The Geek Speaks

Life is moving oh so fast, I think we should take it slow

2009-11-09T23:40:00.002+08:00

Life is moving oh so fast,
I think we should take it slow.
Rest our heads upon the grass
and listen to it grow.

From the song Splendour in the Grass, the latest album of the same name by Pink Martini. It's especially apt in crazy today's world where we are all working fast and hard, with hardly enough time for ourselves. Pianist Thomas Lauderdale has also ingeniously woven in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 into the song. He has done other similar classical cameos in previous albums as well.

The other meaningful verse is:-

Back when i was starting out,
I always wanted more.
But every time I got it,
I still felt just like before

Time to take a break, slow things down, and relax a little.

Pink Martini's New Album - Splendor in the Grass

2009-10-19T22:19:00.003+08:00

One of my favourite bands, Pink Martini, has released a new album titled "Splendor in the Grass". Sounds pretty nice from the preview. Speaking of which, it's very nice of Pink Martini to provide full song previews of 4 of the songs, unlike many online music retailers out there who provides only a mere 30s. The caveat is of course, that it's only limited to 4 songs (otherwise no one will buy the CDs given the very high audio quality of the preview). Can't wait for it to be available here.

iPod Touch vs Zune HD Screen

2009-10-15T22:16:00.007+08:00

Screen comparison between the iPod Touch 32GB (1st Gen) vs the Zune HD. Shot on location on Singapore's world-class MRT train. Though the iPod Touch screen is brighter, the Zune HD is much more vibrant/contrasty, making the iPod Touch's colours look pale in comparison. Photos shot with a Panasonic LX3.

The Math of Pizzas

2009-06-17T23:46:00.003+08:00

Saw this in my Twitter timeline:

True: A pizza with the radius "z" and thickness "a" has the volume pi*z*z*a

Whoever thought of this iAnd it's been retweeted many times over now.

Microsoft's Mega Fail in Project Naming

2009-05-19T23:56:00.005+08:00

A long time ago, Rio had a MP3 player called the Chiba. Then Google had a payment system they called GBuy before renaming it to Google Checkout. Now, Microsoft calls their latest software project Ciba which they describe it as "a generic static analyzer based on abstract interpretation for the modular analysis and verification of Java classes".

Unbeknownst to them, the term actually sounds very similar to the hokkien for a female private part, and is often used as a profanity. This website has an explanation of the term and of course, popular Singaporean mrbrown also had something to say about this as well. :) The Twittersphere is now awash with people mocking the name with #cibai becoming the top trending topic for a short while.

Lesson learnt : It sure makes sense (and is worth the trouble) to make sure that you check your product naming in all possible languages to see if it has any negative connotations before using. :)

Singapore Tourism Board Singapore Grand Prix Photo Contest Submission

2009-05-15T18:22:00.004+08:00

These are the entries I submitted for Singapore Grand Prix Photo Contest by the Singapore Tourism Board. I got shortlisted in the Top 50 but unfortunately did not make it to the finals. You can see the results here. Apparently the same contestant can win more than one prize each. Here's what they have to say about this:

The photos where short-listed based on 3 criteria : relevancy to requested competition theme, Photography Technique and Innovation & Creativity. Photos where chosen completely on merit independent of who submitted it. Therefore, one participant who submitted multiple photos which satisfied our criteria could potentially win more than once. As such, Alphonsus Chern and Vivencio S.Rojas, JR won two prizes

And there's still a missing second prize winner, which they did not answer when I asked them.

Here are the contest submissions. Unfortunately I can no longer remember the captions I submitted, since STB never had a confirmation email when I submitted these.

On hindsight, looking at the winners, maybe this photo below could have won me something :p

Free High-Resolution (24-bit/96kHz) Audiophile Tracks

2009-04-07T00:14:00.002+08:00

HDtracks.com has released another free sampler of their audiophile recordings called the HDtracks 96/24 Ultimate Download Experience. The tracks are in the 24-bit, 96kHz FLAC format and are culled from HDtracks' extensive collection of audiophile recordings. I downloaded them and they were excellent when played through the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum.

Cheap HDMI Cables

2009-04-07T00:01:00.003+08:00

This is possibly one of the cheapest HDMI cables you can get. Only US$1.05! Considering how much HDMI cables can cost (esp. the so-called Premium brands), this is really a steal. They also have cheap TOSLink Optical and DVI-to-HDMI cables.

Western Digital WDTV

2009-04-05T21:21:00.007+08:00

Just got the Western Digital WDTV from the IT Show 2009. It's basically a no-frills media player which lets you plug in a mass storage device (e.g. Hard drive, ThumbDrive etc) and play your media files stored within. It supports 1080p resolution in its HDMI output as well as Dolby Digital surround sound via the optical SPDIF output.

