USB Headphone amplifier
I recently rewarded my self with a USB headphone amplifier to use at work together with my Beyerdynamic
FiiO E7 USB DAC and Portable Headphone Amplifier (Black)
and
NuForce Icon uDAC-2 (Red) Headphone Amp and USB DAC (24bit/96kHz)
The FiiO is not available in Sweden, but I have found it in Europe so I thought I would be able to get it without any extra value added tax.
After reading some of the uDAC-2 drama I got cold feet and started searching for external soundcards instead of headphone amplifiers.
This got me on to this little gem
Behringer UCA202 Audio Interface
It’s way cheaper than my previous alternatives and Behringer is in it self a cheap brand, I was told by a musician friend. Evens so it made wonders to the sound of my old laptop. The sound is more controlled both in the low and high frequencies. The high pitched nails in my ears are totally gone. It’s not like it’s filtering ’cause I can still hear the artifacts of a bad mp3 compression.
Other search terms:
- loud usb headphones
Geocaching with a Nokia E72
Geocaching is an outdoor game where you search for hidden logs in which you note that you found the cache. In addition to logging on paper, you log your visit on a site that gathers several caches. The site with the most caches is geocaching.com.
Many caches can be found by looking at maps and satellite images, but the best is to have a GPS so that you can enter the coordinates of a cache and follow the GPS there.
I use the GPS and the included OVI maps on my Nokia E72
One thing I really like about satellite view in the E72 is that it is possible to zoom in to a resolution of a few meters. It is very helpful when the GPS is not quite keeping up, especially in a city environment.
The default settings for the coordinate system in the phone is not the one used on geocaching.com so change it to: GGG MM.MMMM. Otherwise it is a pain if you are looking for a cache where the coordinates are the result of a quest or a math problem.
To get the cache coordinates to the phone I use a program called GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) and Dropbox.
In GSAK, I use a macro called Nokia (without version number). There is one known as Nokia xxx, where xxx is a version number, but I did not get it to work. The Nokia macro exports all the caches that are currently visible in GSAK to an LMX file. LMX is the file format that Nokia uses to store locations on the map.
When I export LMX file I make it go to the folder called Public in my Dropbox directory. Right-clicking on the file when it is the gives you a public URL (Web address). I use the same file name for each export.
The public URL to my LMX file is saved as a bookmark in my phone. Then I can quickly import new locations to the phone when I export them with GSAK.
It looks pretty complicated, but takes less than half an hour to set up. It is time you save up quite fast because you do not have to convert the coordinates and enter them manually into the phone.
Other search terms:
- geocaching with nokia e72
- geocaching maps nokia e72
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- how do i enter gps coordinates on my nokia e72 ovi maps?
- lmx to nokia
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Wikileaks – Where did democracy and free speech go?
The fact that Sweden had an even closer military cooperation with the U.S. than most people suspect does not disturb me very much. It scared me more that I wasn’t surprised.
What disturbs more is that the state apparatus in the countries that we like to call democratic act like five year olds as soon as it affects them.
It’s one thing to confiscate domain names , strangle internet access and access to money , but when high-ranking politicians in the” democratic “states are talking about execution and assassination of an informant those states are not one bit better than China or Iran.
I think the first three assaults are clearly not democratic, but to publicly speak of assassination should make the most level-headed people worried.
In some ways, I think Eric Schmidt actually is right; If you have nothing to hide you have no need to worry.
I can understand that the states get upset if their military secrets are revealed, but the latest round of documents appears to be mostly revelations that falls back as embarrassment of public figures.
That’s probably the reason why governments starts to behave like this. The problem is not that Wikileaks leaks dangerous information, the problem is that the public finds out how bad their elected representatives behave. It has nothing with military security to do.
Bloglines alternative
Well now that Ask.com finally pulled the plug on Bloglines I am in need of an online RSS reader.
I do know about Google Reader but I’ve never grown fond of it.
I did find FeedShow so I guess I’ll have to give that a try.
Update 12/9: Found this list of feed aggregators: http://www.newsonfeeds.com/faq/aggregators
If you know of any other online feed reader please let me know. I might even consider hosting it by myself if I find an open source one that is nice to use.
Other search terms:
- bloglines alternative
- boglines alternative
pifts.exe
I just read about pifts.exe at a fellow Swedish blogger.
It does look a little suspicious, but I am not convinced it is a cover up.
All the threads I have seen mentioning pifts.exe at the Norton Forum site, before being deleted, has contained loads of junk.
I might be a social attack against Norton.
Will Bush be sent to Hague now?
Since no country has the power to chase down an ex ruler of the USA but USA it self, now is probably the time to stand up for justice.
Wouldn’t it be a huge statement if Bush was sent to trial in Hague for his crimes against international law by the new administration.
It’s probably a pipe dream ant I wonder if that would lead to civil war in the USA.
An ex leader from almost any other country that had behaved like Bush would have been hunted for life.
I don’t mind bringing terrorists to to court, but keeping suspects in weak foreign countries to circumvent the domestic law and calling them illegal warriors to circumvent international law is straight up bullying to me.
Maybe all the countries that USA owe money could gather and put some collective preassure on them. That seems to be a weak point of the super power that is open to exploit right now.
Irrational
I have way to much to do and all of it is by my own choice. I have some school work that should have been done two weeks ago and I am already behind with the math studies that I started this semester.
I haven’t done any academic math for about twenty years and it looks like I wasn’t taught the same amount of math that students today read at the same level.
On top of that there are loads of things I want to do with logview4net, jsiPodFetch, jsiServiceManager and two Swedish sites I am working on. (For you Swedish readers one of them is komdit.nu and the other one is still in the design phase.
If this was all work related stuff I would make a list and tick them of off one at a time, but now I am totally irrational. I sit down to work but I get nothing done. There is just one more blog post to read and one more WoW quest to do.
I recently added the UserVoice widget to jsisoft.com so please make sugestions and vote for them. At least that will help me prioritize work on the jsisoft side of things.
The blame game
We have all been part of the blame game, by our choosing or by the actions of someone else.
In todays Dilbert, Wally takes it to the next level.
I work as a consultant and beyond the instant irritation I actually find some amusement in watching the blame game in action. At least when I am not a central player.
I’ve had to work with people that CC’s and forwards every mail to a supervisor (or a hand full of peers) and insists on the same policy for booking meetings. My experience is that those that do what ever they can to protect their back are usually the ones starting the game.
So, is their protective behavior the result previous games or strategic moves for the next one?
Big ups to Trent
Trent at The Simple Dollar removed his Adsense ads because they often showed ads that were in contrast to the content of his blog.
I just want to give him some cred for being strong in his principles.
I have some ads but the click through rate is so small I should probably do something else with that space. It is up for sale for almost any immoral purposes if the pay is good enough.
Conference at work today
… and all I can say about it is that today is one of those days I wish I blogged anonymously.
