28 dec 06
show us the new boom box!
it's already set up, and is in pieces all over the room, so it might be hard for you to get a cohesive impression.
i'm going to circuit city today with the remainder of my gift card, to buy sufficiently long speaker wires to mount the four satellite speakers in good places on the wall (in the ceiling corners, i believe).
the system includes a "central speaker", which lives on my desk behind my laptop screen, an enormous borg-cube of a subwoofer, which in turn lives on the floor a bit to my left, and a wired remote control. the subwoofer is rougly 12" x 12" X 12", is made of metal, weighs a substantial amount, has lots of ports in the back, and is of course indented with that familiar, ominous, parabolic hole that emits tangible puffs of air. it also makes an ok footrest.
if i have any money left-over at circuit city after wire-purchase, i suppose i'll buy a CD or a bigger flash drive, or something else that strikes my fancy. but i don't really need more crap. i have a lot of crap already, and it's not going to all fit in a car, which i suppose is a problem that solves itself.
i didn't use to like gift cards, but now i do, because they force you to spend money on fun things. if someone were to give me cash, there's a likelyhood that i'd (at least have the passing impulse to) spend it on groceries, rent, etc, which is suppose isn't a bad thing, but is maybe a bit antithetical to the gift-buying spirit. a giftcard, even though i detest shopping, necessitates picking out some toy. in this case, i picked up a fairly serious system of PC speakers. i don't know that they improve the quality of my life all that much, but hey -- they're fun (even though maybe that's a contradiction). but that's a good definition of a gift, i think.
anyway, here -- i'll take a few pics for ya:
woof woof.
the "center speaker", serving a purpose of which i was skeptical, until i discovered that the whole system as it's currently positioned sounds a little better with it on. i think this will be especially true once i get the satellites wall-mounted. that's my router to its right (yes, it has a perspective).
left-front satellite, on my homemade desk.
right-front satellite, on my homemade desk.
right-rear satellite, on top of my little guitar amp for now, because there is no other place to put it while it's unmounted.
left-front satellite. i bet this is your favorite speaker (sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll).
wired remote, which i've been playing with, trying to get the subwoofer and center speaker to sound perfect. it's a supid struggle -- i should make an effort to avoid falling into the pit of audiophilism.
this question and its answer also provides a little glimpse into the nature of my bedroom -- cables and wires everywhere. when the comcast "technicians" came to install a new router, they gave little groans of dread when they saw the spider's nest of ethernet, coaxial, rca, ac/dc, power strips, and god-knows-what on the floor. they had to find the power strip, and unplug the right thing. that's not too bad, now that i think about it.
i like my wires -- they make me feel cyborg-ish. i see them as part of the decor, rather than an afront to it. ad hoc aesthetics aren't objectionable, per se, if they make you happy. plus it's the whole basis for the "alleatorism" (chance-built structures) in dada, fluxus, performance art and their relatives (no pun intended). this is not to say that anyone knows what fluxus is, except that it's supposedly modern dada. or something. but everyone would be a lot happier if they tried to live a little more dada (not so concerned with form, structure, and categories). it's a lot like a zen-like approach, in many ways; not being a tight-ass, mainly.
speaking of chic art and sound systems, i have some music that i've categorized as "avant garde". i spent a stupid amount of time attaching id3 "genre" tags to my mp3s, as well as changing those i found to be innacurate. except that it's not that stupid, because what if i only feel like listening to a particular "type" of music? well, it's still stupid, because my categories are going to vary from day to day. it's more a hobby than anything else (musical genres).