episiarch

Back on topic, please. *Points to thread title.* The Apple Tablet's healing rays will cure the zombie virus infection in its early stages (pre-mortality). The Apple Tablet will be thin enough to use as a decapitation weapon for those zombies it is too late to save. Power users will be able to fling their Tablet through multiple zombie-necks and have it automatically return to them (auto-return to be shipped in iPhone OS 4.0 as well). Apple is lobbying to make this an event for the 2012 Olympics but there is still a dispute about whether GPS assist will be allowed, so it is possible this feature won't be announced on Wednesday. Carry on.

Any chance of making the go-to-first-new-post icon a little bigger? It's pretty much my main way of navigating, and the old icon was a lot easier to hit than the new one. (And yeah, I'm sober.)

Don'cha mean Kraft Cream Eggs as of a few days ago? Gad, and Cadbury owned Green & Black's. Now my house chocolate comes from the Cheez Whiz people.

s/popular entertainment today/the way MBAs think/ Yeah. Sorry.

I agree, lots of people don't understand this. (I particularly remember one "Use a K501 portably? You'll have to strap a car battery to your butt" thread over on HF.) But from a business perspective it's probably best if even underinformed customers aren't disappointed. Defaulting to the 'traditional' gain sounds to me like safest thing to do. Seems a little easier from a wiring perspective too.

I tried a couple similar products - not from these people - a few years ago. One was custom molded and one was generic-in-assorted-sizes. In both cases they were pretty awful SQ-wise, but of course I can't speak for this one. To judge from the fitting process, these really have to be generics (size preselected based on your photo), but IMO the price is on the high side for that. Of course if for $30 I could really get my Jawbone headset to fit properly, then I wouldn't care whether it was custom or not -- but the warranty is solely against defects and doesn't appear to cover dissatisfaction over fit. So personally I'll pass. As a business case study, though, it's kind of interesting. Stock a selection of generic parts, and charge $30 to choose one pair on your behalf rather than, say, $20 to ship a full fit kit with a range of sizes. A nice markup for the custom-feeling service, and a reduction in cost of goods sold as well.

With a K501 and quiet source material I've actually used perhaps up to 70% of the pot range of a Headamp Gilmore Lite - which I think has the default 11 gain. Most of the time, though, with most of my headphones, I'm in the bottom third or so of the dial. And none of my amp-worthy earphones are the sensitive ones that people are buying today. So I concur, an option of 2 or maybe 3 seems reasonable.

Koss Custom Fit Noise Isolating Earbuds - $10 + $5 shipping - woot.com Today only. Not a really exciting deal for purposes of most of us here, but I'm mentioning it since Koss is topical these days. Not that purchasing these is likely to do them much good, since this seems to be a discontinued model that has been remaindered other places as well.

All that money embezzled, all those expensive clothes and charity balls, and the paper doesn't even have a flattering and properly lit file photo of her. That should make the orange jumpsuit extra poignant.

Amen to this. We shoot RAW+JPEG - that is, camera stores both - and usually the camera's white balance is excellent. But for those occasions where the shot is genuinely worth the time to tweak carefully, it's great to have raw. I shoot with a D90 and besides very good auto-WB it also does some highlight/shadow correction that seems to work really well. Also I tend to switch among saturation profiles depending on what I'm shooting. Having this stuff applied in-camera saves me some effort. Possibly more importantly, because the results are usually very good already, it helps protect me from the temptation to waste time trying to tweak the hell out of every usable picture, which was something of a temptation when I was shooting RAW only.

I don't know much about being a playa, but I didn't think that was the hormone you were supposed to OD on in that situation. Seriously, looks like a lovely occasion. I actually haven't been to tea like that in England yet (did in Dublin, it was fantastic). Now the important question: what tea did you have?

FWIW I see a single-ended B22 on Head-Fi right now . . . FS: Three Channel Beta22 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

Driver wars indeed. Just got the tweet: JH Audio Audiophiles and Pros meet the newest innovation from JH Audio: the JH16. The JH16 is our 8 driver, 3 way, triple bore IEM. Pre order now, ships mid-March. Edit: more details from Jude

Happy birthday, Grahame!

