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All work and no play can make a guy crazy. I needed a break from writing and data (re)-analysis and realized I have been neglecting my artistic side entirely too much of late (obviously!)
Hopefully this shook the cobwebs off my sketching abilities a bit, (a very little bit) I hope to sketch something every other day at least this year. Not a New Years resolution per se, but a goal. Like 120 dives and over 120 hours in the water. A goal I hope to hit, even surpass, but nothing I will cry over if I miss it. Came really close to my target of 100 dives and 100 hours in the water last year.
I needed some new speakers for my desktop computer system at home. I've been tolerating JBL creature 2.1 system for a couple of years now and I'd finally had enough. The JBLs suffered from a depressing lack of critical midrange detail. This, coupled with the fact that the kids now hog the main system in the front room, means that I can't get access to my iTunes library readily.
A few years ago I was doing some research into speakers and I came across the Quad 11l actives. They were very well reviewed in a couple of Australian and New Zealand hi-fi publications. From what I could gather at the time they were not widely available in the UK. When I did eventually track them down their price tag was £600 for a pair. Prohibitively expensive for a desktop audio system. These things are marketed as pro-level near field monitors. They have their own build in amps. Two per speaker. 60W for the bass driver and 40W for the treble driver.
Anyway a couple of weeks ago I decided to have a casual squint at eBay and see if I could pick up a second hand pair at a vastly reduced price. There were none available. One seller was selling individual speakers new for £250. apiece. Still too expensive. Crestfallen, I gave up. A couple of days later I had another look. Another seller was offering a pair of Quad actives for £229. Stunned, I had a closer look. Apart from a different badge, Quad Industrial, these looked identical to the Quad 11l actives. Plus, they were brand new, in unopened boxes.
After a few hours of research I discovered that IAG, Quad's parent company, has an Industrial division that market audio equipment for hotels, conference centres, lecture theatres, and the like. Hence the different branding. The speaker also goes by another name, the Quad QPM1. Other than that it is identical in every way to the Quad 11l active monitor.
This was a game changer. Prior to this I was considering the Audioengine 2 model as my desktop speaker replacement. I phoned the supplier to check that there was no mistake in their pricing in the advert. They confirmed that they were on sale for £229 for the pair. I placed my order immediately.
I was very excited to hear these speakers given the reviews I'd read. I'm also a big fan of the Quad sound. My front room consists of the Quad 12l2s as main speakers in my 5.1 kit, Quad Centre, Quad l-ite satellites for rear and Quad l-ite subwoofer. Now I could have the Quad sound as part of my desktop system at a fraction of the price.
Quad speakers are known for being extremely neutral. In other words they take nothing away from or add anything to the original recording or source. Although my Quads were all very well reviewed at the time of their release, around 2004-2007, there are other great speakers out there. For me I liked the cachet associated with being a Quad owner. I clearly liked the sound and most importantly I got all the kit at bargain prices. Most of it was ex-dem so I saved at least 20% on the normal retail price. Another important factor was matching the speakers across the whole 5.1 kit. All of them should work well together. The 5.1 kit is driven by an Arcam AVR 300 that again was ex-dem. The front speakers are bi-amped and bi-wired. This affords them 120 watts per channel and per driver.
Being a hi-fi enthusiast makes you a bit picky about what you’ll listen to. So how do the Quad actives sound? Well put it this way... I've not stopped playing them since the minute they arrived in the house. I've thrown everything at them. From Led Zepp to Beethoven. Alison Krauss through to Prokofiev. Unbelievable! If anything the Quad actives may sound better than the 12l2s in my front room due to the fact that their bi-amp design is perfectly matched to the drivers in a way that any other amp would struggle to better. There is plenty of power and the signal path is not compromised by additional cabling and junction points. So the sound could be characterised as being clean, clear with tight bass control and a surprising amount of depth considering the cabinet size. However being nearfield monitors they are very revealing! If the recording is poor it sounds poor through these. You are very conscious of it. Also after a few days I became very aware of the deficiencies of the iMac's sound card. There was a constant low hum and other nasties such as buzzing and clicks. Hissing too. Another issue was that I wanted to run an old radio tuner through these. All I could lay my hands on at short notice was a phono switchbox. This worked but it was difficult to control the volume of the tuner other than messing around at the back of the monitors. Not really ideal.
