Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio - Blogs - Jude's "Take My Word" Blog by jude

Matt Writes Best Sellers! (Eat This Not That!)

jude — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:33:00 GMT

I was reading the August 2008 The Costco Connection (Costco's member magazine), and saw, in the Book Previews section (on page 41), under nonfiction, a book titled Eat This Not That! for Kids: Raise a Lean, Healthy, Happy Child! (Amazon actually shows the title as Eat This Not That! for Kids!: Be the Leanest, Fittest Family on the Block!), by David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding. Matt Goulding is a buddy of mine, and the Food & Nutrition Editor for Men's Health.

I immediately fired off an e-mail to Matt to tell him I was surprised and thrilled to see his book being promoted by Costco (for those of you outside the U.S., Costco is huge here in the States), and to catch up with him, since we hadn't communicated in well over a year. Matt responded, and modestly mentioned in his message that they also co-wrote a previous Eat This Not That! book (titled Eat This Not That!: Thousands of Simple Food Swaps That Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds-or More!), released back in December of last year--he didn't tell me that it's still at #17 on Amazon's Best Seller list! (It's currently #1 in the categories "Exercise & Fitness" and "Diets.")

Matt and I met on a trip to Majorca for a product launch event. As one of the press pieces for their previous book states, Matt "has cooked and eaten his way across the world," which is very true. For such a young guy, Matt is one of the most cosmopolitan cats I've met, his Spanish so natural that he doesn't sound like an American speaking Spanish, but maybe more like a lifelong Chilean (which, if I recall correctly, is one of the places Matt was a chef). He is the ultimate foodie, with the culinary skills to match, and the ability to talk about food and eating in a manner so passionate as to make it interesting to anyone. There wasn't a thing we ate and drank together that he didn't make more fascinating for all of us, with his boyishly enthusiastic, yet very sophisticated, musings.

As he probably does wherever he travels, Matt was intent on smuggling a bunch of native food items back home, with the most memorable piece from that trip probably being a particularly strong-smelling chorizo--so strong-smelling that I believe the manager of the finca/hotel asked him to keep it out of his room, and so I think Matt hung it outside on the patio. We joked around, a few of us placing gentlemen's bets on whether he was going to get that chorizo across the border without a hitch, and I found out later from him that he did! I'm sure his local friends were the luckier for it, as I believe he was intending to transform the Mallorcan treasures he'd collected into a meal for them.

At a Palma dance club the bunch of us went to, the rather intoxicated duo of Matt and me tried to convince the club staff to let me dance in a just-vacated cage that was normally occupied by a buff club staffer (male and/or female), hoisted above the dance floor, apparently to entertain the patrons with the site of ultra-fit gals and guys, scantily clad, cage-dancing. We made a concerted effort to make my decidedly non-buff presence in one of those cages happen, so that I could entertain the group we were with (and simultaneously horrify the other club-goers who didn't know me). Alas, despite Matt's slurred urgings en espa�ol--and even a bribe of around 50 Euro, if I recall correctly--we were, with a now-go-away-you-drunks laugh, politely turned away.

So, Matt Goulding, you're a best-seller, man! And, as a parent, I think your latest book is going to be an even bigger hit. My wife and I will be picking it up--and may give a couple away as gifts--and if I see you soon, sign my copy for me, buddy. Congratulations, Matt!

You can check out more of Matt's writing in Men's Health magazine, the Men's Health website (including videos of Matt and his colleagues cooking up healthy recipes), and the direct "Eat This, Not That" website at eatthis.com.

Blogging Again: A Great, Fun Saturday (Fast Friend, Fast Cars)

jude — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:05:00 GMT

It has been a long time since I've made a blog entry, but I had such a nice, interesting weekend (the weekend before last), that I thought I'd blog about it.

First of all, Jack Roush Jr. had a great day in his Grand Am Cup race at Barber Motorsports Park yesterday. (Jack is one of my best friends, a business partner, and like a brother to me). Jack races in the Grand Am Cup GS (Grand Sport Class), and started the July 19, 2008 race with his #59 ROUSH / Valvoline Mustang in 12th place. I've karted with Jack on plenty of occasions, and one of his driving strengths is his insane skill through traffic (passing), and that day was no exception, as he passed his way into second place, before handing the reins over to his teammate (Dean Martin) halfway through the race for the mandatory driver change.

At the checkered flag, Jack and Dean finished third, in what was an intense race (I wasn't there, but it was televised a couple of days ago), earning Jack's first-ever podium finish in his very young Grand Am Cup career. Congratulations to Jack and Dean, Rehagen Racing, and ROUSH / Valvoline on their podium finish!

The other great part of that weekend was an interesting Saturday trip I took. One of my other best friends is the CEO of an overseas investment banking firm. He conducts his businesses internationally, and so has occasion to come into town from time to time. For this stop in Michigan, he asked if I wanted to come with him on a business trip to the southern part of the country. Two gentlemen he's doing business with were flying up in a Lear that belongs to one of them to pick him up, and he got the okay to bring a few guests--so he invited his young son, his brother, and me. I've flown in small private jets before, and I've always enjoyed the experience (it's certainly not something I get to do regularly), so I agreed, and had no idea any of the other details of the trip or the people--I was just happy to spend the time with my friend (for his privacy's sake, I'll call him DA for short), his brother (who's also a very good friend of mine), and his son (who, though not by blood, is very much a nephew to me), all three of whom I don't get to spend much quality time with.

(If you're wondering where I'm going with this, it does get a bit more interesting, especially if you're a car and motorsports enthusiast.)

At some point, one of the gentleman who was picking us up (I'll call him �J�) contacted a car service to pick us up upon landing in Mississippi. He told them there were six of us, so something like a Chevy Suburban would be great. What came to pick us up was apparently the closest thing this car service had to a Suburban: a stretch Lincoln Navigator that was hilariously gaudy. We had a good laugh about it, and headed off to other places related to their business discussions. Once done with that, one of the business partners (I�ll call him �G�) treated us to lunch at a beautiful restaurant called Mary Mahoney�s Old French House Restaurant. The food was exceptional.

After lunch, we boarded the plane again, and headed to another southern state that served as the home base of the two gentlemen�s businesses (Biloxi was not where these gentlemen are based, which is why we needed the car service). (To maintain the privacy and anonymity of the gentlemen involved, I�m going to refrain from mentioning their home state, as they�re both rather high profile, and seemed to me to be rather private types, too--I�m also going to blur everyone�s faces in the photos.)

