Category Archives: Technology

Music, Technology

Bose® In-Ear Headphones

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I recently had the opportunity to use bose in-ear headphones and I was so moved by the experience that I had to write a post.
Firstly, I wanted to know what the hype is about bose products and why they cost so more. Maybe it was this because of which my expectations were high. These bose headphones are good, but not as good as I expected. If you’re looking for noise cancelling phones, these are not for you. They fight very lightly in the ears but are very very comfortable. I normally use the generic headphones that came with my phone, so I like to keep my equaliser to high bass. The bass on the bose is so strong I immediately had to turn my equaliser back to normal. I started off with sad but true by metallica and the depth of the sound blew me away. The song sounded amazing. Next I moved on to marooned from pink floyd’s division bell. Again, amazing, with the bass just a bit high, overwhelming the mid range. Coming back to life sounded amazing, the bass on high hopes
was physically irritating to my skull and I had to lower the volume. Bose also says on the package that the headphones produce “natural sound” which is not entirely true, as the music sounds enhanced in the low range.
To change the genre I turned to Dire Straits. I started off with So far away, continued to Money for nothing and finished off with brothers in arms. Again, normal songs sound good, the songs with already prominent bass tracks just overwhelm the mid-range. By this time i’ve listened to an hour worth of songs but the headphones are barely noticeable and so comfortable that if it wasn’t for the sound or the wires
hanging off, I would not even know they were there. I am normally not a fan of in-ear earphones, but these are really-really good.
Pros:

  1. Excellent sound quality
  2. Excellent comfort
  3. Good Bass
Cons:
  1. Bass sometimes too strong, overpowers mid-range
  2. Better earphones available within same range
If you listen to a song for the music, the clarity of the instruments, there may be better options available. If you want just loud music with thumping bass, this the the thing for you.

I myself have added the Klipsch Image S4 on my wishlist and will be getting these bad boys as soon as I get my pay at the end of the month.

Rant, Technology

My job is like a medical intern’s

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I’ve been watching scrubs a lot lately and I think I can relate to that lifestyle because I have a similar job. Now, I’m not remotely connected to the medical profession, but there are many similarities between my job and that of a medical intern.

1. We both work in shifts, mostly nights.
2. We both have to work under high pressure situations, time being of essence.
3. We both get to work on cases. Some are easy and get solved right away, some take months.
4. There are high priority cases where you can’t do anything unless they gets solved and there are normal ones. Just like an ICU.
5. You don’t feel that happy when you escape at the end of the shift because you know when you return the next day, the cases will be waiting for you.
6. Some cases you don’t know what to do but they got solved by themselves, some cases seem very easy but go on for months.
7. We all have to work on holidays.
8. Research is your best friend.
9. When you don’t know what to do, you go beg your mentor to tell you something.

Rant, Technology

Electric Car – A farce

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The electric car is one of the biggest objects of farce in today’s age. People keep on crying about how electric cars run on electricity and not by burning hydrocarbons and hence they are less polluting and “environment friendly” Ha. Ha. Looks like the people who say this have never believed in anything written outside text books and tabloids or understood a few simple concepts of physics.

Let’s take for example a regular petrol/diesel powered car. The efficiency of a stock normal compression petrol engine is around 30% and that of a diesel engine is 45%. That means 45% of the energy obtained from burning fuel is actually converted into mechanical energy to move a car and this includes mechanical loss and heat loss. For high performance cars, the figure may be up to 50%.

Now let’s take the “environment friendly” electric car. An electric car motor has an efficiency of around 90%!! Wow!! Isn’t that amazing?? And also so pollution free! Not quite so! Where does the electricity used to charge the car come from? From power plants. What do these power plants run from? In India, 87% power is produced by burning coal. The efficiency of a typical Indian power plant is around 23%(US=33%) which means a loss of 77%. Add to that transmission losses of around 15%(US=9%). Battery charging efficiency is at the best 70% which means a loss of 30%. This brings the total efficiency of an electric car down to 19% starting from the first fuel. And this is using coal, which is much much more polluting than petrol or diesel. I’m not even taking into account the fact that half the weight of an electric car is the batteries which is a waste of the mechanical energy. Also, each megawatt of power utilised more in the cities means 1 less hour of electricity per day in the villages. And the villages i’m talking about get only a few hours of electricity per day as it is.

Let’s look at the total efficiency figures of a diesel and electric car

Diesel—–Diesel Engine 55% loss——> Mechanical Energy = 45% Efficiency

Coal/Diesel—-Turbine power plant 77% loss—>Transmission 15% loss—>Battery charging 30% loss—->Electric Motor loss 10%—->Mechanical Energy = 19% efficiency

Modern diesel and petrol engines are almost pollution free and you also get performance and practicality. Would you want to go on a road trip and stop for a charge every 100km or so and even then crawl along at speeds not more than 80kmph. And for all this you shell out 4 times as more than you would for an Internal Combustion car and also have people laugh at you.

