ATTENTION, ATTENTION, TIME FOR A PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT!

I’d like to point-out something really important for both you and me. I really appreciate every comment that I get from you people. I’m the kind of guy who likes to get in touch with people who have problems, some doubts or simply are knowledgeable. That’s why often, instead of replying to your inquiries here as a reply-comment, I write an e-mail reply to you. BUT! Most of you seem to be afraid of typing in your real e-mail address. Why? Probably most of you are scared of spam-bots or other such “web monstrosities”…

Well then let me assure you, right from the start of this here blog I made certain that spammers won’t get to your e-mail addresses. How? It’s simple. Nobody (and no “thing”), but me, the site administrator, can see your e-mail addresses which you leave in the comment fields. The addresses are stored in the blog’s comment database and not somewhere directly on the website, so the spam robots aren’t able to find them.

So to sum things up, I’m not forcing anybody to write your real e-mail address, but if you’d like to get some direct feedback from me (especially when you’re in need of help) then please don’t be afraid to use your real address. That’s all. Thanks in advance!

OK now as for the blog, in-between exams I managed to make some technical changes here. First and foremost, I abandoned my old hosting service and moved everything to a new one, which is (yeah, I’m sure of it already) faster, more stable and has better support than the old one. The next thing is that I’ve updated both the blog and the forum software. You’ll probably won’t notice anything new thanks to the blog update, but I can’t say the same about the forum, it changed quite a bit (new layout and all). I hope you’ll like the new look and functionality.

So, is that all? Nope. There’s one more change that I’ve made, probably the most substantial of them all. As planned before, I’ve made a second blog for all my posts that aren’t directly related to audio (which is the main focus of this here blog). The address to the second blog is: wojtek.younghifi.com. Expect mostly personal stuff there, so if you’re interested in what’s going on in my life aside from all the audio and music stuff, then that’s the place to go. I’ll probably put up a link to it somewhere here on the homepage, but I haven’t decided where yet, but rest assured that it’ll be quite visible.

I know that there have been such non-audio related posts before here and for now on I’ll leave them here, but I’ll probably move them to the second blog in the future in order to keep the integrity intact.

I guess that’s all for now. Stay tuned for the continuation of the turntable posts series and expect some more posts about vinyl records. This time with hands-on photos!

UPDATE (4th April 2008):

I’ve brought down the other blog after all, so the above mentioned link has been made redundant. I’ll stick to posting non-audio stuff on this blog too.

As for recent blog-related stuff, I’ve updated the blog software to the newest version, so it should run a bit more smoother now. I’ve also added the “Guides” page, where you can find direct links to all the guide posts that I wrote. You can also think of it as a “featured posts” page.

The recently established forum is slowly becoming more popular (at the time of writing, it’s 6 members strong out of which 3 members are most active). I wonder when will it hit the 10 member milestone…

Now let me explain a bit more. The main idea behind the forum is to have a place where people new to the whole audio biz and those who don’t have much experience, can ask questions about whatever problems they may have or simply state their thoughts and discuss them with others without any risk of getting laughed at from other, so called “elite” people. If you’re a frequent on any forum, I’m sure that you know what kind of people I’m talking about. I myself have been recently laughed at when I asked a novice-type question about speaker cables on a Polish audio-oriented forum. It took about 20 replies till I finally got the answer to my query and most of them where totally not on-topic. Later a fight started on that single thread of posts between the “all-knowing elitists” and people who felt that it was wrong to laugh at a potential newcomer and discourage him. I really must confess that if I would start my hobby by frequenting such a forum, I would surely be discouraged if people would be making fun of my lack of knowledge while I’d just be trying to learn something new from them. I guess that most people would.

That’s what got me thinking and this new forum is the result.

You can visit the forum by going directly to it’s address: http://forum.younghifi.com or by clicking on the “Forum” link, which is located above in the blog’s header and right on the blog’s sidebar under the “Pages” listing. I still got put a link on the forum that would bring you back to the blog though.

As for the technicalities, the forum runs on the new phpBB3 system (which is actually still in “beta” stage, as in “not-yet-final-version” state, but it’s already very stable) with the standard layout. The forum’s structure is still not-solid, as I’m thinking about new stuff and implementing new ideas on the go and of course I’m also open to any suggestions that might come from you. I still have to write and put up some forum rules there, but I hope that this feature will become useful and profitable in a number of ways to both you guys and me.

Now I still have some exams ahead of me and I hope that after I pass them I can get back to writing some new audio-related stuff here on my blog. So please stay tuned and do visit both the blog and the new forum from time to time.

I promise I’ll get back to some writing right after the examination session.

Furthermore, I’ve decided to slightly divide my blog. As you probably know, I sometimes also post strictly personal posts, sometimes not even related to audio (just like this one here) and I’m not too comfortable with that, because I want this blog to be only about my audio experiences and not all my personal experiences…

That’s why I decided that when I’ll have some more free time on my hands, I’m going to put up a personal blog next to this one. I dunno if I’ll be also using the Wordpress platform for that purpose, but the main idea is to have a place where I can post about stuff completely unrelated to audio, so to not clutter up the content you may find here.

