Random Tangent

I discovered only today that, late last year, Alexander Davidson released a new version of my all time favourite text editor, Metapad!

Metapad is one of the most lightweight, simple, and yet powerful text editors out there. I love it for its tiny footprint, portability, multiple font support, block editing functionality, and transparent window capability. It also looks really nice :)

Before I upgraded this afternoon, I’d been using its previous version for at least ten years (via a recommendation from Chris Pirillo).

The latest version has a higher quality icon (which is really cool) and integrates fully with Windows 7 so it’s now my default text editor. Yes, you have to do a little OS-level tweaking and hacking to make that work…but it’s so worth it.

Yaay!

Tags: Technology by Ameel
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Yes, you can has!

After years of wanting a large screen HDTV, on Friday I finally went out and bought one. And boy was it worth it!

Sitting on the sofa in our living room, this is what our old 32” CRT TV looked like:

And this is what our new 50” Plasma TV looks like:

The larger screen makes a big difference, doesn’t it? :)

What Did You Get?

For those who are interested, I ended up getting the Samsung PS50C7000, which is a 50” (127cm) Series 7 (i.e. 2010) Plasma TV:

I did quite a lot of research before selecting this model and reviews like this from CNET were very encouraging:

The Samsung PS50C7000 is one of the best plasmas on the market and boasts one of the most complete feature sets available. Not quite deserving of full marks, though. [CNET Australia]

As well as this one from PC World:

The Samsung Series 7 (PS50C7000) plasma is very nearly the best television we’ve tested. It’s got an excellent design and generally great picture quality, only falling short in overall black levels. 3D is handled well but there are still a few aberrations; it is fine for occasional casual viewing. The Series 7 (PS50C7000) does a great job on Internet connectivity as well, making it an excellent all-round performer we’d happily recommend. [PC World]

My main research source was CHOICE, though, and they recommended this as one of the best 127-132cm TVs to buy (Note: Report viewable by members only):

CHOICE also named Samsung the ‘Best Television Brand’ in its 2011 Choice Awards. Panasonic and Sony were the other two TV brands that received the highest overall performance and CHOICE member customer satisfaction scores.

This TV also met all of my basic requirements:

• 40-50”, Full HD (i.e. 1080p), LCD or Plasma
• HDMI, Component, Composite, USB, and Audio In/Out connectivity
• HD tuner built-in
• RGA port included (i.e. it can be used as a computer monitor)
• LAN/wireless connector
• DLNA certified (i.e. works with streaming media players/servers on your network)

Basically, this was last year’s top end Plasma model from Samsung so it had everything I wanted and even a few things that I didn’t want (like 3D capabilities).

Timing is Everything

The best part is that, in the annual consumer electronics cycle, April is when most new TV models hit the market. So, if you’re happy to buy the previous year’s model, March and April are when you get the best discounts(assuming the TV you want is still in stock). As it happens, I got this TV for about half its market launch price :)

LCD vs Plasma

In the choice between LCD and Plasma, I’m an audiophile and videophile so the superior picture quality of Plasmas has always appealed to me.

Also, in our price range of “just over A$1,000”, I had a choice of getting:

• a cheaper brand LCD,
• a better brand LCD from 2-3 years ago,
• a more recent model of a better brand LCD that had a smaller screen (e.g. 32-40”), or
• a better brand plasma from last year.

When you look at it that way, the choice of getting the plasma was obvious (assuming your aim was to get the largest screen size appropriate to your TV/living room).

Which Store?

I ended up getting our TV from RetraVision, which has one of the best range of Samsung TVs.

I got there at about 8pm on Friday night and, fifteen minutes later, I was done. The TV got delivered the next morning and I spent much of yesterday (Saturday) setting it up.

Yes, this has been a fun weekend :)

What Next?

Now that we have an HDTV, we need high definition content to watch.

