2003 News
Nov, 2003
The year is winding down and it has been hectic as I
transition put on an additional hat as a part-time teacher. As someone in
politics put it: "You cannot hold on to one trapeze and move on to the
next". I've tried....it is a lot of work. Below are some random notes from
the last few months.
First off is a little penguin (Linux anyone?) that my wife picked up.
You wind it up and it basically teeter and totters on its high centre of
gravity like a child leaning to walk. Must have stocking stuffer. My wife
picked it up from GANZ warehouse sale. Everyone I've shown it to wants
one....made by IWAYA
CORP
Click on the images them in medium, larger and smaller images.
CBC's "Saturday Night at the Movies" put on the sleeper hit from the
80's called Breaking
Away. Still one of the coolest movies for a twelve year to come
across...even in the era of moutain bikes.
A web service for $2.95 a month with unlimited connect time...I've beta
tested the services offered by 295.ca and
have no complaints. I'm running the Opera
Browser under Linux and Win98....runs much better and more stable under
Linux. Dialing in from a dumb terminal, it looks as if the servers are Linux
based based upon the userid: and password: prompts. In order to use this
service under Linux you need to put the nameserver in your /etc/resolv.conf
file. This allows you to type in strings like "www.google.com" and have them
translated to appropriate IP addresses numeric strings to access the
web...if you decide to stick with Win98...read on...
Most users of Win98 have seen the steady degradation of their once humber
computer to what seems like 1/2 the horsepower of the unit when it was new.
For people with problems under Win 98, here is "some" salvation short of
updating and obsoleting your Pentium 200 class computer in a forced upgrade
to WinXP:
- Run "RegCheck" utiliites. These may have to be download. You can also
run SCANREG.EXE from MS-DOS normal/safe mode. It does a very similar
function. To do this, you may need to hold the SHIFT key down as your
computer boots prior to the Windows "spash" screen coming up.
- Run "msconfig" from the Start Menu using the "RUN" facility and the
look at the startup files. You can disable tons of stuff that installation
programs have forced upon you.
- Have the optional "accessories" for Windows installed that included
the "resource meter". This will tell you if it is your active imagination
or something real stealing resources from your computer.
If you are running Linux/Win98, download the best human engineered
browser period. If you have not tried Opera. Key
features are:
- One key click: Show Cache pictures/Show all pictures/Show no pictures
toggle button
- One key click variable magnification from 10% to 1000%
- One key click "printer preview"
- One key click for "blank webpage" background...allows you to see
purple text on blue!!!
- Ignore "Pop-up Windows"
Cover of Bryan Adams song "Heaven" on the episode of "Cold Case" called
"Fly Away". It is that time of the year to be looking for music. I heard a
voice from the past in a radio interview with Jane Siberry.
Rank your sites traffic using Alexa.
Somewhat controversial is the basic mechanism for ranking.
High-end FM radios...modify your
SRF-49/SRF-59FM radio. Take your home hi-fi sound on the road. For you home
stereo, I would recommend analog interconnects based upon Jon Risch. I have
them in my system since mid summer and extended listening just wants me to
leave my system to playing the music.
Sept 2003
In the fall of 2003, my uncle Bak Yit Chew passed away. Born in 1913 in
the city of Sanhoi, he followed his father to Canada at the age of 13. His
influence upon my own father is that of a father as he was 20 years his
senior. Always the peace maker and broker, my uncle was without peer in
dealing and interacting with people 40 years or more his junior. I say this
having experienced him from when he was 50 years of age. By that time he had
established himself as a general mechanic. He could take apart a motor,
boiler, hydralic machinery and put it back together better than it was.
During the Second world war he was entrusted with running the factory floor
for a manufacturing company (whose name now escapes me). With the arrival of
cousins, brothers, and village acquaintances from Canton, how would he ease
their transition into Canada. He picked up a copy of the "Joy of Cooking"
and thus began his foray into the restuarant businees with the establishment
of Moon Palance Restaurant. His annual Birthday get together was a joyous
occassion marked by an abundance of gleeful children and a wide variety of
foods. I was about ten when his son mentioned to my older brother that Uncle
Joe's shortness of breath was diagnose as emphysema and that his doctor's
prognosis was not good if he continued. He stopped the next day and searched
for a form of exercise as his doctor suggested. He heard about Tai Chi.
Within a year he master many of the basic moves and got deeper into the
meditative aspects of the martial art. He sought out masters from other
cities and invited them to Toronto and formed a Tai Chi class in what is now
Toronto's SOHO district at Beverley and Queen street (right beside the HMV
Store). Of course he invited his grandchildren, me, my brothers...I guess he
thought the next Bruce Lee might come out it.
My memories of the 80's are filled with that of school and university. My
uncle at this time was living in a duplex in the High Park area. His son's
family on the second floor and he comfortably on the first. Tai Chi
continued to play a large role in his life, as was learning the Mandarin
dialect. He often said to me: "Ray, if I was in position, I would learn
Mandarin and go back to China...great opportunity in many different ways".