We landed at a municipal airport where I believe G has two hangars. Parking the plane aside one of those hangars, we went inside. What greeted me was one of the nicest private vehicle collections I�ve personally seen, belonging to G. The first car to greet me, just past the hangar doors, was a Rolls-Royce Phantom, on one side of which was a Ford GT, and the other side a covered car that was later revealed to us to be a Shelby Series 1. Looking to the other half of the hangar, I spotted a helicopter (which I believe was one of two belonging to G), a small propeller plane, a bunch of trucks, including a Chevrolet Silverado, a Range Rover, a Land Rover Defender 90, an AMG G55, a Hummer H1, and maybe one or two more I missed. There were at least a few motorcycles in there, including a custom chopper, a Honda Valkyrie, and a Confederate, and four-wheelers. In one corner was an old Indy Car (I�m guessing early 90�s vintage) that I believe had a pole position in its history. Further on in the hangar was an Aston Martin Vanquish, a Porsche 911 Turbo, and a Porsche Carrera GT. If I recall what J said correctly, this building represented about one-third of G�s vehicle collection. I didn�t get a chance to raid the other hangar before we drove off to go do other things; our group divided four into the AMG G55, and two in the 911 Turbo. There will soon be an addition to the vehicle fleet, when G acquires a jet that can fly transcontinental, as their business interests are quickly expanding

The pilots were tired (G includes two full-time pilots on staff), as they�d been up since very early in the morning, and so needed time to rest, giving us time to tool around town, and time for the three gentlemen to further discuss their businesses.

After stopping at one of G�s offices, he took us to his farm. On his farm, G had a 1.2-mile road racing course (I am not kidding) on which to play with his many horsepower-aplenty toys (parts of it also served as driveways to other parts of the farm). In the garage that sits on what was the start of the course were even more motorized marvels, including a Richard-Petty-raced NASCAR Cup car, a Davey-Allison-raced NASCAR Cup car, some four-wheeler ATVs, four 125-cc shifter karts, and what looked to me like a single 100cc TaG kart. G let my nephew hop into the Petty car and start it up and rev the engine (which my nephew had some difficulty feathering, resulting in bomb-loud explosions out of that garage, so I snapped just a few quick photos and made a hasty exit from that little building, before hearing damage was earned). Even more graciously, he handed over the keys to any of us willing to take his 911 Turbo out on the track, with no instructions to drive it softly, but only mischievous grinning. It was not a Tiptronic, and I�m not very good at driving a manual, so I let DA drive with me in the passenger seat. With several laps under his belt on that track before I got in, DA turned in some pretty impressive laps with me riding shotgun. DA�s brother also took his turn in the 911 on the track, and came back grinning ear-to-ear. Thanks, G, for letting us open that 911 up completely around your track.

To me, just as impressive as all of the toys was something G built in the middle of his farm property--a beautifully constructed, small Japanese tea house. The views of the property and surrounding mountains were 360 degrees around, and gorgeous. The tea house serves as a relaxing getaway for G, and I think I may have loved that little setup more than any of G�s other toys. It was simply gorgeous, with outlandish attention to detail, in terms of the construction, the hand-painted/lacquered art, and even just the location on the property. Stunning.

We then took a short drive away from the farm to take a tour of G�s new house (currently under construction, but almost complete), which was still another jaw-dropping experience; stopped for a quick dinner at a place called Chick-fil-A (thanks again, G, I wish we had Chick-fil-A's in Michigan), and then headed back to Michigan. Due to a previous engagement, G couldn�t join us on the flight back to Detroit. He did, however, call J while we were taxiing on the runway. After J hung up, he told the pilots that G called to say that he was going to wait on the tarmac to make sure they did what he called a �performance takeoff� for us. The pilots smiled and obliged, the takeoff was fast and steep enough that I can say I felt a positive-G sensation on that plane upon takeoff that I�d only felt something similar to before on a helicopter ride a client gave Jack and me some time ago (although the helicopter ride was rather more extreme). About two hours later, close to midnight, we were back in Michigan. What a day!

Thank you, DA, for letting me tag along on your business trip--one of the best things about it was spending some quality time with you and the family, brother. Thanks, G and J, for your tremendous generosity throughout.

To see more photos from this trip, click here.

Can Jam '08: I'm really looking forward to this.

jude — Sat, 03 May 2008 03:13:03 GMT

To say the least, the last couple of weeks has been rather busy for me. As if to make me pay for the fun I'm about to have at Can Jam '08, the task demons struck a last-minute blow to my pre-Can-Jam rest-up plans. I was working last night until about 0400, went to the kitchen to get a glass of water before finally going to bed, but dropped the glass on the counter from a good height; and the glass did its best Death-Star-explosion imitation, shooting shards and bits from one end of the kitchen to the other. Doh. Out came the flashlights to help me spot the sharp, glimmering debris. Out came the vacuum. The cleanup lasted just shy of two hours, as I kept finding glass debris in virtually every nook and cranny I checked--it was just a half-pint pub glass, but almost two hours in and I was starting to wonder if I dropped and shattered the entire Chihuly ceiling display at Bellagio.

The vacuum woke my three-year-old son up repeatedly, and he apparently enjoyed watching me work from a safe distance, as he kept getting out of bed to come and watch me no matter how many times I put him back in bed (I'm not going to lie and say I didn't enjoy his company, and his typical fusillade of questions about everything--kids have such fun, refreshing views of our world). All of this, by the way, and I never did drink a glass of water before going to bed for what ended up being little more than a couple of hours of sleep, which I ebbed into as the sun was about to crest my east.

We rarely use an alarm clock in my house, as there's a regular, dependable household morning rhythm--we generally wake up when our son wakes up. Here's the rub: The staying-up-with-Dad routine had our son sleeping in later than usual, which had my wife sleeping in later than usual, and, my wife being my alarm clock when my son doen't manage to wake me, I ended up sleeping later than I'd intended. I hadn't even finished packing yet--and I still had some work to do. Double-doh!

Anyway, already-long-story short, my wife and son rushed me to the airport, where I barely made it in time for my scheduled flight time--which ended up being delayed anyway. No worries there--that's what portable rigs and BlackBerries are for. In addition to catching up with colleagues on the BlackBerry, I had a brief instant-message exchange with Head-Fi'er jgonino, which was a nice segue to where I'm on my way to now--hundreds of miles somewhere ahead, and approximately 33,000 feet down, is a growing gathering of like-minded audio geeks from all over the place. And we're going to listen to some groovy gear by a bunch of exhibiting Members of the Trade, homemade gear by DIY'ers, and shared rigs that many of us are toting with us. (With the exception of the Wadia 170 iTransport and Trends Audio UD-10.1, I've pretty much limited what I'm toting to portable gear, in the off-chance I have to go straight to another place for reasons of business after Can Jam '08 ends on Sunday.)

My Can Jam '08 started at the airport. My Can Jam '08 is in its own personal full swing as I listen to Yo La Tengo and Explosions in the Sky while being, well, way up in the sky (please, no explosions, though). Great music-->Apple iPod Classic 160-->CablePro iPod dock cable-->Ray Samuels Audio Predator-->Ultimate Ears UE-11, and I'm a happy man. And the best parts of our Can Jam '08 are still ahead, and I can't wait. I fully intend to roll around in audio goodness like a pig in mud for the next 48 hours.

Thanks to the exceptional Can Jam '08 organization team, led by tyrion, for the gift that's now upon us. If I didn't already say it, "Woohoo!"

