Kudos to Viewsonic as it was long out of warranty. I had contacted them after discovering that the DVI port wasn't working properly, and that the screen seemed to drift out of alignment after a random amount of time (making it unusable) and had gotten an RMA number.

What with moving about and putting things in storage, it was a year later when I finally got it out of storage, stripped it off mount, and sent it out with a plaintive letter asking for warranty repair.

No questions asked, and 20 days later it is returned - actually, as far as I can tell, it's a new or refurbished unit. I had a small scratch on the screen that is no longer there.

Well, the unit manifested exactly the same problem with the drifting out of phase. Hmm.. says me. That makes no sense if they really have replaced the unit.

Then the lightbulb came on. I had used the same VGA cable it originally came with to hook it up. What if the cable is bad (never happened in 25 years for me but there is always a first)?

Lo and behold, it's been running for several days now and no problems! I haven't tested the DVI port yet (though I expect it to work fine).

So a victory for scientific method (and thanks again to Robert Pirsig)..

On strong recommendations, I just bought a Zivio Boom headset for use with my iPhone. I've lamented for the last couple of years that every single BT headset I've ever used (and I've used many) has been absolute crap when it came to filtering environmental noise.

Since my most common use is walking outside, or driving in my car, 90+% of my time on a BT headset has environmental noise.

I've looked for a BT headset with a boom for quite some time. All the shorter headsets (that don't place a microphone close to ones mouth) use omni-directional microphones. These don't work very well in a noisy environment as to be sufficiently sensitive to pick up your voice from four to five inches away they pick up a lot of extraneous sound.

Some manufacturers have add noise-cancelling (only good when the sound source is a constant frequency range and amplitude) and some have added a second microphone and circuitry to discriminate between your voice and environmental sound. None work particularly well, sadly.

But the Zivio has an extendable, bendable (very slightly) boom mic that places the mike within an inch or two of my mouth. Early tests with a live (loud) TV in the background proved very effective (according to my callees).

So, both thumbs up for the best BT headset I've found so far.

I should note that it comes with six (!) different earpieces and an optional earhook to help it fit your ear. Mine has a very small canal (and doesn't fit the standard Apple headphones at all) and I managed to find one that fits this headset very well.

Liverpool was dominating, moving at full speed for the entire game and their midfield controlled Scholes and Carrick very handily. Even a partially-fit Torres, abused as he was by the Man Utd players, was enough to score a beautiful goal as he was sent through by Lucas' pass.

The press had written off Liverpool before the game on the back of four successive losses (the last because the ball was deflected by a beach ball thrown onto the field). All in all, a very fine result. That's three in a row now over Man Utd.

I just typed in my name and Microsoft login and it automagically found the right settings to connect to the Exchange server and downloaded my email and set it up just like my laptop.

Blazing speed, and very easy. I've got to applaud MS for doing this very well and seamlessly..

So on the off chance, I hooked up my venerable NAD pre-amp and amp and lo and behold, the speakers sound awesome. So I think the Sony is f*cked. Overly complicated piece of junk.

My only problem now is that my new studio has wood floors and I doubt I can use more than 1/10th of the power of the amps (go a pair of NADs bi-amped) without getting complaints from my neighbors.

Ah well.. next up.. refinishing the cabinet exteriors and putting new grill covering on them - and protecting the rear woofers from my cats by putting shields over them. That's why they need re-coning in the first place.

Tremendous magnetic fields in the mid-ranges. They are 20-30 inches at a minimum from my TV but are affecting the tube pretty seriously.

Then I discovered the hole (should have photographed it). When I talked to Champions they tell me that this may be the first one they've ever seen come back. No matter, I'm now moving to a synthetic sling. They have their liabilities too (occasional catastrophic failure of the metal bits, I hear) but I'll keep an extra one in the bag. Either Kurt Thune or Gehmann or Anschutz in my future very soon now.

The big limitation I'm finding, which I've never had to deal with before, is that my eyes are getting presbyopic. Basically, the lens is hardening and my eye muscles are losing the ability to get my lens to change focus quickly. So when once I could shift focus between bull and aperture nearly instantaneously I can now see the change in focus happen. Indeed, I have to force my eye back to focusing on the front sight.

Which truly sucks as my skill hasn't deteriorated, and wind aside, I feel I should be at least capable of shooting at the Master level.

My most recent acquisition is a pair of Knobloch shooting glasses (schiess brillen). They should allow me to position a lens, adjusted to bring the front sight into focus, exactly in line with my eye and the apertures I'm looking through.

