Price: £135-£180 (Purchased for £140 from HomeCinemaTV)

Rating:

Demo

Purchase Motivations?

Here’s my predicament. I don’t have enough space in my bedroom for a PC (and I can’t do with the temptation!) so what do I do for music en mi dormitorio? Ok lets look at what I do have:

1. PDA (HP iPaq rx3715 wireless enabled, 2GB SD)
2. iPod (4th Gen 40GB)
3. W810i Walkman phone (built in radio, 2x512MB Memory Stick Duo)

So I’d be listening to music mainly on my HP Bluetooth headphones with my iPaq, or with earphones on my iPod, or even with my headset on my phone (2x512MB).

What’s missing? Yep, speakers. I always recommend that one does enough research before investing in anything, and everything you buy is an investment in the short and the long term. So what do I need to be able to do? What are my requirements?

“Connect all of my devices through a central system in order to output the sound at a higher quality and volume using speakers. Need a good wattage with facilities for heavy bass and treble.”

Where to look?

A few years ago, it would’ve been a trip down to the nearest shopping centre or town centre. Now its a trip down to the PC. I usually look at a wide variety of sources before making any decisions. Start with functionality, expandability and likely long term usage (i.e. won’t have to be replaced in a year). Then look at aesthetics, sizes and ergonomics. Usually you don’t get much choice once you’ve gotten the exact specification you’re after.

I start with mainstream places like Amazon, eBay, Froogle and other sites which will give you a basic idea of what you’re looking for and the price range you’ll need to be targeting. When you see something you like, make sure you look for the criteria you have specified.

My criteria were around – Relatively heavy bass, less then £200, Auxillary input. It’s a good idea not to make them too specific, you don’t want to limit yourself too quickly.

Why Auxillary (AUX) Input? This was my solution to inputting all the different devices. Things like this are very important when purchasing a Hi-Fi.

Found a product you like?

Once I find my product I’ll check out the detailed specifications on the products website. In this case, I checked the brochure of the Hi-Fi on the Philips website. Try not to become too attached to the product, this happens a lot.

Analyse critically, if your satisfied, its time to price hunt. Kelkoo is a useful resource for this, although in this case there wasn’t really much selection. Once your certain you’ve got the best deal (and that the company looks reliable etc), make your purchase and be satisfied – if you did you’re research you have nothing to worry about.

So, the product!

As you can see, I’ve given it a very high rating. Why? Because it satisfied all of my criteria, wasn’t too expensive and it has more then I was after.

Features

Auxillary – Of course I checked for this before I bought it, so I was sure I’d be able to connect my essential devices. I bought 2x3M AUX wires from a website for a couple of quid thanks to the online manual.

USB connectivity – One of the first Hi-Fis to have a built in USB port which enables you to play music off a memory stick. This enables me to a) connect my iPod directly using the cable b) connect my memory stick from my PDA using my card reader. Furthermore, you have the ability to record from your CD to your USB drive! How cool is that?

Standard Spec:

- Single CD
- USB Hosting With CD Ripping
- 75 Watts RMS Per Channel
- Single Auto Reverse Cassette Deck
- FM / AM Tuner With Digital Presets
- CDR/RW, MP3 & WMA CD Playback
- 2 Way Loudspeakers With Neodymium Ribbon Tweeter
- Clock / Timer

How do I use it?

Wireless streaming. Excellente. I always say that my best technological purchase was my PDA – why? I bought it in 2004 and to this day I’ve used it probably every single day since I bought it! See that is a worthy investment. So how does it work? Time to do some poor Photoshop work:

So I have lots of music and audio etc on my PC downstairs. To get it to my Hi-Fi I don’t need a cop out ‘wireless media player’, or a ‘streaming station’, nope all I need is an my trusty PDA and an AUX cable and I can potentially listen to 500GB worth of music (if both my hard drives were full of music!).

As you can see in the second picture above, I can also plug in my iPod directly to the Hi-Fi. The only problem there is it can only handle 999 tracks (strange limitation…). I really like the way that when you do plug something in via USB it shows all the tracks names as it would do with an MP3 CD.

Pro’s

- USB handling
- AUX input
- Tape Deck (still useful!)
- Excellent sound quality, bass and treble
- Very attractive, especially the blue lighting

Cons

- Perhaps a little on the large size (like a mini PC)
- 999 songs limitation from USB

Evaluation & Conclusion

So, overall I’m very happy with my purchase. It does exactly what I needed and a little more on top of that. It seems that the future really is in the computing world, with Hi-Fis having USB and what next? Built in WiFi, hard drives and much more. So the futures bright (and full of radiation).

