Jim Barraud

It feels strange posting this today since our town has the ass-backwards tradition of Trick or Treating on the 30th. A tradition which is wrong on every level. But none the less, Happy Halloween.

I finally got the new Mac OSX (10.5) Leopard up and running. I had attempted to do a regular upgrade, but that ended in a blank blue screen staring back at me after restart. I attribute that to either the fact that the image size of Leopard is 6.66 GB (the number of the beast!) or more than likely, months ago I installed some third party system level app that I completely forgot about. A quick “Archive and Install” resolved the issue.

First impression, it’s pretty nice. Seems faster (spotlight seems usable!) and there’s some gratuitous visuals that bug me. I’ll post a full observation after putting this cat threw it’s paces over the next couple days.

Update: Turns out my installation issues stemmed from my Logitech trackball driver. Apparently Logitech doesn’t know how to properly write Mac OSX drivers for it’s mice and relies on hackie third-party solutions. Providing users of it’s software hours of fun when trying to upgrade to Apple’s latest and greatest operating system.

My Media-Hive comrade Mr. Jon Sykes has released his latest child into the world. On Yongo. A place where people can post pictures of their business cards. And not just any old business card (well I guess you could post that to), but business cards that say something. Business cards with personality. Business cards your proud to give to your mom (even though your Mom is proud of you just for having a job that requires a business card).

Rumor has it that this is the first in a string of Sykes ventures. Stay tuned.

One of my main sources of sanity when dealing with the daily grind is music. Music at home, in the car, and at work. Music listening at work (or while working at home) is usually performed through headphones. My headphones for the past couple years have been a moderate sounding pair of Sony earbuds. While sufficient, they always seemed rather lacking in terms of musical quality. And in a desire to regain some of my audiophile hay-day (pre bills & children), the search was on for a decent pair of headphones.

My search came down to two contenders. The Sennheiser HD280 Pro and the Sony MDR-V6. After reading endless online reviews of both headphones, I was able to aggregate the following Pros and Cons of each.

The Sennheiser HD280 Pros are said to have excellent and accurate sound quality. They excel at blocking outside sound without using noise canceling technology. I found three common complaints about the HD280 Pros. The first was that to achieve the excellent outside sound reduction, the headphones tend to press against your head tightly. Because of this, some people would report getting a headache after wearing them for an extended period of time. The second complaint was that they’re rather large. While this to completely subjective (some people love big bulky headphones) it was mostly expressed as a negative. The third was that the headphones need adequate power to perform properly. Portable devices such as mini-disc players (they still make these?) and iPods tend to be a bit underpowered for these headphones.

The Sony MDR-V6 benefits from being a tried and true studio headphone for the past 15 years or so. They have excellent sound reproduction and people say they tend to be a bit more bass heavy then the Sennheiser HD280 Pros. Which I prefer. They also have lower power requirements and work great with iPods. They’re also smaller and more portable. The only complaints I was able to find was that some people report of their ears getting too warm due to the ear pads. And that the ear pads seem to start falling apart after 7 or 8 years. Both complaints seem to be easily resolvable with these Beyerdynamic velour replacements.

It should be noted that while both had their common complaints, the amount of complaints of both of these were minimal. And the vast majority of reviewers praised their choice headphones. Although the Sony MDR-V6 seemed to get a bit more in the way of praise.

So I went with the Sony MDR-V6. For the added bass response people noted and the smaller form factor since I’ll be toting these to and from work. The main factor that turned me away from the HD280 Pros was the perception that they were a tight fit and the complaints of headaches from several reviewers. Being someone who is prone to headaches, this was something I wanted to avoid.

So far I’ve been extremely pleased with my purchase. The headphones sound crisp and clear and bring out a level of detail I haven’t heard in my music in quite some time. I find them very comfortable and haven’t experienced the “hot ears” that some people complain about. I’ve also read reports that they sound even better once they “burn in”, but I’m not sure if I buy into the whole “burn in” theory. Time will tell on that front.

Yup. Everyone on the internet is listening to Radiohead this week (at least according to last.fm). As well they should.

I turned the ripe old age of 31 last week, and in a moment a reflection I thought it would be fun to create a playlist. A playlist of songs and artists that have made me who I am over these past 31 years. I applied a couple rules when creating this list.

• One song per year.
• One song per artist.

The songs are listed in rough chronological order. The order being the time in my life that either the song or artist played a significant role. Song placement in the list does not correspond to the year of my life. I couldn’t tell you what I was rocking out to at the age of two (Although I do recall rocking out to Disney’s “Mousercise” on my little Fisher-Price turntable around the age of 5 or 6. That and countless kids audiobook-type 45’s). It wasn’t easy narrowing down the plethora of song options down to 31, so song choice came down to three basic criteria, in the following order:

• The song marks a significant milestone or period in my life.
• The Artist has been of significant listening enjoyment throughout my life. Selection of a song to represent this artist could either be the song that got me interested in said artist or picked entirely at random.
• I dig the song so much that the previous two rules need not apply.

As to which songs fit which criteria, we’ll leave that part a mystery.

My original intention was to create an iTunes iMix out of this playlist, but it turns out the whole iMix feature kinda sucks. I can understand a song not being included if it’s not available for sale in the iTunes store, but songs I actually purchased on the iTunes store weren’t being included either. So I linked up whatever songs I could to Amazon’s rocking new MP3 downloads store.

If you’re interested in what I’m listening to nowadays, I suggest you check out my Last.fm profile. So without further ado…

1. Pour Some Sugar On Me : Def Leppard
2. Thunderstruck : AC/DC
3. The Four Horsemen : Metallica
4. Animal : Pearl Jam
5. Digging In The Dirt : Peter Gabriel
6. The Fly : U2
7. Two Of Us : The Beatles
8. Closer : Nine Inch Nails
9. Sympathy For The Devil : The Rolling Stones
10. Interstate Love Song : Stone Temple Pilots
11. So What’Cha Want : The Beastie Boys
12. Wish You Were Here : Pink Floyd
13. Elephant Talk : King Crimson
14. Dancing With The Moonlight Knight : Genesis
15. Starship Trooper : Yes
16. Limelight : Rush
17. Bitterblue : Cat Stevens
18. Misty Mountain Hop : Led Zeppelin
19. Hanging Upside Down : David Byrne
20. When We Were Free : Pat Metheny Group
21. Song-Song : Brad Mehldau
22. Still Learning How To Crawl : Daniel Lanois
23. No Blues : Wes Montgomery
24. Yolele : Papa Wemba
25. Lie in Our Graves : Dave Matthews Band
26. So What : Miles Davis
27. Paranoid Android : Radiohead
28. Cowgirl : Underworld
29. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces : Ben Folds Five
30. I Belong To You : Lenny Kravitz
31. What Light : Wilco