I can't believe I'm coming back to my blog with "pretzel v churro"

jude — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:08:47 GMT

As some of the long-time Head-Fi.org Members know, there has been an ongoing joke theme at Head-Fi.org that started with someone creating a poll about pretzels versus churros. Long story short, this theme carried itself into many a thread. As it got a bit out of hand (to say the least), it irritated many folks, myself included; and so now any pretzel versus churro posting almost always gets deleted from the Main Forums.

That being said, I can't believe I'm about to post this photo, and then actually ask a question about what I'm posting:

Yes, sadly, I took this photo. It was snapped at a large trade show in Chicago that I was at for a day. Was it coincidence that these two stands were so close together, or is this common to find pretzels and churros for sale in such close proximity? Is that part of the joke? I wasn't sure, and, sadly, this one of the few photos I took that day (and there were plenty of very cool things I should've photographed but didn't).

Yeah, yeah, yuck it up. But let's make this blog post, and its comments section, the official pretzel versus churro discussion area at Head-Fi.org, assuming anyone still has it in his system to post about it. (And, yes, pretzel/churro posts and threads in the Main Forums will still be deleted.)

It has been a long time since I've blogged, and there's a lot to catch up on, including, but not limited to, Can Jam '08 (the 2008 International Head-Fi Meet); and some great gear I've been playing with, including the Klipsch Image, Sennheiser MX W1, Sleek Audio SA6, Luxman P-1, Trends Audio UD-10.1, Wadia 170 iTransport, Sennheiser IE6 and IE7, Ray Samuels Audio Predator, and some great cable products by CablePro, Stefan AudioArt, ALO Audio and Qables. I'll be posting more about these products over time. In other more relevant news (more relevant than pretzels versus churros), there'll soon be updates to the forum topic breakdowns that I think most will be very happy with.

By the way, my vote? Hot, soft pretzels in any number of configurations (although a sweet churro now and then can really hit the spot). ;)

The Wadia iTransport: I've Been Waiting for This!

jude — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:30:50 GMT

Check out the press release for (and renderings of) the Wadia iTransport iPod Dock.

I want one. Bad.

I have been considering putting together a media server (primarily a music server) for some time now. When John Schaffer told me, back in September, that Wadia was developing what would become the iTransport iPod Dock, I flipped, as I knew what they were developing was something that would be ideal for me (and countless others) in my pursuit of a music server. With iPods storing up to 160GB--and undoubtedly storing still more and more in future models--the iTransport makes a lossless/WAV-packed iPod one heck of a digital transport.

What's the significance of the iTransport? It is the first iPod dock that I'm aware of that extracts music from the iPod to a bit-perfect S/PDIF digital audio output without ever leaving the digital domain. (On top of that, it has a high-resolution component digital video output, as well as analog audio and video outputs.) In concert with a high quality digital-to-analog converter (DAC) or home theater receiver/processor, the iPod/iTransport combination allows the iPod to serve two very distinct, cool roles: the iPod remains the portable source it has always been; but, docked on the iTransport, it should serve as one heck of a digital transport that can feed bit-perfect digital to your choice of DAC/processor.

Wadia president John Schaffer has invited me recently to their headquarters to audition it, but I just haven't been able to get out there before CES came upon us, so Vegas is where I'll first get a listen to it.

We should be among the first to get one for auditioning!

Happy New Year 2008, Everyone!

jude — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 07:10:00 GMT

I celebrated New Year's Eve over here with a small dinner at the house with my wife, my son, my father-in-law, and my wife's cousin (who was kind enough to bring with her a case of Sprecher Root Beer from her home state of Wisconsin).

To bring in 2008, my wife, her cousin and I watched a DVD movie, and then a wonderful HD replay of Live From Lincoln Center: New York Philharmonic New Year's Eve Gala with Joshua Bell some time after midnight, toasting with the aforementioned Sprecher soda.

If I'm still up, I'll call my parents out west when it's their turn at midnight.

I feel endlessly thankful for so much going into another New Year, especially the love of family and friends (and the drowsy-eyed, sleepily-whispered "Good night, sweet dreams, daddy" from my little son tonight, and on so many other nights in 2007).

Happy New Year to you and yours, everyone!

Sennheiser Invites Me To A CES Launch

jude — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:22:00 GMT

So I get an e-mail and a call from Sennheiser, inviting me to attend a product launch they're holding on the night before CES officially starts. They'll set it up, they say, and give Head-Fi.org the scoop on the new products, if I'd go. Okay, let's see....I'm a Head-Fi'er; Sennheiser is inviting me to a launch of some new products, and offering to fly me out for it; I'm a Head-Fi'er; my parents live in Vegas, so I don't see them very often, and I can stay with them; I'm a Head-Fi'er; it's CES; I'm a Head-Fi'er....heck yeah I'll go!

I'm going to cover the launch with an HHB FlashMic, a Canon SD800IS or G5 (hey, they're the best cameras I have right now), quickly uploading photos and a Head-Fi Podcast that Sunday night (January 6, 2008).

I've already received some messages and e-mails asking me what Sennheiser is launching that night. Other than a vague teaser from them, I'm as much in the dark as the rest of you until then (unless they release more information to me in the interim, which I doubt will happen).

My work schedule won't allow me to stay for the whole week of CES, but I expect to be there all day Monday and all day Tuesday (January 7th and 8th, 2008). I'll try to visit with our other Sponsors, too, at least one of whom I know is going to be announcing a product our community will no doubt find significant. (And I'm quite sure there'll be others.)

Needless to say, I'm pumped.

Lucky Charms?

jude — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:39:00 GMT

I'm not sure exactly why I'm posting this, but something pretty amazing (at least I think it's really cool) happened to me yesterday.

I sometimes wear a silver necklace (under my shirt) that my wife gave me on our fifth anniversary that has two charms hanging on it: a crucifix charm and a tag charm with an engraved message from my wife on one side, and the date of our fifth anniversary engraved on the other.

I had been running errands before going to the office. Once in my office, as always I do, I put my backpack and cases down, and took my coat off. Shortly after, I noticed my silver necklace (sans charms) on the floor (a closer inspection showed I hadn't closed the clasp properly). I went out to the parking lot to see if the charms had fallen out there. They hadn't. I checked inside my truck. They weren't there either. I then checked inside my waistband, shook my legs, checked the top of my socks--nada. Finally, I checked my pockets, and, lo, both charms had fallen into the small watch pocket of my jeans (that little sub-pocket in the right-front pocket of most jeans).

Seriously, what are the odds of that happening?

Anyway, the necklace and charms are important to me, so I was very happy to know I still had them.

