Philip Fibiger

We’ve been doing a lot of minor renovation around the house, trying to make the place ours. Painting, replacing hardware, new appliances in the kitchen, that sort of thing. Our half bath downstairs was painted a nice color but in all other aspects it wasn’t at all our style. It had this ugly gold hardware on the sink, and the toilet paper holder and towel ring were gold and antiqued iron. The walls had “decorative” fleur-de-lys painted all over it. Emily painted over the decorative paint and I hit ebay for some new bathroom hardware.

The Kohler Fairfax faucet that I bought was really astounding. The old faucet I removed (which likely wasn’t that old, maybe 7-8 years?) hooked up the traditional way. Each handle and the faucet were attached separately with nuts, puttied in place, plumbed to the water supply with lengths of pex. The multi-part drain was epoxied together. Contrast that with the new faucet set:

A single piece drain that has a gasket built in and just screws tight (plumbers putty around the drain is the only place it’s required). Braided stainless supply lines that can fit a variable length run. The real beauty of the installation design is the way the faucet mounts to the sink itself. Instead of having to putty it down and then try to tighten it down from below, it has a rubber gasket and uses a toggle bolt to hold it tight. The toggle is guided up the bolt by a pair of plastic guides, literally all you do is fit the faucet in place (the toggle pops through the centerset hole) and then turn the hidden screw (in the drain plug control) until the toggle moves up flush with the bottom of the sink.

In the end removing the old faucet and cleaning up the old putty mess was the longest part of the process, actually installing the new set was a 10 minute job. A lot of home improvement technologies feel like they really haven’t changed in 50 years, It was a pleasant surprise to find out how easy Kohler had made this task.

My stereo had long ago morphed into a home theater system, and for a while I’d been thinking about separating the two. My stereo had been built up piecemeal since I was in high school, it was a real deal-hound special (huge floor standing cerwin vegas I got a garage sale in a ritzy suburb of Albany, the receiver that I bought online and the company sent the ship request to the warehouse, but had their credit card processing ability shut down before they could charge my card, the cd changer that was broken and kenwood replaced it with the top-of-the-line model). It served me well, but I knew that when I got a high def television set, I needed a receiver that could handle passing around the audio and video signals via HDMI. The speakers really didn’t fit in the house, either as part of the home theater setup or as part of a separate listening system.

After setting up a new home theater system (with just a receiver and a set of smaller infinity satellites), I decided to get a little radical with audio. I got rid of my cassette deck (it was time), my cd changer, and my turntable (still a little sad about this). The only pieces that survive from my system in LA is the Roku Soundbridge (a MP3 streamer) and the Mac Mini that sits in my office and serves it.

I wanted it to fit on a shelf in our new built-ins, and I think I put together a near perfect shelf system. It’s a Jolida Hybrid Tube Amp powering a pair of NHT Classic Two speakers. Against my better judgement I even upgraded my speaker cables and rca interconnects from radio shack models to Ixos wire and Acoustic Research interconnects.

The system sounds fantastic, the speakers have tremendous detail and the tubes in the amp add warmth to the sound. The weak link of the system is definitely the DAC in the Roku. It’s a budget unit, at some point I’ll use the optical output of the Roku and bypass the DAC, feeding it into an external DAC like this. At that point the only difference between my system and a high end cd system is the mp3 compression itself. Some day I’ll probably move to a lossless format, but the issue there is the iPod. Apple lossless files are so much larger than even 320k or v0 mp3s that the effective capacity of my ipod would only be a fraction of what it is now. Maybe this’ll change when my next iPod holds 200gb, but the elegant solution would be for apple to either compress files on the fly for adding to a portable device (your itunes library is uncompressed, but when it syncs to your iPod it compresses the files to mp3) or more likely when ripping it gives you an option to store two copies of the file, one for playback (lossless) and one for portable devices (mp3). C’mon Apple, stop screwing around with mobile phones and make it happen.

Even though I got rid of my cd player, I can’t bring myself to get rid of the discs themselves. I’ve probably got six hundred cds sitting in boxes in my attic. They serve as the ultimate backup if something were to happen to the music on the mini, and it keeps things in check karmically.

I thought I’d feel like something was missing, moving from physical media with liner notes and album artwork (however compressed vs. LP artwork), but I think it’s liberating. I make it a lot further into my collection than I did with CDs, where the same five discs would live in my changer for weeks or months, and clearly a playlist is a huge upgrade over a 90 minute mix tape. The biggest drawback is the display. It’s more difficult to get an overview of the collection on a two line vacuum flourescent display than it is standing in front of a wall of cds. Something like cover flow in the new itunes/iphone is probably the way to go.

Well, it looks like the experiment to use the NSLU2 NAS device as a music server has come to an end. My NSLU2 bit the dust a week or so ago, refusing to come back from a reboot and offering up some random beep error codes. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but there were enough other problems with the setup to force a change.

Mt-daapd was great, but clearly still in development. It still didn’t have iTunes playlist support (although it is on the way), and due to the anemic hardware in the NSLU2, it was pretty slow to browse music from the Roku. Twonkyvision may have been faster, but had even greater compatibility problems. Having all of my music on a network drive, but running iTunes on my local PC was great for serving music to the Roku, but was terrible for using iTunes. Network latency made it difficult to do even simple operations, like adding more than a few songs to a playlist at a time. Syncing iPods was also incredibly time consuming (a playlist of more than a few gigs would take half an hour or more to crunch through). Finally, there was some weirdness while connecting two ipods at the same time (this may be a general iTunes on windows problem).

