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contrary science is fun

The blog failed me last night.  The Christmas tunes entry should’ve auto-posted Tuesday at midnight, like most of my entries do.  Welp, it didn’t – and I only noticed late in the evening my time Tuesday.  Regardless, it’s published now and should fall just below this post for your reading pleasure.

Construction began last night.  Keaton held the walls steady as Sharaun fixed them with a sturdy bead of royal icing.  Before long, the roof was on the gables and iced down.  To ensure compliance with California’s stringent earthquake-rating building codes, we let the hull of the house sit overnight, roof propped on cups to  avoid slippage.  Tonight she was ready for gale force winds… and the finery began.  Gumdrops, peppermints, licorice sticks, jelly beans and fruity Cheerios were stuck here and there (under Keaton’s direction) to make for festive, icing-drenched gingerbread house.  Are we really supposed to be able to eat this thing, too?

I saw a study online the other day that really tickled me.  It stated that, due to the amount of food they consume and associated resources needed to produce it, dogs have double the carbon footprint of an SUV.  This means that, if you’re in favor of the environmentalist concept of “trading” or “offsetting” environmental impact, it’s half as bad for Mother Earth if you drive an SUV than if you own a dog.

I love when real science proves to be antagonistic or contrary to popular psuedo-science (or Oprah-fueled public misconception).  Organic food leads to obesity; sunblock contributes to cancer; anti-bacterial sanitizers actually weaken your natural ability to fight off germs, and thus make you more likely to get sick; etc.

I think it would be hilarious to see a bigger comparative chart of activities that are thought of as environmentally-conscious vs. those that have garnered a bad name.  For instance, the impacts of the massive fleets of recycling trucks burning fuel nationwide on a weekly basis graphed against the regained-resources we get from the materials they collect.  Or, cloth diapers and the water and energy they consume vs. disposables.  Maybe showing, unit-for-unit energy, that a landfill is actually the most efficient way of dealing with waste.

By the way, I don’t know if any of those things are true, but contrary science is fun.

Have a good Christmas Eve eve, folks.  Until later.

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something about christmas songs

There’s something about Christmas songs. Well, the traditional ones.

By “traditional,” I guess I mean the ones you’d expect to hear in church. Songs like “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “What Child is This,” “Angels We Have Heard On High,” and, most of all, “Silent Night” knock something loose inside me. If they’re sung right, these songs can illicit the most striking, unbidden, emotional response from me. Especially “Silent Night.” A well-done version of that song and I’ll have trouble holding back tears. I don’t know why this is, or how the association got made in my subconscious, but it’s for-sure there. This Sunday at church they did a run of mostly these holiday tracks and my chest swelled as I sang along. There’s just something about Christmas songs.

Ahem… do I get to keep my man-card? OK, moving on then.

We’re supposed to get our car back Wednesday, but if things aren’t looking good I’m going to rent a vehicle to get us through Christmastime while my folks are here. Something of comparable size to the out-of-commission Acadia, on the off chance we want to do something as a family while my folks are in town (in my head I see us doing a whole lot of nothing, but you never know). The bill came to $6,000 or so of damage… although it was all superficial and the body shop says there’s nothing wrong with the underlying chassis of the vehicle. All the same, I’d rather it never had been in an accident, let alone just a few months after we’d gotten it. But, such is life. We can roll with it.

As predicted, work has slowed considerably this week. As the holidays approach there are less and less cars in the parking lot each morning. By Thursday the place will be a ghost town. All this makes for and environment that’s 1) very quiet, uninterrupted, and work-conducive as well as 2) hard to stick around long in, even being super productive. The desolation and thoughts of everyone else being at home enjoying family or a good book just makes a man want to cut-out early and call a few hours work “good enough.” Maybe, since things come so easy in the silent solitude, I can justify a few hours work as equal to a busy interrupt-drive day’s full eight hours? Yeah… that’s the ticket.

Goodnight.

