bonnie & jason

Millett Minimax headphone amp

This is officially my last project before the arrival of the twins. You may remember I took on a small DIY headphone amp project a couple weeks ago. Although that amp performed pretty well, I still wasn’t really impressed with my new headphones. After doing some research, I thought they might reach their full potential with a higher powered amp. Furthermore, many folks swear by vacuum tube amplification for great sound quality. As is usually the case, I figured I’d try to build my own rather than purchase a retail version of one of these amps.

Lucky for me, a number of enterprising folks have put their heads together and developed the parts list, assembly instructions, and other resources to help you put your own amplifier together. So after some more research and a couple mail order deliveries, I had everything I needed to git ‘er done.

I still need to find a volume knob.

(this image courtesy of www.diyforums.org)

Assembly notes:
As you can see, it’s a fair bit more complex than the little Cmoy amp, but the assembly was actually fairly straight forward. For those of you who are looking to build your own, here are some thoughts (based mostly on my mistakes) that might help supplement that already extensive instructions found on the official website:

1. The standoff kit works great, but pay attention to the instructions to make sure you have the washers in the right place. Otherwise, it won’t fit in the enclosure.

2. Tom (the proprietor of the official site) doesn’t yet have instructions for the final connections for the RCA jacks and such but does have some pictures to show how others have done it. I would probably leave enough slack in those wires to be able to just take the back panel off by no more than 1″. Any more and the slack in the wires gets in the way of bolting the panel to the enclosure.

3. When you first get all the baggies of parts, separate and order them by size (height) so the assembly process simply requires going through the little baggies one at a time.

4. The BOM is confusing in what buffer transistors you really need. At first glance (and second and third for me) it seems like you need eight. This made sense to me since there are eight spots on the PCB for said transistors. As it turns out, you only need four. The extra four spots are used if and only if you use transistors of reversed pinout (in which case you would leave the other four empty.)

5. I followed Tom’s advice of using the 12AE6 vacuum tubes and eliminating the RB14 transistors considering my Sennheiser HD 650′s are 300 Ohm impedance. I also used the “can’t miss boutique” parts listed on the website with 2SC3422/2SA1359 transistors. Although I have nothing to compare against, I’m very happy with the results.

Listening impressions:
1. Wow! Although I’m still relatively new to the high end audio scene, I’m very happy with the results. Whereas before, the headphones seemed a bit tentative and “veiled” as some users have stated, everything opens up with the new amplifier. Soundstage is larger, vocals sound more intimate (both female and male), and bass notes are tight and accurate.

2. The difference in good vs. bad recordings is more evident now. I guess the sound engineers in the booth really do make a contribution behind the scenes!

3. I’m hoping that everything sounds even better as the amp gets broken in. However, even if that doesn’t happen, I’m still very impressed. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough experience to say if it’s the “tube” sound that appeals to me or if it’s just the fact that this amp has more power. Maybe I’ll just have to find a similar power DIY solid state amp to build next!

Canon 5D2 – short video sample

Bonnie’s dad just got the Canon 5D2. I haven’t had a chance to put it through it’s paces yet, but I did try a short video clip.

This was taken in pretty bad lighting with a 24-105mm 4.0 IS lens. I think the ISO ended up at 3200. There’s no autofocus feature in video mode so that will take getting used to. Otherwise, it works pretty well! The coolest thing is the bokeh in the out of focus areas. Take a look for yourself. (You can view in HD if you click through to vimeo.)

2008 12 09 5D2 test video from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

Body Worlds 2 at The Tech Museum

We used part of my vacation day today to visit the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at The Tech Museum in San Jose. I was a little concerned that Alissa was going to freak out about the displays but she barely noticed anything. Actually, she was pretty well behaved for the whole thing as we kept her entertained with Cheerios whenever she got restless.

You’re not supposed to take pictures inside, but I sneaked a few here and there. Sorry for the funny angles and composition… not too bad for shooting blind.

Aside from the pictures I managed to take there were a bunch of other displays that were really cool. All these displays were made possible thanks to plastination, a technique of impregnating body parts with silicone rubber pioneered by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens. The technique itself is almost as interesting as the specimens themselves if you’re a geek like me. If you’re not a geek like me, there’s a good chance this whole idea is rather distasteful which is why I didn’t post too many pictures here. Instead, click here for those of you who are into this kinda thing.

After visiting this particular exhibit, we did a quick tour of the rest of The Tech. We didn’t stay long as it was getting late and Alissa is still too young to appreciate this kind of stuff. But I can definitely see us going back someday when Alissa is old enough to understand the plethora of interactive displays and activities.

Canon SD1000

You may remember that I broke our little point and shoot Canon S400 while mountain biking with Eric a while back. Since then, Eric has let us borrow their S400 as he had upgraded to an SD900. Since then, I’ve been going back and forth as to which camera to buy to replace our camera so I could give Eric’s back. Some days I wanted something full featured with more manual control that we “pro” photographers desire. Other days, I wanted something small and truly pocketable. Ultimately, I decided this was going to be Bonnie’s camera and her priority was pocketable so I ended up getting the Canon SD1000. It has the cool image stablization and face detection features that are pretty common these days and comes in a tidy little package. It actually looks a little retro compared to the more curvy designs that came out previously but I actually like the more simple aesthetics. Works great! More than enough resolution and everything works as expected. I’ll be sure not to break this one as the old S400 will now be my “extreme” camera. True, the screen is broken, but it still works.

