06.29.07
Got My iPhone …
... and I’m typing this entry on it right now. More tomorrow.
02.16.06
Self-Repairing Electronics
When I worked in tech support, we had a name for the phenomenon of problems that mysteriously resolve themselves as soon as a tech arrives to help: “Solved by Tech Proximity.” It happens a lot—either the problem was transitory to begin with, or the process of walking through the symptoms makes a user more careful and conscious of the correct procedure, so he doesn’t make whatever mistake he was making when the tech wasn’t there. But since I am the tech guy, it’s not supposed to happen to me.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
- I bought a car power adaptor for my aging, battery-challenged iPod. When plugged into this adaptor, my iPod emitted a hissing sound through the headphone cable that leads to my auxiliary input adaptor. I spotted what looked like a line-out jack on the power adaptor and tried plugging the auxiliary input cable into that. With a loud pop! the auxiliary input adaptor stopped working. Turns out that jack was intended to supply power to an FM transmitter.
- After a period of rest, the auxiliary input adaptor worked again, but poorly. The sound was tinny and I really had to crank the volume on the head unit to hear it, making switching between iPod and radio a pain. Also, the display on the head unit went blank when I switched to the iPod, and I couldn’t switch between the auxiliary input adaptor’s two input channels.
- Shortly after all this, my PowerBook’s internal hard drive stopped working—it wouldn’t even spin up. I had a recent backup on an external firewire drive, and my PowerBook automatically detected that and booted from it, but this made synchronizing my iPod difficult because the iPod doesn’t like FireWire daisy-chaining—it likes to be the only FireWire device present. But if I held it just right (for some reason it seemed to work better if the cable was perfectly straight—lack of cable shielding, maybe?) it worked—slowly.
- I figured I’d kill two birds with one iPod car charger. This particular model comes with a USB docking cable that plugs into the charger, so I figured not only could I power the iPod in the car, but when I got home I’d take the cable in and sync to iTunes with it. But it turns out my iPod is too old for this to work—it syncs via USB, but it won’t derive power from it.
- Not knowing this, I plugged the charger into my cigarette lighter, the cable into the charger, and the iPod into the cable. There was another pop!—and then unusually loud music. My adaptor was working normally again—it sounded great, the display on the head unit worked, and I could once again switch between inputs.
- When I got home I took the USB cable in, figuring that part of the plan was still worth a try. There was a message on my computer screen (which I’d left on all day, downloading via Bittorrent) saying the computer needed to be rebooted. When I did that, one of the partitions on the external drive failed to show up. This was annoying, but then I noticed that the computer had booted from its internal drive rather than the FireWire drive. SMART diagnostics found no problem with the internal drive, and the bad partition on the external drive had minor directory problems from which I didn’t even bother recovering the data, since I no longer needed it anyway.
Self-reparing electronics: really cool, or kinda creepy? I say cool.
02.08.06
A Thing of Beauty
I’m in awe. Someone has built a Difference Engine out of LEGO bricks, powerful enough to compute 2nd- or 3rd-order polynomials to 3 or 4 digits.
Background reading: Wikipedia has articles about the Difference Engine, the Analytical Engine, and Charles Babbage—but if you want the whole story, well-written and extensively illustrated, I highly recommend The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer, by Doron Swade (not to be confused with the similarly-named Steampunk novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling).
11.09.05
Best Homebrew Project Ever
Surj Patel has decided to build a Linux-based homebrew GSM cell phone from scratch. This is absolutely heroic. I’m currently with Sprint, but if Surj succeeds in this project I’d definitely switch to a GSM provider if it meant I could build my own Linux phone.
08.19.05
Butterfly Plane
Would someone please be a dear and buy me a Butterfly RC Airplane? I think this just might be the coolest thing ever invented.
02.23.05
AACs on a TiVo
TiVo has a very cool feature called TiVo Desktop that pulls music from your computer and plays it over whatever stereo you have hooked up for your TV, while displaying the song, artist, and album names on the TV. Unfortunately for iTunes users, the TiVo Desktop download page warns that the feature “does not support AAC audio files (including music purchased at the iTunes Music Store).” As it turns out—for Mac users, at least—half of that statement is a dirty, rotten lie.
As posted on PVRblog this morning, playing AAC files over TiVo Desktop is as simple as installing a command-line MP3 encoder called LAME. You don’t even have to use the command line to make it work—a handy package file on Vas the Man’s Downloads page will install the program for you, and then the feature just works without further ado. I don’t know if there’s a way to make it work for iTunes-using Windows users, and since I’m not a Windows user myself, I have no motivation for finding out.
But the other half of that warning on TiVo’s page remains problematic: TiVo Desktop won’t play DRM-encoded files, like the ones you get from the iTunes Music Store. So you’ll just have to strip the DRM nonsense from your AAC files if you want to play them on your TiVo.
