Almost Free Bike and Cheap Cables . . .
Almost Free BikeSo Steve turned me onto a blog about bicycling. It's a very fun read, the guy that writes it is much funnier than I am and should you become bored reading MY blog, you should definitely check his out. This past week he has shown the power of blogging to just about it's full extent. The blog is "Fat Cyclist". Over the past week he has:
- Started a weight loss contest in which he's offering a sweet pair of mountain bike grips to the winner. Entry fee is a minimum $10.00 donation to the Lance Armstrong "Livestrong" foundation. 39 people have entered and he's raised nearly $800.00. VERY cool.
- He wrote a letter to Travis Ott, brand manager for Fisher/Lemond bikes "selling out" to get a free Fisher Superfly mountain bike. He got a response yesterday and he's getting the bike. All be it on Travis' terms, not fatty's.
- And I think the most noble thing he's doing with his blog is fighting cancer. His wife Susan has cancer and he blogs about it. He created the Fat Cyclist cycling jersey and the Fat Cyclist Pink jersey of which Steve is a proud owner. The jerseys are produced by Twin Six and the proceeds from said jerseys go to helping Fatty and his wife in their battle and to various cancer related charities. Simply AWESOME!
Cheap Cables
OK, so in a previous post, I mentioned my new TV and new Receiver. (Just checked and the receiver is in Seattle!) Well now that I'm moving into 1080p land, all my component video connections and digital optical connection are to be replaced by the fancy HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) connection. Scott and I were at Best Buy yesterday and perusing the new Magnolia shop inside of Best Buy. They had the Monster reference series cables that I had been pondering purchasing. I looked and a 6 foot version of the M1000 cable was $219.00. I started doing the math in my head and realized for the 4 or 5 cables I needed, I was looking to spend in the neighborhood of $800.00. For cables.
When I got back home, I started doing some research on cables on AVS Forum and came across the following two articles:
HDMI Cables How do I Pick one?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=933831
Monster Cables – What’s The Difference?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=935820
Both articles seemed to say that for anything under about 12 feet, cable quality didn't matter much. A few users went on to say that they preferred Monoprice cables above Monster because they couldn't tell the difference in signal quality AND they were significantly cheaper. I looked at the prices of the Monoprice cables and could NOT believe they were as good as monster. They were MUCH and I mean MUCH less expensive. So I continued to do some research. I came across the following articles at Gizmodo:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hdmi-cable-battlemodo/
There are two articles there, Part II and Part III. Part II does a lab test using a spectrum analyzer comparing Monster cable to of all things, Monoprice cables and one other brand. If you look through the pictures, you can see a difference between the two cables, but JUST. And at higher resolutions, etc. the Monster cables DO out perform the Monoprice cables. But those higher resolutions are not yet a standard and are unlikely to be anytime soon. For all intents and purposes, the cables both performed well. Up to 35 feet. Part III went on to do a real world test where the cables were actually hooked up between a source and a TV. The Monoprice cables performed flawlessly as did the Monster cables. When the Monoprice cable at 35 feet showed some image degredation, they swapped the cable for a different monoprice and the image degredation was gone. Conclusion, first cable was bad.
OK, so how much less expensive are the Monoprice cables? Seriously, you're not going to believe me when I tell you, so go to their site to see it for your own eyes. Yesterday the ONE six foot Monster cable was $219.00. I ordered FOUR six foot and ONE ten foot monoprice cable, shipped to my door USPS priority for . . . . ready? . . . . $41.49 . . . yes, you are reading that correctly and I did not leave out a digit. Less than forty two dollars for FIVE monoprice HDMI cables.
What's up Monster?