Garmin Forerunner 305

I’ve had my eye on the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch for quite a while now. It does all sorts of cool stuff like track your heart rate, speed, elevation, and cadence (if you get the cadence sensor). Lo-and-behold, there’s a deal for the unit (I said, “unit”) plus the $75 footpod for free plus another $50 discount from Powerbar. So after months of disciplined conspicuous non-consumption, I gave in and got it. I figure if it gets me out exercising more, it’s worth it. Plus, I’m a sucker for a good deal.

Anyway, I’ve tried it out and it works pretty well. I haven’t had any problems with satellite signals or getting the heart rate monitor to work. It also recognizes the cadence sensor on the bike. So now I’ve set a personal goal to ride 100 miles before the end of the year (excluding my daily commute.) That should be pretty easy but the end of the year is going to be pretty busy. Holidays, Mike’s wedding, Alissa’s birthday party, etc. So 100 miles seems like a good round number to shoot for.

EDIT: Here’s a link to my ride to and from work.

New monitor: Dell 2407WFP-HC

I picked up a new monitor to go with the Mac Pro now that I’ve sold my old computer/monitors to Terry. I got the Dell 2407-HC 24″ widescreen. It’s pretty awesome. The best thing about it is watching HD video at full resolution. And I got it just in time to edit some HD wedding video I shot last weekend. Another reason I like it is the fact that it has a built in memory card reader. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to want to read my 4GB SD card. But otherwise, the extra wide real estate is working great. Here’s a screen shot:

At the moment, I’m encoding video, uploading pictures, watching the four cores, five hard drives, and 5 GB of RAM at work in the activity monitor, and blogging. Woot!

Alissa teething, Avenue Q, and Saigon sandwiches

Well, our super easy baby isn’t quite as easy now that she’s started teething. They haven’t erupted yet, but I think they’re on the verge as she’s drooling more, seems to be running a slight fever, and doesn’t go to sleep as readily as she used to. Also, she really goes to town on her teething pacifier, chomping down pretty hard with her gums. Here are a couple pictures from yesterday when I was setting up the backdrop for Kathy and Eric’s maternity studio session:

In other news, we went to see Avenue Q with Kathy, Eric, and Benita today. It was pretty darn funny although the music itself wasn’t all that great. I have to say, some of the lyrics were a little hard to pickup so maybe I’ll have to listen to the soundtrack to make sure I didn’t miss all the jokes. One thing that I didn’t miss was all the puppet sex. Yes, puppet sex. Pretty funny… certainly worth the price of admission just for that. =)

Before the show, we had lunch at Saigon Sandwiches. A coworker of mine claimed it to have the best Vietnamese sandwiches and if you remember from this post, I’m quite the connoiseur of Vietnamese sandwiches. (I stole this pic from Yelp.)

So what was noteworthy of this new contender? Well, first of all, this place is similar to Bahnwich in that there are two Chinese ladies working their tails off in a tiny little place trying to get the line of people out the door served. (Yes, there was a line out the door.) Second, the official menu is pretty limited, but what do you expect when the sign outside says, “Saigon sandwiches?” Despite the limited official menu, they still had a wide variety of drinks as well as other random snacks like spring rolls, mochi desserts, and other pre-made appetizer kinds of things that were not listed up on the board. There was also a shelf full of random Chinesey kinds of candy and snacks. Third, the sandwiches are all $2.50… including tax! Even cheaper than Bahnwich! Yeah, yeah, but how were they?

The bread was really good. The sauce was more sweet than savory. The pork was tasty. And the fixins (carrots, cilantro, peppers) were fresh. All in all, I’d say that they edged out Bahnwich but didn’t quite dethrone Vietnam Village. I guess I prefer the savory sauce and stronger BBQ flavor of Vietnam Village still. Maybe it’s because Vietnam Village is where I had my first sandwich. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been there so many times. Whatever the reason, they still hold the title of best Vietnamese sandwich.

Mac Pro 5th hard drive installation

I’ve been filling up hard drive space pretty quickly recently with all the HD video that I’ve been editing along with the Alissa and wedding pictures. As such, I’ve been looking for more storage as well as how to archive old stuff that I don’t need to access much.

Thankfully, the Mac Pro has four hard drive slots. Unfortunately, I really want five slots to have one system drive and four data drives setup as a Raid 10. So, originally, I was considering getting an external SATA enclosure taking advantage of the extra SATA ports on the Mac Pro motherboard. But then, I found that you can actually use the space in the optical drive bay to add a fifth hard drive.

Here’s an easy off-the shelf solution, but it’ll cost you $69. And here’s a guy who made things work with some spare parts and creative thinking.

I basically did the same thing the guy did but I didn’t have any spare parts lying around so I was able to do it “right” by buying new parts that would fit without modification.