I used to hook up m MacBook to my TV/AV receiver whenever I wanted to watch a podcast like Tekzilla or the .mkv files that I have, which is really a hassle. Now I just have to copy the files over to my external HDD, plug it into the WDTV's USB port and bingo. HD entertainment at my fingertips.

Been using it for a while through my Pioneer PDP-428XG plasma TV and I gotta say it's excellent. The HD playback is smooth and I don't see any dropped frames. I watched a BD rip of Planet Earth on it and it just looks gorgeous. My only gripe is the lack of any network capability, but at this price point (<S$200) I can't really complain.

For those interested, the WDTV is reviewed together with Seagate's FreeAgent Theater in Episode 81 of Tekzilla.

Pink Martini Sympathique

2006-05-05T23:28:00.000+08:00

Discovered this wonderful CD by Pink Martini from a hifi mag. Despite it being released in 1997, I only recently "found" it. Very nice songs which of latin, cuban, spanish, etc influences. Very enjoyable. I especially like the track "Sympathique" which gave the album its name.

There's this music video to Sympathique which I feel is very well done. It's supposed to be available for download on the web site but apparently the link is broken. However, there's a copy on YouTube as well. :)

A friend of mine bought the album very soon after I sent him the link to this video. Not only that, he ended up buying Pink Martini's second album, "Hang On, Little Tomato" as well. I'll probably get that too. :)

Now That's What I Call the iPod Hifi

2006-03-25T22:23:00.000+08:00

Not too long ago Apple launched this product dubbed as the "iPod Hifi". Of course it cannot qualify as a hifi and many audiophiles have understandably scoffed at it. There are also people who labled it a "boombox" instead.

I heard the thing at Apple Centre Funan and it was indeed horrible. The music played through it was harsh and almost unlistenable.

Then came the Concertino, a speaker + tube amplifier combo by German audio company Goldster Audio. This is a rather high-end-ish setup which uses a tube amplifier running in the much touted Single-Ended mode. This is supposed to "pinnacle of what is possible in tube amplifier design" according to Goldster Audio.

This seemingly old technology "perfectly capable of compensating for the sound distortions of today's music production and data reduction because of its wonderful "analogue charm".

Now that is definitely more hifi than the iPod Hifi. How much does this baby cost? A cool US$3,700.

Finally, QuickTime HD on my PC!

2006-01-30T23:54:00.000+08:00

For months, my AMD Sempron 3200-based PC has never been able to play QuickTime HD files, they just seem so processor intensive. While I have played HD in other formats such as DivX and WMV-HD, QuickTime HD playback never worked well for me. Somehow, QuickTime HD requires a much higher system requirement than the other HD formats (Apple recommends at least a 2.8GHz machine for playback of 720p files while others can work with a 2.4GHz.)

I was browsing the Mac User Group forums I read about other users playing such files using VLC. I've known VLC to be a "play everything" player but it never quite dawned on me that it'll do QuickTime HD as well. I decided to give it a go anyway, and bingo, my previously "unplayable" 720p QuickTime HD files played without much of a hitch!

So for those of you out there having problems with playing back QuickTime HD files, do give VLC a go.

Zen Vision:M

2005-12-13T23:02:00.000+08:00

Just tried the newly released Creative Zen Vision:M. Conclusion: Nothing short of amazing. The 2.5" LCD display is capable of displaying 262,144 colours compared to the iPod's paltry 64k. Videos and photos are splendidly displayed in rich, vibrant colours. Dark scenes in DiVX movies were rendered properly without losing detail.

The AV output is able to output video at full 640x480 resultion. On my TV this is amazing, considering it's only delivered via a "lowly" composite connection (known to be the worst video connection around). It's almost DVD quality, assuming your source is good to begin with of course. One can only imagine what a component connection can do. I sure hope this will be available in future players from Creative.

Am I hearing things? Can this be?

2005-12-13T22:50:00.000+08:00

I had my bare DIY AMP3 digital amp kit running in my hifi for some time now, but decided to switch back to my old Musical Fidelity A220 amplifier to hear how it sounds in comparison. Hmm, don't remember it had that much 'glare' in it. Doesn't sound quite like the way I remember it.

Decided to hook up the AMP3 again. Despite being a much lower powered amp (~8W vs 50W for the Musical Fidelity), it sounds more detailed and with much less 'glare'. It also sounds a lot more musical. Much less fatiguing to listen to. Of course it can't play orchestral climaxes really loud, but it's more than enough for a small room like mine.

Am I hearing things? Is the AMP3 really better than the Musical Fidelity? Hmm... no wonder everyone is raving about digital amplification!