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amble at an easy pace

Been a while since I wrote.  Should be a slow week; writing should pick up.  All over the place today.

Tonight (Sunday) I got a wild hair and wanted to cook dinner for the family.  At work they make this roasted red pepper tomato bisque that I could eat ten bowls of, and since it was a nice chill gray day I figured it’d be fun to give it a try.  After some internettin’, I had cobbled together a recipe that sounded good and we picked up the raw materials on the way back from church.  Turned out to be dead-simple and pretty tasty, and the family approved so I felt accomplished.

Saturday morning my mom called and said that she and dad were considering a last-minute trip down for Christmas. A few hours of deliberation later and we got a copy of their itinerary in the inbox. Sharaun and I are both excited we’ll have family around for the holidays after all. We can cook a real-sized dinner now without feeling wasteful or overly-gluttonous (until we sit down to eat, at least), and we’ll be able to share gift-opening with Keaton. We were just lamenting the other day about not being able to spend the holiday with any extended family, and now we got that on lock. Thanks guys.

Cleaned out the computer desk area this weekend, found the DMV notice that Sharaun’s registration needed to be renewed… back in August.  With the fees, it’s nearly 200% what it would’ve been four months ago were it done on time.  My fault; I’m the one who’s responsible for doing “those kind of things” around here and it must’ve just slipped through the cracks.  Bad thing is, I’ve been giving Sharaun a hard time for the past month, contending she’d lost the renewed stickers they must have sent when I (surely) paid on-time.  I’ve been reminding her to call the DMV to get new stickers on an almost daily basis for weeks now.  Dang.

As a blogging-mecahnics sideline, I’ve become quite good at blogging on the iPhone WordPress application. In landscape mode I can tap out the paragraphs at an alarming pace, with relatively few typos or rewrites necessary. Best of all, the prospect of tackling a full-sized entry via the phone is no longer too duanting. In fact, everything you’ve read up to now, including this very sentence is iPhone-birthed. Not bad as a handheld tool.

Don’t really have anything more.  Goodnight.

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pert near impossible

Not even going anywhere...

It’s 10pm and, because we only have the one car at the moment, I couldn’t go to the gym tonight (Sharaun had the vehicle for her volleyball game). So I stayed home and played with Keaton before I put her to bed. Then, I decided I’d write (I’m doing that now) before I’d read a little, finishing off the book I’m in (haven’t done that yet, but have a strict be-done-writing deadline of 10:30pm so I can). Let’s go.

Feeling guilty, maybe, tonight I took the house to task a bit. I focused on the kitchen and master bedroom, mostly because I think Keaton needs to be responsible for her bedroom and toy room (and this behavior needs to be taught and continually reinforced, but I digress). Most of the scattered mess is random half-unpacked suitcases stretching back to travels as musty and dusty as our Thanksgiving trip to Florida.

This time, I can blame that solely on Sharaun. Once she packs a suitcase, it’s pert near impossible to get her to unpack it again. I’d do it myself, and make one of my trademark “piles” of unsavory materials (a technique I learned from my Dad, I fear, where I stack various items I feel aren’t where they should be in some conspicuous place as a passive-aggressive message to any opponent of tidiness), but she’s forbidden me from doing so, claiming there are unwraped Christmas gifts for me still half-packed inside. So, they rot.

As I was putting Keaton to bed tonight, I found myself wishing once again that she was done with nighttime diapers. She’ll be four in February and she’s still can’t make it through the night without one (not technically true, but you get my meaning). All her friends her age are out of diapers for good, and most of them have been for a while now. We’ve tried all sorts of different things… but so far nothing has worked. She’s great during the waking hours, using the bathroom at will and as trained as you’d expect any almost four-year-old to be; it’s just overnight that gets her.

Sharaun has a theory that she’s just a super-sound sleeper. She’s come in after naps sometimes (no diapers at naps, if we even get a nap) to find her having peed multiple times and not even stirred. She swears she read somewhere that kids who are really hard sleepers often have a harder time recognizing the impulse to get up and use the potty; no idea how that explains not being able to learn to hold it… but that’s her theory. I don’t really know… she is a pretty deep sleeper, so maybe there’s something to it.

