Last night, Nicole and I had several friends over and we wound up watching The Sentinel. The movie was not all that great but what I found even more distracting was the rattles in the room generated by the substantial bass of my subwoofer. I was probably the only one in the room that noticed or was disturbed by it, but so what. So today I'm identifying the offenders in the room.

I know the door covering the equipment rack is rattling and there is a light fixture in the ceiling rattling as well. But both rattle at different frequencies and it's a pain to re-watch movies trying to find the sections that caused the brief rattles. So I use a tone generator to generate different frequencies and isolate and troubleshoot the offending rattlers at each frequency. To do this, you need a Windows or Mac PC, a Palm PDA, or a Windows Mobile PDA and the NCH Tone Generator for the appropriated Operating System.

Attach your PC / PDA to your receiver using an RCA adapter cable (or your car stereo using a cassette tape adapter) and start a sine wave test tone at 100 Hz and work down to 15 Hz. You'll easily be able to figure out which frequencies cause which rattles.

Fixing the problem is the difficult part. Dynamat is a great product for eliminating rattles. Generous amounts of duct tape or extra screws are other alternatives. Using a rubber or foam window seal/door stripping are other alternatives. Be creative. Basically, you want to increase the natural frequency by making the rattling part more stiff or by adding more mass to it. Be patient and keep trying and your rattles can be eliminated!

I don't own a Mac but Steve Jobs makes me wish I did every time I see one of his keynote addresses.  Today my friend Luke sent me this link to a non-Apple speech Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005.  Although I'm somewhat skeptical of inspirational speeches give by the 0.00001% who become extremely successful (while ignoring the other 99.99999%), I couldn't help but feel inspired.

Last week, Sonos released software revision 2.0. This is the third time they've released an update in the ~1.5 years I've owned one. What impresses me most is that I've made requests in their user suggestion forum and they have implemented many of them. Customers speak and Sonos listens. Too bad more companies are not like this (I've been complaining to Philips about their omission of ProntoProNG button backlights for a couple of years now and no change.)

One of the coolest new features is integrated Real Rhapsody Service. Previous support was barely functional - it used a networked PC running Rhapsody as an intermediary. The new software completely integrates Real Rhapsody into the Sonos itself and it now works very well. My wife Nicole has a crazy joy from being able to access 2.1 million songs. Guess we'll be paying $10/months when our 30-day trial expires.

Other new features includes gapless playback, an alarm clock, automatic updating of the music library (great for incorporating daily podcasts), better scrolling, better random shuffle play, and better tag support. A full list of the new features is available here. If you're thinking of getting a new digital home music player, you can't go wrong with a Sonos.

See my Sonos vs. Roku comparison to see why I originally chose the Sonos.

For the third time this year, I visited Putnam Park for Porsche Driver Education weekend. This event was hosted by the Central Indiana Region, and thought they did a better job than the Kentucky Region and Mid-Ohio Region (but all were great).

I was surprised how long it took me to get back to the performance level I obtained during my previous weekend. I feel like I was slower the entire first day this session, but reached and maybe exceeded my previous levels on the second day. I don't have a lap timer (yet) so I'm not really sure how I was doing, but it's easy to tell when the tires are approaching their limit (or not, as was the case Saturday, because I was slower).

I did have several new experiences this weekend. I actually pushed the car hard enough to unsettle it a few times. (Click the image to enlarge for traces of wrong routes). The first "experience" in the very tight and very slow Turn 7, where I decided I could take the turn a little faster than I really could. The back end started to come around mid-turn but I was already back in the throttle, which started the transfer of weight to the back end. My mistake turned into a pretty nifty rear end drift, with the rear neatly tucking back in as I straightened the wheel. I'm sure I was slower through the corner and I'd never intentionally do it again, but it was fun in retrospect. And I learned something new about the car's handling.

The second "experience" occurred in Turn 2, which is one of the fastest turns on the track. It was my first session on Sunday morning. I was trying to carry more speed into the corner and was doing better each time. Until I decided to take the turn waaay too early — which means there was no way I could stay on the track because I was going too fast and point the wrong direction. So I said out loud "I'm going off the track", I pointed my wheels straight forward, and about 1 second later I was coasting through the grass. It was a very boring exit, the car was never in any jeopardy — my pulse didn't raise at all. I was glad that I recognized I was on the wrong line and chose the best escape. The "guest instructor" riding with me said that if I had tried to save it, I probably would have spun. I didn't even consider trying to save it and was pleased with my composure.