We already get some HD stuff from our free-to-air digital channels but my next step is to upgrade our Foxtel set top box to the iQHD and our subscription package to include HD channels (21 of them).

After that, we’ll think about getting a Blu-Ray player and some Blu-Ray discs. And, once we do that, we’ll think about getting a home theatre audio system. None of this will be any time soon, though. Certainly not till next year.

Fortunately, this is only the start of our life in HD so there’s a long way to go, yet. Let the fun begin! :)

Tags: Film, Technology, Television by Ameel
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I love Casio watches and, since the early 80s, haven’t bought anything other than a Casio for myself. (I’ve also never bought anything other than a Casio calculator but that’s another blog post.)

When the battery on my latest watch started to die for the second time a couple of weeks ago (I’d owned this one for about 5 years) I figured it was time for me to buy a new one.

28 years of Casio Watches

But, before I get to that, here’s a quick trip down memory lane of the Casio watches that I remember owning over the years (thanks to Watch Shock and their awesome watch archive).

I owned this watch when I was six or seven years old (i.e. in the early 80s):

And this one some years later:

I then got this fabulous calculator watch in the early 90s (which I loved dearly):

Through the rest of the 90s I owned G-Shock watches; first this one:

And then this one:

Finally, in the mid 00s, I got myself a ProTrek:

My New, Simple Watch

My newest Casio is one of their basic models (the AE-2000W) which really just tells the time (though it does do that across 31 time zones):

I bought this simpler type because I don’t use my watch as often as I used to. That’s mainly because the ProTrek was too bulky to wear under business shirts so I couldn’t wear it to work every day. This new one isn’t much thinner but I’ll certainly give it a try.

That said, I do still wear my watch whenever else I’m out of the house and I do keep it next to my pillow every night.

And now I have this shiny new one to help me keep track of my day :)

Tags: Technology by Ameel
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Tags: Blogging, Tablet PC, Technology by Ameel
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Following on from my post on ‘How to be Alone’, I have two articles two share. One that I remembered from earlier this year and one that I read today.

In ‘Why I Returned my iPad’ Paul Bregman talks about the importance of boredom and unproductive time in his life:

Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that’s where creativity arises.

My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone. When I am lying in bed as my mind wanders before falling to sleep. These "wasted" moments, moments not filled with anything in particular, are vital.

They are the moments in which we, often unconsciously, organize our minds, make sense of our lives, and connect the dots. They’re the moments in which we talk to ourselves. And listen.

While in ‘How Do You Process Your Life?’ Tara Sophia Mohr talks about the need for downtime during which she reflects on and process what’s been going on in her life:

I need reflective processing time desperately, I’ve learned. Not because I’ll stop functioning without it. On the contrary, I look more “normal” to others when I don’t have it.

[…]

But to be the woman I want to be – emotionally generous, not cranky or erratic or jaded; to be spacious and open and deep, to have a presence that feels to myself and others to be grounded and alert and graceful; to be someone who brings more sanity into this world instead of contributing to the craziness, then I need downtime. To deal with colleagues and professional partners in a rational and calm way, to manage the challenges of my work effectively, to show up creative and focused everyday, I need to process what comes into the ecosystem of me.

I agree wholeheartedly with both Bregman and Mohr.

Tags: Life, Technology by Ameel
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One of the reasons I bought a tablet PC was so I could be truly mobile in my computing. An important part of mobile computing is to have Internet access wherever you go. And the obvious and most reliable way to get that access is to have your own mobile broadband connection.

Last year I got that connection from 3. I bought from them a USB mobile broadband modem and signed up for a prepaid month-to-month data plan.

[Source: PC World]

This year I went one better. I bought and got Lenovo to preinstall an internal broadband modem (the Qualcomm Gobi 2000) when I bought my tablet PC.

I did that because I didn’t want to carry around a USB modem that I’d have to plug in every time I was out and about and wanted to connect to the Internet.

