I’m not the most obsessive person I know, but certainly I’m above average.

Ever since I got my first stereo and DVD player, I have had the question of speech intelligibility at the back of my mind. You see, very often I need to turn on the English subtitles for the films I watch in DVD, otherwise I lose words here and there. This has been an issue for years, and though I’ve made incremental improvements (I even wrote an optimistic post), it has kept bothering me.
For instance, a DVD I saw recently, where I needed to turn on the subtitles, was Gran Torino.

This weekend I started browsing through Sound Reproduction by Floyd Toole.
It said that stereo playback itself is limited by physics, and that multichannel systems, as those used in home theater, are a good idea. I have always been a stereo purist, scoffing at those clueless souls who buy “home theater packages” with mediocre multi-speakers. This was most surprising. Reading more, it started to make perfect sense.

Sound is a wave, and like all waves, it is susceptible to interference. When two identical waves fire from different places, there are points in space at which they fight each other, and other points in space where they reinforce each other.
You can read the wikipedia entry, but here’s an animated photo from it:

Now, the pattern of interference depends on the frequency of the wave. In the case of audio, that means that if you play the same exact sound from your left and right speakers, in your ears some frequencies will sound louder, and some softer, than they would coming from a single speaker. Moreover, the effect is location-dependent.

Movie dialogs are recorded in a single channel in the studio, and are added to the soundtrack in the mastering room. When listening to DVDs through two speakers, two identical copies of the dialog track are sent to the speakers. Hence, there is an interference pattern that alters the frequency balance you hear. Floyd Toole’s book contains graphs showing that this can be a significant effect.

The solution? Use a center channel for dialog! Well I’ll be damned, those home theater systems had it right! And this is not only for DVDs. Toole explains that music CDs are vulnerable in the same way. SuperAudioCD, touted as the ultimate in sound, is capable of multi-channel.

Headphones don’t have this problem, since each ear gets the sound from a single source. I have always found good headphones more detailed than speakers, and now I know why.

Since my Panasonic amplifier can handle multi-channel audio, this weekend I added a center speaker from a pair I bought for the computer, and tested. The difference was notable. Dialog lost it’s pleasant, enveloping, “somewhere between the speakers” quality, and became pinpointed in the center speaker, but gained clarity, no doubt. I had once read a review of an amplifier that was referred to as “congested”. At times I had thought that word described dialogues in my system well, but now the congestion seemed gone.

I love to have my assumptions challenged like this, and to my delight, I no longer need subtitles for Gran Torino. I’m not about to get surround speakers, but I am certainly keeping the center channel. Who’da thunk?

One more for the list of things that peeve me about driving in the US. The other day I was pulled over by a cop in the highway, on my way to work. Though I was going over the speed limit (by a bit only), the reason I was stopped was that the tabs on my license plates had expired. Come again? What are tabs?

Tabs are little stickers in the license plates of vehicles that have a date on them. I had always thought they were simply indicators of vintage. But no, they need to be renewed, at about $100. This can be done entirely over the internet, you can use your credit card (convenient, ey?). Yes, you read right: the car is not inspected in any way, you just have to pay.

Of course, aside from paying for the tabs, I was fined $200, and the little citation calls me a “violator”. I know this isn’t as bad a word in English as it is in Spanish, but it annoys me because I think I’m the victim here. Oh well, taxes must be collected.

A few months ago, I had a phone call from my landlord. He had realized he had been paying the electricity bill, which was supposed to be my duty. Neither of us stay on top of our money, obviously. I payed him back for past bills, and set up an account with Seattle Light.

My landlord remarked that I had a very low bill. This was a surprise. A lot of the time I’m home, I’m watching a DVD, or listening to music while playing with my laptop. I had been reading about amplifier technology, and had found out most amplifiers, mine included, are energy-inefficient. I assumed I would be power-hungry, for a single person that is.

I discovered, a long time ago, that several of the power outlets in my living room can be switched on/off from one wall switch, and I put all my computer and internet gear on those outlets, so that I can shut down properly when I go to bed. The hifi set and the TV, however, sit in an area of the room where the outlets are always on, and unplugging the power strip to which they’re connected is not something I want to do daily.

I’ve recently bought a little toy, a watt-meter called the Kill-a-Watt.

This little box will tell you how much current, voltage and energy your equipment is drawing.
To my great surprise, the news was almost all good.

