more to follow soon I guess, I have my acceptance committee thing on Tuesday morning so I’ll hear then if the school wants me. one presumes the best heh, but we will see. I kinda also think I need to go on holiday. and get on the mtb. I haven’t been since my holiday in Norway! fuck!

thanks r.stevens!

So, house. It was pretty I have to call the broker tomorrow to schedule another appointment, that is to say, if I can actually speak for longer than a minute without sounding like I habitually gargle with diesel. In fact, gargling some diesel sounds like a good idea atm.

So, nerditry. To relieve the boredom of being home, I’ve played completely through the computer game The Witcher, which was fun but featured some of the worst voice acting ever. I’ve watched the entire season 1 of Dexter, which was pretty cool as I managed to miss it when it came out and had only seen a random episode here and there. I’ve configured my internet server thingy, this thingy in fact, that you’re reading this web page off of, to accept encrypted log-in’s for the sending of email, which is good, and while I was at it I configured it to use RRDtool to graph pretty stats for me so I can see how many spams are caught by the tarpit, and how many non-compliant emails (aka also spam) are dropped by my vigorous mailer looking at  headers, and how many valid emails I am sending and receiving. Great fun. Oh, yeah, and while I was doing all that, I ditched my apache2 for a different http daemon. Also good fun. Poor lickle server never knew what hit it

Anyway, all this has resulted in my sleep cycle being completely wrecked, which is prolly why I am wide awake at 4am listening to the rain, typing this blog, and coughing, one mustn’t forget the coughing. Time to make some tea with honey

some of you, all zero people who read this not-a-blog, know that I am inclined to occasionally dabble in things that are (usually technical) experiments to see if I can do stuff…erm… differently to the norm. In this case, I recently became a convert to the power of the so called High End cabling on hifi systems, power, speaker, interlink, you name it. I’ve become a convert, based mostly on the power cable that my friend Dennis lent me.

Ofc, I am also a cheap cunt, so even though looking at audiophile websites offerings of cables makes me moist, it also makes my wallet wince, twitch, fart, and all kinds of other things it normally doesn’t do, not to mention stimulate my disbelief of things that may or may not be marketing. Long crystal ultra pure oxygen free yadda yadda schmadda schmadda. Sure. Well, almost sure. This would be so easy to dismiss were it not for the borrowed power cable in my system that is certainly making it sound better. In fact, for even more jollies, imo it is also giving me a better picture on my TV, and that’s not even hooked up to the cable! O_0

Ok, while talking about the cable to a friend, I was pointed to a website called audiofriends where there was a collection of interesting tips, pictures, you name it, and also a couple pages on why ultra-high-end cables are for fools (my words, not theirs). Literally music (sic) to my ears you could say, and I read the pages with avid curiosity.  In these pages I was introduced to the Aircom Plus co-axial antenna cable which is a monster (10.8mm!!) cable with an equally monstrous core of 2.7mm. Like, wow! So, twitching to experiment as I was, the Aircom turned out to be not that disgustingly expensive at about 4 euros per meter. Not bad, as the cable I had been considering getting was a scary 27epm or about 570e more expensive for the fearsome 24 meters I would require to make two three-meter bi-wire cables to connect my amp to my speakers. Holy shit!

Before I knew it I had actually bought some of this cable, and sat back to suck it up and wait. Soon it arrived, and I set about making the imagined product. This is what 25 meters of Aircom look like:

I set about turning this monster in to 8 three meter pieces, stick them in some confectionery, strip them and finally hook them up to my hifi set. To do this I used a fine hacksaw to cut the cable into manageable chunks, and a very sharp knife to dress the pieces, While working on the cable segments I had to resharpen the knife several times, which should give you an idea just how tough this monster is.

In the above pictures you see the eight segments. Assembling the segments into two red pairs and two black pairs. Assembling and dressing the red and black pairs.  The amp side of one bi-wire pair. Please excuse the quality of the images, my phone camera isn’t that great

What are my thoughts about the Aircom?

Well, firstly let me just say that about half way through making this home brew cable I had to take about two hours break because I really didn’t feel like continuing. Ofc in my defence I was somewhat ill at the time with a tummy bug, just so you know. After the break I felt a lot better and continued to finish the two cables in one go.  If I had to do it all again, I would put a lot more thought into working out beforehand how the cables would connect to my amp, and especially how they would sit in relation to my speakers’ cable terminals. These babies are not particularly flexible and once you have four of them in a cable sleeve together they’re even less so, also doing fine mechanical fiddly things like connecting them to my Elac 243 LE’s when the cable lengths are -just- off is certainly not a joy, which brings me to my next point, which is measure three -not two- times and cut once hehe

Sound wise they are, imo, very neutral. They conduct the audio from my amp to my speakers with ease. They’re clear, precise and quite detailed. My reference cable, which is a generic house brand from an electronics shop of which a friend was kind enough to once gift me several meters has been re-designated “less-than-poop”. Currently I am extremely curious how they compare against proper high-end cables, as compared to the reference I had they are mind bogglingly amazing.

