What have you bought lately?

[Fun With Matches]

Heck, when I move I'm getting a projector with surround sound speakers.

[Fun With Matches]

Does anyone feel like buying me this jewellery box? I would hold you in high regard!

http://dulwichdesigns.com/ladies-collection/ladies-jewellery-boxes/belgravia-extra-large-jewellery-box.html

[Parts]

An ice harvesting axe for my collection

[Icequeen]

Oil, air cleaner, plug, WD40

Basement flooded at the bar, the mower I just fixed has been returned to me from the deep abyss after the pump out (it was under around 5ft of water).

Yipee.

...and I thought I might get bored this week. 

Drained the fluids, it's sitting and drying out right now.

[Walkie]

No one ever hand washes my undies. 

Nope. They go directly into an undefined bonfire of their own making.

NO really! No thanks necessary. Please, it was a pleasure.
 


Lyrical context:


The Muffin Man is seated at the table
In the laboratory of the Utility Muffin
Research Kitchen . . .
Reaching for an oversized chrome spoon
He gathers an intimate quantity of dried muffin remnants
And brushing his scapular aside
Proceeds to dump these inside of his shirt. . .
He turns to us and speaks:
"Some people like cupcakes better. I for one
Care less for them!"
Arrogantly twisting the sterile canvas snoot
of a fully charged icing anointment utensil
He pools forth a quarter-ounce green rosette (oh ah yuk yuk.
let's try that again . . .!)
He pools forth a quarter-ounce green rosette
Near the summit of a dense but radiant muffin
of his own design.
Later he says: "Some people . . . some people like cupcakes exclusively,
While I myself say there is naughl nor ought there be
Nothing so exalted on the faceof God's grey earth
As that prince of foods . . . The Muffin!"

Girl you thoughl he was a man
Bul he was a muffin
He hung around till you found
That he didn't know nuthin'
Girl you thought he was a man
But he only was a-puffin'
No cries is heard in the night
As a result of him stuffin'






No, seriously,  play it all the way through and you may come to experience a bit of this man's genius.
Now mind you, this track was created live before an audience.
Thank you, Mr. Zappa.

OOh! I found this post by checking out karma points.  (Thanks scrap) . And another    from me as a consequence.

I still have my vinyl copy of Roxy and Elsewhere (not that I can play it anymore) bought for me as a sixteenth bithday present from my boyfriend.  (he was romantic like that *chuckle* )

Despitr permanently splitting up, before my 18th birthday  , we remained friends, and recently discussed our favourite Zappa tracks.  To my immense surprise we had the same favourite : that sequence Son of Orange County/More Trouble Every Day from the aforementioned album. What did he he like about it? "It's sincerity" he replied. Stone  me, that's what i like about it too! Not Zappa's most celebrated characteristic *chuckle* .

As for "Muffin man" well, my Son's Norwigian girlfriend and I broke out into a spontaneous duet  on that song, the other day, in response to said son's enormous appetite for muffins   
Just goes to show how timeless it is, hmm?

[DirtDawg]

CDs. Yes, I still prefer to own the music I like.

Yep!

Me too.

[DirtDawg]

It's useful to do the EQ more than once. I usually run a reel of test material I know intimately to get a sense of what the RTA isn't showing me.

And yet, it is never more than approaching adequate. You still hear things that make you want to jump out of your seat, if not your entire skin, to correct things once again.

This modern era of actual real time digital/figital analysis has gone a bit over the top, so to speak.
In all honesty, I had a hard time learning to let one instance of "not quite right" go.

Then you go from an empty house to one filled to the brim with screaming fans. Thank god I had time to do the ring out and set the problem frequencies to the notch filter as you turn it up and up and up to offset the crowd noise.

Rock and roll, baby!!
 


Time for "protective"  headphones.

I'm so glad I never had to do concerts. It must very, very different from doing a house EQ for a cinema where people sit fairly still in a well-controlled environment.

