Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, the internet, science, skepticism, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
Something to look forward to in (probably) October!
Screenshot from a Windows computer showing a pop-up window with the title “This PC can run Windows 11” and text that reads “Great news - this PC meets all the system requirements for Windows 11, and it’s free. We’ll let you know when it’s ready to install.”
More about Windows 11 here:
Introducing Windows 11 (page)
Introducing Windows 11 (blog post)
Hello. Here are some of my favourite 4K videos, timelapses and hyperlapses (ie moving timelapse).
First we have JeffHK’s ‘30 Days Timelapse at Sea’.
I’d been wanting to buy a 4K monitor for a while. That video of Jeff’s is what finally got me to pull the trigger on a 32” 4K Dell display. Thanks Jeff!
Jeff’s more recent '14 Days Timelapse of U.S. East Coast' is fantastic too.
And while you’re on his channel, check out his Panama and Suez canal transit videos.
Next is Mike Oblinski whose storm videos are mindbogglingly gorgeous. Like his recent ‘Monsoon 6’.
Or 'Vorticity 3’ from a few months ago:
Then we have Timelab Pro, who create some of the most fantastic 4K+ drone footage.
Their latest video is from Switzerland.
Though my recent favourite of theirs is ‘75 000 h.p. The Biggest Nuclear Icebreaker’ – which is set to Hans Zimmer’s Inception soundtrack, no less.
Next we have this lovely hyperlapse from FilmSpektakel which presents 'A Taste of Los Angeles’.
Finally there’s this timelapse that I just recently came across. It’s from The Timewriters and is a riveting ‘Travel from Rotterdam to Amsterdam in 10 minutes by boat'.
If watching these types of videos is totally your jam, by the way, search for ‘4K timelapse’ on YouTube. You’ll find so many fantastic videos.
Happy watching! And let me know if you have any favourites I should really watch.
It’s here! Exactly five months and one day after I ordered it, my Scorptec Blackout Gaming PC is finally up and running – and it’s all that I’d hoped it would be :)
Photo of a wide desk showing a large black desktop computer tower with a Wi-Fi antenna on top of it. Next to the tower is an ultra-widescreen computer monitor. The monitor is switched on and has a cloudy, starry nebula displayed on it. Behind the monitor is a pair of desktop speakers. In front of a monitor is a split gaming keyboard and a gaming mouse lying on a mouse pad.
I’m a PC gamer and over the last few years I’ve been buying myself Gigabyte gaming laptops. But when Microsoft Flight Simulator came out last year and struggled to run on my AERO 15 laptop – which, to be fair, is now three years old – I realised it was finally time to upgrade to a full-on gaming desktop. This decision coincided really nicely with NVIDIA releasing their GeForce 30 series, their latest line of dedicated graphics cards.
So, on the day the RTX 3080 was released (which was 18 Sep 2020 in Australia), I ordered a pre-built gaming PC from Scorptec, my favourite local computer retailer.
(Much as I’d love the idea of assembling my own gaming PC, that’s not something that I want to spend time on. I have several other mini-projects to keep me occupied.)
Sadly the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in NVIDIA’s production schedule. While, on the customer side, demand for those graphics cards far outstripped whatever NVIDIA could supply. So, from the middle of September 2020 to the middle of January 2021, my computer desk remained unoccupied.
Photo of a wide, half empty desk with several computer accessories arrayed on it: a pair of desktop speakers along the back; a gaming joystick and throttle; a gaming steering wheel; and three boxes, one each for a keyboard, mouse, and mousepad.
By November 2020 Scorptec had realised just how low the supply of the new NVIDIA graphics cards was going to be, so they created a page on their website though which customers could stay updated on how things were going. My NVIDIA graphics card was ASUS customised and co-branded. When Scorptec’s page was originally launched they’d only managed to fulfil 13% of the pre-orders on that particular card.
By January 2021 those pre-ordered had climbed into the 20% range. That’s when the curved, ultra-widescreen LG computer monitor (38GN950-B) that I’d ordered in December 2020 arrived. (Yay!)
Then, in mid-February – when that number climbed to 38% – I got a message from Scorptec to say that my gaming PC was almost ready to go. (I’d asked for an extra hard disk to be installed and that delayed the order by a couple of additional days.)
So it was on 19 February 2021 that I finally got my hands on this gorgeous machine. Now I can finally play Flight Simulator to my heart’s content. (After its 157GB data download, of course.)
Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, a gaming joystick, and gaming aircraft throttle, and a large drinking mug. The computer screen shows a window with a long download progress bar.
Funnily enough, Flight Simulator is the game I’ve played least since I got this PC.
