Sometimes bigger is not better, especially in the case of surround sound systems. Most people would think that 7 speakers should deliver better sound than 5, but the majority of home theatre systems are not set up to handle 7 speakers and even if they were, the media you’re playing is optimized for 5. If I haven’t confused you with numbers yet, the guys over at DesignTechnica are sure to turn your brain to mush in this great article lamenting surround sound 7.1:

“In film exhibition, 6.1- and 7.1-channel systems make sense. At home, however, 5.1 channels are quite enough. It’s easy to generate a solid soundfield in a small space with three speakers in front and two on the rear of the side walls. To me it’s self-evidently nonsensical to have four surround speakers outnumbering the three in front…”

“If you’re worried about missing out on back-channel information in surround soundtracks, I’d advise you not to fret over it. Most DVD soundtracks are either Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS 5.1. The high-res music formats, SACD and DVD-Audio, are strictly 5.1-channel affairs with no 6.1 or 7.1 equivalents. If you feed a 7.1-channel receiver with a 5.1-channel signal, it will usually fake something for the back-surrounds using Dolby Pro Logic IIx processing. For my own part, I’d rather listen to five (.1) honest channels and dispense with the sonic smoke and mirrors.”

Basically, if you’re looking for the best sound for your buck, 5.1 should suffice unless you have a stadium theatre in your livingroom.

Imagine this: you’re in your Manroom watching football and your wife yells for you to bring out the trash. You immediately jump up from your recliner, lift up the seat and dive into a hidden tube that jettisons you to your garage, your wife, none the wiser. Imagine no longer!

Creative Home Engineering, an Arizona-based company has developed systems to help you sneak around your house unnoticed. Whether you opt for hidden slide tubes under furniture or the more traditional spinning bookcase, you’ll be sneaking from the study to the conservatory in no time. Their systems are surprisingly affordable starting at just $1500 for pre-fab DIY systems or installed systems starting at $10,000.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a better use of this year’s tax return than building a secret passage way from the fridge to my Manroom.

I was pretty close with my prediction earlier this month when Harpoon announced they were launching a new beer. I said it would either be a light or fruit beer. Well it ended up being kind of both.

From the brewer:

“UFO Raspberry Hefeweizen is our own interpretation of the European practice of adding fruit flavors to wheat beers. We have added natural raspberry flavor to our UFO Hefeweizen to give it a delicate fruit flavor and slight sweetness. The raspberry juice adds a rich color to the cloudy, unfiltered beer, yielding a soft reddish hue. The scent of the berries mixes with the lightly hopped beer aroma. The raspberries are balanced by UFO Hefeweizen’s clean, wheat beer taste, making this beer enjoyable and refreshing.”

They are premiering the beer on Thursday March 2 for Friends of Harpoon. If you’re in the Boston area, stop bye and put a few pints back with me.

Every one loves a “feel-good” story otherwise they wouldn’t be called that and Rochester, NY produced a whopper this week when autistic high school senior, Jason McElwain nailed 6 three-pointers (a school record) during his first ever high school basketball game.

Jason was the team’s manager throughout his high school career, but the last game of his senior year the coach gave him a jersey and sat him on the bench, then in fourth quarter put him in after the crowd was screaming for him to play.

It started rough, with an air-ball and a blocked layup attempt. Something clicked, and he nailed his next three-pointer as well as his next five 3’s in a row leading to a 20-point game. How long before Isiah Thomas signs this kid?

National Lampoon recently jumped on the Internet video band wagon with Toga TV. Featuring oringinal bits like “How Long is Harry Potter’s Wand” and “Spring Break 24/6,” Toga Tv is a study in quality over quantity when considering competition from YouTube and other massive video dump sites.

If you’ve enjoyed any National Lampoon content in the past, Toga TV will surely please.

If I have to tell you why a refrigerator and keg/tap system go well together then you shouldn’t be reading this website. For years, the only simple in-house solution for chilled keg beer has been the kegerator. While functional, the kegerator is less than practical considering that it can only do one (very important) thing, chill keg beer.

The HomePub is a refrigerator with a built-in beer-tap ready for “standard” 5 liter kegs. Besides the tap, the fridge has plenty of freezer and refrigeration space for your non-beer essentials and also features a back-up keg holder so you never run out of cold beer.

As is normally the case with boozerific products like this, it’s not currently available in the U.S., but I would surely invest if an enterprising company in the States if it were willing to produce something similar.

While France is not typically known for her inventions, “Security Feel Better” could be a world changing innovation.

A drink that reportedly cures hangovers and even removes alcohol from the system, Security Feel Better is probably too good to be true. Taking effect in less than 45 minutes, the drink can, “prevent hangover and eliminate food and drinks quicker, especially alcohol.” The drink is already being exported to Korea, Germany and Switzerland, but I doubt the FDA would allow this anywhere near US borders.

If you enjoy a good pint of Guinness then you might like to know what’s going on behind the scenes and what makes this great beer company tick. They’ve recently launched a blog (currently available only to users in the UK or users smart enough to say they are from the UK) that details there various marketing campaigns and lets the beer lover behind the curtain of a world-class brewer.

The site just launched last week so there isn’t much there currently, but it should be a great source of entertainment for any beer lover.

Just because the bar is open doesn’t mean it’s ok to start drinking. So when is it appropriate to tie one on? Bill Simmons of ESPN says 10am, but with 3 exceptions: “Football tailgates, Vegas and college reunions.” Although I think St. Patrick’s Day and the 4th of July should be added as well. Modern Drunkard had this to say about early drinking, “There’s nothing wrong with drinking before noon. Especially if you’re supposed to be at work.” AA simply asks if you typically drink in the “morning.”

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty around this issue. I say, play it by ear–if you feel guilty about the time you start drinking, then you’ve obviously not drunk enough.

I watched the men’s snowboard cross (SBX) finals last night and I must admit that I was impressed. The sport made it’s Olympic debut in Torino this year and is like Motorcross, but on snowboards. Four racers compete in a down hill race complete with jumps and hair-pin turns. There’s a lot of contact and crashes, which makes it a lot more interesting to watch than ice dancing. This is the kind of innovation the Olympics need in the war for eyeballs. If you want to check it out, the women’s snowboard cross goes down tonight (well, technically it already happened, but…) at 8pm EST on NBC.