Dusty Chalk

Am I the only one that was completely underwhelmed by Spiderman 2? Just way too mopey, although Mary Jane in a wet shirt almost makes it worth while.

Audioreview.com a little.

It's not even remotely amusing if you look at it from the perspective of someone like me, who doesn't know enough about the internals or behind-the-scenes to see through his bullshit, and then subtract the enlightening aspect of this forum (e.g., a newb on head-fi).

It's just an alternate target market. I'm one of them. My ultimate speakers are probably going to be omnidirectional. The biggest thing for me is that I can wander around -- sweet spot is not focused. When I listen to speakers, I tend not to be in one place. There's also: Gallo Reference line and Due (their little spherical satellites don't count as omnidirectional) Shahinian Acoustics (entire line) MBL (entire line) Duevel (entire line) Mirage (many) and there's an Italian one that I don't remember. My problem is, I'm very particular as to the sound -- I like the Spendor S3/5 / Quad 12L sound a great deal. The bad thing is, omnidirectional speakers are even more sensitive to room interaction than front-shooters are. I've been told by more than one person to just get a dipole. I wouldn't recommend them unless you need omnidirectionality. If you want a bigger sweet spot, just look at the dispersion characteristics of speakers that interest you anyway. Martin-Logan, for example, have excellent dispersion. Final do not.

I'm still in the market for a good, powerful amp. I snoozed on that Bel Canto, and I haven't seen a Musical Fidelity A300CR power amp (not the integrated) in a while when I was liquid (ain't liquid right now). But looking ahead, anyone heard a Pathos amp? It seems to combine power with tube preamplification; so, theoretically, the best of both worlds. Is it? And it needs high frequency extension, that's one thing the MF had in spades -- air. Nice air. Effortless air. And nice extended deep bass. Anyone heard any of the new breed of digital amps with the ICEpower modules? The new Cary, AudioSource, B&O, bunch o' others have that technology. Are they any good?

link So, who are these people? I know pic #2 is Jude; #8 is Mikhail; #11 is Tyll; #13 is Ray. #6, is that Pete Millet? #12 (the other one, not Tyll)? #16, I haven't a clue -- Steve Nugent? The EFF guy and the Ultimate Ears guy are pretty obvious.

Well, yeah, of course crap is readily available.

(jumps on the "I hate GS1000" "GS1000 is not neutral" bandwagon) To me, the frequency response isn't as simple as bimodal -- it hits me as a freakin' roller coaster ride. Blech.

Yeah, that's definitely on my wishlist. I've only read the entire Sandman once, but it still ranks as my single most favourite graphic novel series.

Yeah, he was my favourite author there for a while. In the forward, he mentions an abortion of an adaptation for Weaveworld, for some reason. And there was also the Tapping the Vein series. Don't you think it'd make a great comic?

You should flip through the first couple pages of Marvel Zombies (to see if it's for you) the next time you're in a book store -- all of those are featured in there. It's the funny.

I also recently read Max Zombies and Marvel Zombies, both of which were excellent. I guess I'm just in a zombie mood. I also read the first TP of Clive Barker's Great and Secret Show -- good stuff. Anyone else reading any interesting stuff? Manga welcome here, too, but not to the exclusion of non-manga comics and graphic novels. Any recommendations? I wouldn't mind seeing The Diamond Age converted into a graphic novel mini-series.

I am currently reading Kirkman's Walking Dead series. It's quite good, quite "human" -- reminds me a lot of Y: The Last Man, in a lot of ways (apocalyptic epic).

I know I'm still waiting.

Thanks, I actually found Crucial for not much more than the Centron, I think I'll buy it and return the Centron (it's as yet unopened).

PNY? Centron? KByte? Some unknown brand? Should I buy two sets of two different ones and try them both out? Background: I already bought some Centron, but can buy 4G of PNY for reasonably cheap. Should I? Or is it a move sideways? What are there often sales of? Kingston? Crucial? Are those the two best at this point? I don't need best (not for this computer), I need "Honda" -- cheap (or rather, reasonably priced considering its quality, not Kia cheap) yet reliable. For the one I build myself, then I'll want "BMW" performance.

Looks good. How's the fit and finish in real life? I'll be needing an audio rack at some point.

I was only telling to increase swap first because then it -- theoretically anyway -- should be on a contiguous piece of the hard drive, not that it in itself is speeding effect. Heck, I've even allocated a separate partition for the swap before. Not having your swap file fragged is the speeding effect. There are lots of little hints like this (it's supposed to be some even multiple of your swap plus 12K? ...or something like that), one should find a list of all of those before one rebuilds one's system. Having all your operating system and non-volatile program files in a separate partition is another one. That kind of thing. But the swap thing first is, to me, crucial, hence why I mentioned it. Oh, and why == lazy. Was still going to work on it, and probably still will, but just a little bit overwhelmed right now. I had got to the point where I needed to download all the source for the kernel because the driver needed to recompile it, and that was at 2 in the morning, so I said, "fuck it...for now". And just never got back around to it.

I got mine from Microcenter, which I believe do mail-order. Let us know when you have a couple hundred, because prices fluctuate wildly. Their regular price for the GX270 is US$299. Let's see if this works (it should be a list of their desktops in price order, starting at their cheapest). You should also check pricewatch, though I think they only do parts. I also like to watch the Dell refurb site, but now you're getting into the US$1K range.

In all likelihood, it won't be compatible. Even so, it's probably not your main problem. The combination of CPU speed, bus speed, and other factors dictate your overall system speed. I just bought a new computer for US$250 (refurbished Dell Optiplex GX260), you sure you can't afford that? In only had 1/2 G of RAM, but it was still noticeably faster. I plan on getting 4G more at a later date (possibly this weekend). If you can't even afford that, I would do this: get a new hard drive (40G is probably enough), and rebuild your OS. It saves you the trouble of defragging your hard drive and fine-tuning all your software. First thing after you do that -- before you even run windows update -- is increase your swap space to as much as you can afford. I couldn't do it -- didn't know where all the software was, so I did both -- I reinstalled my OS (switched to linux) and bought the new computer, and the combination is great. The Windows machine has never been on the internet, I save it for all the Windows exclusive stuff, and the linux machine is for email and browsing and downloading only. The only bad thing was that I couldn't use my new widescreen monitor on the linux machine.

Amen!

'Too', not 'to', and 'should've', not 'should of'. And: Ew!

The second one is HDCD.

Yes, we know, your hatred for those phones are well-documented. Shut up already, it's fucking annoying. Comment was directed at A.T.