Sports highlight: Golden Oak climb, rugby weekend

I ride up Alpine Road quite often, either to Portola Valley or to Joaquin Road (one of the steepest climb in the area, max 19%!) I just learned about an interesting "detour" on Alpine called Golden Oak. The entrance to Golden Oak is near the intersection of Alpine and Arastradero. It's 0.8 miles long with quite a steep climb (not as bad as Joaquin but still challenging when I did it) and lead you back to Alpine 0.3 miles further up hill. 

More on sports that I don't play: it's time for Hong Kong Rugby 7 again! Time really flies. I still remember watching it on TV in HK a few Spring Breaks ago. I watch quite a bit of rugby during this break between football and baseball season. The last-minute try scored in the London Wasp vs Northhampton Saints match was really something. A bit off-topic here: as a frequent rugby watcher, scrum means physical confrontation between strong men who fight for control of the ball. It's funny to hear the term also being used to describe meetings for software projects which definitely disallowed any physical contact and hopefully not much confrontation. Another term I learned recently is even worse: daily huddle, obviously borrowed from the sports but simply means a quick daily meeting to provide updates to the management. Whoever invented the term must have fancied himself being an elite athlete which he's unlikely to be. It probably explained why the management type likes to use the term :P

Sports highlight: World Baseball Classic

Not sure if we are one of the very few families in the States that are following this tournament, even after USA was out! Baseball is on the top (tied with several others) of my long long list of favorite sports and I actually paid attention to this "World Cup" for baseball that is played every 4 years. I checked the ticket price when I found out the final 4 will be here in SF but decided $75 was too much (It has been dropped to single digit, reflecting the fact that a lot of American fans simply don't care) We followed both of the last 2 games of USA (in which they just needed to win one and advance to semi) hoping they got some of Giants vibe from last WS (in which they won every elimination game) Giants pitcher Ryan Vogelsong actually started and lost in the final game that eliminated Team USA. I agree with some writers that the team didn't show enough determination to win like their opponents. Playing baseball for national pride is not in our culture, yet. Oh well, now I'm rooting for a Puerto Rico vs Dominican Republic final. These teams do have some big MLB names on their rosters: Yadier Molina, Alex Rios, Angel Pagan, Robinson Cano, Alejandro De Aza and Jose Reyes. (Pagan is from the Giants while Rios and De Aza are from the White Sox)

My weekend

One of my friend has bought a new road bike. Of course we gotta went for a ride together. Now that I have been riding in the bay area for a few years, I could recommend an interesting route close to most of my friends, in this case, it's the 37-mile Fremont-Sunol-Calaveras loop. We had a good time riding together. Another interesting fact about the ride was that we went through Bradley St and Evans Rd. If you're a fan of the sports, you would notice these are the names of the two most recent Tour De France winners.

And I am finally back to the world of vinyl after my first stint ~15 years ago, during which I collected a whole bunch of classics on LP. I didn't even listen to LP before the digital era began but spinning a record on a turntable simply sounds and feels great. It's a more engaging experience than streaming and more natural sounding than CD. Many are surprised that brand new vinyls are still being manufactured (just bought a copy of jazz organist Larry Young's 1966 album, Unity) I did some research before I made my purchase this time around (my old $1500+ setup consisted of a VPI HW-19 Jr with Audioquest PT-6 tonearm, Benz-Micro MC Silver cartridge and a Creek OBH-8 phono stage) To keep things inexpensive and simple, I opted for a piece of critically-acclaimed "budget" equipment: the USB version of Pro-ject Debut Carbon, which has a "built-in" phono stage that could output both analog and digital signal (via USB) I checked with the distributor for a local dealer and then contacted the local dealer but too bad they don't have any in stock and they are not expecting another shipment soon. So, I have no choice but to buy online. And because of this, I have to partially assemble a turntable for the first time ever! The task sounded intimidating with all those loose parts that I needed to put together, including the counterweight and anti-skating weight for the tonearm/cartridge. After installing the counterweight, I still needed to adjust the tracking force. Well, it's not that complicated after all. Next, I wasn't too sure if the analog output is properly amplified (i.e, to line-level and adjusted with the RIAA curve) because the manual didn't say so (the manual is really for the "regular" instead of the USB version) I tried the USB output first with the recording software I most familiar with, Audacity, but it's not clear to me how to simply playback the audio signal (more on this later) Still uncertain about the level of the signal, I decided to try it with my tube headphone amp, a Qinpu A3 (also capable of powering my speakers but they are shelved, which was another story.) I started with an album by jazz pianist George Shearing. Well, the audio is strong enough and balanced but his playing seemed extremely fast. I'm not too familiar with that album anyway so I put on Sgt Pepper. And Paul McCartney sounded funny. I had a feeling that the speed is wrong: to switch from 45rpm to 33, I needed to manually "pulled" the belt from one pulley to another. Finally it sounded right, actually, fantastic!

BTW, to playback through the computer using Audacity, one simply needed to enable 'software playthrough' under the 'Transport' menu. (Found the instructions here) The sound might be distorted (this is called clipping) before the level of the recording device (i.e., the USB input) is adjusted. This could be checked in Audacity by starting monitoring and making sure the level is not exceeding max. I don't plan to use this often but it comes in handy (e.g., sending the audio from the turntable to the computer then to TV via HDMI)

It has been a rather awful week overall but at least I have something positive to write about.