Photos from Christine and Steve’s Maui Wedding

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Happy Christine is Happy

I’ve known and been friends with Christine for almost as long as I’ve lived here in Dallas. She moved to San Diego a few years ago and that’s where she met Steve. And they decided to get married in Maui.

I hadn’t been to Maui before, but it was a trip I had been looking forward to for months. And even though I was only able to go for a Saturday-through-Tuesday trip, I had an awesome time. Hawaii is basically picturesque everywhere, all the time. You can glance in nearly any direction and you’ll see a beautiful lush landscape.

The wedding was on the back lawn of the Wailea Golf Club on the Sunday around 5 p.m. It wasn’t an overpopulated wedding—I believe I counted twenty chairs—but that seemed just right for the setting. Christine and Steve were both beaming with happiness and they said their vows just as the sun was falling into the horizon. It was pretty special.

Options for Thin Home Theater Receivers

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

My friend Dan lives in New York and he mentioned the other day that he wouldn’t mind a more minimal home theater receiver since his apartment doesn't have all that much room to begin with:

I currently have an insanely complicated home theater setup that takes up half my closet, connected by a rat’s nest of cables that I dare not touch lest I inexplicably lose the left audio channel on my Blu-ray player. It’s ridiculous, it’s completely overkill for my needs, and did I mention it takes up half my closet? My tiny, Manhattan-sized closet?

[…]

My home theater receiver is huge. Massive. It’s 10” tall, 20” deep, weighs 800 lbs, and probably draws more power than our air conditioner. Despite its long list of capabilities, it has but two jobs that are of any use to me: 1) switch between my various components, and 2) make things loud.

[…]

And so, I find myself looking for a replacement. Something small. Something elegant. Something that does what I need, and nothing more. […]

As I rather enjoy home theater stuff, I thought I’d try to come up with a few options for him.

What I soon discovered is that there aren’t many products in this category. Granted, you’d have several options if all you had needed was 2-channel (stereo) amplification. (I suppose they’re catering to systems that one might place on a bookshelf or the like.) On the other hand, when catering to a home theater, a receiver needs a separate amplifier for each of (at least) five channels; those extra amplifiers alone take up more space. In addition, it seems that there isn’t much demand for “bookshelf” home theaters and so multi-channel receivers typically use amplifiers that are beefy enough to fill medium-to-large rooms. (And beefier amplifiers take up yet more room.)

Nonetheless, I did find a handful of options that I thought might work for Dan. I didn’t come across a single perfect product—for instance, some were small, but had a lot of buttons, while others were relatively larger but had few buttons— but I think there’re some promising options here.

I decided to use the Outlaw Audio 1050 in my bedroom (a 70 Wpc receiver) as a baseline for comparison. It’s served me well for many years, but more importantly for this discussion, its size and weight seemed to be fairly representative of an average receiver:

  • Width: 17 3/16"
  • Height: 6 1/8"
  • Depth: 14 5/16"
  • Weight: 36.3 lbs

Sherwood R-904N NetBoxx

  • Width: 17" (1% narrower than baseline)
  • Height: 2 7/8" (53% shorter)
  • Depth: 12" (16% shallower)
  • Weight: 10.3 lbs (72% lighter)
  • Power: 100 Wpc × 7 channels
  • Price: About $440

This receiver is clearly the leader in size (or lack thereof). While not the narrowest or the lightest of the bunch—those honors would fall to the Yamaha—this one is the shortest (height) and shallowest (depth). Unfortunately, though, this receiver has some design drawbacks that might be deal breakers for some:

The first complaint that I must mention is a styling issue related to the front display of the NetBoxx. The front of the unit is covered with very bright blue LEDs. During the day these LEDs are fairly innocuous; however placed in a dark room, they become extremely distracting. I don’t understand why Sherwood would put a dimmer option on the unit that only dims some of the LEDs. Because of this I would recommend placing the NetBoxx in a location out of sight, which is a shame as it’s otherwise an attractive unit. […]

Yamaha neoHD YMC-500

  • Width: 11 3/4" (32% narrower than baseline)
  • Height: 3 5/8" (41% shorter)
  • Depth: 12 3/8" (13% shallower)
  • Weight: 7.9 lbs (78% lighter)
  • Power: 35~50? Wpc × 5 channels (I had a hard time confirming the power output.)
  • Price: About $180

This is a pretty darn small receiver. It’s the narrowest (width) and lightest (weight) of the bunch, and even though the Sherwood beats it on height and depth, the Yamaha is only 3/4" taller and 3/8" deeper. This receiver also has the fewest front-panel buttons: 2 (volume knob & power button).

Oddly enough, I had some trouble confirming this receiver’s power output; the specifications I was able to find weren’t all that explicit in this regard, but the unit appears to either have 35 or 50 Wpc as best as I can figure.

