Sean's Blog

Who's still listening to vinyl?

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:57:31 -0400

Although I don’t personally have a turntable, my father has a killer stereo setup, and I can attest that vinyl actually sounds better than a CD. Granted, there are cracks and pops, but the music sounds so much more full, and natural. It really is striking.

Oh boy, you just opened a whole case of worms right there. You might as well come out and say that solid state amps suck ass, and that the only proper way to listen to music is through a tube amplifier (with the speaker cables properly suspended from ceramic hangers, of course).

That being said, I kind of agree with you. I say “kind of” because I’m torn. The scientist part of me believes that Nyquist was on to something, and that a digital medium is fully capable of reproducing sounds a human would find indistinguishable from the original analog form, given a high enough sampling rate. But I’ve heard the same things you have, hence the whole being torn bit.

I think there’s a few logical explanations (though partial they may be) behind this. First, and probably foremost, the greatest advantage CDs had over LPs when they first came out was their dynamic range advantage. However, the record industry has gradually eroded this advantage, thanks to most people and the Loudness War (the animation there is particularly telling).

Part of the problem is also the listening habits of people. Very few people just listen to music anymore. Music has become too damn convenient, to the point where more often than not, music serves as little more than background noise. Back when LPs were popular, it took effort to listen to music, so people generally sat down and enjoyed it when they put a LP on. These days, not so much.

And honestly, I think the last part is nostalgia. The pops and clicks aren’t true to the original performance of an album, but depending upon age, they’re original to the first time we heard “Hotel California” or “Dark Side of the Moon.” All in all, it combines to make us want to listen to vinyl.

Of course, this is comparing vinyl and CDs. Compare vinyl to a shitty MP3, or vinyl to SACD or the like, and it’s entirely different ball game…

Red Hat Upgrade Woes

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:41:33 -0400

So, I was building a system last week with CentOS 5.5, and most everything was going well. The software stack on top of it was working as expected, which was a pleasant surprise, given some of the changes I had made to it. The one thing that wasn’t working correctly was an entry in root’s crontab, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why, especially considering the exact same entry/script was working great on some of our other systems, running CentOS 5.4. One of my coworkers couldn’t figure it out either. A few days later (while working on a variety of other things, of course), I finally figured it out.

First, a bit of background. This script was running as root, and was invoking various commands using sudo (to run the commands as a user other than root). I didn’t think much of this until I happened to look at /var/log/secure for another issue, when I noticed some messages regarding this script in there. As it turns out, Red Hat, in their infinite wisdom, made the decision to disable sudo from running under anything than a proper TTY (i.e., console/SSH/et cetera). They made this decision despite RHEL 5.4 (and thus CentOS 5.4) not having this behavior, and despite Red Hat’s premise of being an enterprise distribution, where as little as necessary will change between point releases.

Now, I realize I should’ve found this sooner, and the manner in which sudo was being invoked wasn’t terribly logical, but it worked, and it wasn’t something that should’ve been changed in a point release of an enterprise distribution. Marginal additional security (in my not-so-humble opinion) doesn’t outweigh some of the headaches I can foresee this causing. Sorry Red Hat, but bad move…

Oh, and a word to Dell too: for the love of god, why do you have not one, but two lights-out management boards in some of your rackmount servers? I had to replace a motherboard last week, and while I swapped the iDRAC 6 Super Active Enterprise® card over, I missed this tiny little do-nothing iDRAC 6 Useless Edition board in the corner. A board that the Super Active Enterprise edition happened to depend upon, for some odd reason.

I do still love working in IT though. I must be psychotic.

Electrical fires suck. No real damage other than this, but it...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:26:00 -0400

Electrical fires suck. No real damage other than this, but it necessitated a quick trip to Home Depot for a new outlet and what not. Oh, and dry fire extinguishers are a bitch to clean up after.

Favorite Concert DVDs

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:33:41 -0400

Like a lot of people, I love music, but a lot of the artists that I like the most are well past their prime, so if I want to see any of their concerts, I’m best off watching them on DVD. A few of my favorites:

Pink Floyd - “Pulse” - Yes, there is no Roger Waters, but have you ever seen a Roger Waters concert? He’s missing the rest of the group far more than they are him (though “Comfortably Numb” done with Van Morrison is quite good). They do the entirety of “Dark Side of the Moon” on this one, and almost all of it is amazing (save for “The Great Gig in the Sky,” which just can’t compete with the album version). Seeing “Wish You Were Here” performed live must have been a real treat too. The audio is also the best I’ve heard on any concert DVD, which is especially surprising since the concert was filmed in 1994.

