I should have posted this on the 4th

Things I Like–Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 Pros

John Scalzi complained yesterday about earbud headphones because they don’t fit in his ears. Scalzi wonders if his ears are weird, but from the comments, it’s obvious that he isn’t alone. I’m with Scalzi–earbud headphones don’t fit my ears well. I absolutely hate the Apple earbuds, especially because you have to crank the volume to hear anything while ride the metro and I that wasn’t good for my ears. After some searching I have found wonderful headphones for commuting and excersizing–Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 Pros. They sound great, they keep out extraneous sounds (such as the sound of airplanes, subways, etc.), and they stay in my ears.

If you clicked on the link and went to Amazon, you are probably saying, what in the &$%@ are you doing buying $180 headphones?! The answer is simple–I went through multiple pairs of less expensive headphones and then I decided to upgrade.

When I decided to upgrade my headphones from the cheap headphones that came with my MP3 player, I bought at pair of Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator headphones. I liked them, but after the warranty period expired, the sound went out of one side of the headphones. I was bummed, but I liked them, so I bought another pair. After the warranty period on my second pair of Etymotics expired, however, the same problem occurred. Much to Etymotic’s credit, they replaced the headphones. Even though Etymotics customer service was great, I decided to upgrade my headphones.

To research headphones, I went to the best site for headphone information–Headroom. Headroom has a lot of great information about headphones, including headphone ratings (though it appears they no longer carry the Super.fi 5 Pros). From the information on Headroom, I decided to buy the Super.fi 5Pros. I haven’t regretted it for a moment.

Sure they are pricey, but they sound awesome. Also, I justify the prices because I listen to headphones for about 15 hours a week (on the Metro and while exercising), so I’m happy with paying a bit more for wonderful sounding headphones. It’s a matter of personal preference, but I much prefer the sound of the Super.fi 5′s to the Etymotics. The Super.fi’s sound much richer and less tinny (you would hope they would sound better because the Super.fi 5′s are $100 more expansive than my Etymotics).

If you listen to to headphones a lot, I strongly recommend you check out Super.fi 5 Pros. If you are interested in other options, here’s Headroom’s list of ear canal headphones.

As a side note, if anyone would like to buy me some new headphones, I’d like a pair of Ultimate Ears UE 11 Pros. They only cost $1150, but by all accounts you can’t get better headphones. If $1150 is too steep, I wouldn’t complain about a pair of Sennheiser HD 650s. They are a mere $500. Like the UE 11 Pros, these Sennheisers are as good as it gets.

XM Led

I’ve been a subscriber to XM for a long time. My biggest complaint is that XM’s classic rock station (46–Top Tracks) is not a great station. For example, right now they are playing A Trick of the Tail by Genesis. There’s nothing wrong with this song, but it isn’t a “top track.” It belongs on XM 40–Deep Tracks. When I turn to a classic rock station I want to listen to a song I really long.

XM has fixed their problems with XM 59–XM Led. A station that plays nothing but Led Zeppelin. Now, whenever I’m in a classic rock mood I can find a song I really like.

Things I Like #2–The XLerator

I saw this blog post by Glen Whitman about how he hates bathroom hand dryers. Obviously Glen hasn’t experienced the joy that is the XLerator had dryer. I agree with Glen that standard bathroom hand dyers, such as the World Dryer, are terrible because they don’t work. Honestly, how does World Dyer survive? How can you keep a company going when your product “World Dryer” doesn’t dry hands, let alone the entire world?

Anyway, back to a product that actually works. The XLerator is great because they actually dry your hands. Unlike a standard hard dryer, which lightly propels a few lonely molecules towards your hands, the XLerator unleases a Cat 5 hurricane, drying your hands in seconds. It’s great.

But don’t just take my word for it, check out this happy and surprise first time XLerator user.

Things I Like #1–Terry Pratchett

I spend a lot of time writing about things that get me fired up and irritated. This is the beginning of a series with which I write regularly (hopefully) about things I really like instead of just dwelling on the things I don’t like.

It’s taken me a while to figure out what I wanted to write about in this first installment of this series because I ought to start with something I really like. For this inaugural installment have decided to write about my favorite author, Terry Pratchett.

I’ve read over 30 books by Terry Pratchett and I’ve liked almost all of them. In fact, I really like a large number of them. Here are some examples of Pratchett’s wit:

• “Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
• “In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
• “And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.”
• “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
• “They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”
• “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
• “But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
• “One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.”

And here are some of my favorite Terry Pratchett books. Check him out. You will thank me.

• Mort
• Small Gods
• Guards! Guards!
• Men at Arms
• Going Postal
• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
• Night Watch
• Wyrd Sisters
• The Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers, Diggers, Wings
• Witches Abroad
  Reaper Man

Enjoy!

And by the way, he sells a lot of books. According to Wikipedia:

According to the Bookseller’s Pocket Yearbook from 2005, in 2003 Pratchett’s UK sales amounted to 3.4% of the fiction market by hardback sales and 3.8% by value, putting him in 2nd place behind J. K. Rowling (6% and 5.6% respectively), while in the paperback sales list Pratchett came 5th with 1.2% by sales and 1.3% by value (behind James Patterson (1.9% and 1.7%), Alexander McCall Smith, John Grisham and J. R. R. Tolkien). His sales in the UK alone are more than 2.5 million copies a year.