The Vince Files

Today, we retired our old DVD player after 4 years of service.

I still remember reading about this player around 4 years ago and finally buying it here at Visions.  It was one of the first DVD players to feature upconversion from 480i to 1080i and 720p.  These days, upconverting DVD players are common.  I’m glad to have enjoyed upconversion goodness long before people have even heard of upconversion.

We had this unit going all digital by outputting video through DVI and audio by coaxial.  I still remember upgrading the unit’s firmware with a Zenith firmware that fixes a “white crush” issue over DVI but somehow disables upconversion over component video.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/audio-video-sources/181770-zenith-dvb-318-lg-7832-dvd-player-merged-thread.html

This past Christmas, Anna got me an 80 GB Sony PlayStation 3!  It was just a matter of time before it would take over from the old DVD player.  We just had to wait for our order from MonoPrice.com for a optical audio cable and a HDMI female/DVI male adapter since our TV can’t accept HDMI inputs.  Yesterday, my MonoPrice order came after only 6 days shipping and we are now enjoying the PS3 in all its digital glory!

I’m just so amazed at how simple the upgrade process is! 

I’ll be changing to a new theme soon.  I just have to find a 3-column, SEO-optimized, ad friendly one first.

Today was our first major snowfall of the season.  The commute to work took longer than usual.

Coming home was a bit more interesting.  Our house is on a hill.  Getting down a snowy hill is no problem.  Going back up was a different story.  Even though our Mazda5 has excellent all-weather tires, it was no match for the slope of the hill.

house_on_hill

I had to resort to driving up the hill backwards to get home.  Driving up the hill in a front-wheel-drive car is best done backwards when there’s a lot of snow on the ground.  The front wheels carry more weight due to gravity and will have better grip.

I noticed recently one of our heater registers was barely blowing any hot air.  I went to the crawlspace and traced the path from the furnace, through the plenum and to the ducts.  This is what I saw: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s made by Seville Classics Inc. and available at Costco.  This thing is rock solid and weighs in at around 110 lbs.  This is the real deal folks as in the kind of shelving restaurants use in their kitchens. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we’re settled in our new home and mostly (99%) unpacked, we took a bit of a break to enjoy the fact that we have no neighbours on the other side of our walls.  Living in a townhouse these past several years, we’ve always had to maintain courtesy and not make excessive noise.  Also, our townhouse didn’t quite have enough room in the living room for our 44″ TV and my stereo setup.  We decided to just chill and enjoy some audio.

In our new home, we enjoy a larger living room where space is not much of a problem (at the moment).  I was able to take my beloved Paradigm speakers (a pair of Mini-Monitor V3 and a PDR-12 subwoofer) out of storage where they’ve been patiently waiting for the past 4 years.  I also ordered new banana plugs from MonoPrice to finish the ends of my 16AWG Monster Cable speaker wires.

I connected them all to my older Denon 5.1 receiver and played a few test tracks.  Something was off; it must have been the acoustics in the room.  I checked the settings on the receiver and my subwoofer and made some adjustments.  I had set the crossover frequency for the subwoofer at a really low 80Hz.  The subwoofer will play the lowest frequency and starts to attenuate response at 80Hz.  However, the fronts are still somewhat too small to play these low sounds above 80Hz.  So, the music volume tends to dip around the 90-100Hz range.  So I raised the crossover frequency on the subwoofer to as high as it would go (thereby attempting to play any sound sent to it by the receiver).  At the receiver, I set the subwoofer crossover frequency to 120Hz and now the sound sounds fuller without too much of a bump in response at around the 100Hz mark.  Thankfully, this subwoofer is very “musical” and not overly boomy or muddy.  I’m no audiophile so I can’t really explain what I mean.

Last night, we listened to select CDs from our collection: from Charlotte Church to Pavarotti to The Beatles.  They all sounded excellent and quite literally music to my ears.

The fastest implementation I’ve seen of a validator for a Canadian Social Insurance number is from hackcanada.

I’ve rewritten his JavaScript code here in C# with a few guard clauses at the top. Enjoy!
================================

private static bool ValidateSIN(string sin)
{
    int dummy;
    if (!Int32.TryParse(sin, out dummy)) return false;
    if (sin.Length != 9) return false;

    int s = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < 9; i++)
    {
        int x = Convert.ToInt32(sin.Substring(i, 1));
        if (i % 2 != 0)
        {
            if ((x << 1) > 9)
            {
                s += ((x << 1) - 9);
            }
            else
            {
                s += (x << 1);
            }
        }
        else
        {
            s += x;
        }
    }
    return (s % 10 == 0);
}

EDIT: Neil correctly pointed out I was missing a null check as my first statement; I was checking (sin.Length != 9) first.  I’ve changed it and decided to do the Int32.TryParse() first before checking for length.  According to Reflector, System.Int32.TryParse(string s, out int result) calls the internal method System.Number.TryParseInt32(s, NumberStyles.Integer, NumberFormatInfo.CurrentInfo, out result) which in turn calls System.Number.TryStringToNumber(string str, NumberStyles options, ref NumberBuffer number, NumberFormatInfo numfmt, bool parseDecimal) which does a null check.

I like Rick Brewster’s fluent approach to parameter validation using .NET 3.0 and higher.  It’s pretty slick.

I got my first Google AdSense cheque in the mail today!  I’ve finally crossed the $100 USD mark for the first time ever.  Google pays on a monthly basis if you have a minimum $100USD accumulated.

I’ve been displaying AdSense ads on my blog for quite a while.  It’s just been in the past several months that my traffic has increased due to the popularity of one of my blog posts.  It’s on this post that most of the clicks have occurred.

So it seems good blog content is rewarded after all.  I better think of other things to blog about now.

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=s62d454rknx6&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=29248694&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Anna and I took Claire trick-or-treating in the same place we took her last year.  The area is very dense and we can cover many homes in such a short distance.  This is a major townhouse development built around 2002 and all doors are accessible from outdoors unlike an apartment building.  It’s perfect for small feet.

Pics coming soon.

Well, everything’s still verbal at this point.  We offered, they counter-offered, we countered their counter and they’ve accepted.  Our agent is still waiting for the paperwork from the selling agent.

The bidding went like this:

We offer at 92.6% of list price.  They counter-offered back at 97.7%.  We counter-countered at 94.7% and they’ve accepted.  We’re just waiting for paperwork.  Anna will accompany our realtor and home inspector next week at the new home.

Timelines are tight, stress is high, moving is a major pain-in-the-a$$ but we’re super happy we got the place.  It really shows well and we’re pretty sure the owners took care of the place.

[UPDATE 10/17/2008]: I just stopped by our realtor’s office with the certified cheque for our deposit.  Anna and I have signed the addendum to remove subjects after the satisfactory home inspection, mortgage application, and title search.  The deal is firm!  Just waiting for lawyers to complete the transactions.

[UPDATE 10/22/2008]: We just stopped by our lawyer’s office to sign papers.  Wow! That law office is like a well-oiled machine.  They had all paperworks ready (in triplicate!) for our signatures.  The lawyer split our session into 2 parts: a) the sale of our old home and b) the purchase of our new home.  He described every single document we were signing and believe me, there were many.  With such tight timelines, I’m hoping everything goes through OK.  Fingers are crossed.