My third "experience" occurred during in Turn 1 of the first full-speed lap of my third Sunday session. I was trying to use a different visual mark for my turn-in indicator. I used the wrong one and I turned in too soon (experience #2 hadn't fully sunk in yet). My rear inside tire just barely got off into the grass and unsettled the car. I didn't know what was going to happen. I was ready to point the front wheels off the track and escape into the grass (experience #2 flashback all of a sudden). But the Boxster immediately settled down and stuck to the pavement. I was pointing in the correct direction and had a decent amount of speed. So I just kept on going. I talked to Colin, the driver following me when it happened (after the session was over), so that I fully understood what had gone on. (The picture to the right of this paragraph was taken about 20 seconds later.)

My forth "experience" was with my new Mintex "red box" brake pads. I was going out for my 4th and final Sunday session and heard a little grinding in the front when I hit the brakes in the parking lot. So I skipped the track and when in to check the front brakes. The and front left pad was completely consumed. Now, I'd checked the pads Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning and there was plenty of material left. But my three sessions on Sunday (and my increased speed) finished them off. Wear issues aside, I must elaborate on how terrible these pads were. They had no initial bite and required long, excessive pedal application to slow the car down, which causes more heat in the pads and more into the brake fluid. These pads were far inferior to the stock pads for both initial bite and maximum stopping force, when they were cold and at higher temperatures. And they didn't even last 2 DE weekends. These pads were terrible and I'll never, ever use Mintex pads again.

I had a great weekend and was happy with my driving by the end of Sunday. More importantly, I learned a bunch about how my car reacts to different situations and how to compensate for mistakes. The only downside is that, for the first time, I noticed my 2.5L engine's lack of power. I could drive faster than several (but not all) of the more-powerful cars in my C group as long as we were in the curves. But as soon as we made it to a straight-away, I'd start losing ground. I could sometimes catch back up for a little while (as long as we were between turns 1 and 7), but I was incapable of making up any distance throughout the other half of the track. I knew it would happen eventually, but I didn't think it would be this soon. But I'm not ready to purchase a more powerful car. Yet.

I no longer subscribe to any magazines that offer reviews of home theater-type equipment and I don't generally read online review sites either. Why? Because, I'm sick of reading worthless and inaccurate information and that doesn't help me pick a product and understand its limitations. I'm convienced the only way to get a useful opinion is through aggregation of forum posts, where multiple individuals can give multiple opinions to allow once to reach their own, overall consensus. This methodology is reinforced by the book The Wisdom of Crowds (Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few) by James Surowiecki. Paperback link, Audio book link . But I have some additional reasons.

First of all, I never read any strongly negative opinion in a magazine review. Then I'd buy a product, find a major design annoyance, go to an Internet forum/message board such as AVS Forum and find others with the same exact complaints. Perhaps the magazine authors are trying to please the advertisers? The opinions posted on forums do not generally any tie to the banner add at the top of the forum page, and that is a positive.

Secondly, the magazine authors don't always seem to have a full understanding of what they are testing and what the results mean. For example, this article in Home Theater Mag says that the measured brightness of the projector was 27 ft-lamberts. For the non-engineer, this probably doesn't seem like a problem. Here's the issue: this unit measures the brightness of the projected image on the screen, which is a result of projector brightness AND screen size AND screen gain ratio. So, the ft-Lambert result doesn't directly describe the performance of the projector, which is the focus of the review. How would a person know if that projector is any brighter than any other projector? It's like saying "this flashlight is blindingly bright" without saying whether it is 1 inch or 1000 feet away from your eye. I used my home theater calculator to reverse-calculate the projector ANSI brightness (based on the screen the tester used) and posted it in the corresponding Engadget entry so others could maybe make sense of it. It's beyond my why the author didn't include it in the article. Check the box off for reporting brightness and move on, regardless whether it is usable by the reader. At least they are not covering up a flaw of the projector.

