Creative XMod Review!
Posted by Ray @ 11:41 pm
(Full disclosure: the XMod was provided courtesy of Creative and its marketing partner.)
Price: S$139 retail
Bottom line: If you use a laptop exclusively as your main computing and multimedia viewing tool, this gadget is worth the buy. If you’re using an on-board sound solution and are thinking of buying a simple sound card, this gadget is very worth the buy. Conversely, if you have good noise-canceling headphones, or a snug-fitting set of ear buds, it is not. For the price, you might want to spend a bit more for a better pair of headphones / ear buds.
Pros: X-Fi Crystalizer [sic] works across the board; X-Fi CMSS-3D works well when it does; XMod is literally plug-and-play on both Mac OSX and Windows (!); XMod is external and consequently has zero noise; very convenient to use with its nice big knob (damn you, Freud!).
Cons: X-Fi CMSS-3D introduces distortions at the high end of audible frequencies; requires a separate purchase for use without a computer; XMod is of limited use across the board; annoying X-name; price.
Full review after the jump.
Addendum (5 Jan 07): I’ve added some additional information regarding the metallic popping noise that the XMod emits to earphones. They’re at the bottom of the page, but the summary is: it exists on a handful of windows systems, there is no permanent solution I can find, for a quick fix just unplug and re-plug the XMod.
It’s all kitty’s fault
Posted by Ray @ 6:58 pmIt’s rather old news (at least a year old), but a common parasite found in cats make men less attractive, while making women more so.
From the article:
Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.
On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.
I only made the association today, while my cat was purring on my lap.
It’s all your fault!!!!
(Okay, so I exaggerate. It’s not a causative factor, merely correlative. But where’s the fun in that? Besides, it’s easier to blame the cat.)
The King is dead. Long live the King.
Posted by Ray @ 1:31 pmThe internets breathe again after a quake hits Taiwan, just in time for us to tune in to Saddam Hussein’s execution (he was executed just over two hours ago Singapore time).
So what? Yes, the Shiites are happy, but Osama is still running around. Plus Iraq looks like it’s going to degenerate into something far worse than Saddam’s regime. A corpse is a corpse, be it made in the name of justice or tyranny.
Oh well.
All I Want for Christmas
Posted by Ray @ 11:48 pm
The True Historically Accurate Meaning of Christmas
Posted by Ray @ 7:43 pm
In modern times, Christians celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ birthday. The rest of us use it as an excuse to buy presents, sing songs and get drunk. But I bet you didn’t know some of these interesting factoids and answers!
1) Celebration of the birthdays of religious figures was originally frowned upon.
The birthday, or “Natal day” was not celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church as such. In the early years, it was the death of a religious figure that was celebrated. Why? Because physical death signified birth into eternal life - the true life, as it were.
Physical birth was not considered as important. In fact, some even considered it an egotistical, sinful abhorrence (see e.g. Origen’s opinions). It was only in Eastern Christianity (i.e. not Roman Catholicism) that Jesus’ birth was celebrated as part of the Epiphany, and then it was celebrated on January 6th.
When exactly the celebration became that of Jesus’ birthday is unclear, as are the reasons for this shift.
2) Where did the twelve days of Christmas come from?
As mentioned, the Epiphany, known to modern Christians as the time the three wise men visited Jesus, is celebrated on January 6. The preceding 12 days, from December 25 to January 5, are known as the twelve days of Christmas, or Christmastide.
A similar 12-day period, Yuletide, refers to the 12 days filling the gap between the two halves of Giuli Tide (essentially December - January) in the ancient Anglo-Saxon calendar. As the Julian Calendar (and later, the Gregorian Calendar) spread back over the rest of Europe, the definition of Yuletide narrowed to mean just Christmas.
Interesting sidenote: Shakespeare wrote a play, “Twelfth Night, or What You Will,” set on January 5.
3) Many Christmas customs are of Pagan origin.
In pre-Christian Scandinavia, “Jol” (aka “Jule”, pronounced “Yule”) was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year for the northern hemisphere. Pagan winter festivities often revolved around death, and the Yule log was lit to protect the household against evil spirits. As technology progressed, we found it less and less necessary to use massive logs to warm the home, and so the logs got smaller, eventually winding up as a table decoration and cake.
Also a part of Yule celebrations was the slaughtering of a boar as an offering to Freyr, the Norse God of fertility. That, of course, became the Christmas Ham (mmmmm… haaaam).
Pre-Christian Rome had a similar tradition where they sacrificed a pig to Saturn, the Roman God of agriculture. They did this during a festival called Saturnalia, which started on December 17 and ran for 5-7 days. Saturnalia itself was a crazy time, where slaves were served by their masters, people sang in the nude and wanton gambling took place.