If this type of minimalism were of interest, the YMC-500’s bigger brother, the YMC-700, might also be worth considering. Both models allow you to play music from your home network, but the YMC-700 (which goes for about $500) has built-in WiFi (rather than just an Ethernet port). Plus, Yamaha also offers an iPhone app that can control one’s YMC-700. (The app communicates over WiFi and so it works with the YMC-700 but not the YMC-500.)

Marantz NR1501

  • Width: 17 3/8" (1% wider than baseline)
  • Height: 4 3/16" (31% shorter)
  • Depth: 14 1/2" (1% deeper)
  • Weight: 19 lbs (48% lighter)
  • Power: 50 Wpc × 7 channels
  • Price: About $400

The Marantz may be the most traditional of the receivers here. While its dimensions might not be as low as the other receivers here, its height is only 9/16" taller than the next-shorest model (the Yamaha) and 1 5/6" taller than the shortest (the Sherwood). Even then, it’s still about 1/3 shorter than a standard receiver and about half the weight.

Even if the Marantz might not seem as impressive as the others when it comes to size, it does have a few things going for it. For one thing, its back panel includes 2 optical inputs (and 2 coax digital inputs). Granted, Dan mentioned only needing a single optical input (which the Sherwood and Yamaha have), although I can’t help but wonder if that second input might potentially come in handy if Dan were to ever get another device such as an X-Box or a TiVo.

Another potential advantage of the Marantz is its pedigree. Marantz is owned by D&M Holdings, a company that also owns Denon, McIntosh, and a few other brands. I’m not saying that Yamaha is a slouch—although I have my suspicions about Sherwood—but Marantz is a brand that’s known for its attention to detail and build quality. I would expect any of their equipment to last for many years.

Additional Thoughts

There may not be a clear winner here, but there may be a receiver that’s best for you depending on the features that you value most.

I would only consider the Sherwood if sheer size is your utmost concern. It’s not the lightest of the bunch, but it’s definitely the shortest. On the other hand, I’m a bit skeeved out by its build quality—if they’re already screwed up the blue LEDs across the front, how much else might be sub-par?

For most people, I think it comes down to the Yamaha and the Marantz. On one hand, the Yamaha is the cheaper of the two ($180 vs. $400), but on the other hand, the YMC-700 (which goes for $500) seems like a justifiable step-up considering that model’s WiFi streaming (née Ethernet) and iPhone app support. So, depending on which Yamaha model you’d be putting up against the Marantz, it could be a toss-up between those two brands on price.

What I think it comes down to is size & minimalism vs. capability & pedigree. The Yamaha is certainly the smaller overall and its front facia—with just two buttons—is also sparser. Still, the Marantz has a few more inputs (which may come in handy if you get more devices) and it also has a clear 50 Wpc × 7 channels. (The Yamaha’s specifications were somewhat unclear, but it appears to have either 35 or 50 Wpc. Even so, that’s across 5 channels rather than the Marantz’ 7.)

If I were in Dan’s shoes, I might lean toward the Marantz. All the same, the Yamaha would not be a bad choice either.

Oscar Party Foods 2011

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I love movies, but I’ve never been all that excited about the Oscars. I suppose that I don’t have that much interest in the pomp and circumstance of the awards and I generally prefer just to read the results the next day.

On the other hand, I do enjoy language and puns, and if you’re holding an Oscar party this evening, you’re welcome to use any of these. (I’ve grouped them by nomination category, although not every category is represented.)

I’ve listed only the names of each dish (with links to recipes), but if you hover your mouse over an item, you’ll see a tooltip revealing the nominee from which the dish was inspired.

(Some of them are more obvious than others, but if you need a hint, here’s the official list of this year’s nominees.)

Best Picture

Art Direction

Foreign Language Film

Makeup

Music (Original Song)

Short Film (Animated)

Sound Mixing

Visual Effects

Snopes: Colorblindness Accessibility Userstyle

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Andy Baio recently wrote a post about a line chart that had accompanied some research from Netflix about the streaming video performance across various ISPs. The chart was ostensibly informative, but due to the colors that they chose for each line, it ended up being nearly useless for people with red-green colorblindness.

Andy went on to create a more colorblind-safe version of the chart, but what I found even more interesting is that he closed his post with an anecdote relating his interactions with the Snopes folks. (Snopes, if you’re not familiar with it, is a popular site that fact-checks various urban legends.) As it would happen, Snopes’ category pages—in which they summarize the “True” / “Not True” status of each item in that category—was making use of shades of red (“false”) and green (“true”) spheres that weren't all that accessible. In fact, for someone with red-green colorblindness (which affects around 5–8% of all men), the colors were virtually indistinguishable.

(Even if you may not be colorblind, this kind of thing can be easily tested with freely available software such as Color Oracle. If you install that, you can see this for yourself by loading any of Snopes’ index pages and selecting “Deuteranopia” from Color Oracle’s menu.)

