Elvis Ripley

Go to elvisripley.com and see what is going on there.

I put up these pictures of Viet's going away party. It is a good set but I also thought I would put up this video. When I shoot a group of images I usually just put up one, whatever is best during the second long burst but when you view them all together it is a pretty nice experience.

A6-6T6 Tower

In the last part of 2007 I had been looking for some speakers and a subwoofer. It was pretty tough to find something that was just the right balance of cost and sound quality. Most companies after you go above the cheapest speakers try to balance cost, sound quality and high quality wood cabinets. It doesn't really help for me. I just want it big and cheap. Here is an example of some of the speakers I was considering and maybe also these. Both of those are fine examples of speakers but still not as much performance as I would like and a little nicer looking than I would care to have.

Spiky Feet

Subwoofers are another search I have been on for a long time. In the last couple of years there has been a big growth in a more manufacturer direct model for subwoofer as well as more subwoofer only dealers instead of speaker makers who also make a subwoofer. For subwoofers I looked at Hsu Research along with Aperion and AV123 from the above speaker examples. My favorite was from SVS mainly because I wanted to have a cylindrical subwoofer. How sweet would that be? But SVS also makes good box subwoofers too.

In what I thought was the end I had decided on getting the SVS SBS-01 5.1 speaker system with that nice box sub above. It is a very nice setup, the sub is great but the speakers are a little expensive for being a little small and they are also not very efficient. Around that time, this is probably November, I found an article about some subs made for a theater. I wondered how much that would cost and saw that on the company's site you could figure it out and it wasn't very much for some car sized subwoofers. That lead me to their home subwoofers. I read reviews for about a month and decided they were where it is at for price performance. Also most people aren't happy with the way they look so it was perfect.

I ordered a subwoofer, which as far as I could find reviewed higher than most of the other subs I was checking out. That then led to a couple tower speakers and a center, you get a discount if you get a package. It was all very reasonably priced but the subwoofer is made on order and they are backed up quite a bit. Last Thursday it had been 10 weeks and the towers showed up after 8 weeks. That is a pretty long time. The subwoofer is expected to ship tomorrow so it will arrive this Thursday or Friday, right at 11 weeks from order. Yowser.

In terms of a review, these speakers sound really amazing. The clarity and range of the speakers I ended up getting are really fantastic. The towers and center go lower than I would have expected for the size of each one. They are really super and I am glad I have them. I will really go into everything when the subwoofer shows up.

Elemental Designs A6 6T6 Tower Set

If you have been in my kitchen in the past quarter of a year you have probably seen the wires and electrical components spread out on my kitchen table. Last night I decided to finish it a it took about 4 more hours of very slow soldering to finish a very fantastic amp. It is sort of an old style DIY HiFi. It uses a new type of amplifier and is super clean sounding with very high efficiency meaning small size and a low amount of heat. It also means it has loads of tiny pins to solder that are way too close to each other. I am very pleased with it and plan on building a nice box so I can take it off the towel. Also, I plan on making a much more powerful amp or maybe even a multi channel one. This entry is a little short, I think I am too excited. I will have to wait another day and fill this out.

Update: So now that I have spent some time with the amp, in its still bare board form. I am still very pleased with the easy sound of the amp. I don't have any speakers with an efficiency high enough to really explore high end hifi like a nice pair of La Scala II's. I will probably just build some simple Voight Pipes in my spare time and use those for my office speakers. That would be a weird adventure.

In high school my friend Chris Brown didn't like doing book reports so the teacher had the option to make a video. I think he hoped that everyone would make a video so as they presented their book reports it would be less boring. Chris needed a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde book report so we put together this fancy video. It stars Chris Brown as Dr. Jekyllathon, Sherri Johnson as some sort of Hoochie Truckin' Mama and me as Rhino Utterson aka Johnny. Mr Hydeasaurus is played by a block of wood. It features drug use, smoking and guns, all in a high school video.

I didn't have the edited version so I had to re-edit the video. I tried to stay as truthful to the original as I could. I didn't clean it up or change much. I added a few wipes but it is pretty close to the version shown in Chris' English class in 1998. It features music from PaRappa the Rapper, Dr Octagon and The Crystal Method. Dr. Octagon was a much requested favorite in the mustang.

Dr Jekyllathon and Mr Hydeasaurus on YouTube.

It is pretty cold. On Sunday night the power went out for a little bit because of the ice storm and then came back on a few hours later. It wasn't too bad but that night as I watched the transformers blow all through my neighborhood, they kept getting closer and closer until my transformer blew up and my power went out. Then the next day I saw that everyone's power was out, pretty much.

I had a bunch of work to do so I packed up my computer and lots of drives and took them all to the farm to stay with my parents. It is pretty sweet living in the studio. It is a little chilly but it is big and open and has a very nice ceiling. I really had a tight deadline to get a Biker Fox music video finished for Tulsa Overground so that is what I mainly worked on and then other stuff came my way too. I went to Tulsa on Tuesday to drop off the Biker Fox DVD, pick up some footage and then stayed the night to get some ram. It was so freezing that night. I got a bunch of bottles and filled them with hot water and put them in the bed with me under all the blankets I could find. It was still too cold but I did alright and only had to refill the bottles with warmer water once.

In my driveway.

I have pretty much all I need with the exception of a strong internet connection. It is satellite based and goes in and out all day. The one thing that has really come in handy and hasn't let me down is my iPhone. It is a great source for an independent network to look up numbers and be in all forms of communication with people. The battery lasts a long time and the cold didn't seem to bother it. That night I spent at home with the water bottles my iPhone was sitting on top of my blankets and when I picked it up in the middle of the night it felt ice cold but it still had full battery power and I was able to send some emails.

My street after the storm damage.
It looks pretty dreary.

Monday is the expected date for the return of the power at my house and I hope that works out. As of Wednesday it still seems like there is a lot of damage and I don't know how they are going to get to everything by the 18th. I did see on the news how many electrical workers they had brought in but on Tuesday night I saw more transformers blowing in areas where they were trying to restore power so I don't know what to think of it all. It is a great disaster that has slowed everything down but overall it didn't seem to really be too much of a disaster. It is just pretty inconvenient. If it kept going for a few more weeks everyone would just adjust to it and by January it wouldn't be that bad.

I will update if anything happens but I will probably just be at the farm until my power comes back on and then I will be back to normal with less trees. Hopefully full internet and power come back pretty close to each other. I think my Cox line is yanked out of the back of the house along with the phone line and power.

Update: so I am at home. It is so freaking amazing here.
I came back on Wednesday for a quick meeting and to drop off some DVDs. As I was coming into town I noticed an AEP truck in the front of my house. I came in and turned off anything I found on and waited for the work to finish so I could start the house heat up process. The power came on and I heard plenty of beeps meaning that I didn't get close to unplugging anything. I turned the heater on, went to my meeting, went to the farm and finally brought everything home after a little dinner with my parents and anti aliasing talk (audio and video) with my dad. The internet didn't work but the power was on and it was pretty nice. After an extensive water flush to get rid of some sort of stagnant smell it was back to normal.

Today my parents saw some Cox guys and had them come over and fix my Cox drop. They were so overwhelmingly nice and didn't leave until they made sure my internet was going and as fast as possible. In fact, after they were done they hung out in front of my house for about an hour, that is how dedicated they were. So in conclusion I am glad to be back and happy about everything else.