My (broken) Sennheiser CX 95

I've had used a number of headphones over the last few years. Shure E2C, Bose Triport, Sennheiser CX 300, JBL 501, Sony MDR 71, Sony NC 22 with loads of other brands and models. Only Shure E2C clicked for a while off the above list until I came across Sennheiser CX 95, which is pretty awesome for the price.

Photo : Sennheiser CX 95

I bought it ~18 months back from JB HiFi (Adelaide St Store) at Brisbane for $179/=. I didn't burn for more than 2 days to get the best out of it. Very detailed sounds with rich mids along with good thump. Which is the best headphones I've ever used so far, which could be rated ahead of Shure E2C, Shure 110 without a doubt.

I enjoyed every bit of it. It's really awesome! However, sadly in the morning, I broke it, as I sat on top of it :-/ I was deeply in love with the sounds they produced.. the music I love.. Although this damage doesn't have any impact on the sounds, it's very hard to use them with the broken toe, which holds the incoming wire into the headphone. I tried JB HiFi to find the same model and realised Sennheiser has discontinued this model and couldn't locate it on their latest catalog.

I checked with Amazon's Sennheiser store but with not much success. However, I was told CX 95 has been re-branded as CX 550 II. I'm not quite sure about this and can't gamble with it. I can't give up on my headphones for I'm so crazy about the amazing sounds it offers, so I managed fix the broken handle which fits at the bottom of barrel. I belive, I could use it for couple of more weeks until I'm fully convinced CX 95 == CX 550 II. If not, my other option would be Sennheiser IE 8, which is ~ $500... hmm .. music is so expensive .....

The true meaning of Christmas

People celebrate Christmas on every 25th December. Christmas means the birthday of Jesus Christ, as people call it. But why do these people do shopping for Jesus' birthday ? If they to do, they should buy things for the person who celebrates his birthday, in this case Christ. Why would they buy things for themselves on Jesus' birthday ? what does this mean ?

Also, if you read the bible carefully, you would figure out Jesus' existence waayy back in time. Jesus was there at the beginning, before creation of the world. Then what's this birth of Jesus Christ ? what's Christmas ?

In brief, God is a tri-personal being of same substance and essence, consist of God, Jesus, Holy Spirit. The sin of men created a great barrier between God and men. Therefore God sent his only son to this world, Jesus Christ to crucify for the sin of men, so that the men can communicate with God once their sins are forgiven through the crucifixion of Christ Jesus.

So when Jesus was born into this world to crucify for our sins, this arrival in human flesh of God referred as birth of Christ. Although the exact date and time period was not known, shopping malls (people) started celebrating this as Christmas on 25th of every December.

In this way, Christmas means the birth of Christ in this world; so why do these people buy themselves with gifts and fancy stuff for Christmas ? this of course something I failed to understand. If we're celebrating the birth of Christ, then we should offer our gifts to the Person Who celebrates His birthday, to Christ. The best we could offer him is to live the kind of life which is due from our side.

Buying cloths, doing shopping and exchanging gifts between people and families are the most idiotic celebration that I'm seeing. Yet, they miss the whole point of Jesus' birth in flesh... If someone wishes to celebrate Christmas (the birth of Christ) the best way he could celebrate is; by living the kind of life God expects us to live.... believing in Jesus as our personal savior.. having a personal relationship with God through Christ.. Then you could see the real Messiah in you.. else.. there's nothing but emptiness.. .. ..

new wireless router netgear dg834pn

I had to buy new wireless router , since the old one started rebooting each time it drops a connection. I bought Netgear DG834Gv5 for $190 with an additional two year warranty (max speed 54mbps).

Sadly I couldn't use it for more than a few days. It stopped working as well. When contacting Netgear support, they asked me to return it for a replacement.

Internet has become a very critical service to me, I need to be online and within reach always. I need to be online while my faulty router being replaced.