In a cinema, the RTA is desperately needed as you're not looking for flat, you're doing a Dolby curve (also known as X curve) so Dolby mixes come out right. They still control the market.

The RTA is also essential when doing the A chain--optical sound is tricky to get right without one.

Concerts were fun for me. I sometimes felt like I was doing "rocket science" in a cowboy bar fight half the time, but I had fun, mostly.   
Set up lots of curves but never the Dolby standards. I kept decent records on my own and returning to a familiar venue was much easier to set up the second or third time.  Not so hard with established standards.

I might also suggest that optical sound follows no established, industry standard, adhered to without fail at all times,  "curve"  at all. At least not in the beginning.

Even though all my old movies are on either DVD or Blu-ray, the sound was originally optical and if I did not own a fairly cool (tube based, BTW and switchable, in or out of the audio chain) way to alter the tonal qualities of some of those old soundtracks, with my fairly flat sound system, my satisfaction when viewing older movies would suffer greatly.

We watched "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"  a few nights ago. A problem sound track for sure, but tamed a bit with some tonal controls in the sound stream.

I have never set up a system requiring adherence to the X curve. As I mentioned all my video content is disc oriented with encoding "built in"  and except for certain variables such as LFE channels or possibly the new  "Atmos"  configurations allow for a very forgiving, flat sound system which I have worked hard and long to accomplish in room, here.
New Atmos movies still sound good to me, though.

My speaker system is finally all vintage JBL with Denon AV receiver  (4312 model, getting old now. Looking at a more modern Marantz reciever for the future) and all Crown subwoofer channels (bi-amped, BTW).

[DirtDawg]

No one ever hand washes my undies. 

Nope. They go directly into an undefined bonfire of their own making.

NO really! No thanks necessary. Please, it was a pleasure.
 


Lyrical context:


The Muffin Man is seated at the table
In the laboratory of the Utility Muffin
Research Kitchen . . .
Reaching for an oversized chrome spoon
He gathers an intimate quantity of dried muffin remnants
And brushing his scapular aside
Proceeds to dump these inside of his shirt. . .
He turns to us and speaks:
"Some people like cupcakes better. I for one
Care less for them!"
Arrogantly twisting the sterile canvas snoot
of a fully charged icing anointment utensil
He pools forth a quarter-ounce green rosette (oh ah yuk yuk.
let's try that again . . .!)
He pools forth a quarter-ounce green rosette
Near the summit of a dense but radiant muffin
of his own design.
Later he says: "Some people . . . some people like cupcakes exclusively,
While I myself say there is naughl nor ought there be
Nothing so exalted on the faceof God's grey earth
As that prince of foods . . . The Muffin!"

Girl you thoughl he was a man
Bul he was a muffin
He hung around till you found
That he didn't know nuthin'
Girl you thought he was a man
But he only was a-puffin'
No cries is heard in the night
As a result of him stuffin'






No, seriously,  play it all the way through and you may come to experience a bit of this man's genius.
Now mind you, this track was created live before an audience.
Thank you, Mr. Zappa.

OOh! I found this post by checking out karma points.  (Thanks scrap) . And another    from me as a consequence.

I still have my vinyl copy of Roxy and Elsewhere (not that I can play it anymore) bought for me as a sixteenth bithday present from my boyfriend.  (he was romantic like that *chuckle* )

Despitr permanently splitting up, before my 18th birthday  , we remained friends, and recently discussed our favourite Zappa tracks.  To my immense surprise we had the same favourite : that sequence Son of Orange County/More Trouble Every Day from the aforementioned album. What did he he like about it? "It's sincerity" he replied. Stone  me, that's what i like about it too! Not Zappa's most celebrated characteristic *chuckle* .

As for "Muffin man" well, my Son's Norwigian girlfriend and I broke out into a spontaneous duet  on that song, the other day, in response to said son's enormous appetite for muffins   
Just goes to show how timeless it is, hmm?

I am always glad to find more fans!