I realised I need to look for some kind of preamp. Nothing suitable for desktop audio seemed immediately available. Initially I started looking at pro audio solutions. Mixers and the like. Not only were these really expensive but they also took up a lot of desk space. The other thing that seemed clear was that some kind of external signal processing solution would improve on the sound the iMac was capable of producing. Looked like a DAC was required. This took me into a whole new ballpark. It came down to two companies in the end. Cambridge Audio’s Dacmagic or NuForce’s uDac or Icon products. Fundamentally it came down to my need to switch sources easily and the ability to control volume at the turn of a dial or via an installed remote app on an iPhone. The Dacmagic looked very tempting but there was no preamp function or headphone amplifier. This left me with the NuForce products.
NuForce’s website information is confusing. Being new to the world of DACs and desktop audio I knew little about using USB as a means of feeding an external digital to analogue converter with a digital signal. I was familiar with toslink optical links from the Arcam processor but USB was new to me. So I started reading about jitter and the degrading effect is has on sound quality and the technology used by NuForce to take correct these issues. I also read some astonishing reviews on their uDac, Icon 2 and Icon HDP products. Turns out NuForce are an American company that specialises in really high end digital amplifiers and DACs. We’re talking thousands of pounds. Their ‘desktop’ range is much more affordable however. The uDac was offered to me for £55 for example. In the end I got a fantastic deal on the Icon HDP. I had to make a couple of phone calls at this point. I can’t say how much I saved but I got a better bargain on this than I got on the Quads! The Icon HDP is a combined class A headphone, preamp and top quality DAC rolled into one. Perfect for my needs.
Now we have the combined effect of the iMac and its ability to feed a purely digital signal from iTunes or Spotify Premium to the NuForce Icon HDP via USB and then onto the Quad QPMs. The effect the Icon HDP had on the system was staggering. This truly is a phenomenal product. Undoubtedly the most accomplished, best sounding and most useful piece of hi-fi equipment I’ve ever bought. The whole soundstage opened right up. Subtle nuances present in the recordings were revealed in extraordinary detail. A truly three dimensional space is presented to the listener. Given I’m used to the full Quad/Arcam experience in the front room it’s amazing how lifelike and articulate my bargain desktop audio solution really is. The Quads in themselves are remarkable for the price but the Icon HDP is literally a revelation.
As you’ll see from the photos I’ve experimented with this system in all sorts of combinations. At one point I even hooked up the Quad sub to hear the difference it made. I concluded it’s really not required the system is already capable of producing almost terrifying levels of deep controlled bass without it. Midrange too is superb. Treble crisp and smear free. I’ve been particularly enjoying the albums below. I’ve pretty much moved into the backroom! All in all, a pretty good October week…
Trentemøller – The Very Last Resort
Mercan Dede – 800
Sergei Rachmaninoff – Rachmaninov
Alison Krauss – Lonely Runs Both Ways
John Hiatt – Hiatt Comes Alive At Budokan?
Booka Shade – Memento
Avishai Cohen – Aurora
By the way the Quads are still available on eBay, last few remaining. Other speakers shown for comparison.
I'm not dead.
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Sorry for the long absence. It may not yet be over, sadly; I still have some other projects on my plate, and desktop modding just isn't a priority. I have no intention of abandoning it entirely, however. There are still plenty of ideas that I want to play with, just don't expect a blitz for a while.
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Enigma
Anyone who's e-mailed me about Enigma deserves my deepest apologies. I'm doing my best to respond to as many of you as possible, but there are still hundreds of messages that have gone unanswered, some of them for months, and I feel terrible about that. If I ever run into some money, I'll hire an assistant to respond to them all. I know it's become cliché to say something like this, but it's humbling to see how passionate and genuinely appreciative you are, and I really have read each message.
Since interest clearly has yet to die, I'm making it a goal to release Enigma 3 by the end of the year. Rather than piling on with new functions, I want to keep the focus on making it easier to set up and use:
- As I've talked about in the past, my chief objective for this is to make Enigma part of a fully-developed Litestep theme. Beyond the eye candy, this would ideally let the user switch between skins, profiles and templates using shell-integrated controls. (For those who aren't interested in a shell replacement, don't worry - the package will still and always be available as a Rainmeter module.)
- Setting modesty aside for a moment, I believe a lot of Enigma's success comes from its detailed documentation and its (albeit crude) installer tool, which made it far more accessible to the average user. The only other Rainmeter suite I've seen with any such automation is Vista Rainbar. This has been a successful policy, and if possible, I hope to continue it by streamlining the installation of Litestep and the Enigma theme as much as possible.