• My amplifier, which I assumed was a waster, consumed a very reasonable 30 watt in regular use.
• My DVD player and turntable consumed 14 watt each when in use, and less than 1 watt when not.
• The TV consumed 80 watt in use, and 1 watt when idle. This was much lower than I expected, better even than specified by Panasonic. The reason, I believe, is that I calibrated the TV for maximum fidelity, and toned the brightness way down.
• The Mac laptop consumes 30 watt in use, and 7 when idle – but I switch the power outlet off at night, so that is not so important.
• The EeePC consumes 16 watt in use, and 3 when idle (again, not that important).

Very surprising, especially when considering that watching a DVD will draw 120 watt. Not far off from reading at night!

Some figures were not as good:

• The Apple TV consumes 40 watt when active, and 30 when idle, and has no off switch.
• The amplifier consumes 14 watt when off.

The most annoying was the Apple TV, a piece of equipment that hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations. Still, the solution was easy. I had a spare power strip, which I connected to the big strip I use for hifi/tv. The AppleTV is connected to it, and I switch the strip on/off as needed. I don’t want to put the amplifier on the same strip, though, because that would mean the Apple TV is on almost all the time I’m in the living room.

Now my hifi/tv corner consumes 16 watt when idle, instead of 45. Not as good as 0, but for the moment it will do. I feel much better now.

My New York friends tell me that anything can be found in New York, and they may be right, but some things are easier in Seattle. This is clearly a great city for hikers.

In August, during my Montana hike, I abraded my lower back to the point of bleeding. It made me miss my old backpack, which had been broken for a year. This old backpack is a wonderful French model with a capacity of 60 liters, and I bought it for my very first multi-day hike, in 1996. It has been with me in the Pyrenees, Morocco, New Zealand, the Grand Canyon and many other places. Last year, one side of the belt clasp snapped. I tried to find a replacement part, but the right size wasn’t available. Unfortunately, the other part of the clasp was sewn to the waist band, and it was not something I could fix myself in a reliable way. I bought a new backpack to carry on hiking, and hoped to find a replacement clasp in Spain, in one of the stores that carries French brands. Alas, they didn’t have the size I needed.

Seattle is the birth place of REI, perhaps the biggest chain of outdoors sports in the US, but there are several other good stores around. One in my neighborhood, Feathered Friends, has a great selection and carries French brands. After I asked about repairs, they told me to try Rainy Pass Repair, apparently one of the best outdoor gear repair shops in the country, and a 5 minute drive from home, to boot.

Since I was going to give them the backpack, I thought I might as well ask them to repair the side pouch, which had been torn by a hungry squirrel in the Grand Canyon. Here you can see Guillermo simulating the incident:

I got my backpack after a week, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.
Here is the side pouch:

And the clasp was un-sewn, replaced with a clasp I provided, and sewn back. It’s looking mighty solid.

I can’t wait to hike with it again. However, that will have to wait until spring. It is funny how I consider this backpack an old friend. I do develop friendships with many of the objects I own.

I just wanted to mention, in case you’re not aware, that when you see a small photo in this blog, you can click on it to get a larger version. Thanks to the site I use for my photo albums, the larger photo is scaled up to take advantage of your screen.

Here’s an example.

This weekend, Tom, my old friend from the Bear Stearns days, flew to Vancouver, and I drove to join him. It was my first time to Vancouver, and my first time to Canada too.
We had spectacular weather, although it got a bit chilly at times. Hey, what can you expect at this time of the year, that far North?

Vancouver is a great city. It has an enormous park right next to the downtown area: Stanley Park, which is also by the shore, and next to the iconic Siwash Rock. You can see a Douglas fir on top:

The walk to the rock was fun, as the sea was very choppy. You might think, from this photo, that it was open sea, but that is not the case. Vancouver’s bay is the Strait of Georgia, and its access to the Pacific is blocked by the enormus Vancouver island. Still, the Strait of Georgia is big, much bigger than Puget sound, and clearly big enough for waves:

There is also the spectacular Lions Gate bridge:

Across the bridge is Grouse mountain, a pretty intense climb. It took us an hour and a half, the climb goes up around 1000m. It was good to get the exercise, but we could have taken the tram:

Grouse mountain is also a ski mountain during winter, and the ski lift was operating. We took it, and got even better views:

On Sunday we had a lazier day, and just drove to Lighthouse Park, again with plenty of views of the sea, and big trees.

