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Clueing up on Pot Seeds

Continue Reading March 5th, 2010

If shopping for medical cannabis seeds, caliber and security really makes a difference. After you slip by the hustles, what’s your next move? Look for a seedbank offering potent strains with safe shipping. You should consider a number of questions to help you reduce the risks before you find a cannabis seed store you can be sure of.

Test Medical Cannabis Strains — Identify Skunk Seeds

Continue Reading January 21st, 2010

Users of skunk seeds look for trustworthy traders and valuable stock. Optimally, the seed bank of your choice should promise swift shipping of the very best varieties — but beware hustles. So here’s what you should remember so you can cruise past the common issues and choose an approved store for your collection…

Thinkings Daily

August 18th, 2009

I hope you don’t mind my sharing these links with you from a couple weeks ago. Let me know if these are useful for you - if yes, I’ll keep sharing. Enjoy the safety of a security system, energize your day and go camping.

Camping Tent

We went up to the mountains to camp a while ago. Sometimes the mountains just dump a ton of rain on you when you least expect it. Shopping before a camping trip is fun - especially online. We found a good camping tent. Shipping a tent online can be stressful…luckily the dang thing made it to us on time. The website I used was really helpful. Tent arrived as expected. Shipping was free. I couldn’t believe it. The mountains are so beautiful. It was an awesome time. Had a blast!

Home Security Systems

High tech home security is in the house now because of this vacation. We’re a young family and are starting to accumulate some valuable things. If I had to guess, I’d say the computer is most valuable. We searched through Family Home Security and ended up with the right stuff to get a good system in place. The system was not invasive to our home. The peace of mind is totally worthwhile.

Energy Drinks

Camping takes a lot out of me and my wife. We had been efusjon members for a short time and are already happy to be part of the efusjon opportunity. I couldn’t have been happier to be so energized the entire time with a bit of efusjon mixed in. You definitely should try the drink first, then buy. It’s worth it. The opportunity is great. It’s about time to visit that link!

Cya. Let me know if this helped!

How to Get the Most From Your Home Theater - Without Spendin

May 19th, 2008

So you’ve scraped and saved, now you’ve finally gotten together a semi-respectable home theater system. You want even more, but the idea of spending another few thousand on new front speakers doesn’t cut it. What can you do?

There are ways to get the most out of what you have without breaking the bank. There are several areas you can look at to ensure your theater is set up correctly and performing at its best.

Cables and Interconnects -
It’s imperative the signals are transferred from your source components to your speakers, going through various components along the way, with the least amount of degradation. Make sure your audio, video and speaker cables are all of good quality and that none are old and corroded. You can use contact enhancer to be sure the connection is really good.

Contact enhancers increase the contact area of metal to metal connections, such as you find with a typical RCA connection. Because of the surface imperfections, most connectors actually make fairly poor contact. As low as 5% of the surface area is actually in contact with each other. Contact enhancers fill in the minute gaps between the two connectors.

One such product is Quicksilver. It uses a silver-based solution, just like some of the finest specialty A/V cables. You’ve really got to check this stuff out, it can make a noticeable improvement for not much money.

Make sure to use the highest level of A/V connection your system supports. i.e. if you can use a component or DVI video connection from your DVD to your display device then do it.

Calibration - Your video display will definitely not look its best without proper calibration. Manufacturers have a dismal record when it comes to calibrating sets at the factory. Most are TVs designed to look their best on the showroom floor, not in your home theater. In fact, a CRT based rear projection TV can have its life dramatically shortened by improper calibration.

The contrast is invariably set too high to make the set stand out in the showroom environment. This sells more TVs but causes premature tube wear. (That sells more TVs too, I guess) Proper video calibration will correct the problem.

I have used Joe Kane’s Digital Video Essentials for years and the Video Essentials laser disc before that. It is a great tool to help you get the best out of your home theater. It has all the needed video test patterns and explanations on how to properly use them. Pick one up here:
http://1touchmovie.com/DVDOnline/Digital_Video_Essentials.html

Acoustic Improvements -
These encompass a whole host of different things, from acoustically treating the interior of the room, to quieting down your projector. Whenever you lower your noise floor, you effectively increase your dynamic range. In addition, acoustic treatments can dramatically improve dialogue intelligibility, bass response and imaging.

One of the best in the “bang for the buck” category is to put a 1″ or 2″ thick, acoustic panel on the two side walls of the theater to reduce the “first reflection”. The first reflection is the sound that leaves the front speaker and takes a longer path to your ears by bouncing off the side wall on the way. Since it takes a longer path, it takes more time and arrives later than the direct sound that went straight from the speakers to your ears. The net effect is a loss of dialog intelligibility.

Another, even cheaper, tweak is to optimize your subwoofer placement. For years people have been told “Bass is non-directional. You can put your sub anywhere”. That is, simply, BS. While low bass is fairly non-directional, the tonal quality and amount of bass is tremendously affected by subwoofer placement.

A simple trick is to place the sub at the listening position (at ear height), then move around the room (at sub height) until you find the place with the best bass quality. If possible, that’s where you put the sub.

Keeping the ambient noise level in your home theater is critical to maintain the “suspension of disbelief” you’ve tried so hard to achieve. In addition, lower ambient noise will enable you to hear the softer portions of the movie’s sound track without turning up your home theater’s volume so loud. This has the effect of increasing the available dynamic range (the difference between the loudest and softest sounds your audio system can reproduce).

One cheap tweak is to build a hush box around your projector to minimize noise from it. Make sure you use adequate ventilation to maintain proper cooling. That cannot be emphasized enough. As a partial measure, without having to build a whole box, you can place acoustic absorption material on the ceiling above the projector. If your projector is close to the ceiling, this will kill the noise that normally bounces off the ceiling and into the listening room.

I hope this gets you started down the path to even more enjoyment from your home theater and saves you some money at the same time.

About the Author

Steve has 15 yrs in electronics. He is a CEDIA certified designer with ISF and THX certificates. Experience includes: installer and programmer; system designer; business unit director for an a/v importer; sales rep for a CE distributor; and principal of a $1.5M+ CEDIA firm. He’s now senior sales engineer for Digital Cinema Design in Redmond, WA. See him at The Home Theater and Automation Guide