Posted by Carlton Bale on December 15th, 2008

After a couple of years of searching for a great deal on HermanMiller Aeron chairs, my wife finally found one, and we've been enjoying them for the past 8 months. Unfortunately, her chair developed a crack in the back (most likely due to mis-assembly by the store.) I feared an expensive repair, but started searching [...]
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Posted by Carlton Bale on August 27th, 2007
I just ran across an article on DigtalHome.ca [via Engadget HD] singing the praises of Plasma over LCD. Although I agree with most of the points, there are a couple with which I completely disagree. In fact, both of the posts seem to be overly-biased toward plasma, to the point that it is almost misinformation. [...]
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Posted in Home Theater | 17 Comments » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on December 14th, 2008
Baja, a.k.a. Mr. Kitty, was gentle, kind, and had the unique ability of befriending anyone he met. When visitor would come to our front door, he was there to meet them. When guest would sit down, he would make his way over to say hello. When a guest would spend the night at our house [...]
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Baja asleep on the bed in my first apartment when I started work at Cummins in 1997.
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Baja loved to play with Christmas trees and orniments.
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Baja asleep in a Staples box. He loved sleeping in boxes.
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Mr. Kitty and Sunny chewing on lemon grass leaves together.
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Baja helping me study. Grad school part 2.
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Baja drinking from the aquarium during a water change.
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Baja cooling his toes due to excessive heat from the aquarium lights.
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Baja posing. We used this picture on his "lost cat" poster; we found him while distributing it through the neighborhood.
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Baja asleep in a moving box. He loved boxes.
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Baja climbing a ladder to figure out how to get in the Christmas tree.
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Baja, Sunny, and Silo were all buddies, especially kit and bun.
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Baja quietly standing by as I work in the background. He was usually in my lap during opportunities like this.
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Baja receiving his favorite form of affection, the index finger whisker scratch. He was very tolerant while Ainsley learned to be gentle.
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Baja watching the snow fall in November 2008.
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Baja reading a book with Carlton and Ainsley. This was just taken this week.
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Posted in Life Reflections | 4 Comments » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on November 22nd, 2008

Like Dave Zatz and Matt Miller, I made the leap into the netbook pool with a new MSI Wind. Technically, I guess I really made my wife take the leap. She has been in disparate need of her own personal laptop as I am just too overprotective of and particular about my ThinkPad T61. What [...]
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Posted in Gear and Gadgets | Add a Comment » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on November 20th, 2008

I think Microsoft should be given credit for single-handedly stimulating the economy. Consumer spending is down, most of the Black Friday deals are lame, but I'm purchasing things that have been on my Wish List for years. Why? Because I can get 25% cash back if I purchase an Ebay Buy It Now item and [...]
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Posted in Gear and Gadgets, Web | Add a Comment » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on November 7th, 2008

To get the best video quality playback possible for movies in a home theater, it's necessary for the refresh rate of the source component to match the refresh rate of the display. One of the most common problems stems from the fact that most movies are 24 frames per second while most televisions are 60 [...]
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Posted in Home Theater | 1 Comment » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on November 5th, 2008

If you're a home theater enthusiast, you want the highest-quality audio and video possible, and that means Blu-ray with lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio) and the best video compression codec (VC-1 or MPEG-4 H.264 AVC HP.)
Most people would choose a Sony PlayStation 3 or stand-alone Blu-ray player to deliver this content to [...]
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Posted in Gear and Gadgets, Home Theater | 2 Comments » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on November 3rd, 2008
I just finished reading an interesting article by Amir Majidimehr (former Microsoft VP, video compression) in Oct 2008 issue of Widescreen Review. I was surprised that there are 4 different, incompatible versions of MPEG-4! Here are some facts from the article; I recommending picking up a copy of the magazine for all of the details [...]
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Posted by Carlton Bale on September 22nd, 2008

I've been searching for some wireless headphone to use while watching video on my iPhone when on the treadmill. My objective is to not have a cord connected between me and my iPhone - I don't want to accidentally knock off my iPhone and damage it. After comparing options, I was excited to try the [...]
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Posted in Gear and Gadgets | 2 Comments » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on September 5th, 2008
About a year ago, I somehow happened upon a request from computer case manufacturer CoolerMaster to browse their new website and provide feedback on areas where improvements were needed. In short, the site was terrible, with coding errors, navigation issues, and worthless search capabilities. I provided feedback thinking that they would actually value it and [...]
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Posted in Web | Add a Comment » |
Posted by Carlton Bale on August 28th, 2008

About 6 months ago, I started my search for a wireless network camera that would allow us to watch our little girl while she slept (or didn't sleep) in her crib. My list of requirements were pretty simple: I wanted it to work in complete darkness and I wanted it to work with the Firefox [...]
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Posted in Gear and Gadgets | 8 Comments » |