Instead of joystick and throttle mode, I’ve gone mostly into steering wheel and pedals mode. (Thrustmaster FTW, either way.)
Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, and a gaming steering wheel. Below the desk is a set of gaming car foot pedals. Pushed to the sides are a gaming joystick, a gaming aircraft throttle, and a paper stand on which there is a printed diagram of that joystick and what its various keys are mapped to.
The games I’ve been playing most are SnowRunner, BeamNG.drive, DiRT Rally 2.0, and Never Alone – all of which are fantastic and I’d highly recommend. (That last one, of course, is narrative based side-scroller that only requires a keyboard and mouse.)
I’m also really looking forward to Forza Horizon 4 which will finally be released for PC on 10 March.
So here’s to many more hours of gaming enjoyment. If you’re a gamer of any sort too, I wish you many hours on joy on your gaming set-up as well. #GameOn
I watch rovers land on Mars for breakfast. What a time to be alive.
Photo of a television screen that shows live video of operators in a NASA JPL mission control room who are cheering because their Perseverance rover has just successfully landed on Mars.
Do you have a favourite podcast sign-off ? I have six!
Up first is the O.G. podcast sign-off from Leo Laporte (with an occasional assist from Owen JJ Stone) on This Week in Tech:
LEO: “Another TWiT…is in the can.”
Then there's my favourite podcast sign-off, which is from Simone de Rochefort, Brianna Wu, and Christina Warren on Rocket:
SIMONE: “This episode of Rocket is terminated.”
BRIANNA: “Terminated.”
CHRISTINA: “Terminated.”
Next is the most consistently entertaining podcast sign-off, which is from Jack Rhysider on Darknet Diaries:
JACK: “And even though <insert funny, nonsensical, episode-specific tech reference/joke>, this is Darknet Diaries.”
Possibly the most encouraging podcast sign-off is from Saron Yitbarek on Command Line Heroes:
SARON: “I’m Saron Yitbarek. Thanks for listening and keep on codin’“
This next podcast sign-off is the most unassuming, but somehow also the most reassuring. It's from Laura Murphy-Oates from when she's the host of Guardian Australia’s Full Story:
LAURA: “Okay, catch you tomorrow” or “Okay, catch you on Monday.”
Finally there's the podcast sign-off that always makes me happy. This is from Roman Mars on 99% Invisible and ends with:
ROMAN: “…but in it's heart will always be in beautiful downtown Oakland, California.”
I’ve been tracking the NBN speeds we’ve been getting in the last four houses we’ve lived in. (NBN is Australia’s National Broadband Network, by the way.)
Since 2015, when we swapped our ADSL connection for the NBN, every time we’ve moved house our speeds have been gotten better. That’s mainly because, when picking a place to rent, we’ve only looked at houses with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connections. (Also because the NBN network itself has been getting incrementally better.)
This time, because we wanted a specific type of house within our price range, we decided to compromise a little and go for a place with a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) connection. The performance of FTTC connections depends very much on how far your house is from the fibre-optic distribution point on your street. We lucked out and found a house we wanted to rent that is directly across the street from one of these points.
Compared to the house we just moved from, our download have dropped only 12.7% to 91.9Mbps, which I’m super happy about.
Unfortunately our upload speeds dropped by 51.2% to 18.5Mbps, which isn’t ideal.
Given how much time Nadia and I spend on video conference calls for work, this drop in upload speeds might be an issue if we’re both on a video call at the same time. I guess we’ll wait and see how the connection performs when that situation arises in the next few weeks.
There are two other differences compared to our previous NBN connection.
First, our connection latency has increased 78% from 3ms to 5ms. You don’t notice that too much day-to-day, though, so this hasn’t been an issue so far.
Second, given the technology change from FTTP to FTTC, we had to change modems because the fantastic Synology RT2600ac we were using doesn’t support VLANs (virtual local area networks).
UPDATE (24 Aug 2022): With a firmware upgrade to SRM 1.3, the Synology RT2600ac router does now support VLANs (announcement; feature support; configuration info). A big thank-you to to Craig in the comments for letting me know about this update!
FTTC is more of a shared connection than FTTP, so you need to use a VLAN-capable modem to connect to the internet. But all is well because I quickly bought a Netgear Nighthawk AX8, which is an equally fantastic modem that does support VLANs (and, specifically, 802.1Q VLAN tagging).
(If any of you are wanting to connect your Netgear Nighthawk AX8 to an FTTC connection, by the way, follow the configuration that rhys375 figured out you need to get this working.)
