's neat that the guys from Savatage morphed into an act (actually, two acts tour as TSO - "-East" and "-West") that attracts such a broad audience. There were people of many ages and dress there to see the show. I would recommend you see it once if you think you'd like your Christmas music served via classical shredding.

Just watched about 1/4 of the R30 concert DVD on my computer with the surround setup. Nice. I'm digging this much more than Rush In Rio.

Just happened to browse over and see that the Icecast team released v2.3.1. What makes me the happiest:

Fixes for 2.3.1
[..]
An audio glitch was possible in playback of vorbis streams when a new logical stream started (eg metadata update).

I've noticed this from time to time over the course of listening to ICYG. I think I even posted about it to Oddsock's forums, thinking it was a Oddcast problem. That reminds me, I have to upgrade to the recent Oddcast v3.1.6 release as well. Thanks to Oddsock for continuing to work on this stuff.

Update (12/1): Took advantage of an unexpected breaker trip (darn basement heater) to get Icecast and Oddcast upgraded. Things sound great. I'll have to listen closely to the stream to see if the metadata skip is truly gone.