2008 May Archive at Minwoo’s Right Brain Archive

Monthly Archive for May, 2008

iPhone envy…

Published

on 5/27/2008

. 1 Comment

Sure iPhone is nice. But first, and foremost, most important thing about a cellphone is the carrier.

I’ve been having some annoying problems with my LG Chocolate phone. First, the touch keys started acting weird. I would have to press various parts of the phone to activate “Send” function which was not working. That is not at all annoying compared to the other problem — my phone dialed random contacts at wee hours in the morning. Just the other night, it called Migi 5 o’clock in the morning and, well, she was kinda freaked out about it.

That put me over the edge and so I wrote a complaint email to Verizon Customer Service. I wasn’t expecting much, really. I figured I steam off before I switch to AT&T and ride the iPhone bandwagon. But to my surprise, they offered to FedEx me a new phone for free of charge! (It’s the same LG Chocolate, but they claim that this problem has been addressed by LG, so I’m optimistic).

I just got my replacement phone, and I am more excited about it than I would be with an iPhone, because more important than just a gadget, it felt really good to be treated so nicely as a customer. I’ve been with Verizon for more than 7 years now. And I can say for certain, that I will continue to, for the foreseeable future. Kudos to Verizon!

ps: ok, maybe that was stretching a bit. iPhone still rocks, and I can’t wait until iPhone is availble on Verizon!!! :D

Biggest Drawing In The World

Published

minwoo

on 5/24/2008

in Random

. 2 Comments

BIGGEST DRAWING IN THE WORLD

… or the worst case of narcissism? :D

[via]

iPhone 2.0 madness begins

Published

minwoo

on 5/23/2008

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. 0 Comments

Could ‘electric computers’ be the new iPhone? - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

An unusually-large shipment of 188 mysterious containers has arrived in North America from Apple’s manufacturing partners in China. The contents? “Electric computers,” a term that Apple has never before used on its customs declarations.

Good gawd, they are tracking container ships now?? (ok, I admit I was tracking container ship for my Euro-delivery :D)

These iPhone fan boys must be wetting their pants right now (if that’s an improv, it’s brilliant! :D)

In search of quiet

Published

minwoo

on 5/18/2008

in Random

. 2 Comments

Past few months, I’ve been researching to find a good noise canceling earphones. Riding bus to commute to work every day, I often found myself turning up the volume really high just to be able to hear the music over the road noise.

Studio phones provide good noise isolation, and I already have a few nice ones. But they are bulky and can be really hot on ears during Summer days - not to mention they give you “headphone hair” if worn the way they are supposed to be worn.

I researched Bose® QuietComfort® 3 and some noise-isolating canalphones (earphones that fits deep inside the ear canals). Bose use fancy electronic gadgetry to generate sound inside the phones that cancels out the ambient noise on the fly. I’ve heard that it works quiet well, but it suffers from the same problems I mentioned above. Also, it requires batteries to operate - a big minus for me. (Migi bought a pair for me as a gift, but I decided that $350 for a pair of headphones was a tad overpriced, so we returned it… You can buy an iPhone with that!!)

I was little speculative about the canalphones, thinking that they are just fancy earphones. But I’ve been reading lot of positive reviews online.. so when I found V-MODA Vibe on sale at Costco, I decided to give them a try (Costco has really good return policy :-)

Well, from the first time I put them on, I was able to tell the worldly difference! Difference is night and day, really. When you hear music on most stereo earphones and low-end headphones, it feels like the sound is coming from around the ears. But the canalphones, the music feels like they are emanating from the center of the brain in 3D. Sound quality-wise, they are better than the studio headphones that I have. I heard sounds from the music that I’ve never heard before. And the noise-isolation is very effective. It’s like swimming ear-plugs, and based on my non-scientific experiments, they can block out 82% of the ambient noise ;-)

Some people don’t find it comfortable (too much poking feeling inside the ear), but if you’re looking for a new pair of head/ear-phones, you should definitely give them a try. Some popular brands are Shure, Etymotic. They are BMW’s and Audi’s of canalphones :D, so they tend to be pricey - anywhere from $75 to $400. Sennheiser and V-MODA are more affordable, but I read they work just as well - Toyota, maybe? :-) I paid $60, and it’s one of the best money spent on electronics.

Iron Man

Published

minwoo

on 5/17/2008

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. 0 Comments

Just came back from Iron Man showing. It’s a movie that any gadget loving geeks will love. I enjoyed it very much, and so did Migi (although she probably had her eyes closed through out most of the fight scenes :-)

If you’re going to go see it, make sure you wait until the credit finishes scrolling for a big bonus.

If you’ve already seen the movie but missed the bonus, or don’t care about the spoiler, here a hint.

Estimating Death Tolls

Published

minwoo

on 5/14/2008

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. 0 Comments

With a back-to-back natural disasters in the Far East region of the world, we see lot of death toll numbers in news headlines these days. It’s always too depressing to read, but after the initial shock and disbelief, most of us suffer from number numbness.

I always wondered how accurate are these casualty numbers are. When I first heard of the cyclone in Burma on the radio, I heard 400 deaths. Now the number of casualty is estimated anywhere between 63,833 to 127,990 (or 1.5 million if you project the death toll, caused by the after effects of disasters, such as diseases and famine). Slate has a good article on how different organizations come up with these figures.

And this lack of accurate figure is not because Burma and China are less technologically advanced than the Western countries (although “government” red-tapes do not help). I remember that it took months for US to come up with an accurate number of people who perished from 9/11 attacks.

Frontline: Storm over Everest

Published

minwoo

on 5/11/2008

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. 0 Comments

For the adventure story fans out there. Catch this Frontline episode about the 1996 Everest disaster told by David Breashears, one of the IMAX film maker who was on the mountain at the time. Bound to be awesome.

If you crave for more, I highly recommend Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. It makes you want to go climb Everest but have second thoughts about it, at the same time.