Overall I’m comfortable with our new speeds. I might think differently if we have issues with simultaneous video conferencing, but I don’t expect this to be a major issue.
So, onwards and only slightly downwards! And let’s hope the NBN network keeps getting better and better as time goes by.
Turns out the 63 photos I’ve uploaded to Google Maps over the years have had over half a million total views!
Though just two of them — that Peninsula Hot Springs pizza one and the one from the helicopter flight over the 12 Apostles — have contributed to 200k of those views.
Over 500k views of my photos on Google Maps!
It’s cool of Google to keep sending update emails to their contributors that tell you how your contributions are performing and how they’re are helping other Maps users find what they're looking for. That’s gamification done well, and it certainly keeps me motivated to continue to share my local knowledge with them.
If you’re a regular user of Google Maps I recommend you sign up to be a local guide yourself. (I’m now a Level 6 local guide). What goes around comes around, as they say. And your contribution helps keep that wheel turning.
Importantly, data sets like these could do with more contributions from non-majority demographic city residents. So please review, rate, and share photos from non-mainstream places you love. That’s why, for example, I make sure to review every South Asian store and restaurant I go to in Melbourne.
And please don’t just contribute to closed, commercial data sets like Google Maps. Also contribute to open data sets like Open Street Map (where I’m also a contributor). That’s not as easy to do, I know, but the extra effort is worth it. Plus you learn a lot about map-making in the process — so that’s a win-win :)
There’s a lot to be said about muscle memory.
I subscribed to Google Play Music in July 2013 and have been using it almost exclusively to listen to all my music since then. The only time I use a local media player on my laptop is when I want to listen to a bunch of high resolution albums I have in FLAC, which isn’t all that often these days.
So it still surprises me, then, when I find myself using — without a second thought — all the important keyboard shortcuts in Winamp!
WinAmp interface showing the album being played is Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I love aviation, so it’s awesome that we live in Melbourne, which is close to Avalon Airport where the Australian International Airshow (usually just called Avalon Airshow) is held every couple of years.
Last time I got to take an inside tour of one my favourite military transport aircraft, the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, so this year I just enjoyed it from the outside. Of course you have to walk quite a way away before you can take a selfie that shows more than just one section of the Globemaster!
Other cool military transport aircraft I got to check out included the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules (from Republic of Singapore Air Force), Kawasaki C-2 (from Japan Air Self-Defense Force), and Boeing CH-47 Chinook (from Royal Australian Air Force).
Speaking of air forces, there was also an air force dog there!
Coming back to aircraft, some of the other highlights for me were this Beechcraft Super King Air (from Ambulance Victoria), Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin (from Victoria Police), and Douglas DC-3 (from Melbourne’s Gooney Bird).
My favourites from the commercial aviation side were this Boeing 747-400 (from Qantas) and the Cirrus Vision SF50 (Vision Jet). The Cirrus display was also where I got to meet Stefan Drury, who I’ve been following on YouTube for a couple of years and am a big fan of. Turns out real-life Stef is just like YouTube-star Stef :)
It was a super hot day so I didn’t have the time or energy to check out much else, like the indoor exhibition booths, seminars, military dog performances, and drone racing – all of which I wanted to go to. But I did get to check out this model aircraft display from Victorian Model Aeronautical Association.
I also didn’t get to watch many of the flying displays properly – though I did get to follow the aircraft around with my binoculars, so that was cool.
I had specifically wanted to watch the Globemaster in action, and even timed my day to be in the public viewing area when it was due to fly. Unfortunately, due to air traffic issues, its slot was rescheduled. So I had to make do with seeing it zip back down the runway to await a future slot. Oh well.
Here are some snippets from what I did get to see.
Finally, just before I left, I checked out the one bit of equipment you don’t ever want to use, but you’re very happy to see in the hugely capable hands of Airservices Australia.
All in all, I had a really fun time. And, given it was going to be a 40-degree day at Avalon, my plan of getting to the airshow just after gates opened and 8am and leaving around lunchtime worked out exceptionally well. So much so that I’m already looking forward to the 2021 show!
