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Running and headphone amps

Posted by ellisaurus on February 2, 2015February 2, 2015

Last week it was so warm out I ran in shorts and a t-shirt- it cooled off quickly but it was ridiculously amazing for an outdoor run in January. Things quickly turned ugly this week.

I was looking at the Adidas springblade, now that I realized my running shoes are totally dead and in dire need of replacement. I absolutely love the style of these shoes but the online reviews are TERRIBLE- the shoe breaks right in the middle – I’ve never bothered to do shoe reviews before but I’m glad I did. Needless to say, I didn’t buy these. I will need to look for a pair soon though. I have decided to get my hibernating winter butt off the ground and add in three sets of stairs efter every workout- I am in dire need of conditioning . So far four days into this, I feel amazing.

Here’s where the winter decided to strike back. Today was awful looking all day.

I dropped weight on my deadlift and went down to 260 and 8×8 reps. Felt a lot more productive than my previous 315 3×8 sets.

W and I went skiing the other day! It was a great student price and I hadn’t gone skiing since junior high.

Picking out our helmets- so weird to be looking at helmets right now for skiing- it wasn’t critical to wear one when I last went in like the 1990s.

Getting our skis fitted.

The ski lift turned out to be the hardest thing for me to handle. I just could not get a hang of getting one and off them.

Adjusting the bindings.

It was an absolutely beautiful night to go skiing. This was the main hill.

Of course I grabbed a pole. I didn’t realize they were a hazard to people.

So relaxing riding the lift up.

I fell down this part several times.

Seriously beautiful out that night.

Everything was just fun fun fun. I forgot that I had a ton of work assignments I had to kick out this week.

The drop after this edge was terrifying to me but so so fun to go down.

You can tell I really liked riding the lift, despite being a dunce on getting on and off. It was like an amusement park ride to me.

Lining up with all the other university students. I miss undergrad days of going on adventures and then coming back to study- now its going back to work.

Lunch at Taipan- congee and chow mein.

Fried sticky rice.

I was inspired and tried to make some congee at home- it wasn’t as good.

Got to handle the new Dell XPS 13. EASILY the most impressive design I have seen this past year (since VAIO dropped out the market). The bezel is ridiculously thin on this- its a 13 inch screen in an 11 inch body. This thing felt premium all in all. If I was in the market for a laptop- this would be it.

Went to the Sony store on their second last day and scored two things- one out of impulsivity and one out of heavy deliberation. I must admit- today I called them on an off chance that I might step in again but they were totally closed. I actually choked a little and became sad. It really is a good bye to my favorite store. 😦

This was impuslive- originally 190 bucks, it was now going for 25 bucks. SO freaking cheap. It turns into a sentient photographer and takes pictures by using face detection- that way as a photographer you might actually be in the shots. I think its gimiicky at best but the price was so low I couldn’t say no.

After debating for some time, I said no the the 35th Anniversary Walkman player and ended up getting the PHA-2 headphone amplifier.

Its absolutely beautiful- I love the two tone color and hard angles- the rail system is a really nice touch to hold your DAP down.

I decided I needed an amp first and foremost over another DAP, no matter how good it is. I really wanted to listen to music away from my desktop and a portable amp was the only way to go- I read reports that the ZX1 Walkman was not powerful enough to drive the MDR-Z7s or my other power hungry cans, so I would have needed an amp in the end anyways. I loved the ZX1 but the price was still really crazy to me. In the end, II’m pretty happy with my hail from Sony. I ended up getting two products I didn’t think I would have this year because they were super out of my price range- especially the Z7s. Here is my current portable set up- the Walkman Z is the main source right now and it fits perfectly on the PHA-2 but I must admit I do wonder if I am deliberately bottlenecking this setup. If you recall my review of the Walkman Z- its sound is good but its not outstanding in todays modern DAP world and my Z3 phone runs circles around it. I would even suggest that the Sony Z3 approaches the ZX1 with remarkably little distance between them. We shall see how it goes.

Saw this random image on Reddit and could not stop looking at it- its gorgeous.

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