While his comical theatrics are amazing, a guitar fan might also enjoy a couple I have had for many years.

"Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar"  and a triple CD, simply titled,  "Guitar."  These are extended excerpts from his solos during various concerts.  Awesome stuff.

[renaeden]

I bought Neurofen Zavance just before I went to autism group yesterday. I had a headache.

[Lestat]

Not bought them yet, but going to go search ebay and find the best deal on at least one, hopefully a small job lot of small (and better yet, if possible both small and intermediate sized, say from 100-250 and 500ml) erlenmeyer flasks (the conical type with a wide mouth and flat bottom), ideally with a vacuum takeoff adapter built in although I can live without that by using a still head and if I want a thermometer in there as well a claisen adapter and/or claisen head (the former has a single male ground glass joint leading to a small length of glass interposed between a short column with a female joint at the top and at the bottom, it diverges into a U-shape with another straight wide tube with another female joint, so as to allow the adaptation of a single-necked flask to serve the purpose of a 2-necked one, such as for inserting a thermometer and a distillation head, whilst a claisen head has a single connection to the flask, an upper bore for a thermometer, addition funnel (like my rather nice pressure-equalized one that still works with a stopper in the top that can be used for addition of solutions/suspensions of air-sensitive and/or pyrophoric or just generically volatile and nasty reagents without exposure to air, after inert gas purging:)) and an downward-angled male joint for attaching condensers, similar to the claisen adapter but integrated for distillations) although I do have 2- and 3-necked flasks when I wish to use them. No 4-necked ones yet, but I haven't actually ever needed to use one. Of course I plan to add some to my lab arsenal but thats just me. Once I start window-shopping for lab supplies I just can't stop myself, I'm like a teen prep girl in a designer clothes store and can't help myself but to slaver over the prospect of updating my gear, and stocking the shelves with yet more reagents and solvents (although generally in the latter case I'll be buying things for my immediate and short-term future desires and requirements, but I'm not immune to knowing a good deal when I spot one and snagging something that I don't need right this moment, but will come in handy in the future. Last shopping trip of that kind, grabbed a liter of methyl cyanide on that basis because I just KNOW it will come in mighty useful (its a solvent, polar, but unlike alcohols, water etc. its aprotic, meaning it can be used for many reactions that need things that won't dissolve in nonpolars but cannot be used in media capable of being deprotonated under the reaction conditions. In this respect it has more in common with acetone (although this is fairly reactive due to the carbonyl group which would interfere with quite a lot of processes, or with DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, notable for its medical and vetinary use on sore joints, nontoxic, if clean, but has a remarkable ability to penetrate skin extremely quickly, carrying anything dissolved in it with it. Which could  be a good thing [E.g transdermal drug delivery systems] or extremely bad, if it were containing something such as corrosives or poisonous chemicals, spill it on you and it'll go straight in] and with DMF, NMP and HMPA [dimethylformamide, N-methylpyrrolidone and hexamethylphosphoramide] and methyl cyanide/acetonitrile is similar to these, with many solvent and the odd reactant use, and unlike, barring acetone and other low-boiling ketonic solvents like methyl ethyl ketone, MIBK (methylisobutyl ketone) it has a respectably low boiling point, below that of water, whilst the likes of DMF, and particularly DMSO have really high BPs,  needing a GOOD vacuum pump to distill them off after use, so does HMPA, although its not a solvent I'd want to be exposed to if at all possible, its got a nickname of 'liquid cancer', and is, unsurprisingly carcinogenic, causing nasal cancers in particular. The sort of thing I'd keep on the shelf in reserve for perhaps the odd use if something really had to be done in HMPA and wouldn't tolerate DMSO, MeCN, DMF etc.

Need some Erlenmeyer flasks, its one of the few basic common pieces of kit I actually am lacking in, I only have one, and its not suitable for small-scale applications since its a dirty great big bugger, a 2.5 liter vacuum filtration flask that has a huge neck (intended for taking one or more rubber/elastic polymer shim collars that narrow it down to take various sizes of Buchner filtration funnels and allow a good vacuum seal.