I picked Netgear DG834PN from umart for $89. Almost half the price of my second modem. As you could see on the website, it doesn't say this modem supports ADSL 2+. Not even the reseller, umart. When I called them up to verify ADSL 2+ support, they confirmed it's *not* supported. Hence, it's $89.

I didn't believe Netgear web or the reseller. This modem/router supports 108mbps with 10x range. Also this is quite a new model compared to the former. I rang Netgear pre-sales to get this clarified. They confirmed with a clarification code, which can be used as a reference in case if the information isn't accurate. I bought it for $89 from umart.

I set it up at home last night. Everything went well and of course it does support ADSL 2+. Since my wireless clients support draft N, I'm getting the best out of it. And it's for just $89!!

Moral of the story: don't believe what you see..the obvious.. have faith in what you believe as what's right ;-)

sri lanka - elections on monthly basis

last time, when i was in sri lanka (sl), it was april 2009. sadly i couldn't have much fun, for there was a bloody election. and i came to know there had been elections for every 3-4 months. the provincial council elections.

instead of hosting them all at once, the government decided (due to some unknown X reason) to host them on quatarly basis.

however, don't these morons know how badly affect elections to our day to day lives ? how risky to stepout home during elections, when gangs shoot and bomb one another ? post election violance and all?

last time, i had 20 days to spend in sl, but sadly i couldn't enjoy most of it. since i didn't want to take any risks by goingout during the elections.

however, as i'm planning to visit the country for the next year, today i've heard that there will be couple of more elections lined up for 2010.

i don't mind having elections if the people in sl are slecting the right kinda people. but to select the kind of morons we have right now, do we really want to host elections and waste public funds ? scary! sri lankans been selecting clowns and idiots on round-robin fashion to rule the country.

wasted years ? all without a purpose ?

Time reads as 1400hrs, after hours long delay, all passengers were boarded the plane and it was ready to take off. but it didn't happen as usual, it got further delayed. then the captain broke the silence, almost after two hours since they were boarded. "welcome on board, i'm your captain for today's flight. i'm afraid that i have to bring you this bad news, we have to reschedule this flight at 1800 hrs due to a technical failure". another four hours ? the passengers were not happy at all.

needless to say how much jet fuel wasted, how many important appointments got cancelled. how many man-hours wasted and all associated resources with it. just like that, how many hours, days, months and years have we wasted in our lives ? countless, isn't it ?

if we turn back a few thousand years... a man named Moses spent his best time in life, in a desert. trying to find his way to the "Promised Land". the months, years he spent in the desert were countless. but if you take a deep look into this man, you could see that it was nothing but God's plan. that it was God, Who took Moses through the desert to, make him in the liking of God.

when we first see Moses in the Bible, he's an arrogant, pride, selfish and a stubborn person. but God chose him to take His people out of Egypt from slavery. to lead his people to the "promised land". God took this arrogant, pride, stubborn person and made him a humble, generous yet a kind person with patients. God made him a vessel to pour his spirit upon him. made him a loyal servant of God. this didn't happen in an overnight but took a number of years..as you could see it in the Bible.

the same way, God is taking you and me thru life.. to unlearn our bad habits, change our lives from our wrong ways and transform us into the image of Christ. when we look back, the time we have spent.. time we have wasted, they all didn't happen for no reason. there was a perfect reason and a plan. that's the perfect plan of God. if you measure the time we've wasted and the things we've learned. what we have gained far outweighs to what was wasted. which cannot be measured by any means.

God has a plan and a purpose for each and every person, understanding his plan and allowing Him in our lives is the best we could do, during the limited number of days of our existence. making our ways according to him and transform our lives into His image is what's going to take us away from roaming around the "desert" like it was with Moses... which brings us happiness in this life and life after death.

note:

the "wasted years" was something, what most of my friends used to tell me and regret. but quite often, they failed to realise, why they've had wasted so many years. i just wanted to express how i feel about it; the best possible way i could.

the given video, Brenton Brown's Humble king was first heard in 2001, when i was going thru a bumpy ride in life, like what moses did. but up to this moment, i never regret for taking that bumpy ride. which is what transformed me into His image.

i bought the entire album containing "Humble King" off iTunes store. it's a production of Vineyard Records, UK. , a couple of weeks back. since it wasn't available on amazon.com (cdnow.com).

