Messages

16

Random / Re: Home Theatre

« on: October 17, 2021, 08:02:36 PM »

Um, you spent probably north of 20K on sound gear and you don't have a 4K TV? Those are fundamentally free. You have to work to spend a thousand bucks.

This is an older thread, but I wanted to post and give a shout out to Pono Bill. I had mentioned in my original post that we built a new soundstage for our home theatre system. As an aside it sounds absolutely fantastic and we are still thrilled with it.

But the real reason I'm posting is that Pono, you had asked why we didn't also upgrade our TV.   I hadn't even thought of replacing our TV before you posed the question, but it made a lot of sense. So while it has taken us a while, last week we ordered a new 65" LG OLED TV. Supposed to be delivered this coming Friday. Am stoked to finally be completing this. Also have to mention though Pono, that your pricing is a little off, or at least the prices you are used to in the U.S. don't apply in Canada. For our new TV, you can triple the $1,000 estimate you made. But it's still all good, as when we get it set up we will have a very nice, complete system.

So thanks again for the idea. Don't know why I didn't think of it myself. I've always been more of a sound guy, so really wasn't concentrating on the visual end. But you were absolutely correct. If we are going to spend the kind of money we did for the sound components, it only made sense to also upgrade the TV.

17

Technique / Re: Newbie Paddling Up Wind Advice

« on: September 23, 2021, 12:55:47 PM »

The other thing you can try is "feathering" your paddle. So if it's really windy, when you have taken your paddle blade out of the water to reload for your next stroke, feather or twist the paddle so the edge of the paddle blade is slicing through the wind as opposed to having the force of the wind against the full blade of the paddle.

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Random / Re: Home Theatre

« on: May 30, 2021, 08:32:35 PM »

That’s excellent. Glad you got it sorted out!

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Random / Re: Home Theatre

« on: May 30, 2021, 12:22:47 PM »

Wow, Admin. That is so cool. LG and Sony OLED are on my short list for when we do finally replace our TV, but I had never seen what you have. It just amazes me the way technology keeps improving, and how fast it goes.

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Random / Re: Home Theatre

« on: May 30, 2021, 10:03:54 AM »

I wondered mostly if you had a dedicated theater room or if this is in a living room (or similar) and what you had done there. 

I find myself listening to music now entirely through headphones or in the car.  Electric vehicles are terrific for that as car noise is so low.

Not a dedicated theatre room. It's all in a living room, dining room combination, but it worked out amazingly well. Just by luck really. We had our house custom designed and built in 2013 and just lucked out in that the design supports what we are now doing with our sound system. We also had ceiling speakers installed during the build and the placement of these speakers once again fits in perfectly with the sound system we now have. I wished we had put in 4 ceiling speakers but again, at the time I don't even think Dolby Atmos was around. Sometime in the fall I am going to try out two more speakers, which are called upward firing Dolby Atmos speakers. They basically bounce the sound off the ceiling to give the effect of ceiling speakers. Not sure how well they will work, or even if they will work at all given our room design and the placement of our already existing ceiling speakers, but I'm at least going to try them out. And if they don't work, we are still very, very happy with what we have. It really does take movie watching to an entirely different level. And also gives a complete new dimension to listening to music.

And one of these days I'll hopefully be able to experience listening to music in an electric vehicle. It will be a while but I'm almost certain our next vehicle will be electric.

21

Random / Re: Home Theatre

« on: May 30, 2021, 09:52:09 AM »

Um, you spent probably north of 20K on sound gear and you don't have a 4K TV? Those are fundamentally free. You have to work to spend a thousand bucks.

I know. One step at a time though. We really are quite happy with our plasma and any new TV we get will be somewhere around 55" as we don't have the space for anything larger. But you are correct and our next TV will be a 4K OLED.

22

Random / Re: Home Theatre

« on: May 29, 2021, 05:24:07 PM »

Sorry Admin., but I don't have pictures. Hate to admit it, but I have never posted pictures to this site and am not sure how to do so. But even if I did, I don't think pictures would do it justice. Our A/V Receiver, power amp, and all the other components are on a stand which is partially hidden behind a couch. So that doesn't provide a great view. And while our front speakers would show up, it wouldn't show our surrounds or our rear surrounds, or for that matter our in ceiling Atmos speakers.

What I can provide is a link that will show you what we have for our two main speakers, and we will also use for our surrounds. We went with Totem Tribe Towers. Totem is a company out of Montreal that produces high end speakers. Our speakers aren't large in size, but they punch way above their weight class and have a marvelous sound. You can see them here (https://totemacoustic.com/product/tribe-tower/). We got them in Satin Black.

23

Random / Home Theatre

« on: May 29, 2021, 09:51:52 AM »

For the last few months we have been putting together a new soundstage for our home theatre set up. We now have all the speakers in place, but are still waiting for two more to replace some older speakers we are using temporarily. But a few days ago we got the new 4K Apple TV with Dolby Atmos sound. Our TV is an older Samsung Plasma so it's not 4K, but still has a pretty decent picture. But the real goal of what we've been putting together has been the sound stage.

I've been really happy so far with how everything has come together and I know it will be even better once we get the final pair of speakers we have on order. But with the addition of the new Apple TV, last night is the first time I've heard a movie in a home theatre setting in Dolby Atmos. We bought the movie "Gravity" with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.

Holy crap, it was amazing. Sound coming at us from all directions and the floor shaking. Talk about being immersed in a movie. We originally saw this movie in the theatre a number of years ago (in 3d) and I wasn't all that impressed. Last night it quite literally blew me away. It was that good. It's been a while since we saw it in the theatre, but I'm almost positive it sounded better on our system than it did in the theatre. I'm thinking this is probably because the sound is concentrated in a much smaller area.

