Just Plain Wrong

Wow, does Katie Hafner writing for the New York Times blow it with her article on building a home cinema. She sets off on the wrong foot with this:

The New York Times > The Do-It-Yourself Cineplex: "My first step was to lay a few ground rules. One was to conduct thorough research but not drive myself crazy. I vowed to gather information from a handful of well-informed aficionados near my home in the San Francisco Bay area and ignore the rest.

I allowed myself to use the Web, but selectively. Product reviews and price comparisons were fine, but I steered clear of the dozens of online home theater discussion groups. Remember, some of these people are not merely opinionated fanatics, they're opinionated fanatics with too much time on their hands.

If you want advice, you're better off calling friends who have been through the home theater ordeal. Make sure they went through it recently, because like most technology, equipment and prices change almost weekly."

Let me tell you something: your friends don't know shit. And even if your friends do know something, you don't know if they're experience on this can be trusted.

And most of all, you don't know what's possible.

This can be applied to anything, but let's talk about home theater.

Before starting a project like this, survey what's possible. You might decide you'd just like a TV and some stereo speakers, or you might discover that for a little more, you can build an immersive environment. But you'll never know until you look outside your group of friends. You might find out that those Bose speakers you've been looking at don't produce as sound as well as something less expensive, but Best Buy doesn't carry them. You might find out that no, painting your wall flat white isn't the best way to save on buying a screen (but there are other colors and DIY solutions that produce very good results.) And you might find that a little more thought about the room before you look at equipment can save you $$$ and give you a great audio environment.

You picked the wrong group to ignore, Ms. Hafner. Some of us fanatics could have spent some of our "too much time" helping you.

Oh, and you really screwed your friends by showing them "Master and Commander" with a blown subwoofer. That movie rocked at my place.

Damn, Missed Another Anniversary

Gmail For All (OK, Just For Me)

I received my invitation to join the Beta test of Google's new email system last night. Gmail, when it's released to the public will be a free service which offers a free email account with a full gigabyte of storage. Most systems offer a tiny fraction of that - hell, most paid systems offer less than 10%.

It's also an interesting approach to email - making your email into "conversations" - which I find very useful. And searching - which is also cool.

I wish there were a way for me to dump 10 years of old email into it, but I'll have to work it from this point forward. And I'm not yet set on making it my main account, which also limits its usefulness.

The ads? Not a problem. And no, I don't have any more privacy concerns with them than I do with any other internet service provider.

And no, I can't get you into the beta, either. But it should be available to the public soon.

It's Due Now, Baby

"'John always knows when his homework is due.'"

This is good news. Sorta.

But it doesn't counteract the acid sent swirling in my gut this morning when I hear Rush Limbaugh proclaim that the Iraq prison abuses wasn't a bad thing at all. “If you look at the role Arab men make their women play, to make American prison guards females and give them utter power over Arab men, some might call that torture. Some might call that decent punishment. Some might say, 'Here's a taste of your own medicine. This is what you've been doing to your women, only now the tables are turned.'”

I use too think he was just a blustering idiot I didn't care for. It's clear now that that he's more than that. He's a evil man - a real bad guy. He poisons his audience, trying out messages, seeing what they'll believe. When he goes to far he'll say, "I was only kidding. Can't you tell it's all comedy?"

No. It's not funny anymore. It never was.

And shouldn't he be in prison? What happened to those drug charges? Guess it helps to have friends in high places. Too bad - he might get to see some of those prison guard abuses up close and personal.

Changing Time

Hmm - Blogger's been sprucing up the place. I've been mucking about with my template as well. We'll see how this all turns out.