End of the road for Argentina ?

End of the road for Argentina ?

After all the barking from big mouths with pet talks. Argentina, is now well set and left with ample amount of time to work on 2014 world cup, at this stage. Although there are two more games left to seal their fate, it seems all over for them.


It's so heart breaking to see how Argentina played against Paraguay. I had to check and recheck the schedule to make sure that I wasn't watching a club match. A club who'd getting ready for next Champions League Tournament.

It's not that Paraguay played well but the sloppy midfield, poor formation and lack of "team play" cost Argentinians, the end result. Argentina don't deserve to be in the finals, if they continue to play like this. Which is par below the average. What they could take positive off this game is, they have improved on their defenses.


dieGO maradona

There's no doubt about Maradona being a great player. Yes, I would rate him beyond Pele. Of course, he was voted ahead of Pele in 2001, when FIFA picked the player of the century.

But the question is, is he a good coach ? This is the fourth world cup qualifying defeat under Diego. There had bee a number of bad decisions by Diego in this short period:

The formation, of 3,3,4. You truly have to follow this formation , when your strikers aren't performing well. He has no reason to go on with aging Veron, Sergio and Messi. Veron shouldn't have played this game as a striker. True, there had been a drought of goals for Argentina, but the strikers aren't at fault.

There's just little what your strikers could do, when they don't get much assistance from the midfield. The pressure would have eased very easily off Messi, if there had been 2,4,4 formation.

By substituting Sergio with 36 year old Martín Palermo, Diego proved that he's bit more than an average idiot, given the grounds as a coach. Palermo hasn't played an international game for 10 bloody years. I wouldn't be surprised if he recalls Batistuta.

Needless to say how bad and stupid Diego as a coach. Just like he won the cup single handedly in 1986. He's responsible for the downfall of Argentina and for getting kicked off from FIFA 2010. I can't accept the reality that Argentina having such a soccer pedigree not playing for the next years world cup. It's not impossible yet, but can't afford to have any hopes for the way they play right now.


Final words

Like it says, when it rains, not _just_ 'rain' but it 'pours'. When Argentine's are going, they are 'in', they are in for the big moment. Let's hold our breath until my birthday, 14th Oct. Hoping that Argentines would bring me a memorable birthday gift on 14th morning, as they play their final match on the qualifying round.

Can Argentina Do The Magic Tonight ?

Then and now.. bit of history

When everything was well set for Argentina , the "luck" had something else to say during their bitter 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. The penalty shootout favoured the hosts, leaving Argentinians packing.

Since then and now, things have changed. .. young blood has pumped into the team. The class of Messi, fireworks from Tevez and Sergio have given a new hope for the Argentinians. There IS no argument over Messi being the best player in the world right now.

The magician's class act out performed Chritiano (Ga*) Ronaldo as well as Wayne Roony, during the Champions League finals representing Barça. Meanwhile Maradona took over as the Argentinian coach, when they slumped to a 1-0 defeat against Chile during the worldcup qualifying games.

More recent history...

Maradona started off as the coach for Argentina with couple of *soft* wins. Which led him/everyone to open big mouths before the mission is accomplished. Then the reality struck on them bit hard. Argentina faced a couple of major setbacks, which includes a 6-1 defeat against Bolivia. Again followed by a 2-0 defeat against Ecuador.

Do we have to bring back Riquelme ?

