August 2005 Archives
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August 31, 2005
MegaSound VRCD300-USB Follow-Up
In my last review I hadn't yet tried the CD player part of this head-unit. Over the weekend, we had a chance to give it a shot. I prepared a bunch of podcasts on a CD. I transcoded all of the audio files into MP3 at either 56 Kbps or 64 Kbps mono and stereo. Some of them had to be transcoded since they were in .m4a format and the rest I did because of the playback problems with the USB keys.
We had no technical problems using the CD player with MP3s. We did have some problems, though. However, first on to the good stuff. With the CD player, MP3s can be fast forwarded and rewound. It only skips about 15 seconds at time, so it still takes a while to move forward a half an hour in a podcast, but it works. This moves into some of the bad stuff.
The lack of keeping its spot where it was playing is a problem for doing simple tasks like stopping the car to get fuel. If I switch to using MP3 CDs only I may still break up the podcasts into 10 segments or something (then the +10 track button will still move forward a whole file and be useful).
The sound on many podcasts is not very professional. Different people would be at drastically different levels. For a normal podcast, sending the audio through a sound compressor would probably work fine to limit the range, but that's yet another annoying step -- and it's not the problem of the player. Professional podcasts or broadcast recordings are usually fine.
Another annoying thing with the volume that we discovered also had nothing to do with the head unit but to do with the Jeep. We have the overhead sound bar. As it turns out, it pipes much more sound to the rear passengers than the front. Spoken word needs to be louder in many cases due to road noise than music does. When we couldn't hear the sound the rear passenger complained of it being painfully loud. Part of this was the constantly changing volume in some of the podcasts. However, part was just a lack of good front speakers in the Jeep. I could fade it forward some but it just caused a good loss of volume -- and turning it back up defeated the point.
In daily commuting, the CD has been working well. I wish the unit would tell me duration left of an MP3 file and I wish there was a way to manually cycle through the information displayed -- and I wish it wouldn't display information when all it's going to do is say "unknown."
In any case, I still haven't tried any non-USB 2.0 memory keys yet. Now that I know the MP3 playback does work fairly well I know that it has something to do with the USB connection or the memory keys themselves. More to come...
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: MegaSound VRCD300-USB Review
The LG VX9800
So, looking around on the forums this handset should be shipping sometime in mid-October. That's very promising, because...
I recently got to get my sticky hands on one. Of course, I can't really say anything about it and since it's not even on phonescoop anymore, I won't comment much on it at all.
However, what I can say, is that it's my kind of phone. It better come out cheaper than a Treo. A lot cheaper. Assuming it does, though, it's in my must-have category.
The screen is absolutely amazing. Much better than what was on the CDM-9900. The camera quality is pretty decent. It is much like the camera on the VX8000 (but not the VX8100).
The LG VX9800 isn't for everyone, though. It's basically the same thickness as an Audiovox CDM-8940, but a fair bit longer. Then you open it up and it's quite large. However, that size is put to very good use. MobileIM on it is a dream. ;)
Well, anyway, before I start getting into details that might give stuff away, I should leave with: I hope developers consider making special versions of their games and apps for the phone to fully leverage it's amazing capabilities.
August 30, 2005
Online Comic Strips That Interest Me
The following two comics (and they are funny, so no quips about them being "graphic web strips") I've been reading regularly for a while now -- including reading all of the back entries. I've really enjoyed both and find them both rather funny in very different ways. I found Hellbound when Rich Burlew of Order of the Stick was having guests do the strip during the recent GenCon.
Hellbound is a tale about a guy who loses his job 5 minutes after he gets it because he interrupts his boss and breaks the barrier allowing a demon to cross over. This demon then kisses him with a foot long tongue, sucking his soul out (or so she says). The antics continue from there...
Order of the Stick is a story of a role playing adventure but from the point of view of the PCs (player characters -- those being controlled by the real life players). You'll get amusing things because of this, like the dude standing there with ninjas behind him saying something like, "I think I failed my spot check." Then the ninjas saying something like, "Hello, we're over here!" This, naturally, is following by, "Hmm, I think I just failed a listen check." Plenty more where that came from... (although you won't find much repetition of jokes and puns, making it enjoyable for the long run).
Although I linked to the latest for each, I recommend reading them from the start. It doesn't actually take that long to catch up.
