Yes. This is huge. This is a major milestone. I am so happy that my basement's rough-in inspections passed today.

The inspector left me with a very small list of minor things to take care of that I can get done in about five minutes. Other than that, I can start drywall whenever I'm ready.

There was a point at which the inspector was questioning my use of vapor barriers in the studio and started by saying I'd need to tear down all the insulation I put in, but he backed off after I told him that I had already called the city twice before starting insulation to make sure I was doing it right. He basically said "ok" and left it at that. That seemed kind of strange to me, but I'm not going to tear down an entire room's worth of insulation if I don't have to.

Now, the only question is when to start drywall. Between now and the end of the year, I think we'll only be at home for a few weekends. Yep, it's already that crazy and it's not even November yet. I want to get some estimates from contractors on mudding and taping first too. Optimistically I should be able to get drywall done before 2007. We shall see.

Yesterday we carved a few pumpkins. Last year I used an electric drill, this year I tried a Dremel rotary tool. All I have to say is that it doesn't really work that well. Pictures to follow later.... It just wasn't very easy to cut through a pumpkin for some reason. Next year, I'm using a hammer.

I think fighting in the NHL should be banned because it's stupid, but on the other hand, hockey fights can be fun to witness. The rumor is that Boogaard gave Fedoruk multiple cheek fractures with his right-hander to Fedoruk's face on Friday night:

Why oh why would you seek out a fight with Boogaard? If you've been watching the Wild this season, then you know that Boogaard is doing a great job of antagonizing the other team within the rules and getting opposing players pissed off. Other players want to get back at him, and most of the time he'll just smile and laugh while they throw a punch, and they get a penalty while he keeps his cool. But some nights if he's in the mood he'll throw punches back. This game was obviously one of those nights :)

tags: nhl hockey wild boogaard fedoruk fight

If you don't have enough to do and have never checked it out before, go read the Shit People Send Us blog. (atom feed). A collection of all the videos, games, pictures, and other crap out on the internet that people send you all day.

For the past six months I was planning on writing a tutorial about do-it-yourself "soundproofing" [1]. I decided to write a tutorial because I had come across nothing but useless, incomplete, or poorly-written information out on the internet while researching my home studio construction. I've learned since then that my own knowledge wasn't much better than all of that bad information I had found - given that I installed my own resilient channel upside down. In the last couple of weeks I've come across excellent resources (books and internet) that I wish I had found years ago when I was planning my construction. I've learned more in two weeks than I learned in two years.

So, I've decided to not write the tutorial. There are already good resources out there that I can't really compliment effectively with my own writing. What I will do is help steer other folks in the right direction to the good resources and dispell some myths so that others don't make the same mistakes I do when planning and constructing a home studio.

First, buy Home Recording Studio: Build it like the pros by Rod Gervais. Rod explains difficult concepts about sound and construction in a way that makes them easy to understand. The book covers room dimensions, wall angles, wall/floor/ceiling construction, windows, doors, and acoustic treatment. It's $40, and you will get a return on your investment if you buy it and read it. I would have saved $150 had I read the book first. Others have saved thousands.

Second, visit John Sayers's Recording Studio Design forum. It's moderated by real professionals, including Rod, the author of the book above. There is already an abundance of "FAQ"-style material on the forum that could potentially answer all of your questions without having to post a new thread. The forum covers the same basic topics as the book: studio design, construction, and acoustic treatment. It also gets into gear (e.g. electronics and wiring).

Here are some myths:

• You think you know something about studio construction
• You need commercial sound blocking materials to block sound (rather, 2x4's, drywall, caulk, and planning will likely be enough)
• What you think would make a good sound-blocking treatment is going to work.  Rather, you're probably wrong based on real science and tried-and-true methods that will prove you otherwise.

An example on that last bullet - I've read a lot of stories of folks who spent thousands of dollars building complex framing systems which they thought would "isolate" their walls from the rest of their house/structure, when in the end they actually made sound translation to the rest of their structure even worse. Those folks never did their homework and went purely on intuition. A specific example of this that Rod provides in his book is the double-wall construction technique: it seems intuitive that for a double-wall, you'd put drywall on both sides of both walls (e.g. four total faces of drywall). This in fact weakens the sound-blocking ability of the double wall.

The bottom line is that there are real resources out there that you need to consult. Don't assume anything. Home studio construction really isn't that hard to accomplish - it just takes some knowledge of the right way to do something.

[1] there is no such thing as "soundproofing", realistically. Any company or person trying to sell something for "soundproofing" is probably trying to peddle a product that doesn't actually work. They haven't done their research and they don't know the science behind blocking sound. Most sound blocking construction can be done without commercial products.