Why Google Currently Rules The Web Search Roost (Big-Time)

jude — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:32:38 GMT

As many of you know, Head-Fi.org suffered its worst outage since its 2001 founding, on November 10, 2007, remaining down for about two weeks (coming back online early in the morning of November 25, 2007). Long story short, a storage appliance's malfunction (both hardware- and software-related) corrupted a lot of data, primary and backups. The two weeks of downtime was a result of the time it took to reconstruct the data as best we could, with some difficult decisions to make along the way. One of the toughest decisions was the primary goal--what to focus the most on in the site's restoration. In one way, this was the easiest decision: Get as much of the post/thread/forum/user registration data back as we could. Secondary (but not considered lightly) was photo hosting data, post attachment data, and the private message data, all of which, during the outage, we could not give as much consideration to, without increasing the total outage time significantly (there is some chance the photo hosting data can still be recovered, but there is much to do ahead of that, and I am in no position to make any promises about it one way or the other at this point; the post attachment data was lost; the private message data was restored with compromises).

What made what would seem like a straightforward primary goal a series of very difficult decisions was discovering that we had the data necessary to get the post/thread/forum/user data restored up to the very moment of the outage--but that restoring it to that point would require an importing process that would result in every single URL (about 4,000,000 URLs, if I'm not mistaken) to be re-written. (We did try standard restore/repair procedures, but with no luck--a big thanks anyway to the excellent vBulletin Support Team for their guidance in our repair attempts, answering my many questions, even on Thanksgiving afternoon--Steve, I hope the turkey was good that night.) In other words, almost every single forum/post/thread URL (and many user profile URLs) that had been formed by the forum software over the last 6 1/2 years would end up changed at the end of the restoration. Some of the downsides to this are quite obvious, including the fact that virtually all Head-Fi.org page URLs bookmarked prior to the outage are almost certainly now pointing to completely different topics. Also, pages from other websites that linked in to thousands upon thousands of different places within Head-Fi.org, pre-outage, also now mostly point to the wrong pages. One of the most obvious collateral-damage effects from this site-wide internal URL shifting is the effect it has had on search results on the major web search engines that point to Head-Fi.org. But, with Head-Fi.org typically receiving between 2700 and 3100 new posts per day (which is a lot for an audio-specific forum, and certainly for one that focuses on headphones and personal audio), the decision to sacrifice the old URL structure instead of trying to maintain that structure (but potentially losing weeks or months of content) was a painful but obvious choice, given the decision matrix we were faced with.

Prior to the outage, I hadn't given much consideration to SEO (search engine optimization), with respect to Head-Fi.org. Over the years, this site has grown into what is arguably the authority web resource for high-end personal audio and headphones, the clear heart of it all being our forums, and the the content we create within those forums as a community. As its position as an authority site in its space continued to grow, Head-Fi.org continued to rank higher and higher for relevant search queries at the major web search engines (especially Google), with more than half of outside referrals to Head-Fi.org coming from search engines. This URL-change situation required that I start looking at Head-Fi-related SEO closely, which included the licensing and installation of specialized forum SEO software for the purpose. If you're a Head-Fi.org veteran, you probably noticed that the URLs are now formed with words from thread titles (and/or usernames, where applicable), and with the use of more search-engine-spider-friendly static URLs. Normally, with the installation of this SEO software, the existing URLs are simply 301-redirected to the newly-formed URLs, and all is well (that is, any old, bookmarked/cached URLs would still point to the right content). In our case, however, with all the base URLs changed during the recovery import process, 301-redirecting from the original (pre-outage) URLs to the post-outage URLs wasn't practical or possible. So, over time, Head-Fi.org will simply have to have its pages/URLs completely re-indexed by the major web search engines, and external links pointing to the post-outage URLs repaired (and added to) over time. And now that I've been paying such close attention to all things SEO, I have made some interesting observations about the various web search engines, their crawling/indexing activity, and the resultant output on their respective SERPs (search engine results pages).

(Grizzled SEO veterans may find this discussion of very limited I�m-learnin�-somethin� value, but I think most folks would be surprised at the stark differences in search engine performance, from the spidering side, indexing side, and their end products--the quality and freshness of their search results.)

One of the many helpful things the forum SEO software application we installed does is track the spidering activity of the various web search engines, providing rather detailed reporting on which search engine spiders have touched the site, and which specific sections of the site they've crawled.

For the first two days after the site was put back up (again, with most all URLs changed), the two biggest web search engines--Google (#1) and Yahoo (#2)--were close to each other in crawling activity (based on the number of URLs reached by their spiders), with Google edging Yahoo out on Head-Fi.org�s first day back by just under 200 URLs; and Yahoo edging Google out on the second day by just under 150 URLs. Microsoft�s Live--the only other web search engine that crawled enough pages to register on the summary report page--came in, over those first two days, at about 15.5% of the total URLs crawled, versus either Yahoo or Google.

On The Third Day�.

But, on the third day back, things started to look dramatically different. Whereas Yahoo crawled approximately the same number of URLs as it did on days one and two, Googlebot cranked up its rate of crawling, ending up with 29 times the number of URLs crawled versus Yahoo on that day (and more than 120 times Microsoft�s tally for the day). For most of Head-Fi.org�s first 19 days back up, Google kept up the frenetic spidering pace, averaging (over those 19 days) 23 times the crawled URLs versus Yahoo, and 148 times the crawled URLs versus Microsoft! Look at the graph below to get a clear visual of the relative difference in crawling activity between the three top search engines in the first 19 days back up. (Click on the graph below to see Yahoo and Microsoft isolated, to compare the two without Google�s heavy effect on the linear y-axis.)

Google Fresh

No webmaster would want his site being spider-pummeled all day long for nothing, and Google�s Googlebot spider(s) crawl and pull down a lot of data from Head-Fi.org on any given day--but it�s definitely not for naught, as the Google web search results clearly show. I am in awe at how quickly Google can crawl content, do its thorough analysis of content for countless factors relative to pages both within and outside a site (determining content relevancy; identifying duplicate content, spam, unethical SEO practices; etc., etc.), and then quickly get relevant content into its web index (in our case, sometimes within minutes of the content being posted to Head-Fi.org) for relevant search queries. Currently, no other web search engine (from what I can tell) comes remotely close to achieving the search results freshness that Google serves up. Look at the screenshots below to get an example of just how quickly content from Head-Fi.org can be picked up and included in Google�s search index, ready for the world to query and find:

(NOTE: I know a couple of the queries below are obviously long-tail queries. I just copied thread titles exactly as they were, and used them as queries to pull up specific results for the sake of example.)

In this screenshot (below), the search results show a thread URL that was picked up one hour prior to the query (at 2050 EST), meaning that Google picked up that URL less than two hours after the originating post was made at 1756 EST.

In this screenshot (below), the search results show a thread URL that was picked up just 35 minutes prior to the query (at 2048 EST), and so picked up in just over two hours after the thread�s originating post was made.

In this screenshot (below), the result from Head-Fi.org was put up just 19 minutes prior to the query, from a thread created just hours before.

Remarkable.