I do lots of things to keep myself as secure and private as I can online – so many that I figured I’d make a list.
make sure all my devices are fully encrypted – that includes all phones, tablets, laptops, and external hard drives (plus some USB sticks)
make sure all my data is backed up – and where it’s backed-up it is encrypted at rest (my cloud backup tool of choice is Arq and I use a local Synology NAS and Google Coldline as my backup locations)
make sure I have USB recovery drives for my all Windows installs
make sure my computer is kept proactively and reactively secure using anti-virus and anti-malware tools (my AV tool of choice is the pre-installed Windows Defender and my anti-malware tool of choice is Malwarebytes)
configure my router to use a secure, private DNS server (CloudFlare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s Public DNS 8.8.8.8)
configure my Android phone to use a secure, private DNS server when on 4G (on the latest Android phones go to: Settings > Networks & Internet > Advanced > Private DNS)
use a VPN whenever I’m on an even slightly insecure network – on both my laptop and smartphone (my VPN provider of choice is Mullvad)
turn on my router’s guest network (with network isolation) and connect all my non-computer internet-connected gadgets (TV, Blu-ray player, cable set top box, etc) through that
use an advanced router that supports enterprise-level intrusion prevention (in my case I use a Synology router and their Intrusion Prevention app)
use browser add-ons/plug-ins like HTTPS Everywhere, uBlock Origin, and Facebook Container (Firefox only) to minimise my online footprint
disable third-party cookies on all my browsers
disable Flash on all my browsers (which will be the default setting in Firefox from Firefox 69 onwards)
use a separate web browser to log into Facebook and Instagram (I actually use five browsers on my laptop: Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera, and Edge!)
Update: Check out my follow-up post for my list of ‘Firefox extensions for privacy and security’.
use a password manager to generate and store long, secure, unique passwords for all my accounts (my password manager of choice is LastPass)
use two-factor authentication to keep as many of my accounts as possible secure (check the excellent Two Factor Auth List to see which accounts and services you can set up two-factor authentication for)
keep a regular, close eye on the data that various online services and social networks have on me by going through their ‘security check-up’ processes (eg Google’s excellent Privacy Check-up)
check all my email addresses on Have I Been Pwned to see which online services that I have an account with have had their user data stolen – also sign up to their ‘Notify me’ service to get an alert every time any of my email addresses is found in a newly stolen user data set
keep up with the latest in security via things like the Security Now podcast, several blogs, and a bunch of security-related mailing lists
check the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense website for the latest guides
consider switching to “ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives” to social media networks, online services, and software using the comprehensive (and growing) list on switching.social
Much of my life is on the internet so slow network speeds really irk me. Which is why, two years ago, I moved my personal mobile account from Telstra to iiNet.
Back in 2016 the Optus mobile broadband network had among the best 4G data speeds: 21% faster downloads and 33% faster uploads compared to Telstra (when measured from my office). And the prices offered by resellers of that network, in my case iiNet, were significantly lower too.
I’d been with Telstra for ten years, but switching to iiNet — who were offering a clearly superior product — was an obvious choice. (I’d had iiNet as my home broadband ISP for over seven years by that point too.)
I currently spend about a third of my day in the office every single weekday. When I’m there I connect my work phone to the corporate Wi-Fi network. However, for various reasons, I don’t connect my personal phone to work’s guest Wi-Fi network. So, for over half of my weekday waking hours (more if you count my commute), I rely on my phone’s 4G connection.
This was all well and good till about two months ago.
My office is in Collins Square, which is a five-tower complex in Docklands, Melbourne. Two months ago we moved offices from a tower at the front of the complex (adjacent Collins Street) to a tower at the back (overlooking the Yarra River). The views from this new building are much better, but the 4G download speeds for Optus mobile network users are much, much worse.
My work phone is with Telstra, so I was able to compare the 4G download and upload speeds I was getting from both Telstra an iiNet in this new building. The results speak for themselves.
The 4G speeds I was getting from iiNet were better than what they were in 2016, of course, but they were 8 times slower than what I was getting from Telstra.
Telstra has always had better mobile and mobile broadband coverage in both urban and rural areas across Australia. That superior coverage was making all the difference here.
An investigation revealed that the the iiNet cell tower that gave me the best signal strength in the new office building was behind two of the other Collins Square buildings. Meanwhile the Telstra cell tower that gave me the best signal was just across the river.
So, yeah. The decision to switch back to Telstra was about as easy as it had been to switch away in the first place.
The good news is that, over the last two years, Telstra’s customer service has improved considerably. Ten minutes with an agent at one of their stores was all it took to make the switch back. And, as a bonus, I’m getting three times as much data from Telstra for the same monthly price I was paying at iiNet.
All is well again.
Update 4/2/19: Since publishing this post I discovered that Telstra has activated a cell tower at the top of Collins Square! Since that’s the tower my phone now connects to most often, my 4G connection is now even faster and is considerably more reliable from all corners of the office.
This time last year we finally got connected to Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).
Doing so dramatically increased our average download speed from 6.9MBps with ADSL2+ (over the old telephone copper wire network) to 46.7MBps with NBN (over a new NBN fibre optic connection to the closest telephone/internet exchange).