So I went back last year for my first trip seeing small villages to visit.
More as a tourist, I travelled to small towns and regions fo China. The
sense of opportunity was there as my uncle predicited. In the last 90's a
feinting spell led to a bad fall that left the left side of my uncle
partially paralyzed. He regained an incredible amount of movement back
through deep meditation. I've seen him sweating profusively after these
"mental visualization exercises" in earlier days and I'm sure the doctors
were somewhat mistified. He lived with his wife in a condominium in North
York in his last decade. Fiercely independent, his son William would drop by
each week with his children. His great grand children were as enamoured of
him as I and countless other cousins, grandchildren, acquaintances. I'll
have to come back and touch this up but a few more details need to be added
about the RCMP and community in which he grew up and help build in
Chinatown.
High end Audiophile replay may never be the same. It seemed as if the
movement to more features in HT receivers was diametrically opposed to
simplicity seen in high end Audio. Zero feedback, No tone controls, short
signal paths, etc were the norm for amplifiers featuring emphasis on
non-visible expenses suchs as large toroidal transformers, wide bandwidth
output devices, good electrolytic caps in signal paths, and low noise
resistors. I'll cut to the chase and let John Meyer talk about the
discontinuity introduced by good sounding Class D power amplifiers enabling
six channels of quality 100W amplification to be packaged into a nine pound
package....take it away John
July 19, 2003
With one week left in the Tour de France, commentators have been saying
that this is the strongest field seen in some time. Lance Armstrong survived
a bout with high heat conditions losing about 10% (15 pounds) of his
bodyweight to retain the yellow jersey. Today's foray into the Pyranees was
fast paced and tactical to whittle out the field down to the main
contenders. A colleague of Tyler Hamilton on the Danish CSC team named
Sastre won the stage on his bicycles designed and built in Canada named CerVelo. As Armstrong
predicted, Jan Ulrich is back in fine form and a contender for the podium in
Paris.
If you are looking for serious cables to connect your Audio pieces at a
reasonable price...take a look at Signal
Cable run out of the home of Frank Dai. They offer state of the art
power cables, interconnect and speaker cables at prices hovering around the
$50 mark for the power cord and the interconnect and about double that for
speaker cables. Some have tested them against the best of their class and
had them come out ahead. Some of the designs are based upon those of Jon
Risch.
July 4, 2003
I thought I put in a plug for an acquaitance of mine that I met over the
web when he decided to reproduce the circuits changes I made for the NAD
3020 on a friends unit. If you wish you could afford the Audio Note or
Sakura DAC units that operate at 1x sampling rate with no digital output
filtering...then you owe it to yourself to listen to the dAck! DAC. Chris Own has a love and heard a
lot of great music...he also appreciates the voicing of electronic
equipment.
June 4, 2003
One month I'm comtemplating $2000 components and the this month I
purchased a $300 amplifier in the form of the
ART SLA-1
( Wayback link)
amplifier.
I put together a summary of this
amplifier which is presently on the radar of many looking for the "DI/O" of
amplifiers...from none other than the folks at "Applied Research &
Technology".
(click to enlarge)
May 3 , 2003
The link to "Connoisseur Audio" is broken deliberately. Similar to the
Audio Note situation
where Peter Qvortrup stole the "Audio Note" trademark from the original
designer Hiroyasu Kondo. It seems as if a similar situation is occurring
with this firm's circuit designer Howard Lee. My friend and I met him at the
Montreal Audio show and asked if we might arrange a review of his SE-2 300B
amplifier after the show.
In Howard's case as in the case of "Audio Note", where the mindshare of
the chief designer, Kondo, was gradually extracted over time under the guise
of of a distributor. This blossomed into a lower end line of electronics
that ultimately ran into trouble in the U.K. and went bankrupt. A separate
company was resurrected as "Audio Note" and then filed for the trademark in
countries outside of Japan. Peter Qvortrup claimed he built the brand name
outside of Japan and was entitled to the trademark. What would GM, BMW, or
Mercedes say if a similar situation happened with their products. Your
deserved better, Howard. For more on the saga of Kondo, click here.
To support Mr. Kondo, visit his his Kondo website.
March 31 , 2003
Read my review
of audio show held in Montreal from March 28-March 30, 2003 called "Le
Festival Son & Image". The Art DI/O was there as well as an amazing
integrated amplifier by Connoisseur
Audio. The Art DI/O was there in a box at one distributor's room...most
of the retailers have not heard of this unit.
(click image to enlarge)
March 7, 2003
This site was shut down for two weeks in protest of the US invasion of
Iraq. This page was replaced by the following one
. If you do not agree, just keep it to yourself...I do not believe in a
new world order based on the authority of predominantly one force.
January 25, 2003
I have been recommending digital cables for the SP/DIF output connection
for the DI/O DAC from someone named Cousin Dupree of Audio Asylum
fame...beware that a number of people have
not recieved cables that they paid for on the web. Until this is
resolved, he will get a conditional recommendation.
(click image to enlarge) 