Once again, it�s obvious that, as of right now, none of Google�s web search engine competitors comes close when it comes to delivering relevant, fresh web search results, which brings me to a little aside:

Do I think it will always be this way? Not necessarily. Who do I think is most likely to close the gap fastest? I�d have to say Microsoft, even though they�re currently far behind #2 Yahoo, in terms of search market share. Microsoft, in its latest update of Live Search, made substantial strides, in terms of improving the relevance of its search results. However, based on the spidering numbers I�m seeing on Head-Fi.org (I know, n=1 is hardly a representative sample), Microsoft is still far behind #2 Yahoo (which itself is far behind #1 Google), in terms of spidering activity--and, on a site like Head-Fi.org (that is updated very frequently, due to it being a busy forum site), high spidering activity is necessary to achieving good search results freshness. But I�ve learned over the years not to count Microsoft out, even when they�re in a position of severe disadvantage. Microsoft is stacked with cash that history has shown us they�re willing to throw at whatever big problem or segment they target. Remember (in what feels to me like eons ago) when Netscape was at 95+% of the browser market, and how bad IE 2.x was? Microsoft re-tooled (and invested heavily) to focus on the Internet, and ended up dominating browser market share eventually (and still does today), with a combination of OS-bundling and serious improvements to their browser over the years. (And though I do like Firefox for all its available add-ons, I still also use IE, as it doesn't leak memory like Firefox-the-memory-hog, which is something the Mozilla team will have to fix if Firefox is ever going to be a serious player in the mobile browser market). As a PDA reviewer years ago, I remember receiving loaner units of the first generation of Microsoft Windows CE-powered handheld PCs and Palm PCs (later re-named "Pocket PCs," after being sued by Palm), and marveling at how incomplete they felt, even compared to the simpler (but much more elegant) PalmPilot's Palm OS. Fast forward to 2007, and I dumped my Palm OS PDA years ago for Pocket PCs powered by Windows Mobile (which is a more current, complete, elegant version of Windows CE, that, for my purposes, now trounces Palm); and this very blog post is being drafted on an old NEC MobilePro handheld PC, running one of the first decent versions of Windows CE. Also, Windows Mobile is now the OS of choice for many of the world's latest generation of smart mobile phones. Again, I'll not count Microsoft out of any segment (including web search) until they give me strong reason to. I think we'll see some very serious gains in their web search prowess in the coming months and years, but catching up to Google may end up being one of their biggest challenges yet. Web search is OS-independent (so there's less in this space for Microsoft to leverage with their OS dominance), and Google is hardly sitting still when it comes to advancing that front, with Google currently getting better faster than all of its web search competitors (in my opinion), only further padding its lead as time goes by. Both Microsoft and Google continue to build immense data centers worldwide, amassing vast computing power to apply to web search and other applications. For now, though, it just seems to me that Google navigates with greater ease (as a company) through the web and what it is, and what it's becoming, than Microsoft currently does.

What Head-Fi.org SEO-Related Challenges Remain, Post-Outage?

There are still some challenges that remain with respect to SEO and a post-outage Head-Fi.org. First, the non-Google web search engines--because they do not crawl at nearly the rate that Google does, and because they don�t put up what they do crawl as fast as Google does--will likely not send a lot of correctly-pointed traffic Head-Fi�s way any time very soon, due to the fact that they�re simply not picking up and displaying the revised URLs in great abundance yet. Let me make clear that I�m not asserting that they�re in any way responsible for fixing what the outage caused, but only making the comparison between how Yahoo and Microsoft spider, index and present, versus Google, post-outage.

And even though Google is far surpassing its competitors with respect to crawling, indexing, and representing the post-outage Head-Fi.org, there is still a long way to go before the revised URLs are completely crawled and indexed, and the old (pre-November 10, 2007) URLs are completely replaced with them in the Google web index. But, again, nobody comes close to the progress Google has made in this regard, and I�m noticing that, increasingly, the revised URLs are starting to replace the old URLs in Google�s index. For example, a Google search for a blog post that I made that was put back up post-outage (again, with a different URL), is now being shown in Google ahead of the old, cached, pre-outage version of it (I�m starting to see these older results dropping, too, as Google discovers that they�re unreachable and/or no longer representative, or less representative, of the query). No other search engine has picked up this change yet. In fact, Yahoo, for the same query, doesn�t even show any version, new or old, of that blog post. Part of this is probably how Yahoo and Google treat the query differently, with Google apparently giving much more weight to word proximity and order. (To get this query to pull something relevant in Yahoo up, you have to query it as a phrase--framing the query in quotation marks.) Microsoft�s Live, for the same query, shows a cached version of the post, which now points to the wrong place, after the post-outage URL re-writes (but at least it�s showing a more relevant result than Yahoo).

Long story short, this site and its unique situation with respect to its pre- and post-outage states, is one clear illustration of why Google still rules the game of searching the World Wide Web, and likely will for some time to come. I�m thankful to see Google making such strong progress on the re-indexing and representation of post-outage Head-Fi.org in its web search index. Of course, I wish that I could say the same for Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search, but, based on what I've seen so far, it'll be a much longer time coming on those search engines.

And to all of you, thanks for coming back to Head-Fi.org after the outage. I missed y�all, and I�m glad as heck we're back.
_________________

Some sites and articles to read, relevant to this post:

Google�s Matt Cutts� blog post on Google�s �Minty Fresh Indexing.�
An interesting article on the power of �cloud computing,� and the various players (and their datacenters), including the aforementioned companies.
SearchEngineLand.com is currently my favorite site for web search engine industry news (with great feeds).
SEOmoz.org is a great resource for information on SEO and SEM (search engine marketing), and where I am a Premium Member (and it�s worth every penny so far).
WebMasterWorld is another great resource for webmaster information of all stripes, including, of course, SEO and SEM. I am also an annual subscriber to their premium content.

Ray Samuels Audio Predator Prototype Arrives For A Brief Stay

jude — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:38:00 GMT

Click on the photo above for a larger version.

Before it heads to New York for the Official NYC Fall Regional Meet (2007-11-10), a Ray Samuels Audio Predator USB DAC/portable amp prototype arrived for a brief stay with me. It is uncased (see the photo above), so I just have it sitting on a white index card. (Ray Samuels made sure to make sure that I understood that, as an electrical device uncased, it's potentially susceptible to shorting should anything conductive cross the exposed paths. I told Ray not to worry, as the first thing I'd do to protect it would be to wrap it snugly in aluminum foil. I think Ray's heart skipped a few beats, before he realized a second or two later that I was joking.)

I've only had three or four hours on it, so all that the Predator's played for me so far is some Loudon Wainwright III (Rufus' dad), John Pizzarelli Trio, Tord Gustavsen Trio, and Brad Mehldau. And, since I forgot my only 1/4"-to-mini adapter at the office, I haven't had a chance yet to use the Predator with any of my favorite full-sized headphones (currently the Sennheiser HD650 and Grado GS-1000). So, so far it has been all IEM use, trying both the Ultimate Ears UE-10 Pro and UE-11, both sounding fantastic out of the Predator in either low- or medium-gain modes (high is too high for these IEMs). Before the night's over, I may also try the Predator with the SHURE SE530, Ultimate Ears Triple.Fi 10 Pro, and Yuin PK-1.