A little over a week ago we moved into an independent house in another suburb. This meant we were no longer sharing that fibre optic internet connection with the other residents in an apartment block.
I checked to see if this had increased our connection speed and, sure enough, our download speeds have gone up by 62% to 75.7MBps!
Woohoo!
Pro tip: If you’re looking to move house and, like me, can’t live without the NBN, check out the nbnm8 Chrome extension. When you use realstate.com.au and Domain to search for properties it’ll automatically do the nbn availability look-up for you :)
On 23 June 2014 I tweeted this:
But it wasn't till yesterday, 15 December 2015, that we finally got connected to Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN).
Yes, this took 1 year, 5 months and 22 days.
What was particularly irritating was that our neighbours got connected several month ago. It took us this long because we're in an apartment building. Which meant that, first, our Body Corporate had to get their act together and network our building — which they finally did at the end of October.
We then had to wait till iiNet, our prefered ISP (who we've been with for over six years), released their Fibre to the Basement plans for selling NBN services to individual apartment building residents.
Once all these pieces fell into place, though, things moved quickly. And, six days after the NBN became available to us, we were online:
We're now enjoying download speeds seven times faster than our old ADSL2+ connection (an average of 46.7Mbps with NBN versus 6.9MBps with ADSL2+) and upload speeds thirty-one times faster (27.6Mbps now vs 0.9Mbps previously). We're also connecting faster, with an average ping time of just 2.5ms with NBN vs 27ms with ADSL2+.
It's awesome.
Of course these speeds aren't as fast as the NBN can theoretically reach ("up to 100Mbps") or as fast as my internet connection is at work (average downloads at 64.3Mbps and average uploads at 86.9Mbps) — but it still pretty darned good. And it's more than enough for any video streaming we want want to do.
So, yay! The NBN was a long time coming, but it was sure worth the wait.
As I said in my previous post, I'm ready to buy my first mechanical watch.
Now people in this situation usually look to well-known Japanese brands like Seiko and Orient since these companies produce excellent quality mechanical watches that aren't very expensive.
And if I was looking for a dive style watch I'd definitely get the Seiko SKX007K1 or Orient Ray EM6500CD. Or, if I was looking for a field style watch I'd get the Seiko SNZG11K1. Or, if I was looking for a dress watch, I'd get the Orient Bambino ER2400CN.
But, no, I'm an aviation enthusiast so I want to get a pilot watch.
Eventually, I'll want to get myself something like the Breitling Navitimer 01 (which costs $9,800) or the Breitling Navitimer 1461 ($13,400) but that won't happen for another couple of decades at least. Which is fine because the type of pilot's watch that I adore is the flieger style watch from WWII.
Now the Seiko 5 Military SNK809K2 does have some pilot/flieger characteristics but it's not quite what I'm after. And the Orient Flight ER2A001B is closer, but it's still a loose interpretation of the original and I'd rather get something more visually authentic.
Of course, before I go any further, I should explain what a flieger style watch is.
Pilot watches have been around since 1904 and, if you want to learn more about them, check out this excellent five-part history on Monochrome:
For flieger style watches we're interested in part five of that series.
Or, if you want a quicker introduction, check out this blog post:
But, basically, these 'beobachtungs-uhr' (i.e. 'observer watches') were created for the Luftwaffe in the 1940s by five German watchmakers:
These watches were required to:
They came in two types: Type A for pilots and Type B for navigators.
And they looked like this:
Because no one company can claim to have designed or built the original flieger style watch lots of companies now make them.
Most of the luxury flieger style watch are Type A, though, and I much prefer Type B. The one Type B I do like from this bunch (the Bell & Ross Vintage WWI) happens to be the cheapest of the lot - but is still not something I can afford just yet.
Fortunately, there are a number of Type B watches from enthusiast-level watch brands. The STOWA Flieger Baumuster B and Archimede Pilot 42 B Automatic are the most original-looking (and I love them both) but I think the Hamilton Pilot Auto is my favourite.
Yes, Hamilton have tweaked the design a bit and have even added a day/date complication - but I really like their interpretation. In fact, I like it so much that, as far as pilot watches go, I'll settle on this on till I'm ready to buy a Breitling. But, for now, these watches are still out of my price range.
The watches that are in my price range also come from enthusiast-level brands - though from the lower end. I love both the STEINHART Nav B-Uhr B-Type and the Laco Aachen Type B Dial Automatic but, on balance, I think I prefer the Laco.
Aside from the fact that Laco is one of the companies that made the original B-Uhr watches back in the 1940s, I prefer its full lume and open case back. Also, Laco's movement is made in-house - which is a plus for any watchmaker.