Vancouver gets right many of the things that Portland and Seattle get wrong. There are also industrial sectors to Vancouver, but it has a wonderful, long promenade by the waterfront, a beautiful park next to it, and what looks to be a livelier, spunkier crowd of people. What’s not to like?

Well, for one thing, on the way back to the old US, I got “selected for a random car inspection” at the border. I don’t know what’s random about picking the foreigners, but I digress. I saw an old Canadian man being denied entry to the US. I was impressed by the firmness and friendliness of the officer giving him the news. “Wow”, I thought, “that officer has charisma”. But then he asked the old man to stick out his hands so he could put handcuffs on him. Oh well, I suppose they must follow the rules and regulations.

Here is my favorite piece of Canadian signage:

I would like to redesign it to say: “Silence: Car Thieves Work Here – please be respectful of thieves earning their livelihood, try not to disturb them”.

Ah, yes, you can also see the photo album.

My friend Victor, from the IHouse years, flew in from California on Friday. On Saturday morning, we drove to the Northwest part of Mt. Rainier National Park. It was an overcast, drizzly day, but it is always a joy to be out in the woods.

The campsite was only 2 miles (around 3 km) from the start of the hike, so we pitched the tent, left our pads and sleeping bags inside, and had lunch. For a brief period, the sun was out. We were hopeful, but we would need to wait until Sunday for good visibility. We set out to explore with a reduced load on our backs.

Spray Falls exceeded our expectations.

We got back to camp around 6 and had dinner. It started to get cold quickly, so much so that we went to bed not much later than 7. It was a very cold night, and I slept with my fleece on, inside the sleeping bag. Amazingly, I slept almost straight through, and woke up at 9. Not usual for me at all.

Sunday started sunny, and at last we got clear shots of Mount Rainier and some other crowd-pleasers.

Perhaps the most photogenic part of the trip was Lake Mowich, right next to where we left the car.

In Seattle, warm showers and a nice dinner rounded the weekend. It is nice to get a proper meal.

There are more photos in the trip album.

I’m back in Seattle after some vacation. I wish I had more.

One of the things I wanted to do in Madrid was rescue the old Commodore VIC20 from oblivion in the garage. I’ve been reading a book on the history of Commodore, and it has stirred some memories. The VIC20 was the first computer we had in our family. I remember being very excited about it. Today, it is a quaint machine.

As you can see, there are less than 4K of memory. No hard drive nor floppy disk drive. No mouse (actually, that isn’t half bad). And yet, I have fonder memories of the VIC20 than of most of the computers I’ve used since. Why?
One reason can be seen in this photo:

The machine came with programming manuals. We used it to play games, but we also tried little programs. The instruction manuals taught the BASIC language, and showed how to make sounds and images. Larger programming projects were almost always games. Javier wrote his own game, which I played often. We had clones of such arcade classics as Scramble and Frogger.

I don’t think the VIC turned me into a programmer. I never did much in it but copy programs from the manuals, line by line. Years later, with the Sinclair Spectrum 128+, I would try to write my own video game in assembly language, a project I quit in frustration. With the Spectrum, I also developed a dangerous addiction to games. One day I decided to let go of it, and my interest in programming and computers went to sleep for several years.

Today we have more powerful machines, but something got lost. Computers today don’t come with programming manuals or tools. They exist mainly for you to run your purchased software on. The world became less naïve. Really, was it realistic to think that people would use computers to write their own software?

I’m very happy the old VIC20 is still running. I typed a little program into it that bounced a ball off the edges of the screen. It was about 12 lines of code, and I was thrilled to see it in action.

The trip to Glacier NP, Montana, happened a week ago. It’s about time I posted the photo album.

Since it feels far away now, I’m not doing a write-up. Know that it was a good, intense hike, and that each of us sustained some physical damage, as happens in intense hikes. We all returned to Seattle in one piece – one piece per person, that is.

Now I’m in Madrid, enjoying idleness and mom’s cooking.

The third try was the charm. On previous weekends, I hadn’t been able to climb up Mailbox Peak. This time, JP and I met in North Bend in the morning, and reached the top by lunch time. It was four hours round-trip. The inclination is impressive: 4000 ft (1200 m) of elevation gained in the space of 2.5 miles (4 km). Surprisingly, there was a trail all the way, and we didn’t need to use our hands.

At the top of the peak, there are two mailboxes. People put things in them, and apparently, letters have been delivered from there!