Unless more efficient and pollution free power generation is adopted, the electric car is clearly impractical and in fact more polluting than a normal car. The only difference is that a normal car pollutes the urban section and the electric car pollutes the suburbs and the rural. The blame of pollution is just passing from your conscience to the government.

Technology

Saved!!!

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Just when I thought that I was doomed, my luck changed abruptly for the better. We went and pleaded with the service centre guy and convinced him to overlook the evidence of water/vodka in the motherboard and replace it under warranty. Anyways, he seemed like a nice guy because he agreed and will replace the motherboard for free.. As for me, I am so happy that I am gonna celebrate tonight… See ya..
Song of the day:-Run to you(Bryan Adams)

Rant, Technology

Pink Floyd+Vodka=Disaster (I am screwed big time…)

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Seemed like the perfect evening. Pink Floyd Pulse concert on DVD on my friend’s laptop. Me and my friend were having Fuel Vodka. Pink Floyd music and Vodka really combined have a really interesting effect. Couple with that the spectacular Visual Effects and the Psychedelic nature of the music and your head will surely start reeling. Anyways, We watched the whole concert when “Comfortably Numb” started playing. Eager to show off my guitaring skills, as I could play that song well, I picked up my guitar from the bed and accidentally hit over the vodka glass lying on the table and spilled vodka all over the laptop. Dried it off the best we could at that time but in the morning it won’t turn ON, so we took it to the service centre. Seems that the motherboard is shot to hell and I have to get a new one. A new HP laptop motherboard costs around 35,000 and I have to pay that so I am screwed. Don’t know where to arrange so much money. Meanwhile I am really depressed while I look for ways to arrange the money.. 🙁

Rant, Technology

My Latest Mobile Phone…

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A Motorola C350

No, this is not the picture of my handset, it’s a picture from the website. The theft of my phone had left me penniless so, somehow after conjuring up around 2000 bucks, I went off to the second hand mobile shop to search for a cheap phone with USB Modem capabilities. What I wanted was a samsung C100 but I couldn’t find that in any of the shops so I decided to settle for a Motorola C350. As I had already used my friend’s handset for a week, I knew that it had a decent modem with USB connectivity. Anyways, I have tried to list the Pros and Cons of this wonderful handset(not the original one but the second hand piece that I have) below.
Pros:-

  1. Decent modem with USB pop port.

Cons:-

  1. Pathetic display with huge dots forming up the tiny screen.
  2. Screen conveys a feeling of depression.
  3. 256 color screen.
  4. Pathetic menus.
  5. Disgusting text entry mechanism.
  6. Extremely bad ringtone quality.
  7. Body looks like the handset fell off a moving vehicle and a few trucks ran over it.
  8. Poor battery life.
  9. Crashes whenever some memory operation is performed.
  10. Lack of profiles.
  11. * key of the keypad broken in 3 places.
  12. Switches off automatically
  13. Vibrator louder than the ringtone.
  14. Maximum 2 lines of text on the screen at a time.
  15. After a message has been typed, you have to press atleast another 6 buttons to send it.
  16. Poor phonebook.
  17. Doesnt support picture messages, sms ringtones.
Technology

One month review of O2 XPhone II

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It’s more than a month I have been using my new phone. So I thought it’s time I wrote a fair review about it. Following are the pros and cons of this smartphone.

Pros.:-

  1. Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition
  2. 64 Mb integrated storage
  3. 32 Mb Ram
  4. Mini-SD card support upto 4 gb
  5. Fast processor
  6. Large and very clear display with exceptional clarity
  7. Speakerphone
  8. Sleek and suave
  9. Keypad Light Sensor
  10. Long battery life
  11. Above average camera quality
  12. Runs .exe files and installs software directly out of .cab files
  13. Bluetooth/Infrared Connectivity
  14. Great Multimedia Album with zoom in videos
  15. Great mp3 quality in Windows Media Player 9 and other applications.
  16. Mirror on back for self-portrait
  17. Great t9 dictionary with intuitive suggestions while typing.
  18. Good volume
  19. Wma/wav ringtones

Cons.:-

  1. File explorer software has to be downloaded from official website.
  2. Maybe hard to use for newbies.
  3. Lack of mp3 ringtones(Can be rectified by 3rd party software)
  4. Sub megapixel camera
  5. Office apps not bundled
  6. Windows Media Player 10 not present
  7. Memory Card not hot swappable