Bring'em on!!!

Now, guess who's gone and scored some tickets to a friendly game of football played in the new Home of Football? Yup, that's right:

BRAZIL vs ARGENTINA
Arsenal Emirates Stadium
Sunday September 3rd 2006

Oh yeah :-)

Hola, Barcelona!

Funnily enough, I'm finding myself writing this while watching Barcelona destroy some unknown eastern european team in the Champions League. I was standing in this very arena, the Nou Camp, just a couple of weeks ago. This was my first trip to Spain, or more precisely Catalunya, where Lora and I spent 4 days in the company of Errol & Julia.

As we were leaving the tarmac of Heathrow on the Saturday morning, we had no qualms about leaving London behind for a few days, as the weather had been absolutely atrocious. The forecasts for Barcelona were a bit ambiguous and we got a bit apprehensive when we noticed that all we'd seen of France were mountains poking through clouds. Still, in the end, we had no complaints about the hot and humid weather, although I did notice a singular pattern of cloudy mornings usually transforming into bright sunny days by lunch time.

Barcelona welcomed the Olympics in 1992 (who can forget the Dream Team!?) and it is quite obvious in some of the city's architecture and layout that major work was done to present a great face to the world. The seafront is quite lovely, with a long promenade down to the Olympic village, and a grand marina lined up with swanky seafood restaurants, an area which reminded me a lot of the Rocks in Sydney.

We did a lot of walking in four days but, at the same time, we were keen not to overdo it and enjoy some R&R. Still, there were a few things we just had to see, like La Sagrada Familia (absolutely amazing) and the aforementioned Nou Camp. We also had time to catch the cable car up to Montjuic Castel and the Olympic park, check out La Ciutadella, go for a hike through Parc Güell and do some shopping along La Rambla.

We picked different areas to visit every day, which would usually end with a trip back to the hotel for some rest near the rooftop pool before dressing up and heading out into the warm summer evening to find a nice place to eat, possibly preceded or followed by some coktails (Sex On The Beach! Mmh!)

Contrary to what some might believe, we didn't have tapas every day (mostly lunch) nor did we gorge ourselves on sangria (only on the last day) but I did get to have a seafood paella. Niiiiice. (My sole meuniere on the last day was heavenly, too. Fresh fish. Makes all the difference.)

I was wondering what to expect from the locals. Since the Catalan pride has been well documented, I wasn't sure whether people would expect us to speak catalan or spanish. The latter was my preference, as I was somehow hoping to magically remember my piss-poor spanish learnt in high-school. In the end, I did remember a few things, enough to get by, and most people spoke english anyway...

FruitStock 2006, Hemscott Summer Party, Tex 'n Tim, etc.

Ok, this one's gonna be a bit of a quick catchup post. I've been getting very lazy about updating this blog so I'll try to clear some of the backlog.

Hemscott Summer Party
This year, my company organized a cruise on the Thames for our Summer party. Luckily, the weather was on our side as we slowly made our way eastwards towards Greenwich while the last rays of sunset were lighting the sky. It was quite nice but it got even better when we turned around and started going up towards the West End, under the stars. A bit of a shame that a lot of people got off at the first stop, in order to get an early night in (it was a schoolnight, after all). They missed on the best sights.


FruitStock 2006
I'm still not sure why they call it the "Innocent Festival" but it'd been good fun last year so I thought it't be good to check out again, especially as Lora had never been. It was actually a bit weird to realize that I've been in London long enough now that a new "cycle" has started and I'm able to go back to this kind of events. To be honest, we didn't catch too many of the musical acts (although I heard some cool african percussion) but the different "organic" food outlets got more of my attention, as well as some dancers demonstrating the brazilian martial art called "Capoeira", which is a weird mix of dance moves and kicks and flips.


Tex 'n' Tim
As people who know me will be aware, I'm a huge fan of You Am I, who I consider the best Australian live rock act of the last 20 years. So, when I heard Tim Rogers, their frontman/leader was going on tour with Tex Perkins and coming to the UK, I just had to go! it gave me the opportunity to expose Lora to some good old Aussie rock. Tex & Tim are two very charismatic performers and they were on good form that night, filling the Carling Academy with very happy aussies. They also threw in some unlikely covers which had the crowd going bonkers. Let just say I'll never, ever be able to listen to Rod Stewart the same way.

The Island Nearest To Paradise.