The one last category of watch brands I should mention are the less well-known consumer brands. So not the Seikos and Orients of the world, but the brands that build cheaper watches that generally work well and are still decent enough looking.
For example, TISELL is a Korean brand that uses off-the-shelf Chinese watch movements from Sea-Gull. And Ticino is a German brand that uses both Chinese Sea-Gull and Japanese Miyota movements (Miyota is owned by Citizen). Watches with Sea-Gull movements used to be hit-and-miss but both TISELL and Ticino do their own quality control with these movements so their watches generally run well.
Each of these brands makes a Type B flieger style watch. The TISELL Type B Pilot uses a Sea-Gull movement while the Ticino Type B Automatic uses a Miyota movement (their Type B watch from last year used a Sea-Gull movement but this year they're moving a little up-market).
Both of these are decent enough watches. They have stainless steel cases and sapphire crystals, and they generally run well. But brand like these save money with cheaper movements, lower production costs and fewer subtle refinements. Which means these two watches are less water resistant, they're not quite as well-built or finished, they use a dimmer lume, and their straps aren't particularly good. Also, they don't have much of an after-sales support, maintenance and repair network to turn to if they're not working as well as you'd like.
Deciding which watch I'm going to get depends on a number of things:
Keeping all that in mind, this is what I'd get at each budget level:
That $200 decision was the hardest. If I had just $200 I'd either have to get the Orient Flight, which is not my favourite flieger interpretation but I know will be built well and is guaranteed to run really well. Or I'd have to get a TISELL or Ticino that, while more faithful to the original design, may not be built as well or run as well.
As it happens, I'm not willing to compromise on either flieger design faithfulness or watch features and quality so I'd probably go with neither of those options. Instead, I'd wait till I had $500 to spend so I could get the Laco, instead :)
Also, for completeness' sake, if I actually had $4,000 just lying around, I wouldn't go for that particular Bell & Ross watch, either. I'd already own those Laco and Hamilton Type B flieger watches and I wouldn't want another one. Instead I'd go for a different Bell & Ross watch or something else entirely.
So there you have it: my thought process (or, well, brain dump) on buying my first mechanical watch given all that I've learnt about the world of watches in the last few months. I'm hoping at least a couple of you enjoyed reading it. Or at least you looked at the pictures and though: "Ah, so that's what he's been on about these last few weeks!" :)
I love watches and, since the age of seven, have owned eleven of them. (Which turns out, on average, to be one watch every three years.)
Nine of these were Casio watches - including one calculator watch, two G-shocks, one ProTrek, and one Edifice. This is the Edifice (EQS-A500B-1AV) that I bought just a couple of months ago, by the way (which I then customized with Hadley Roma leather strap and butterfly deployant clasp):
The other two watches I've owned were a Pulsar LED (the one I got when I was seven) and a mechanical hand winding watch that I don't remember the brand of (I was twelve at the time).
The cool thing is that I have I reached a point in my life at which I'm ready to move beyond watches as primarily practical time telling tools. I now want to get watches that, while still good for telling time, are also pieces of jewellery and objects of design, engineering, craftsmanship and history. So, aside from another couple of quartz watches I'll probably want to get in the future (a Casio ProTrek and some type of chronometer), this means I'm looking to get myself my first proper mechanical watch.
I've spent the last few months researching watches and world or horology - both online and in local stores in Melbourne - and, over the next few months, I'll summarize what I've learnt on this blog.
Let's start with the basics, though:
What types of watches can you get?
Who makes them?
How much do they cost?
Historically, wristwatches have been tool watches. In the early 1900s people were perfectly happy with pocket watches (though women sometimes wore watches as jewellery on their wrists) but, when it stopped being convenient to pull a watch out of your pocket - like when you were diving, flying, driving or marching across Europe in your army - wristwatches started to become popular.
Accordingly, these are now the main styles of wristwatches available (list sourced from this convenient 'Watches Style Guide' thread on Reddit):
Diver's watches: for divers and sailors
Field watches: for infantrymen, rangers and other ground troops
Pilot's watches: for pilots and navigators
Chronographs or sport watches: for drivers, racers, yachtsmen and other people who play sports
Dress watches: for people who want elegant watches to wear with fancy clothes
Or, more visually:
There are just the big bucket watch styles, of course. There are many variations within these styles and a handful of other styles, as well (e.g. single hand, Bauhaus, fashion). And a lot of these styles and variations overlap, too.
