When Miro 1.2 came out, I decided to give it another try after some previously failed attempts due to annoying bugs. Well, I’ve been using this free and open source, next generation video platform on my Mac for a while now, and I must say it’s quite nice if you fancy yourself watching some of the great, free video content available on the internet.

Miro is RSS + Bittorrent. Find sites with cool videos that interest you, subscribe to their feeds, and when new content is published, you can have it downloaded and waiting for you by the time you realize it’s there. It’s just so smooth the way I can play the first video, and all the new content plays like my personal TV station. Cmd+F throws me into full-screen mode. It didn’t used to work nearly this well, and I’m just all so very pleased with today’s offering. (It will even search and play YouTube videos.)

Ok, so you want to try this. Click the “Miro” link above and grab the player. It comes with some default channels, but I’ve deleted all but the Onion News Network. The Miro Guide appears to be a nice index of most/all of the content available for the platform, but please allow me to recommend a few of my favorites.

• Revision3 is The TV Network of Kevin Rose (of TechTV and Digg fame) with great shows like Tekzilla, Systm, and of course Diggnation. I also have come to watch the goofy Internet Superstar... I haven’t even tasted many of the Rev3 shows yet!
• Mahalo Daily is a great 5-day/wk short form (3-5 mins) show with Veronica Belmont. (Although she’s about to leave…) They visit someone and show of something… usually very interesting stuff. I like the one about the dude who makes music with Gameboys.
• WebbAlert is another daily, short form show with Megan Webb. Just a quick overview of the tech news.
• GeekBrief.TV is yet another daily, short form show with the bouncy character that of Cali Lewis. Again, it’s an overview of the tech news. Maybe a product review or interview here and there.
• commandN is a longer form (15-20 mins), weekly show with Amber MacArthur, Will Pate, and others. They talk about the news and share cool website picks. Amber’s brother, Jeff, usually has a longer segment where he usually reviews a product.
• Hak5 Is a great, long standing show with a great crew. They hack stuff and talk about it on the show.
• Cranky Geeks is a talk show with John C. Dvorak.
• DL.TV is a tech show with some of the folks from TechTV.

Also, anything from Leo Laporte is fantastic. I’m a very regular listener of Security Now, TWiT, MacBreak Weekly, Net@Nite, and Windows Weekly on his TWiT.TV (audio) podcast network. While there aren’t any regular, internet-available video shows from him yet, he’s been talking recently about a new studio he’s setting up where he’ll start doing some video shows. He’s a great personality… One to watch.

I hope I’ve captured the interest of some new internet TV consumers. Watching this web-based, independent content has really never been this easy.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my audio equipment (or about much of anything) ... So allow me to give a short comparison between two of the best universal fit IEMs available. It goes on and on, so allow me to place it below the fold.

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I’ve had Ray Samuels’s The Tomahawk headphone amp for about a full month now, so I felt it was about time to report back my experiences. This month gave me time to run it through the first set of batteries and some of a second set. This should have been long enough to fully burn the Tomahawk in. The electronics take 300-500 hours or so to really settle in and emit their final sound signature.

Aside: I can’t bring myself to call this a review because I don’t consider myself much of an genuine audiophile, and I don’t feel I’m really qualified to seriously critique this product. Also, this is the first headphone amp I’ve ever experienced, so I can’t really compare it to anything.

The Tomahawk is a very highly acclaimed headphone amplifier. I’ve read numerous reviews and comparisons – mostly on head-fi.org – about this amp, and everyone seems to think very highly of it. My experience has been just excellent. The amplifier adds smoothness/shininess to the sound that is just a joy to listen to through the E500. In the interest of preserving my hearing, when in a quiet room, I like listening at low volumes. This combo retains thick & juicy dynamics while emphasizing the fact that this little box eliminates ALL hiss/buzz produced by my mp3 player and presents nothing but pure music over a deep, black background.

As for size & build, there is absolutely nothing to complain about here. The Tomahawk is built like a tank… and a very, very tiny one at that. Ray’s amps are built with plenty of TLC, and he doesn’t just throw together these things with whatever chips happen to be cheapest. Each amp is built with the same, high-quality components.

What’s most amazing is the punch that this thing produces. One should not come under the impression that this amp will drive only IEMs. In fact, it will drive all but the most exotic and demanding of headphones with juice to spare. If that wasn’t amazing enough, it will actually perform its duty for over 400 hours solid, about 17 days, or as Ray says, 6 weeks at 10 hours per day. (Apparently, more demanding headphones will start to clip towards the end of the battery life.)

I must also comment on Ray’s customer service. Ray is a really great guy and a pleasure to do business with. He likes to talk to his customers on the phone, so if you’re interested in his products, call him up!

Pics over the jump!

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So I am a crazy man.