So far, with the UE-11 and UE-10 Pro, the Predator's sound reminds me of my Ray Samuels Audio Hornet, which is my current favorite of my portable amps. I'll compare the Hornet (with the Firestone Audio Fubar II as its USB DAC) with the Predator, hopefully tomorrow, or sometime this weekend. As with my Hornet, I love how well the Predator is able to convey piano, which is critical to me, since I listen to a disproportionate amount of piano (both jazz and classical). In fact, I just cued up Marc-Andr� Hamelin performing Jules Massenet's "Valse folle" from Hamelin's Kaleidoscope album, and ended up playing it three times in a row, because, as the piece's name might indicate it could, it always puts an ear-to-ear smile on my face. The Predator (through the UE-11) conveys Hamelin and his piano's presence very dynamically, very impressively. Again, so critical to me, this diminutive setup does piano great justice.

I'm champin' at the bit to try this Predator with my full-size headphones, which I'll do later today, and to get a greater variety of music played through it. (It's 0436 over here, I've got to get up in a couple of hours, and I'm still up listening and working, and typing this up.)

So far, so very good, Se�or Samuels. Please put me on the list for the first batch!

(I haven't heard HeadAmp's Pico USB DAC/portable amp yet--which has been getting some rave reviews so far from those who've heard it--but will do so at my earliest opportunity.)

Sleek Audio Pays Me A Visit, And Lets Me Audition Their Upcoming SA6

jude — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:20:00 GMT

Earlier this week, Mark and Jason Krywko from Sleek Audio paid a visit to my office to chat, and to let me hear their upcoming SA6 in-ear monitor. A father and son team with years of experience in the hearing aid business, they have spent the last few years genuinely paying close attention to the community at Head-Fi.org, and set out to create a product that addressed what they saw as a fundamental need based on their observations: a headphone (in this case, an in-ear monitor) that could be easily user-customized to accommodate the widely varying sonic preferences of listeners and/or the variations in sonic character of different gear, and to do so mechanically/acoustically (as opposed to using electronic equalization).

The ability to do this is something I've always wanted to see in a headphone--mechanical/acoustic equalization. With loudspeakers, audiophiles regularly adjust for sonic preferences by adjusting loudspeaker placement--moving speakers closer to (or further away) from walls and corners can dramatically affect bass performance; and toeing-in speakers can be used to adjust treble response. Even with some full-sized headphones, varying headphone placement over the ears can be used to some degree to adjust headphone frequency response (but I'd still like to see a full-sized audiophile headphone that provides purpose-built acoustic/mechanical sound tailoring). But with IEMs, it's pretty much a zero-sum game--either they're inserted correctly or they're not (there is some tweaking that can be done with the use of different tip types, but not with the level of control or predictability that the Krywkos were obviously after).

Upon arriving at my office, the Krywkows unfurled some frequency response measurement sheets (with accompanying narrative) to show me just what effects the interchanging of the various sonics-adjusting parts have. It was very clear to me that this father-son pair was very serious about the precision of their methods and designs, with respect to the goal of predictable frequency response adjustments through the use of interchangeable pieces. Specifically, the SA6 comes with three different "bass ports," and three different "treble tubes" (for each of the two earpieces, of course). (For simplicity�s sake, let�s just call each of the three variations of bass ports and treble tubes minus, flat, and plus.) The use of the term �bass port� might suggest that the SA6 isn�t sealed, but it is--if I understood the Krywkos correctly, the different bass ports simply change the internal volume of the body (and thus the bass response); but the SA6, regardless of which bass port you use, remains sealed, and you can expect isolation from ambient noise to be competitive with other universal-fit IEMs. The treble tubes adjust treble response through both filtering and tube diameter (again, if I understood their explanations correctly). NOTE: The cable is also removable, using proprietary connectors that allow the cable to turn 360-degrees at each earpiece (and will probably also mean different cable-length choices at some point, if not from the outset).

All three of us listened to the SA6 prototype through my Tomahawk, with both Mark and Jason grinning broadly upon hearing what a good portable amp could do for their SA6. I was very impressed with this $249 IEM, and the way it could be tailored. During the visit, I kept the flat bass port in, but tried the flat and plus treble tubes, and the plus very noticeably increased the treble energy, changing the entire character of the SA6. I have since played with all the various pieces, and the various combinations make for a changeling of an IEM--their system works. So far, in early listening, the plus bass port is a little too big and loose for me, the flat being the best combination of control, detail and extension. And, for a single-driver IEM, there is significant bass extension here--if you�re thinking single-driver means Etymotic-type bass quantity, you�re only right when you put in the minus bass port.

I�ll say more about the SA6 in the headphone/earphone forum after more time with the SA6 prototype I currently have. We also recorded a brief interview segment with the Krywkos while they were in the office, using the HHB FlashMic, so listen for that in Episode 005 of the Head-Fi Podcast, which should be released soon.

The Trends Audio UD-10.1 Gets Me A Little Deeper Into Computer Audio

jude — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:15:00 GMT

Click photo above for a larger image.

I have recently picked up a new product that is not portable-audio-related (boomana is probably smiling), but is related to another area I've found increasingly fun to experiment with, which is computer audio. (Actually, it was HeadRoom's Tyll Hertsens who was the first to demonstrate to me, during a visit to my office a couple of years ago, just how good computer audio can be, and who continues to push the envelope in this regard at HeadRoom.) I'm still a relative novice in this area, but am getting ever deeper into it. I'm sworn to confidentiality on one device I'm dying to see released that will almost certainly get me even more into it, and I can't wait until it's out (don't ask, I'm not telling, or even hinting). For now, I picked up a Trends UD-10.1 USB Audio Converter, which is a very affordable device that can be used as either a USB DAC, or--and it sounds much better this way, in my experience so far--as a device to output SPDIF from your computer's USB (complete with RCA, AES/EBU, BNC, and optical digital outputs), from which you can take that digital out and feed your favorite audiophile DAC (I'm still using a trusty MSB Gold Link III with MSB Power Base that I still absolutely love the sound of). The Trends/MSB combination has replaced my Firestone Audio Fubar II USB DAC at home in my main desktop rig (the Fubar II now being my office USB DAC). I'll offer more words about this really clever, affordable Trends Audio device in the forums after I spend more time with it, but being able to run my computer audio through that upsampling MSB DAC sounds awesome so far.

Now, getting back to portable audio (boomana may not be smiling so much anymore ): Earlier this week...(see next post)...