So I want and have just enough money left to get at least one, hopefully 2-3 small Erlenmeyers, for distillations, etc. that are more suitable than the whopper I have. That does admirably at the task intended, but isn't suited for distilling small quantities of liquids.

[odeon]

It's useful to do the EQ more than once. I usually run a reel of test material I know intimately to get a sense of what the RTA isn't showing me.

And yet, it is never more than approaching adequate. You still hear things that make you want to jump out of your seat, if not your entire skin, to correct things once again.

This modern era of actual real time digital/figital analysis has gone a bit over the top, so to speak.
In all honesty, I had a hard time learning to let one instance of "not quite right" go.

Then you go from an empty house to one filled to the brim with screaming fans. Thank god I had time to do the ring out and set the problem frequencies to the notch filter as you turn it up and up and up to offset the crowd noise.

Rock and roll, baby!!
 


Time for "protective"  headphones.

I'm so glad I never had to do concerts. It must very, very different from doing a house EQ for a cinema where people sit fairly still in a well-controlled environment.

In a cinema, the RTA is desperately needed as you're not looking for flat, you're doing a Dolby curve (also known as X curve) so Dolby mixes come out right. They still control the market.

The RTA is also essential when doing the A chain--optical sound is tricky to get right without one.

Concerts were fun for me. I sometimes felt like I was doing "rocket science" in a cowboy bar fight half the time, but I had fun, mostly.   
Set up lots of curves but never the Dolby standards. I kept decent records on my own and returning to a familiar venue was much easier to set up the second or third time.  Not so hard with established standards.

I might also suggest that optical sound follows no established, industry standard, adhered to without fail at all times,  "curve"  at all. At least not in the beginning.

Even though all my old movies are on either DVD or Blu-ray, the sound was originally optical and if I did not own a fairly cool (tube based, BTW and switchable, in or out of the audio chain) way to alter the tonal qualities of some of those old soundtracks, with my fairly flat sound system, my satisfaction when viewing older movies would suffer greatly.

We watched "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"  a few nights ago. A problem sound track for sure, but tamed a bit with some tonal controls in the sound stream.

I have never set up a system requiring adherence to the X curve. As I mentioned all my video content is disc oriented with encoding "built in"  and except for certain variables such as LFE channels or possibly the new  "Atmos"  configurations allow for a very forgiving, flat sound system which I have worked hard and long to accomplish in room, here.
New Atmos movies still sound good to me, though.

My speaker system is finally all vintage JBL with Denon AV receiver  (4312 model, getting old now. Looking at a more modern Marantz reciever for the future) and all Crown subwoofer channels (bi-amped, BTW).

Mr Smith was originally mixed following the Academy recommendations. IIRC, the 35 mm print I screened a couple of years ago sounded decent with Dolby's standard Academy mono filter. I think they've handled that part in the transfer because home AV receivers can't actually run it--I'd expect newer transfers to have a Dolby Digital soundtrack with a single centre track.

BTW, aren't Marantz and Denon still mostly the same, hardware-wise? If memory serves, they share the same basic components.

[renaeden]

Spent $66 at Good Sammy's yesterday, mostly on pants for Kayleigh (her birthday is today). Bought myself lots of t-shirts to wear to the gym. Yep, back to going to the gym, with a friend this time.

[Genesis]

CDs. Yes, I still prefer to own the music I like.

Me too, and films. Netflix and other films you download, those companies don't have nearly as much of a selection as they should. It's basically limiting what their viewers can see. I wonder if there is an ulterior motive for this.

That's why I have a big collection of DVDs. Basically they're all movies I like, and want to keep in my collection.

[DirtDawg]

It's useful to do the EQ more than once. I usually run a reel of test material I know intimately to get a sense of what the RTA isn't showing me.

