Wave Field Synthesis

Wave Field Synthesis  is a spatial audio rendering technique, characterized by creation of virtual acoustic environments. It produces "artificial" wave fronts synthesized by a large number of individually driven speakers. Such wave fronts seem to originate from a virtual starting point, the virtual source ornotional source. Contrary to traditional spatialization techniques such as stereo or surround sound, the localization of virtual sources in WFS does not depend on or change with the listener's position.

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Various Ramblings

Various technology coming your way soon

Of course the recent news from Apple - iPhone 6 and 6+ and Apple Watch
Then there is the rumor of a Retina Display iMac from Apple coming at the end of the year featuring a 5K Ultra HD display following the announcement of a 27" 5K Ultrasharp display by Dell - also slated for Q4 2014.

As for the competitors, we will be seeing Note 4, Note Edge and Sony's Xperia Z3 phones to compete with iPhone 6es,  They feature stuff like QHD display (2.5K display compared to iPhone 6+'s full
HD display) and water proof features for all your underwater photos !!

For routers - we have a whole range of new 802.11ac wireless routers by all the various manufacturers.  My favourite so far are from Asus and Netgear.  Asus offering includes the
AC2400 RT-AC87U (dual band),  AC1900 RT-AC68U and Netgear's AC3200 Nighthawk X6 R8000 (Triband)

From the Gaming front, Dota2 and ArcheAge is my current games of choice ;)

A remote to rule them all

Logitech Harmony Ultimate or

  Roomie

Roomie Review here.

I've short-listed these two solutions as the best way to automate your home's complex entertainment system and Phillips HUE lighting system.


Also you may want to read up on home automation

More research coming up.....

UberX Singapore

UberX has arrived to the Merlion garden city.  Finally, a competition for our monopolized taxi industry.
You can download and install the app into your smartphone, and register for an account -  a credit card is required to complete the process.

Standard Chartered Priority Banking Visa Infinite Cardholders get promo codes. See here.
I saw a website with some promo codes - not sure if any of them will work in Singapore  I also tried the word "uber" as promo code, and got a $10 discount from Gina - again, unsure if it will actually work.

I understand that UberX is a flat-fee service, but essentially, they use S$3.50 as base fee, and S$0.70 per km.  There is no on-call fee like other taxi providers in Singapore, which makes it a good service during peak hours where taxis are hard to find.  Other charges like ERP toll still applies.

Please share your experience if you have used the service in Singapore before !!

The saga of the Audio Video Receiver

My friends gave me a Denon AVR-4306 Audio/Video Receiver. I have not worked with an AVR for decades and thought it would be a piece of cake.

To my surprise, the AVR comes with a 147 pages manual. And hooking up a passive Subwoofer is not a straight forward task, and may not even be recommended. The manual can be found at 

http://usa.denon.com/us/downloads/pages/instructionmanual.aspx  Look under Archieved Products.

Firmware upgrades for Denon equipment can be found at http://firmware.denon.eu/. Be sure you have the serial # handy to get into the site.

The unit is very heavy and biased to the left side.  The HDMI ports are fairly easy to connect. So are the left and right speakers.  The problem I had is that there are no terminals to connect a sub-woofer to. (those red and black terminals - you can see two rows at the bottom right)

Apparently,  sub-woofer requires more energy/power to drive, and hence, an Active Sub-woofer is assumed to be used with a typical AVR.  So to connect an active sub-woofer, the speaker is connected to the Pre-Out connector labelled with "SW"

I only have a passive sub-woofer, and two very small bookshelf speakers, which I had from a previous legacy system (eg. think cassette era).  The bookshelf-speakers were already hooked up, and I also added a center speaker (but due to the size, it is put somewhat to the right side of the TV)

The Ethernet cable for LAN, the FM radio antennae as well as the AM antennae were all self-explanatory and easy to install.

This is as far as I have gotten, and will report in the next article and my saga to power up the AVR.  

Calico - the new age of anti-ageing !

From Larry Page on 18 Sept 2013

"I’m excited to announce Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases.  Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief Executive Officer.