Apparently the lights of Messi, Tevez and Sergio couldn't restore their pride. Something is wrong! Everyone turned their eyes on the underrated Riquelme (Juan Román Riquelme), calling him back on. Can their woes come to an end by bringing Riquelme in ? I believe it's NOT.

Argentina lost their way looking down at the 4th slot in their group, for their bad play. They were not organised on the field. They lost those games, for it's not that the Argentinians are bad. But they failed to ignite their act together. They're still one of the best teams in the tournament. They are a great team. They are the best. But, they have to be bit more organised that what we've seen off them so far. Specially the midfield. They have to lift the game, specially in the midfield, if they have any hopes of making it to South Africa in 2010.

Importantly, they have to play as a team. I'm not saying Riquelme isn't needed. He's a great player, I respect him a lot. But bringing him on won't do any better unless they lift their game a bit with having the right kind of spirit, motivation and performance.

Argentina vs Brazil

Let's hope that the Argentinians could shut their mouths for a while and play genuine soccer, until the mission is accomplished. I'm writing this damn piece of blog for them, for I love to Argentina holding the trophy next year. Because, I'm a huge Argentinian fan.... Let's hope that they could get back to their best form to beat Brazil.

Today, it's a must win situation for them, to have any hope in the competition. Let's hope things could go in favor of them. Not the luck, but let's hope Argentinians going to play up to their full potential. :-)

Goodbye Michael!

i've heard the death of michael jackson. minutes after he was confirmed dead, via a friend of mine on 26th morning ~ 0700 hrs AEST. i don't think i could call myself as a michael jackson fan or i liked his music, *lately*. i'm more a heavy metal fan, liking Trivium, As I Lay Dying, Hammer Fall etc etc. so then, why the heck am i writing this ?

well, even though i switched to rock/metals at around grade 7-8. the sounds of jackson 5 and michael's were the background music during most memorable times in my school days... also many other artists like barry manilow, paul mccartney, duran duran, david bowie, led zeppelin, jimmy hendrix, pink floyd blah blah blah

it always makes me cry, bringing back the memories of my glorious schooldays .. whenever i listen to "got to be there" by jackson 5.. i love it!! michael performs it with his killer vocals.. amazing! also "i'll be there", "someone in the dark", "may be tomorrow", "one day in your life", "off the wall" .. i simply love them. jackson 5 music resembles most memorable moments in my school days .. the memories won't live without them..



life is all about memories .. the memories that we love to cherish all the time.. my memories are filled with these music .. i can't imagine a life or living a life without music.. for music is linked with each and every memorable incident.. and seasons of my life.. whether they were good or bad.. it was just the music which drove me through.. helped me to sail.. when emotions were the main substance to address.. and i love every bit of them .. for music was there..

i'm not talking about the commercially successful michael jackson, with "thriller" and "bad" albums. where he had a marketing success ahead of the substance. instead, i love the michael jackson off jacksone 5. pre "thriller" era. given this context, it's so sad to bear the death of micahel .. i'm worried over the death of jackson 5 lead vocalist .. not the michael who got into child abuse and all sorts of mess in his life, caused by billions of money, wealth and lust.



i'm worried about the amazing vocalist .. who sang side by side with jermaine .. it's a great loss.. no doubt about that.. that's the man we're missing.. that's the man we love.. it's time to say goodbye michael.. thanks for the memories .. and for your music .. rest in peace mj

ps:
i should also be thankful to my friends and thier elderly relatives who gave most of these "records" and "tapes" when we were schooling. not even my parents were married by the time these tracks were released/played. but thanks to the "oldies" and "gold music" mania we had during our school days, we were so lucky enough to get hold of these tracks :-)

ipod vs the loudness war

i can't exactly recall when i first noticed this "loudness war". but i'm pretty sure i noticed this during the first leg of the present decade. well, the "loudness war" means, the record companies increase the level of loudness to sound their CDs louder at a lower volume. you might think this is appropriate but this loudness generates nothing but an irritating flat distorted sound not the sound of music or music equipments/vocals. this means, you're losing the "dynamics".


the present sound processing equipments are well armoured with what's needed to increase the loudness on demand. yet these record companies keep on increasing the loudness on their records, insane. making some of the records sound like crap. however, you could *cope* with this "loudness madness" up to a certain extent by customizing individual frequencies, if you have a good graphic equalizer. a  in reality, there is no way to get over with the cds, who have this loudness war than throwing them away or switching to vinyl records.





