Neil Robinson's blog

1st Season, 4th Trip, 3rd Continent!

About 6 months ago, my brother asked me if I'd be interested in going on a Snowboarding holiday with him and a load of friends. The plan was for 12 of us to go, though this later grew to a group of 14.

Initially I wasn't too keen on the idea, although I've always been tempted by winter sports, I'd always thought it was too expensive, and that sun was a million times better than snow right?

Anyway, somehow, Graeme managed to convince me, and I made the commitment to go with him in January of this year.

I didn't want to be the only guy that couldn't already board, so I booked up some lessons on the indoor snow slope in Milton Keynes to learn the basics.

Almost as soon as I'd started, I was loving it! I would urge anyone that's toying with the idea of going to jump right in with both feet - I garauntee you won't be disappointed. It's not even that difficult to learn, I recon it probably takes around 3 days of practice to get to the point where you're not falling over every thirty seconds, but it suddenly just clicks and you're away.

I'm lucky that with work I have to travel around a fair bit, and it wasn't long before an opportunity arose, and I was able to hit the slopes of Cervinia in Italy with an old friend. It was only a couple of days, but great experience of a real mountain slope, rather than the short, almost synthetic snow in Milton Keynes. I posted about this trip around that time, so look further down the page to see that.

Following that, I got the chance again to go in Las Vegas, while on a trip to CES - the most important Consumer Electronics show on the calendar. This was only for 1 day, but yet more experience and, don't forget continent No. 2!

Then it was the trip with my brother and other friends. This trip was great and deserves a post of it's own, but I just haven't had chance to write one as yet. I might get round to it... sometime; never.

Following in from this trip, I was really hoping to be able to make it to a 4th trip, in Korea, the 3rd Continent in my 1st season.

As my trip to Korea was very late in their winter season, I didn't think it would be possible, but it all turned out great and here are a couple of photos to prove it. On the left is my colleague and friend 이기동 (Kidong Lee), he was kind enough to organise the trip. It's me on the right, in case you couldn't work it out!

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As you can see from the photos, Korean Ski resorts are not quite the same as European ones. Korea doesn't have such high mountains, the one that I'm stood on here is just ~1400m high. Despite this, the views are great and the snow is very good, all in all, it was much much better than I expected.

 

Joining Kidong and I was also another colleage and friend 백선필 (Seonpill Baik) and his son 백보성 (Bosung Baik). Seonpill has been on many business trips recently, so it was quite a surprise that he was able to come with us, his lovely wife 김신정 (Shinjung Kim) was left at home looking after their young daughter. I felt very bad that she wasn't able to come along, and hadn't seen how good at skiing her son had become so I took this video for her to see. I think you'll agree, he's pretty impressive.

More Korean Curios

Since my last post, which was only after my first on this trip to Korea, I've find some more unusual Korean things to tell you about.

Before I start talking about these interesting things, I'd like to talk about something that I'm fairly proud of. On the second day of this trip, I had a plan to visit LG's TV factory for some meetings. This factory is located in a town called 구미 (Gumi), around 3 hours train ride south of Seoul. The night before my trip, I learnt that I would have to make my way to Gumi from the guest house and back... alone. This involved getting the subway to 서울역 (Seoul Station), which was easy. But also involved buying a train ticket for the 새마울 train, selecting the right platform and then getting a taxi to the factory once I arrived. I had no problems, but I was a little worried about it as my Korean is still very weak.

As a slight side note, I've had to quit my Korean language course for this year, something that I'm really disappointed about. Unfortunately I am having so many business trips these days that I'm only able to attend half of the lessons on the course, and I'm falling behind. I do plan to re-take year 2 when it starts again in September, as I really do enjoy learning. This trip to Korea has left me with an even greater desire to continue, so I really hope I can.

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Onto the unusual Korean things then... First up are Electronic Toilet Seats. I'd forgotten about these, probably because I'm staying in a Guest House rather than a hotel, but I do remember them being pretty popular on my previous visits. This particular toilet seat I found in a restaurant in Gumi, and it's typical of the electronic seats that I've seen.

