Posted on

More Excellence from Evidence Audio!

Tony Farinella — of Evidence Audio fame — has been my friend since 2009. Yes, we’ve been friends for over 1,000 musician years, or in people-years, that would figure to be somewhere around 13 earth years. Tony and I were brought together by a great, shared, love of grand sound and excellent music — and if you’re in the audio biz, pro or amateur, you know that sound matters, noise matters, and purity matters. Tony makes it his day job, and probably his evening nightmare, to create really great, high-quality audio cables for music, production, and performance; and today I am delighted to share with you two new fantabulous creations of his: The Forte Microphone Cable and the Source AC Power Cable! Hey, take a look at these beauty shots!

Continue reading → More Excellence from Evidence Audio!

Posted on

Three Days of a Hundred Years of Darkness: Hurricane Sandy and 12 Months of Nothingness

One year ago today, 8.5 million people in the New York City area were without heat or power as Hurricane Sandy blasted the soft middle of our lives — thrusting us backward a hundred years behind a wall of water into at least three days of cold and darkness:

Monday night, at 11:00 pm sharp in Jersey City, New Jersey, the lights went out and stayed off until last night at 7:43pm.  That’s three days without power or heat.  Hurricane Sandy was a massively nasty beast, and we’re just now starting the recovery process.  We are hungry and scavenging for food.  Supermarkets are closed.  Few places have power.

For many of those directly touched by the floodwater a year ago, life has yet to return to normal, and many will never recover the good lives they once had before the storm; and that is a clear failure of the government safety net and the lack of any sort of real social fabric that meshes us together.  The King has no clothes, and we don’t, either!

When it is better, and more profitable, to cut and run and abandon than it is to stay and rebuild and recover — we all have a problem.

Continue reading → Three Days of a Hundred Years of Darkness: Hurricane Sandy and 12 Months of Nothingness

Posted on

Smartphone Battery Management During Hurricane Sandy

One good thing about Hurricane Sandy is that we had plenty of notice she was coming.  That meant we could stock up on munchables and charge all our battery powered devices.  We plugged in two 3G iPhone 4S devices and two 4G LTE iPads and crossed our fingers it would all work out if we hit the dark as we maxed out each device to 100% capacity.

We also filled up the bathtub with water in case we would not be able to flush our toilets manually.  If you live in a building with more than five floors and you lose power, you will not have water to flush your toilet because the electric water pump for the building will be inoperable.  You’ll have to “scoop and dump” water a gallon at a time from the bathtub to the toilet bowl to flush.

Continue reading → Smartphone Battery Management During Hurricane Sandy

Posted on

Recovering from Hurricane Sandy in Jersey City

Monday night, at 11:00 pm sharp in Jersey City, New Jersey, the lights went out and stayed off until last night at 7:43pm.  That’s three days without power or heat.  Hurricane Sandy was a massively nasty beast, and we’re just now starting the recovery process.  We are hungry and scavenging for food.  Supermarkets are closed.  Few places have power.

Continue reading → Recovering from Hurricane Sandy in Jersey City

Posted on

The Secret to Subconscious Multitasking: Pretend You Have No Idea What You Are Thinking

We think, and conscious lives are fed by our subconscious mind and inflicted behaviors unwittingly become us.  In a recent conversation with Gordon Davidescu, we examined sleep learning and the power of the subconscious mind in the comments stream:

I take walks, too, when I get stuck on a problem. I go out, think about other things and then later on the answer magically appears on its own. Consciously letting go of the problem is the key to making it happen. That’s the hardest part to learn because we tend to want to actively seek solutions until we feel we’ve solved it. Letting go of unsolved things is tricky.

Continue reading → The Secret to Subconscious Multitasking: Pretend You Have No Idea What You Are Thinking

Posted on

Anger Over the Incandescent Light Bulb Phaseout

Change can be extremely difficult for some people — when mechanized looms were introduced, some people were so upset by them that they revolted and destroyed the looms. The situation is not too dissimilar to one being currently faced with the impending phase out of incandescent light bulbs.

Continue reading → Anger Over the Incandescent Light Bulb Phaseout

Posted on

The University of Tartu Department of Semiotics

We rambunctiously support higher education.  We love semiotics.  When we received a request over the weekend from the University of Tartu Department of Semiotics — that combined both of our passions — we were delighted to help!

Continue reading → The University of Tartu Department of Semiotics