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Sansa Clip (Original, not ‘+’ version) + Fiio E3 amp + Soundmagic PL11 IEM’s

Just last month, it was an unhealthy obsession on CPU cooling. Now its that thing in the middle you see with a red light on the bottom.

Its 500 pesos worth, powered by one AAA battery, and it makes me keep my mp3 player volume halfway.

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Back when hard disks cost and storage size was a big compromise on the wallet, I, like everyone else, relied on CD’s for backups. Our first family CD writer cost us 4,000 pesos, but we knew at that time that it was a worthy investment.

And we, dear reader, will fast forward to the present and dwell on my wanting one, or two, terrabytes more of storage via an external hard disk. This wishing coincided with my cleaning my workstation at home yesterday. No before and after pictures of the mess, but let me present a web artifact I found, and would still keep, from the olden days:

mp3.com CD samplers, with videos, software, and the obligatory free internet

At the time when mp3 conversion was just rearing its huge head to everyone’s everyday living, when 64MB flash disk players were the porma iPod-equivalent, when the then highly controversial Napster was dying, and there were a few trying to take its place (it was always Audiogalaxy or 100% legal Epitonic for me), receiving my free mp3.com CD samplers made me feel cutting-edge and tech-cool. The CD’s didn’t only have mp3s, but video game previews, movie trailers, and music software.

Never mind that I don’t think I ever valued the actual music in it. Like everyone else, freebies are always appreciated in my world.

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More CD talk:

Since Ubuntu 5.04, I’ve decided to order disks-to-ship, since they don’t charge anyway, and I get stickers! Ubuntu shipped discs for x86, PowerPC, Mac, AMD64, 64-bit, and like any geek, I’d want to get the maximum reasonable number. Now I have a couple of dozen of these I’m not sure what to do with, though. For gloating purposes, I’ll be keeping a copy of each, and unload the others.

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First off, Meshuggah was my beautiful music backdrop for this week’s mid-week office restdays:

I do try to listen to all the newer metal releases, but as for now, nothing really appeals to me as much as Meshuggah material: extremely heavy music without the need to resort to overbearing metal imagery (but as seen on video above, they are in that boat). And despite the term technical cropping up every time you mention the band, the technique doesn’t take over the song, and goes over to guitar-god territory.

Some geek talk for ya:

I’ve installed Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala beside the splendid Windows 7. Not very impressed. Annoyed that it won’t save my resolution settings, and yes, that’s even after I’ve consulted multiple threads on the support forums. You won’t see me taking it out of my system though, since I’ve had Windows screw me before.

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1:00 PM

Still backing up Windows 7 RC files. Failed to install Wordmobi (Symbian) on mobile phone (for mobile blogging), needs Python, which I can’t be bothered to install right now. Documents and Downloads folder finished transferring.

2:09 PM

Win 7 RC backup DONE. Ubuntu 9.04 backup DONE. After not using Ubuntu since Win7 RC, I just realized how faster, and how antiseptic the user experience is on Linux. Oh well, 3 days to go before Ubuntu 9.10 anyway. But for now, BYE Win7 RC and Ubuntu 9.04! I will be wiping out both of you for the final Windows 7 FINAL install!

2:51 PM

Install DONE. Now that was fairly easy, almost painless, except for the usual wait. That’s it for this liveblog session! Now downloading latest NVIDIA graphics drivers.

Password phishing scares don’t usually affect me, and today’s news isn’t really enough to make me go through the trouble of changing my passwords across all my online accounts, but its the usual mix of nothing-to-do-today and the realization that I haven’t really changed passwords for a long time got to me. We all know the unfortunate hacking incident that (allegedly) happened to Jacque Bermejo, right?

So after spending time figuring out the new passwords I’d use, I also looked up possible password management solutions, and came up with this pretty straightforward approach:

1. Use Passpack (for online password management).
2. Use Dropbox and store an encrypted backup copy of a list of my new passwords.

This setup was partly inspired by this post, though I simplified and made that part of the solution my backup method. Yes, not exactly a geeky solution, but these were based on a few considerations:

• Passpack looked good, and it did feel nice and secure once I actually used it. I know that hosting sensitive data on a web service that you don’t host yourself is an iffy thought, but then self-hosted solutions aren’t always the best solutions to less-than-complex needs. I use Gmail for all my email needs, and with Windows Live (Hotmail) and Yahoo Mail also giving out unlimited storage, who needs their own POP (or similar) personal client-side mail solution these days? In contrast, I haven’t been enjoying the frequent self-hosted Wordpress updates, and the idea of just moving to a site hosted on Wordpress.com has been brewing in my head for some time now.

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