August 26, 2005
MegaSound VRCD300-USB Review
So, our Jeep, being the ancient 1997 model that it is, only had a tape player in it. This wasn't terrible as we had a tape adapter for using MP3 players or whatnot -- until that got stuck in the unit and wouldn't work or come out, even with force and wrenches.
Clearly that meant we had to get a new head unit. I really wanted one with front auxilary mini-jack input, just like the one in our Miata. Our Miata has a JVC 990 (something or another). The only one I could find this time around that hand the headphone style input that I wanted was the JVC G510. Well, it was basically the same as the one in the Miata, but newer.
Some problems with it: It does not display the time when off, although you can push a button to turn it on long enough to display the time -- but that causes the antenna to go up briefly. It has no pause button, for CD playing or otherwise. It only has auto scan for the radio, which is nice for strong signals but bad if you're trying to get a channel you know is about to come in -- or can come in good enough (a lot of public radio stations are like this). You have to flip it down to insert a CD, which disables all controls while doing this.
So, we weren't entirely too happy with it, but it has been working out just fine. However, all of the local places that sell the G510 have it for $180 with free installation (compare to cardomain). That's not too bad for the features we wanted. When shopping, I had seen a higher end unit with USB input (the Audiobahn A1200N). That intruiged me, but it had not front input and was more expensive.
Then along comes a Kragen ad with a no-name headunit with both front input and front USB input for a mere hundred bucks. So what's the catch? Well, it's a no name. That means Google searches return almost nothing about it. Although it did return a sparse manual from their website (VR3 -- Roadmaster -- their only CD player).
The only review I found was someone putting it on a bench and determining it didn't have that great of sound. Precisely what I would expect from a hundred buck no name unit.
So we bought it.
August 25, 2005
Yay! EVDO Live here!
EVDO appears to now be turned on in the South Bay area (Los Gatos). I don't know where else yet.
It's fast, as usual, of course. ;)
[Update: It's not in Santa Cruz yet.]
August 23, 2005
Verizon Voicemail Oddity
So, I got a call from Laurie recently. I could hear her but she couldn't hear me. This isn't entirely unusual. So, after a bit, I called back, got her voicemail, hung up, and called back again.
We talked briefly and then hung up. A few seconds after, my phone alerted me of voicemail.
What was it?
A bit over a minute of silence and then it ended with our conversation -- both sides of it. I don't quite understand what happened, but it seems somehow my voicemail triggered and record anything going either direction through my account for a while.
That's just a little odd -- and perhaps a little scary (in a privacy sort of way).
August 15, 2005
DSL: Information Service == Monopoloy OK?
So the big news lately here in the US is that the FCC has said that DSL is an information service.
Big deal. Everyone knows that. So what gives?
Well, that means that it no longer qualifies to be under regulation. That means that phone providers, like SBC or Verizon no longer are required to resell the lines for use by secondary providers, like DSL Extreme, or Yahoo, or MSN.
So what happens if you have one of those secondary providers? Good question. There is supposedly a year transitional period. Not sure what the transition is, either.
Perhaps this will force companies like Microsoft or Yahoo to have to buy a telco just to provide broadband to their customers.
I hope the change isn't as drastic as people think it will be. We've got DSL Extreme with 6 megabit down and 600+ kilobit up. This comes at a mere $60 a month, too. Is SBC were to dump DSL Extreme, what would our recourse be? The next fastest connection is probably cable, not SBCs own offerings. (In fact, their fastest is "1.5-3.0M" down and "384-512k" up for $75 a month with static IP or $25 a month with dynamic -- we have static, but that's because it didn't cost $50 extra a month (it cost nothing extra a month)). Cable, on the other hand (via Comcast) is advertised as up to 5x faster than DSL -- their site clarifies that it's 786k DSL (SBC doesn't get that slow), which puts it at about 3.8M down for $43, or about 2/3rds the speed of our guaranteed DSL rates (from high bandwidth sites, we do get at least 600 kilobytes per second transfers).
So this will only HURT us in the long run. How is this supposed to help consumers?
Maybe when they dump us we'll be able to get fiber or something.
Sony PSP: Versatility Beyond Utility
So here we have it. Run an x86 emulator on the PSP so you can boot Windows 95. And play solitaire.
Yipee!!