Fleetwood Mac - “The Dance” - Like “Pulse,” I could watch and listen to this one endlessly. The best tracks are “I’m So Afraid,” “Go Insane,” “Gold Dust Woman,” and “Silver Springs,” I think, though their bigger hits are also quite well done. Pay particular attention to “I’m So Afraid,” and you may start to think Lindsay Buckingham is the one of the most underrated guitarists of that era.

The Eagles - “Hell Freezes Over” - This one is quite good, and is definitely on my list of favorites (otherwise it wouldn’t be here), but it doesn’t make me want to watch it the way the other two do. The highlight is definitely “Hotel California,” and if you only know that song because of the album version, you’re in for a treat. “New York Minute” was also quite good. By the end though, you’ll be quite sick about hearing the name J.D. Souther. Great music though…

And now, an aside. Watching “Pulse” and listening to “Money,” you have to sort of chuckle at Nick Mason, when you know about the Enzo Ferrari he owns. Money, it is a gas…

Coyote Tracks: The Emperor's New Antenna

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:20:00 -0400

Coyote Tracks: The Emperor's New Antenna:

marco:

Every recent consumer electronics product from Apple—definitely the iPad, but all iterations of the iPhone including the initial one—has been greeted with rounds of articles crowing about what an arrogant, foolhardy mistake it is and how this will finally, finally, be the moment the emperor is revealed to have no clothes. And ultimately this is what’s so infuriating about Apple: that’s not what happens. Ever.

A very interesting read, full of good points. Apple has, in recent history, set the bar so high for itself that it’s become impossible to continue to meet the bar. Apple has become to computing what the Patriots have been to football, what the Lakers and Celtics have been to basketball, and as much as it pains me to say it as a Flyers fan, what the (gulp) Devils and Penguins have been to hockey. No matter how good a team is, anything short of a championship becomes a disappointment. No matter how good a product is, it’ll be expected to be perfect. Unrealistic expectations, for sure, but it comes with the territory.

That being said, I still maintain that the iPhone/iPad is now where the Mac was in the early 90s. It’s still a superior product for most people, but the competition has caught up quickly, and has even surpassed Apple in a few areas. Apple got complacent, and more or less stagnated, compared to the competition. The competition may have never bettered Apple in all or even most areas back then, but it didn’t matter. As it might not now…

caseyliss: mykol78: rosiesiman: Tesla owner talks smack using...

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:28:22 -0400

caseyliss:

mykol78:

rosiesiman:

Tesla owner talks smack using world’s greatest vanity plate via Engadget

Definitely funny, but I wouldn’t be surprised if an Elise had a lower carbon footprint than the average Tesla charged by the United States’ leading producers of electricity. Not to mention an Elise has to be a hell of a lot more fun on the track…

"I’ve never been in the Vatican, and I’ve heard it’s supposed to be beautiful."

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:13:15 -0400

“I’ve never been in the Vatican, and I’ve heard it’s supposed to be beautiful.”

- God, per The Onion.

The Perils of Direct Injection

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:41:00 -0400

The Perils of Direct Injection:

Direct injection engines seem to be all the rage today, and for good reason: you can bump up the compression ratio (compared to port injection) without necessarily raising the octane requirement, and/or combine it with forced induction to get higher HP/torque numbers while maintaining or even improving fuel economy compared to a similar engine with port injection.

My 2010 GTI has it, and I’ve been very happy with the engine’s performance. But when I look at the images in links like this one, I do get a little worried. And I’m hardly alone in that regard. This happened with the 2.0 FSI motor, it’s happening with the 2.0 TSI motor in my car, and it’s apparently happening in a wide variety of other engines from other manufacturers (BMW’s N54, various Porsche engines, et cetera).

In a car with port injection, this wouldn’t be a problem, as the fuel would wash over the valves upon injection, but in a car where the fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber, that obviously has no chance of occurring.

Volkswagen recommends oil changes at 10,000 mile intervals, but after reading about this quite a bit, I can’t see myself ever going that long. I changed my oil yesterday with a quality synthetic 5W-40 at 4,900 miles or so, and I’ll probably be doing every 5,000 miles from here on out. Oddly, for all the crap Toyota has been getting lately, they have seemed to avoid the direct injection problems by pairing their direct injection with smaller port injectors that periodically send fuel through the intake manifold to wash the valves off…

Why I'm Not A Developer

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:34:09 -0400

I spent over a hour today trying to debug a piece of code I’m writing in Perl (used via Asterisk’s nifty AGI interface), and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why a certain function call was being made. It was being executed as part of a while loop, and it kept going one increment past my exit condition. And then it hit me: I was calling the function as part of a logical AND statement that formed the conditional for the loop. And it just so happened to be the first portion of the AND conditional, so simply swapping places allowed what was the second conditional to short circuit the AND statement once the exit condition was reached.