My plan was to transfer my existing 3 connection over from the old modem to the new one. I considered going to a 3 store and asking them to do that for me but then realized that, being a technology geek, I could probably do all that (i.e. the SIM installation and network configuration) myself. And I was right :)

So, here’s how you do it…

First, Get a Connection

If you don’t already have a mobile broadband connection it’s pretty easy to get one from one of your local mobile carriers.

If you go with 3 in Australia, for example, you:

• go to one of their stores,
• sign up for an account (in my case, a prepaid one),
• tell them you’ll be using your own modem, and
• pick up the ‘3 Mobile Broadband Prepaid Starter Kit’ (which will include your SIM card).

Do read the BYO Modem page on their website before you go ahead and do that, though.

In my case all I had to do was take the SIM out of my USB modem.

Insert the SIM Card

Inserting the SIM card into your laptop (or tablet PC, as the case may be) is really easy.

In the Lenovo ThinkPad X210 tablet PC – as in other ThinkPad X-Series computers – the slot for the SIM card lies behind the battery bay (click images for larger photos):

Take the card, orient it according to the etching on the metal plate below the slot, and push it all the way in:

Then put the battery back on and you’re done.

Power-On the Modem

Assuming that you actually have a broadband modem installed in your computer and that all your drivers are up-to-date, you now need to turn your modem on.

To turn it on, use Lenovo’s Fn+F5 keystroke to bring up the ‘ThinkPad Wireless Radio’ window and press the ‘Power On’ button for the Wireless WAN Radio:

That should change the colour of the ‘Wireless WAN Radio’ text to green and should also light up (again, in green) the WWAN status indicator light just below the screen:

[Source: Laptop Mag]

If this doesn’t happen you probably don’t have a modem installed (check in Device Manager in Windows) or your modem isn’t configured properly (run Windows Update to get its latest drivers).

Configure the Connection

Next, you need to set up the connection to 3’s mobile network.

Since I use Lenovo’s Access Connections utility to manage my connections that was pretty straightforward to do. All I had to do was create a new Location Profile by clicking on the ‘Location Profiles’ tab:

And then pressing the ‘Create’ button:

Since I already have a Location Profile for my connection – called ‘3 Mobile Broadband WWAN’ – I’ll show you what its configuration is by clicking the ‘Edit’ button instead.

Under the ‘General Settings’ tab I’ve:

• named my profile,
• said that I want to connect using ‘Mobile Broadband’, and
• selected the Gobi 2000 modem (the only option in the list):

Under the ‘Mobile Broadband Settings’ tab I’ve said that this is an HSDPA/GPRS network that requires ‘Custom Settings’:

These ‘Custom Settings’ (which you get to by clicking the ‘Edit Settings’ button) are:

• the ‘Known WAN service providers’ option is ‘Other’,
• the ‘Custom service provider’ name is ‘3MobileBroadband Prepaid’ (this will be ‘3Mobile Broadband Postpaid’ if that’s the connection you signed up for),
• the APN is called ‘3services’:

There’s no need to change any advanced or additional settings. Click all the ‘OK’ buttons and you’re done.

Connect to the Network

Go back to the ‘Connect to the Internet’ tab and you should now have ‘3 Mobile Broadband WWAN’ listed in your Location drop-down list. Select that and click the ‘Connect’ button next to it.

In this screenshot I’ve already clicked ‘Connect’ so that button has changed to ‘Stop’:

It should take about 10-20 seconds to connect…and off you go!

If the connection doesn’t take place then something hasn’t been configured properly or your account with the mobile carrier hasn’t yet been activated. I can’t help you with the former (because I’ve already told you all I know) and the latter you should already have worked out with the salesperson at the mobile carrier’s store.

If further tweaking fails and you can’t find the answer on the Internet then you should take your laptop to the mobile carrier’s store and ask for help (or, alternatively, call them up and get help over the phone).

But if all this has worked then you should now be connected to the Internet via your mobile broadband connection. Yaay!