Now, I'm all for heated toilet seats, there's nothing worse than sitting your butt down and doing the whole sit down, jump up, sit down, jump up routine until the seat's just about warm enough to bear. These toilet seats however take things a couple of steps further, just take a look at the control panel!

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As a foreigner that can read a little Korean, I have an advantage over many, but playing with those buttons can cause one hell of a shock to the unsuspecting! The basic functions are simply a wash and blow dry, but you're also provided with adjustments for temperature, pressure, motion, pulsing actions, a whole manner of things. I've played with these toilet seats a couple of times, but always finished with a wet bum that is impossible to dry with toilet paper. It is a bit of fun for sure, but I find it hard to see how these have become so popular and successful.

 

Perhaps less unusual, but still very cultural is the popular Korean style of cooking that involves the use of a barbeque in the centre of the table. Marinated meat is brought out of the kitchen and simply cooked in front of you. It's a very friendly affair, and the food is also very tasty. This is very typical of a meal that I will be having after a day of meetings. Although these photos were not taken during my visit to Gumi, I did have a very similar meal there.

After a meal similar to this in 평택 (Pyoungtaek), where I had been meeting the AV products engineers, I went to a Karaoke bar. I'm not going to go into details about this, as I hate singing, but I will say that I did find out that I can sing Elton John songs better than I thought.

Following the Karaoke, it was suggested that we go to a more traditional establishment from song food and yet more drinking. I was warned before hand that this was not a quality establishment, but I wasn't expecting this...

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Take a closer look at this, as it may not be obvious at first what you're looking at. It's called 닭발 (Dack-Bal). It's literal translation will give it away - Chicken Foot!

Korean Oddities

I'm off to Korea again, and this is the first post of perhaps a couple that I'll do.

For those that don't know, I work for LG Electronics, which is of course a Korean company. I actually work for one of the departments in HQ, rather than LG UK, so I have to travel to Korea fairly often.

I always look forward to going to Korea for various reasons. It's a good chance to practice the Korean that I've learnt each time; but one of the best things about a trip to Korea is the unusual things that you can buy and see here.

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First up is the guest house where I'm staying. Now, in England, I'm not sure if we have guest houses, and if we do, I don't think I've ever stayed in one. I was therefore a little aprehensive when I was told that I should stay in the 호암교수회관, which is a guest house close to Seoul's National University, 서울대학교. I'd stayed at LG's learning centre before, and the accomodation there was pretty different, so I was expecting something similar here.

Actually, it was all a bit of a let down. The guest house was pretty much the same as a hotel. I've been told it's cheaper, though I've not paid yet, so I don't know how much cheaper it is, but the room is very spacious and the internet is free. In my opinion it's probably better than the hotel I normally stay in when I visit Korea.

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Korean bathrooms are a little different from English ones. They're basically wet rooms, with a drain in the floor. I like this idea, except that because of this, there is rarely a shower curtain, and the whole room is flooded by the time you've finished, and you get wet feet when you come back in to do your hair. To overcome this issue, there is always a pair of jelly sandles provided for you to walk across the floor. I personally find these to be some of the most uncomfortable footwear I have ever experienced, and instead choose to go barefoot and dry every time I go back into the bathroom.

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In the desk drawer I found what I initially thought was a strip of three condoms, but there was a strange plastic device next to it, and I thought these might be linked. I asked some colleagues the next day and this is apparantly some kind of incence burner that gets rid of mosquitoes that can be a problem in the summer. I was pretty wrong with the condom guess then...

 

 

 

 I am a bit of a junk food fan, I love my crisps, and to some extent I love sweets too, especially banana ones. In Korea they sell delicious Banana Milkshake, I pretty much make this my staple breakfast drink during my stays, but this involves taking a trip to a local supermarket on the first evening. This is always full of new things to try, I usually find a new thing each visit and this time was no exception.

