oogabooga

You can revoke my man card when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers... We may not have guns in Canada, but I've got a crack team of beavers trained to make a dam out of people's bones. That's Blofeld!

Went to the gym for the first time in months... ow.

What movie is that second image from? It looks strangely familiar...

FTFY.

Used Rio Karma off amazon - $20! My current one works but has no power button or jog dial, so it pretty much stays in the dock all the time. Hope to pair it with a $4 IDE to CF adapter I bought off eBay and a yet-to-be-purchased 32GB CF card

I'm pretty sure they've stopped making any systems but you might find some on the bay (although looks like that pair's seen better days). According to the almighty wikipedia all the spare parts are at some unnamed store in Vancouver.

I just stayed home to watch the speech. Didn't get the crowd rolling, but definitely signified a big shift in policy!

I had the 2.1 MM-1000s and, for a time, the 4.1 MM-2000s. The MH-500's are the cheaper hybrid containing a small planar driver and a cone in each "satellite", while the higher models had satellites which were one large, planar driver. I really liked the sound of my MM-1000s... until they started to die - the amp (contained in the sub enclosure) started to go south, and things just stopped working. The MM-2000s are more powerful but tended to have a hiss. Since the setup was in my bedroom and the hiss pissed me off at night, the 2000's went back. I eventually bought Z5500s to replace my broken MM-1000s, but the sound just isn't as good - if I had found MM-1000s for sale at that time I'd've bought them in a heartbeat, even though Monsoon no longer supports/warranties anything I think.

Twas the 3007WFP-HC, but I don't know if those particular Days of Deals are available in the US (although I'm sure Dell does some big sales down there too).

Helped my boss set up his new 40" Sony XBR, surround sound system, HD PVR, and blu-ray. Lucky bugger! Also continued rediscovering the joy of my Rio Karma, after soldering back the battery and thermistor wires that I stupidly yanked on yesterday.

Very true. I especially like when the BBC does state anything that could be construed as an opinion, they preface it with "Our correspondent says", or "in our correspondent's view" or some-such.

Agreed. The networks don't seem to think viewers can draw their own conlusions, IMO. Here in Canada we generally consider "Fox News" to be an oxymoron BBC news (as well as CNN) is broadcast in Canada, so we have a few options to choose from, thankfully. For me it's the delivery of Fox News - from what little I've seen I've found it biased and focussed on the wrong issues at times. Mind you, I am by no means a regular watcher of TV news, so take my comments with a large grain of NaCl. The only "news" show I watch with any regularity is the communistic Daily Show, and its right-wing nutjob counterpart, the Colbert Report.

Everytime I use the triple.fi's "airline adapter" (which is just a resistor), it attenuates the upper-mids and highs more than the rest. Fail.

Crimony! How long did that take you?? Braiding those 1ft RCAs above took me about 1/2 an hour... your run must've taken a day!

Ditto. While I get some news from cbc.ca (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) - I get all my real news from BBC. I still find the US newssites have too much of a focus on US issues (and sometimes too much of a pro-US tilt). I still shudder whenever a US newscaster uses the word "we" in reference to their country - I'm of the firm belief that the newscaster should detach themselves from the story.

Airbrush? I remember those from my model airplane days - they'd give a nice, even coat.

Up here BB is #2, but #1 is its "sister" company Future Shop. From what I've heard Fry's is the geek's dream-store - my boss was in Palo Alto last year and told me I'd be in heaven at a Fry's. I hope they expand northward at some point

I'd like to consider my UE triple.fi 10s as hi-end... triple balanced armatures one for trebles, two for everything else. Often compared to the Westone 3 (three armature, 3-way) and Shure 530 (three armature, 2-way) on HF. I've only heard the TF10s so I won't comment on the others - I find TF10s very clear, good treble extension and solid throughout the entire frequency spectrum. Great isolation and bass when used with Shure "olive" black foam tips. Downsides: Fit can be finicky, and SQ is VERY dependant on tips. The wrong tips will "pinch" over the sound tube and annihilate the treble. I spent a week exploring tip options before finally being happy with my purchase. I did compare them to the "mid-end" super.fi 5 in the store, and I felt the TF10s removed a veil present in the super.fi, especially in the high-end.

Indeed. Only difference is, if I don't like their work I'll simply kill them all and start anew.

Stayed in the lab till 4AM because my goddamn bacteria were taking forever to grow, slept 7 hours, now I'm futzing around with my LD MKII before I have to go back to the lab in the evening.

Thanks for all the details, Spuig. Unfortunately a dedicated mains socket is not an option for me - not enough available in my place. The capacitor bank looks quite interesting - perhaps if I used some good (but not BlackGate good) caps I could build one for less than the $52 Newark wants for the Elpac wallwart.

In Canada I get all that goodly stuff from redflagdeals.com - and yesterday's 30" Dell LCD for $899 was VERY tempting.

One of my first cables - a couple of short RCA-RCA ICs. Just over a foot long, Neutrik NYS352G plugs and Neotech UPOCC 24 AWG in a four-wire round litz braid. Should I heat-shrink the ends? The wire cost ~$7 for the nine feet I needed and the neutriks were $4.49 a pair - making this thing cost $17 CAD... I'd like to eventually make one from silver plated copper, but wonder if there's a better (i.e. cheaper) source than takefiveaudio for this stuff.

Re-he-heally?? Thanks for the insights, Spiug! Is this using the HP out of the MiniDAC or via a dedicated amp?