OK … so you’re probably thinking wow!  That’s a lot different from what Google does today.  And you’re right.  But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there’s tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people’s lives.  So don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses.  And please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.

Art and I are excited about tackling aging and illness.  These issues affect us all—from the decreased mobility and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families.  And while this is clearly a longer-term bet, we believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people.

Our press release has a few more details though it’s still very early days so there’s not much more to share yet.  Of course when Art has something more substantial to communicate (and that will likely take time), he’ll provide an update.  Finally, thanks to Bill Maris for helping bring this idea to life and getting Art involved, and to Sergey Brin for consistently supporting 10X thinking like this.  It’s hard for many companies to make long term investments.  So I’m tremendously excited about the innovative new way we’re funding this project.  Now for the hard work!"

The age of mashups

Today I came across a cloud service called IFTTT - pronounced as Gift.
It stands for If This Then That.

Interestingly, it can hook up to home automation lights such as Belkin's Wemo or Phillips's Hue

It can of course connect to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email and a whole other bunch of applications. They call these "Channels"

You can therefore, create your own  "recipes"  to create your custom function.  For example, you can do something like "If I upload a photo to Instagram, then upload that photo to Facebook"

or turn on a light at home via Hue or Wemo

Check this out.. really interesting.... !

Using your router as a switch dir-655

http://www.technoleros.com/turn-a-d-link-dir-655-router-into-a-secondary-access-point/

1. Plug the power into the access point router. Connect one of your computers to the router (LAN port) using an Ethernet cable.
2. Open a web browser and enter http://192.168.0.1 and press Enter. When the login window appears, set the user name to Admin and leave the password box empty. Click Log In to continue. (Note: these are the D-Link default values.  If you have changed the default IP address or Admin password, substitute the appropriate values)
3. Click on Advanced and then click Advanced Network. Uncheck the Enable UPnP checkbox. Click Save Settings to continue.
4. Click Setup and then click Network Settings. Uncheck the Enable DHCP Server checkbox. Click Save Settings to continue. Ensure to disable all of the following options as they will be no longer needed or usable while using this mode: Virtual Server, Application and Port Forward Rules, Access Control and Web Filters, SPI and Firewall, WISH and WPS.
5. Under Setup or Basic/Networking, enter an available IP address (192.168.0.50-.59 is recommended by D-Link) and the subnet mask of your network, usually 255.255.255.0 or .255. Click Save Settings to save your settings. Use this new IP address to access the configuration utility of the access point router in the future. Also turn off or disable other features on the access point router (Port Forwarding, Firewall, WISH, WPS and any email logging). Save the settings. Close the browser.
6. Connect an ethernet cable in one of the LAN ports of the access point router and connect it to one of the LAN ports in your host router. Do not plug anything into the Internet (WAN) port of the router that your turning into an access point. Use the LAN ports only.
7. You may now use the other 3 LAN ports of the access point router to connect other ethernet devices and computers (it acts as a switch). To configure your wireless network, open a web browser and enter the IP address (192.168.0.50) you assigned to the access point router. Recommend using Mixed G and N or Single G or N modes.  That’s it!

HOW TO RESET YOUR TV REMOTE CONTROL - TV REMOTE CONTROLS AMAZING SECRET

Vertical Power Strips

Space efficient power strips, a 3 way x 4 sides = 12 ways vertical strip would be sufficient for most people's PC rig.

New Rig

 Here is a new Rig I was toying around

1 x case (3 x fans)
1x 750W PSU Gold
1x Intel i7 4770k
1x ASUS Z87-K motherboard
2x 8gb 1866 Memory
1x DVD RW LG
120GB SSD (Samsung EVO 840)
2TB HDD ( WD Red)
Asus GTX 770 2gb graphics card

Price - approximately S$2000.   Price in Singapore not as competitive as compared to the US, so I suspect such a rig would cost cheaper in the US.

Now, what software to load up ?

