|
JANUARY 2005 |
26th January 2005
I've wanted these headphones for about 2 years now. I found a good deal and went for it. I was pretty fed up with the flat sound of the Kenwood 'phones I've been using. So here we are, What Hi-Fi Award Winners 2002. They are amazing, I'm struggling to find words here. The sound is so rich, so well balanced. The first track I played was a FLAC of Badly Drawn Boy - Once Around The Block, and it did not fail to impress, the orchastra was in my head. They do leak a lot of sound, so not a pair to wear on the train, but thats not why I bought them. I don't think I'll ever need another pair of headphones for home listening, ever. The only fault I can possibly find, is they are not as comfy as Sennheisers. Thats it. Worth every penny.
Track of the day: Dusty Springfield - The Look Of Love
21st January 2005
My 550W power supply came today, cool stuff, it means I can put everything back together as it was. Nice and stable it is too.
Track of the day: Herbaliser - Distinguished Jamaican English
17th January 2005
Looks like I'm having some more problems with the ATi Radeon. I've started playing Far Cry, and its stunning. Getting quite into the game, been playing for a few minutes and *poof* the computer shuts off. Odd. I load up Doom 3, and the same thing (another great game though, will write about these soon). When I benchmark to see how many 3DMarks I get, its the same story.
I increase the voltage to the AGP slot in the BIOS, but it doesn't help. I pull out an old 230W AT power supply out of my cupboard, plug it into the Radeon and power it up, leaving my old 400W to deal with the rest of the computer. My frankenstein contraption works! Time for a new power supply then I guess. 400W isn't enough for a Athlon 2500+ @ 3200+, 1GB RAM, 2 CD drives, a 7200rpm disk and a whole bunch of USB tat.
Track of the day: A Tribe Called Quest - Its Yours
16th January 2005
Got a new toy today, a Radeon 9800 Pro! Got a neat little deal in exchange for my trusty ASUS V8200 Deluxe GeForce3 Ti500. It all seems rather fast though I haven't really played on it much yet. One problem it has which is fairly well documented is the fact that it just seems to be stuck on a 60Hz refresh rate. No matter what you set the refresh rate to in Windows, the image still flickers like crazy, gives me a headache and the monitor reports 60Hz. It works ok in Linux though. I did some juggling with the official ATi drivers and default Windows drivers, but no joy for quite some time.
But I did find the solution in the end in the aptly named RefreshFix from radeon2.ru. In one swoop it fixes a bunch of registry keys that restrict the valid refresh rates for the monitor and allows the driver to switch to them. 1280x1024 @ 100Hz, thats what I'm talking about.
Track of the day: Lux - Northern Lights
12th January 2005
 |
New Covent Garden Parsnip & Bramley Apple Soup, and lightly toasted freshly baked white bread. Lunch of Champions. Never underestimate the greatness of a lovely sweet parsnip. |
11th January 2005
It was Jobs keynote today, and he announced a tiny new flash music player, the iPod shuffle, and also a really small desktop Macintosh, the Mac mini. I read the highlights on Engadget, Gizmodo and a bunch of Mac news sites as well. I saw the keynote today streaming over the net too (damn, am I sad or what?), and he did babble on about some stuff that we already knew about OS X Tiger. There were some not massively interesting updates to the iLife suite of apps. A new not-entirely-convincing word processor Pages bundled with an update to Keynote in a package called iWork. Luckily iWork isn't too expensive, which will at least give it some credit compared to the pretty decent Microsoft Office.
The iPod shuffle does indeed fill up the gaps nicely in the iPod line, it is the right price and a neat little gadget. I can see some issues though, so you've got a 1GB iPod Shuffle loaded up with 240 songs... and no way of picking what you want to play? Yeah, nice one Apple. Shuffle mode is all well and good, but what happens when you want to listen to Reindeer Section on a late night, or Prodigy when you're cycling hard on your bike? Sounds like hassle to me. How about some beat-detection and some simple buttons to adjust the BPM of what tracks you want to listen to? That would solve it.
The Mac mini is awesome. It really looks tiny, and is basically the same spec as my Powerbook in most ways. It is still expensive compared to what you can get in x86 these days, but the design and the fact you get OS X makes it well worth it. I've already decided I'm going to get one to replace my sisters Dell Latitude, when Tiger comes out. So, I'm thinking around April-time. All in all, this Steve guy really is a genius.
Track of the day: Travis - Somewhere Else
8th January 2005
My sister was home for the weekend, so we thought we'd make the most of it and spend some time in the West End. We booked ourselves in to see Napoleon Dynamite in Empire, Leicester Square. We took the tube in early and chilled out in the Häagen Dazs cafe for a little while drinking coffee and eating sweet sweet banana toffee chocolate goodness. Such an ideal evening.
The screen in the Empire was amazingly small. It was a cosy little number, the kind of arrangement you would expect in an independant out in a small town. I was left wondering whats the big deal with west end cinema, I mean whats the big deal with the high prices anyway? You'd get a bigger screen in Harrow or Nottingham, and you could watch nearly 3 movies at the price. Ah well. The movie was a really great, fun geeky comedy. The characters were simply brilliant, and although its not your straightforward beginning, middle, end hollywood film, the story is still interesting. Some bits are so strange, some so funny I just cant get some of the scenes out of my mind. I've already pre-ordered it on DVD.
We walked though Regent Street before getting the tube home. Had a quick peek in the Apple Store... the iPod mini is so tempting when you hold it in your hands, but the actual thing I wanted to have a look at was the 30" Cinema Display. Yes, it is massive, and especially so when paired with another 30" all hooked up to one G5 machine. Steve Jobs' keynote in Macworld is in a few days, I wonder what shiny new things he will announce - so many rumours, but what will it be?
Track of the day: Jamiroquai - Canned Heat