- I realize the existing version has some problems that need fixing. The Location skin is still plagued by servers thinking it's a web crawler and cutting it off, so the search is still on for a permanent provider. I also realize that MoxaWeather is no longer working - this is the fault of Weather.com, who shut down the convenient XML feed that we've all been using. I know there are talks going on between Weather.com and the Rainmeter community, and they've asked that skin developers refrain from exploiting a well-known loophole to fix the problem until they've worked out a deal. I'm happy to oblige.
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Liquid Crystal Discourse
still exists, technically. I got to write one post, and then, naturally, Real Lifeâ„¢ swept in and buried it like a hurricane. I've heard from a few people who were disappointed about that, so I'm now reaffirming my commitment to the blog. My plan is to post at least once a week.
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Desktop
As you can tell, another reason I haven't posted in a while is that very little has changed. I'm no longer running Google Desktop, because, well, I don't use it anymore. Autohotkey, Rainmeter and Notepad pretty much joined forces to render it obsolete.
I'm really looking forward to Windows 7, which shall, I'm sure, initiate a new stage of evolution for my dear laptop.
See the notes for more trivia.
Theme:
- NOOTO VS. Requires patched uxtheme.dll - patcher here.
- Wallpaper: Remnants, by freelancah, resized and rotated.
Startups:
- Autohotkey.
- Launchy.
Programs running:
- Rainmeter. Skin: Enigma, customized with Amana Icons.
- Yod'm 3D 1.4.
My work-day... Today's pretty slow and boring. :/
Edit: Interesting note, everyone in that chat window (as in everyone I was talking to) works for Apple, except for the "beg51" one... He just wishes he worked there. :D
Other work-time screenshots from Apple:
Ben pretending he's Steve Jobs
Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) joins Apple board of directors
My Apple badge (not a screenshot, but fun nonetheless)
Mountain Dew bottlecap stack (also not a screenshot, but very slackerish at work... it was slow!)
Smoke break shenanigans (also not a screencap, but funny)
My eMac at Apple, and part of my desktop
You like this? Then Digg this shit, son! :D
Edit: 05/10/2007 - Somewhere around 2pm today, Ira SomethingOrOther, from Apple (who did not even care to specify his position) called my house and spoke to me. Mr. Ira Whoever then "asked me nicely" to remove the image ("I'm asking you to take it down, or we'll send you papers". Yes. his words). My response: "So, I'm being threatened with a NastyGram?" and before I could barely finish the word "threatened", his hurried and heavy-toned response was "No, you're not being threatened. We're 'asking you nicely' to remove it." I inquired exactly what the part of it was that Apple had a problem with, and was given a very vague response:
"We don't have a problem with it. It's illegal to post internal systems of Apple's."
"However, Peoplesoft is not owned nor created by Apple."
"PeopleSoft does belong to Apple."
"No, PeopleSoft is not owned by Apple, I've used it at Radioshack, Wells Fargo, and Shasta High School."
"Well... um... GCRM is."
"Yeah, sure, I guess."
When I asked specifically if it was GCRM that Apple's higher-ups had an issue with, I was again given a very vague answer, just coming back down to somewhat thinly veiled heavyhanded "polite asking".
Now, I understand Apple's interest in protecting their internal secrets, interests, and properties... So, in response to Ira *Insert forgettable last name here*, I have replaced this image with a hopefully Apple-Friendly version. Anything even remotely considered Apple internal systems has been blurred out.
I am now not in any violation of any interpretation of any sort of NDA that I signed a year and a half ago.
Cupertino must've been bored this week... It's not like this was a leak of Asteroid proportions. Which, being said, as an Apple fan and a musician obsessed with computer-based recording, I would 99.9% buy one of those bastards. IF it didn't suck. Pass that on to His Steveness, Ira.
So, if this image is now Apple-Approved, great. If this still is a problem, I believe you have my number. ;-)
Wallpaper found on Wallbase.cc
Clock, weather and date are illustro for rainmeter.
I used theme Soft 7 2.0 for Windows and Ribbon Start orb.
This desktop is running on Crunchbang Linux & Openbox DE, with one of the stock wallpapers, and Conky running on top.
The ring meter makes use of Conky's new Cairo bindings for Lua to draw system stats in rings...This one, from the inside out, shows the space used on the root partition, the battery charge on my netbook, the total CPU% usage and the memory % usage.
All my programs are launched via the right-click menu or via keybindings (in true Openbox style!).
I hope you like!
Meu Desktop no Mac!
* Importante: Isto é apenas um screenshot da tela do meu MacBook. Esta foto não é de minha autoria.
*Important: This picture is just a screenshot of my desktop. This photography is not my property.
download the original size for your desktop if you dig it.
got posted here...
check them out they have some other cool ones.
my new desktop. she has one of the most amazing smiles. the whole happiness thing just ups the sexyness so much more.
