Purchased the ATH-ANC7s a couple weeks back and they’re the first pair of “real” headphones I’ve ever purchased over $40. At first I was looking at the Bose QC headphones but I couldn’t rationalize a $300 purchase. Instead I bought some Sony headphones a year ago and they’ve suited me enough to not really care too much. Now, work has been a little loud and it’s only going to get more chatery around my office so I started looking again only to be convinced that $300 is just too much for headphones–again–, even if I’m going to have them on for 6 hours a day x 5 days a week.
Then I read an article in Wired magazine reviewing noise canceling headphones and they rated the Bose QC 2s at 8/10 and their pick for best noise canceling headphones was these Audio-Techincas at $240 list. Soon after reading I went straight to Amazon and noticed the $130 tag, then eBay and found Amazon’s deal was huge so I ordered them through Prime.
After 2 weeks of using them I’m loving them. The sound is crisp and powerful, they sound so good that every other stereo that before sounded okay now sounds like crap.
The set is very comfortable. The design makes you want to put the headset on backwards but after putting them on I had to think the unique design contributed to comfortableness. The cups fit perfectly over my ears and the padding never irritates, they do make a suction after a long time of wear (if you have very short hair on the sides).
The quality of the headphones are notable. It comes with a great soft/hard case, especially if you’re planning to using them for travel. My one complaint, the cord it comes with is too short, at only 6 feet (standard) I’m in the need of buying a longer one. But with the set having a jack it allows for getting a male-male cord for use and let’s you use the noise canceling without any cord.
The Noise Canceling is good. I had wanted it to work perfect, not allowing anything in but as expected only the consistent ambient noise was canceled out. Something I didn’t expect was, voices actually sound crisper. At first I thought these were a waste because of the noises and voices I still heard but I found myself trying to listen for noise rather then just using them. So after a few hours I was comfortable enough to the point that I couldn’t even hear the phone sitting next to me with just some light music playing.
Overall, the phones are great. Wired rated them at 9/10 and I’d have to agree although I’m completely biased. And at such a large price discount they’re definitely worth it. I’ve already purchased a set for a fellow employee and I’d suggest anyone thinking of noise canceling headphones to get these now while you can.
If you haven’t noticed my site has dramatically transformed overnight to a “light” theme. The core of it is based off of IAMWW D2, which I had to heavily restructure and stylize to get what I wanted. Heavy props to the author because I was about to write my own sandbox theme with about the same layout and look. And even though I want to do a lot more here it is…
I want to post a more in depth about why I went to a light theme later but (since I’ve already been e-mailed and asked why) the main reason was I’ve see high-contrast completely different when I’m on the web and I don’t want people to feel the same about mine–including myself–. I actually want to go more simplistic and over the next few weeks it will be toned down a little.
The problems/to-dos:
Received a Pownce invite from Techcrunch’s newly purchased inviteshare.com. I’d like to say that inviteshare is not just a great idea but the design and implementation is wonderful. I received my invite to Pownce in less than 5 minutes of requesting it; I just hope the demonoid invite get fulfilled through it’s small community.
On to my early impressions of Pownce:
It’s been compared to Twitter but it’s completely missing the mobility of Twitter and the accessibility of Twitter. Without an API it’s going to be very hard to get updates of what’s going on over there and actually updating your friends requires you to login to the site or use the AIR application they’ve released.
That AIR application is rather bulky. Not in application size or overhead, I’m actually sure it’s very light using the Adobe framework but the design of the app is too simple. You can’t change the style, transparency or size and I do not need anything else on my desktop. That’s what I love about Twitter because I already have IM open and getting updates through IMs and sending messages through IM fits perfectly into my mobility. Pownce is lacking in this area to the tune of null.
The feature set is everything that I’d ever want in a mini/social-blog. You can send files, separate links out, post files or events and it’s not just posting it’s all about sending. You can easily segment out your friends and send only to them or just individually. I actually love this because it’s completely personal and it makes sense and very similar to facebook.
facebook allows you to be completely private and pownce walks the line. I really enjoy how there are fans and friends but I wish I could ask to be a fan or make a freind a fan instead. A few of my “friends” aren’t actual friends but I don’t want to remove them. I love the personalization of pownce. Not for interface personalization because there isn’t any but the personalization and segmentation you give to your friends and fans is perfect.
