Gear Reviews, Tech & Photography
Here are a selection of photos I took at the Offutt Air Force Base Air Show in 2011. It was a good show and I was glad to go with a friend who had a good time. See all of my photos on my G+ page. G+ is my new home to display most of my photos in edition to here. I did not renew my Flickr Pro account. No use in paying for something I can do over on G+ for free.
Last night on 8/6/11 Lincoln experienced a damaging thunderstorm. The air has been full of humidity and there was lots of heat in the atmosphere so energy was abundant. The storm had tons of lighting, it knocked out power all over town and made it pretty unstable for the rest of town. One of the local TV stations took a direct hit (During the weather cast) and was offline for a little while. After the storm there were reports of lots of down trees, fences, etc. Nature repeated itself later that night with a second round.
The pictures below were all taken after the storm except the first one. The storm rolled through when the sun was starting to set so this created some great colors on the clouds. The bubble clouds are mammatus clouds. These were some of the most defined mammantus clouds I have seen recently.
I am always a little slow posting things to the blog but am much better about posting to the new G+ which I love. Follow me at http://Liquidretro.net/+
The city of Lincoln decided to hold its annual Uncle Sam Jam on July 2, 2011. This is always followed up with a professional fireworks show that evening. I wish the fireworks would have been on the 3rd so that I could have gone to the Nebraska City Fireworks display (July 2nd) as well but it just did not fall that way this year. The weather was perfect for this display, it was about 75F for showtime with a light breeze to keep the bugs off. Enjoy the photos below.
The entire set can be seen on Flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157627107802974/
Intro
Last week I made a bit of an impulse buy. I was not really in the market for new in hear earbuds/monitors but I bought some. Previously I had been using the older of my 2 pair of Sennheiser CX300s. I have had these for probably 4-5 years and really liked them. Recently I thought one ear as not outputting as much sound as the others and they had become more muddy in tone. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks recently so it was still ok. Well I was browsing around on Slickdeals and saw a thread all about new in ear monitors in this under $30 price range. Recently it seems that there are a lot of new upstart companies that are making fantastic sounding products for fractions of the price.
Build Quality
The build quality of the M9s are quite good. The heads are a hard metal shell and the metal looks to be anodized. I ended up with the silver buds because they were a little cheaper than black. The cord seems pretty sturdy. It is kind of slick feeling so hopefully this helps avoid knots. The cord is in a Y configuration. This is a personal preference but I much prefer the J cord style of the CX300’s. This will take a little getting use to. The plug end is bent at a 45 degree angle and I think this will work well for people who wrap the phones around a device or put the device in a pocket while using it. For my devices its a nice tight fit that really clicks in. The one area I can ding build quality is the speaker grill area. On my CX300’s its made of a wire mesh, on the M9 it looks to be a cardboard cover. I am a little concerned with how this will hold up over time, especially with sweat. I like to wear my IEM while biking.
Sound Quality
I would categorize myself somewhere between enthusiast and audiophile. I don’t have the budget to spend thousands on speakers and headphones every year but do enjoy quality. I would say I favor bass but like crisp clear full range either. Muddy strong bass for me is a pass. I tested with a variety of music. I am recently into electronic,dubstep, house stuff, but balanced this with Tech N9ne new album “All 6’s & 7’s” because of the hard hitting base but sharp clear fast lyrics. I also used Silversun Pickups, Incubus, and John Mayer. The later because this is an excellently mastered album with fine detail in the guitars.
The M9’s are advertised as for bass heads and I would not argue with that. The bass is strong but not overpowering for my taste. The bass improved as the headphones burned in (See below) the bass becamse more accurate and cleaner. The mids and highs are very crisp, with the highs maybe being too crisp and strong for my liking. This can be improved with EQ but isnt a huge thing. I think I will get use to it the more I listen. I prefer the crispness to the not as crisp mids and highs of my CX300s.
The soundstage is pretty good for in ear ear buds. Its no where nearly as large as my Sennheiser 595 cans but there is several factors of price difference too. The soundstage is large and improvement over the cx300’s.
These headphones do need a burn in period in my opinion. I was not impressed with them on first listen but I played music through them over night for 2 nights and the phones improved quite a bit. Tones mellowed out and some of the harshness of the mids and highs wore off. I would think the more I use them the more this will improve.
Fit/Noise Reducing ability
Many people do not like in ear headphones because of the fit. They say they the sound quality is poor. This is 100% down to fit. Companies need to really stress this in instructions. Without the proper fit all in ear earbuds will sound terrible. The proper fit transforms them. This said I am still experimenting with the fit of my M9’s. I really want the double flanged versions to work for me but I don’t think it will for me because they are a bit large. I do wish they had a couple of sizes of the double flanged versions but for the money your still getting a great value.