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First up are the 'Cream Puffs' which are basically very soft bread, filled with vanilla custard. I've tried these before and they're very tasty. Oddly though, each shop only ever seems to have one pack of these, they're sometimes a little bit hard to come by. Don't make the mistake of getting the Red Bean Puffs instead, I've tried these, and though still nice, they're nothing compared to the cream ones.

Next, I found a bar of chocolate filled with Banana cream, this was pretty tasty, but I've saved the best for last....

바나나 킥 (Banana Kik). The easiest way for me to describe this is Banana flavour Wotsits, or Banana flavour Cheetos puffs if you're not English. I know it sounds odd, but honestly, this may be the tastiest junk food I've tried in a long while. An awesome combination of Banana sweets and Crisps. Could it get any better than that!

Finally, last night, after a meal with some colleagues, a few of us went to a bar, where we were served a local snack, very popular when you're drinking beer I'm told - 오징어, or dried squid. There are not many foods that look quite a disgusting as this, and believe me it doesn't smell that good either. I have tried this before, just the once, and I don't intend to try it again. I really didn't like it, but if you're in Korea, I guess you should give it a go, you can buy it almost anywhere it's so popular.

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This food was actually mentioned in my Korean lesson a couple of weeks ago, and my classmates didn't believe it. I've promised to bring one back for them; hope I don't forget!

Nemo & Dory, Coming soon...

It's been ages since I posted on my blog, and a bit like going to the gym, once you stop, it's difficult to get back into it, no matter how much I enjoy writing it.

Since I've last posted, I've been to Las Vegas, where I went to CES and did a couple of days snowboarding; Val Thorens in France for a week for snowboarding with 14 friends; bought an iPhone, several in fact, that I then sold on; knocked down a wall in my house and started a new fish tank.

It's the last point that I'm going to talk about in this post.

Ever since I moved into my house (nearly 3 years ago), I've wanted to knock down a couple of walls and turn what was a huge cupboard into a dining area. It's quite a big job, that I knew was going to cost a fair bit, and take a lot of time, so I waited for Christmas before really getting started.

The first preparations I actually did last summer, which was to move the pipes for the radiators into the loft space, as these came down in the cupboard and went around the house from there, which was of course ridiculous anyway.

The next part of the plan was very simple - knock down two walls and build another. This took a lot less time than I expected, and I was able to get to the point during the Christmas holidays that I had the new wall ready for plastering.

In getting rid of this large cupboard, I was left with an issue, most of the contents of this cupboard could be moved into the loft space or shed, but the vacum cleaner is used very often and needs to be easily accesible. I was struggling to think of where to put this, when my Dad suggested that I build a new cupboard for my fish tank and make it large enough to house the vacum cleaner on the bottom shelf.

I loved this idea, because it meant I would be able to have a new larger fish tank, and keep the kind of fish that I've always wanted to - Marines!

The space that I had available was exactly 99cm long, so I started by searching for a fish tank that was 100cm long. This is actually easier said than done, as most fish tanks are made in imperial sizes. I did find one however - the Fluval Roma 200. This tank was £200 and comes with an external cannister filter, and a heater, so potentially everything I thought I would need, and it all said that it was suitable for Marine use as well.

After sorting the Aquarium, I set about making the stand. After a short time thinking about making one completely from scratch, I decided to base the stand on an IKEA wardrobe, that I cut down to the right height, and then braced inside with 2" x 4" wooden battons. To make the top surface (which is normally out of sight as a wardrobe) look a little better, I cut down a third door and fitted this to the top. I'm pretty happy with the end result, and the vacum cleaner fits easily inside, with a shelf above for fish keeping things.

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I really should have looked more into keeping Marine fish before I ventured into it, because it's quite a bit more complicated than it initially seems....