There are a great many watch brands out there but, again, thanks to Reddit, here's a good way of categorizing them:
Consumer: some quartz, some mechanical; brands from all over the world (e.g. Switzerland, Japan, Russia, China, USA, Denmark)
Enthusiast: usually tool watches designed for a specific purpose (e.g. pilot or military watches)
Quasi-luxury: expensive or fancy enthusiast watches; lower-prices luxury watches
Entry-level Luxury: starter luxury watches; expensive enthusiast watches
Luxury: expensive watches with a lot of history behind them
High-end Luxury: most well-known luxury brands
Ultra Luxury: very expensive watches (for serious watch collectors and very rich people only)
Or, more visually:
Note: I haven't included the independent watchmakers of the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants (ACHI) in that list because, let's face it, I'll never be able to afford any of their watches.
It's useful to know that a number of these brands are owned by large multinational holding companies.
For example, the Swatch Group owns:
Swatch from the consumer group;
Hamilton and Tissot from the enthusiast group;
Longines and Rado from the quasi-luxury group;
Omega from the luxury group; and
Breguet, Blancpain and Glashütte Original from the high-end luxury group.
The Richemont Group owns:
Baume & Mercier and Montblanc from the entry-level luxury group;
IWC from the luxury group;
Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Officine Panerai from the high-end luxury group; and
Piaget and Vacheron Constantin from the ultra luxury group.
And LVMH owns:
TAG Heuer from the quasi-luxury group;
Bvlgari from the luxury group; and
Hublot and Zenith from the high-end luxury group.
Also, Tudor is Rolex's lower-end brand and Orient is owned by Seiko.
I'm sure there are other brand partnerships and joint ownerships out there.
You can buy a watch for almost price - from a $25 Casio to a $250,000 Hublot - and different people create different price-range buckets for watches.
For example, A Blog to Watch has three:
While ever-practical Reddit has buying guides for these six price ranges (and a separate guide for 'Ladies Watches'):
I, too, am practical so I have three personalized buckets (each with its own Pinterest board, no less):
The way I see it:
In my 30s and 40s I'll only be able to justify buying watches that cost less than $1,000
In my 50s I'd like to be able to justify buying a watch that costs more than $1,000
And in my 60s I might just buy myself a watch that costs more than $5,000
So that was just the basics. There's a lot more to summarize but I'll try to do that over the next few months (though it'll probably take years since there's so much to learn).
Instead, let's move on to something more interesting: like actually buying a watch. That's what my next post will be about.
My Gigabyte laptop has an excellent LCD display that came almost perfectly calibrated out of the box. It's easy to forget, though, that not all LCD screens are like that. When I got an external monitor at work, for example, it was over-bright, with washed-out colours and poor contrast.
Fortunately, it took only a little bit of calibration to fix the problem. So now I can see lighter greys and richer oranges correctly:
Yay!
A few months ago I finally retired my three year old ThinkPad X201 Tablet PC and bought myself a fantastic new Gigabyte P34G laptop. This is from Gigabyte's high-end P Series gaming laptops and is a very impressive piece of tech.
The P34G weighs about as much as my old laptop did but has an excellent 14" 1920x1080p screen. That's a big step up from the X201's grainy-but-capacitive-touch 12.1" 1280x800px screen:
And while 1920x1080 is sometimes too high a resolution for this size of screen, the LCD panel itself is gorgeous and has excellent colour reproduction:
Importantly, the P34G is powerful. Mine is configured with an Intel Core i7-4700HQ processor, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M graphics card. In fact, it's more than twice as powerful as my old laptop:
It's also very thin so it fits really easily in my Crumpler Dry Red No. 5 backpack's slim laptop pocket:
The best part? It costs half of what the X201 did :)
To fit all that technical goodness into a low cost, thin-and-light package you have to make some sacrifices. Thus the P34G doesn't have the best build quality (mine already has a tiny cosmetic crack in the plastic keyboard housing) and a sub-par soundcard. Actually, the soundcard itself might be okay but it's not tweaked and configured to sound as good as it should. For an audiophile like me, this is a problem. However that problem is easily remedied by bypassing the laptop's on-board hardware and using an external USB soundcard. I now use the iBasso D-Zero DAC and headphone amp which is small, cheap, and easily transportable but still sounds really good.
On balance, though, this is a fantastic laptop and I am really happy I bought it.
So, if you're in the market for a thin-and-light family laptop with an excellent screen and discrete graphics card, I would highly recommend the Gigabyte P34G.
Yay! We have a new website!
Every since Squarespace 6 launched in July 2012 I've been meaning to upgrade our old Squarespace 5 site to this newer CMS version. I wasn't in any rush to do so - Squarespace said they'd keep supporting the old CMS version indefinitely - but I finally reached the point at which the old site started to look boring and I was itching for something new.
