NEWS

2/10/11 - Minecraft gets its own page, I haven't played in my own server for a few days, but it's up.  Details and eventually pictures will go up on the Minecraft page.  If you connect, your default permissions probably won't allow you to build, but you can explore and you should be able to get a sword from one of the chests  near the spawn.

1/27/11 - I haven't taken this long a break in a while.  Perhaps Minecraft is a little too addictive.  On the other hand, I'm also lazy and really didn't have anything else that I though was interesting.  Maybe I'll update more this year... really depends on life.  In case anyone's been paying attention, I have occasionally been updating the Links and Lists.  The lists are still a bit behind, but not too far.

As far as the Tapped Horn goes, I made a mock-up out of cardboard at ~1:12 scale to test my measurements.  Shortly thereafter, my wife found some nice dark-blue industrial carpet to cover the thing once it's done.  We also got a pair of matching loveseats that are just the right size to sit atop the horn.  Until the horn is built, they're just hiding behind the sectional in the basement.  All that's left now is to buy the wood and the driver.  Too bad our taxes this year won't be helping with that.

6/4/10 - Wow, with the new speakers, yard work, and the 360 I just recently acquired, I obviously haven't been updating much.  Design work on the Tapped Horn continues, I started a Wave to keep track of what I'm doing that works and doesn't work.

Also, on the 360 front, I just started playing Too Human (yeah, I know, I'm 2 years behind on that) and I can see why it got panned. It's rather brief, story-wise, the combat controls feel laggy, character movement is sluggish, the camera is annoying to manage, and it's a grind-fest for the good gear.  Otherwise, it's an interesting re-imagining of Norse Mythology and it's rather fun to smash through the mechanized hordes.  If they ever manage to make the 2 sequels, I'd probably give them a try.

Too Human and it's Norse bent got me thinking.  I recalled some details from Mass Effect 2 and realized that the Mass Effect series is almost becoming a stealth-Norse scenario, with the LOKI and YMIR mechs and the impending Reaper fleet set to create a Ragnarok-like world-ending conflict, after which sentient life would have to be re-born.  That may be stretching it a little, but it does make me wonder what other details could be linked.  Almost makes it sound like Mass Effect and Too Human are long-lost cousins.

3/13/10 - I knew something was off about those KLH towers, turns out the high-freq drivers were blown.  Luckily, I had a pair of piezo compression horns that sound like they can adequately cover the 2.8kHz+ range that the crossover gives them.  They sound much livelier now, if a little hot on the highs.  Now I just need to figure out suitable mid-range drivers for the Marantz CS1220's and I'll have 3 perfectly working sets of 3-way towers.

The tapped horn is still a ways off, waiting for this year's tax refund before I start buying supplies and parts.  I'll have to start putting up some of my plans and Hornresp graphs sometime.

3/9/10 - I've been doing a lot of tweaking in Hornresp trying to find the most sensible geometry that produces a decent response curve for the different sub drivers available... one thing is for certain, I'm going to have to coil a 17ft+ horn into a 4x8ft box.  Additionally, my wife managed to convince me to buy a set of KLH 1206T towers that we found at the Salvation Army.  They almost match the finish on the Mitsubishi SS-1000's I already have and adding them to the system lets me even out the sound field in such a wide room as our basement is.

1/29/10 - Two more projects on my plate, a big built-in to turn the front room into a library/study and my personal pet, a tapped-horn subwoofer that will double as a seating riser in the basement theater.  I think I may document a little of that process.  I'll have to play it by ear since I don't have any equipment to make measurements of frequency response.

10/19/09 - One project down, flooring in the middle bedroom is done. Baseboards and door trim molding still needs to be put in, but at least the room is usable again.

9/9/09 - So many things to do around the house... so much to fix up, so much yard to deal with. Still, it's a great time to become a first time homeowner... as if I needed any more proof, two more of my friends are doing the same thing right now.

In other news, I've shuffled a few comics around on the Links page, to reflect their status better. Also, the IRC server is down again. Kernel Panic... I must have goofed up the last kernel I compiled. Oh well, I'll probably just burn it down and rebuild this weekend. There's a very good reason that all my config stuff is on /home in a separate partition. Maybe I'll try ANOPE instead of IRCServices this time.

3/27/09 -  I am now among the ranks of home owners.  The house has been ours for two weeks , and we've been moved in for one week.  Lots of stuff still to be unpacked, plenty of things to fix, lots of painting to be done, but it's home.  Too bad we can only get Comcast for cable & internet...

2/7/09 - Lists and links have been nudged again.

10/15/08 - More poking about. Updated my Lists since I realized that it was missing a fair number of things I picked up.

10/6/08 - Just poking around adding some comics over on the Links page.  I think my sense of humor is warping further lately.