Everbody Loves a Wedding.....

...especially when two of your best friends decide to tie the knot. After nearly seven years of dating, Matt and Angie made it official last weekend.

The ceremony was lovely. Riz and I were given credit for introducing Matt and Ang to one another. Actually, the credit goes to Mom Ejaz who made it very clear that I was never to be alone with the likes of Rizwan Parvez. Smart lady. Matt soon grew tired of being our on-call chaperone. He asked for a lady friend and we got him one. For the record mom, I'm only good, rule-abiding daughter. Perhaps my favorite rule was the 11pm curfew that was imposed in 11th grade and was still going strong when I was 21 years of age and engaged. Mom, do you know where Sameena is right now?  

Some wedding night advice from an old pro. 

I have to say Riz, you do clean up rather nicely.

T and Brett post ceremony. 

Riz belts out his fav Celin Dion ballad "Power of Love" to get the groom's attention. Ang, assumely her wifely duties decides not to encourage him. Even a wedding singer would have been embarrassed.  

The happy couple poses for some pics at Elmira College. 

The afternoon sun is brutal and their smiles are strained. They have lost yet another brother. So young. Such a promising future. 

Cheers to the bride and groom! 

The geeks will appreciate this one.

OK, so I took a break from studying this morning to rearrange the speakers in the living room to optimize the sound stage. After a little reading, I learned that the optimal arrangement for the front speakers was have the width spaced apart 3/4 the length. (i.e. X=0.75Y) and to have their intersection point be some distance (~12-24") behind the listener's head.

I set about to arrange the speakers following this formula, and discovered that I had to move the speakers 1' forward from the television to maintain the optimal 3/4 ratio.

After having done so, I had speakers all sorts of odd distances from the center of the seating. Fortunately my receiver is programmable to correct for variations in distance for the center, front and surround speakers, so with a little fiddling around (and a bunch of measuring, and the Pythagorean theorem!) I was able to electronically correct for those aberrations and virtually optimize the space.

After having done all this, I've learned 2 important lessons:
1) When the speakers are arranged optimally, they really do disappear. Music seems to take on an airy, immersive quality that's exceptionally better. It didn't cost a cent and it made a huge difference.
2) Instead of using math and measure, would-be optimizers can achieve almost-as-good results by merely arranging their speakers in the most ugly and intrusive way possible. Showing a disregard for the physical comfort of listeners will also improve the audio quality considerably. As those who've studied the diagram carefully must have already noted, the sweet spot of the sound stage requires you to sit on the seam between the two sectional halves of the couch.

Philistines may ask, "Isn't that a strange spot to sit in?"

Yes.

They may even go on to query, "Is it really worth all the bother to achieve maximal listening enjoyment?"

The answer of course is yes. Yes, philistine; it definitely is.

Additional Tidbits from Boulder

T and I spent most of yesterday posting, but didn't quite get all the goodies up that we wanted to. Here are a couple of terrific leftovers that were still on deck:


This first photo was taken as a series immediately after the huge hailstorm. The view is from an overlook on road up to flagstaff





This panorama was taken as a series of 6 shots from the roadside at Rocky Mountain National Park.

Osman and I both were playing with our cameras when the hailstorm was in full fury. He's posted one video clip from the same time period on his site, but I thought this one was interesting too. look at how high the standing water splashes up when the hail hits it.





and finally, I took a video clip with my camera of this guy at the farmer's market playing guitar. Actually, this is Colorado's unofficial theme music, and they've stationed guys like this every 25 yards so you here the music wherever you go.

Boulder, Colorado

Now we all know "Virginia is for Lovers", and in Texas, "It's Like a Whole Other Country"....

For Colorado, it's Fresh Air and Fond Memories Served Daily! 

So without further ado, here's a (relatively disorganized) review of our romp through CO. 

In Denver, we happened upon a street festival. Seems pretty ordinary, right? 

Then we realized this wasn't any ordinary festival. This gave us a whole new definition for gaiety. 

Dallice gets into an argument with the vendor over what exactly constitutes a "Hat of New Zealand" 

After the gay-pride festival, 2 carriage-cyclists gave us free rides back to the shopping district.  

A street performer in Denver. Shortie would have freaked out. 

Osman and I got to being quite the nuisance with our incessant picture taking. Grin and bear it became the unspoken motto.