I decided I wanted to amp my phones, but my UE Super.fi 5 Pros have been said not to change much with an amp. Plus, from all the discussion on head-fi.org (WARNING: stay clear of that site if you are susceptible to upgradeitus!) I found that it was common opinion that the Super.fi’s, while they are a fine earphone, suffer from some amount of “veil” or lack of balance. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing even, depending on your objective, but I wanted something that was well balanced and “audiophile grade” that I could enjoy wherever I am (such as work for 8 hrs/day).

I wanted something that would fit snugly in my ear and not stick out like the 5 Pros. That ruled out the Triple.fi 10 Pros as they have a similar form factor. And since the best IEM amp that I could find, Ray Samuels Audio’s “Tomahawk,” was designed with the Shure E500’s in mind (along with a few other earphones), I knew I would not be making a bad decision in going with these earphones.

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I got my Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 Pro earphones Wednesday (3 days ago). I had been thinking of upgrading from my Shure E2’s for a while. I just knew there was more to the sound, and I wanted to really be able to rock out properly and independently (when there are others around who might not appreciate teh thumpz). And oh man was I right. I’ll explain how I feel about these phones in various areas. Read the rest of this entry

Just in case you need some blank paper to write on or something, be sure and check out this amazing and free service, blanksheetofpaper.com. You save on ink, too! I tried this service out and I am very satisfied. I highly recommend it.

It seems TextMate has become quite a popular editor as of late. Some even say it is the best editor on any platform which is quite a bold statement, indeed. Cheat sheets such as this one might give you some idea of the breadth of features available at the tap of a key, but allow me to attempt a bulleted list of my favorites:

• Yes! There are hotkeys for everything! I almost don’t even miss vim at all! Hotkeys to navigate around and manipulate your text are essential, and TextMate doesn’t let you down.
• Moving around couldn’t be easier. Cmd+T brings up a dialog that intelligently figures out what file you’re looking for in your project from what you type. This lets you open up a file with the quickness. Cmd+Shift+T is similar, but you’re jumping to a symbol (class, function, etc) in the current file instead. Bookmarks let you cycle through important lines of code.
• Snippits are amazing. Type a snippit keyword and hit tab. It will be expanded to the full snippit with the first modifiable area selected. Type to replace it with something new, and hit tab to move to the next “hot” spot. With “smart typing” automatically closing my quotes and brackets, the code practically writes itself!
• You can execute a line of code as ruby and insert its result. You can commit code to versioning systems. You can …
• Extensibility. You can add third party bundles such as the that include new commands, macros, snippits, etc.
• It is a native cocoa application with predictable keybindings (Cmd+w closes, etc) and snazzy-clean mac-friendly interface.

People use this editor to maintain their todo lists and weblogs.

My biggest and nearly lonesome gripe with TextMate is how it freezes for a couple seconds when it comes to focus when you’re working on remote files (nfs, samba, etc). The upcoming version 2.0 will fix this issue as well as bring numerous exciting improvements.

Serious respect goes out to the mighty Allan Odgaard of Denmark for this incredible editor.

My iRiver iHP-120’s (now known as H120) power/play button finally gave out the other day, so I’m no longer able to easily turn it on. (I actually since noticed that hitting the reset button also causes it to power on; so it’s still somewhat workable although I have no idea what I’m going to do with it.) With iRiver unwilling to repair it for me, I had to pick up a replacement.

I originally bought the iRiver primarily because of the Ogg Vorbis support that I am so keen on. Since then, though, iRiver seems to have sold out to the almighty Microsoft because their product pages have the M$ “Plays for Sure” badge image and no longer support any open formats. (Add that to the list of reasons I hate Microsoft pls.)

I’ve been using the Cowon iAudio X5L 30Gb for a few days now and I must say, I am quite pleased with it overall. Although it comes from an iAudio fan site, iAudiophile has an excellent review on the X5 that I highly recommend if you want even more detail than I provide. (The X5L differs only in that it is 1) a bit larger, 2) a bit heavier, 3) costs a bit more, and 4) lasts for 35 hrs instead of the X5’s 14.)

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I like to listen to some podcasts… but I find myself getting behind simply because I have to constantly revisit the separate websites, click around, find the torrent link… No it’s not that hard, but it certainly could be a lot easier.

Somewhere in my digg reading today, I read that Azureus supports RSS feeds. “Wow,” I thought, “That would really be the easiest way to get my podcasts!” I consulted google, and found that this functionality is offered via an extension. I gave it the rss feeds for thisweekintech and a couple other podcasts I like to listen to, and it lists the episodes and lets me download them with the click of a button. It will also poll the feeds on an interval and download them automatically.

This is perfect. I just had to share it.

