September 29, 2011 1:06 pm

MP James Moore – Puppet of the Media-Entertainment Complex

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by    in conservitard

Last year just before the conservative government was about to introduce the copyright reform bill (C-32), Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore was at a speaking engagement when he referred to opponents of the bill as “radical extremists.” You can find the details here:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5137/125/

After watching the video, I actually wrote a letter politely asking for clarification of his remarks. Perhaps they were taken out of context or there was some nuance I missed. Unfortunately, I no longer have the letter and needless to say I didn’t get clarification. Instead, I got a form letter that simply restates the same talking points.

Here we are a year later and the C-32 that died is now back as C-11 and will likely pass. What I take away from all this is that James Moore isn’t a politician anyone should take seriously. He calls people names and doesn’t actually respond to his critics in any meaningful way.

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November 16, 2010 9:09 pm

ASIX AX88772 USB ethernet adapter performance

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by    in Uncategorized

I’ve always been skeptical of USB ethernet adapters. An old 10Mb adapter I have in my junk box can barely do 1Mb. I have in my hands a D-Link DUB-E100 adapter. It’s supposed to be able to do 100Mb. I was really expecting to expose the sham that is 100Mbit USB Ethernet adapters. Fortunately, I was very wrong and this device works perfectly. There was no appreciable increase in CPU usage in any scenario. Using mpstat, the %irq column essentially stayed at zero for all tests while using the D-Link.


$ lsusb | grep D-Link
Bus 001 Device 016: ID 2001:3c05 D-Link Corp. [hex] DUB-E100 Fast Ethernet [asix]
$ dmesg | grep eth2
[22867.448692] eth2: register 'asix' at usb-0000:00:1d.7-4, ASIX AX88772 USB 2.0 Ethernet

More: Read the rest of this entry…

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October 9, 2010 9:24 pm

The funniest antijoke ever

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by    in Uncategorized

A gorilla walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a drink. The bartender finds this very peculiar and realizes he is dreaming. He then wakes up and tells his wife about the ridiculous dream he just had. His wife just ignores him, he rolls over and starts to sob because he knows his marriage is in shambles.

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August 17, 2010 11:27 am

Intel Atom based motherboards. Why bother?

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by    in Uncategorized

I recently built a small computer because I wanted to make my own wireless AP and I needed more horsepower than the old WRT54GL could provide. I put together a new system using an Intel D510MO motherboard/cpu combo. Then I started doing the math about what this little system cost me. Here is how it works out.

  • Intel D510MO – $80
  • Minibox M350 – $60
  • Pico PSU – $60
  • 1GB RAM – $30
  • 160GB HD – $60
  • Decent minipci-e wireless card – $40
  • Odds and ends – $20

The total here is about $350. What I ended up with is a cute little underpowered PC that, according to my Kill-A-Watt, draws “only” 19W at idle. Compare this to a Dell Mini 10 which hardware-wise is very similar, but includes a built in UPS (battery), keyboard and monitor for about the same price. I could have saved about $50 if I would have just used a cheap case instead of the minibox/picopsu combo, but then it would have been ugly.

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July 28, 2010 8:16 pm

Beans, how do they work.

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by    in food

Just when you think you have it all figured out, you find something like this right in your own back yard.

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July 13, 2010 9:21 pm

Parasound Zamp v.3

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by    in audio

I like small amplifiers. As you can see in the pictures below, I have a few of them. I also have TA2020 board in need of a chassis and a Gainclone waiting to be assembled. Other “hobbies” have these two projects on back bench for now.

For a while I have been using a Topping TP21 (TA2021 based) amplifier to drive my main speakers. Since it’s only about 12-15 wpc RMS into 4 ohms, I find that it doesn’t quite have enough power for when I really need to rock out. Being a fan of Tripath and class D based amplifiers, I set out to find a more powerful one. Unfortunately, the higher power class D units tend to be expensive. I’m not quite sure why that is. Maybe it has something to do with convincing audiophiles that class D is fine for more than just sub amps.

Instead of overpaying for a 50 wpc class D amp, I bought a $300 Parasound Zamp. This thing is tiny and beautiful. I haven’t taken the lid off yet, but it appears to be a standard class AB using bipolar output transistors. I won’t regurgitate the specs and features, you can read all about it on the Parasound web site. For those concerned about the country of origin of their gear, it’s made in Taiwan.

I used my kill-a-watt style power meter and found that the amp measured 8 watts when “off” and 13-14 watts when on and idle. Blame it on the big-ass toroid in there I guess.

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May 30, 2010 8:10 pm

MP3 streaming with MPD in Ubuntu 10.04

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by    in audio,linux

Nov 13, 2010 update: 0.16 alpha3 build
mpd_0.16~alpha3+git20101108.46ab8d1-0ubuntu1~ripps1~lucid_i386.deb

I have not tested this build! My mpd box is now on 10.10 and I haven’t rebuilt mpd for it yet.