The first thing I discovered is that take make the salt water, you should buy a special mix and add this to water that is extremely pure. This pure water can be bought from an aquarium store, but I was going to need at least 200 litres, and this would be a real pain, not to mention expensive in the long run, when water changes are required often. I decided therefore to buy my own water processing unit. This is called an RO (Reverse Osmosis) unit, that works by pressure to force water through a semi permeable membrane. They cost around £100, and have filters that must be replaced every 6 months costing around £15. The RO unit has three pipes connected to it, the first is the feed - mains water in; then there are two outputs, one is purified water, and the other is waste water. The waste comes out at a ratio of around 4 to 1 of pure water, so this must be plumbed into a drain, or water butt for watering flowers etc. The model I chose, also came with a TDS (Total Disolved Solids) meter, that can measure how pure the water is going in, straight from the tap, and how pure it is coming out the filtered side.

I fitted my RO unit to the loft of my house, there is easy access to mains water, that feeds the header tanks there. I put the waste water in the header tank, which has itself an overflow to the outside world.

The RO unit produces pure water at around 6 litres per hour, so it took a huge about of time to fill the tank. I started mixing in the salt quite early on, and the pure water makes a really nice effect, like smoke, as it slowly feeds into the salted water.

The next peice of equipment that I learnt I would need is a Protein Skimmer. These devices are considered to be the single biggest advance in Marine fish keeping in recent years, the aim of the Protein Skimmer is to remove disolved organic waste before it has a chance to break down and reduce the water quality. Protein Skimmers can only really be used in salt water aquariums, as fresh water is less dense and doesn't act in the same way.

The Protein Skimmer works by forcing water to flow into a tube, where a large number of bubbles are created, these bubbles float to the top of the tube, and form a foam of organic waste that collects in a small cup that must be emptied periodically. The filter works on the principle that organic waste is drawn to the surface of the liquid, each tiny bubble has a comparatively large surface area, so a foam is easily created. This is actually a man made device that mimics a natural phenomenon; in the sea, the action of the waves and tides creates bubbles, and you can often see a similar yellow brown foam on the beach, or round rocks etc.

Once the tank was full of water, the heater and pumps were turned on and it was time to buy some Live Rock, but I'll talk about that in my next installment.

The White Slopes Of Cervinia

This week I had another business trip to Geneva, and thought I'd make the most of it by trying to get a few days of snowboarding in the weekend before.

As this was my first ever trip snowboarding on a mountain, having previously only boarded in Milton Keynes' indoor snow slope before, I thought is would be a good idea to go with someone who would know what was involved and hopefully be able to suggest the most appropriate resort for a beginner like myself.

I immediately thought of my friend Graham, who I used to run a business with many years ago. He is a keen Skier and I thought he might be interested in going too. As it happens I was right, he was really excited about going and pretty much organised the whole thing. Graham even drove the whole way there... and back again!

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We decided on a resort in northern Italy called Cervinia. I'm not sure how this is pronounced, but most people tell me it should be said something like sher-vin-ya. This resort is situated on the southern side of the alps, on the side of the mountain known as The Matterhorn to the Swiss, or Cervino to the Italians. Cervinia backs onto, and is joined by cable car to the Swiss resort of Zermatt.

We travelled, as I said, by car, leaving my house around 4.30am, taking the Euro-Tunnel to France, and eventually arrived (with no stops, except for fuel) at around 5.30pm in Cervinia. 12 hours is pretty good going I think you'll agree!

Because it wasn't that late when we arrived, we were able to pick up the equipment we were renting that evening. Graham had paid for the 'Premium' Ski package, and I had gone for the 'Standard' Snowboard option as it was all that was available.

Graham's skis looked like they were brand new, the same could not be said however for my board... It wasn't in terrible condition, just looked like it had done at least a years worth of work. I guess it was so early in the season that no new equipment had been purchased yet.

Saturday morning, I was apprehensive, but confident - I'd had 9 hours experience at Milton Keynes after all hadn't I!

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To get to the slopes, a cable car and a gondola system run from the resort to a plateau at ~2500m called Plan Maison. This is the lowest point for most of the slopes, and the location of my first piste - the nursery slope! There's a drag lift that takes you to the top of the two nursery slopes, which moves pretty fast, and was a little bit daunting, but I didn't fall over, so I thought I was doing pretty well.