Bought a new vacuum to replace the one that died yesterday. The old one was fairly good, but this one's a bit more powerful. It quite literally wants to suck the wall-to-wall right up off the floor. The toddler's food-crumb trail stands no chance whatsoever.

I have a Fiio E1 (the unit MASantos linked to in the OP). It's good for making some earphones that really don't need an amp sound better. It's really not good for making earphones that do need an amp sound properly amped. I like it very much with my d-jays and Denon C551. It's pretty good with the V-moda Vibe II. It's a sonic negative with Etymotic hf2, which sounds much better without it. It is hopeless with Etymotic ER-4, Yuin PK-1, Senn PX100, etc. Anything beyond an already very efficient earphone, in other words. Don't know at all how it would go with your brother's UEs. So, yeah, this isn't a really helpful post, sorry. But at $25 it's hard to go too far wrong. For some purposes the inline remote/volume control on the E1 could be worth that by itself.

I have an auld acquaintance / current Facebook friend who says he does this. At least at night. Child sleeps diaperless, pajamas and crib cover get washed . . . well, pretty often, I would hope, but he didn't actually say. Not clear to me how it's an improvement over diapers. I suspect it's more of a political statement. We use fancy-schmancy washable diaper systems with the impermeable outer layer and the ultrapermeable inner layer and various degrees of absorbent lining in between, yada-yada, and they're great but you do wind up doing lots of laundry. Takes a little time to reassemble them after washing too, but that can be done while reading Head-Case in the morning or whatever.

Possibly a valid point. Can't speak from experience. But after the ritual torching I'd likely have to get another and make it into a desk before Mrs. episiarch finds out. So I still claim, it turns into a desk. Edit: but that is pretty much how Mrs. e felt about the breast pump (AKA The Noisy Machine) once that was done with. So maybe she'd understand.

I've gotten Etys custom-sleeved. It was not a sonic upgrade, but was a fairly big practical upgrade in that it made proper fit much less fiddly.

Broke my vacuum cleaner. Which is a problem, because I have a majorly crumb-scattering toddler. Which reminds me. Congratulations! Add me to the list of people you can ping for suggestions, or, really, start the Gear Recs For Newborns thread -- there's no shortage of material. Shortlist of our gear: - Baby Bjorn worked for us. She haaated the sling. - Love the Maxi-Cosi infant car seat system. Ultra secure, easy to snap the base into the car and know that it's in securely. - Graco infant car seat was perfectly good, but way more work to get really, really securely into the car. - Stokke Xplory is our around-town stroller. It's great but a pain to get into the car. - Quinny Zapp is our travel stroller. Very nice. - If I had to make the stroller decision over again I'd be looking hard at Quinny Buzz. Most of the benefits of the Xplory but easier fold/unfold when it goes in the car. And Maxi-Cosi car seats and Quinny strollers interoperate. - Stokke Sleepi crib. - Forgot which brand of breast pump...but the expensive-but-effective one. Had to get an emergency backup pump one night when nothing but Target was open, and tried the second-best brand. Slow and awful. Don't do it, get first-best. And the who-woulda-guessed? award goes to possibly our favourite piece of gear of them all, the Stokke Care changing table. Comfortable working height, solidly built, plenty of storage, attractive. Never imagined we'd feel so much affection for a changing table. Oh, and it turns into a desk or bookshelf when she's older.

And they completely failed to season the mugs. What were they thinking?

That was the first thing I thought too.

Sounds like a good choice, and congratulations. Just got the latest issue of Fortune a couple days ago and its cover story is Hyundai smokes the competition - Jan. 5, 2010

How about a 64GB iPod Touch? At $399 it's a bump upward in price, but consider: - solid state - very fine SQ - wirelessly update your podcasts (assuming you park in wifi range of home) - run accelerometer, decibel-meter and other (possibly driving-related and possibly not) apps on it