Hokey Pokey isn't what it's all about

A Canadian research team has concluded that the "Hokey Pokey" isn't what it's all about. For years, participants at weddings, parties, and other social gatherings have proclaimed that the Hokey Pokey was, in fact, what it was all about. The four-person team set out to discover the truth and put years of blind belief to the test.

Seth Pattan, the team's lead researcher whose specialties include molecular harmonics and synthetic plasma bond technology, describes the finding as "pure genius". "We had no idea that what we discovered could be so huge", says Pattan. "These findings overturn generations of speculation and untruth."

Over a six-year period, the team conducted research and experiments at their lab in Sudbury, Ontario. They studied and tested a large volume of volunteer subjects (mostly college students) to gain a better understanding of their true desires and needs. "What we found was that the subjects placed a higher priority on matters other than the Hokey Pokey", said researcher Pete Lessard, who is best known for his research on color-bending theory at MIT. "It was extraordinary."

Included in the team's findings are a number of potential candidates that they conclude "might" be what it's all about. Among these candidates include dentistry, knuckles, Aluminum, woodworking, and small rocks.

While the research effort is complete, the team intends to further test their findings. "This was just the first step. We want to determine without a doubt that the Hokey Pokey is in fact what it is not about", said Pattan. The team is currently enjoying a brief break from their research while visiting New Mexico, after which they will continue their efforts in Sudbury.

I just scheduled an inspection for the basement next Monday 10/30/2006. This is a huge milestone - I've been working for this day for about two and a half years. It really should have been less than that, but I'm a slacker with too many hobbies. Unfortunately, my biggest hobby is really being hindered by the fact that the basement isn't done, so lately I've had a lot more motivation to finish it.

This past weekend I tore down all the RC from the walls, put up the remaining required fire blocking in the frames, and added some insulation up in the joists by the house exterior. Now I just need to clean up and make things look pretty for Mr. Inspector.

Assuming that everything goes well with the inspection (which from what I know from other people's projects will not be the case), I could be done with drywall in early November. I need to seek out some mudding/taping contractors, and I'm curious to see if their rate for also hanging drywall isn't much more on top of mudding/taping. If it's not, then I might contract out all of the drywall work. However I doubt that'll be the case. After drywall I'm not sure what'll be next. Painting, doors, and bath fixtures come to mind. Then trim and flooring. Happy happy, joy joy.

ARP of the Covenant will be playing a gig on 11/7/2006 at the Nomad World Pub. Here are event details.

After much researching over the past couple of days I've made a decision about what to do with my resilient channel problem. Regardless of what I decided, I have to tear down all of the RC from the walls. I've decided to not put it back up, but I'll still keep it on the ceiling.

What I've learned is that there is an arguably better product to decrease sound transmission through walls called Green Glue (GG). GG is an adhesive that you sandwich between two layers of drywall, and then you put the whole sandwich up on the wall frame. GG has produced the same sound transmission loss levels as RC in labs. GG can be used in combination with RC, but the gains are very, very small. Given that RC is difficult to work with, it's not really worth putting back up if I'm going to use GG.

However, RC does have a benefit if your walls aren't isolated from the rest of the structure of your house. That's a little true in my case. My wall frames aren't 100% isolated from the rest of my house, but the contact with other house framing members has been minimized. Thus I don't think the money and effort put into re-hanging the RC will give me much benefit. GG by itself should do a good job.

So this weekend I'll be tearing down the RC. It should go pretty quick. Tearing down is always easier :)

As a side note - I wish I would have come across my studio construction resources years ago. I would have built my studio very differently. In a way, I even have a bug for wanting to try and build another one! But who am I kidding? Maybe if and when Nikki, Eva, and I move into a new house I'll consider it :)

Last Friday I hosted a Halo 2 LAN party at my house and about eleven people came over. It was a blast, but one of the highlights of the night was a dare to chug down four garlic butter cups from the Papa Johns pizzas that we ordered, and then top them off with a shot of Jim Beam. One brave soul was up for the challenge:

NSFW?? The content is on par with a mild episode of Jackass, in case you're viewing this at work.

• Vince and the Garlic Butter (25 MB)
• Vince and the Garlic Butter (low res version) (4 MB)

Nice job Vince!

Squashed YouTube version:

Dammit!

If you know me, then you know that I rarely get angry, upset, or down about almost anything. This afternoon I found some information on an excellent recording studio construction site that made my heart sink. I was visibly upset and my coworkers noticed and they asked what was wrong. I had learned that I installed all of the resilient channel in my studio upside down.