"Big-name CD manufacturers are distorting sounds to make them seem louder. Sound quality suffers.

This video was made with image editing software and a screen capture program for the visuals, and a DAW (Digital Performer 4.5) to process the audio.

Thanks to everyone for watching! - Matt Mayfield, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA"

apple ipod - victim of the loudness war

sadly but realistically, apple ipod users are the ones at receiving end of this mess. if you rip any music off a "loud" music cd, you'd find it difficult to listen and enjoy the music when you play it on an ipod. apple ipod/users are the direct victim of this "loudness war" at the absence of a fully fledged/customizable graphic equalizer. this limitation on ipod has boxed modern cds which were released with having this loudness fever. (leaving me with the music of 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's on my ipod. :D)


having said that, ipod comes with a dodgy graphical equalizer which has a set of preset channels, however it falls far behind what one would expect it to be. i rip all my music off original music cds at the rate of 320 kbps, the highest bit rate what ipod supports. yet, the music sounds like crap.


needless to say that i'm receiving these crappy sounds even though i'm using best headphones like sennheiser cx 95, ie 8, shure e3c, b & w , jbl.... for i have a general allergy of dodgy japanese headphones.


at the same time, i should also mention that i don't like the policy of the apple company, on their proprietary equipments. so with the apple ipod. in simple terms, apple shouldn't be bothered on what we do with our apple ipods. we should have given the opportunity to change the default firmware. but sadly, we can't do this from 6th generation ipod' onwards. once you buy an ipod, you've got to to use the crappy firmware it has, you can't change it. this is unfair for people like us, for we can't install any other firmware like rockbox.


we live in an open world and opensource is the buzzword with the dawn of the new millennium. but not for apple though it worked for redhat, sun microsystems and many other leading organizations. being an optimistic, i'm waiting for the day, when apple opens it firmware to the general public.


please also read : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

to give you an idea on this loudness war, i could nominate following cds:
death magnetic - metallica
ten thousand fists - disturbed
indestructible - disturbed
by the people for the people - mudvayne
the crusade - trivium
blackbird - alter bridge

american idol - scott macintyre

i'm not a huge fan of american idol. i didn't like it and never watched before! however, as i was running through tv channels, i found a guy singing 87's billboard hit classic, bruce hornsby's 'mandolyn rain'. i was shocked for a moment with how he performed. i was really stunned the way he transformed it to the sounds of today with his magic vocals. it was none other than scott macintyre from az.





eventually, i realised this guy is singing for american idol and he's a contender. besides his great performance, i was deeply shocked to see him having a partial imparity in his vision. he's legally blind. but to bring truth into life, what shocked me most wasn't his performances, lately. but with what i discovered off him, that the relationship he has with God through Jesus Christ. besides his brilliance with the piano, the most gifted thing he has in his life is this testimony of God! his inspiring life story.






having visual impurity at birth, overcoming life's obstacles and how he faced and won life's toughest challenges by depending on God was the most inspiring story i've heard in recent times. God has a plan and a purpose for each and every person's life, understanding His plan to allow His plan in our lives is what most important thing. i'm truly amazed how he has realised these realities and transformed his life to become a vessel of God to use him.

i'm not going to say he's going to win the competition or not. but this doesn't matter. whether he wins or lose, he's got nothing to gain out of this competition for he's already a winner by believing in God through Christ and how he has transformed his life to an instrument of God.