Tags: Internet, Tablet PC, Technology by Ameel
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Nadia and I have maintained our website at insanityWORKS.org since 2004. It was overhauled once (in 2007) and is past due for another major upgrade.

Moving to a Content Management System

This time, though, the plan is to move it on to a Content Management System (CMS). Much as I love getting down and dirty with HTML code (via Dreamweaver, of course) a CMS-based site will be much faster and significantly easier to maintain. At the very least we won’t be stuck managing it from only those computers that have Dreamweaver installed on them.

The question then becomes: Which CMS do I choose? I’ve been using both proprietary and open source systems since 2001 so I know a lot about a lot of them. That means I can use pretty much any one that’s out there quite effectively; though I do plan to use an open source one for this site.

Fortunately, my choice is limited by the ones that my web hosting provider, E-Starr, provides automatic support for (specifically, installation and upgrade support). I’ve used a bunch of these CMSs in the past, too, so I’m already quite comfortable with most of them.

My Needs Have Changed

What’s also good is that my personal website needs aren’t what they used to be three years ago. For example:

• A lot of information about me is now available on my Google Profile
• I now host my photos on Picasaweb (albums) and Flickr (photo stream)
• I do most of my writing on my blogs (this one and my professional one)
• I no longer need to maintain a PDF version of my CV for people to download because most of that information is available on my LinkedIn profile
• A lot of the other content that I host on the site can be moved elsewhere (like Slideshare or Google Docs, for example)

What’s left, then, is mostly text content and a couple of archived websites. Any old CMS can handle the former and latter will remain the way they are so, all told, my CMS requirements are actually quite simple.

So, What Now?

What I think I’ll do now test a bunch of the CMSs available to see which one I like the most. I do have lots of options, including:

• Drupal
• Geeklog
• Joomla 1.5
• PHP-Nuke
• phpWCMS
• phpWebSite
• Siteframe
• TYPO3
• Xoops

Not to mention WordPress, which can be tweaked to make a pretty good CMS itself.

So, if all goes well, I will report back in a few weeks, by which time I hope to have the newest version of insanityWORKS.org up and running.

Wish me luck!

Tags: Internet, Life, Technology by Ameel
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So, after much research and analysis I bought myself a Cowon S9 mp3 player which arrived in the mail yesterday:

[Source: Trusted Reviews]

Why a new MP3 Player?

I’ve been wanting to buy myself a new MP3 player for a while now. The iriver E100 that I have is decent enough, but it does have a few problems.

For example, its UI is rather clunky and I didn’t want to deal with slow menus, slow scrolling, and the inability to quickly forward through an audio track or podcast any more.

I was also feeling limited by its 2GB storage space and lack of good quality video playback (though the latter was more of a secondary concern).

Research Mode

So, last week I went into research mode and started to build a shortlist of players that met my needs.

My needs, by the way, were:

• Excellent quality sound
• Podcast support
• Audible support
• Small and light (so, most likely, a Flash memory based player and not a hard disk based one)
• Plenty of storage space (at least 8GB)
• A good UI
• Ideally, good quality video

My early first choice was the Microsoft Zune HD but that’s still not available in Australia so it dropped out of the running pretty early on.

Most of the Sony and Samsung players dropped out, too. They had good quality sound but were lacking in one aspect or the other. The ones that fit the bill were out of my price range. I considered briefly the thought of getting an iPod – either the Nano or the Touch – but the iPods have always far to limited for my liking.

FYI: If you’re interested in this kind of thing, check out Pocketable’s ‘Apple iPod touch 2G vs. Cowon S9 vs. Samsung P3’ comparison.

Shortlist, then a Selection

So I ended up with a shortlist of three players:

• Creative Zen X-Fi: Cnet US, Anything But iPod, Trusted Reviews
• SanDisk Sansa Fuze: Cnet US, Anything But iPod, Trusted Reviews
• Cowon S9: Cnet US, Anything But iPod, Trusted Reviews, DAP Review, Engadget

All three met my needs but the S9, though it cost more than the other two, gave me more than what I wanted while remaining within my price range.