We’ve tried doing no diapers and just dealing with the daily cleanup, but we got tired of the added work after two weeks of nightly accidents (sometimes more than one per night, which isn’t easily managed with a limited amount of fresh bedding). We’ve tried a psychological approach, “You’re a big girl, right? Well big girls don’t use diapers at night.”

And, I must admit, I, at least, have even tried twisting the psychological approach by adding the element of shame, “None of your friends still use diapers at night. Not Jake, not Gracie, not Matthew; no one.” I know, I’m a bad dad… but I’m telling you, I’m tired of diapers. We’ve tried a graduated approach, using pull-ups as some kind of intermediary “Look! They’re almost underwear” fakeout. All to no avail.

The only thing we haven’t tried is the high-tech approach one of my buddies swears by, where you hook some loud wetness-sensing alarm thing into their underwear. When it picks up on the first molecule of liquid it apparently sounds a loud alarm, theoretically waking the child and helping them remember to use the bathroom instead.

I haven’t tied this because, #1 it sounds all crazy 1984 loony and #2 who the crap wants to be scared awake by an alarm in the middle of the night because they are peeing? Seems like that scenario is a setup for some kind of future therapy… or at least some kind of unwanted urination/loud-noise subconscious association. Really though, I’ve not tried it because it’s probably expensive and sounds like too much like shock therapy, literally.

So we soldier on, going through diapers at the pace of one-a-day. At this rate, we may actually have two kids in diapers come next July. Now that thought is bumming me out. What do you think? Maybe she’s just not ready. Still, I’d love for her to ditch the diapers…

Goodnight.

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the creeping mess (or, keaton knows)

Sleeping on the couch.

Tuesday already?

One more week until work slows to a near stop. For all most folks will care, as good a “stop” as any real “stop” would be. No, we’re not one of those companies who “shut down” for the holiday weeks, but, effectively, the pace of business (depending on where you work at the sawmill, I suppose) dwindles significantly.

For me, one of the lucky folks who calls on customers (some of whom who do shut down for the season), things grind to an almost-halt. This will be most welcomed. Lately, I’ve been buried and I’m ready for a break. Our Christmas plans are strikingly stark; we plan to do the thing at home with the family. We may join some friends for Christmas day afternoon and the meals and good fellowship which accompany it, but other than that we’re kicking it family-style.

I don’t have much for tonight. We did tell Keaton about her coming new brother or sister, and video’d the conversation, but it wasn’t as all-out hilarious as I thought it might be and something crazy happened with the audio to where it’s got a terrible background hum. Even after several passes of noise reduction and voice amplification I was left with a slurry mess that isn’t worth further cleanup. So, you’ll have to take my word for it: Her reaction was underwhelming. I think she knows what’s going on, but almost four year olds are used to immediate pay-off, and this thing doesn’t satisfy there. Maybe as Sharaun’s belly grows and grows and grows it’ll sink in more for her. We’ll see.

OK folks… that’s enough for this evening. Off to load some 24-bit Beatles files onto my iPod (see the ‘tweener entry below for some context). Goodnight.

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high-definition audio on an ipod

Hello, Def.

After I wrote all this mess, I decided to break it out from the regular day-to-day stuff that makes up the bulk of sounds familiar, just to spare the typical audience from something they likely wouldn’t be interested in.  But for those who may get down with the music/audio/technical junk, here’s some.

Well folks, I thought I had it all.  A while back when I got the new 2009 Beatles remastered catalog in lossless FLAC format I figured I had the best sounding version of the stuff to be had by humans. I was even super happy that I was able to losslessly transcode the FLAC files into Apple’s own lossless audio format for pristine playback on the iPod (I know, no comments about my 6G iPod Classic’s crappy DAC or sound quality in general here, please).  Anyway, put short – I was pleased that, on my portable device, I had the best-sounding versions of the Beatles’ records you could get.

