A Few Thoughts…

Well, I started my graduate education this week. I’m taking 2 classes – a graduate seminar (ECECS 701) that we’re all required to take, and “Intro to Computer Architecture” (ECECS 795). The architecture course is going to reading intensive, which is going to be tough to manage since the bookstore didn’t have the book! Luckily, Kelly was able to find the book at her Alma Mater (Cedarville University) with a quick email to the infamous Dr. G. Hopefully she can pick up 2 books from there in fairly short order so we can get this reading going!

In a weird coincidence, Steve Shary – a good friend and fellow saxophonist from high school – is starting his Ph.D. work in CS/CE at UC this quarter as well! I have to say I was a little jealous when I realized that I would be finishing my M.S. around the same time he will be finishing his Ph.D. Oh well, I’ll get there eventually! For now, I do have some reading that’s not in the book that I should be doing.

Oh, in other news – check out http://htglimited.com – we finally got things up and running for the web hosting! Customers are already coming in, so we’ll see how quickly we have to add a new server! Also, Wyatt now has electricity at his house! Go see http://blog.hackerforhire.org for more info on that fun!

Upon graduating college (literally on the way home from commencement) I purchased a working mythbox from a friend of mine before he made his way out to California. It was a nice fanless Via setup in a console-like case. Over a year later, I finally get around to working on it (hey, I’ve been a little busy).

It’s a system built on gentoo, so I had to remember a few things I haven’t done in quite a while to get the system updated. First off was to reset the root password, because I didn’t know what it was and neither did Rick. After searching through CD’s, I found a gentoo 2004.0 cd in the system itself! It was old, but it got me to the point where I could chroot to the disk and reset the password. Next step – update some severly out of date software (2 years of open source software must be like 20 in dog years or something like that).

It seems like the lirc build process is messed up badly – saying that it needs a version of autoconf at least 2.50, and I have 2.59 installed. Oh well, I’ll figure that one out eventually. Maybe I just need to reboot it for something in portage to catch up. MythTV is currently building. No chance of this thing being a compute CPU anytime soon. The ultimate goal of it it to be simply a MythtV frontend and I’ll do all recording on another machine. We’ll see how that works out!

Per Mazda’s website, my car has the premium sound package, including:

• 222W 7-Speaker Bose sound system w/ 5-channel EQ
• Four 6.5″ low/mid speakers in the doors
• Two 1.5″ front door tweeters
• 5.25″ woofer in a 4.5L tuned ported enclosure under the front passenger seat

I’ve had my car over a month now, and have put about 3K miles on it – enough time to listen to quite a few things, in different road conditions, at different volume levels. For one thing, the 5-channel EQ is either hiding from me or I can only really control bass and treble. I guess I’m gonna have to read more of the manual to find out ore about that.

The low/mid speakers do a fairly good job at medium+ volumes. At the lower volume, the low/mids get lost from what little road noise comes into the cabin, and the tweeters. When the bass is pushed on the 2-channel EQ I seem to have control over, it seems to be overdriven at lower volumes. But, if I get up to a mid-volume (12-16 on the volume dial) it gets a nicer balance.Â

Tonight on my way home, I was listening to Day of Fire’s new album “Cut and Move” and had the volume up to ~14 I think, and put the windows down, and opened the sunroof. I pushed the bass to +4 (out of 6 or 8 I think), and left the treble at 0, and it’s like the system found it’s sweet spot! The highs of the cymbals and snare were crisp, the vocals and guitars were clear, and the bass and kick drum were not rumbling or muffled.

I’m thinking maybe the speakers needed to be broken in a bit. I’ll keep them pushed a bit for the next few trips and see if the lower volume levels with jazz or classical sound as clear as the heavier rock at a higher volume. From what I’ve read about Bose gear, is that it never really does a super job on full range and dynamics, so we’ll see.

Okay, okay, so it’s been a while since I’ve posted a few thoughts of mine (though not quite as long as this guy). There’s been a whole lot going on in my life, so here goes. In no particular order (other than the order I thought of them in), here’s what’s been goin on…

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