sigizmund.com » gadgets

An ordinary day at Roman's home workplace

sigizmund — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 11:51:41 +0000

It was an ordinary Saturday morning, a bit rainy, a bit grey but otherwise quite normal. So, one by one, I turned on all my four laptops and iMac and proceeded to my usual morning routine…

To say the truth, Vaio laptop isn't mine — a technically challenged college of my wife has asked me to choose, buy and set it up for her. Small laptop (netbook) is Natalie's. Rest of them are indeed mine.

New iPhone adapter for headphones: here we go again

sigizmund — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:51:00 +0000

Do you remember a while ago I posted about replacing my broken Griffin SmartTalk? Well, they replaced it — indeed they did. And guess what? It got broken again. In the very same place — where the cable connects to the jack. Same symptoms. Same problem. Same product. I decided not to hassle their customer support, because the best they can do is to send me another one which will again break in a couple of months — repeat until the warranty expires.

So I decided it’s a time to fix the root cause of the problem. Virtually all cheap headphones (and adapters too) have this problem, so I decided to get the one from Shure (which was a recommended accessory for my Shure SE 210 headphones — which I’m extremely happy with). So, I got myself a Shure MPA-3C.

I think photos say enough, finally answering the question why it shouldn’t break in a months or two. Very solidly looking thick cable, protected jack connection, not thin and elegant by any standards, but seriously built, sturdy and durable, or at least it looks this way.

Hope this will sort the problem out, but now my music experience is Shure all the way through (except my iPhone, but everybody knows Shure doesn’t produce any decent iPhones).

Well, may be they should?

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Huey colour calibration, pink colours and my Macs

sigizmund — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:55:53 +0000

I’ve got a thingie, you know… this colour calibration thingie named Huey. I got a while ago as a birthday gift from my friends, but when I switched to Mac two years ago it suddenly stopped to work (well it did but it produced that horrible pink cast – I couldn’t use it and I didn’t want to). Yet, a couple of weeks ago I decided that this not gonna work this way and sent a request to Pantone to do something about it.

So, after some checks they sent me a replacement. I tried it at home and – yes, the same pink cast. Completely devastated, I decided to take it to work and try with my 24″ HP monitor (connected to my MacBook).

I took it. And I tried. And it did work!!! Now my MacBook monitor and HP monitor look if not the same, but very similar at least. Actually, I did a very simple trick to make a non-pro version of Huey to work for two monitors: apparently, Pantone guys didn’t know you can change the primary monitor (and it calibrates only primary monitor) just by dragging the menu bar in monitors’ settings. I did it twice and it worked like a dream!

Seriously, colours are not perfect. I can see it even though probably none of my colleagues will see any difference after working with calibrated monitor for couple of hours. But – it’s much better than original non-calibrated colours, and it makes me happy.

One day I’ll buy a semi-pro Eye One Display, but until then I’ll live with my Huey.