New Headphones from Sennheiser

Oh nice, Sennheiser has just released the PX 100-II and the PX 200-II headphones. The original (PX 100) is said to be a VERY good value right up there with the Koss KSC75 in the price/performance ratio.

The story at ecoustics.com

Sennheiser press release

Many Shower Heads Filled with Nasty Bacteria

Here’s a delicious thought. An article just posted to boingboing says that a third of 50 shower heads tested contained a film coating of “significant levels” of Mycobacterium avium, a bacteria that can cause lung disease.

So be sure and let that shower warm up before putting your face in it!

My Thoughts on JHAudio’s JH13 Pro IEM

Jerry Harvey is a pioneer in custom-molded, in-ear monitors. In 1995, he founded Ultimate Ears and was responsible for engineering their line-up of custom products. After enjoying wild success, capturing 75%+ of the touring musician market, he left to start Jerry Harvey Audio 2-3 years ago. Since Jerry is a pilot, they initially specialized only in aviation headsets — a custom earpiece with an attached boom mic. At the (May) 2009 CanJam event in Los Angeles, though, he proved that he was about to make big waves in the custom IEM market once again.

Now that I have about 2 months of use on my JH13 Pro’s (and a refreshed blog featuring them top and center) I will hopefully be able to share some thoughts on these unique IEMs. › Continue reading

Hooray for a Blog Makeover!

So I’ve finally gotten around to migrating my blog from Mephisto to Wordpress. I took a free theme that was pretty simple, and applied a good amount of tweakage to make it my own. I hope to find more things to blog about, so prepared for more traffic than we’ve seen in a while.

Edit: Almost forgot to include a screenshot of the old design like I used to do.

All Settled in the New House

Hi, Internet! My site only just came back online because I took my sweet time about properly configuring my Gentoo Linux server to support my Mephisto blog. The site was being run by my good friend and roommate, Matt Nagi, but now that I’ve moved into my new house with Julie, I’ve set the site up the site to run on my very own cable modem. So please be gentile. :)

The new house is awesome—having a cozy place to call your own is totally worth the bit of extra work required to repair and maintain it.

And I’m still “Unraveling” on dnbradio.com every Tuesday at 7:00 PM EST.

Miro: Internet TV Made Easy

When Miro 1.2 came out, I decided to give it another try after some previously failed attempts due to annoying bugs. Well, I’ve been using this free and open source, next generation video platform on my Mac for a while now, and I must say it’s quite nice if you fancy yourself watching some of the great, free video content available on the internet.

Miro is RSS + Bittorrent. Find sites with cool videos that interest you, subscribe to their feeds, and when new content is published, you can have it downloaded and waiting for you by the time you realize it’s there. It’s just so smooth the way I can play the first video, and all the new content plays like my personal TV station. Cmd+F throws me into full-screen mode. It didn’t used to work nearly this well, and I’m just all so very pleased with today’s offering. (It will even search and play YouTube videos.)

Ok, so you want to try this. Click the “Miro” link above and grab the player. It comes with some default channels, but I’ve deleted all but the Onion News Network. The Miro Guide appears to be a nice index of most/all of the content available for the platform, but please allow me to recommend a few of my favorites.

• Revision3 is The TV Network of Kevin Rose (of TechTV and Digg fame) with great shows like Tekzilla, Systm, and of course Diggnation. I also have come to watch the goofy Internet Superstar… I haven’t even tasted many of the Rev3 shows yet!
• Mahalo Daily is a great 5-day/wk short form (3-5 mins) show with Veronica Belmont. (Although she’s about to leave…) They visit someone and show of something… usually very interesting stuff. I like the one about the dude who makes music with Gameboys.
• WebbAlert is another daily, short form show with Megan Webb. Just a quick overview of the tech news.
• GeekBrief.TV is yet another daily, short form show with the bouncy character that of Cali Lewis. Again, it’s an overview of the tech news. Maybe a product review or interview here and there.
• commandN is a longer form (15-20 mins), weekly show with Amber MacArthur, Will Pate, and others. They talk about the news and share cool website picks. Amber’s brother, Jeff, usually has a longer segment where he usually reviews a product.
• Hak5 Is a great, long standing show with a great crew. They hack stuff and talk about it on the show.
• Cranky Geeks is a talk show with John C. Dvorak.
• DL.TV is a tech show with some of the folks from TechTV.

Also, anything from Leo Laporte is fantastic. I’m a very regular listener of Security Now, TWiT, MacBreak Weekly, Net@Nite, and Windows Weekly on his TWiT.TV (audio) podcast network. While there aren’t any regular, internet-available video shows from him yet, he’s been talking recently about a new studio he’s setting up where he’ll start doing some video shows. He’s a great personality… One to watch.

I hope I’ve captured the interest of some new internet TV consumers. Watching this web-based, independent content has really never been this easy.

Celemony to Release Revolutionary Audio Tool

Celemony is set to release Direct Note Access in Autumn of 2008. There is a nice video on the DNA page that explains what it does, but this software is able to identify and isolate different voices within a single audio recording. The user can then change the pitch of and mute individual notes without affecting the overall mix! This is the first piece of software that allows you to reach into a simple, flat audio stream and manipulate its components in this way.

It’ll be really interesting to see how artists use this product to remix familiar tunes.

Korg Makes a Synth From a DS

Holy crap this is totally awesome. Korg will soon release Korg DS-10: a music composition tool that runs on the Nintendo DS. Check out the short video for an idea what it does. It seems like it could be significantly more versatile than the Kaossilator Touchpad Synthesizer.

Link via Wired Blog

Shure E500 vs UE Triple.fi 10 Pro

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my audio equipment (or about much of anything) … So allow me to give a short comparison between two of the best universal fit IEMs available. It goes on and on, so allow me to place it below the fold.

› Continue reading

Quizzle is Live!

The project that I’ve been a part of for most of my time here at Quicken Loans has finally gone live. Think of it as a flexible financial tool. We want Quizzle to one day be your one-stop shop for learning where you financially stand against the ever-changing climates of the home markets and economy.

The most important feature for most folks seems to be the FREE credit report. You might laugh and say there’s no such thing as a free lunch (as you may have learned in attempting to get other “free” credit reports from other sites) but at Quizzle, we not only give you a completely free and easy to understand credit report, but we manage to do so without your having to provide your SSN! I don’t believe anyone else is doing this right now.

There is a lot to be had inside Quizzle apart from the credit report. A set of your incomes and debts will be You’ll receive an estimate of your home’s value