2014 Year in Review

Well, 2014 is coming to a close.  Was it any better than 2013?  It's hard to say.

By many accounts, 2014 was shaped by events that were more unfortunate than could ever been realized.  Domestically, in the US, we had multiple police brutality cases come to light.  None of those seemed to come to the conclusion the public hoped for.  We were swept by fear over the concerns of Ebola, which hit Africa to devastating effect but never made a particular impact here.

Overseas, by all accounts, was much worse however.  From ISIL to plane disasters, 3 of them now that another plane has gone missing on the 28th of December, the world has not been a particularly safe place.  It all seems so far away when we hear about atrocities like the December 16th school massacre in Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban or the thousands of deaths in West Africa due to Ebola.

At home, this disconnect became increasingly obvious.  The fear frenzy sparked by Ebola, which to date only has 4 cases and 1 death in the US, was almost comical in how overblown it was.  The level of misinformation supplied was clearly crafted to feed the fear as all credible sources have said that outbreaks in developed countries would be incredibly unlikely.  Now don't get me wrong, the crisis in west Africa over the spread and fatality of this current Ebola strain is very well founded, it just isn't particularly dangerous to the US where the media went crazy.

As bad as the year's been in the world, outside the Earth we perhaps had one of the most exciting events in recent space history.  Rosetta and Philae, spacecraft from the European Space Agency (ESA) landed on a moving asteroid, no doubt a great feat.  From a set of cute animated renditions of their mission to an xkcd comic chronicling their landing, the scientific community celebrated the success, though brief, of one of the longest and most difficult space missions to date.

In daily life I'm sure everyone has had somewhat of an up and down year.  Every time you think something good happens, you get punched in the gut with something terrible.  That's how the world is though, between all the good and bad, there's a lull where nothing seems to happen.  Sometimes, I feel like that's what we should really be celebrating.  Not praising the good, nor vilifying the bad, but celebrating those everyday events, the mediocrity is what keeps us going.

With that, I hope everyone has a good new year's.  Hopefully, this upcoming year will have more to celebrate, both good and neutral, and less to cry over.  As always, until next time.

--CsMiREK

Gear Days - Stocking Stuffer Special

I'm a bit late with this, I wanted to originally have this out yesterday night but it took a bit longer than expected.  The topic for the day is the Stocking Stuffer Special, a ranking of headphones I own that can all be bought for under $50.  The field is crowded and honestly there aren't a large number of standouts but let's get started anyways.

All told, there were 14 pairs ranked this time around and they got grouped into 2 small groups at the ends and one big blob in the middle

So let's get to the ratings:
1. Superlux HD668B
2. Yuin PK3
3. Sennheiser CX200
4. Incipio NX-100 f38
5. Panasonic RPTCM125K
6. NuForce NE600X
7. UrbanEars Plattan
8. Sony MDR-PQ5 (Discontinued)
9. TTPOD T1-E
10. California Headphones Silverado (Discontinued)
11. Klipsch S4i Rugged (Discontinued)
12. Sol Republic Amps
13. NuForce NE770X
14. Zipbuds Juiced

Gear Days - Holiday Kickoff: Beats Studio Wireless

It's holiday time and that means headphones (not that it isn't headphones time all the time).  To kick off the holiday headphone times I'll cover a pair of headphones I've recently come to owning, the Beats Studio Wireless.

So, what are the Beats Studio Wireless headphones?  Most obviously, they're headphones produced by the often controversial company Beats (now owned by Apple).  Equally obvious is that they're wireless headphones.  What else can be easily gleaned about the Beats Studio Wireless?  Well, they're over ear, closed back headphones that also sport ANC (active noise cancelling).  Now let's get to it and get on with the review.

M50 vs M50x: Changing of the guard?

Back in February of this year, Audio Technica released a followup to their wildly popular Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones, now labelled the ATH-M50x.  About a month ago I caved and decided to get a pair expressly for the purpose of figuring out what has changed.  With that, let's get started.

Both the M50 and M50x are closed back over ear headphones, that much has not changed.  In fact, overall, the sound and design are really quite similar.  So what has changed?  First, the M50x has a removable cable, which is awesome.  In the box, it comes with three different length cables and the addition of having a removable cable is really quite great.  Second, the pads on the M50x are initially more comfortable and less stiff than the original M50's ear pads.  After extended wearing though, they both feel about the same.  The carrying case that comes with the headphones is the same as before.  That pretty much sums up the external differences.  Let's move onto the sound.