The Roman New Year’s Day celebrations also had the custom of giving presents, which were originally strenae (twigs from a sacred grove), and gradually became the presents we know today. Rather ironically, early Christians hated gift-giving because of its pagan origins (see e.g. Tertullian’s opinions).
Mistletoe is actually a parasitic plant that old Norse Druids considered sacred, and the tradition of kissing underneath it comes from Norse mythology. Holly wreaths were used as decoration in midwinter pagan festivals. Caroling probably originated as a form of circle dance having nothing to do with religion, and Roman Catholicism originally frowned upon it. When it was finally generally accepted, the Reformation took place, and Protestants suppressed it… because of its association with Roman Catholicism.
Even Santa Claus has Pagan influences. Santa is a corruption of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children. So far, so Christian. But all the trappings surrounding Santa - the chimney, the stockings, etc are Pagan. Some of the stories are quite gruesome. In one of them, the gift-giver is a demon forced to repent!
4) Nobody really knows what day Jesus was born, so why December 25?
The Gospels don’t tell us what day he was born. We can infer some conclusions based upon circumstantial evidence, but those are contradictory. For example, the census Joseph and Mary had to attend (see e.g. Luke 2) would have been foolhardy in winter, as would tending your flock of sheep on a cold winter night.
The date of December 25 comes with much uncertainty. The Jews believe in a concept of “integral age”, where Jesus was supposed to have lived for an integral number of years (i.e. he died on the same day he was born). Jesus’ birth was set at December 25 because that’s the day he supposedly died. Subsequent evidence shows this to be false, or at least, uncertain.
The most likely candidate for the source of the date is pre-Christian Rome’s Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or “Festival of the Birth of the Invincible Sun,” a pagan custom celebrating (what else?) the rebirth of the sun. According to the calendar at the time, the winter solstice fell on December 25, which meant from then on the days would get longer.
Its claim is not without the same difficulty accompanying the other claims, that of uncertainty and lack of historical record. But records do show that the early Church was divided over whether or not it was appropriate to associate the birth of the Sun with the birth of Christ - on the one hand, it could be seen as Providence that Christ should be born on such an auspicious day; on the other, it could be seen as Heresy.
In any case the Church adopted December 25 as Christmas, perhaps to more easily convert the incumbent populace.
And there you have it: a few interesting nuggets of information to chew through Christmas.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
* * *
Further reading:
1) The Catholic Encyclopaedia’s entry on Christmas. Their other entries are just as dense, informative and interesting.
2) Wikipedia entries on: Natalis Invicti, Tertullian (one of the foundation builders of Christianity), History of some Christmas traditions, Origins of Santa Claus, and many many more.
3) The Active Bible Church of God’s introduction to Christmas.
Obligatory Plug for Modhost
Posted by Ray @ 2:30 amSince its inception, Squarebrain has been hosted on Modhost’s servers. They’re pretty reliable, but users have been telling us that access to Squarebrain is a bit slow, so we’re thinking of shifting to a host nearer to Singapore, geographically speaking.
In preparation, I told them I wanted to switch to a monthly payment scheme while I work out what host I want to switch to. I also asked them for help fiddling with some domain name stuff.
Their service rocks.
Within 26 minutes of my e-mail, they replied to me with a fix for my problems, and also asked me to do change some settings so they could continue. I changed those settings, told them about it, and within 3 minutes it was all done.
Done, in half an hour!
They didn’t even ask me why I was switching.
So I’m obliging them with a plug. Not that it helps, we’re not exactly an internet presence. But still.
Geographical discrimination = Stupid
Posted by Ray @ 11:52 pmThe powers that be recently released John Hodgeman’s The Areas of my Expertise for free on iTunes as an audio book. It’s an abridged version, running at almost 7 hours.
If you know who he is, delight in the geeky deadpan delivery. If you don’t… well, poo to you.
Except even though it is free, iTunes requires me to make an account to download it. And everyone in Singapore cannot do that, because nobody can buy stuff from iTunes in Singapore. Because iTunes hasn’t “come to Singapore” yet.
The whole idea of geographical segmentation for an online business makes complete and utter nonsense. It’s one thing to say you can’t physically ship your product to Singapore. It’s another thing entirely to say you can’t transfer an electronic copy of your product to Singapore.
What the hell? Are record companies scared they won’t get enough “protection”? Come on, our copyright law can kick your civil liberties so hard your loss of habeas corpus looks like a minor inconvenience in comparison. (It’s illegal to make backup copies of CDs you legally own in Singapore. That means the only music you can play on your iPod is music you’ve bought off the ‘net. Up until recently, that meant you had almost zero ways of obtaining legal music. Which means everyone who has an MP3 player is almost certainly a criminal under Singaporean law. Also, we never had the right to habeas corpus =P).
After that initial flash of fury, I just went to my favourite bittorrent site and downloaded it. And I feel fully justified. Pah!
Christmas time!