Specifically, the S9 had excellent quality audio while the other two had merely ‘very good’ quality audio.

It also had excellent quality video on a fabulous widescreen display, which was a big bonus. The Fuze’s video quality, meanwhile, was terrible while the X-Fi’s was good, though not widescreen.

And, while the S9 didn’t have the additional features the X-Fi had, I really didn’t want or need all those additional features.

So that was that. I ordered the S9 from Eljo Media last Sunday and it arrived in the mail yesterday. I also bought for it a leather carrying case and a mains charger.

I have since spent the day exploring it, updating its firmware, and copying my media onto it.

My early thoughts: it’s awesome :)

Good Quality Headphones to Match

To round off my move into ‘excellent’ quality audio, by the way, I also wanted to buy a pair of quality earphones.

I ended up getting the HiFiMan RE0 In-ear Earphones Headphones (i.e. canalphones) from Headphonics:

[Source: HiFiMan]

FYI: If you’re interested in quality headphones, by the way, check out Headphonic’s Top Picks in headphones.

These haven’t arrived yet because I ordered them a day after I ordered the S9 but I trust they’ll be awesome, too.

UPDATE: The headphones arrived this morning and they are, indeed, awesome. First off, they’re made of lightweight metal and not plastic, which is brilliant. They also have five different eartips of different lengths (i.e. both single and double flange) and diameters. Finally, they come with a detachable clip (to clip the cord to your shirt) and five pairs of fabric mesh filters (i.e. covers) for the micro-speaker bit of the earbud. For much more on these these earphones, check out this awesome review by ClieOS.

Post Script: Being an Audiophile

So, now that I have excellent quality music equipment (and most of my music is encoded in high bit-rate MP3 format), I can go back to being an active audiophile.

I’ve actually been an audiophile – though not of the insufferable variety – since I co-produced an album for the band I used to be in back in 2004. During that period I trained my ear to listen to music much more deeply and I haven’t looked back since. So much so that badly produced, over-produced, or over-mastered music now really irritates me.

So, while I’ve had this love of quality music for a while, I haven’t always had the equipment to enjoy my music to the fullest. Well, with the Cowon S9 and the HiFiMan RE0, my situation has changed: I’m back :)

FYI: If you’re interested, here are some articles for your inner audiophile (with a focus on MP3 compression, modern music mastering techniques, and the loudness was):

• Why we need Audiophiles [Gizmodo]
• Loudness War [Wikipedia]
• Imperfect Sound Forever [Stylus Magazine]
• The Death of High Fidelity [Rolling Stone Magazine]
• The Big Squeeze [Mix Magazine]
• How to get the Most out of your Speakers [Sound & Vision Magazine]

Tags: Life, Music, Technology by Ameel
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I’m done with the first phase of my comprehensive data backup plan.

In this phase I backed-up all of my data (about 180GB of it) and all of Nadia’s data (about 60GB) to our network attached storage drive. That got completed last night.

For those of you who missed it a few blog posts ago, I bought the awesome 1TB My Book World Edition hard drive from Western Digital to do our our local backing-up. The best part of this solution is that it comes with Memeo’s WD Anywhere Backup software which automates backing-up over the network. Not only is this software really easy to use, you get five licenses for it so it’s a great solution for networked, multiple computer households (it works on both PCs and Macs).

The next phase will be to organize online backups for both me and Nadia using Carbonite. I’ll probably start that over the coming weekend. I won’t backup all my media online, of course, so hopefully it won’t take more than 2-3 months to get done. (It’ll take this long because my Internet upload speeds isn’t all that great and, besides, I don’t want to use more than, say, half my monthly bandwidth cap on this initial backup.)

