Gear Reviews, Tech & Photography
Last week we had some extremely cold weather in Nebraska. My garage is pretty well insulated but I sometimes get ice on the window. When I came home from work I noticed some very large crystals had formed. The neighbors side house light provided the light. I posted this to the Nebraska Through The Lens group on Facebook not expecting much and was blown away. In 15 minues I had 100 likes, in 24 hours just at 500 likes and quite a few comments.
The roommate and I drove to Des Moines, IA to see The Glitch Mob on a Thursday afternoon. The venue was different, much like a big community center. They had about half of it marked off with a big curtain for the concert. Parking was great though about 15 feet from the front door and free. The Glitch Mob (Soundcloud) sounded great during the entire show. I was worried that with just the 2 large stacks of PA speakers on either side it would not be loud enough but it was. Sound quality was not up to Bassnectar level but still better than most concerts. Lighting was pretty good for a small venue too. The controllers they were using to que the sounds were pretty cool. All touch screen based, with segmented areas it would be interesting to know more about them. Behind the large turbine looking props were digital drums/triggers too. Summary I would drive 3 hours to see The Glitch Mob again, especially for a $20 ticket. I may come back and post a little video if there is interest please leave a comment below.
Love him or hate him, Skrillex is a a pretty big name in modern music. I am admittedly not the biggest fan but decided to go to support a bigger show like this in Lincoln. It was unique because they closed down a intersection in downtown Lincoln and had the concert outside in the streets. Weather ended up being clear but pretty cool for early October. Opening acts were a few local DJ’s that did a good job and then Waka Flacka Flame who played a lot of his older rap songs and had a lot of stage energy to get people going. Skrillex came on and played a lot of his bigger songs but also a lot of mashups from others. I had pretty mixed feelings about it expecting some more of his original content. We did get to hear a exclusive to a new song he did say.
The concert was not physically setup very well which this combined with the crowed kind of ruined it for me to a degree. The front of the stage was about even with where the crosswalk would be, and the sound booth was set across the interesection just past the other crosswalk. This left very just the middle of the middle of the intersection for people who wanted to be directly in front of the stage where the best viewpoint, best sound, and best lights were. There were just too many people for this, and that left people spilling over the sides where sound and lights deteriorated a lot. There were also beer carts in the major walkways forcing people further into these pinch points to get from one side to the other. The crowed was more rude and rough than I have experienced in a while, even with a large police presence. You expect some of this but not to this extent. The next day the comments in the local newspaper’s online article was a great laugh with people complaining about noise for blocks etc. The promoters did a good job of announcing the show in advance and it ended at the reasonable time of 11pm sharp. I hope they can continue to offer this type of outdoor show in the future and make some improvements in setup and layout.
All photos taken with a Samsung Note 2.
Arctic Monkeys With Royal Blood
It was nice to go to a Rock Show again. The Harrah’s casino is a pretty good venu. It was the first smoke free concert I have been too indoor or out. Sound quality was good, not great. Royal Blood was my surprise of the show, having never heard of them I became a fan and had to grab their album when I got home. Arctic Monkeys put on a good show, focused most on their music playing song after song.
Katy Perry
I wasn’t originally planning to go to this one but got a ticket at the last minute. While not the biggest Katy Perry fan I left the show very impressed. Seats were great at midcourt since the stage was a big triangle and went to just over midcourt. This show was a huge production, over 15 trucks brought in tons of lights, screens, moving floor sections, props, and fireworks. Sound quality in the PBA is really great, although bring your earplugs, it’s loud. You really forget about how many hit’s Katy Perry has had and she sang them all.
Pretty Lights came to Lincoln on November 15th as part of his Analog Future Tour. Unlike other electronic artists, this show had real live musicians playing along with Pretty Lights. The keyboards and horn players were pretty cool. This was a more laid back show in comparison to Bassnectar but this is to be expected. It was a long show at over 3 hours of music playing. I enjoyed it for sure. All photos and video below were taken with my Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
I took the photo below at the Nebraska vs Michigan State football game on November 16th in Lincoln, NE with my Samsung Note 2. I used the new HDR feature of #Snapseed to edit the photo, and I posted it to Twitter. Later that night I had a few people tweet me saying that my photo made the big screen at the Nebraska Volleyball game. Pretty cool!