by winning this, he won't gain anything but the world would benefit with what Scott has to offer. who could bring light to so many people, who are in the darkness, which is indeed a blessing for many others. hence, i would be happy to see him winning it. for others would be healed and blessed with not just with music but with the message of God.

sabayon.. .. anotherone bites the dust

after failing the installer with a bug in gnome, i started installing 64 bit sabayon. sabayon = gentoo ++. the installation off the dvd was a painful one. on my lenovo t61, both gfx/text base installations got failed _successfully_ :(

the alternative was to start the system using sabayon and then to continue with the installation. booting the live dvd and continuing the installation was a pita. since i haven't left with much choices .. i had to follow the later..

after going thru the painful slow installation .. it appeared be working fine besides couple of broken applicaions .. i updated the portage and the system went thru an automated update .. to my surprise .. when the system got rebooted .. the Xserver starts keep on crashing.. and a couple of gdm error messages .. well.. the OS is just a bus to do my day to day work .. i shouldn't be shitting and bitching much about it ..

no other choice . falling back to fedora ..

good old gentoo.. all gone!

my first experience in linux brought to me by rdhat 7.0, few years back. i was using redhat quite extensively until it was branched into fedora rhel model. the first ever fedora used was a bitter experience. the second and third release didn't improve by the means of stability.

i made a very good decision at the same time, switching to gentoo in 2004. the initial installation was painful, true. but it outweighs the system you build by yourself in a numerous ways. using gentoo i managed to get :
- improvides performance
- less memory consumption
- didn't install any component, i didn't want to use/install
- gained a very good control over the installed bits

the honeymoon i had with gentoo ended around late 2006. i was using fedora since then. however, i tried to install gentoo on one of my boxes to have a slimmed down version. installing from the scratch, from stage 3.

i managed to get the base installation up and running around an hours time. what was installed was really light and i was delighted with what i had built. this leads me to install the x-sever a desktop manager + desktop environment.

i picked gnome as usual ahead of buggy kde4. i was installing 150 packages, which too more than a couple hours. then when it reached the 147 package .. it had to say the following .. after spending hours on this installation:

indicating that the good old gentoo i know a few years back had already gone. this is not the first time that this happened. in recent times i tried installing gentoo more than a few times... all that i realised was .. the present gentoo isn't good as what we used before .. there are so many broken packages .. with a number of bugs .. beyond what's acceptable.. proving that fedora to be the latest pure open source leader in the arena


!!! Please attach the following file when seeking support:
!!! /var/tmp/portage/gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3/work/gnome-session-2.20.3/config.log
*
* ERROR: gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3 failed.
* Call stack:
* ebuild.sh, line 49: Called src_compile
* environment, line 2581: Called gnome2_src_compile
* environment, line 1966: Called gnome2_src_configure
* environment, line 1980: Called econf 'src_compile' 'src_compile' '--enable-ipv6'
* ebuild.sh, line 513: Called die
* The specific snippet of code:
* die "econf failed"
* The die message:
* econf failed
*
* If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.
* A complete build log is located at '/var/tmp/portage/gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3/temp/build.log'.
* The ebuild environment file is located at '/var/tmp/portage/gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3/temp/environment'.
*

* Messages for package gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3:

*
* ERROR: gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3 failed.
* Call stack:
* ebuild.sh, line 49: Called src_compile
* environment, line 2581: Called gnome2_src_compile
* environment, line 1966: Called gnome2_src_configure
* environment, line 1980: Called econf 'src_compile' 'src_compile' '--enable-ipv6'
* ebuild.sh, line 513: Called die
* The specific snippet of code:
* die "econf failed"
* The die message:
* econf failed
*
* If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.
* A complete build log is located at '/var/tmp/portage/gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3/temp/build.log'.
* The ebuild environment file is located at '/var/tmp/portage/gnome-base/gnome-session-2.20.3/temp/environment'.
*
* GNU info directory index is up-to-date.