Seven hours later, the shock of this knowledge has disappeared and I can think reasonably about it. In fact, I've learned a lot about studio construction as a result of it because I've researched my ass off in the process. I picked up a copy of Home Recording Studio: Build it like the pros, which has some of the best construction information I've ever read.

The good news is that since I've learned that I installed the RC incorrectly, I've learned about two or three other things that I'll be able to do while hanging drywall that will significantly help reduce sound transmission to the rest of the house from the studio. So even though I'll need to do a lot of rework, some good has come out of this. See, that's my optimistic, happy side that you're used to seeing coming out!

So - back to work. Someday.

The Wild are off to a red hot start in the NHL this year with a 5-0-0 record. Their first road game is in a few days and we'll see how well they fare outside the XCel Energy Center.

I've seen three of the five games so far this season and there is a completely different atmosphere about the team this year. Now that the Wild has some firepower, the expectations are different. In my opinion, three out of the four lines on the team have a good chance of scoring any time that they're on the ice - whereas in the past the scoring was primarily limited to Brian Rolston and Marian Gaborik. Gaborik, Rolston, Demitra, Parrish, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Mikko Koivu and Todd White are all forwards who can make plays and score. They all show offensive flair and feed off each other's talent. This was hardly the case last year when you just hoped for a strong effort and 100% heart.

The defensemen are pitching in too. Petteri Nummelin (a.k.a. Pete) and Kim Johnsson are two new defensement this year and they are solid on the blue line but can also get creative with the puck. I didn't realize that former Wild defensemen like Kuba were that "average" until I saw Pete and Johnsson play.

The fans this year aren't leaving early. The building stays full to the end and fans stay for the 3-star announcements. They're cheering louder and longer. Every time Demitra or Gaborik touches the puck the crowd buzzes a bit. Everyone can feel that this team has begun a new chapter and dare I say it we can't wait for the playoffs this year.

My parents were in town over the weekend and my dad came over today to help with the basement. In about five hours we completed putting up the resilient channel in the soundproof room - which is a major milestone considering its been in an incomplete state for months. It was also the final major task before getting the inspection done. I still need to spend about 30 minutes putting in some fire-blocking for some of the internal framing but that's a small task to be completed later this week.

So now I need to pick up a little bit and call the city to schedule the inspection. Realistically I could get drywall done in November before Thanksgiving. Hmmm, with a little luck I could even get doors, flooring, and painting done by the end of the year. The lazy slacker inside of me is competing with my inner home studio demon that hasn't seen the light of day in over a year. Did that make any sense to you?

...awesome!

The party was great - complete with shenanigans and tom-foolery. Here are some brief tidbits:

• Twelve people showed up - we had a lot of cancellations within 24 hours before we started, and a surprising number of people never showed up who said they would. Those bastards. Twelve is still a great number though and mass carnage ensued...
• Lots of great games - lots of great CTF games, lots of bad one-sided ones, team King on Terminal... too many others to mention.
• Captured a ton of raw gameplay footage with the USB video capture device
• Everyone, and I literally mean everyone, brought at least a six pack of beer or some other type of tasty alcoholic beverage. Most people brought more. Plus, I already had the fridge and a cooler stocked with about 24 beers. Do the math... the remainder is a stock of leftover, unopened alcohol in my house :)
• One person (to be named later...) was dared to chug four garlic-butter cups and top them off with a shot of Jim Beam for $10. It was all caught on video...

I'm editing a few videos from the camcorder and video-capture footage. We'll see how long it takes but they should be fun to watch. We didn't really take a lot of pictures this time around. Just too much time spent having fun on the controller :)

Wild sign coach Lemaire to extension

"Lemaire said he had no hesitation about wanting to stay with the franchise he helped build."

I was happy to see that in the article. You don't really hear from the Wild's front office what the coaches think about their jobs and how happy they are. I'm glad to see that Jacques is happy with his job and the team.

This'll be big for the Wild as they continue to build and groom draft picks. Lemaire is a great hockey teacher and the Wild will need that kind of approach to coaching in their first decade.

It's good to get the reptilian perspective some of the time.

There's a ridiculously detailed set of scaled images that illustrate the relative size of objects within the Halo universe. The web pages allow you to drill down into more and more levels of relatively sized objects. Everything is included from the Halo ring, the Covenant city of High Charity, and the Pillar of Autumn down to Warthogs, Forerunner structures, and a UNSC medkit.

Pretty cool stuff. I can't imagine how much time was sucked into obtaining the geometries for everything.

Interesting how some objects are shown that don't really ever appear entirely visible in the game - such as Gravemind. Where the heck do these people get that information from (e.g. how do they know that Gravemind is shaped so tall and skinny)? It's HBO... full of obsessed fans and there are connections with Bungie, so there must be ways to get it.