I’ll leave you with a neat picture of one of my speakers

My Rating: 5/5

Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantanamo and Back

Review

When I was in Year 10 in January 2005 I did a presentation to my English class on the indefinite detention of potentially innocent human beings in Gunatanamo Bay. Handing out some of the few pictures actually available from the media and articles describing the horrific events that took place in Guantanamo to the class showed some interest, in particular a cutting from a newspaper highlighting the release of 4 Britons, one of whom I have come to know as Moazzam Begg.

Almost two years later, at ExpoIslamia in Manchester I saw a book which immediately struck me as something of interest. I found it difficult to relate from my initial studies into the crimes in Guantanamo to this book, something that you will only really understand when you read it. The personality enclosed in a book is so much more powerful then any article you could read in the newspaper or any piece on the TV news, and this book does not differ.

I guess a question that could easily be asked is what is there to gain from reading this book? Honestly I think you will gain from reading anything, the amount of knowledge to be gained from books is immense, unfortunately something I know I haven’t really been taking advantage of recently.

The thing about this book is that even though it is completely factual, it portrays the story as something which makes you attached to Moazzam’s ‘journey’. You ultimately feel weak and helpless sat there in your warm sofa reading about someone no different to yourself being taken from his home in Pakistan into 3 years of illegal detention. He is British and lived but an hour away from me. The only real difference was his choice to help his Muslim brothers suffering in other countries, something which we all strive to do.

The journey takes you from England to Bosnia, Pakistan to Afghanistan, Bagram to Cuba and finally back to England. A mixture of emotions run through you as you read about the terrors, the praying, the lack of food, the torture – psychological and physical, the excitement of small acts of kindness. If you don’t cry at least once when reading this book you have a heart of stone or just really didn’t read it.
Ensnared within this steel quagmire,
Our view holds little to admire,
So to the darkness we retire,
Amidst the chime of the razor wire.
I opened the file I kept with the research I did on Guantanamo in year 10 and suddenly I could put a real picture to the faces of the people talked about in the articles. I could put a real image to the few pictures of the camps in Guantanamo. It’s funny how you think you’re well educated on the problems of the world until you really learn just how deep it goes. The example of Moazzam’s father becoming active in campaigning for his son’s release really touched me:

“Old feuds between my father and his siblings had stopped, and they had come together. People who hadn’t spoken to one another for years had turned up to my fathers house and offered him their complete support. I had come home to a united family”

Astonished that out of so much evil has come some good. There are so many things to say about this book, but really – just read it. You will truly see what a mess we are in today, what our governments are doing beyond the laws, how people just like us are suffering for no apparent reason. “You do NOT have the RIGHT to remain silent.” (used by Amnesty protestors against Guantanamo).

Perhaps it is time to starting making a difference.

Various organisations based in and around Slough, came together to organise this event such as the Slough Cooperative Film Society, Resource Productions which specialises in providing video production work shops for young people and community groups, Aik Saath and Instant Films. Aik Saath which means ‘Together as one’ was the backbone of the event and is a registered charity which started off to help resolve problems within the Asian Youth in Slough during the 1996-1997 violence which caused a lot of tension between various Asian communities and religious groups. It works towards the aim of ‘empowering them to work for themselves positively and proactively towards a potential resolution’.

During the week or so, various events took place based on the central theme of Conflict and Resolution depicted through film. There were various days which featured themes such as Gangs Day which involved a film called Bullet Boy, focusing on the gang culture now prominent amongst the youth in Britain. I watched various films, two of which included Turtles Can Fly (Lakposhtha Hâm Parvaz Mikonand) and Saviour.

Saviour is about war and the horrors and atrocities it can bring.

How it can turn ordinary citizens into blood thirsty villains and murderous savages, driven by revenge and the need to kill for the sake of their identity. More specifically, Saviour is about the Bosnian/ Serb war, which took place from 1992-1995, in which 102,000 people were killed and 1.8 million displaced. Although set in 1993, the movie opens in a café in Paris in the year 1879. Joshua, played by Denis Quaid, watches his wife and son die, as they are blown apart in a terrorist bomb. Blinded by anger and hatred, he storms into a nearby mosque and massacres worshippers and feeling disillusioned and helpless he consequently joins the Foreign Legion.