Here’s my parts list:
2x$109: Seagate 500GB hard drive (These were made in Thailand vs. the ones I got from newegg which were made in China… no idea if it makes any difference.)
$4.99: 18″ SATA cable (right angle on one end, straight on the other… should have gotten the 24″ one.)
$2: Molex to SATA power adapter (I actually forgot to buy this initially and had to visit to my friendly Cosmic Computer to pick one up.)
$3.99: 3.5″ to 5.25″ drive bracket

So basically, instead of spending the money on an external enclosure, I was able to install the hard drive for an extra $11 in parts. Plus, the big benefit is that I don’t have to deal with another enclosure that requires power and a cable. Simple=good.

If I was really smart, I would have gotten the 24″ SATA cable because the 18″ one was a bear to get in. (Tip: if you screwed up and got the 18″ one, first thread it through from the SATA port to the drive bay after removing hard drives #1 and #2. Then attach it to the new hard drive and replace the optical drive assembly before attaching the right angle side to the SATA port.)

Here are some pictures that show how the SATA cable was routed:

Looking from the rear of the case towards the front, here’s the view of the SATA ports:

Here’s a closeup of the right angle SATA cable connected to one of the two free ports:

Here’s a view of the SATA cable routed behind the fan shroud. This is looking where the #1 hard drive would normally be. You can see the cable routing goes by the #1 SATA connection.

Here’s a view of the cable as it leaves the section in the above picture into the area where the 2 optical drive bays are normally located:

Review: Yumma’s Mediterranean Grill after a running workout

This is another one of those places that has great cheap food.  Everytime I’m in the inner sunset and want something quick, Yumma’s usually tops my list.  The Falafel Deluxe is my favorite… it’s bursting with flavors, they execute the wrap perfectly (ie, it’s easy to eat without getting stuff all over yourself), and it doesn’t even occur to me that it’s vegetarian.  All for about $6.  The Shawarma’s are really good too.  (Update 5/11: Had the chicken Shawarma today… good, but not as good as the Falafel Deluxe.)

Anyway, the reason I went there today was that I was in the neighborhood after doing a little running with Dennis at Kezar Stadium.  It’s actually kinda nice running on a real track with a little padding.  My body doesn’t feel nearly as beat up as it usually does after running 5 miles or so.  I do need new sneakers though… my sneakers are from before I ran the Chicago marathon a few years ago.  Hmm…

Bahnwich… better sandwiches than Vietnam Village?

I worked from home today so Bonnie and I took Alissa to Bahnwich for lunch.  Some of you may remember that we tried to go last week but were thwarted by their early closing schedule so we ended up at Chick-n-coop instead.  Also, faithful readers will remember that Vietnam Village has been the gold standard of Vietnamese sandwiches for the past six years and I had high hopes that a local establishment, like Bahnwich, could take over that claim.  Afterall, with “wich” in their name, how could they lose?

So, was Bahn-’wich’ up to the task?  Could David defeat Goliath?  Would 94116 prevail over 94066?

I’ll start off by noting that Vietnam Village is a good sized restaurant with room for at least 50 guests whereas Bahnwich is more of a takeout kind of place with room for eight… assuming you’re all close friends and no one has a bad B.O. problem.  Of course, as a Vietnamese sandwich connoisseur, I wasn’t really all that concerned about the ambience, but if folks are looking for a sit down place for a large group, you’d be better off at Chick-n-coop down the street.  That being said, it is cozy inside and everything is reasonably clean if not terribly new.  Also, the woman taking my order was nice (Bonnie said she spoke Cantonese with a Vietnamese accent) and was very speedy in preparing our food.

Right, the food!  I ordered the BBQ chicken and Bonnie ordered the BBQ pork.  We also got some fresh spring rolls (the kind with vermicelli, shrimp, and mint dipped in peanut sauce) and an aloe jelly drink.  As soon as we ordered the sandwiches, she put the rolls in the toaster.  Then she went back (basically two steps behind the small counter) and presumably got the meat started. 

Just a few minutes later, we were presented with two sandwiches wrapped in paper secured with a green rubber band and a ‘P’ written in blue bic pen on the pork one.  By this time, we had already dug into the spring rolls since we were super hungry.  They were quite good by the way… and really big.  But I digress.  How were the sandwiches?!

In short, they were very good.  The bread was fresh and toasty.  The fixins were as you would expect.  And the chicken was tender and juicy.  All for $3.00!  But, were they better than Vietnam Village?  Unfortunately, I’m going to rule slightly but definitely in favor of the incumbent Vietnamese sandwich king.  The Bahnwiches (clever, huh) were good, but they were lacking in a few key areas.  First, the chicken didn’t have that right off the grill flavor.  I would say this was a dealbreaker… aren’t they BBQ chicken sandwiches?  Also, the sauce wasn’t quite as savory.  Finally, they weren’t quite as fully stuffed as I hoped they’d be.  (Granted, they are a little less expensive than Vietnam Village.) 

But that’s ok… like I said, they were very good, just not good enough to dethrone “The Village.”  And now I know where to go for a Vietnamese sandwich if I don’t feel like driving down to San Bruno.

(photo courtesy of yelp.com… I forgot my camera again.)