Gear Days - Fall On Ear Classic

This year's Fall On Ear Classic featured 8 entrants and honestly was quite surprising to me with the end results.  As a note, the Fall On Ear Classic may be a biannual thing as I don't find myself liking on ear headphones all that much.  In general, I find on ear headphones to be quite uncomfortable. Another note is that my views on how bassy particular headphones are may be quite biased, both personally and as an effect of the gear with which I am doing my testing, it tends to give all headphones a not insignificant bass boost.  Anyways, onto the results.

How very colorful, just missing purple

From top left to bottom right, the Beats Mixr, Yamaha PRO 300, Sennheiser Momentum, Harman Kardon CL, Voxoa HD (Bluetooth), Outdoor Tech Privates (Bluetooth), Grado SR80i, and UrbanEars Plattan.

Exact numerical breakdowns can be found in the headphones spreadsheet under the On Ear tab but let's get to some reviewing.

Musical Discovery (genre) - Math rock

I'm aware it's been a long time since my last post and I'll eventually get to giving my conclusions of the summer 2014 anime season.  It might not be until I clear up the fall 2014 anime season though.  In the meantime, I'm gonna put up some music related posts to come back a bit more to how I started off this blog.

The topic of the day is math rock.  Math rock is a derivative of post rock and progressive rock that focuses on interesting and different uses of time signatures.  While most music currently (both rock and otherwise) follow a relatively strict 4/4 beat, meaning the beat is in 4 beat cycles, math rock employs shifts in time from 3 beats to 2 beats.  It is also common for math rock to use more exotic time signatures like 7/8 or 11/8 as well as abrupt or frequent time signature switching.

The thing about using 7 or 11 beats to a cycle is that it makes it difficult to count.  3 beats or 2 beats are short enough that it is obvious when listening to a 3 or 2 beat passage.  7 or 11 beat passages on the other hand blend in, being just one beat shy of a 4 beat cycle (8 or 12).  This leads to some interesting interactions where beat can be obscured greatly while appearing to have a relatively static sounding 4 beat.

The two bands in particular I've been listening to in the math rock vein are 'toe' and 'how to count one to ten'.  Both bands are based out of Japan and are mainly instrumental bands. The thing that strikes me about both bands is how well they are able to layer sound.  Honestly, I am quite poor when it comes to hearing and listening to beats.  However, their ability to layer different rhythms and lines fascinates me.  If you want lyrics and a catchy line, don't listen to either of them.  However if you want well formed and interesting musical ideas and good clean guitar sound, they're both fantastic.  At the current moment I'm tipping towards 'how to count one to ten' because I find the music more refreshing, but that's my opinion and if any of this sounds appealing I recommend you check both bands out.  Until next time.

--CsMiREK

Summer 2014 - Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

More anime, 4 to go for me.  This time we've got Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun.  Nozaki-kun is about a high school mangaka or manga writer/artist known for shoujo manga, in English terms, manga aimed towards girls.  However, contrary to the stereotype of a female mangaka we get a completely deadpan male.

From that description, it's pretty obvious that Nozaki-kun is a slice of life anime.  However, it also starts off with a bit of a gag scene where another main character, Sakura Chiyo, tries to confess to Nozaki.  It's too bad that he construes this as her wanting his autograph.  Somehow this leads to Chiyo becoming an assistant to Nozaki.  As much as that setting sounds like the back drop for a full out romance, at least from the first episode, it seems that that might just become a recurring gag.  To add to the comedic effect, we find out that Nozaki really seems like a complete airhead when it comes to romance even though he's shown as one of the best shoujo mangaka.

Overall, I'm a bit torn on how to rate Nozaki-kun.  On the one hand it is a generally well crafted gag based slice of life/comedy anime.  However, on the other, it doesn't seem to have characters strong enough to really shine.  Nozaki feels a bit lifeless and Chiyo feels like the personification of a girl in love trope.  That said, there's really not much offensive about the anime as a whole.  I would say that it's worth a watch but if you don't immediately like it, I can't really say it would be worth watching how it continues.  For a rating I'll just go with a 5/10 as it's honestly quite middling for me, I'm not offended by it nor do I think it's particularly good.  I could put up a picture but I'm not sure there's too much of interest here.  Let's power through the remaining anime reviews.  Until next time.

--CsMiREK