I did note that they had/have a burn-in period. The first cd I dropped in my player sounded pretty poor in the beginning, very flat with almost no bass (much to my dismay after a couple hours work on the cables I must add). During the course of playing that cd, the sound audibly became better and better to the point where the dynamics and bass had returned. Dropping in another cd the trend continued to the point where I already can no longer hear it getting better. I’m under the impression if I am not hearing something now, the issue lies in a different place than my amp, speakers and the connection between them. Atm I am slightly (only slightly) obsessing about getting a “proper”  cd player to put sound into my amp hehe.

Tonight was the first proper test of the cables: I listened to Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport, Wintersleep – Welcome to the Night Sky, Broken Records – Until the Earth begins to part, Radiohead – Amnesiac (SE) and now Mogwai – Young Team, which I must say is sounding particularly awesome. On the whole I am well pleased with the outcome of my little experiment

Products used:

• Aircom Plus cable, 25m
• cablesleeve, black, approx 6m
• insulation tape, black, one roll
• shrink wrap sleeve, red
• shrink wrap sleeve, black
• viablue bananaplugs, three sets

Tools used:

• hacksaw, fine
• swiss army knife
• scissors, small

Costs:

• about 230 euros, 100 for the cable, 100 for the confectionery,  remainder is postage and packaging
• about 6 hours to make the cables, given that it was the first time I had ever done something like this

Well worth the time, because the new set sounds so amazing that it’s almost as if the cd’s are new, virgin,  unlistened to by my ears, whole audio landscapes that can be reexplored, where things that I have never heard are suddenly hearable. Well known old friends like Radiohead, Interpol, DJ Shadow, Elbow and many others have developed an extra shine, while new friends like Fever Ray, Florence and the Machine, Wintersleep, Mumford and Sons are extra fun to get in to. I mean, I don’t know what was up with my old speakers, but there are whole audio parts -especially voice- that I swear I’ve never heard before o0

In a quest to make it sound even more betterish, and refusing my friend Dennis‘  commanding wish to invest in (imo) stupidly expensive power cables which (imo) do fuck all to enhance anything because (imo) it’s impossible for anything that short to (imo) make a difference. Imo. :p Anyway, according to him I fail to comprehend what is done by these special cables, because they’re awesome and thus I generally suck and am a non-believer in the church. Which may be true, but we’ll see about proofs before I deign to invest money that could be beer in something that I get for free usually.

That said, and in complete contradiction of me not believing stuff that may or may not be true, I used the guide on the website that I link to below to connect my lurvelery ELAC’s to my amp in bi-wired mode. Sexy, nerdy, and it was do this or do the dishes, so the choice was easily made. So, after chopping up the last of my reserve of cable that I still had like friggin years after Maks gave it to me I hooked up the speakers and hit the couch for some serious listening. Radiohead’s Amnesiac spesh ed was first, now Florence and the Machine’s Lungs is on, and I’m going to finish with Mogwai’s Young Team. Too bad all my whiskey is gone hehe!

So, bi-wire, yeah or boo? I know that this is something that is at the fringe of things I might believe (if I’m in a good mood). Technically, meh, I have serious doubts: I don’t believe that I am hearing better sounds. Also, I’ve read a lot of stuff on the interpipes that says that bi-wire tech is full of shit. On the other hand, my amp sounds different now. It’s almost like my living room has magically gotten bigger, or that my amp has suddenly aged by 10 years or so. Hard to describe. Point in case is that right now I am not sure that I am pleased with this effect. It may have to go.

Still, it is potentially a cheap upgrade. Have a look at the guide below and may spend an evening nerding out…just like I did

http://www.brilliancehifi.co.uk/how-to-bi-wire-speakers.htm

My little backup script thingy has been completed, and ofc I’ve become inspired to make it more than it was.  This is a great exercise to see if I can still knock these things out, I mean, I’m not a scripter or have any real programming background to speak of. There are new criteria for the version 0.4 of the script.

teedlescript criteria

DONE    * runs in manual or non-manual (eg cron) mode, configurable in a variable.
DONE    * pulls the content of a (configurable) directory into a tar archive, compresses it on the fly with gzip and stores it in another (configurable) directory.
DONE    * detects if the run is the first one (eg backup is mandatory) otherwise it checks to see if the configured directory that should be backed up has changed size. If it has, the script will backup the dir, otherwise it won’t.
DONE    * detects the size of the backup, and will write a warning if the size of the target dir is less than twice the size of the backup, and will write an error and fail if the size of the target dir is equal or less than the estimated size of the backup.
DONE    * has a a lock file scheme, eg prevents the script starting while another instance of it is running
DONE    * has an email scheme, ie you get a “backup was successful || failed miserably” email to a mailbox you configure in the script.
DONE    * do something snazzy when run in manual mode to show the user that the script is actually still running hehe
* implement passwordless scp copy to a configured remote machine…..maybe
* asks the user questions at first run about what variables need filling
* check for presence of external variable file
* is flexible about the location of the variable file in case the user is allergic to /usr/local/etc
* test for everything eg extreme paranoia, assume nothing