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Once I got on the slope, I was rubbish, I kept falling over, I couldn't turn, I couldn't go in a straight line, it was impossible. I told Graham to go off on his own and that I'd meet him for lunch a little later on, so he headed off to Zermatt. I was then on my own to sort out my problems. I'm not sure if it was the different board, different boots, harder packed snow, or just my lack of experience, but I couldn't master this mountain snow to begin with at all.

After a couple of hours getting really frustrated on the nursery slopes, I got on the chair lift that went to the top of the main section of Blue runs. I had heard that chair lifts were particularly difficult for boarders, so I decided to remove my board and carry it. I didn't realise that if I did this, I wouldn't be able to pull down the safety bar and was pulled aside by the lift operator; I was very embarrassed of course! Once on the lift, with the board now attached to my foot, I'm not sure what all the fuss was about, no problems getting on or off at all.

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I spent the rest of the day boarding, falling over, boarding a little more, then falling over again going down the selection of Blue runs from the main chair lift. I didn't really master it, but I was beginning to feel like I was making some progress. The views were spectacular from the top of the runs too, which helped take my mind off the pathetic attempts I was making at snowboarding!

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By the end of the day I was so tired, and to be honest, not really enjoying it as much as I thought I would be. We had a nice pizza in a restaurant which had an ice rink outside, this had been made simply by freezing water in a huge circle on what was just a field in the summer. While we were eating, some people started playing ice hockey on it.

On day two, I still didn't feel confident, and I sent Graham off to Zermatt again as he was really enjoying the Red and Black runs over there. I spent the whole morning practising on the blue runs, then after a long lunch break, things really started to click. I was easily able to go the whole way down the Blue runs in one go without stopping or falling over - It was time to tackle a Red run!

The Red runs were very scary, but I am pleased to be able to say that I did go the whole way down the two I tried, and didn't fall over, despite the well mogul-ed slopes.

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Graham came back to join me and we were finally able to go down the slopes together, though I'm sure he would have liked to go a little faster!

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The weather forecast was snow on Sunday night, and snow it did! In the morning, there was at least 30cm of fresh snow covering Cervinia, and it was impossible to see the mountain above. When we got to the lift station, there was a few people waiting there, but neither the gondolas or the cable car were running. There were no signs up saying the pistes were closed so we had no idea what was going on. After about a 45 minute wait, we were allowed into a cable car up to the pistes.

The weather conditions were terrible at piste height, and as there was so much fresh snow, it was a totally different experience to the two days previous. It took me a couple of hours (and a phone call to my brother) to work out just how to board in these conditions. The biggest problem was that everything was so white, at times it was difficult to see if I was moving or not, let alone where the slope was! In the end the weather just got so bad, so we decided to pack up and head on to Geneva.

All in all it was a great trip, and one that left me looking forward to my next trip in January. I'll also be going to Milton Keynes a few times more before that too to get in a little more practice.

Sigur who?

Today has been a day, totally dominated by music, that's no bad thing of course, I've really enjoyed it, and now at 1.15am the day is pretty much over.

Takk

Sigur Ros

On the way home from work a few days ago I heard a Radio 1 DJ comment that Sigur Rós had been he and his wife's favourite band during his wife's pregnancy. A bit of an unusual comment perhaps, but I made a mental note to listen to the album Takk... which I had downloaded previously, just for the track Hoppipolla which was featured on the trailer to the BBC nature series Planet Earth.

So, this morning my day started normally; wake up too late, rush around to get ready for work, then jump in the car and drive to work. As planned once I'd set off I put on Takk... to listen to on my journey.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but by the time I got to work I knew I had found a real gem of an album, and one that somewhat frustratingly, I had owned all along!

As some of you may know, I am going through my music collection and buying the CDs of anything that I've either copied from people or downloaded. I knew that this album was so good, I was going to have to listen to it properly over the weekend, and that meant I was going to have to take a trip into Slough town centre at lunch time and buy a copy.

Before lunch I did a bit of research on the internet to find out some background information on Sigur Rós, and also to find out if there were any other albums that I should be looking for from them.