It’s Friday the 13^th and two good things are happening today. First, My new LCD has arrived. I’d been thinking of getting a new lcd for a while, and when I saw deal like this one, I had to splurge. It’s a combo Dimension system & LCD deal, but the price is killer. The bad news is that I’ll have to find a buyer for the tower that comes with it and my old LCD, but after all is said and done, I’ll have saved several hundred bucks on this screen (hopefully).

I’ve got the thing set up at the kitchen table right now… so that’s what’s in the picture. I was nothing but wow’d when I opened the thing up. I’m really not used to seeing screens larger than 19 or 20 inches. The design is really nice; the black & grey scheme matches the rest of my system. The base allows the screen to swivel with ease in all conceivable directions—including raising the entire screen up and down. You’ll need to raise it up in order to make enough room underneith to rotate the entire screen 90” clockwise and go into portrait mode. I haven’t looked into making this feature work in linux yet. Oh, and it has a multi media card reader in the left side of the screen which saved me just now when I couldn’t find the usb cord for my camera. I have no frickin clue where that thing is…

And I found it interesting that this product made #5 on PCWorld.com’s 100 Best Products of 2005.

The second good thing happening today is that I’m going to go DJ at a house party on Durand street (like a block over from me). I’ll be working in some other styles besides dnb to appease the peoples tonight. I may end up posting at least part of it for those of you who couldn’t make it. ;)

So I got the Laserpod from Thinkgeek the other day, and it seems to be a real hit. The housemates love it, the guests are all interested in it, and it generally looks cool. I’m too lazy to post pictures, but the I4U News site does a good job of explaining what this thing is.

So I was convinced by my housemates that it would be a great idea to go see the Chronicles of Narnia on opening night. I had a feeling it would be packed, and boy was I right. The show sold out, and we had to say goodbye to a couple friends who couldn’t get tickets. (We reserved ours online.)

Even though I had to look upward at the gigantic, overstimulating screen while sitting in the front row’s center area, I thought it was a pretty enjoyable movie. It certainly scores high in the eye candy category. In fact, I decided that that was half of the movie’s formula. The other half was MAGIC. There was very little about this movie (or story) that wasn’t MAGICAL. From the land of Narnia existing behind the wardrobe in the first place, to pretty much everything that happens inside Narnia—it’s all both beautiful and magical. The CG characters looked very nice.

So, Eye Candy + Magic = Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Firefox 1.5 came out yesterday, and although I tried a beta some time ago and was impressed with the speed increase, I’ve held out upgrading for day-to-day use until the final release. This isn’t even so much because for the sake of a final release but also so the extensions I want would become available.

So, since I hear it might be some time before we see Firefox 1.5 backported to Ubuntu Breezy (let alone 64-bit packages!), I decided to just build it myself from source. Well, I had a tiny gotcha that I was able to solve, but now I’m lovin’ the Firefox!

It’s really cool:

1. It’s 20-30% faster than the old 1.0.x versions in most cases making it rival even Opera’s speed.
2. It caches pages so that when you go back/forward, the new page loads instantaneously. This is especially pleasing when I can use my mouse’s side thumby buttons to zip around in my history!
3. You can drag/drop tabs around to reorder them—even between windows!
4. It has lots of really nice extensions
5. There are friendlier error messages.
6. UI enhancements, particularly in the preferences.
7. Loads of other stuff.

Firefox has been a really great browser for quite some time now. Version 1.5 seems to be very well refined product that is fast, easy to use, and very flexible.

I’m not crazy about their names or color schemes, but Ubuntu linux seriously has the whole linux usability thing figured out. I upgraded my Hoary laptop to Breezy last Wednesday, and just yesterday switched my desktop that has been running Gentoo for 5-6 years now over to Breezy. Why did I do that, you ask? Well even if you didn’t, it’s because qt failed to compile, and rather than figure it out like I always have to, I said to hell with it. Gentoo is awesome, but things often take more time and research than they should.

The new Gnome 2.12 is so frickin smooth. Nautilus doesn’t crash like it did in 2.10, and there are new usability features that really make it a comfy environment. Hooray for linux on the desktop! \o/

I’ve ordered a pile of Breezy discs from shipit.ubuntu.com. So I’ll be passing those out to anyone who’s interested.

Podcasts have recently become more popular. Now that iTunes supports podcast downloading (basic usage—no torrents) podcasts have come to the masses. TWiT is apparently #2 on the iTunes podcast roster! If you don’t know, it’s Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, and many others from the TechTV crew. It’s quite a nice show if you’re one who enjoyed their appearances on TechTV’s The Screen Savers and Call for Help.

I like listening to these shows with dnb in the background. Shit, I’ll listen to dnb whenver possible! Anyway, as I was playing some tunes alongside the podcast, I decided to fire up Audacity and add my last released set at lower volume to the podcast. I’m not going to post it, but if for some reason you’re actually interested, msg me on aim.

Oh, and my other favorite podcast is LugRadio.