On Friday, October 27, 2013 I was able to go see @Bassnectar in concert at Pershing in Lincoln. Having enjoyed Bassnectar for awhile and hearing about his great live shows, it was exciting to see it come to my home town. The show had some really unique things, and in total it was great. The sound was unbelievable.
Security
The security to the show was nearly as extensive as at an airport. They required everyone to take everything out of pockets, have a pat down (not as invasive as an airport), and lift up your shirt to look at the waistband. Despite this, they allowed sealed water bottles in (they took the caps at the door) and bags after looking in them as well. My observation while waiting in line was this caused a lot of people to consume anything they were hoping to get into the show before going in. This did cut down a lot on substance use inside the concert, but of course the concert still smelled like an EDM concert.
Koan Sound
Usually opening acts don’t get much attention, Koan Sounds was the opposite of that. They got the crowd going and were a surprise for me. Being from the UK, their music was a bit different and more like a club. I am definitely going to check them out.
Bassnectar/The Sound
Bassnectar’s set was over 2 hours of constant music and dancing. He had 1 giant screen behind him supported with 4 smaller pillar boards on the sides. The video was very colorful and synced to songs. Some were random fractal designs, others were moving video or stylized bits from music videos.
The music was a great selection of new and old Bassnectar. One of the things I like about Bassnectar’s music is it incorporates pieces from lots of styles of music, and this showed in what he played. It was similar to some of his recent mixtapes. It’s the Bassnectar we know and expect to hear.
The sound quality was unbelievably clear and dangerously loud. It brought new meaning to “feel the music”. I had read a little on the Meyer Sound system being used. I thought some of it was hype, but the system lived up to its reputation. Never before have I been to any concert that was as loud, but super clear, as this one was. You could feel the music in your body way more than you typically would at a rock show. As a long time follower of Bassnectar on twitter, I knew that he recommended ear plugs; I was very glad I had my Etymotic Research ER20 in my pocket. These are unique in that they evenly block volume in sound without distortion or changing pitch. They make it so you can talk to someone near you without yelling. My guess is this was the loudest and most bass heavy concert that the old Pershing building had ever seen.
All photos below were taken with my Note 2.
Please make sure to see my updates at the bottom of the page.
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I have talked with Lincolnites citywide who share similar frustrations with the ISP options in town. The big guys tend to overpromise, underdeliver, have over utilization problems, and reliability issues. For me, the last 6 months have been worse than average, with huge fluctuations in speed, especially during peak times. I had techs out, replaced modems, talked with support and there just was not much that could be done. On top of this, new fees and a fairly high bill have been enough for me to start looking at other options.
In Lincoln there are not a ton of options. Lincoln has a fairly limited market. We have one cable provider and one traditional POTS phone provider. There are a few resellers but they mainly use the infrastructure of the first two, thanks FCC. There have been other options, but they typically have not been able to offer the price/performance ratio I was looking for, especially delivering a faster upload speed.
Wide Range Broadband (WRB) is a small, locally owned and operated ISP, wanting to give Lincolnites another option to get Internet, phone and TV service. When I first ran across them in late 2012 they didn’t have service in my area, but this has recently changed as they expand to cover more of the city. View a coverage map here. WRB is a point to point line of sight Wireless ISP (WISP). They use a RF technology and mount an antenna on a high point of your home and then run CAT5 inside. More on the install later. They are using fiber for the backhaul between their current 5 towers in town.Their main provider is Level 3 who dumps to the internet in Dallas TX. The transmissions from the antenna to the providers tower is encrypted using 128 bit AES, which is a great thing.
This is the rooftop antenna on my house.