Soon enough he finds himself fighting alongside Serbs at the height of the bloodthirsty war, patrolling destroyed and ruined Bosnian villages. Although ruthless and vicious himself for example there is a scene where he shoots an unarmed child, he does however witness greater horrors that he didn’t realise were possible. Besides they were the enemy, surely they deserved it? Silently he continues to serve, although from inside it is clear to the audience he is questioning his intentions and the morality of his presence in Bosnia. The story continues on in this manner, and slowly but surely reveals the true terror of the Bosnia’s conflict for all innocent people involved including ordinary Serb citizens. Saviour is clear about its message, war is iniquitous. War causes pain, suffering and terror. The atmosphere of the film is gruesome and dreary, there is no sudden sunshine, or happiness to turn this into a fairytale. It is not a nightmare, the characters don’t suddenly wake up, this is reality. More importantly the film is honest, and seeks to act as a moral lesson for the audience rather then just entertainment. Therefore it might not be everyone’s piece of cake, especially some scenes for example when a fully conscious Bosnian mother has her fingers chopped off by a Serb soldier, it is almost impossible not to grimace and turn away. Yet despite the anguish and despair, Saviour is successful in leaving the audience with a sense of hope in this crazy , vicious and bloodthirsty world.

Turtles Can Fly , a joint Iranian-Iraqi film is directed and produced by Bahman Ghobadi, a filmmaker who was born in Iranian Kurdistan. Filmed on location in a Iraqi refugee camp on the Turkish border, it is the first film to come out of Iraq since the fall of Saddam. It captures the lives of ordinary Kurdish orphan refugee children in a country on the verge of war. Living in poor conditions, often without shelter the community eagerly awaits information of an American lead invasion. Without TV they have no contact with the outside world, and anxiously buy a satellite in hope of news. The film follows ‘Satellite’ a refugee child who is a whiz kid at technology (hence the nickname) about his daily life before the invasion. He is a leader and hero for the other orphans and directs their day to day lives which include mine picking, which they can later sell for petty amounts of money. All the actors in the movie are real refugee children without previous professional experience, their performance is magnificent and outstanding. Living amongst mine fields left many of them with mutations or disabilities, one of the main characters of the film being the ‘Armless boy’, who the rest of the children believe can make predictions about the future. The film is incredibly moving and heartbreaking, shedding light not only on the lives of the orphan children, but their future, which seems to be equally torn apart by the awaited invasion. After tripping on American mines while the they are playing and having their limbs blown off, they come to doubt the ‘We are your Friends’ leaflets distributed by American planes on the eve of war. Saddening and horrifically explicit, Turtles Can Fly left everyone at the cinema in tears and it was difficult to find someone who hadn’t been moved by this harrowing account. I urge everyone to watch it, it is available on DVD and although in Kurdish it is obtainable with English subtitles.

All in all the Festival was a huge success, bringing together people from all communities and uniting them under the banner of humanity. It also goes to show that film, documentaries and other forms of media are the most popular ways of getting a message across in this day and age. It is a hugely effective and successful method that more and more people are turning to

For more information on the film festival and Aik Saath please visit:

Are you interested in a career in film and television? Visit

Anyway Apple have now opened 6 stores in England which is pretty cool, I always used to wonder what you were meant to do when you Mac has a problem over here. Its not like you can just pop down to your Apple store (as I was once advised by some guy in America) and get it fixed. Funnily enough, I still doubt it would be as simple as that over here

Well finally I got to see the nearest Apple store to me which has recently opened in the Trafford Centre (when I say recently I mean since the last time I went because I haven’t been there for quite a while). Let me give you a little intro to the Trafford Centre, or ‘TC’ as the regulars might call it. It is basically a big shopping centre with lots of shops, I think that the correct word is a ‘Hypermarket’ but that just sounds sad, and they’d call it a ‘Mall’ in America. It’s one of the biggest in England, again thats just a guess, I know that people do come from different cities to see it so yeah it probably is. It is often being changed, mainly added to. There was a new John Lewis added at the end of last year and at the moment they’re extending the eating quarters even further. I’ve been going there pretty much since it opened in ’98.

Well this Apple store is quite nice, it has only one floor and it is relatively small, I’m guessing it was previously a small shoe shop of some kind. Anyway it has the very simplistic layout that most Apple stores have, and I think that is what makes them stand out. Before this shop opened I used to go to John Lewis to check out the Macs because they have been selling them probably since the first iPods. The thing I didn’t like about going there was that they were always a little behind on the latest. For example, last time I went, which was only about a month ago, there was no sign of any Intel Chip Macs and the ones that they had were at least a year old. One thing you can be quite sure of is that the official Apple stores will have the latest that they can achieve. Another thing that bugged me about non-Apple retailers is that usually the people working there haven’t got a clue about Macs. Sometimes its just amusing to watch them try and sell a Mac to a customer – and they always do try selling the Macs because frankly, they’re more expensive. Let me put it this way, I’ve had to interrupt just to make sure the customer gets the right information!