And that is why I never want programming to be my full time job. I’ll take troubleshooting crashing daemons and quirky IOS configuration issues over this kind of thing any day.

Now that's cool

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:33:06 -0400

Now that's cool:

caseyliss:

Those who buy a new Z06 or ZR1 corvette, and pay a ~$6k premium, and get themselves to Detroit, can actually help build the motor for their new ‘vette. Sweet.

I’d rather take the money, go to Germany, take delivery of either a Porsche or BMW (or perhaps a R8) for a discount, and enjoy breaking it in on the Autobahn. I might not even get shot, as one might in the wonderfully developed and upscale area that is Detroit. Thanks for making it an easy choice for me, GM…

IT Porn

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:38:00 -0400

IT Porn:

We got two of these in the office today. Supposedly, multiple units can be linked together to form a single-system-image with X times the number of processors, RAM, et cetera. But even one of these guys is insanely powerful. That said, I’m sure we’ll find a way for Oracle to bring the pain…

I friggin’ love the fact that this guy is a Flyer. Many...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:22:27 -0400

I friggin’ love the fact that this guy is a Flyer. Many people think Peyton Manning is “funny,” but the truth is he can’t hold a candle to Chris Pronger. As for what he’s responding to, it’s this moron who might never play a game in the majors again.

89,500 Miles In The World's Best Car

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:26:25 -0400

89,500 Miles In The World's Best Car:

A great read about a very impressive car from an engineering perspective. If I were in the market for a ultra-luxury car, this is almost certainly what I’d get, mostly because it’s a truly great car available at an absolute fire sale price, but also because it’s quite possibly the least ostentatious vehicle in its class.

…which reminds me of the sheer number of BMWs and Lexuses (Lexi?) in my area, most of which are bought more for the badge than any kind of intrinsic satisfaction to be had by driving or riding in one.

Timing Chains vs. Timing Belts

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:32:54 -0400

In being a huge car nut since I subscribed myself to Motor Trend when I was 9 years old, I’ve gotten to know quite a bit about cars, in most every aspect, including engines. Whether they’re a regular old OHV engine, or an OHC (or, in the case of the flat-4 in my Subaru, two side cams, hah) engine. Whether it has variable valve timing. Whether it’s naturally aspirated, turbocharged, or supercharged. Et cetera.

And one of the other things I notice is whether an engine uses a timing belt or a timing chain. Generally speaking, timing chains are perceived as being better, but why? They generally don’t require maintenance or replacement, as belts do. Or do they? My first car—a 1990 Nissan 240SX—had a timing chain. Said timing chain destroyed its first engine (or at least the engine that was in it when I bought it) when the tensioner failed and allowed the chain to rattle against the front cover of the engine, which had coolant passages in it, which led to coolant in the oil, which led to the bearings on the crank seizing up. I put a rebuilt engine in, and the tensioner on that one failed too, and needed replacement. Likewise, I’ve heard of issues with the tensioners on the F20C in the Honda S2000, and I was just reading about issues certain B6 S4s have with their tensioners.

In short, despite their supposed superiority and lack of “required” maintenance, I see no real advantage to chains over belts. They’re each pretty likely to cost you a fair amount of money: It’s just that in one case, it’s a generally-accepted aspect of ownership, whereas it seems to surprise the owners of cars with chains.

Of course, you could just say screw it and get a car with a rotary engine. In that case, I trust you’ll learn to love apex seals…

Why Sculley Fired Jobs

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:00:00 -0400

Why Sculley Fired Jobs:

I saw this article on Digg a few days ago, and couldn’t wait to read it, mainly because I’ve read a lot about Apple’s history, and the first post-Jobs period was/is particularly interesting. I was hoping to gain some more insight into what was going on at the time, but from what I’ve read, this is just a puff piece blowing smoke up The Turtleneck’s ass.