The install at my house took about 1.5 hours on a weeknight. It was refreshing to have an appointment time that was not a 4 hour window. During the install, Aaron, the company owner, installed an antenna on my rooftop. They had a lots of options, and I chose to put it on the side of my chimney. Another common install point was the PVC exhaust vents many roofs have. This is a good choice if you can’t put holes into the structure. The install is similar to a satellite dish install, with the mount actually being from a satellite dish. From there he ran a length of outdoor rated CAT5 wire down the eave of my house and inside, with the rest of the service wires. The antenna and CAT5 blend in pretty well, I think. You can see them if you’re looking for it, but if not it blends in pretty well. Inside there is a simple small POE injector that plugs into electricity and a patch cable to your router.
I will admit I was a little skeptical at first of a wireless point to point service. I have two pretty heavy users (Gaming, Streaming, Online Backup and more) in the house, so low lag and performance is a must. Point to point systems of the past are associated with having problems when there is weather, and high ping times. So far I have not found this to be the case. I am on the top residential package (21×5) and am seeing download speeds between 18-20mb/s and uploads of between 5-7mb/s Upload speeds to seem to vary some, but they don’t dip that low, and are still significantly faster than I was previously receiving with my old ISP. Higher speeds are being seen at non peak times. The speed test screenshots speak for themselves. There are no bandwidth caps with the service either.
Service is dependent on distance from the towers, and according to Google Maps I am about 2.5 miles from the tower. My housemate reports his ping times when playing online games are about 1/2 or 1/3 less with the new service. Ping times to Google during peak hours are less than 30ms. Youtube and Netflix performance are a lot better; much less buffering and no throttling. So far we have not had any thunderstorms roll through to see how that affects the service. WRB told me that rain or snow would not affect the service. So far in the one storm we have had I didn’t notice any performance differences.
After having the service about a week, I can easily say it’s the best ISP experience I have had in Lincoln and the best value. The top package is quoted as a (21×5) for $60 a month. With my old ISP I was paying $65 for (15×1) and that was not being delivered, so this is a much better value. Other packages are available as well with various levels of speed and price. I also like supporting a local company.
WRB also offers a referral program. If this post has made you interested in signing up please let them know LiquidRetro referred you.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below or find me on Twitter at @Liquidretro and I will reply back.
UPDATE1: I just wanted to write a quick update on the performance in the crazy weather Lincoln has had in the past 2 days. On Tuesday some very significant thunderstorms rolled through town. These brought with them some intense hail, that did cause a problem with my service. After talking with the ISP they acknowledged a bit of downtime due to the weather. The hail had struck some of their antennas. This was unexpected and they were looking deeper into the cause of the problem. Good news is the outage only lasted about 20 minutes. During the rest of the rain in the later thunderstorm there were no problems. Today Lincoln has received a at times heavy wintry mix of precipitation I have not had any problems with reliability or speed. Speeds are still nice and fast.
UPDATE2: As of October 2017 I no longer was a Widerrange customer. I had the opportunity to get Allo Fiber to the home which is the best thing to happen to the Lincoln ISP market. It’s a fantastic service with great customer support.
Since my Update 1 My service with Widerrange declined in speed, because unstable and customer support suffered greatly. Running a WISP takes knowledge of the wireless spectrum above general networking and it woudl appear the new owner is lacking in this. My service required resetting due to vulnerable firmware that was known to the ISP but instead of being proactive they were reactive when users called in about a problem.
At the current time I do not recommend Widerange if you have other options. The product being delivered did not meet expectations nor did the customer service. Lincoln now has better options, and I would recommend using one of them if possible.
A couple of weekends ago I was able to see Bill Nye @TheScienceGuy speak at the Homestead National Monument in Beatrice NE. It was a beautiful fall day for 300-400 people to sit and listen. I was expecting a few basic experiments similar to the TV show, but instead it was more of a speech lecture. The topic varied but some of the main points were sustainability, and the future and importance of science.
At the end there was a long Q&A session, and the topics were all over the place. Controversial questions were asked and they were handled in a dignified way. Bill Nye did not try and stay in the middle of the road, instead voicing his strong opinion on some topics such as global warming, nuclear energy’s future, etc. He did keep stressing finding a way to store energy efficiently and that it could “Make you Rich”!
I took several photos during the speech, and a few are below. I was glad I went.