Andy went so far as to create some accessible versions of those color spheres (keeping them red and green, but mostly changing them to a different shade) and he offered them to the Snopes people with the hope that they might put those to use. The change would have made their site much more usable to persons with colorblindness while maintaining the site’s overall aesthetic. Oddly enough, they refused and decided, instead, to write a FAQ entry on the subject:

We chose our red-yellow-green coding system because its “traffic light” pattern can be understood by most of our readers with little or no explanation. While we understand that about 8% of our readership experiences some form of color blindness and therefore cannot distinguish the different colors of bullets, other alternatives we have tried have proved confusing to many of our non-color blind readers. Therefore, we have chosen to stick with a system that works very well for 92% of our readers.

If we take a closer look at the numbers relating to colorblindness, that 5–8% means that between 1 in 20 and 1 in 12 men will have difficulty using Snopes.com. By way of analogy, around 1.6 million Americans use wheelchairs. While that may be ½% of the US population, the public has every expectation that businesses will help accommodate persons with wheelchairs through the use of wheelchair ramps and the like. And rightly so. (It’s also the law.) Whether one’s eyes, limbs, or other parts of one’s body, disabilities can affect all of us. That’s why I was so astounded when I learned that the people behind Snopes had no interest in the assistance that was offered to them.

Snopes.com — Before and After Colorblindness Accessibility Userstyle applied

After giving it some thought, I decided to see if I could help fix this. So, after first checking with Andy to ask whether I could make use of the revised images that he had created, I wrote up a Userstyle for Stylish to automagically replace Snopes’ inaccessible images with Andy’s improved versions.

If you’re not familiar with the Stylish, you can think of it along the lines of Greasemonkey but for CSS. Put another way, Stylish can automagically insert CSS into a page whenever you visit a particular site. It’s available for both Firefox and Chrome.

Installing the Userstyle for Firefox or Chrome

First, you’ll need to install Stylish (and then restart your browser):

  • Stylish for Firefox. (If you’re using the Firefox 4 betas, you’ll need to scroll down the page to the “Beta Channel” heading to load the beta version of Stylish.)
  • Stylish for Chrome.

Once you have Stylish installed, the only remaining step is to visit the page for the Snopes Colorblindness Accessibility userstyle and click the “Install with Stylish” button.

Installing the Userstyle for Safari

If you’re using Safari, you’re not entirely out of luck. Though there isn’t an official port of Stylish for Safari, there is another extension that can be used in its place:

  1. First, you’ll need to install the User CSS extension (which is basically a clone of Stylish).

  2. Then, once you’ve restarted your browser, you should see a toolbar button with an “A” near your forward/back buttons—click that; that’ll load the editing screen for User CSS.

  3. At this point, you should see a “New User CSS” screen:

    • Enabled — Check this.
    • Name — “Snopes.com - Fix Colorblindness Accessibility”
    • Domains — http://www.snopes.com/*
    • Styles — Load this special version of the userstyle in a new tab and copy-n-paste all of that into the “Styles” field.
  4. Lastly, click “Save” and that should be it.

One Last Thing

Though I was disappointed by Snopes’ nonchalance toward accessibility, I feel I should mention that I continue to trust their fact-checking. They’re pretty good at that.

Photos from Winterfamilytime 2010

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment
Dad Laughing

I visited my parents and brother in Charlotte last month, and even though it had only been a few weeks since I had seen my parents for Thanksgiving, it was great to see everyone again (especially my brother, who I hadn’t seen in about a year). It happened to be a bit on the chilly side in Charlotte—the highs most days were in the lower 40s, if memory serves—but it wasn’t anything a little bundling-up couldn't solve.

I decided to try out some new lighting gear since I knew we’d be spending a good chunk of Saturday in the living room. As a key light, I hung a Canon 430EX with a Lumiquest Softbox to one corner of the mantle with a Gorillapod. (The Lumiquest Softbox was the smaller of the light modifiers I had on hand so I thought that would be a good fit for that spot.)

Then, as a back light (or fill light, depending on how people were facing), I attached a 430EX II with a Lumiquest Softbox LTp to the railings of the second-story walkway above the living room using a Gorillapod SLR. (The LTp is a 10×14 softbox—Lumiquest’s largest model—and I was really impressed by how much soft light it put out.) So, in all, I had two lights set up in the living room and I’m generally pleased with how things turned out; I’ll probably try a setup like that again sometime.

We happened to get a little snow while I was there (perhaps on Saturday?), and while Charlotte doesn’t typically get much snow, it was enough to cover the ground and trees. I didn’t exactly have the proper footwear for trudging around in the snow, but my one regret for the trip is that I wish I had managed to get some shots of the treetops (and other portions of the landscape) covered in snow; it was a pretty sight. Oh, well—there’s always next year.