The final phase — which will kick off once I get a tablet PC — will be to use Live Mesh to sync my tablet PC to my desktop PC. That way I won’t need to install any backup software on my tablet PC since all its data will always be replicated on the desktop and, thanks to Phase I and II, all that desktop data will be automatically backed-up both locally and online.

I feel safer already, but there’s still more to do. On to Phase II…

Tags: Internet, Life, Technology by Ameel
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My blogging has been sporadic of late (I’ve been very busy at work) so here’s a quick catch-up on all the exciting things that have been happening in my life recently. This works quickest as a Q&A.

Q: How’s life?

A: It’s going well:

• We’ve moved apartments so we’re closer to the city. Nadia can now walk to university and my daily commute to work is shorter by 20 minutes each way.
• We now have high speed, large bandwidth broadband Internet (ADSL2+) at home thanks to awesome iiNet. This also means we have a land line telephone, which is nice.
• We have a bigger TV (inherited from my sister) and Foxtel have added new channels to their line-up. I’m particularly enjoying SciFi+2 (which is the SciFi Channel time-shifted by two hours) because I can now watch shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation at more convenient times. I’m also watching a lot of Inside the Actor’s Studio, which I’m really enjoying.
• Work is going really well. Melbourne Water is an awesome place to work and I love my job (I’m the Websites Manager there). Importantly, I’m having lots of fun.
• Over the last six months I’ve had much dental work done from the excellent dentists at East Melbourne Dental. And, though this had hit my wallet quite hard, it has made me a much more pain-free (and, therefore, a much happier!) person.

Q: What have you been up to?

A: Plenty!

Last month Nadia and I visited the Gold Coast for the first time.

We stayed at the excellent Watermark Hotel & Spa in Surfers Paradise and, though were only there for three days, we had lots of fun. Our trip to Sea World was particularly enjoyable.

 

I’ll upload a photo gallery from that trip to my PicasaWeb account some time soon. We hope to go back for a longer trip in the future.

Right after the Gold Coast trip we attended the Australian Skeptics National Convention in Brisbane (hosted by the Queensland Skeptics) which was both exciting and hugely inspiring. More on this in a later blog post.

We also saw the fabulous Tim Minchin (official site) perform at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. In a few days’ time (3 Jan), I’ll be going to see Moby (official site) perform at the Palace Theatre on Bourke Street! :)

Q: What else is happening in your life?

A: Well, starting with the geeky side of life, I’ve made a few excellent purchases.

For backup and media storage, I bought Western Digital’s My Book World Edition external hard drive:

This gives us 1TB of storage and lets us do daily backups over the network. It’s a fantastic network attached storage solution for the home.

I bought a 7” digital photo frame (via the brilliant Catch of the Day website) which we’ve placed in our living room.

I downloaded and installed Amazon’s Kindle for PC software, though I’ve only bought one book for it so far (‘Groundswell’ by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li). I’ll probably buy more once I get myself an actual Kindle device (which I hope to do some time in the near future).

Finally, I went ahead and bought two pieces of software I’ve been meaning to get for a long time: WinAmp Professional (my favourite media player) and Webcam Saver (my favourite screen saver).

On the music side of life, I joined the Melbourne Water Choir (which was lots of fun) and I bought myself a drum kit. That drum kit is the really basic Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite:

I bought an electronic kit because an acoustic one, no matter how muffled, would be too loud for the apartment. I bought this particular one because it’s the quietest, most acoustic-like in its price range. It’s also one of the cheapest electronic kits available :)

I have discovered since that not playing the drums for about a year makes you a little rusty!

Q: What else?

A: That’s about it, I think (though I will probably remember more later). Well, other than the fact that we’ve been watching lots of movies, listening to lots of music, hanging out with lots of friends (including one who was here from overseas), and generally doing stuff we enjoy.

All in all, life is really busy (mostly because of work) but it’s going well and we’re having fun.

Tags: Australia, Life, Music, Skepticism, Technology, Television by Ameel
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