This, by the way, is what the old site used to look like:
Insanity Works Version 3
And, for future reference, this is what the current one looks like:
Insanity Works Version 4
I've really enjoyed building this new site because Squarespace 6 is a really fun CMS platform to design on. I particularly love how it handles images - which you'll notice are now front and centre in this new site version.
I also love all the fonts you get access to via Typekit and Google Fonts and the fact that, thanks to developments in responsive web design, this site automatically has an excellent mobile version, too :)
So, what do you think? Do you like the new design?
In case you haven’t already noticed, we’ve upgraded our website.
We’ve moved from a basic, static HTML site that was built in 2008 to one that’s hosted on the fantastic Squarespace platform – which, by the way, I highly recommend.
We upgraded the site because the old one was…well, old. Also, it was too manual and time consuming to maintain. This new site, on the other hand, is leaner, faster, and, overall, a more effective online presence for both me and Nadia.
The web has also changed a lot in four years. For example, your own website no longer needs to host your entire online life. You can do things like outsource your media storage and sharing to services like Flickr, YouTube, and Picasa Web Albums. And, on the social media side, you can outsource a lot of your micro-content and general web content sharing to services like Twitter and Google+.
But you know what the best part is? Using a professionally hosted web content management because that really makes website management both easy and a lot of fun.
What do you think of the new site? Love it? Hate it? Don’t care?
Exciting news! I've bought myself another watch :)
This news is exciting because I love watches – not as pieces of jewellery, but as gadgets that tell the time. I always need/want to know what time it is and, as a result, have been wearing a wrist watch almost every day since the early 80s.
Why buy a second watch when I already have a perfectly good watch that I love and wear all the time?
Two reasons:
First, the watch I have right now is too thick to fit comfortably under the cuff of my work shirts. As you can see in the picture below, the watch on the left, which is my current watch, is much thicker (16mm) than the watch on the right (8.6mm), which is my new one.
Now, because my current watch is so thick, for the last year and a half, I have actually not been wearing it to work every day. I know! Crazy, right? Fortunately, I carry two smartphones with me all the time so, even though I’ve been without a watch at work, I have always been able to keep track of the time.
Second, well…let me put it this way: Where is the one place you can't use a smartphone to tell the time? In an airplane, of course – specifically during take-off and landing. And what company do I work for now? Oh, yes, an airline.
So what happened to me last month? I flew to Sydney for work and, for two extended periods of time (well, at least they felt like extended periods of time), I was chronologically disadvantaged because I'd had to turn my phones off and had forgotten to wear my bulky-but-still-functional watch to work that day.
Scarred by that experience, I decided to look for a nice, cheap, simple, and, importantly, thin watch that I could wear to work. Obviously, I was only going to look at Casio watches.
Unfortunately, there are no Casio outlets in Melbourne so I was stuck with the limited selection on display at Angus & Coote and Thomas Jewellers on Bourke Street in the CBD. Neither of them had what I wanted so I went to trusty old Amazon.com to see what I could find.
That was when I discovered that online retailers sell most Casio watches at about a third of the price that local brick-and-mortar retailers sell them at. Wow. I am never buying a watch from a local brick-and-mortar retailer again.
Anyway, here is my original short list from Amazon (my current watch is in the top left hand corner):
Yes, I get a little obsessive when it comes to buying gadgets. Especially those I’ll be using frequently for a number of years. Heck, I wouldn’t even be writing this blog post if I wasn’t that obsessed with this stuff!
Finally, after getting Nadia's preferences, I made my decision and placed my order. As it happens, Amazon ended up being just the front-end for this purchase because my actual order was placed with the appropriately named MrWatch.
A few days later, through the mysterious powers of FedEx, I had my new watch :)
The watch I bought is a Casio MTP-1309L-8BV. (Yes, that’s quite a mouthful.)
It’s simple, good looking, and, fits very comfortably under the cuff of all my work shirts.
Of course, this is the first analogue watch I’ve had in years so using it to tell the time is taking a little getting used to. I can’t just take a quick peek at one part of it, for example. I have to look at the entire watch face before I can tell what time it is. Not that this difficult to do, of course. I’m just not used to doing it.
I am liking its leather strap, though. And I am enjoying the sight of the second hand as it spins around the clock face.
So, “yaay!” for my new watch and my ability to comfortably keep track of time while wearing a business shirt during take-off and landing. (Hmmm…my reason for getting this watch sounds a lot less impressive when you put it that way.)
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
