[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]

This was probably the best concert I have ever attended. Yes, it was even better than watching The Police live at the MCG on Australia Day a couple of years ago. I guess it helps that I own almost every Moby album and that I knew all of the songs he played :)

Instead of writing much about it, I’m just going to share some of the photos and video snippets that I took.

Photos

Opening number:

Joy Malcolm and Moby:

Kelli Scarr and Moby:

The whole band at the end of a song:

Joy Malcom and crowd participation:

Videos

‘Bodyrock’

‘Porcelain’

‘Disco Lies’

‘Feeling so Real’ and concert end

It was awesome.

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…

I didn’t know Asim as well as I would have liked to but…well, I had always assumed I’d meet up with him some time in the future. My most recent contact with him was last year, in the months after I blogged about him, but I did try to keep up with everything he was up to.

I don’t know what led to his decision. Indeed, we may never know. It’s just incredibly sad that it had to come to this.

That’s about all I can say right now.

Other have said more:

• ‘Asim Butt (1978-2010)‘ [Stucksim]
• ‘RIP Asim Butt‘ by Adil Najam [All Things Pakistan]
• ‘The Graffiti Activist: Asim Butt‘ [Teeth Maestro]
• ‘Death of an Artist. Asim Butt 1978-2010‘ by Imran Khan [The Asia Blog; Al Jazeera]
• ‘In Loving Memory of Asim Butt, 1978-2010‘ [Facebook Group]

It is now Chimamanda Adichie taking about ‘The Danger of a Single Story’:

You can find out more about Adichie on her Wikipedia page.

How Not To Write About Africa

Speaking of the “single story of Africa”, you must also watch Binyavanga Wainaina’s ‘How Not to Write About Africa’:

If you have the time, do watch Wainaina’s follow-up video (which is rather long, unfortunately) in which he explains why he wrote ‘How Not to Write About Africa’: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

You can find out more about Wainaina on his Wikipedia page.

A Message for Peace From Pakistan

Continuing with the single-story theme, check out Asher Hasan’s short TED talk called ‘A Message of Peace from Pakistan’:

You can find out more about Asher Hasan on his LinkedIn profile. Also check out his non-profit, Naya Jeevan.

More Pakistani Stories

This is why blogs such as these – which are written about Pakistan or by Pakistanis – are so important because they tell you much more about this country and its people than what you would normally hear, see, or read via global media outlets:

• PakPositive
• Pakistaniat (a.k.a. All Things Pakistan)
• Metblogs: Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore
• Well Pitched

For many more Pakistan-related blogs, take a look at these lists:

• Pakistani Bloggers on PakPositive (or just go to the full list of bloggers)
• Bloggers.pk
• NetworkedBlogs – Pakistan (which is, technically, the 50 most popular blogs among Pakistanis based on data collected from the NetworkedBlogs Facebook application)
• Mosharraf Zaidi (great blog and a good list of other blogs on his list of links)

It’s a good list – and the following shows are on it – but I recommend you read the article to see exactly why they’ve been selected (including where they came from and what specifically they influenced):

• Desperate Housewives (2004-present, ABC)
• The West Wing (1999-2006, NBC)
• Lost (2004-present, ABC)
• Chappelle’s Show (2003-2006, Comedy Central)
• Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009, Syfy)
• Sex and the City (1998-2004, HBO)
• The Daily Show (1996-present, Comedy Central)
• The Shield (2002-2008, FX)
• Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006, FOX) and The Office (2005-present, NBC)
• The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986-present, CBS)
• The OC (2003-2007, FOX)
• The O’Reilly Factor (1996-present, FOX News)
• Survivor (2000-present, CBS)
• The Sopranos (1999-2007, HBO) and The Wire (2002-2008, HBO)
• American Idol (2002-present, FOX)

Since then I’ve gone and looked for other Melbourne photo blogs and here are the ones I found so far:

• Today in Melbourne [Michael Blamey]
• Girl in Melbourne [Jayne]
• Melbourne Street Art
• Melbourne Photoblog [Sam]
• The Grapevine [Adam Dimech]
• The Foto Kid [Edouard Mouy]
• Heiko Waechter | Fotoblog [Heiko Waechter]
• Melbourne in Photos [John Evans]

Let me know if you find any others.

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.

The Cinematic Experience

I liked it because it was entertaining, immersive, and beautifully shot. I loved the 3-D effects and did, eventually, get used to wearing the 3-D glasses for that long a time (once I figured out how best to place them on my nose in relation to the glasses that I already wear).

I also liked the way in which future technology and space travel were depicted. Though, funnily enough, future bulldozers make the same beeping noises that present-day ones do :)

Of course, Pandora was gorgeous and I really appreciated the depth of detail that Weta Digital and ILM went into when creating that world.

The Story

The story was pretty good, too. Though, as you would expect, it had issues.

Speaking of those issues, there are a number of lenses you can use to analyze both the basic plot and actual storyline of the film. And lots of people have, indeed, reviewed and analyzed the film extensively (see links to my favourite reviews/discussions at the end). The lenses they have used include race, colonialism, gender, the role of the military/militia in broader society, military strategy, the role of scientists/sociologists in broader society, capitalism/anti-corporatism, and disability.

What’s particularly interesting about these reviews is that everyone comes at the story from a different point of view. For example, I’ve found that many American reviewers and bloggers see parallels between the film’s story and what happened to the indigenous peoples of North America during European colonization. Non-Americans, meanwhile, talk about that as well as other colonialist movements from around the world.

I think that’s a testament to the screenwriters (and Dr Paul Frommer, who created the Na’vi language) because the situation presented in the film can reference any number of real situations from human history from around the world.

That said, the basic plot itself isn’t very original. And if you read ‘The Evolution of ‘Avatar’’ on the Reappropriate blog you’ll see how this film’s plot is somewhat similar to the plots of ‘Dances with Wolves’ and ‘The Last Samurai’.

Still, it’s an important story to tell and I think it was told quite well. For more, read the reviews I’ve linked-to below.

Overall, I’d give the movie a 9 out of 10 – both for its awesome cinematography & visual effects and for its timing & relevance-of-story to our present-day socio-political world. Oh, and also for Sigourney Weaver and the kick-ass character she plays in the film :)

Reviews Worth Reading

• ‘What Does Avatar Tell Us About Masculinity and Disability?‘ by Chauncey DeVega [Open Salon]
• ‘On Avatar, the Movie (Spoiler Alert)‘ by Lisa Wade [Contexts.org]
• ‘When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”?‘ by Annalee Newitz [io9]
• Avatar (2009 film) [Wikipedia]

Saieen Zahoor and Noori performing a modern rendition of Bulleh Shah’s ‘Aik Alif’ at Coke Studio earlier this year is certainly one of them. This is my song of the year, if not song of the decade:

For more on this song:

• Lyrics and translation [Farah’s Log]
• An account of the recording session [ZooWorld of a U2 Maniac]
• Coke Studio webpage for the episode (Season 2, Episode 1, ‘Individuality’) in which this was featured