I’ll be working on it if I have time

oh, yes, for those curious to what it looks like (or wanting to point out how bad I am at scripts hehe) you can see the thing here

README:

put the script somewhere on your linux server.
copy it somewhere sensible like /usr/local/bin
make sure that it can be executed (chmod +x)
edit some variables (vi /usr/local/bin/teedlebackup):
this is where your stuff is you want to backup: SOURCE=/my/important/stuff
this is where you want your backup to go: TARGET=/my/backups
manual mode or not; 1=on 0=off (eg using cron) MANUAL=1
leave ADDY= blank for now

once you’ve tested it and it seems to work, change MANUAL=1 to MANUAL=0
if your account can mail, put a valid email address here and it will mail you ADDY=myself@mydomain.tld
set up your cron or root’s cron or whatever to run at a time you’d enjoy (crontab -e). example:

15 0 * * 1 /usr/local/bin/teedlebackup

^^ runs teedlebackup every monday at quarter past zero in the morning

if you are running it automated, and did not fill in your email, it will also leave messages for you in the system’s main logfile, which is usually /var/log/messages. you can look at the logfile with the tail or cat commands.

Enjoy!

• runs in manual or non-manual (eg cron) mode, configurable in a variable.
• pulls the content of a (configurable) directory into a tar archive, compresses it on the fly with gzip and stores it in another (configurable) directory.
• detects if the run is the first one (eg backup is mandatory) otherwise it checks to see if the configured directory that should be backed up has changed size. If it has, the script will backup the dir, otherwise it won’t.
• detects the size of the backup, and will write a warning if the size of the target dir is less than twice the size of the backup, and will write an error and fail if the size of the target dir is equal or less than the estimated size of the backup.
• has a a lock file scheme, eg prevents the script starting while another instance of it is running
• has an email scheme, ie you get a “backup was successful || failed miserably” email to a mailbox you configure in the script.

to do:

-do something snazzy when run in manual mode to show the user that the script is actually still running hehe
-implement passwordless scp copy to a configured remote machine…..maybe

only took me about an hour and a half to write, which I felt pretty good about considering the last time I wrote something is nearly a year ago. good to see I still have it in me heh

ps. nurd!

so, to conform to the internet age, where typing boobies! is not as good as displaying a picture of said boobies! (at least, I think so), I bring you my efforts in pictures (and please excuse the quality heh):

coming to ye olde polo here. strange how the pics completely do away with any depth perception. some of the snow I walked through to get to the car was over 30cm deep!

car

opened the door to show you the depth of snow on the roof of the car. about a cd jewel box high on the door I guess.

car

going to scrape the snow off the car’s windows, my hand and ice-scraper thingy disappeared in to above my wrist o0

car

and more windscreen. I guess a good cd case deep tbh.

car

even more windscreen, but this chunk gives you a good idea of the depth.

car

and done note how caked the roof is on the awesome Citroen next to my polo. and the footsteps leading away from the car, you can’t tell through the lack of depth perception in the picture but my feet were going in to well over my ankles. two or three inches over, judging from my jeans. I’m not very tall, but ankle height is more or less universal

car

now you may wonder why I am making such a song and dance about this hehe.

well, not just because I have to drive through it at 5.30am tomorrow but also because the last time it snowed here that I took notice is at least eight or nine years ago, and the last time it snowed and was cold enough for the snow to be around for a while is perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, and the last time it was so cold that people could drive cars on the IJsselmeer, and my uncle took pictures of frozen sea-ice pushed up on the beaches is 30 or more years ago. aka longer than some of you have been alive. Just goes to show

gosh, what to write? well, what is first in my mind is the fact that last week I helped move house for a friend by lifting things and driving a big van, which went quick and easy enough. just as quick and easy as the burgelers who came after we left again and took some of his belongings and photography stuff. stuff which is worth absolutely nothing to anyone except it’s rightful owner, so the only thing they’ve actually managed to do is upset my friend for the -maybe- 10 euros they stand to gain. what a set of twats is all I can say really. he was so happy the evening we were moving. what a set of twats!

in other -and happier- news, I have finished the project mountain bike for my friend Maks which is awesome haha! all I really had left to do was trim the hydraulic cables to size, a job which I absolutely hate btw even though it’s relatively easy. the bike has turned out awesome though, and I actually don’t want to give it to him heh. I will test ride it to my mum’s place tomorrow to see if I haven’t forgotten anything of major importance, like wheels or something

speaking of mountain bikes, I haven’t ridden mine since I got back from Norway. in fact I have not done a lot of things I said I’d do since then, except maybe finish one of my work targets for this year and do about 90% of another, which is good, but has not a lot to do with my hobbies really. except in the, erm, facilitating of them I guess ^^ anyway, testriding the maksbike tomorrow will be good, because to my mum and back is 20 km or so. night night!

currently, this is me

I mean, I get colds reasonably easily, or perhaps better worded I give in to them easily. Right now I have a headache because my head is filled with snot. My eyes hurt. I have random muscle pains, and I feel very cold.

Just made myself some nice anti-cold drink, with hot coldrex, whiskey and sugar. Perhaps I should go to bed for an hour or so :/