Big Weekend for Head-Fi Meets

jude — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:38:00 GMT

This is a big weekend for Head-Fi Meets around the world, and I wish I could have attended at least one of them, especially the "Storm Before The Jam" Meet in Florida, which is a mild preview (yeah, like our Florida Contingent does anything mildly) of the kind of hijinks, fun, and gear the very familial Florida Crew is arranging for us for the upcoming Can Jam '08, the 2008 International Head-Fi Meet taking place in Florida on May 3rd and 4th, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the Embassy Suites in Fort Lauderdale on 17th Street. There are three new products that I've been dying to listen to--the Meier Audio Corda HeadSix portable amp, the Ray Samuels Audio Predator prototype portable amp/USB DAC, and the HeadAmp Pico portable amp/DAC--and I know at least the latter two are making their debuts this weekend.

This was a true rehearsal for the upcoming Can Jam '08, with previous International Head-Fi Meet planners bringing their Big-Meet-Mojo and experience with them to Florida this weekend--both immtbiker (the lead coordinator of the very first International Head-Fi Meet in New York in 2006) and Voltron (the lead coordinator of the Second International Head-Fi Meet--HeadFest 2007) flew in for this "Storm Before The Jam."

I'm at a Halloween party right now, which, though fun, doesn't have a personal audio rig anywhere in sight (well, 'cept the portable one in my messenger bag, which I'm seriously considering using)--but the party throwers (good friends of ours) do have one heck of a home theater system, with what might be the best-resolving 10-foot screen I've ever seen (unfortunately, their amazing Barco is currently down, as they're in the midst of a major home renovation, so no video awe for me here tonight). At least there's some music I like being played out in the living room (Alice In Chains Unplugged) right now.

Like the rest of you, I'm eagerly awaiting reading the Meet impressions posts from the various Meets happening this weekend. I have a feeling I'll be indulging in some new Head-Fi product(s) for Christmas this season, and, given my listening lifestyle over this past year, I have a feeling anything I pick up for the holidays will be portable-audio-related (hence my great interest in the HeadSix, Predator and Pico).

I can�t wait to see those impressions flowing! (And I can't wait for Can Jam '08!)

C�ad M�le F�ilte! My Ireland Vacation Journal

jude — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:06:00 GMT

(NOTE: This lengthy post is mostly intended for my close friends and family. Of course, should you wish to read through this long vacation recap, be my guest.)

I'm convinced that it's places like this that inspire writers (and even non-writers like me) to write. This lush, private, hedged-in courtyard, just off the gorgeous, perfectly green, sloped yards of an estate (on the center of which sits what is now my dream house)--with the perfect combination of sounds of a fast-flowing stream out front, birds of several varieties singing and chirping, and the oddly comforting noises (comforting for a Metro Detroit suburbanite anyway) from the occasional cars and trucks on the road that pass this place that I wish was mine forever--inspires thoughts that demand being expressed through my hands into this keyboard that sits in front of me (or vocally if anyone was actually sitting in front of me; but, thankfully for that someone, I'm alone, and so I type). I could live here at this estate for the rest of my life, if not for a couple of minor glitches: First, it's not for sale; second, even if it was for sale, it would almost certainly be so far out of my current price range that buying it at even half the price might require a career change, to, say, something that involves nervous couriers trying to get through customs, very fast speedboats, and very low-flying planes trying to evade radar. Of course, there's always the possibility that my legitimate career choice(s) could eventually lead me on a path back to County Galway in Ireland as not just the renter, but the buyer of this emerald slice of inspirational heaven on earth, and so I've another new goal in life, which is to be old (but hopefully not too old) and happy here with my wife eventually.

The crunching of gravel under tires out front brings even more peace to my heart, reassuring me now that my family has just safely returned in our rented van after taking a drive to look at a nearby 15th century castle and its grounds. (For Americans unfamiliar with Irish roads, our driveways are wider than most of them; so a safe return for someone used to driving on much wider roads, on the opposite side, is a reasonable thing to be thankful for.) And the sound of my three-year-old son's cute little shoes crunch-crunch-crunching through the gravel will soon lure me from this table and bench in this dreamy courtyard, through the arched arbor opening in the back yard's densed hedge border to greet them all (my son, my wife, my sister-in-law, and our cousin) out front. (My father-in-law is in the large home's front room taking in a book in front of a peat-brick-fueled fire.)

This is me on my first out-of-the-country vacation I've taken in almost seven years. Yes, business travels have taken me to many places in between vacations--including this very country where now I am--but it is pretty much always without the company of my family. And, though my wife's family has a lovely cottage on one of the Great Lakes that we escape to for weekend (and occasional week-long) getaways, I'm reminded here that we should plan on getting away together--really getting away like this--more often than once every six or seven years.

I feel a kinship with Ireland's County Galway that quite literally started with a song many years ago. Before so sadly it closed, my father-in-law used to love to treat us to turkey dinners at Michigan's oldest inn, the Botsford Inn. It was a glorious throwback to a time long before my time to enter the old foyer of the Bostford Inn, and to be greeted and led into one of its dining rooms by its latest proprietor, Creon Smith, like we were old friends of the place--we all felt like small pieces of a whole lot of history there every time we went. On some nights there--the best nights there, as far as I was concerned--a man named Lyman P. (Dusty) Rhodes would serve as troubador to the smiling diners, his particular specialty being a knack for fully transporting his audience to Ireland with a God-given gift for story-telling and music. Thanks to Dusty, I had Ireland steeped in my heart long before I'd ever stepped foot in it, or sipped at a Guinness properly poured. One song--and Dusty's passionately descriptive narrative that preceded it--always resonated with me more than any of the others (and I loved all of them), and it was "Galway Bay." I felt I had to find out more about this place that clearly owned a part of Dusty's heart, even after just the first time I'd heard him sing it (and I've since heard him sing it many times), so I read about it, and saw pictures from the various parts of County Galway, and put it on my short list of places I absolutely have to visit before I die.

Then, on a flight to Dublin a few years back, I ended up sitting with a red-headed, freckle-faced, green-eyed Irish girl who spoke Gaeilge (Irish) as her first language, and English as her second, who happened to be from a place in County Galway, where (and I'm not kidding) her parents owned a pub, essentially making her the most Irish girl in the world, as far as I was concerned. And, though she wasn't currently living there at the time (she was teaching English in another part of the world, and returning home for a visit), there wasn't an �ire-accented syllable she spoke to me about her home (including the phrases I asked her to speak to me in Irish) that didn't strengthen my desire to visit Galway. Unfortunately, on that particular visit to Ireland, I never got any closer to Galway than Tullamore (and that certainly isn't very close)--though, for a Head-Fi'er like me, Tullamore was particularly special in another way, because I had the opportunity to tour Sennheiser's state-of-the-art factory there (and it's in that factory that they manufacture some of my favorite headphones, like the HD600 and HD650).