And yet, it is never more than approaching adequate. You still hear things that make you want to jump out of your seat, if not your entire skin, to correct things once again.

This modern era of actual real time digital/figital analysis has gone a bit over the top, so to speak.
In all honesty, I had a hard time learning to let one instance of "not quite right" go.

Then you go from an empty house to one filled to the brim with screaming fans. Thank god I had time to do the ring out and set the problem frequencies to the notch filter as you turn it up and up and up to offset the crowd noise.

Rock and roll, baby!!
 


Time for "protective"  headphones.

I'm so glad I never had to do concerts. It must very, very different from doing a house EQ for a cinema where people sit fairly still in a well-controlled environment.

In a cinema, the RTA is desperately needed as you're not looking for flat, you're doing a Dolby curve (also known as X curve) so Dolby mixes come out right. They still control the market.

The RTA is also essential when doing the A chain--optical sound is tricky to get right without one.

Concerts were fun for me. I sometimes felt like I was doing "rocket science" in a cowboy bar fight half the time, but I had fun, mostly.   
Set up lots of curves but never the Dolby standards. I kept decent records on my own and returning to a familiar venue was much easier to set up the second or third time.  Not so hard with established standards.

I might also suggest that optical sound follows no established, industry standard, adhered to without fail at all times,  "curve"  at all. At least not in the beginning.

Even though all my old movies are on either DVD or Blu-ray, the sound was originally optical and if I did not own a fairly cool (tube based, BTW and switchable, in or out of the audio chain) way to alter the tonal qualities of some of those old soundtracks, with my fairly flat sound system, my satisfaction when viewing older movies would suffer greatly.

We watched "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"  a few nights ago. A problem sound track for sure, but tamed a bit with some tonal controls in the sound stream.

I have never set up a system requiring adherence to the X curve. As I mentioned all my video content is disc oriented with encoding "built in"  and except for certain variables such as LFE channels or possibly the new  "Atmos"  configurations allow for a very forgiving, flat sound system which I have worked hard and long to accomplish in room, here.
New Atmos movies still sound good to me, though.

My speaker system is finally all vintage JBL with Denon AV receiver  (4312 model, getting old now. Looking at a more modern Marantz reciever for the future) and all Crown subwoofer channels (bi-amped, BTW).

Mr Smith was originally mixed following the Academy recommendations. IIRC, the 35 mm print I screened a couple of years ago sounded decent with Dolby's standard Academy mono filter. I think they've handled that part in the transfer because home AV receivers can't actually run it--I'd expect newer transfers to have a Dolby Digital soundtrack with a single centre track.

BTW, aren't Marantz and Denon still mostly the same, hardware-wise? If memory serves, they share the same basic components.

I think that you are right as far as any top tier movie following the standards of the day, but I feel that some of those standards do not transfer well to modern all digital reproduction systems.
Now you tell me that the average home receiver can not even follow that curve? Makes sense as to why I had to use my  glorified tone control to be able to watch it with my wife.

Now, I can tolerate questionable sound while enjoying and older movie, but my wife is basically a giant tin ear and anything not perfect (read "perfect" as that which is not annoying to her distinct set of sensibilities), she blames my "expensive" and extremely "visually invasive"  surround system. So I have this little box hidden behind the video monitor that often helps quite a bit.

The reason I have been looking more toward the Marantz is a newish one I saw has a far cleaner look, like a typical Marantz product and I have heard that the power supplies are a different/better. As far as hardware-wise, referring to the decoding capabilities, I am not sure. More research necessary. 
I do know that for a while all the Blu-ray players actually used the same set of chips.

It is time to replace my older receiver, anyway. BTW, I got the model number wrong on my receiver. It is a Denon 4310. 
4312 is the model number of my vintage JBL audio monitors I use in the bedroom with my SET dual mono tube amps. These are not bad speakers at all if you enjoy vintage sound (meaning no "subwoofer" needed or welcomed) and tube amps.

[Phoenix]

More moving boxes