AMP3 with Usher Speakers

2005-11-22T22:22:00.000+08:00

Finally went ahead and hooked up the AMP3 digital amp to my Usher S-520 speakers. Totally amazing. The tiny amp has a very liquid midrange akin to tube amps and very good detail. Despite its relatively low power , dynamics are pretty good. It has no trouble playing stuff like the Magnificent 7 on Telarc's Round Up, Ein Straussfest and other orchestral works. Soundstage is wide and deep. I can easily pin-point almost all the individual instruments. Instrument timbre is played back very very well. Playback of vocal pieces are also absolutely amazing. The very good midrange is very smooth, and voices have a very nice, warm quality with a good tonal body. There's no sense of the harshness and glare found on lower end digital and solid state equipment. I can now see (or rather hear) what all the digital amplification hype is all about.

Right now the amp runs off a Cambridge SoundWorks 12VDC 1.5A power adaptor which used to power the PC Works speakers. I believe this is an unregulated power supply, so a better, regulated power supply should improve things a bit.

I've begun to re-play quite a number of the CDs from my collection and still have not been disappointed. :)

Here's the AMP3 in its full naked glory (haven't cased it yet). The clothes peg you see clips a PC slot cover for use as a heatsink :p

AMP3 Complete

2005-11-18T00:38:00.000+08:00

After weeks of "bit-by-bit" soldering, my AMP3 digital amp kit is now fully assembled. Glad that it worked the very first time, and I didn't have to waste time troubleshooting. :)

Initial listening tests using a Cambridge Soundworks 12VDC power adaptor and driving the Creative GigaWorks S750 satellites sounded pretty good. Will probably let it run-in a bit before hooking them up to my Usher S-520 speakers to see how they perform.

Digital Amps

2005-09-27T23:01:00.000+08:00

There have been quite a bit of talk lately about digital amps in the various forums, ranging to the cheap Sonic Impact T-Amp, to the AudioTrak Dr Amp, to the high end Flying Mole DAD-M100pro and NuForce Reference. In fact the Sonic Impact got such a good review from audiophile site tnt-audio that it has become sort of an overnight success, sprouting other companies like Red Wine Audio to make heavily modified versions of it and selling it as the US$499 Clari-T amplifier, which also earned raving reviews. Forbes also has an article recently about Sonic Impact's success.

The T-Amp, Dr. Amp and Clari-T all uses various digital amplifier chips from Tripath, and DIY amplifier kits are available from sites like diyparadise.com and 41hz.com. To see (and hear) what all the digital amp craze is about, I've ordered th AMP3 kit from 41hz. Various other kits based on Tripath's chip are also available there, with one having a power output of 300W! From the forum there, it appears that all of these kits have very good audio quality. My kit is on the way to me, and I'll be writing about it again once it comes and I assemble it. Stay tuned.

Mac in Mac

2005-08-25T00:01:00.000+08:00

By now, most of the Singaporean Mac users will have known that if you updated your operating system to Tiger 10.4.2 or if you are using Panther and have applied the Airport Software Update, you lose connectivity to the free WiFi connection at McDonalds (SSID:skynetglobal). There's a long thread at the Mac User Group's forum in which the "unlucky" users reported their problems. I was fortunate to be late enough to hop onto the OS X Tiger bandwagon and thus knew about this and avoided the 10.4.2 update, thus still able to use the free WiFi service in McDonalds. :)

A friend and I were in the McDonald's at Bugis Junction, and I took out my PowerBook to go online and show him some photos. A speech impaired person with an iBook gestured to me asking me how we got online. I booted up his iBook, and went "oh no" when I saw the Spotlight icon in the menu bar. My fears were confirmed when I couldn't logon even with the famed "Control-Key" trick. I clicked "About this Mac" and saw that it is indeed 10.4.2.

Since I can't communicate with him by speech and gesticulation is going to be difficult, I opened TextEditor and typed to him, IM-style, that Tiger 10.4.2 is not compatible with the skynetglobal network. He said that his friend using Panther isn't able to get online as well, which I replied that Panther with the Airport Software update isn't able to get online too. He went away for a while and brought his friend's iBook. Tried the Control-Key trick and we got online without a hitch. Phew. Opened TextEditor again, and taught him the trick. He went away happy that he is now able to get online.

I sure hope the sysadmin for that network (and/or Apple) is able to get this fixed.

Soundblaster X-Fi Product Info Released

2005-08-24T23:50:00.000+08:00

Creative has released the product information for their X-Fi series of sound cards. They include the X-Fi Elite Pro, targetted at high end users who want the absolute quality in their music creation and home theatre applications, the X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS, named after famed gamer Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendell and aimed at hard-core gamers, the X-Fi Platinum, for serious music listeners and home theatre fans and finally the X-Fi Xtreme Music, the entry level (but not compromising quality) of the range.