When I built this system, the Mac Mini didn’t exist. I don’t know that I would have thought it cost effective at the time, but it really is the perfect solution. I got a new NSLU2 under warranty, just so I could copy the files from one of the 160gb external drives to the other one, now connected to the Mac. Once I’m positive I’ve gotten all the data off the network device, the 2nd drive will also attach to the Mac, providing a backup for all the data. The mini is silent, it may consume more power than the NSLU2, but it’s a much more robust computing platform. Both iPods will connect to the mini via firewire, so syncing and creating playlists will be seamless again. I can use it as a general purpose server, serve video from it, it can even be a backup desktop. I’m looking for some good backup software, so I can use it (with the expansive external drives) as a backup solution for our home network. It’s configured to log in as the music server user on boot and load itunes. Any time a music cd is dropped into the mini’s drive, it rips it and adds the files to the iTunes library, and then spits the disc back out. Any time I notice a cd sticking out of the drive, I can just pop another in..I think I’ll make it through the rest of my CD collection a lot faster.

We can connect to the mini either through VNC or a KVM switch. It is really tiny, taking up only a fraction more desk space than the NSLU2 did.

Finally, with automator, collecting new music will be much easier. There are already examples of automator workflows that grab all mp3s off of a webpage, download them to the desktop, and automatically import them into iTunes.

For a while now, message boards and mailing lists have been the best place to find product reviews and troubleshooting information. Want to find out how to add a larger capacity hard drive to your Tivo? Hit the Tivo Community Forums. Want to know which 4 megapixel micro camera you should buy? Look at what owners are saying at the Digital Photo Review Forums.

As the computer and internet adoption continues to soar, it’s no longer just niche electronics goods. The internet offers insane completists/collectors/nuts a place to chat about the minutiae of almost anything. You no longer need to guess which product might fit your needs and hope it works out. You don’t need buy an enthusiast’s magazine and go with one editor’s opinion. You can harness the collective knowledge of obsessive collectors. Want to know what the absolute best value in an automatic watch under $300 is? Want to find the best water resistant 20 degree down sleeping bag? How about the best single-battery LED flashlight? The information’s all out there, and pretty easy to find. These forums let you find the absolute best item in a particular category. What follows is my rundown of available forums, and what sort of information you could collect with a couple of quick searches. Feel free to add your own.

Candlepower Forums
Whether you’re looking for a flashlight that will literally turn night into day, or a small light that will fit on a keychain or in a pocket, these guys have reviewed everything. See also The LED Museum for more info.

Poor Man’s Watch Forum
Full of discussion of watches that cost less than a grand. In particular I like their list of Top 20 Best Buys (with both sub $500 and sub $1000 sections) that they’ve compiled. The Hamilton Khaki and Invicta 8926 are both particularly handsome, and watches one would never know about just browsing at a department store.

Blade Forums
Lots of discussion of locking mechanisms, the benefits of various types of blade steel, which multitool offers the best selection of tools or holds up the longest, and techniques for sharpening a knife. Whether you’re looking for a small locking pocket knife, a great gentleman’s swiss army knife, a pretty serious survival folder, or a stocked multi-tool the information here will point you in the right direction.

Backpacker Gear Forum
Most comfortable boots, weatherproof lightweight raingear, roomiest tent under 7 pounds, whatever you’re looking for there’s a load of information here. They’ve also got a “hot deals” thread that’ll point you toward some incredible closeout deals on high quality gear.

Howard Forums
Having trouble choosing a cellphone provider? Looking for a new handset? You can find handsets with the best reception, longest talk time, the highest resolution camera. Once you’ve got your phone, they’ve got information on getting wallpapers/ringtones, guides to unlocking the phone, pretty much anything you’d want to do.

E-Gullet Forum
While it isn’t about gear per se, there is a fair amount of discussion about kitchen gadgets/tools. Inside the various forums you can discussions of the best cocktail shaker, the required implements for baking bread, or the relative merits of enameled cast iron vs. stainless steel dutch ovens. The forums are full of professional chefs (including some you’ve heard of), and the amount of information is staggering.

Digital Photo Review
The reviews on this site are great, and pretty useful, but the real treasure trove is found when you drill down into the manufacturers forums. Considering a Canon SD10? Find out what people who have been using the camera for a year have to say about it. Find professional photographers weighing the pros and cons of the Nikon D70 vs. the Canon Digital Rebel. They’ll also point you toward great deals on cameras and accessories.

Chowhound Forums
If this list is all about harnessing the power of the internet to choose the “best” of a particular class of item, then even though there are no physical goods involved, this is one of the most important. The chowhound forums, while powered by incredibly outdated software, are an absolute goldmine. What better way to trade in cool and impress your friends/aquaintances than to choose a dynamite restaurant for your next trip out. Whether you’re looking for the best chinese dumplings in all of Los Angeles or the best steak frites in Philadelphia, chowhound knows everything.