I do see pownce replacing Twitter (for me) on shear feature set, unless Twitter kicks it up a notch but it’s going to take me a long time without being free’d up a little. Since I really don’t want to loose my twitter blog on this site I don’t know what to do, especially since it pownce does replace Twitter here it could handle all the comments. So unless I think of another way to merge the two services (maybe RSS splicing and an RSS module in the sidebar replacing the tweets to the right) it will take a while.
As you can tell I really like pownce and I’ll wait for it to replace anything but I will still use the service and hopefully you’ll join me.
Spiderman 3 was awesome and a major let down in one. The action scenes were great the major plot line was solid but the fillers were horrible and distracting.
Spoliers ahead:
Roger and I left this morning and headed out to IKEA in Burbank. Sara and I are planning to redo our closets; mine, Sara’s and create one for Avery’s future room. After a huge credit card charge and two disappointed fellows we were looking at a truck full of PAX and a cart sitting with no place to fit. I ended up driving back out there in the pouring rain and I’m finally back. Saturday night is usually my Zelda night but tonight I’m going to finish Crank and go to bed. Next week Roger and I will put them together, hopefully Lowes will have our Tub in stock.
As you can tell Sara and I are doing a lot of home improvements: Closets, bathtub and shower and well a new TV :). So far we are looking good for costs. The IKEA closets will end up 1/4 of what a few companies wanted to charge. And the guy wanting my broken down car wants to install the tub and shower and some and do some other work for the car. Maybe I should have splurged a little more on the TV.
A few months ago, in October 2006, Wired News ran a story titled “The Crusade Against Religion” where the author investigated the re-emergence (or emergence?) of atheism powered by some very brilliant scientists and writers. Many people around the world have been involved with this New Atheism, but the most well-known and recognizable figure is Richard Dawkins who is a … Read More »
January 03
This is a video from dove’s campaign for real beauty where you see a girl get a heavy makeup and then “fixed” in photoshop before she’s beauty enough to fit the ad.read more | digg story … Read More »
October 14
# Don’t worry about what people think, they don’t do it very often.
# Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.
# Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
# If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.
# My idea of housework is to sweep … Read More »
September 02
As you can tell, if your not reading this post in RSS, I’ve changed a few things. Namely just making everything bigger; bigger fonts, bigger header, and flexible width. I think it’s been enough time for me to move to flexible width site after many discussions (mostly w/ Jared) about how sites should not be fixed width.
There are still a few things I need to fix but I’ll probably pass since I rather not spend the time into the minor details. For example Safari renders the “Activity” and “Tags and…” buttons differently then Firefox, the buttons are lowered 10 px for some reason. Another bug that I hate and the reason I never went to flexible width is getting the rolling archives to properly fit within the content div, if you look closely you will either see a gap or an overlay.
Some stuff I want to add is:
I’d also like to thank Jared for making the tagboard plugin I’m currently testing out for him. It’s pretty awesome.
Wednesday was my first ride to work day. Reminiscent of riding my bike to school it turned out to be not as bad as I thought. One reason was the new awesome bike I bought the night before.
For some reason the bike just looks to small in the picture but it really is grown up size. I bought it at the Trek store behind Target after visiting there last week and driving to a couple local shops around town including Ray’s on Johnson and Costco; Costco’s bikes are crappy and Ray’s was an almost buy, it just turned out that Trek’s equivalent was only $30 less, a brand I never heard of (Giant) and it would have taken a few days to make. So $400 later and 15 minutes of trying to fit the thing in my car I had a new bike to drive to work.
I’ve surprised myself this week with riding it everyday even this morning when I was going to be “late” and yesterday after a killer long Lost night. It only takes 20 minutes to ride to work which is the same amount of time it took me to drive to Oxnard for SJ. I find it a great time to listen to some podcasts like the Gillmor gang and hopefully loose a few pounds in between saving on gas. I wonder how many calories I burn every 3+ miles.
