Richard Farrar's Blog

Any system is only as good as the weakest link in the chain and audio systems are certainly no exception to the rule. Assuming that your music system is producing reasonably pleasant sounds, you may never stop to give it a second thought, but with a few simple tests you can check to make sure that your speakers are wired correctly and that you’re getting the best out of your system.

Attaching speakers to your Hi-Fi system usually only requires a few cables. You wouldn’t think that getting these cables mixed up would present much of a problem would you, providing your music plays back OK and no smoke comes out of the system?

Well, under most circumstances you’d be right, with a simple channel mix up being the most likely probable outcome, but if you have a real knack for getting things back to front, then you could have your speakers wired out-of-phase, which while it won’t do any damage, certainly won’t help you to get the best out of your system.

These potential problems are easy to spot with a few simple tests and luckily the corresponding remedies are equally simple.

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Photo by dantaylor

It’s been exactly one year to the day since I re-launched my website as a BLOG and published my first blog post. So perhaps it’s an appropriate time to look back at what I’ve achieved on the blogging front in the past year, what I’ve learnt and what  plans I have for the blog .

When I launched my blog, I planned on writing a post  once a week. This didn’t seem to be a too onerous schedule and I managed to maintain it for the first few months, but of late my posting frequency has slipped a little. I now seem to average 3 posts a month.

With each of my posts, I try to aim for a post length of 1,000 words or so. Due to the technical nature of most of my posts, I don’t just hammer them out and click publish. I like to research the post, checking my facts and then spend a little time after writing to re-read and edit the post to make sure it all makes sense and flows correctly; it’s surprising how much time this takes, hence my slip in posting frequency.

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The Internet Monthly is a monthly podcast featuring 20 or so short Internet related articles, tips and tricks and a regular search engine of the month feature.

In this month’s podcast, you can find out how to secure your business pitch on Google Maps, find a good domain name from the ever decreasing supply and help search engines make the right choice between your duplicate Web site pages.

You can see how to check the way your Web site looks on mobile phones, add a brand icon to the web address of your website that browsers display and listen to music while you work by Twittering. Plus find out how to translate words into any of over 50 foreign languages and when you finally escape the office, learn how to make £300 in a weekend!

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

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