I think that the ‘Genius Bar’ is an interesting idea, but the name is really sad, no offence Apple! It sounds really geeky and again, I have some reservations as to how ‘genius’ these guys really are. I guess its safe to assume that they know more then your average guy about macs because really, people in there haven’t got a clue. What I like about that place is that they aren’t too cheapskate to only have a few products on display. They had some 20+ iPod’s and iPod nanos out there and there were loads of different Mac’s also available for use. Again I find it frustrating when other shops have the Macs behind glass, or on some annoying screensaver that ‘apparently’ (yes – Command+Q(+Esc) usually works) can’t be switched off. At these stores they have them all there ready to use, and they’re fully loaded with apps, music and pictures all at your disposal. I had a nice play around on a Dual G5 with a 30″ screen, yes that was nice. I opened up Photoshop and had a play around (yes I was the one who filled the screen with a nice ‘w0rd’). They also have a section at the back with ipod/mac accessories (overpriced of course) and some other additional items like printers, scanners etc.

The Apple website details some other things which sound pretty impressive. There is a whole timetable of events that the shop’s supposedly do, mainly workshops which are important to introduce people to the computer side of Apple.

In conclusion to my random article about an Apple store, I think that it is very positive step for Apple to open up stores in this country. They are certainly a success, people are attracted to new things and Mac’s are definitely new to quite a percentage of the population. I myself am not so amazed with them having used them since I was a child but I still see that the Apple market is opening up to a much wider target audience. I think it will still be some time before they are fully successful in competing with the PC market, but this has taken them at least a step ahead in that journey.

Digg this

Pricing

Retail Price: $239.99 = £135

Av. online selling prices: £75 exc VAT+Del

Purchase Price: £63 inc VAT+Del [eBay - New]

Specifications

• Minimum of 10MB/second sequential read speed for ultra-fast image viewing and data transfer
• Minimum 9MB/second sequential write speed lets you capture large image files faster
• Backed by a lifetime limited warranty (10 Years Europe)
• Low power consumption for longer battery life

Usage

I purchased this 2GB card because I didn’t have enough space on my Pocket PC. Before purchasing this card I had 2x256MB SanDIsk SD cards (Standard) and about 150MB Internal memory. As my last two SanDisk SD Cards have been perfectly reliable I felt that purchasing another SanDisk card would be a wise choice. I am going to be using this card for pretty much everything, photos, applications, files, music etc. I already have a SanDisk USB SD Card reader/writer which is USB2/Plug and Play so that makes it a lot easier to transfer files to and from the SD Card at high speeds wherever I am.

I was slightly worried before purchasing the card that it would not be recognised on my HP iPaq rx3715 PDA. I checked around and a few people who had purchased 2GB cards had confirmed that they worked but not this particular model. The SanDisk website was also slightly unclear about it, but I went for it anyway. As you can see on the PDA screenshot, it does work pefectly well.

Evaluation

This SD card is fast and light and as they claim, it doesn’t use too much power (though I am yet to test that properly). I am glad I waited and purchased a 2GB SD card rather than the 1GB which I was going to get a while back – it was worth the wait. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the two 256MB SD Cards but I guess they will still come in useful.

Overall Rating:

External Links:
SanDisk Ultra II Webpage

I was playing “liberty city” and to my eyes the quality was just as good as the PS2, I am aware of the fact that many people who read blogs and who know just the slightest about PC will loath all forms of consoles, but you know what this is different.

I think that I could spend a whole day in the back of a car with one of these playing games or watching movies. I think by now most probably have seen the PSP on TV or even in real life, if you have seen it on TV well all I have to say is that it doesn’t do the PSP any justice, the screen is so much bigger than you could imagine but saying that the console itself isn’t too big.

I have thought quite hard to find some bad things on the PSP here is what I have come up with………………………….. …. …. ..umm.. no but seriously the only thing that I could think of well in my eyes is the fact that they use some crappy UMD, I think if I am right in saying that is stands for Universal Media Disk these are some small cassettes type CD’s which can fit in to the palm of you hand but they really do cost an arm and a leg. The only other bad points of the PSP is the things it doesn’t have (like the feature of being a mobile phone) which if it did have I would be sure to buy.

I think consoles are on the brink of a revolution if the PS3 is as good as the PSP, and I definitely think that Sony have got there act together…well I still disagree with putting multi-player games on consoles I think that ruins the experience. If you do have the money then definitely I am 100 percent behind you if you buy the PSP its a bargain in my view.