02.07.05
The Future Is Now
Volvo is giving away a suborbital flight with Virgin Galactic on a passenger-bearing commercial spaceship. All that’s left, I guess, is for someone to start selling a flying car.
02.02.05
iPods at Microsoft
Wired has an interesting article today about Microsoft employees and their iPods. It’s very encouraging, but not surprising. I’ve tried a few of the other MP3 players out there—some are cheaper, some are smaller, some have all sorts of features like FM radio and built-in voice recording—but none approach the usability and elegance of the iPod. I have a third-generation 20GB iPod, and when it dies I’ll buy another. I plan on getting an iPod shuffle soon, too.
It was interesting watching industry reaction to the iPod shuffle—by which I mean not the reviews and other media coverage, but the response of other MP3 player manufacturers. They said the technology was old, it didn’t have anything new to offer, and it wouldn’t be usable without a screen. Less than a month has passed, and those same competitors are now dropping their prices in an attempt to compete. Apple stores can’t keep the shuffle in stock—most have a waiting list of around 120 buyers.
What those companies either didn’t realize or didn’t want to admit is that the shuffle couldn’t help but be popular at this point, because only on an iPod can you play music from the iTunes Music Store. That means more exclusive tracks, more celebrity playlists (turns out Andrew Lloyd Webber likes Eminem), and more overall selection than you’ll get from any other legitimate source of music online. With that kind of momentum behind it, the shuffle doesn’t need a screen to be successful. Besides, if you’re in a situation where looking at a screen would be pracitical, Apple suggests an iPod, iPod photo, or iPod mini. If you’re jogging, you don’t need a screen—take an iPod shuffle.
So I’m glad to learn that white headphones are a familiar sight in Redmond, but I’m not surprised. Apple got this one exactly right. They released a good product with a good online service supporting it. They enticed people to use that online service by offering good software for free, and by securing exclusive content that people actually wanted. They timed everything perfectly—they didn’t put a lot of money into catching the early adopters, but they also didn’t take on the burden of entering a mature market with a new product. And they understood, as they always do, the importance of design and the “cool factor.” Microsoft didn’t. So now Microsoft employees wear their iPods to work, and it’s not because they’re not loyal, but because it’s the best product in its class and offers music they can’t get on a Microsoft-backed player.
Besides, if Microsoft wants to hire the best and brightest tech workers, it should expect to learn from those employees. If the they overwhelmingly choose a competing product, it says a lot more about the product than the employees.
01.16.05
Review: Sennheiser PXC-250 Headphones
I’d been looking for some new headphones for a while. I had a pair of Sony MDR-EX71s (mine were in white, imported from Japan, to match my iPod), but wasn’t entirely happy with them. They sounded pretty good, for the most part, except for maybe a little too much treble, but the in-ear design wasn’t as comfortable as I would have liked, and taking them out to answer my cell phone or talk to someone was such an annoyance I often just skipped it. Also, the cord: either too short (without the extension) or far too long (with it), and it amplified every bump or brush as I walked around town. I got about a year of use out of them, and certainly they were worth the $50 I paid for them, but it was time for a replacement.
So at MacWorld last week I picked up a pair of Sennheiser PXC-250 noise cancelling headphones. I ride the bus and train every day to get to and from work, so outside noise is a major issue for me. The Sennheisers reduce constant, low-frequency noise by about 15dB, which the ear perceives as half the noise, without affecting irregular, high-frequency sounds—like car horns and sirens. Even without hooking the ’phones up to my iPod, the noise cancellation on its own is great for reading on the bus or in other noisy environments. This feature does require 2 AAA batteries (without which the headphones still work, as normal headphones), and as a bonus the noise cancellation circuit seems to work like a headphone amp—turning on the noise cancellation increases the volume and makes music sound clearer and more expansive.
There is, as some reviewers on Amazon have noted, a certain degree of hiss accompanying the noise cancellation. This is, of course, white noise—that is, it’s part of the noise cancellation feature. Personally, I think the reviewers who make a big deal of this are missing the point. In any situation in which you’d be likely to use noise cancelling headphones, this slight amount of hiss isn’t likely to be an issue.
The part that actually does the work of noise cancellation and amplification and holds the batteries is external to the headphones themselves. Some have complained about this, because it means there’s a somewhat large tubular piece between the headphones and whatever you have them plugged into. If you’re walking around town, that’s one more item clipped to your belt or taking up space in your pocket. Personally, having tried systems that crammed the whole works into the headphones, I’m in favor of any design that means carrying less bulk over your ears. The PXC-250 headphones are sleek and light, and don’t weigh you down or make you look like Princess Leia. The padding on the headband is a particularly nice touch.
The most important consideration, of course, is the sound, and that’s where the Sennheisers really shine. Listening to my music through these headphones has been like hearing my favorite albums for the first time—the bass is crisp and pronounced but not overpowering, the treble is clear and bright, and the midrange is perfectly balanced. In short, these are the best headphones I’ve ever owned.