Then EMI (not Apple, and the subtle distinction is important here for Beatlemaniacs) goes ahead and releases the entire catalog again in digital format, via a special USB key, and this time they offer a “24 bit”  lossless FLAC option.  What does this mean?  I dunno… not a lot unless you want me to get way technical… oh wait, you do?  If you wanna skip the techy stuff, move forward to the very last paragraph here (“Goodnight”) and just know that the 24 bit version is, for some scientific reason, better than what I had previously.  For the smarty-pantses out there…

Regular readers tuned-out?  Gone?  Good.

See, normal, CD-quality tunes have a bit-depth of 16 bits per sample (a sample being sized as 1/44,100th of second).  Higher-definition audio, such as DVD-quality audio, often comes at at an increased bit-depth of 24 bits per sample, and a smaller sample size (sometimes 48 kHz, sometimes 96 kHz, sometimes as much 192 kHz).  If you’re nerdy, you can think of it as an analog-to-digital thing, trying to take enough discrete points of digital data to accurately represent a continual analog sound.  The more often you “record” the analog sound, and the higher “resolution” in which you make the recording can be thought of, respectively, as sample-rate and bit-depth.  (And for the real nerds those last two links are to a couple far-better explained Wikipedia articles on the subject.)

Anyway, EMI’s straight-to-digital release upped the Beatles catalog ante by offering the lossless files in 24 bit format (albeit still sampled at 44.1 kHz, which some maintain is akin to a cliffhanger ending in a summer blockbuster… leaving open the door for yet another “upgrade” to a higher quality version of the set at a later date).  Oh great; this now means that my heretofore “best quality” 16 bit files on the iPod are, in fact, now trumped.  And while folks will argue with me about an iPod’s ability to, with any noticeable difference in sound quality, reproduce 24 bit audio… I of course want to get these new recordings on my trusty portable device.

Problem is getting 24-bit FLAC files converted over to 24-bit ALAC (m4a) files – using Windows – hasn’t historically been the easiest thing in the world. At this point in time, it’s rather trivial if you’re in the MacOS environment, but quite a bit more tricky in a Windows environment (especially if you prefer open-source stuff or you’re not overly-anxious to spend money on a pay-for piece of software to do the task).  If you’re a Mac person, you’ve got XLD or Max at your side and’ll have hardly any issues getting high-def stuff onto your iPods (provided you’re stubborn like me and want to do it regardless of whether or not the playback quality warrants it).  If you’re a Windows user, you’re options are significantly more narrow.

However, I’m here to report my personal success in the hopes that others out there may share in it.  See, just last week the venerable application dBpoweramp released a version of their great conversion software that supports encoding of 24 bit Apple lossless files.  What’s more, the software does the conversion in a batch format, from the original directories, in mere seconds, and it’s completely free for a 28 day trial period – no strings attached.  Wonderful.  And, as a check, the final files imported into iTunes show 24 bit / 44,100 Hz as expected (and I’m sure would match the sampling rate on a 96 kHz file as well).  Losslessly perfect!

For what it’s worth, as long as you can get files encoded into an Apple container, an iPod classic will indeed support 24 bit playback (I have the 6th generation 160GB, your mileage may vary).  And, even with the internet, it’s pretty hard to nail down the sampling-rate limitations… but from experience I can tell you my 6G classic has no issues at all with the 24 bit / 44.1 kHz Beatles ALACs.  Apparently, however, the iPod does have a sampling-rate ceiling of 48 kHz, and reportedly trying to load anything sampled at a higher rate than this onto your iPod will cause iTunes to spit it right back (yet my Apple TV is able to play 24 bit / 96 kHz files via the optical output, which is fantastic).