According to the press, Takk... is arguably the band's best work, but I don't always believe what I read so I will be listening to the other albums as well.

Heima (Special Edition 116 Page Booklet) [2006]

One recommendation was the new film by Sigur Rós, released earlier this month, called Heima. The film is basically a documentary, which follows the band around as they perform 13 special, free, un-publicised concerts for the public in the small towns and the countryside around Iceland.

I watched the trailer for this film here and was instantly entranced; the combination of the unique landscape of their homeland of Iceland, and the lilting vocals of Jón þor Birgisson was spectacular. I had to buy a copy of this too.

In HMV, there were two versions of the DVD, a standard and a special edition, which came with a 116 page book of photos taken during the making of the film.

I selected the special edition, which was rare for me, but I was enjoying the music so much, I had to have the best copy available. It's a shame there isn't an HD-DVD version of the film, but at least this one does come with a DTS soundtrack.

After work I had already planned to go and watch a performance from the Watoto childrens Choir at Greyfriars church in Reading with a friend of mine. This started at 7.30, so I just had enough time to drop my car off at home and get a lift to the performance.

Watoto is a project set up by an American Christian couple in Uganda to give help and support to orphan children who's parents have died of either AIDS / HIV or in the conflicts taking place in the north of the country. It is estimated that 50 million children are orphans in Africa as a result of the AIDS / HIV epidemic. Although it's just a drop in the ocean, the Watoto project currently gives housing, education, and hope to 7,200 of these children, and their aim is to increase this to 10,000 by the end of this year. More information on the project can be found here.

The performance from the childrens choir was great fun, the enthusiasm that this kids had was fantastic, and made the prim and proper English reserve look all the more ridiculous as the audience was encouraged to dance along with them to a couple of songs.

After the performance, we stopped in at our local pub, the Calleva for a quick drink, then I went back home to watch Heima...

This DVD is just as good as I thought and hoped it would be. I am still amazed at how the live recordings sound so good, the timing that this band have when they play together is like nothing I've ever heard. The talent that all the musicians have is exceptional, effortlessly playing a wide range of instruments, from Electric guitars with a bow, to an organ made from peices of rock collected from a landslide.

Towards the end of the film, the band members describe the way it feels when they're performing as though they're floating, the bassist Georg Holm even said that he got to the end of the concert and he couldn't remember playing, it had just happened.

It's rare that you hear a band so well connected as a group, so unique, and so creative as Sigur Rós. I'm very much looking forward to hearing the other albums.

Late night alumni

OK, a new post for a new day, I'm partly writing this because of the nasty comments I got from people about how boring my last post on FLAC was - I apologise, it was for a select few friends who were interested honest. Please skip past it if you're not interested and don't complain!

I've not done any travel recently so I can't write about that, but I can tell you that over the next few weeks I've got quite a few trips coming up. I don't want to spoil the surprise of the places I'm going, you'll have to keep checking back for my news.

Empty Streets

Late Night Alumni

This evening I've been lounging around preparing for the rest of my week - church course tomorrow night, and Korean lesson on Thursday. I was told off this morning for being continually late to work, so I've also ironed a shirt ready for tomorrow - just the one mind you, I'm not that organised!

Continuing the theme from a couple of posts ago, I'd like to introduce some more music. This time the work of Late Night Alumni and their album empty streets.

This album has been a favorite of mine for some time, it's some of the best chill out music that I've ever heard. It's another one of those albums that I discovered from listening to Chill radio. The first track I heard was the title track empty streets, but the whole album is great, there isn't a weak track on there.

Perfect music for relaxing on a Tuesday evening!

What the FLAC!

OK, so as requested by some friends, I'm going to post so more detail on what I'm doing with my music; besides simply listening to it!

I've always strived to have the best quality music that was possible, quickly moving from tapes to CD when they were introduced all those years ago. Once I started driving, I found I was carrying loads of CDs with me, which was inconvenient, expensive and a lot of them got lost or damaged.