Well I don’t own a PSP so I cant talk about the long term experiences of a PSP e.g. malfunctions, glitches, overheats and warranty’s but still a great little toy. if you disagree with the PSP just because it is a “console” or a “Sony” play it first, or if you have played it and still disagree with any thing I have just wrote, write below.

Heres the little review I promised.

Installation

I downloaded the installer from the MS Max website at 117kb I knew that it was going to download the installation packages itself as it went on. It took me ages, I said it was installing and i’d write the review after i’d restart. Well it took so long to install (P4 2.4ghz 640MB Ram) that I got boerd and forgot about it. Finally after a restart I had to install it again! This time it worked and I got the program running.

The program

Okay so I got it running and I opened it up with not many expectations. It has a half decent layout which is good if you want to get to know how Longhorn (should I say ‘Vista’) is going to look. To be very honest it is probably better then most Microsoft designs, but its old news and its really no big deal.

Screenshot of the splash screen:

Okay as you can see its quite a basic layout. This is a beta or whatever but its still very basic. As a matter of fact, what you can see there, is all that you can do on the application. I started wondering why I had bothered to download and install it.

The thing about this application is that your supposed to be able to share pictures with people. I remember trying out Google’s Pisca a few years ago that did something very similar. As a matter of fact it was prettey much the same if not better.

I tried out putting my pictures into the ‘lists’ category thing. You can add pictures to an album like thing and then view them as a slideshow. Apparently you can share them with your friends too.

Thats it. Thats a full overview of MS Max. As a matter of fact, it was probably a waste of my time even writing the review in the first place. Highly unrecommended. Maybe I missed some huge feature…I seriously doubt that though. I hate logging in with a .net passport to anywhere – and this is so not worth it. 

Tibault can probably try it out in the future and give a less critical review – till then don’t bother to get this app unless you really want to see the layout which is really nothing amazing.

There were of course some disadvantages of the wireless connectivity, WiFi.

It always starts with cost, when things start off they are, naturally, expensive. This really applies to just about anything. WiFi is now not only relatively cheap – it can actually be cheaper then wires! I asked an IT teacher why they had WiFi at certain points in the school, and he simply said its cheaper then having someone come and do the wiring, not to mention more efficient for the staff!

Seeing as the costs have dropped, what else could be considered for your average user. Well okay, I walk into the dentist to have a filling. I’m bored in the waiting room so I pull out my pocket pc (rx3715) and guess what, it automatically connects to the wireless network and there I am surfing the net at my leisure, chatting on MSN and even if I wanted to, calling people on Skype! The issue of WiFi security is a relatively big one. There are generally three options on your basic setup: No Security, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)  or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)™. This is at least how it was when I bought my wireless router which seems like a decade ago!  Now that WPA2 has appeared, the stadardised WEP in 1999 is now probably going to be phased out (good thing my router has 128bit WPA). Okay that probably sounds like a load of ‘jargon’ or whatever, so to learn more about wireless security click here.

 Seeing as security seems to have been prettey much enhanced since the begging of WiFi, there is only one major thing left (of course there are more but yeah). So I walk into the garden on a nice sunny day chatting on Skype via my pda. All of a sudden it cuts off and the sound of birds return to my ears. Yeah, range. WiFi has a few standards, 11a was probably the first. This wasn’t so compatible with the latter; 11b and 54g (which are compatible). Basically the number stands for the transfer rate and the letter really stands for the progress of which, so the earliest being a. Okay i’m not the most advanced in the area but basically the range on these things wasn’t very good. They never specified ranges for some reason (selling!!) but since the first wireless standards things have changed and very soon new advances in the technology of wireless networking have meant that not only is the range increased incredibly, it is now another solvable solution to wireless networking.

What is my point? Well you’ve just learnt a little about WiFi and I recommend you have a look on the WiFi Website or Wireless Networking on Wikipedia.

Okay so with all these advances, there is a post on slashdot which explains:

 "eWeek has a cool review of Xirrus’ XS-3900 Wireless LAN Array. The unit consists of 16 Integrated Access Points and a wireless switch….all in one device. According to their website, Xirrus can achieve 800+ Mbps of bandwidth and handle 1000+ users. Finally enough bandwidth for us all to cut the cord?"

 Well 800meg of Bandwidth with 1000+ users sure means that there won’t be wires for much longer, even at $12,000 that is probably a worthy purchase for a company hiring that many people…!

 Thats all from me, learn more about WiFi from one of the links.

Update 20th August;

San Francisco Looks To Wireless Future

It’s no secret that the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, wants wireless. Last year, he said of city plans to install a wireless cloud, "We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service."

Read Article