All except the X-Fi Xtreme Music comes with a drive bay with various connectors for things like line-in, line-out, headphones etc (much like the previous Audigy/Audigy 2 Platinum series). Both the X-Fi Platinum and Fatal1ty FPS comes with an internal 5.25" drive bay while the top end Elite Pro has an external breakout box with more controls and connectivity options.

Surround Sound in Headphones Comes of Age with Creative's X-Fi Audio Solution

2005-08-10T23:24:00.000+08:00

A friend of mine was raving over the demo DVD which came with the lastest issue of Computer Gaming World today. In it were demos of tracks from Creative's X-Fi audio solutions which shows how surround sound, game audio, movie soundtracks and the like would sound on headphones after they are processed with Creative's new audio technologies such as CMSS 3D and the 24-bit Crystalizer found on their X-Fi audio solutions.

The demo is nothing short of amazing. I've heard other technologies including Dolby Headphone, binaural, etc which claim to emulate surround sound but nothing comes close. There was a demo which positions an applause in the various places in a 7.1 soundfield (i.e. Left, Center, Right, Side Left, Side Right, Surround Left, Surround Right), and the virtualisation of the various positions is truly amazing.

Unlike other technologies where the soundstage still remain somewhat "in your head", the X-Fi's CMSS 3D rendition actually places sounds in a large soundfield outside your head. So front left really is front left, and rear right sounds like it's really from your rear right. The other demos showcases gaming and movie audio, and just as convincingly spatializes the sound and get it "out of your head", giving you a much better listening experience much like listening to true surround speakers.

This being so good, I think it gives the surround headphones like the Sennheiser Lucas and iRock 5.1 a run for their money.

Usher Audio S-520 Speakers

2005-08-05T23:03:00.000+08:00

During lunch, a colleague who is also an audiophile brought me to a couple of hifi shops in Bukit Timah Plaza. At X-Audio, he pointed this pair of speakers to me and asked me how much I thought they cost. Looking at the very well built speakers in glossy piano finish, I said, "Dunno, S$2000?" "No, just S$550!", he said. The very friendly shop owner then talked to us about the product lines and awards garned by the Taiwnese company, Usher Audio.

We asked to try out the speakers which the owner happily obliged. But before that, we played a few tracks on the ProAc bookshelfs (think it's the ~~Response 1SC~~ Reference 8 Signature) which he already had connected. I didn't ask what the rest of the system are, but pre/power amps are from Threshold Audio. After this he switched the speakers over to the Usher S-520.

The difference is clearly audible. Voices sound more natural and have more ambience and presence. There is more detail in the audio playback and literally puts you right where the performer is and engages you in the performance. The speaker also has nice deep & tight bass which is not overpowering.

I am amazed. Until today, I've never heard of the Usher brand, but for the kind of price/performance ratio, I am giving it serious consideration for a future upgrade to my existing budget hifi setup. It really gives the more expensive speakers a run for their money.

The "Individual Ink Cartridge" Myth

2005-08-04T22:15:00.000+08:00

We heard them all -- inkjet printer manufacturers nowadays tout all the advantages of their printers having individual cartridges giving you an substantial savings as you no longer have to replace all the colours at a go regardless of whether all the colours of the inks have depleted. So, unlike the days of old where if you run out of say, magenta, you'd have to replace the entire cartridge consisting of anything from 3-6 colours, you now only have to buy and replace magenta.

I used to have the now defunct Epson Stylus Photo 890 which uses a black cartridge and a "all-in-one" colour cartridge and had always been skeptical of the "individual ink cartridge" advantage as Epson's Status Monitor software would always show me that the levels of the inks would always deplete at around the same rate.

Now I am using a Epson Stylus Photo R210 with INKdividual (Epson's clever marketing term for this feature) Ink Cartridges, I noticed it depletes at around the same rate as well, giving me confirmation of my earlier skepticism. So in the end, I probably have to spend S$110 replacing all the 6 cartridges simultaneously instead of less than half of that using the combined cartridges.

I guess the concept of having individual cartridges is probably more for people who print a lot of business graphics and presentations where large areas of a single colour are the norm. But for the people out there who uses this printer for what it's meant for (i.e. printing photos) then perhaps the concept is not so applicable (unless of coz, you print lots of photos consisting of large areas of a single colour like green grass and blue skies).

The only advantage then, of this whole concept is that since each individual cartridge is obviously of a larger capacity than the combined one, you get to print a more before having to replace the cartridges (albeit all of them).

Creative Zen Vision Released

2005-08-04T00:58:00.000+08:00

Creative Technology finally released the much antipated Zen Vision. Sure looks like a great product with the 3.7" high resolution (640x480) LCD screen and support for a wide variety of video formats including the popular XVid and DiVX formats. There's even a CF card slot for digital photographers like myself can use to offload images from my CF cards to the 30GB harddisk on the device, freeing up the card for more images.