The Prince Of Swords

With the bedroom remodeling almost complete, it was time to wire up the A/V gear since I sleep with the TV ON. I always thought people who had to have absolute silence to study, read, work, or sleep were unrealistic. I’ve spent my life swimming in noise: music, television, barking dogs, to remain adaptable and tolerant of almost any environment.

I’m setting up a media cabinet in my closet to pull all the clutter out of the main bedroom area. I spent the weekend wiring. I had my contractor punch some holes in the walls and run some cabling into the attic. I had most of the hardware, but had to go grab the wiring jacks and adpaters plus two of my new favorite tools, a “toner” and a cable fish. With six pairs of speaker wire, 4 coax cable feeds, two pair of RCA jacks to distribute audio to the living room system, two satellite feeds, and two s-video ports to run, the “toner” saved hours of figuring out which wire was which. I only had three coax that needed run now, two on the west wall (one feeding the living room) and one on the east wall (in case I ever decide to flip the room around), but the ran to the attic and had to be patched to the media closet meaning six cables altogether, three in the attic that connect to three going to the closet. By trial and error, trying to connect the right pairs, going to the bedroom hooking up a TV to test, going to the closet to complete the circuit, then walking back to see if the TV works, then going to the attic to change to another wire, would take forever, plus it is ball sweating hot in the attic.

Enter the “toner”. First I hooked all the coax in the attic to their partners that drop into the closet. Hook the toner to one end of the coax in the bedroom. Walk into the closet and fire up the “inductive amplifier”, waving it next to the coax cables. When the amplifier makes the loudest sound, you’ve identified your cable. Put it in the patch panel and label it. Woo hoo! I then hooked up the device to confirm the signal was good. Then I just had to repeat the process about twenty more times.

The contractor hadn’t run enough coax and skipped the s-video. How the hell do you feed a cable through the plywood attic floor, down a two foot gap to reach the header of the wall, through the insullation, down the wall cavity to the hole cut into the closet? One word, “Cable Fish”. (It might be called something else in the biz.) This slim little badass in four sections of 3/8″ round, two feet long fiberglas rods that thread together lenghtwise and ends in a changeable tip, I used the bullet. I took some coax into the attic with the fish. I taped the coax to the fish and with flashlight in mouth, threaded the fish through the floor, near the gas line, between the gaps in the floor joist and the wall header, through the insulation and down into the wall. Boo yah! I then cruised downstairs to the closet, detached the coax and pulled extra down, then attached another coax and reversed the technique for maximum economy of motion and an additional coax into the attic.

So far I have the bedroom stereo, ReplayTV, two DTV receivers, the four channel video distribution unit, the CATV amplifier, and three TVs with coax IR distribution, all up and running so you can watch four sources and control them from anywhere in the house. I still have to do the RCA audio feeds, s-video, networking, an XBOX, coax to three more rooms, and more IR distribution.

Although I enjoy a good sauna or even taking religious substances and banging drums, naked, in a sweat lodge, working in the hot ass attic has wiped me out. Plus, the itiching from the pink fiberglas insulation reminds me of crabs in college, except shaving won’t help in this case. I’m so lucky I get to do this for fun and not as a way to make a living.

Wonder when they’ll offer a naked version?

SitePal - Home

I do like the concept. I’d rather have her popup on my computer and remind me of a meeting than the dings and bleeps my Palm and desktop makes. I wouldn’t have to look the device if she told me which meeting it was.

David, one of the programmers I work with, pointed me to this site. I instantly remembered being ten years old, sitting at a coffee table playing with Hot Wheels, watching some show probably on PBS, where a guy knocked out some flies and glued them to a small balsa wood and wax paper with a drop of syrup for fuel, wondering where in the hell you can get chloroform. Anyone else remember that show?

Electronic Mail Services

After I finished Everything Bad Is Good For You today, I decided to lift my personal ban on video games. I’d long avoided them since they tend to easily suck me into marathons of staring at a monitor in goal-oriented play. I didn’t have a copy of GTA or the Sims laying around, but I did have Riven from the mid-nineties. I dusted off 5 CD’s and little instruction manual and tried to load it on my XP desktop just for fun. Well…it almost worked but was jittery, and without sound and was really ridiculous seeing a 640×480 game run on a 20″ LCD. Firefox hooked me up with some other titles for classic and modern adventure games and I was off to Best Buy.

I cruised through the music section just to see if they had any new Adam Freeland or DJ Dan mixes, but no joy so off to the games. Judging by the number of rows of other types of PC games, adventures games are a much smaller market. Not surprising since I always seem to have an innate fringe taste in things. I grab the 10th anniversary Myst DVD version (that included Myst 1, Riven, Myst 3), Myst 4, Still Life, and Bad Mojo for just under $100.