For any of you who are into this kind of thing, we now have a 7.2.2 sound system. It has been quite the journey putting all this together, and last night was the culmination. If sound is important to you and this is something you are considering and not sure about, my advice would be to go for it. It quite literally takes movie watching to an entirely different level.

And the cherry on the cake for me at least, is that I am also a huge music fan and our new system also takes music listening to an entirely new level. This is definitely the nicest sound system I've ever owned.

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Random / Re: Electric Surf Vehicles in 2020

« on: May 28, 2021, 11:06:44 AM »

Brilliant. I watched the whole video and this is one impressive vehicle. I just hope they can now do something like this in a small Van or SUV. Thanks for posting.

25

Random / Re: the Corona Virus, One year of Covid-19

« on: May 25, 2021, 06:35:09 PM »

All of our individual circumstances will be different. Would be a pretty boring existence if this wasn't the case. I think however, there comes a time when we need to look beyond our own experience, and take into account what we need to do for the greater good. And in my opinion, a global pandemic qualifies as one of these times.

I'm a pretty healthy guy. I'm 68 years old but generally pretty fit and don't have any of the conditions that Covid seems to target. I always felt that if I got Covid I would be O.K., although admittedly this thinking was before the variants hit. But I wore a mask and got vaccinated because even though I thought I'd be O.K., I know I would have felt terrible if I got Covid and passed it on to someone else. That was a chance I wasn't willing to take. And quite frankly, and with all due respect, in my view to do otherwise is nothing short of selfish. Because in a pandemic, our individual choices and actions can have a devastating effect on others.

As for personal experience, for the longest time I didn't know anyone who had Covid. Then I had a friend get it who had no symptoms. I also have family in India, and my cousin's husband got quite sick with Covid (but is recovering), and my second cousin's uncle, who had diabetes, got Covid and died ten days later. I also know a couple of others who had contracted the disease, again without serious consequences.

But the most telling example I can give comes from a young woman who is a friend of ours and lives in Portugal. At one point Portugal was hit terribly hard with Covid. I believe for a time they were one of the worst areas in the world. This young woman's grandparents both got Covid. They were taken to the hospital in an ambulance but couldn't get inside the hospital. I don't remember how many days their treatment lasted, but the entirety of their treatment took place in the hospital parking lot in the back of the ambulance. When we expressed shock at this, our friend said it was actually a good thing, because it was well known that if you went into the hospital with Covid, the only way you were coming out was in a pine box.

During that same video chat, my wife asked this young woman if there were rallies in Portugal against masks and if there were anti vaccination groups. I will never forget her reply. She said "No." She said that there was so much Covid in Portugal, that "if you don't know someone..." and here I thought she was going to say "if you don't know someone who has had Covid...". But this wasn't what she said. What she said was "if you don't know someone who has died from Covid then you know someone who knows someone else who has died from Covid". Pretty frightening.

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Random / Re: Electric Surf Vehicles in 2020

« on: May 24, 2021, 07:46:59 PM »

I had a natural gas generator at my home in Portland. It was a great addition for a house in an area with frequent outages. Installing it pretty much guaranteed that we'd never have an outage--and we didn't.

Too funny. I’m pretty sure this would be my luck as well.

27

Random / Re: Electric Surf Vehicles in 2020

« on: May 24, 2021, 01:01:30 PM »

This stuff is mind blowing. You guys may have saved me $10,000 to $15,000. I live in a small community in British Columbia, and while I wouldn't say we get frequent power outages, we do get them, and they are a pain. A number of people in our community have purchased natural gas powered generators. They are pretty slick in that they come on automatically the second the power goes out and they power most, if not all of the house. My wife and I have looked at them and have it on our "to do" list to get one of the sales reps out sometime this year.

But now, if in the not too distant future we can use a car to power our house, well that would be perfect. So I'm going to once again put the natural gas generator on hold and wait and see what happens with this feature in electric cars. This technology is brilliant.

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Random / Re: the Corona Virus, One year of Covid-19

« on: May 24, 2021, 01:00:09 PM »

I have a really hard time understanding people who fight against wearing masks and the "anti' vaccination" groups. There was a guy on this site a while ago talking about our rights and how we shouldn't have to wear masks. He went so far as to lie about having a medical condition to try and avoid wearing a mask in a store. I mean come on. For fucks sake, if you don't want to wear a mask or get a vaccine for yourself, then at least show some compassion and do it for others.

And just to be clear, the person I'm referencing above is not you jpeter.

29

Gear Talk / Re: Torn between Hala and Red Paddle

« on: March 31, 2021, 10:06:08 AM »

Hi Windwarrior. I've got the Red Paddle Explorer, which is the exact same board as the Red Voyager, just an earlier version before they renamed it.

I have no experience with the Hala Nass, but I do quite like my Red Explorer. But I really only use it for touring and if I'm going to be teaching. You said you're ready for speed and touring. If it's speed you're looking for, then I wouldn't be getting an inflatable. But if an inflatable is your only option, I'd also take a look at the Starboard All Star inflatable.

So for me, for the purpose I'm using it for, I really like my Red Explorer (Voyager). But again, I don't use it for speed. I've got hard boards to fill that requirement.

If you have any other questions on the Red I'd be happy to help you if I can. Good luck with your decision.

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General Discussion / Re: Tesla designs. Not really SUP friendly

« on: February 14, 2021, 09:14:36 AM »

Rivian (now in production) looks great as well and the VW looks sweet but it may still be a while.

We are still a few years away from getting a new car, but when the time comes we have decided we will go electric. The ones I'm keeping an eye on right now are the Rivian and the VW Microbus.