These are a ported design. The port is directly opposite of the speaker driver. It is a small hole in the metal housing. My CX300s were sealed and this worked great for noisy things and riding my bike into the wind. The ported design of the M9 still seemed to work pretty well when mowing but I did have some trouble when riding my bike. The wind noise was more noticeable than I expected. I may stick with my second pair of CX300s when riding at windy times.
Other
The amount of extras these come with is impressive for the price. The case is nice, I don’t see using it much as its not big enough to put a phone or ipod touch into, but you could fit a shuffle easily into it. The airplane adapter is super nice. I have always wanted one of these but don’t travel enough to buy one. Looking forward to trying it out. They came with 3 sizes of one flange ear tips in the bass boost (black) silicone, 1 size of double tip bass boos material. Also 1 pair of double flange tips in a balanced silicone (gray). I found the little covers a little hard to fit on but they all seem to stay.
Comparison to the CX300’s
My CX300’s have been my old reliable workhorse. I do everything in them without worry. I accepted their falts of having some muddy sound (Part of this was due the excessive wear I think I might have on my original pair). I must say that the new M9’s are better just about everywhere and I wont hesitate recommending these to anyone in the market for in ear buds for $20.
Conclusion
I bought my M9’s at Amazon for $16.99 and for the money I would say these are a fantastic value. These are so much better than any of the included headphones that come with any music player it really should be an automatic upgrade for anyone. While I have not experienced the really high end in earbuds and IEM’s I can say that the M9’s as a whole are the best I have heard. They are not without falts but I think I will get use to some of these. Time will tell how much I end up using them in the next few months. For less than $20 its very hard to go wrong.
Will update with a photo tonight.
In February I decided to start building a studio in my basement. At the time the weather was cold and I was out of things to work on in my house while it was still cold. This was always something I had wanted, so I built a Backdrop stand out of PVC, bought some fabric to use as a backdrop and found a good deal on some great studio lights through a contact at Awesome Camp 2011. About the time this was finished the weather got warmer and I started work on remodeling my garage. A couple of weekends ago a good friend came over and we played around in the studio for a couple of hours. She brought lots of clothes and we had fun mixing and matching. I am looking forward to future studio time to learn. I still have a ton to learn about studio lighting but i think the results below turned out pretty good.
I ended up firing the Alienbee B800’s I have wirelessly with my Canon 7D with the built in wireless flash firing trigger built in. This is a great feature, it was guess and check to get it set right but so far it seems to work great, and quite reliable. I shot tethered via USB to my old laptop using Lightroom to see the shots as I took them. This was cool and my model really liked being able to see every shot as they were taken. I think for the next shoot I will bring one of my external monitors so the images are larger. Other things I learned was I need a bit more width to the room to move lights further away from the source. For big shoots I might have to push furniture to the sides of the room and setup there. I will have to think on this. The backdrop holder worked well. I need to re-engineer one side of it a bit but for the most part it did its job well. I did learn the carpet under the model while nice for her to stand on causes the backdrop to have rinkles. This is distracting in the photography and next time I will remove it. I also learned that I need to iron my backdrops. Not looking forward to this task as it will take forever. Does anyone have a steamer?
I do plan on doing a blog post sometime on the construction of my DIY PVC backdrop holder, and my garage remodel, but I make no guarantee when that may be. In the mean time enjoy the small sample of pictures below and the link to the set on Flickr.
See the rest of this set on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157626682837239/
The Wine:
While in Spain I asked about learning to make this and it was explained to me that any red wine will work to make the drink. They also said the cheaper the wine, the better usually. In Spain we bought Liter boxes of wine for just a few Euro that worked great. This is a great way to get rid of red wine that you don’t care for is just cheap. Shiraz, Malbec, and blends containing Merlo and Cabernet Sauvignon also work well. The wine variety is really unimportant. I have found the Trader Joes famous Two Buck Chuck works pretty well.
The Soda:
In Spain two of the most popular sodas are La Casera Gaseosa which is low sugar lightly carbonated lemonade type drink. The other popular choice is Lemon Fanta. The problem with these is that they are not widely available in the United States. For example Lemon Fanta in the USA is not made with real cane sugar. Anyone who has had a Mexican or European Coke will tell you there is a huge difference, the same is true with Lemon Fanta. I will explain what I use to make the drink in the US below.
What I use to make Tinto De Veranos myself are Trader Joe’s wines. The store recently opened in my area and they sell a couple varieties of house red wines under the label Charles Shaw. It sells in my area for $2.99 a bottle so it sure fits the cheap criteria. For the soda I have found that Sunkist Lemon soda works really well. They also have a diet variety that tastes good too. I have read that a lemon lime soda like Sprite or 7-up also works but since these are sweeter and have lime with them it changes the flavor a bit. I have not tried these as much.