There’s also an idea of starting a “Young HiFi” forum, a discussion board where people who are new to the whole HiFi biz or any other audio hobby have some questions. I’ve noticed that most popular audio forums out there don’t have a “newbie corner” and sometimes the new guy gets ignored or laughed at just because he’s not one of the “elite”…

That’s it for now, tell me what you think about the forum idea, because maybe I’m wrong and such a place isn’t even needed in the big WWW :). I’ll keep you posted when something comes up…

Christmas was nice, seeing my parents and most of the family and all. Everybody enjoyed their presents (including me of course) and we had a very good time together. I also met up with my friend Daniel (I’ve mentioned him in my previous post).

One could say that throughout my presence in Lebork, I’ve had my hands full. I won’t get into details, cause it was mostly family related. I haven’t even touched my turntable! I also promised myself before to take some photos that would be a good addition for my previous posts, but nope, didn’t have the time to do that either…

I can already say that the year 2007 will bring me some good sound, because one thing that turned up while I was back at my home is that I found a pair of good loudspeakers (JBL L-100T) on an internet auction and won them for a good price. I’ve bought a receiver in October, a Sansui 9090DB, and since that time I was mainly using it as an amplifier for my headphones (Sennheiser HD-280 Pro) while getting most of my music from my computer’s soundcard. I haven’t searched for a CD player or a turntable, because I decided that having some speakers was the first priority before anything else and now the time has finally come. They will most probably be delivered to me tomorrow. I’m pretty happy about the fact, because I’ve been hunting for some good and renowned speakers for quite some time now (over a year at least). I’ll let you know more about my first impressions when they get here and when I’ll have a chance to hook them up to the receiver (gotta go and buy some speaker cables too).

As for the blog, I’ve slightly updated the “Vinyl records: Collecting 101 – part 2″ post with some info about vinyl records having drillholes and cut-corners (I’d forgotten about it while I was writing it). More details about that in said post.

I’d also like to say a few things to those people who have posted links directing to my blog on some websites. I appreciate it very much, but I really don’t like it when somebody describes my site as a “vinyl blog”. OK, I know that I’ve written a big deal of information about vinyl records, but I really have no intention of writing ONLY or even OFTEN about vinyl. The blog’s title is “Young HiFi” and not “Young Vinyl”. I have posts about turntables, laserdiscs, the computer demoscene, quadrophonics and other stuff all written up already in my notepad, just waiting to be expanded and published here online. To put things in a nutshell, I really appreciate it that people put links to my blog in the world wide web, but please read the “About” page prior of doing so and if you really find it satisfactionary to just tell of my recent vinyl articles than just point the link at the first part of the Vinyl Records: Collecting 101 series. Why? Because if I won’t be writing anything about vinyl for the next couple of months, then how good is a description of my blog , saying that it’s all and only about vinyl, when it’s not true?

That’s all for today (or rather “for tonight”). Time to get some well earned sleep…

As to the updates:
1. Finally wrote the “About” page, which you can read by clicking on the About link, which is located on the top of the right blog panel, under the “Pages” category.

2. Deleted the Links from the main page and put them all into a link page called “Links”, found also under the “Pages” category on the right blog panel.

I’ve decided that this is better than the former way, because it allows me more control of the links order and doesn’t limit me at describing the links (I simply hate it when someone gives you a link to a website and doesn’t say a word on what is that site about).

3. Added a small vertical Google AdSense bar, as you can probably see on the right.

I still haven’t fully decided if I will be having AdSense on the blog, where will it be located or how it will look like.

4. Added my blog to some blog directories (for instance: Technorati) in order to make my and your life easier :)

Also, as a nod to the “discipline punching” I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve decided to make a promise to the readers: from now on I’ll keep posting on a “1 post per 3 days” MINIMUM basis. It needs to be done in order for this site to have any useful content in the near future and the funny thing is that almost daily I get new ideas as to what to write about, but at the end of the day end up at not even typing the blog’s address in my web browser.

So be prepared for some serious posting in the upcoming days and in the future (hopefully not ONLY the NEAR future).

I’ve finally managed to get this whole blogging business a’ rollin’. As a matter of fact, I’ve bought the hosting services for this blog over 2 months ago, so… let’s just say I wasn’t always in the mood for sitting down in front of the computer and making my “first step” into the personal blog universe. It’s good that I’ve decided to buy the domain name before going officially online, cause I’ve also had second thoughts for some time on that subject…

I know that this site still seems kinda generic (not many gizmos, standard wordpress layout, etc.), but this generic-ness is the fault of my own laziness and the fact that my first plan of what I intended to do in order to start blogging looked like this:

1. Get a web host, domain, install wordpress
2. Get all the gadgets, set a good layout and all the jibba-jabba
3. Start posting

To put things short, let’s say I got stuck in the second point. After laying low for a while, I’ve started reading some articles on blog-related vortals. People there (experienced bloggers) reminded me in their articles what’s the whole essence and most important thing in the blog – content!

I’ve decided to change the plan so that point 2 and 3 would change places :). That was like a week ago. Since then I’ve tried to write my first post, but just couldn’t! It’s hard to tell why… I hope that after this “first step” I’ll have the motivation to continue on writing on a more daily basis.

I still have to do the basics: write the “about me” page, put up some starters post categories, some links to useful and topic-oriented sites. I think I’ll manage to finish these things today. After that I’ll try and put up the mentioned “gizmos”, but I can’t tell when will I have the spare time to look for and test these things on the site, so mostly I’ll stick to posting content.