So for me, I’ll ignore the audiophile mantra of “you’ll never be able to tell on the iPod anyway,” delete my old 16 bit ALAC files from the iPod, and go with my newly-FLAC-transcoded 24 bit / 44.1 kHz ALAC versions of the Beatles’ catalog for portability.  I mean, even amongst all the stuff I read online about the quality of the iPod’s DAC, there’s reason to believe you might be able to tell a difference.  But at home, I’ll try loading the ALACs onto the Apple TV and playing them back via optical to the surround system for the “best” listening… (since I don’t want to have to buy one of those mega-expensive iPod DAC bypassing docks/transports anytime soon…).  Anyway, I’ve said it before: I’m no audiophile.  I obsess about it, but, when it comes down to it, I can’t hear the difference.

Anyway, if you’re a Windows user and dBpoweramp worked for you, you’ll likely end up like me and buy it despite doing all you needed to do with it long before the free trial expires… I mean, it’s worth it  – and down the road when more stuff comes in higher-definition format you’re gonna want to be able to re-encode on the fly anyway.  Drop me a line if you had luck with it, or go buy it… whatever.

I got some Beatles to go listen to…

Goodnight.

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beaten to the punch

Wet but happy.

Hi internet friends. Hope you had a good weekend, mine was a mixed bag.

I mean, how can a trip to Disneyland be bad, right?  Well, it can’t, really… but it can be… challenged.

First off, it rained.  Just a little on Friday, but more on Saturday.  And, since Saturday was my “get in free on your birthday” day, that was kind of a bummer.  Ultimately, though, the rain didn’t bring us down nearly as much as I’d have guessed.  The whole crew had ponchos and rain gear and we were relatively well outfitted for inclement weather.  Besides, the rain kept the throngs away from the park, so the lines were nearly non-existent and we were able to walk on almost everything.

Second, sometime around noon on Saturday (my birthday) I started to feel pretty run-down.  Things took a turn for the worse while we rode the jungle cruise and I battled hard to keep the cold pizza I had for breakfast from making a curtain call.  After that it was only a few more short hours of walking around in the rain feeling nauseous before I called it quits and headed back to the hotel to get some rest.

In the end it didn’t work out too bad, though, as the rain really started coming down in the later afternoon and forced our whole party back to the room to join me in my quarantine.  So, our two-day trip got cut short by half a day, but I don’t think any of us was wont for a good time.  Proof that not even rain or liquid poo or upchuck can hamper a trip to the magical Disneyland.  That place cures (almost) all that ails ya.

In other news, Sharaun is fast coming to dislike the brand new hardwood floors she wanted for so long. And, with each disparaging remark about how easily they dent and scratch I feel more and more dumb for dropping so much money on them. I know she’s not complaining to make me feel bad, but when she does, I do. In her most recent fit of floor-dent panic, I find myself arguing against a completely ridiculous “Keaton can’t play on them” rule. Guess we should’ve got the cheaper laminate or maybe just upgraded the carpet…  I’m still working on convincing her that these minor surface marks should be seen as “character” and are something near unavoidable, but, as yet, she’s just not buying it.  Oh, she will, as the stuff is glued down and not likely to go anywhere anytime soon.  She’ll come around folks, I swear…

In other other news, if you’re a Facebook denizen (as most of you I’m assuming are) you may have seen that Sharaun trumped me at getting an announcement into cyberspace: We’re scheduled to have baby #2 sometime in early July next year.  We are indescribably excited about this, and I’m feeling somewhat personally vindicated after the brief concerns over the working-ness of my junk.  My plan, being that I plan disseminating news like this around the internet, was to announce the good news here on sounds familiar by simply posting the video of us telling Keaton she’s going to have a new baby brother/sister.  And, now that the world knows, we’re planning on doing that today – so if I’m quick with the editing you may see that tomorrow.  For now, here’s a screeny of Sharaun’s Facebook announcement… since she beat me to the punch:

What shall we call this fetus, y'allz?

OK I think that’s enough for today.  Took the car to the body shop this morning, maybe I’ll have an update on the damage by tomorrow.

Goodnight.