Unfortunately, I have an even worse example: the review of the Sony HS-51 projector conducted by AV Review. The author states that the projector has a resolution of 1366 x 768 and that Sony erroneously lists it as 1280 x 720. In general, manufacturers don't under-promote resolution, so I e-mailed the author to see how he reached this conclusion. To paraphrase, he said he "used his professional-grade test equipment to send a 1280×720 test signal to the projector and it did not fill the screen, so it must have more pixels than 1280×720 and 1366×768 seems reasonable." The guy was dead wrong. It wasn't that the projector had more pixels, it was that it was blanking out the pixels it had, ignoring the outer portion of the signal being sent to it. So when you watched something at 1280×720, you would only get 1250×690. It would not fill your screen edge-to-edge (black bars all around) and you would not see the full image. This was a major design bug and Sony eventually issued a recall. I gave the author and the editor more-or-less conclusive proof of this and yet the article remained unmodified. Don't say anything bad about Sony, don't inform customers, and don't ever question your test equipment or methodology.

The one exception I have at this point in time is the website Audioholoics. I've found their reviews to be extremely detailed and adequately critical. Here's hoping they maintain this position.

Nicole and I arrive and hear the opening act from the outside. The singer sounds like Dave Matthews with a different band, but we realize it's Mat Kearney when he closes with his song with radio play. He finishes as we find a place on the lawn. Too bad we didn't catch the whole thing.

We meet-up with Nicole's co-worker Erin and his wife and later run into my MBA classmate Pierre-Alexander Brault. Friends and concerts and a good pairing.

Sheryl Crow takes the stage and start playing through her long and well-earned list of hits. She's like a fine bourbon that keeps getting better with age. She sings, she plays, she chats-up the audience. She can do no wrong. Hearing songs brings back memories over the past 12 or so years I've been listening to her music. I'd definitely like to catch a show in a smaller venue with closer seats. Not surprisingly, the audience is a little older and the stadium is not quite full. Heavy radio play must be a requirement for high-school/college audience attendance. She deserves a packed house.

The youth crowd shows up, it gets dark, and John Mayer takes the stage. He's become my favorite solo artist over the past 5 years and I'm hoping for a better concert than when last I saw him (it got a little boring in the middle.) His band is quite different now (no horn section) and it's tight. This setup, including members from the John Mayer Trio, are a much better fit.

John Mayer is the real deal. Soulful, reflective, and an absolutely amazing guitar player. Songs from his Inside Wants Out release have always been my favorite, but I'm really into the John Mayer Trio tracks.

• In the right mood, the Daughters is a great song, but I'm usually cynical and was a little distraught by all the teenage girls holding each other and rocking to the music.
• Slow Dancing in a Burning Room had a great groove to it.
• My favorite part of the show is the ending to Victoria. John Mayer decides to an impromptu solo/acoustic transition to Love Soon becaue he's feeling the vibe. But he forgets the lyrics a couple of lines in. He's human. He's fun. It's great. I love that he felt like playing it and did, it it leaves me wanting to hear an up-temp solo acoustic version of Love Soon.

I'd be remiss if I did mention another performance by Indy's own Aisle Dancing Dude. He rocks the aisle like no else can. He even picked-up a little aisle dancing honey!

John Mayer Setlist:

Why Georgia
Good Love is On the Way
Bigger Than My Body
Belief
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
My Stupid Mouth
Vultures
Dreaming With A Broken Heart
Daughters
Neon
Waiting on the World to Change
– encore –
Victoria –> Love Soon
No Such Thing
I'm Gonna Find Another You

Seeing Hootie and the Blowfish has become a Labor Day tradition for Nicole and me. We head downtown, eat ribs, enjoy the show, and spend a great evening together.

This year, we had to pay and entrance fee, which was a little disappointing. We then had to go buy tickets so that we could trade them in for ribs and drinks. We picked a tent, picked some ribs, and and had a great dinner before making our way through the lawn. We were about an hour early and it looked like we were going to have a great location — until we walked into the fence. They created a special "premium seating" area that you had to pay for to get in to. They were out of tickets.

No worries, we still have a great location and show started before we knew it. The band is always seems to be upbeat and happy to play and this year was no different. Their old favorites are great, their newer songs continue to grow on me, and their cover of the REM tune Losing My Religion was fantastic.

My only complaint is that the set list was little lower-energy than the previous year, but hey, there's always next year!