Last night I gave some serious thought to getting a surround setup. I got as far as deciding on a 5.1 speaker set and a reciever. They’re still sitting in my Amazon cart.

This morning, while having my breakfast, I measured the size of the living room so I could make sure to order enough speaker wire. My rough calculations suggest that I’d have to run about 74 feet of wire through the place. Or maybe like 114 feet if I decided to hang the speakers on the ceiling. And I’m imagining the awkwardness of a center channel speaker sitting on the floor right in front of the closet door I project my video onto. And of finding places for the l/r rear speakers. And it just doesn’t feel like enough of an upgrade to be worth all that hassle.

So I guess I now get to go digging for 2.1 sub/satellite reviews. Which is turning out to be a bitch as most hits I’m finding so far are for super tiny things you plug your iPod into. I really like the form factor of “sub under the table with consoles on top of it, tiny satellites in the corners of the room”; I don’t want the speakers to be a dominant note in my decor like the giant speakers I grew up with that supported all the reast of the A/V gear.

Aaand as I dig I realize there are a few important details: how the satellites connect, and where the volume controls are. A lot of these connect the satellites with weird proprietary cables rather than plain old speaker wire that I can run however far I need; many of them choose to put the volume controls on one of the satellites, with the assumption that you’ll be sticking the sub under your computer desk and the satellites atop it, rather than slouching in a beanbag chair with the satellites across the room.

…I wonder if keeping my existing satellites and getting a reciever and separate sub would make sense. Hmm. I am also idly fantasizing about some of Bang & Olufsen’s sexy, sexy speakers. I think their prices are just a little more than I’m willing to pay though…

The little Cambridge Soundworks sub/satellite combo I have in my living room is starting to go out. Lots of constant hiss and crackle. I think it may be time to get something new.

I’m not sure if I want to find something similar to replace it with, or upgrade to more serious audio. Either way I’ll have to go searching, as Cambridge Soundworks got bought by Creative and now only makes little portable Bluetooth things. (And it’s worth noting that the one I’m replacing is the second one I’ve owned, made after Creative bought them; the other one has been pumping out music in my studio pretty much all my working hours since 2010. Ah well.)

On the one hand, a self-amplified subwoofer/satellite combo is relatively cheap and unobtrusive – I have the current subwoofer hidden under a coffee table, with my game machines piled on top of it. And it was only somewhere in the $200 neighborhood.

On the other hand, I will admit that surround sound would be pretty nice to have when I’m playing a game that really relies on using my ears to have an idea of what’s nearby. And it would be really nice to be able to send my computer’s audio output from the studio to the living room, then mix that in with the video game sound for those times when I want to provide my own soundtrack to my aimless wanderings around virtual worlds in search of experience points and cool loot. I just don’t know if I’m willing to drop about $700-1000 for a set of 5.1 speakers and a reciever to control them all.

I find myself wondering if any of my gearhead friends happen to have an old receiver and/or set of speakers lying around…

In the meantime I’m looking at the Wirecutter’s 5.1 speaker and receiver reviews, and thinking about their alternative picks – their #2 and #3 speakers are currently $275 and $160 respectively, and their #2 receiver is $250. $525 or $410 for a new audio system doesn’t sound too terrible with my current funds…

Truly, I am a grownup. I am contemplating the purchase of a surround sound system.

(More notes, thinking about my particular setup. Is there enough vertical room beneath my table to add a reciever to the subwoofer/360/ps4 stack there? The Yamaha has an 18×13” footprint, and is 7” tall (rounding up), both subs are a 12.6” cube. My table has 21” below it; the consoles total about 5”. 7+13+5=25 which is problematic. Though I could stand the consoles or the reciever on the side next to the sub? Or maybe I could find a reciever with a 12” square footprint? Looks like that’s a rare thing, though.)

slowly crawls out of bed, body aching from two days of pole dance class in a row after a hiatus due to critical nw*

stands in front of the bathroom mirror

notices a bruise on her left forearm and says “hello, pole bruise!”

goes looking on other arm and legs for more bruises, saying “hello, pole bruise!” to each of them in an increasingly maniacal voice accompanied by tired, unhinged-sounding laughter

* critical northwest: the washington state burn. would have been a lot better if we hadn’t ended up next to some people constantly blaring really aggro music at nearly-painful volumes.

Hmm. Apple has this thing nowadays where when your phone rings, you can answer it on other Apple devices connected to the same network. Because of this, whenever I get a phone call at home, I hear up to four rings at once: the phone, two tablets, and the computer. It’s a cacaphony. And it doesn’t stop until a moment after I’ve picked up the phone and answered it, or sent it to voice mail.

To be honest, the only person I ever really cared enough to answer the phone for is my mom. Now that she’s gone there is basically nobody who is important enough to stop drawing to talk to. I think it’s time to turn off this kinda-interesting feature. Or at least make it stop making so much noise.

Annoyingly enough, I can’t tell the FaceTime app on the tablets to stop making noise but still pop up a notification. Guess I’ll have to record a few seconds of silence to trick it.

Oh. wait. I bet someone’s already done this.

“Fleet of Worlds” by Larry Niven and Edward Lerner is probably not a great book by any means. But for someone who devoured Niven's Known Space books at the age of eight, it's total comfort food. Hi, Nessus. Hi, General Products hulls. Hi, Puppeteer civilization fleeing away from the exploding galactic core. Hi, teleport booths.

Hi, working around holes that Niven never saw in his logic back in the early 70s.

I ate it up and picked up the second volume.

I feel like the stuff I’ve been drawing lately is coming out super-fast. Most of it I don’t even bother with a linear sketch for; I just draw major shapes rapidly, with something like the correct layering, then go back in and add some shadows to show where one part overlaps another. Maybe separate bits off onto their own layer, if the drawing merits it. Maybe don’t bother. It depends on how complex the character is and how much I want to get into the shading.

I’m pretty sure spending four years working in super-limited three-color palettes helped make this happen quickly. My visual cortex spent four years thinking about pretty much nothing but delineating things via shading. And now it can do that so quickly that the only real speed limit is how quickly I can whip out the paths. Which is pretty quickly. Being able to just say “this thing is PINK so it’ll be pink”, then add some translucent shadows or highlights in whatever color of light I want, feels like such a luxury.