I just found this site on my sister's blog, with photos from New Caledonia, organized in albums and categories. Unfortunately, some of the best shots don't display right now but it's still a nice sight (sight. site. night sight, nice site, geddit? oh well, never mind...)

Something that'd been bugging me for a while...

I remember, when I was a lad, asking my dad one day why his old Marantz amplifier sounded so much better and louder than his brand-new Dolby Surround Yamaha amplifier. I remember being a bit surprised at the time because the manuals (yeah, I read these back then. Sad, huh?) said that the Yamaha was putting out almost double the amount of wattage of the Marantz. My dad was a bit underwhelmed by his new acquisition back then but I guess it had sounded good in the soundroom...

Well, while browsing a Marantz anthology site today, I came across a FAQ entry which finally explained to me the discrepancy between the old and the new, and finally gave me a solid argument with which I can win the countless debates I like to start by stating that "the old shit sounds better":

Q: Why does a 35 watt Marantz sound better and louder than many 100 watt receivers?

"Because 35 watts/channel as specified by Marantz in the 1970's meant...

"	The unit can deliver 35 watts into 8 ohms for one hour, from all channels at the same time, with no significant change in distortion, or other specifications, at any time during, or after, the test hour."

...while 100 watts/channel today (for instance, in my JVC surround system) means...

"	The unit can deliver 100 watts for a fraction of a second, in one channel only, if the other channels aren't running and nothing else high energy has happened to drain the power supply of stored energy in the last few seconds."

In fact, my JVC 5-channel Dolby surround receiver claims 500 watts RMS, but the power consumption label on the back panel tells the story:

320 Watts

If my JVC receiver was 100% efficient, meaning that every bit of power it took from the wall was delivered to the speakers as audio power (which it isn't), that'd give you only 64 watts a channel, about 2/3rds of the claimed power rating (which is 100 watts per channel, remember, 500 delivered as 100 per each of the five channels.)

But since the receiver can only (at best) convert about 50% of the available energy to the speakers, and the available energy is what is left over after the heat is generated (did I mention that this model JVC runs almost too hot to touch on top, even when making no sound at all?) and the watts that go to lighting the panel and powering all of the other circuitry are accounted for, the system can perhaps, when brand new, on a good day, generate 32 watts a channel continuously with all the channels going, which is pretty sorry compared to the claimed 100 watt per channel rating. That is less power per channel than an old 2235 receiver. Shocking, eh?

Turning it around, because of the way that the units were rated in the 1970's, that classic 2235 Marantz receiver, rated at 35 watts a channel, can dependably produce much more than 35 watts in both channels at the same time for a minute or two (far longer than the peaks in a modern receiver.) An honest rating for use with music for the power amplifiers of an older Marantz is generally in the range of 120% of rated power or even higher.

These ratings were instituted because of many false claims for power output that were being made using many different types of power measurement and general baloney at that time. IHF, RMS, Peak, Peak Music Power, Average, etc. RMS is what was settled on, and it's still widely used today, but the one hour rating was dropped some time back.

Interestingly, the situation that caused the RMS for one hour ratings to be made standard is now recurring - as I mentioned above, my JVC's ratings are pretty obviously designed to deceive the consumer to an extreme degree. Certainly there is no way that they can claim that those ratings paint an accurate picture of the amount of power the receiver can actually deliver in real world conditions - loud music and cinema surround takes a lot of power, in a lot of channels. Try listening to Jurassic Park... wait till the Tyrannosaur walks up behind you, or there is something exciting going on. Those 32 watts are pretty puny..."

This explains a few things...

A friend of mine sent me this link (thanks Col), which goes on to explain the following:

"The French blog at twice the rate of US Internet users and one-third more than the Brits.

This comes as no real surprise, considering their reputation for lengthy discourse. No Frenchman would be denied his right to put forth his opinion, in great detail… and the Internet provides a world-wide stage upon which to enlighten the ignorant about whatever subject might tempt the blogger."

Mmh, given the rate at which I update this blog (shut up, Col, yes, I'm really french), I'd say that the conclusion of the article, as all studies and surveys, gives only light to a broad generalization. In my case, you could say I've chosen to leave the ignorant to err in the unwise darkness that pervades their pointlessly ignorant lives :-)

However, I must say I'm not really surprised either. After all, I've seen my sister update her blog twice, sometimes thrice a day, during working hours! I guess, after living in Paris for so long, she really is one of them ;-) (No, sis, don't hit me! No hittin'! Nooo!!!)