Software:
- Windows 7 Start Button Changer
- Rainmeter 2.1 beta
- Omnimo UI
Resources:
- Windows modern Wallpaper by djeric from deviantART
- Rainmeter "Elegance 2" by lilshizzy from deviantART
- Eclipse 2 Icon Pack by chrfb from deviantART
- Trans Token Style Start Orb by my99 from deviantART
This is my windows vista desktop, based on the Enigma desktop. The main thing I've changed here is that I hacked together an RSS reader into the sidebar using rainmeter, and of course I changed the wallpaper.
This was made with a desktop image from Mantia.
and the sign was from
I found a vector graphic of the St Johns logo that i altered in photoshop to give the same background as the notice.
I then used geek tool (for the first time) to place the weather and date info on the notice.
i altered the graphics for the arc clock and used the scripted from that to animate the st johns clock.
and finally i used a simple bow tie theme for the iTunes info uptop of the notice.
Little desktop wallpaper project, see here idek.net/AVi
Follow the project on Twitter www.twitter.com/GeekExclamation
It keeps people off my computer... that's why I use the giant eye. To make sure no one sits at my desk and downloads virii and crashes my computer... I'm not too paranoid, am I?
How do you take a screen shot.?
Well, if you use a mac, you probably already know how to do that. For Windows users, you hold down the [alt] key and then hit the [prt scr/sysrq] key. If you've never heard of the [prt scr/sysrq] key, it's right next to the [F12] key at the top. After you hit those two keys simultaneously, an image of what your screen looks like is now on your clipboard. Next, you open MS Paint/photoshop, whatever,, hit [ctrl] and [v] at the same time, and voila. Title it , save it as a .jpg (not a .bmp) then send it to one of the desktop groups pools. I don't know why, but other people's desktop images fascinate me. That's why I'm heading over to the groups now.
*Featured Desktop on Lifehacker.com*
While looking at minimalistic wallpapers, I found this wallpaper and an idea sparked in my head. Wouldn't it be cool to have desktop information "reflected" in the mirrors of the wallpaper? I thought so, especially since I hadn't previously seen something like this done.
What's In this Desktop:
[Wallpaper:]
- Link. What you see in the screen shot is a slightly modified version I did to accommodate for the task bar.
[Icons:]
[Taskbar:]
The invisible taskbar can be found here.
[Rainmeter:]
- 10-Foot HUD
- Simple Sentence for the weather temps and conditions.
- Lines for the RAM and CPU measures
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Full-Size screen shot of the desktop.
I have this entire suite bundled in a Rainstaller file for easy installation! (Scaled to 1440x900) AND now since the amount of traffic I got to download this file, I have moved a fixed installer to a file hosting site:
If the Rainstaller doesn't work for you:
Then download the zip archive of the skins at the link below. Just copy the skins into the Rainmeter directory in My Documents and restart Rainmeter.
Have any comments, tips, or tweaks you think it could use? Let me know!
Many thanks to Mr. Alan Henry and LIFEHACKER.
The Still Sunset Desktop - lifehacker.com
Geektool + Mac OSX
__
Wallpaper: interfacelift.com/wallpaper/details/2553/lake_night.html
Geektool: Clock, Date, Weather, Weather forecast.
Font: Josefin Sans Std
Menu bar (Black color): Nocturne
iTunes info: Mousqueak
Mac Pro (late 2013)
3 ASUS PB287Q (avec 3 Duronic DM451X2)
Wasdkeyboards custom
Klipsch G17-Air
Logitech c920
Magic Mouse & Magic Trackpad
iPad Air 2
Beats Studio Wireless 2.0
Geeklets using ncal for the calendars, Bowtie for the media controller and three geeklets that use ARC font and scripts for disk use, memory use and cpu use
Woody Desktop?
___Rainmeter___
-> Enigma
link: kaelri.deviantart.com/art/Enigma-103823591
-> illustro (default theme with rainmeter)
link: rainmeter.net/RainCMS/?q=rainmeter101_gettingstarted
-> Elementary
link: col-darby.deviantart.com/art/Elementary-Rainmeter-1-4-185...?
-> Elegance 2
link: lilshizzy.deviantart.com/art/Rainmeter-Elegance-1-0-21450...
___Wallpaper___
-> Woody Wall by BSA-Danny
link: browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&global=1&...
___RocketDock___
-> Mnml Icon Set
link: browse.deviantart.com/?q=rocketdock%20icons&order=9&a...