Alright, so getting Linux to run is cool, too, but it's still via an x86 emulator. And does it interface with the built-in WiFi? (Probably not...)
It seems to me that getting the 2.0 firmware has more utility because of the Access browser, which I really like(d) on my Zaurus SLC700.
Now if only you could use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with it...
August 12, 2005
One Computer to Rule Them All
I have to completely agree with Russ about the loss of productivity in using two computers.
I've been using a single laptop for work for nearly 4 years now. It's been great because since I owned it, I didn't really have to worry about the division between work and personal issues that Russell brings up near the end of the post.
Before I used a single laptop for everything, I had things split between at least two machines if not three at any given time (home personal desktop, mobile personal laptop, and office work desktop). Switching away from that made life so much easier. This was particularly true with email handling, but other things as well. I felt like when I would configure something in a nifty way that it would actually apply to everything I did rather than just on that one machine.
Now that I have a new laptop and it's work owned, I haven't fully decided if I'm going to worry about the personal issue thing yet. Since we're encouraged to take our laptops home, I may not. Not only that, but it's not against the rules to install your own software to be used after hours or at home (such as media players (though music is a work hours thing), games, etc.). And as Russell put it, it can often come down to a measure of value. This post here should be damned near valueless.
Speaking of work, I'm sure I have some to do. ;)
August 5, 2005
Make Noise!
So, this CD is about making noise to abnoxious neighbors. I think they're defining obnoxious neighbors as the noisy ones. I, on the other hand, am usually the noisy one. However, one of our neighbors is obnoxious in that she'll pound once on the wall (you hardly even think it's a complaint). I think switching the track from Goldeneye to this CD would be mighty amusing. ;)
DS+GPS+Gmaps = Fun DIY Hack
A little bit of software, a little bit of hardware, and some maps on a CF card make it all work. What's the Google maps portion? Those are the ones on the CF card. It's not yet quite as cool as it could be, but it's pretty nifty what a little dual screen game machine can do.
natrium42 - Weblog » Blog Archive » GPS for DS via Gmapped GPS on the DS: Two, two, two hacks in one - Engadget - www.engadget.com
August 2, 2005
PSP Video Download Service via PSP Connect
In another, "did we forget this site already?" theme, we now have the gadget sites saying that PSP Video download service is launching in Japan but may never make it here to the US. Did everyone forget about Sony's PSP Connect site? It's over here at http://psp.connect.com. What's it have? Since right around the release time of the PSP, it's had videos available for free download for use on the PSP. And it's all in English. And it's all legal and from Sony.
Alright, so it's not downloads via the device itself. And there isn't much content, although it does change. It does, however, show that Sony has been thinking about the US market all along and it can't be long before premium content is made available via the device for small fees.
PSP Video Download Service Starts in Japan, World Green With Envy : Gizmodo
Cool 3D Display
I haven't read into the entire link chain, but this seems like a perfect display for playing games on. If I had this for playing Neverwinter Nights, I could see my characters enemies that much better. Maybe it'll make it into arcades in the near future?
Archos: Model Number Confusion
Archos has for sale currently their AV700. It's a widescreen portable PVR that comes in 40GB and 100GB models. Like the AV400, it has a dock for the TV, has full recording functionality, and even has a USB host mode port. Don't forget about "plays for sure" support for Microsoft DRMed premium content.
Yesterday, however, the gadgets sites were full of "sightings" of the Archos AV500, which has been a model number in the whispers for ages. The only stats people could come up with happen to virtually match the AV700. I think the AV500 is their code for their upcoming devices and they know when things are linked since they never actually seem to make a model AV500. Why would they do the AV500 when the AV700 is already shipping?
(And plenty of other sites, I'm sure.)
August 1, 2005
No Holiday Today?
If you agree with that statement, then you probably live in the US, like myself. The rest of the English speaking countries seem to have a holiday today. Alright, not all of them -- but alot of them, according to my Lord of the Rings daily calendar.
It lists "Holiday" for Ireland and Scotland, "Civic Holiday" for Canada (but not Quebec, see, they speak French there), "Picnic Day" (sounds perfect) for Australia (NT), and "Bank Holiday" for Australia (ACT and NSW).
It's not that we don't have enough federal holidays or national holidays, or even enough Summer holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day) but we don't have any today. And I could use one today. ;)