Sept 11, 2010 update: 0.16 alpha2 build
mpd_0.16~alpha2+git20100803.68c02fc-0ubuntu1~ripps1~lucid_i386.deb

June 13, 2010 update: an updated build mpd_0.15.10+git20100608.53f08a9-0ubuntu1~ripps1~lucid_i386.deb

As of mpd 0.15, there is built in support for http streaming as an output.   Rather than using Icecast, mpd does the streaming itself.    By default 10.04 uses mpd 0.15.4, however I had problems getting the built in http streaming to work.   Also, the build included in the repository does not have lame support so it could not stream mp3, only ogg vorbis or possibly flac which many players don’t support. For example, I’m using a Roku Soundbridge with does not decode ogg.

I figured a recompile was in order. The first thing I did was add the mpd trunk PPA to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gmpc-trunk/mpd-trunk/ubuntu lucid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gmpc-trunk/mpd-trunk/ubuntu lucid main

After that, I downloaded the source deb and modified debian/rules and changed DEB_CONFIGURE_USER_FLAGS to include –enable-lame-encoder. 

DEB_CONFIGURE_USER_FLAGS += $(WITH_TREMOR) --enable-sqlite --enable-un   \
--enable-ao --enable-openal --enable-wildmidi --enable-sndfile --enable-pipe-output --enable-lame-encoder

A rebuild required about 800MB of dependencies. The result is the latest version of mpd with built in support for mp3 streaming.

You can grab my .deb here: mpd_0.15.9+git20100520.8945736-0ubuntu1~ripps1~lucid_i386.deb

My mpd.conf has an output section that looks like this:

audio_output {
        type                    "httpd"
        name                  "mpd stream"
        port                    "8080"
        bitrate                 "192"
        format                 "44100:16:1"
        encoder               "lame"
}

To get your device or player to stream properly, you may have to give it a playlist file. This can be hosted on any web server or can even be a local file.

mpd.pls:

[playlist]
NumberOfEntries=1
File1=http://myhost:8080/
5 comments!
March 30, 2010 9:10 pm

I’m done giving Apple Inc. money

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by    in audio

Despite having owned way too many Apple products, I’ve never considered myself a “Mac user”.   Partly because I use Windows and Linux just as much and also because it’s just an operating system and not a drug, I’ve never put myself in the category.  I may buy another Apple computer at some point in the future, but generally I’m going to try and avoid it.  Even though I’ve never owned an iPhone or an iPod touch and I’ve never even thought about developing applications for them, the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement has certainly made me think twice about even buying another Apple product.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-program-license-agreement-all

So what now?  Sansa Clip+.   For $49 it’s pretty hard to go wrong.   The nice smooth integration with desktop software isn’t there, but it works pretty well with gpodder.    It’s so tiny and has a beautiful screen.  It is also very popular with the head-fi audio-nut forum guys.

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September 29, 2009 8:15 pm

Shure SE102 are the same as the E2C/SCL2!

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by    in audio

I mistakenly bought some Shure SE110′s after my E2C’s finally bit the bullet.  More correctly, the cable finally gave out after a few repair jobs involving solder and heat shrink.  Conveniently, my wife left my SE110′s on an airplane.  While shopping for yet another set of headphones, I noticed that the SE102′s were the same shape as my old E2C’s.   An old thread on head-fi (http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/new-se102-old-e2c-rebranded-393597) lead me to believe it might even be the same driver inside.

I didn’t even bother comparing the specs (gasp), I just took the plunge and bought some SE102′s.   Sure enough, they sound just like the E2C’s.   One thing to note is that the SE102′s don’t come with the foam ear pads or the round zipper case.

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July 30, 2009 7:19 pm

Teac PD-H300mkIII

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by    in audio

My search for a small expensive CD player kept leading me back to this Teac unit.   If you want a nice small amplifier, there are probably hundreds of choices, not so for CD players.   I was unable to check it out locally so I took a chance and bought it online for less than $200 CAD.  Thankfully, it does everything right.   It’s very quick to load a disc and change tracks.  All the buttons do exactly what you think and it doesn’t have a lot of extra crap no one uses.  It will read MP3 CD’s which I’d normally file under “extra crap” but that doesn’t get in the way of playing a CD.   I was concerned that it might impact the load time of a normal CD, but if it does, it’s not noticeable.  The only thing I can complain about at this price is the lack of a detachable power cord and maybe a dedicated headphone jack and level control.

How does it sound?  Good, like a CD player should.

Other notes of interest:

  • It’s made in China like every other mass-produced piece of electronic equipment under $1000.
  • The matrix LCD display is very nice but you can’t dim the display.
  • All normal operations for playing a regular CD are accessible on the front panel.  You don’t need the remote for any of it.
  • There is no CD text support.
  • My pictures don’t capture how nice looking this thing is.
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