Now, several years later, I finally made it to this place I'd also since seen on a couple of different travel television shows (shows that, again, did nothing to wane my deep desire to one day be here). My family arrived in Ireland a week before me, staying at a cottage in Kilkenny, and driving the van to several counties and towns from there, logging countless kilometers (hey, I'm in Ireland, so kilometers it is for now). We were to meet up in Galway, but my journey there wasn't quite as dreamy as the place itself has been, and ended up being, for me. Here's a bullet-point summary of my journey from Detroit to Shannon Airport and Galway, most of which I wrote at points in transit (all times in Eastern Standard Time, unless otherwise noted):

1343 flight from Detroit to New York delayed to 1500. Plane taxis at 1510. Something called a "ground stop" at JFK is keeping us grounded in Detroit, but for how long I have no idea. Well, it's now 1715, and we're finally taking off for JFK. I thought planning a three-hour layover at JFK would give me plenty of scheduling wiggle-room, but....
....we arrive at JFK about a half-hour after my Aer Lingus flight to Shannon went wheels-up.
At JFK, I find out that I may have to wait until the next day to catch a flight out, as their only other flight to Ireland remaining that night (a 2140 to Dublin) isn't filled, but also doesn't have enough meals for all the passengers, due to a glitch in the Aer Lingus flight-planning matrix. Like several others, I am put on stand-by, pending the hopeful arrival of more food for the flight. I meet a nice young lady from Manhattan named Heather, heading to Dublin to stay with friends. Heather is text messaging back and forth with her friends in Dublin to keep them updated, as I am also doing with my wife, who is in Kilkenny. Like me, Heather's on standby, awaiting news of the food situation, both of us gladly willing to waive our meals to get on that flight (but, alas, it seems FAA regulations don't care whether or not we're willing to skip our flight meals).
Hooray! They got the food just in time to get us on that 2140 flight. To get me to Shannon, Aer Lingus is re-routing me on that 2140 flight to Dublin, with a subsequent connector to Shannon. Though scheduled for a 2140 takeoff, the flight doesn't go wheels-up until just before midnight. For six hours or so, my portable rig keeps me company, entertaining me with music and podcasts. The portable rig I have with me for this trip is my Ray Samuels Audio Tomahawk (chosen for its combination of fidelity and its seemingly endless battery life, which is great for extended travels), my iPod nano, an ALO Audio three-wire Jena Cryo Dock (chosen for its physical flexibility), an Ultimate Ears UE-11 in-ear monitor, and a Sennheiser PXC450 active noise-canceling headphone (which I like for its full-size, comfort, and "talkthrough" feature, which allows me to hear what's going on around me when needed). I listen to some GTD Connect podcasts, the new Radiohead album In Rainbows (I love it), a lot of Brad Mehldau and Tord Gustavsen Trio, and some other podcasts about SEO and SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing), and still more music of every stripe.
Despite the late flight out of JFK to Dublin, I do still make it in time for my connector to Shannon in Dublin, which ends up taking off at 0645 EST. It's a very short flight from Dublin to Shannon, taking off and landing in what seemed like a half-hour at best.
I'm in Shannon, but my luggage is apparently still in New York--don't get me started. At the earliest, I'll get it tomorrow, said the very nice gentlemen manning the lost luggage desk. One of the men gives me a complimentary Aer Lingus dopp kit for my troubles, telling me he's �99.9% certain� I'll get my luggage delivered to me at the house we rented in County Galway tomorrow (which is almost two hours away from Shannon Airport by bus). (I found out later that, in addition to toiletries and a razor, inside of that dopp kit was underwear, and an undershirt--the undershirt was very roomy on me, but, on the other end of the fit continuum, wearing the Aer Lingus underwear was as close to wearing a thong as I ever hope to get.)
I hop on a bus to Galway at 0955 EST. It's about a two-hour ride. 10 miles shy of Galway, it breaks down, apparently having blown its radiator. It is from this broken-down bus that I'm typing this now. Luckily, at the airport bus stop a couple of hours prior, I met a nice gal from New Zealand, who has been backpacking it through Europe for the last 3 1/2 months (staying with friends along the way, too). We discuss traveling, our families, our friends, music, and even headphones. At some point in the conversation, she mentions that her iPod's iBuds have been dying a crackling death. I reach into my backpack and give her a pair of Sennheiser earbuds, to her delight.
My temporary travel pal (and now Facebook friend) and I get on the new bus that comes to save us from our now-useless, overheated vessel, and complete our trip to Galway. We gab for the remaining distance to Galway, and, as we exit the bus together, chatting it up, my wife--who'd been touring Ireland with my son, her sister, her cousin, and her father for over a week before I got there--surprises me at the bus stop, tugging at my shirt. I introduce my new travel buddy to my wife, we say our good-byes-and-nice-to-meet-you's, and then my wife and I saunter off arm-in-arm to the waiting van that my family'd been traveling 'round Ireland in before I arrived. (The New Zealander and I, later that week, greeted each other on Facebook again, where we wished each other well, updated each other on our travels, and she told me the Sennheiser earbuds sounded fantastic.)
My luggage arrived today around 1700 Ireland time (the day after I arrived in Ireland), which couldn't have been a more welcome relief, after what felt like an eternity of constantly yanking that Aer Lingus underwear from my butt crack.

As can probably be determined by the opening of this post, the rest of my vacation was about as perfect as I could have wished for. Again, the house we stayed in was gorgeous, as were its grounds and surrounding area. Every morning we gathered as a family in the large kitchen, to have our coffee and breakfast warmed by the ambiance of the fireplace lit with a fragrant fire of peat bricks. The house�s formal dining room was just too formal for us, so we never used it; it did end up, however, being my Internet home base, even though I didn't end up doing much of anything online during the week. Looking out of the upstairs bedroom windows, we would occasionally see cows from the field behind our yard snacking on the hedges that bordered the back of the property.

We packed a lot of sightseeing and relaxation into our time together, and I'll forever treasure the memories of my time in County Galway (and other parts of Ireland we drove to) with my wonderful family. I had raw oysters in Clarinbridge, at a place that came highly recommended by a local for their fresh oysters. We were treated to a round of drinks by the owner of a pub that we initially couldn't figure out by its sign if it was named "Anglers" or "Antlers" (click here to see a picture of the sign), which wasn't made any easier by the fact that inside the pub were wall-hung taxidermied fish and, yes, antlers. (The fish outnumbered the antlers and appeared on the sign, so we guessed "Anglers," and it turns out we were right.) We went to the Cliffs of Moher. We did some rock climbing and scrambling in the Burrens. We shopped. We drank countless pints of Guinness and Smithwick's in as many pubs as we could amble into. And we made that new dream house of mine (new to me, but probably built in the early 1800's) feel very much like our home for just over a week.

I�m in my beloved courtyard again, and it�s the day before we depart for home. For a man to spout this much long-windedness for what amounted to just over a week�s vacation for him is an obvious sign that he probably needs to vacation more often than he does. Unfortunately, my work responsibilities make that very difficult, and it may be a few years again before I can leave the country like this with my family (I hope not, but if history is any guide�). And that�s why I�ll always treasure the memories of this trip, my first out of the country with my son, and the first in many years with my wife (and with other members of our family).

I've been on vacation for the past week....

jude — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:05:00 GMT

....but will be returning this Saturday (2007-10-20). I'll post a couple of photos of where I've been in my Facebook profile.