Dusty Chalk

He's awesome. There's a bunch in that list that I really enjoy, and have heard good things about, live, if not seen them for myself) (MMS&W, Bad Plus, Thievery Corp, Ani[!]).

They look like little dildos.

PS It probably has something to do with Cambridge Audio being a European company. There's this whole overly-protective movement, so they're probably required to cover the B-terminals, because they're unused in most instances, whereas the A-terminals are almost always in use. You know, in case you accidentally touched the two together.

Did you look in the manual?

Whee...

Oh. ...

It does do HDCD. Win! Also -- regarding CODECs, what does it matter? Isn't the computer taking care of decoding the video? I could well be confused on this. Also, not sure how much video can be transmitted on USB2.0 -- anyone know? I know high-def takes up a lot of bandwidth, so I would presume only standard def?

Agreed, but a HTPC won't do SACD or DVD-Audio, AFAIK (I think you may have one or two that will do one or the other, but I know of none that will do both). And it'd be nice to have a single device to do them all, it would prevent having to put a source switcher into anything.

Oh holy shit, it has a USB input. My dream has come the closest is come to coming true (now if it only did HDCD, it would have been perfect).

Cat Wrangling Made Easy: Maintaining Peace and Sanity in Your Multicat Home by Dusty Rainbolt -- the one on the right actually does look like my Karen Carpenter Luvbug. Psycho Kitty: Tips for Solving Your Cat's "Crazy" Behavior by Pam Johnson-Bennett Developing Windows NT Device Drivers: A Programmer's Handbook by Edward N. Dekker & Joseph M. Newcomer Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

I have found that I look best with the Don-Johnson-from-the-80's/French "uber-stubble" look, as I don't have the density to grow a full beard, and I look better with some facial hair than none. Also, I'm fortunate that it's soft enough not to be stubbly when I do it like that. Alas, ever since I started the CPAP/BiPAP, I have to keep it even shorter. Still haven't figured that out yet, but I may have to go clean-shaven in the long run.

Awesome. Remind me to link to photographers' work more often. Welcome to head-case, sorry about your thin skin, it's never/always lupus, House always wins, etc.

Looks good.

Way too young for me...moving on...

Okay, yeah, those are prices I'd pay. I'm not saying North Face is bad, they just seemed overpriced, every time I looked at something by them. The fact that they were head-turning enough to look at tells me I'd still like to own some of their gear. I was probably looking at the low-end gear that you were referring to. Dan -- are there any outlets anywhere near me (and for reference, I usually set my searches to "within 200 miles")? You have to realize, when I went to the North Face site to "find a store near you", I got a bunch of Macy's and Nordstromses. Not exactly the place I look to, to get a deal.

Yuppers.

I'm not familiar with contrastique, she must be (relatively [to my absence]) new.

Is that plainsong you're talking about?

I wore shorts like that to high school once. I think it was me and one other kid. He "made it all better" by raising his fist in solidarity and saying, "Bahama fan club for life!"

Re: option 3 -- rule it out. Inputs? DVD players don't have inputs. Also, if you localize your upsampling/line-doubling/upscaling in the DVD player, you won't be able to go computer-based video later, and you do want that as an option. So you, either make sure the one built in to the TV is good, or get an outboard one (or, get one that's half decent in the TV to begin with, and upgrade to an outboard unit later). I've heard good things about the Lumagen, though I've not experienced one for myself yet.

BTW, just so that no-one misunderstands, there's nothing wrong with being a fan of anime. I, too, am a fan of tv shows and movies, some of which happen to be anime, and I agree that there are some bad ones, too. (What was that elf-hunter one we watched one episode of? That sucked.) But I am acknowledgedly an anime fan, as there are quite a few good ones. If you want to see violence at its absolute finest, watch Elfen Lied. I think like 26 people die before the opening credits of the first episode roll. I don't mean "die by gunshot", I mean, some of them explode in great big red clouds of gelatinous blood, IIRC. I know it sounds psychotic, but it's not -- there's something about gratuitous violence that makes me giggle like a little girl.

Compared to used and DIY (and I don't mean buying someone else's DIY, I mean actually soldering the stuff together yourself), yes; compared to real world market prices of competitive gear, no.

So considering how jacked up their prices are to begin with, that brings them back down to, what, "reasonable"?

They vary. There are some absolutely stupendous scenes, surrounded by some absolutely atrocious scenes. The extended fight in season two (you know which one I'm talking about -- I think it was just over an episode in length?) was absolutely beautiful, and wonderfully intense. I could not stop watching.