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Give our Apple back!

Lousy title, I know. But I can’t help but feel so disappointed with Apple as of late.

Little by little, just as I’ve stated in a(n inaccurate) previous post:

Seriously, someone should file an anti-trust case against these guys for monopoly. I’m baffled as to why Microsoft is the only one being scrutinized for such “practices” – when Apple seems to have been doing it since the release of the iPod.

That was written January 2007 (and I’m sure their practices have been going on longer than that) But it looks like the world is finally seeing Apple as a “bad guy.” Read More

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3GS Impressions

So basically, my 4GB 1st-gen (yes, the very first iPhone model) has been “retired.” It recently was never getting any signal… regardless of the SIM cards I put in it. Those same cards immediately work with my XDA; which I kept handy as a backup.

Naturally, I needed a replacement iPhone ASAP; so I decided to get a legitimately unlocked iPhone 3GS. Here are my impressions of the new phone. Read More

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On Home Recording…

As the YouTube generation has proven, content trumps production quality. You could have something done with the crappiest camera on earth and still be an internet success if the material is interesting enough.

Unfortunately, audio/music isn’t that forgiving. Your senses are narrowed down to one thing; hearing – and all judgment will boil down to your personal musical taste, and more importantly the actual quality of the recording.

I’ve always been meaning to put out a sample of my raw sources just to give people an idea of how much work I have to put in to “improve” the sound before I post anything on the site. Hopefully this would help them appreciate the songs a bit more (hey, every little thing counts hahaha).

I guess this is because for the songs in my site, I’m artist, engineer, and producer. I found that the latter titles put so much more pressure on me than simply being an “artist.” As an artist, fellow musicians will know if you got the chops or not, regardless of public opinion.

But the others… especially being a producer – you have the task of applying what you think should be the “proper treatment” of a piece that will be palatable to the public. Only people that have tried to “produce” can truly grasp the pressure one could get from that sort of responsibility. Read More

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Mavic Wintech Ultimate cyclocomputer

When was the last time I did a hardware review; my review on the Harmonic Converger (which by the way, is one of the most visited pages in my blog)? So to mix my blog contents up a bit, here’s another one.

Actually, I was prompted to make this review because when I was deciding whether or not to upgrade my old cyclocomputer (a Topeak Panoram v16), there was so little information on the one I was planning to get (a Mavic Wintech Ultimate). The pictures in the net are almost all the same, they give the user no idea whatsoever on how big the components are, how they “fit” into the bikes they’re installed in. 1 There was ONE picture, but only showing the computer itself; which was helpful, but not nearly enough.

So now, I ended up upgrading regardless. Thankfully, it was the right decision. And I’ve taken the liberty of putting up more useful pictures up so that people considering getting the computer would have more to work with during their “research.”

This will be more of a picture post than a review to give a better sense of the unit both when installed, and compared with the physical characteristics of another computer. There’s already another review out there which delves on the actual usage, so I won’t reinvent the wheel. Read More

Notes

Notes
⇡1 There was ONE picture, but only showing the computer itself; which was helpful, but not nearly enough.
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Integration

Again, can’t think of a apt title so there.

I’ve decided that its too much of hassle to use my trunk-mounting bicycle rack for carrying the bikes.

  1. It takes a good 5-10 minutes to set the rack up and make sure everything’s nice and tight. 1 You don’t want something like that coming lose while driving
  2. Trunk is rendered “unusable” from the outside at that point; I have to spend another five minutes organizing the backseat to collapse (allowing access to the trunk from the inside 2 Not to mention the challenge of moving my pillows. etc.
  3. Mounting the actual bikes to the rack is also a challenge; I have to make sure the pedals, forks, etc. are positioned a certain way so that it’s easy to tighten down and not have them scratching each other.
  4. All this is usually done in the sun… #3 is done at least 4 times 3 Mounting, unmounting when we get to the venue, mounting before you go home, unmounting when you get home
  5. Speed of driving is severely hindered; anything past 60 and you can feel the rack rocking…

So I decided to “retire” it and get a proper system despite the risk of botching up the look of my car. Practicality won this time.

Read More

Notes

Notes
⇡1 You don’t want something like that coming lose while driving
⇡2 Not to mention the challenge of moving my pillows. etc
⇡3 Mounting, unmounting when we get to the venue, mounting before you go home, unmounting when you get home