Greg and Kat's blog

As part of our recent move, I have had no choice but to buy a new TV. There is a built-in nook for a flat screen to sit. I had a 27″ CRT. The options were to bring the old TV and have it sit awkwardly in the room taking up a bunch of space, or buy a new flat screen.

So, I bought a new TV. Like I said: I clearly had no other choice. The TV was to be mounted on a big heavy-duty arm, so it could be swung a bit to see from the kitchen. No problem, since there was a big chunk of wood behind the nook designed exactly for this purpose: it would hold the weight of a big friggin’ TV.

While mounting the TV, Oli and I learned that the big chunk of wood in question wasn’t quite as high up as we would have liked. We ended up mounting it as high as we could, but that still didn’t leave enough room below for my centre channel:

So, this left me with a conundrum: where exactly am I going to mount the centre speaker for the home theatre? Before I get into the options, two important facts about a centre channel need to be reviewed. (1) The centre channel I have is from the same speaker series as the rest of the speakers, so it is acoustically matched. Having a distinctly different speaker could sound funny (e.g. sounds moving left to right sound different for part of their journey), so keeping this speaker would be ideal. (2) The centre channel needs to be horizontally aligned with the screen so the dialogue (which is what it makes its living doing) seems to come from the people speaking.

Many options, with varying degrees of insanity have been considered:

1. Below the TV in the nook. Ideal, but it won’t fit there. Stupid mounting bracket isn’t height adjustable.
2. Above the TV. This would meet both of the criteria above, but Kat is (for some reason) not thrilled about the idea of hanging the speaker above the TV by fishing line (or maybe I shouldn’t have led with that implementation). To be fair, this would look stupid, and it would block the accent light above the TV.
3. Beside the TV, in the nook. It won’t fit there. Off-centre
4. Beside the TV, outside the nook. This is the current solution because it’s easy. It’s annoyingly off-centre and ugly, but it fits and it works. The cable to the speaker could be hidden with a subtle hole drilled in the cabinet behind.
5. In the stereo component cabinet. This has the problems of the above, but it would probably echo like crazy (since the speaker is rear-ported). It eliminates the need to do any drilling, though.
6. Behind the TV, facing up. Even I didn’t think this was a good idea long enough to say it out loud. It wouldn’t fit anyway and would probably sound like ass.
7. Having established that there is no good position for the current centre channel, I looked into buying something new. The first option there was a new thin centre channel that would fit below the TV. Nice idea, but I can’t find any that are decent, so criteria (1) would be blown out of the water.
8. I could buy a whole new set of sub-sat speakers. These sets include tiny main speakers that can’t produce much bass and a wider-range subwoofer that takes up the slack. These would probably fit, but don’t sound great, and getting anything decent would involve more money than I want to spend. It would also negate the money spent on the very nice speakers I already have.
9. The TV has built-in speakers. I could run the centre-channel line-level out from the receiver to them. It would probably sound horrible, but it would be cheap and inconspicuous.
10. Yes, this idea is strange. I buy a left-right pair of small bookshelf speakers and use them together as the centre channel. I think I can split the speaker cable and connect it to both speakers, tucking one in to either side of the screen. This should fool the ear into perceiving the sound as coming from halfway in between the two and I’m optimistic that I can find a decent pair of speakers that is small enough and will match my current set.
11. Same as above, but mounting the pair of speakers above the TV on the edge of the cabinet. This would relax the size restriction on the speakers.
12. And after all of this, I started to think “no really… is there no way to get the TV up three inches?” The mount isn’t height adjustable, and the bracket on the mount can only attach to the TV in one position. Or can it?

    I think I can get a metal plate that’s the same width and a bit taller than the mounting bracket, and bolt it in between the bracket and the TV. The TV would be able to bolt on a few inches higher than the original holes, so it would sit that much higher.

For the more visual among us, here is an illustration of the options. The red ones use the current speaker; the blue ones use something else:

So, after 11 insane options for how to deal with the speaker, I’m likely going to ignore them all and just fix the mounting bracket to do what I wanted it to in the first place.

Finally, we get to the real question here: Does anybody know where I can get a 9×12 inch piece of steel plate?

Edit: Pictures of the implementation of option 12.

We just got keys for the new place. It’s really awesome. Everything is new, nice, and well thought out. We took a whole pile of pictures to document where things are (since not knowing how much space there is somewhere, or what colour something is can be a real hassle).

My example of why it’s so awesome probably won’t be the same at Kat’s, but here’s when I almost lost the thread: I was looking around, and there are wall jacks everywhere that have RJ-45 jacks, which are the ones used for Ethernet:

This puzzled me: Ethernet is inherently double-ended. It needs to terminate somewhere, and these didn’t have an obvious endpoint.

I moved on to the rest of the tour, until we got to the hall closet, and the landlady showed us this thing that she didn’t exactly understand:

A full-blown RJ-45 patch panel! The place seems to have been wired with Telus TV in mind (which uses Ethernet and a set top box), but I’m pretty sure these are standard RJ-45/Cat5e/T568A cable runs. That means that an hub/router in the closet gives us 100Mb/s (or even 1Gb/s) data everywhere in the apartment.