Posted by Zeng @ 1:01 am
Ride That Scooter!
Posted by Ray @ 1:33 pmCheck out this scooter made by the French military during WWII.
All it needs is Melissa Theuriau riding it. And in case you’re wondering, yes, it works. More info here.
OSX Improvements
Posted by Ray @ 1:00 amOr, the Dark Side of using a Mac.
Computerworld has an article about 15 improvements Apple could make in OSX.
Some of them are good, like having document instances in the dock: Apple’s dock, the equivalent of the Windows taskbar, doubles as an application launcher; it does not show each separate document or window in any open application. Apple’s dock is a horrible piece of design anyway, we’ve known it for years, so all Mac users should download Quicksilver and DragThing and then forget all about the dock.
Some of them are annoyances, like not having a different backspace and delete key (Mac laptop users, press FN + BACKSPACE to achieve the delete effect).
But while they have a handful of good suggestions vis-a-vis the Finder (the equivalent of Explorer for Windows), they miss out the most critical flaw of all: the Finder is single threaded.
It can only do one thing at a time. If something is holding it up, it will wait… and wait… and wait… until it is done, before you can do anything else with it. If that spinning beach ball comes up while you’re using the Finder, you’d better hope it won’t be there for long. All the major “hangs” I’ve had with my Mac have all been related to the bloody Finder.
The Finder, for goodness’ sake! It’s the one thing all Mac users will be using (X11 snobs notwithstanding), and it can only do one thing at a time!
The worst thing is we’ve known about the dock and finder for a long time, yet they’re still the same old dinosaurs.
Apple, you can do much better.
Phone support incompetence
Posted by Ray @ 12:01 amThis guy, George, spends 22 minutes trying to convince Verizon that .002 cents is different from .002 dollars (Link to blog).
You see, he was quoted that he was getting .002 cents / KB for internet usage in Canada. Knowing it is a really good deal, he gets the operator to note it down. Then he receives a bill for $72, calculated from a rate of .002 dollars / KB.
He calls Verizon tech support. They continually reassure him that the quote of .002 cents / KB is correct. Then they tell him his bill is also correct, because their system did the calculating, and their system is obviously infallible.
The opening moments are funny, but as it progresses it just becomes painful:
George (Customer): Do you recognize that there is a difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents?
Mike (Supervisor): … no?
George: Okay, is there a difference between 2 dollars and 2 cents?
Mike: Well yes, there is…
George: Okay, so is there a difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents?
Mike: …They’re both the same, if you look at it on paper…
13 minutes later, he gets bumped up again to this woman:
Andrea (Manager): … How can I help you today?
George: Hi, I think we’ve got a terminology and mathematics problem going on here, it seems very basic to me but we’re having a problem because of the numbers involved…
Andrea: Okay
George: Just to summarize… .002 cents was quoted to me… my bill represents .002 dollars per KB.
Andrea: What do you mean, .002 dollars?
George: (sighs). Okay. I didn’t think I had to do this again. Do you recognize that there is a difference between 1 dollar and 1 cent?
Andrea: Definitely.
George: Do you recognize that there is a difference between half a dollar and half a cent?
Andrea: Definitely.
George: Then, do you therefore recognize that there is a difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents?
Andrea: No.
George (disbelieving): No?
The incredible punchline comes at 22:25. After trying in vain to train this one customer to just stop thinking and obey the company, Andrea says “Well, it’s obviously a difference of opinion…”
Imagine telling that to your primary 5 form teacher.
[Via].
(PS: for more fun, try typing “.002 cents times 35893″ into Google. Heck, try typing “.002 cents per KB times 35893 KB” into Google.)
Play iSketch!
Posted by Ray @ 12:32 amI know I’m a little slow in this, but this is one of the most fun online games I’ve ever played: iSketch.
It plays like Pictionary. No password necessary, just type in a username and play.
Everything should be this simple. [via].
Bittorrent and uTorrent merging?
Posted by Ray @ 3:51 amSo sayeth the utorrent forum.
Not entirely sure this is a good thing, given that Bram Cohen has struck his deals with the MPAA. On the other hand it could mean more funds for Mac and Linux ports of the very small, very fast utorrent client. We’ll wait and see if this is just some hoax, or the real deal.
Homophobia Associated with Homosexual Arousal?
Posted by Ray @ 3:28 pmThis is the title of an old study done by University of Georgia psychologists (1996), and the answer is yes (subject, of course, to the usual uncertainties). Funny that we knew of this phenomnenon a decade ago, yet despite high publicity (Ted Haggart, anyone?) it never gets mentioned.
Abstract:
Participants consisted of a group of homo-phobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29)… Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli… Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.
Of course, the study doesn’t take into account many things (childhood trauma, religious indoctrination), but is interesting nonetheless.
[PDF link, Google cache HTML link]
[Via]