The cashier asked, “Dude, are you a gamer?”

“I am today”, knowing he would have no idea what to do with that.

Myst 1-4 will be an interesting journey through the evolution of a game maker’s skills over the last decade. Still Life and Bad Mojo seem to have been released this year and hopefully close to state of the art. One is a crime scene game. The other is the typical drama of “you are a cockroach in bar trying to escape” type game.

To begin at the beginning, I loaded up Myst and it was like slipping into an ex-girlfriend. It all comes back. Zork. The Pawn. Sundog. Clunky navigation to move around a world of mostly static images, clicking on everything to see if the arrow will turn into a hand and give up the fact that something different can be done. Knowing nothing about this game, in three hours I already feel like I’m making good progress with no instruction and no flipping to Google for help. Turn the tower and write down the clues to open the different levels you reach by the linking books.

Gotta go now. Myst is calling and my mom will only let me stay up until midnight.

Although this title caught me immediately as a huge fan of anything counter to status quo and the institutionalization of marginalizing individuality. As a dedicated chaos engine, I thrill in the moments when the image of us having our professional, romantic, spiritual, philosophical, social, and medical lives completely under control falls flat on its ass. Sorry, but I love that.

This book provides an against the current view of the impact of the pop culture domains of video games, television shows, and movies and argues that they make us smarter. The dynamics of this effect are driven by the complexity of the plots and worlds created in these mediums, movies the least and video games the most.

In short, always read books, but add TV shows like 24, games like GTA and the Sims to increase your IQ by a point each year. Never underestimate collateral learning and refuse to be shamed for being into these things.

I see a PS3 in my future.

Amazon.com: Books: Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter

The great thing about buying things online is that you get the instant gratification of the purchase and then the surprise of the delivery since you never know exactly when it will appear on your doorstep. Today the ceiling fan I ordered from New York City showed up. Bailing the tried and true dark stained wood blades and the shiny gold brass hardware, I went with more contemporary styling to tie in with the other brushed metal accents I’m adding to the bedroom. This is the Ball from the Modern Fan Company. When I first found this manufacturer a few years ago, I was set on their UFO. I changed my mind and they’ve dropped their prices almost in half.

The only thing I was a little disappointed about is that the fan blades are painted wood, not brushed metal like the rest of body, arms, and other parts. The wall speed controller is a four step slider switch that I’ll have to experiment with to figure out if I can get it to work with X10. I have a heavy duty switch that may be a suitable replacement for on/off and the dimmer ability could be a bonus. Who wants to have to get out of bed to turn off a fan? Not me. I find very few reasons to get out of bed. For food, cocktails, smoking, or more baby oil come to mind.

This afternoon I decided to build an FM radio station, you know, for the free backstage passes and access to deep conversation with groupies in push up bras and silk thongs. Actually, the goal is to get rid of some wires that run all over the Ranch to feed MP3s and CDs to the various sound systems. The simplest way to do that was obviously to buy a Ramsey FM10a electronics kit for a Low Power FM Transmitter to broadcast the source in a 3/4 mile radius. After dusting off my soldering iron and running to Radio Shack for some missing 0.0047 ceramic capacitors, a few hours later the transmitter was operational and ready to tune. Finding an audio source was a little trickier that normal, my DJ mixer and turntables were disconnected for a remodeling project.

The first source was my XBOX playing Spy Hunter which worked but it was difficult to hear the sound quality over the rail downstairs. After digging out some cables, my laptop became the next source. I first fired up the latest Radio Essential Mix stream and started scanning the FM band on the stereo for an open frequency. Since I don’t listen to the radio often I was a little surprised to find how crowded the radio dial is. The largest gap I found was at 99.9 so I switched on the transmitter and started adjusting the frequency setting which is a variable resistor you turn with a plastic screwdriver. After a few attempts, I was able to lock it in on 99.9 even though there is a tiny 2 degree margin of error turning the resistor. The next adjustments were the line level inputs and the stereo balance.

The Essential Mix streams are OK, but not CD quality so I slapped in Ultra Chilled Volume 3 and continued adjusting. After 20 minutes, I’d zoomed in on the best settings. I checked a few other tuners in the house and the broadcast did reach everywhere, even in my car in the driveway. The kit was nicely done with clear instructions and an easy layout, but the sound quality of the transmitter won’t work for what I’m trying to do. It has a constant background hum and the signal drifts slightly. The FM10a could work for broadcasting voice content from a radio scanner or even a TV broadcast, but not chill out in stereo. So, I’m off to buy another kit, probably a Ramsey FM25 or the digital FM30.