I'd been monitoring the growth of mp3 and the illegal downloading culture as it grew and I had a few issues with it:

• I don't like having just odd songs, I want the whole album.
• I don't want poor quality audio, CD is a known entity, something I can trust.
• There is as I've said before a certain tactile appeal in owning the original discs.
• It's illegal, and I'm not supporting the artists.

These things prevented me for a time, from moving to mp3, but it was in the iPod in the end that did it...

The iPod is a fantastic peice of kit, and it allowed me to carry all of my music everywhere I went, including, with the relevant line in adaptors, in the car.

So I set about ripping all of my music to mp3. I wanted to make sure that all of my CDs were converted to mp3 in the best possible quality onto the iPod so that I wouldn't feel like I was making a compromise for the sake of convenience.

I found a website suggesting the use of Exact Audio Copy, and an mp3 codec called Lame. I followed the instructions on this website and had mp3s that I was very happy with on my iPod, perfect for listening in the car, or on the move.

For home, I still was still using CDs, but I could see that this wasn't the future, I was impressed with the convenience of mp3 on my iPod but still wasn't happy with quality. The iPod is great, but it's not a peice of Hi-Fi equipment after all.

I did some research into audiophile digital music players and came up with the Squeezebox from Slim Devices (Now owned by Logitech). This device has an optical output, and high end DAC chips, so it should make the best of the mp3s that I'd created. Functionally this product is amazing, but I was still disappointed - mp3s just don't sound as involving as a CD, though to be honest, this is only really a problem when you sit down and enjoy listening on a quality Hi-Fi system; but I do like to do that, so I had to find a solution.

What I've settled on now is FLAC. FLAC is an acronym for Free Lossless Audio Codec. When encoded with Flac, file sizes are smaller than the raw file, but no data is lost at all. The best thing about Flac though, is that the Squeezebox can decompress and play these files in the player itself, again, with no loss of data.

You may not be aware, but a CD player is made of three sections or stages:

1. The transport - which reads data from the disc, and trys to correct for errors as it reads. The transport feeds it's digital output to the next stage...
2. The DAC or digital to audio convertor - which converts the digital signal into an analogue audio signal which is then fed to the next stage...
3. The Audio Stage - which makes sure that the signals are at the correct level to go into your amplifier.

A lot of CD players now have a digital ouput to bypass stages 2 and 3, so that you can use dedicated stage 2 and 3 equipment that potentially could do a better job. This makes the CD player into a transport, a poor quality one will introduce more errors into the digital signal as it can't fix all the read errors as it plays the disc.

The squeezebox recieves the digital audio file as a digital stream, so doesn't have stage 1, it does have stages 2 and 3, but it also has a digital output. It therefore stands to reason that if I use an uncompressed or Flac compressed file into the squeezebox, and use the digital outputs of both devices, the only differences in the audio will be down to the transports used to play the disc (in real time in the CD player, or previously when I ripped the CD in the computer).

The key thing here then is that if I take the time to rip the CD perfectly, using a squeezebox will give me convenience of not having all my discs lying around, as well as the potential audio quality of the best CD transport or player ever made!

I did a little more research into Exact Audio Copy and I now use a very secure way of ripping discs that makes sure that all of the data is read more than once, with checksums for each track compared. If the drive has to do any error correction, it will read the area several times to make sure that a huge majority of the resultant data is the same, before it will accept this as the real data that should have been read.

All of this over the top process results in a rip from the CD which is far superior to a conventional CD player, which can only read in real time, and have to trust the first error correction that they create. To rip each disc does take a long time having said that, around an hour per CD, compared to around 10 mins if I used Media Player or iTunes. 

The raw ripped audio files are then compressed in two ways, Flac for my Squeezebox, and mp3 for my iPod, Media Center Extenders, and XBox.

I now have a system that I am very happy with, It gives me convenience, as well as an increase in audio quality over listening to CDs in the conventional way!

One thing that I didn't mention is that over the last few years, I did start downloading digital audio files, but now I'm going back and righting my wrongs, buying original CDs of everything I've ever downloaded.

