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Of the last 48 hours

Now you see it – now you don’t

Today was pretty boring – which wasn’t supposed to be the case since I got my powerbook back yesterday. But was pulled out again today.

Apparently when they said they’d do a full diagnostics check – they meant the opposite. I eventually opened up the laptop’s backplate and was staring down at two 512MB DIMMs – which is correct. So why do I mention it? Because the OS is only reporting 512MB of RAM instead of a gig! At least they were commited to replacing the logic board.

Once that’s done, I will now be able to enumerate the stuff that hasn’t been replaced:

  1. Superdrive.
  2. LCD shell (the LCD itself has been replaced)
  3. Keyboard.
  4. All inner-components except for the logic board.
  5. Battery.
  6. RAM DIMMs

Can’t help but wonder if I had just saved all of those, and just asked for a new MacBook or something hehehe – I can dream can’t I? Sobrang na-sulit ko na yung warranty. – and still got a whole year to go! Read More

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A [not so] definitive guide to common audio interconnects

Here’s a very useful post for the travelling audio person.

In BukasPalad, whenever we have performances we usually are dependent on whatever soundsystem the venue has. Knowing how 3rd-world countries work, most of these soundsystems’ equipment and technicians are far from professional. But we’re broke so we just have to live with it I guess.

Aside from worrying about what microphones we have available, the next most important thing was always to make sure their system can play our minus-ones (if need be). This usually meant we had to conenct our iPods (cuz were high tech hahahaha joke) to the PA – and that’s were everything can get lost in translation. I remember the trouble we had in finding the correct plugs and jacks to connect whatever we had, to whatever they had. There were times I would say “yung malaki” (the big one) when I referred to the 1/4″ plug, or “pang-headphones” (for headphones) when referring to a 2.5mm plug; just so I could make them understand the type of adaptor I wanted.

So with that, I’ve taken the liberty of distilling the long text from wikipedia articles and explain what you need to know to communicate what you need to whichever venue sound-technician you talk to. There are a lot of alternative names for these common audio interconnects, and I will attempt to consolidate in one post, the different names used – which I’ve come across over time.

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Now for some lovin’

I guess I’m having too much fun keeping the “apple fever” in check. People might start thinking I’m a PC fanboy. So let me post about my good Apple experience.

In case you didn’t know I do own a Powerbook… one that conked out on me just recently. I had recovered the files I needed and sent the unit in for repairs.

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If I could look different…

I tried using an image transformation tool which claims to interpolate what a subject would look like when he/she has a different set of racial traits. After these results – I guess I wouldn’t want to be any other race after all hahaha.

I set the “base” settings to the following:

  1. Male – obviously
  2. West Asian – Honestly I don’t look like any of the choices. In fact my GF’s sister asked her the same question: “ano ba si Carlo? Hindi mestizo/puti, pero hindi din mukhang Pinoy.” I certainly don’t think I look Chinese, but while I’m far from western-asian looking, I guess it was the closest choice I could make.

  3. Teenager – because, while I am old, people say I still look like a kid. And compared to Americans, all of us Filipinos look like high school students.

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