If you want to make the drink a bit stronger you can easily add a shot of white rum. Be careful as this drink does a good job of masking alcohol so things can get out of hand pretty easily.
So now that you know about the drink here is how you make it.
Instructions:
Using a high ball glass fill the glass with several large ice cubes.
Fill the glass about 1/3 of the way full with red wine, add optional rum.
Fill the remaining glass with the Sunkist lemon soda that has been chilled.
Stir and enjoy.
The drink should be light, refreshing and bring the fruit flavors out of the wine. Depending on the wine being used it is acceptable to use a little bit of simple syrup or sugar to make the drink a bit sweeter if desired. Optional garnishments include a slice of Lemon or Orange.
Below is a photo of a Tinto De Verano I made last year.
Pinball Deluxe is a Free Game for the Android platform. The game contains 3 different pinball machines each with their own different theme. Each pinball board contains a mini game which I have not seen in many other pinball games before. Its a neat little thing to set it apart from the others. The game has your classic flippers at the bottom of the board and then on some levels middle flippers higher up as well. This game runs very well. It is super smooth on my Droid X and looks great while doing it. It is safe to say this is the best looking Android game I have seen. In addition to the game running well the designers have really thought it out. You can pause and resume your games so you can come back later. It also asks you on start-up if you want to enable sound. This is a must have feature as far as I am concerned. I often like to pull out my phone if I am in line and the last thing I want is the opening music to come blaring on. Since Android has different volume levels for different items its easy to leave your phone on vibrate but have the media volume on a high level. I have heard stories of people in public places where they probably should not be gaming on their phone (Church) and they suddenly hear the Angry Birds theme song start up someplace in the room. I am sure this happens in college classrooms across the country as well. So this game prevents that.
The only negative I can come up with is with the ball Launcher/Plunger. I would like some type of power meter here so I can tell how powerful the launch will be. Currently it shows a spring that compresses but
Conclusion: At a 7.6Mb download and a price of Free this is a great game that all Android users running 2.1 or higher should try. In my opinion the developer could easily add additional boards and charge for them. You can download it in the Android Market here https://market.android.com/details?id=com.greencod.pinball.android&feature=search_result
Below are a few screen shots from the game on my phone. I will try to get a few better ones.
One other thing before I talk about the New Android Market in the browser. Google choose to stream this event live, for free, for anyone with a browser and a copy of flash. Proving Google is all about being open, this was open to all devices (well nearly). You could even watch it live on your iPad if you watched the TWIT stream which was in a non flash format. The main stream looked and sounded great. This is really the way it should be and I applaud Google for making their event viewable for all.
For me the biggest thing announced was the new Android Market . This in your full size browser on your computer. This is unique, the competition doesn’t have this feature and instead force you into their walled garden that is iTunes to buy or browse your apps on a computer. This requires you to be at your computer. The Android Market has nothing like this, proving Google’s openness. You can download apps from anywhere you have a desktop and cell service. At the Library, at work, at a Friends house you name it. Use any old computer, find your app in the web browser press install and your done, more on that in a minute. The design of the new store is clean and fresh. It has large graphics, screenshots of the application, a description and then users reviews. It also has a related apps bar on the side. The website also has featured apps and the ability to search for applications and then filter your search results by lots of things such as price (Free or Paid) etc.
The neatest thing is the ability once logged in to the store is once click install and purchases all from your computer. It is very simple. First you find the application you want to install, next you click install. You are presented with a screen that shows what services this app uses and you have to agree. If this was a paid app you are then presented with what your funding source is. Click OK and the payment processes. Now within about 3-4 seconds your phone the app is pushed to your phone. The download and install starts automatically. In your Notifications menu you will notice a small down arrow to show you are downloading the file, just like if you downloaded any application. It then installs and that is it. The website also
allows you to link to specific applications with emails or IM. There is even a direct Tweet button on the page of every app so you can easily publish apps to your twitter stream. No longer do you have to share the name of the app and how to get there with your friends you can just give them a link.
In app purchase is not a huge thing for me but it is for developers. In the past it has been hard to do and as a result many developers believed the marketplace did not work for them. Now that this is available it helps to solve these problems. It also shows that Google is listening to developers and making chances to improve the process so it Android ecosystem continues to grow and flourish.
The web Android Market is a game changer for Android, its users, and developers. I predict app downloads will increase greatly just because it is so easy to try apps. It is also much easier for payment of apps as well since you can easily change your payment source. I showed this to a few people at work today and they were blown away with how easy it is. Apps kind of scare some people, but now they feel more comfortable because things are larger and the experience of using a web browser is better than on the small phone of your screen. You can open many tabs now in your browser when comparing like apps too. It’s slick and just works! Way to go Google, keep up those innovations!
Some screenshots of the process.
An App’s Homepage
What happens when you click install
Install screen, Click OK and thats it.