If you'd like any more details of how I've set up Exact Audio Copy, please do get in touch, I'm more than happy to help.

What's on your iPod?

Anyone who knows me will be familiar with my love for music, I've already written a couple of posts about new music that I was introduced to during the summer - Imogen Heap and then subsequently Frou Frou.

I'm still really enjoying those albums, but didn't want to risk over playing them so went in search of some similar music, as well as anything else that I might enjoy.

My first stop was Last.fm - If you haven't used this site, you really should. It's basically a player that creates a custom radio station, playing artists similar to those which you already know. It's amazing what new tracks you'll end up hearing and new artists and groups that you'll discover.

I also listened to Chill, a radio station that started off on DAB in the UK, but now has a web stream as well. If you'd like to try it out, you can use the website, which has a java player, or you can click here for a direct link to the stream.

So, now onto the albums that I bought having discovered them on either Chill or Last.fm...

 

Empathy

Mandalay

Empathy, by Mandalay.

This album is very high quality chill out music, from the minute you listen first listen to it, you can tell how well it has been produced.

Apparantly, Madonna said that Mandalay was her favorite group when she first heard this album, which I'm sure helped their record sales.

Mandalay do have a second album, called Instinct. Both of these albums were only released in Europe, though in the US, they launched a double album called Solace, which contains most of the tracks on these two albums. 

Unfortunately it is pretty difficult to get hold of, only being available from Amazon sellers, rather than Amazon directly. I did see that HMV have some copies pretty cheap though, after I'd paid quite a bit for it!

Highlights for me are track 4 - Another, and track 8 - Beautiful; though the whole album is good.

 

I Megaphone

Imogen Heap

I Megaphone, by Imogen Heap

It's only natural that I should want to listen to Imogen's first album, but it is an absolute nightmare to get hold of. Amazon in the UK don't have any copies, and the sellers are asking a lot of money for used ones. I think I may have to order this from Amazon US and wait for it to be delivered some time between now and Christmas.

I Megaphone isn't as good as Speak For Yourself, but it is still a good album. I can't stop listening to track 9 - Come Here Boy at the moment.

Interestingly, Frou Frou is a collaboration between Imogen Heap and producer Guy Sigsworth, both English by the way! Mandalay was produced by Guy Sigsworth, and one of my other favorite artists, Alanis Morissette is now recording an album with Guy - I'm looking forward to that!

 

Scouting For Girls

Scouting For Girls

Scouting For Girls, by Scouting For Girls

This self titled debut album is a non offensive soft rock / pop album that I think sounds similar to Athlete, Coldplay and Keane.

It's nice to here something that sounds similar to these guys as I'm desperately waiting for the next Keane / Coldplay release.

It's not a bad album, but I can't see it being one of my favorites, but who knows, some albums do just grown on you don't they.

Their hit single is track 2 - She's So Lovely, and this is really the highlight of the album.

 

That's it for new CD's this month; I'm still committed to buying CD's of every album that I've ever downloaded, which is costing me a small fortune, but I'm very pleased with the leap in sound quality that I can now get by making perfect FLAC lossless rips of the originals, and there is a certain pleasure taken from the tactile handling of discs when you want to sit down and listen.

I might post another time an update to my house AV system, and how I go about ripping and playing back FLAC files in better than CD quality, that's a long post, and I'm tired now. I will give a brief mention though to my headphones which are truly amazing. They're called Shure e4c, here's a link to them, don't be put off by the price, they are well worth the money. They're also a huge step up from the e3c and e2c below them in the Shure range.

Sweet and Sour Chicken Anyone?

This may not look like much, but it's quite possilby the nicest meal ever...

What you see here is Sweet and Sour Chicken with BBQ instead of Sweet and Sour sauce, with a side order of Chips. This lovely little lot comes from Jim's Chinese and English takeaway in Basingstoke.

I've been going to Jim's since I was at secondary school just down the road.

It's not gormet, and it's not exactly good for you, but it is my ultimate comfort food!

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