Postpwning chores

After a four month break, I have finally had a chance to continue where I left off in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the PlayStation 3. I was distracted for a while there by my Windows PC, after purchasing a some great games on Steam for cheap. Speaking of which, hopefully Nelle and I will get a chance to continue our Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light cooperative campaign on the PC—if we manage to assemble all of our new IKEA furniture before the weekend ends…

What are you guyses playing?

Equalizer app for iOS

I discovered an iOS app recently, Equalizer, which allows you to modify the frequency, Q and precut on up to seven parametric bands for the music stored on your iOS device. The app itself has been available for some time, but some recent revisions have significantly altered the functionality. These recent changes—namely, the ability to equalise music on the fly—have brought the app to my attention.

In my view, iOS (and any iPod running the default firmware) has always been lacking a critical feature: a graphic equaliser. Sure, there have always been a bunch of preset EQ curves, but these are, at best, so-so. In fact, until iOS 4.0 arrived, these preset EQ curves introduced audible distortion on bass-heavy tracks, because there were no precut adjustments being made to compensate for the low frequency gain. This was the primary reason I held off buying an iPhone until the iPhone 4 arrived. It was the longest two years of my life!


I found myself still tied to my old iAUDIO X5 MP3 player with Rockbox firmware installed, through some inexpensive bass-heavy ear canal headphones, even after I bought the iPhone 4. I tried to retrain my ears to enjoy a flat EQ curve with some new and expensive ear canal headphones connected to the iPhone, hoping that they would pump out some powerful low frequencies without the need for an aggressive EQ curve. That was an ill-informed decision. Those earphones are expensive because they produce a flat frequency response—but that's not what my ears want!

So, back to the app… Equalizer, in its current form, is the app I have been waiting years for. It is a complete music player; an alternative to the iPod app, with a 7-band fully parametric equaliser. The equaliser itself works in a similar way to my beloved Rockbox. The amplitude, centre frequency, and bandwidth can be controlled individually on each band, as opposed to drawing a single curve on a more simplistic software equaliser, such as EQu – also in the App Store. This is perfect for my bass hungry ears, as I can give multiple 12 dB gains at 20 Hz with a sharp drop down to 0 dB at around 60 Hz, creating deep sub-bass without the muddy lower-middle frequencies interfering.

Music selection is handled in a similar fashion to the iPod app, which is a breath of fresh air after using the similar app, EQu, where album selection appeared to be left as an afterthought.

My recommendation is quite simple: if you are currently satisfied with the sound coming from your current iOS device, and feel there is no room for improvement, then carry on using the iPod app. If you find yourself wanting a little more…  Scrap that; buy this $3.99 app, and a pair of ear canal headphones. You don't know what you're missing out on!

Mother will not be pleased

Obey the grassface potatoes

One man's junk is another man's… who am I kidding?

Although I had originally hoped to avoid spending money on the old Windows 98 PCs, I couldn't pass the opportunity to purchase nine used 10BASE2 network cards with coaxial ports for $1.00 on eBay! A reliable network using this method was the stuff of legends back in the day; so this might involve some serious troubleshooting. Well, there will definitely be some kind of shooting involved.

Old age, nostalgia, and its effects on garage space

For those who have been checking my blog regularly, you may have noticed a slight decline in regular postings during the 2010 period. My interests change faster than the pants of a deer in a lion cage, so unfortunately my blog had lost my attention for quite some time; but this is about to change, because I have loads of stuff and junk (literally) to talk about!

I'll kick it off with some news about my latest hobby. In an attempt to relive some of my most memorable years, I have become the proud father of seven Windows 98 era PCs that would have otherwise been thrown out by my employer. With these old machines, a choice selection of high school chums and I will be able to replay some of the old multiplayer games that kept us busy most weekends (and many weeknights) during the 1999–2001 period. I'm talking about classic LAN games such as Delta Force, Half-Life: Counter-Strike, Motocross Madness 2, Quake, Soldier of Fortune, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament, Viper Racing, Worms 2, and butt-loads more. Sure, some of these games are playable on new systems, but nothing beats the feel of a chunky beige keyboard, a flickering CRT monitor, and a noisy rig with the stability of a dead wombat on a tightrope. There's no ugly image resampling for the low-resolution games, and there's a sense of satisfaction I get knowing that the computer is working hard to display the primitive graphics.

Before we go to the trouble of removing 10 years worth of boot marks and coffee stains, I want to at least make sure the old PCs will talk to each other in a network. This was problematic back in the day, as we all had different machines with different operating systems. This time around I have a bunch of Dells, all running Windows 98 Second Edition. The only problem is, the network card drivers want to extract to floppy disks before they can be installed. Where am I supposed to find working floppy disks?! I could try eBay, but I'm hoping to avoid spending any money on this project. Besides this setback, I have functioning sound and video card drivers, and Viper Racing is as fun as it was in 1999!

I better stock up on Cheetos and Mountain Dew, 'cause there will not be any girls there.