Elvis Ripley

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

I don't think many people have heard about the Speed Racer movie directed by the Wachowski brothers. In the 90's the Wachowski brothers took visual elements from a Japanese movie called Ghost in the Shell and made it into a move called The Matrix. It looked and felt in lots of ways just like Ghost in the Shell and also carried over many of the story elements and themes introduced there.

This time they took a Japanese TV show called Mach GoGoGo, which in the US was called Speed Racer, and then made a movie that looked just like the TV show. You can see from the Speed Racer trailer that it looks a lot like a cartoon and even a cartoon from the 60's. The Matrix is just a similar to Ghost in the Shell but not many of people have seen that so you probably didn't notice. You may not have seen Speed Racer but I just told you that it looks similar but here is the opening movie anyway.

Some of the scenes and maybe even a lot of the scenes, were shot using 3 cameras to simulate the way Speed Racer used sharp and blurry parts of the scenes to shift the viewer's focus. That meant that scenes took 3 times longer to shoot but it also gives an unreal feeling to most of it while at the same time giving the viewer clues on what to look at.

The trailer is below and here is a link to the HD trailer in case you want to check that out. Also, Speed's brother and monkey are always tagging along so they can get some of the action. That is where most of the episodes' side stories develop.

I am working this weekend on creating a Drupal theme. Hopefully I will be kind of done by Monday. I you come by the site and find it to look especially plain, like plain text on a black background, that means there is no style applied because I am testing something. Don't worry and everything still works so just continue like normal. The problem with most Drupal sites is that they look like they were made with Drupal. I don't know if that is too big of a problem but it would be nice to have some style. I am going to try it out and see where I can get with it. I might need to wait another week before I can have the site like I want it. Maybe much longer, it is pretty tough.

Update: It is going to take a while longer. It was harder than I thought and my first attempt wasn't very usable. It was just a little kloogy. I am going to work on a module first and see how that goes. I need some more understanding about what is going on behind the scenes. I could modify an existing theme but I didn't think that was the way I wanted to go. I am trying to get started fresh so I can understand the way Drupal is trying to lay things out. So depending on the week ahead it might be done or it might not. I would like to get this done so I can move onto some other sites.

I am trying out some new site management software. Send me an email if you notice anything you need to work and I will go through and fix it. Missing images, broken links, keep that stuff in mind when you are going through the site. It will take about a week for me to get the look and feel of the site how I want it. Right now this is just a test version of the site as I am mainly working on database stuff and things behind the scenes.

I decided to try this because I wanted to set up a new version of The Tractors site that was more flexible and could be easily updated. I thought about using Wordpress which is what elvisripley.com ran on before. Wordpress works really well for pages and blog posts but for anything else it doesn't offer much. I looked around for a better content management system and found a few places running Drupal, then I found some big sites and started researching it. I wanted to try it out here first because I wouldn't mind dealing with whatever issues came up and I could always go back to Wordpress pretty easily.

I will spend the next week making this site work like I want and look like it should and then spend the next couple weeks making a Tractors site that won't be anything like this site. That should be a good experience.

Also, for the next couple days you have to register to post stuff and not have it say anonymous. I am working on it.

Dan Mayo bought a Leica M8 and I took it home during his busy day to get the battery charged and look for any issues. It sure was hard to use and I didn't like it very much and then I totally changed my mind. After about an hour of realizing what I couldn't take pictures of, I started to really like it. I walked around my neighborhood and I spent a few minutes at a birthday party and really enjoyed it all. So I give it a thumbs up. Click on the picture above to see my Leica M8 Pictures set.

The build quality is astounding and the usability is fantastic. The usability is also tough because it doesn't really do anything for you. You have to think like a photographer which is probably pretty handy. I used to have a Voigtlander Bessa T and it was similar in the restrictions. I really loved that camera big time, it was so fantastic. I sold it and bought a Voightlander Bessa R2 which was a mistake. I didn't like it and immediately changed my mind but too late to get my money back. I sold it after a month and lost a little but my rangefinder experience was a good one. This Leica M8 reminds me of it but in a nicer digital way.

Update: It took about one day but I am boxing it up to send back. It had a nice run but somethings just don't fit and in this case it was the wrong tool for the job.

Update: Dan loves this camera! He is going to keep it. It will probably be with him for years to come. He will also get the Digilux 3 unless that changes too. I might skew him to an Olympus body using the Leica lens.

Even More Updates: I got a Leica Digilux 3 for Dan so we will see how that impacts the situation. The Digilux 3 is also a great camera but not the level of the M8 in terms of quality. If ease of use and features are your thing then the Digilux 3 wins like crazy. The Digilux 3 also has a great upgrade path. (See the compatible Olympus bodies)

Digilux 3 Update: Dan now has the Digilux 3 and was very impressed with it. I am not sure if he has taken any pictures yet but I am sure he is thinking about it.

Here are some pictures I took with the Leica's lens on my Olympus E-300 body. They are super sharp and the lens was very nice to use.

I am painting my wall right now with a couple coats of primer and then if that looks thick and smooth enough I am going to add on Behr Silver Screen paint (770E-2). It gets good reviews for a screen surface so I should like it. We will see.

This is a link to the new projector setup photo set where I will be adding pictures of my painting and the progress as it gets finished and as the projector goes up and I will add another post that is more complete when I get to a more final stage in the process. The stages are 1 choose a target size and prepare an area larger, I went with 3 inches on each side extra so I would have some room, 2 sand and primer the surface to smooth it out and get rid of the yellow, 3 paint plenty of grey on the area, 4 mount the projector and figure out the best size for the room and the projector, the larger the image the dimmer it will be but the blacker the blacks so a balance must be reached and 5 paint a black border around my final screen size to enhance contrast and improve the cinematic feel.

Stages of Projector Setup

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

You can see this image big to check out the surface detail. There are some little marks but it is very smooth overall. This picture below was taken when there were still a couple coats left for the wall.

Stage 4 So it took an extra day because Optoma changed the size of the screw holes. Lowes and Home Depot didn't have the screws I needed. Lowes had the area for the screws but the what I ended up with at home for sure weren't the right fit. Ace Hardware really came through. That place is nice. So after one awesome night of using the projector on the coffee table projecting an image about the size of my last setup, 92". Because the projector was brighter than I imagined and because of the changes of the screen surface I think I could go really big. I might go ahead and fill up my whole painted space or I might go with my original estimate of around 110" being the correct size. This image below is 107", or pretty close to that. If it gets bigger my couch starts to be in the way and I already had to take the globe, chains and light bulb out of my ceiling fan. It hangs down just a little too low but any light fixture should work, probably just no fans.

If you click on this image it will link to the larger size.

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And this is an example of why I was hesitant to paint my walls. I don't think that some spackle or mud or whatever would be able to get it totally smooth. I sanded it to get the intense peaks out but this is some serious plaster warpage. My experience with the previous screen assures me that these won't really be noticeable unless the bathroom door is left open which happens sometimes.
Update: You can't see any of this stuff. It looks great.

Update: It is still all awesome.