Sure, the place has other features as well. You can see them in the pictures.

More stuff that we have to get rid of in the move. All prices are “or best offer”. As with other stuff, I’ll give y’all a day or two lead on Craigslist.

VCR: Sony SLV-N88.

Hi-fi, dead-easy programming with the little knob on the front. Works perfectly, as far as I know. $30

TV/component stand.

Nice stand for TV and two shelves of components below it. Won’t fit in the new place, so it’s gotta go. $20, must pick up.


Doesn’t include the electronics in the picture, natch.

CD drawers.

2 × 4 drawer CD jewel case drawers from Ikea. $10

White bookshelf.

68×29×8.5 inch bookshelf. $10, must pick up.


Doesn’t include the crap on the shelf in picture.

Beech bookshelf.

71×28×10.5 inch bookshelf from Ikea. $10, must pick up.


Doesn’t include the crap on the shelf in picture.

All for sale:

• Simpsons DVDs, Seasons 1–10. All in excellent condition. $120
• Family Guy DVDs, Sets 1–4 (seasons 1–5) and Stewie Griffin the Untold Story. All in excellent condition. $60
• Angel DVDs, Seasons 1–5 (complete series). All in excellent condition. $50
• Minoura 850 Mag Trainer, $80
  

Will post on Craiglist tomorrow or so.

We have consolidated our DVD and CD collections into storage binders. That leaves us with a bunch of cases:

• single DVD cases
• double DVD cases
• thin DVD cases (half-width cases that are used for box sets)
• CD jewel cases

We have many of each of these. Anybody want some?

Watch the blog in the next week or two for much more stuff we want to get rid of. I’ll post here before Craigslist if any of you want anything.

As should be obvious to anyone reading this blog, Kat and I are preparing to move to a shiny new place just down the road. There are really only two downsides to this move: (1) we have to move, (2) we are leaving our landlady.

I have blogged about our landlady before: she is a nice old lady from Hong Kong. This house is about her only tangible asset and our rent is a big chunk of her income. I feel bad leaving her to find somebody else. So, I don’t intend to…

Who needs a new place?

It’s a ground-floor suite. Two bedrooms, one bath, decent living room, kitchen, shared laundry. $900/mo + utilities. Maybe 1000 sq ft or so. Entrance through the garage, which isn’t great, but isn’t a big deal either. (It means a good spot to store a bike if nothing else.)

North Burnaby at Albert and Madison. I’m obviously a big fan of the neighbourhood, otherwise we’d be moving more than a block away. Close to a bunch of restaurants, Safeway, 135 stop (25 minutes to SFU Burnaby by bus), Brentwood Mall, bike/hiking paths, …

I took a bunch of pictures when I was moving in two years ago. We haven’t exactly trashed the place, so it will look about the same.

I’d make a killer deal on any furniture that we aren’t taking with us (my initial bargaining position: $0). That seems to include a buffet/island/chopping block thing in the kitchen, a TV stand, DVD shelf, and a loveseat. A few little shelves might stay too.

Remember my affection for the landlady: no loud parties, no trashing the place, no keeping her up at night. You’ll have me to deal with if you do.

Update: Move in mid-August, as soon as we’re out. I’ll pick up that first part-month rent.

Costco has always been my connection for garden burgers. They sold sleeves of about 25 of them, and there was always one in my freezer. There have been many times they kept me alive, particularly in the two lost years while Kat was in NC.

In my last three visits to three different Costcos, they haven’t had any. From this, I conclude that Costco has stopped selling garden burgers.

This is not acceptable, and could be a dealbreaker on my (already facultative) vegetarianism. Does anybody know where I can get a big box o’ veggie burgers, thus avoiding colon cancer and morbid obesity?

My life is in your hands. Please help.

There’s a bike race around my neighbourhood tonight if you’re bored. I was here for it last year: it’s quite cool to see if you have a few minutes.

With my study leave coming up, I expect to have more free time on my hands. Don’t worry, watchers of the public purse: I do have a bunch of work stuff to do over the year, but that’s another blog post.

I think I need to reacquaint myself with PC gaming. I have a (slightly) old Athlon 64 system that isn’t actually being used right now with 1 GB RAM and 320 GB of hard drive. I figure this can be turned into a reasonable gaming rig with a minimal investment.

I would probably drop in a new processor (like the Athlon 64 X2 5400+) and new video card (perhaps an ASUS N7600GS). That would be enough to run the kind of games I’m actually interested in: Portal, Spore, SimCity Societies, Civilization IV. I likes me a good god-game. I really don’t care much about online/multiplayer gaming: I don’t need some 14 year old kid using the word “pwn” at me in my leisure time.

I’d need to get another keyboard and mouse, since USB+DVI KVM switches are unpleasantly expensive. (It’s probably harder to do the switching for USB than old PS2 connections. Don’t forget about buying cables with those too.) I can hook up to the VGA input on my LCD and switch the display that way.

After about $250, I should be ready to go. I can get a Windows XP license from work as long as I promise that it has something to do with teaching (which it undoubtedly will, regardless of the initial plan).