If Apple Confidential is to be trusted, Steve Jobs actually tried to get Sculley fired while he (Sculley) was on a business trip. If it weren’t for Jean-Louis Gassée informing Sculley of Jobs’ plan, Jobs may have never “left” Apple. Again, if the book is accurate, Sculley returned, and had the board choose sides. Ironically, Jobs got his revenge over a decade later when he managed to sell his company back to Apple when Gassée was trying to do the very same thing.

Anyway, looking at the decision as a mistake is looking at it with glasses that are very much rose in color. Almost all the stories you read about Jobs from back then make him out to be a real asshole, and I don’t doubt that he was (and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he still is). There are lots of suggestions that he was vehemently hated by numerous Apple employees, and he seemed to hurt rather than help any project he “became involved” (i.e., forced himself into a management position), based on what I’ve read. In short, Apple may have been worse off had Jobs hung around, but this article completely dismisses that possibility, or so it seems.

cyn1cal: thedailywhat: The Oatmeal. Owning your own domain...

Mon, 31 May 2010 17:53:08 -0400

cyn1cal:

thedailywhat:

The Oatmeal.

Owning your own domain is the only way to go. Proud “owner” of mine since 2000 (when I was 15, hah)…

3 Years

Wed, 26 May 2010 21:51:32 -0400

It seems like every few months I hit a new milestone with this one.

[elbles@firewall ~]$ uptime

21:48:53 up 1096 days, 11:30, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

From procinfo:

Bootup: Sat May 26 10:18:26 2007

I kind of want to replace it, and the UPS it’s on needs its batteries replaced at some point in the next couple months. But when it’s run this long, you just don’t want to kill it yourself…

Casey's Tumblelog: Am I missing something?

Tue, 25 May 2010 21:29:29 -0400

Casey's Tumblelog: Am I missing something?:

There has been much made of the latest iPhone on Verizon rumors. But I still feel like something doesn’t make sense.

Granted, AT&T’s network sucks compared to Verizon’s, in terms of coverage. As someone who lives not in NYC nor California, I can tell you that AT&T’s network is 100% on par…

You’re missing nothing, you’re exactly right. There’s probably no business reason for Apple to offer the iPhone on a network other than AT&T, partially due to how fanatical Apple nut jobs are (and I’m certainly not calling you one of them, at least in this case, hah). I’m sure there’s people on AT&T just so they can have iPhones, and they put up with how bad the service can be (when they’re off the beaten path, as you put it). Would they switch to Verizon if the iPhone came out on that network? Quite possibly. But would they switch away from the iPhone to get on a better network? Almost certainly not. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Even if I thought the iPhone was vastly superior to its competition (and I don’t), I wouldn’t let my phone dictate my network. But plenty of people do…

Apple knows this, and if they’re smart, they’ll use this knowledge to grab AT&T by the balls. “Give us more money, or we create a iPhone on Verizon.” The almighty turtleneck has spoken.

“Richards tried to scoot in there alone, Halak way out of...

Mon, 24 May 2010 22:35:41 -0400

“Richards tried to scoot in there alone, Halak way out of the net, it pinballs to the crease, score!!!!!!” - I’ve probably watched this video 20 times since the game ended. I could watch it a million times more. Way to go Flyers!

P.S.: Please, I know it’s a lot to ask, but just four more wins, please!

One Year Post-College

Sun, 23 May 2010 22:33:06 -0400

I work down by Yale, and with their commencement going on tomorrow, and my own graduation (which I didn’t actually attend, for what it’s worth) having occurred a little over a year ago, it got me thinking about college once again. Since I’ve already said here and elsewhere what a worthless experience it was, I won’t harp on that right now. Especially since I probably did enough to depress anyone reading this with my commencement songs post. Instead, it’s time to talk what I miss about college.

First and foremost, I miss the copious amounts of sleep. My last semester of college, I had to be up before 11 two days a week. The semester before that, I only had classes two days a week (albeit 5 straight classes, the poor thing that I was). Now, as a member of the real world, I’m up at 6 AM five days a week, out of the house a little before 7, and home usually a little before 7 at night. I’m not complaining about that, as it’s just the way things are. But I definitely miss all the sleep. Best aspect of college by far.

Other than that, I can’t think of much else I’m missing. I’m learning quite a bit on the job, which I enjoy. I’m surrounded by people my own age, so I’m not really missing out there either. I sure as hell don’t miss the top two recreational activities being drunken football, and, well, just drinking yourself into a coma.

I know a lot of people graduate from college, and go on for a few years missing it, trying to relive it, or both. Me, I’m happy just to have moved on. That said, if I could go back to school at any given point in time, I’d pick high school long before college…