The pace of NFL games is ridiculously slow. Every Sunday I look forward to watching the Vikings, and before the first quarter is over I'm bored to death. The effect is even worse after watching an NHL game the night before.

Another thing are the commercial breaks. Some days the networks just have the commercial programming all screwed up. For three commercial breaks in a row (and more than five times during just the first quarter), I saw this Volkswagen commercial during the Vikings/Lions game:

I like the commercial, but seeing it that many times makes me want to ensure I never buy a Volkswagen. It actually caused us to change the channel and stop watching the game a few times. Whatever marketing strategy FOX and Volkswagen had for during the game backfired.

Is it really that big of a deal? No. But it was either this or post about what I ate for breakfast today. Or something.

We'll be using a video projector for the LAN party on 10/13/2006, but I don't own a screen or have a good, plain wall to shine it on. This morning I made a screen out of nine pieces of poster board:

Pretty snazzy eh? It's bigger in real life than it looks like in the picture. It's kind of a PITA to hang up so I hope I put it in a good place!

Tonight is the Minnesota Wild's season and home opener, and the NHL season began last night. Minnesota hockey fans have a lot to be excited about now that the Wild brass have opened a new chapter in the team's history by acquiring players like Pavol Demitra, Keith Carney, and Mark Parrish. Demitra is the only real bonafide star among the new faces, but on paper the overall talent level of the team has increased significantly.

I'm planning on blogging after each game I attend this year. It'll be hard to do because the only way it'll work is to post as soon as I get home, and that's usually pretty late after the game. Tonight will be the first test and I'll see how it goes. I want to keep track of how well the Slovakian Gaborik-Demitra chemistry comes along, how fans are enjoying the games, and how the up-and-coming players on the team are getting better.

Predictions. I've always hated predictions. I tend to prefer observing from a distance and seeing how events cause the final outcome. I've hated predictions for fear of being wrong. I've hated predictions because there are so few facts to base them on. But what's to fear about being wrong? Nobody is reading this anyway. After all, it's the NHL.

Mike's NHL 2006-2007 Predictions

• The Wild will finish second in their division behind Calgary.
• The Wild will make the playoffs but won't get past the semis
• Nashville will win the Western Conference title. It's their time.
• Buffalo will win the East. Buffalo has built their team well around Drury with Vanek, Miller, and other solid players.
• Buffalo will win the cup.
• This will be Modano's last season.
• The Penguins will finish last in their division again. Mario, fire your GM, or get out of Pittsburgh.

Man, I wish I had seen this write-up three or four years ago before I started working on my basement:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Thanks to my co-worker Tim for pointing me to it. In reality, I probably wouldn't have changed very much in my music room design in my basement even if I had read it before. But what I'm most concerned about in my music room are the parallel walls and how they'll cause a lot of unwanted sound reflection. While this article talks about how to construct your room to avoid those things, it also talks about how to eliminate them in a room that has unwanted reflection. So I think I'm covered, if I have the problem :)

Tim also pointed me to a recording studio design forum. In there is a post by a guy where he describes how he constructed some bass trap panels (see included picture). The panel design is taken from the acoustics article above.

One thing I've read in a number of places is the importance of a hard-surfaced floor in your studio. I'd been playing around with the idea of using hard-wood floors in that room, and now that idea is solidified. Originally I was going to go with carpet, but it sounds like carpet will do nothing but make the room sound dull and boomy. A hard floor with attention to deflecting and absorbing sound on the walls and ceiling is a better design. So on that note I can't wait to build some panels and try positioning them on the walls and hanging them from the ceiling. Oh, wait, I need to actually finish the basement first.

Last week Jason and I held a recording session at my house for some acoustic guitar work. Here are some videos that document the very important event:

• Session video (15 MB)
• Session video (happy version) (7 MB)

Keep in mind that both videos are to be taken very, very seriously. The "happy" version is of the same ilk as a previous video we did last year that you can view here.

I'd prefer to upload these to YouTube rather than hosting them on my domain except that as far as I know YouTube doesn't support the wide screen ratio (grrrrr). I mean, who makes videos in the old ratio? Oh, I guess a lot of people do.

Also, I don't think I'll ever use Windows Movie Maker again. I have another program (Pinnacle Studio 9) which I hated back when I got my camcorder, but now I realize it's much better. The performance can be a bit slow, but that's because of my computer. WMM really isn't much better anyway. But when it comes to the video processing, Pinnacle is much faster and smoother. It also works with the video in raw AVI format. WMM uses the WMV format right from the start and quality is sacrificed in the compression.