Am toying with the following ideas

1. Windows 8.1 pro
2.  Productivity apps - Libre Office, IZArc Archiver, CDBurnerXP, utorrent, spinrite
3.  Graphics App - Adobe stuffs, OnOne stuffs, Portraits Professional , Proshow Producer, Gigapano, HDRMatix,3DS max
4.  Gaming - Steam and Dota2
5.  Media Apps -  Codecs, Plex, Itunes
6.  Browsers - Chrome and Aurora Firefox
7.  Infrastructure - Java, Flash player
8. Fonts - get your favourite fonts from dafont.com
9. Antivirus - AVG  
10. firewall - Zonealarm

ASUS RT-AC68U Dual-Band Wireless-AC Router 

This router seems to be a little steep on pricing, but sures come with interesting specs. I'm considering the Buffalo dd-WRT firmware models - but this Asus model seems to be the most performing one - based on throughput.   I like the dd-wrt firmware coz you can use the router for other purposes, like access point or wireless bridge. 

Buffalo AirStation™ AC 1750 DD-WRT Router
GIGABIT DUAL BAND OPEN SOURCE WIRELESS ROUTER

Buffalo's AirStation™ AC 1750 Gigabit Dual Band Open Source DD-WRT Wireless Router is a high speed, open source dual band  solution, delivering the latest in Wi-Fi technology. Ideal for high bandwidth applications, it features an 800 MHz dual-core processor with 512 MB of RAM and is equipped with two wireless radios and onboard amplifiers to provide maximum radio power for improved performance and range. 

• DD-WRT Pre-Installed
• Wireless 802.11ac
• Simultaneous Dual Band
• 5 GHz Speeds up to 1300 Mbps*
• 2.4 GHz Speeds up to 450 Mbps*
• 5 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
• Configure as an Access Point or Wireless Bridge

Any of you readers, have any comments on this matter?

Synology DS1512+ VS. Drobo 5N - Head to Head

Remember the Drobo video? this one does a comparison - looks good for knowledge

Synology Advantages

The Synology 1512+ holds several distinct advantages over the Drobo 5N.
It’s faster.
It has a LOT of apps.
It allows for extreme customization.

Drobo Advantages

Meanwhile the Drobo 5N has several distinct advantages over the Synology 1512+.
It’s completely automated.
It’s far easier to expand and repair.
It costs less, uses less power and takes up less space.

The Bottom Line

Both machines have distinct advantages in different areas. Which one is best for you will depend on what you find most important and how you plan to use it.

For the full rundown and all the details, check out my article comparing the Synology DS1512+ and Drobo 5N.

Introducing the Drobo 5N Networked Storage Array

Raffaello D'Andrea: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters

The Singapore IT Show is here again

http://www.itshow.com.sg/

27 Feb - 2 Mar 2014

Levels 1 & B2
Marina Bay Sands

Opening Hours
12PM - 9PM

One of the items I'll be looking out for is the MiiPC - see image below

The MiiPC is your easiest way to experience brilliant moments at home.

Connect the Android-powered MiiPC to your TV sets and enjoy sensational viral videos, play your favourite games and surf the world-wide web from a single device!

Experience the MiiPc at I.T Show 2014, Booth B815.

How to install Android Apps on SD CARD by default without rooting

1Gbps fibre broadband

MyRepublic has just been promoting their latest S$49.95 a month plan for fibre broadband at a whooping 1Gbps.... I wonder....

Bikini Site

Bikini Site : thebikinisite.blogspot.com

Everything Binary of photos of women in bikinis - experimental.

4K displays coming up

I believe 4K displays will start to pick up in 2014 in a very fast paced introduction.
Most movies are still not being shot in 4K resolutions yet though - which makes content scarce at introduction.  Movies are typically being shot at 2K resolutions, and up-sampled to 4K - reason for doing this is that the computing resources required to do special effects progressively get more intense as the number of pixels increase in a production.

Lenovo has some announcement in CES this year, citing 4K monitors for PC - one such monitor is the Lenovo ThinkVision Pro2840m  (28-inch, 3840 x 2160). It will be interesting to see the adoption rate of such "high-end" monitors.  Games may not be able to drive such monitors yet as 3D graphics card may need to double their performance before we see 4K games. Retailing in April 2014 for approximately USD$800.  Let the 4K war begin!