Riding the Flow

Snowpocalypse is upon us!

Recently I’ve partially disassembled my Lenovo Thinkpad W701 laptop to check out the seating design of MXM 3.0 Type B module it uses, and to check out the construction of the heatsink/fan thermal module. This is to determine at least mechanical feasibility of upgrading to another MXM 3.0b video card (software compatibility is still uncertain – trying will be the only option). I’ve took a lot of pictures to illustrate the whole process.

*Update - this article is kept for historical reasons only. For present situation with High DPI web surfing, please refer to a newer article* It’s not easy to find a browser with good High DPI support. A challenge that on high DPI display web content must be scaled up, otherwise it appears too small (being made for 96 DPI). While not a big problem with vector fonts and images, rescaling raster images is a challenge. Hard to rescale up just slightly – usually image is made blurry. Up to now Google Chrome has the best upscale implementation (at least in my eyes). It also has pretty good zoom support, with only caveat – now there is no way to set default zoom level not to 100%. Surely they didn’t expect people to set zoom level on every new site they visit? Setting global zoom with extensions is not quite the same – extensions have no access to this zoom setting, they try to imitate global zoom by zooming the root HTML element, which is not working perfectly in many cases. Th...

Full-resolution photos from my Snake Pass Loop day hike - http://www.panoramio.com/user/3574216/tags/Snake%20Pass

I just have noticed that my photos from random travels have finally been accepted and actually made it in the default Google Earth photo layer (Panoramio) :) http://www.panoramio.com/user/3574216

Just stumbled on Amazon :)

Well, after all I’ve decided to go with Etymotic Research hf2 . They have so much clearer sound, you really hear each separate instrument. I’ve already used to how deep they go in the ear – this is a plus actually, since they are quite comfortable while sitting very securely without falling out. Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi were good, but just too artificially bassy while “mushy” overall. Checks for frequency response confirmed this. They were somewhat quicker to insert/remove, but isolation was a lot worse, they were more prone to falling out and also response/action button was located very low on the cord for some reason.

Now that I finally have standard 3.5 mm TRS jack on my new and shiny Motorola Milestone , I can finally upgrade to high quality headset without resorting to additional cables/cumbersome adapters. I go with in-ear headphones. Supra aural ones are not really that accurate and hard to wear in all settings (i.e. on the street). Ear buds are generally bad, because they don’t isolate at all. Currently I am comparing two headsets: Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi Etymotic Research hf2 Doing extensive listening tests on both. Up to now, wavy opinion – Ultimate Ears have more perceivable bass, but sound more “mushy”. While Etymotics are crystal clear, you can hear so much detail of music its overwhelming, but they may seem to sound a bit “dry” and bass-less because of high accuracy. Guess will play with both for a while to see if opinion stabilizes ;)