When I focus on the front sight, 1/2-1MOA groups seem easily possible. Without that, I'm all over the paper.

Pretty smart blog, I've got to say.

I imagine the Tifosi are crying over their prawn sandwhiches but no great loss. Their season is for all practical purposes over unless Jensen hurts himself.

I bought my Dad a set of Ray-Ban Aviators for Father's Day. Polarized, UVA/UVB protection.. the classic green lens, gold frame we all know and love from "Top Gun". Been around since 1937 and still the best sunglasses of which I know.

Well, I noticed that the G-15 lenses can be prescription ground - so I thought that I might consider a set for myself eventually. Much nicer than having to wear contacts to wear them in allergy season.

So I take myself off to the Ray-Ban official site, thinking that it should be fairly easy to determine the requirements for getting them in my prescription.

Not so.

First, I have to select my country of origin. Given our sophistication with IP lookup and headers, why cannot the designer make a leap and set the country value initially. If wrong, then it can be changed by the user. But you've saved the user a step if you guess right.

After selecting the USA site, I now have to wait for a big Flash object to load.

After at least a minute for the entry page to load (and this on a fairly fast connection), I'm presented with a "Skip Intro" button in the lower right-hand corner. Typically arrogant design. I would have instructed my designer to have that show up in the first two seconds for the impatient customer who does not want "an experience" but rather wants hard info on a product line or feature.

I shouldn't have to waste 10 minutes of precious lifetime just trying to find basic info. No alternative, non-Flash site available as far as I can determine either. So every new page I navigate to seems to require a new Flash to be loaded for me simply to determine it's not what I wanted to see.

The search function is quite poor, the lines defined not by their names but by their product codes (aka 3025 is an Aviator). However, a search for either 3025 or RB3025 yields no results and a search for Aviator yields 3. Clicking on the results seems to have no effect though. I cannot seem to get to the product page and after 10 minutes am ready to leave this site and never go back.

Did I mention the entry page seems to fail to load in Firefox?

The designers seem more in love with their design and less interested in meeting the customer's needs.

Design a la 2000.

So last century.

I like some social networking tools (Twitter, LinkedIn) a great deal but I barely tolerate FB. I have found it's good for staying in touch with distant friends (just reconnected with some French friends) but it's not something that I'm compelled to use every day.

In any event, I was adding a couple of friends from my gmail address book yesterday when FB just messed up. I had invited a dozen friends or so to join my network, hit the send button, and it comes back with a confirmation that it has added half the entries in my gmail. Considering I have several hundred correspondents - including potential employers - this is beyond mildly embarrassing.

Nothing I could do about it because the UI is so crappy it didn't provide a confirmation step. I'll just have to hope my correspondents understand.
The question arises, though, if you've emailed someone you don't really want as a friend (say a business associate) are you obligated to accept them as a "friend" when they respond in the affirmative.

The plus side is that a few friends I haven't been in touch with in a year or two have responded and we are talking again.

Silver lining I suppose..

I discovered a great site for this sort of interest yesterday: Film School Rejects. It seems to have a bit of horror film emphasis - I got there looking at a review of the Norwegian neo-classic "Dod Sno" ("Dead Snow") - but so far it looks very promising.

an·i·mad·vert (ane-mad-vûrt)
intr.v. an·i·mad·vert·ed, an·i·mad·vert·ing, an·i·mad·verts
To remark or comment critically, usually with strong disapproval or censure

How cool is that?

This year, I'm watching a lot of Thursday and Friday action on my iPhone. The Golf Channel is totally lame, even in HD. I believe they are restricted from showing the front 9 (by agreement with Augusta) so their morning coverage is all talking heads while players tee off on the front nine. Total waste of life to watch it.

But my iPhone is giving me live coverage the moment golfers hit Amen Corner (10, 11, 12). The same coverage that will be televised starting at 1pm, except I'm getting it three hours early and live.

I had the bright idea of up the iPhone to the TV with the special cable and watching it on the big screen. No go. I guess the app doesn't support it. Tested my connection by firing up Danger Diabolik from the iPhone and it played perfectly, so it's the Masters app that doesn't support it.

Nevertheless, it's pretty much a seachange, and I think it's escaped many. I'm watching live streaming TV on the iPhone. Other networks (think Sprint) have supported this for a couple of years - for a hefty extra fee - but to my knowledge this is the first mainstream app on the iPhone to support this.

The quality is pretty decent, and it supports WiFi, 3G, and Edge.

Likely candidate is WordPress, of course. I just have to check how the tools are for publishing to it and the ease or difficulty of dumping my archive of articles and moving them over.