10 Random Songs

Here are 10 random songs from my playlist

Paradise City by Guns N Roses
Headshrinker by Oasis
Yellow by Coldplay
Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own by U2
All Star by Smash Mouth
Strange Thing by Oasis
Hey Jude by Beatles
Sweetest Thing by U2
Closing Time by Semisonic
Roll Me Away by Bob Seger

Calling all Nokia N800 and N810 owners :-)

Anyone out there run GPE-Calendar on their Nokia N800 or N810 Internet tablet? If so, I've got a treat for you :) Just recently I got so fed up with the default alarm from GPE-Calendar that I decided to grab the code and fix it. For those who have not had the displeasure of hearing this alarm it sounds like a British ambulance siren and it runs continuously for a full 2 minutes when it goes off. Better hope your office mate is not alone with it when it goes off or you may find your N800/N810 in pieces when you come back!! It is sooo annoying that I leave my N800 on mute most of the time so it does not go off when I'm in a meeting at work. Because of this I've been late to a few meetings, the most recent of which prompted me to fix this annoyance within this otherwise awesome calendar program.

My patch modifies GPE-Calendar (only if ./configured with --enable-hildon) such that it DOES NOT use the normal gpe-calendar alarm interface. Instead when an alarm is due to fire it creates a Maemo alarm event set to fire immediately! The Maemo alarm interface is the default/built-in alarm interface for the N8xx series. It provides snooze capability, custom snooze timeouts, and, most importantly, custom alarm sounds!! Just replace /usr/share/sounds/ui-clock_alarm.mp3 with any mp3 of your choice and GPE-Calendar will play it to alert you of your impending obligation.

For those interested my current patch can be found at the end of this post. If you do not waish to download the 400MB+ development environment for the N800/N810 and fight through learning to compile GPE-Calendar and all of its dependencies send me an e-mail (or leave a comment on my blog (hernejj.blogspot.com/) and I'll send you my gpe-calendar binary which *should* work as a drop-in-replacement for your /usr/bin/gpe-calendar if you are running
the version of GPE-Calendar available at http://maemo.org/downloads .

I've sent an e-mail to the gpe-mailing list including my patch so I can work on getting it accepted into their code repository. In the mean time, I'm posting the first version of this patch here (http://sites.google.com/site/hernejj/) for the benefit of anyone who cares.

Sennheiser HD 380 Pro Headphones

I got a chance to hear these as a local Guitar center and they sound awesome! I WAS headed in to buy the Sennheiser HD 280's (Pro) until I heard these. The 380's completely blow the 280's away. There is JUST no comparison.

The Bass response is amazing for closed ear headphones. This is quite rare from what I understand.

You can hear all the detail in the highs and mid-ranges and everything sounds crystal clear. Close your eyes and you might think you're sitting in a concert hall.

Since Sennheiser still does not have anything about these headphones on their web page I e-mailed them for info and got the following:

Product Features
Collapsible high-end headphone for professional monitoring use
Highly advanced features for superior sound-monitoring- Extended frequency
response for accurate, reliable sound reproduction- Increased sound
pressure level (110dB) to handle demanding use
Closed circumaural design for excellent passive attenuation of ambient
noise (up to 32dB)
Exceptional comfort for extended listening
Carrying case included for engineers on the go
Replaceable single-sided, coiled cable with 3.5mm jack connector and screw
type adapter to ¼"
Easily replaceable parts for long service life
Headphone with detachable coiled cable, Carrying case, ¼" jack adapter


Technical Data
Connector 3.5 mm plug, straight (separate ¼" jack adapter included)
Cable length 1m coiled, extendable up to 3m
Frequency response 8 - 27,000 Hz
Weight 220 g (excluding cable)
THD < 0.1 % (1kHz, 100dB SPL)
Impedance 54 Ohm
Transducer principle Dynamic
Sound pressure level 110 dB (1kHz, 1Vrms)

I can only find 2 places that sell these headphones right now. Musicians Friend (and thus, Amazon) and Guitar center.

Oh and another thing, the sound isolation these things provide is SECOND To NONE (Except maybe the 280's)! Even with the volume extremely low I could not hear people talking who were standing 3 feet away from me! I was listening to Guns N Roses when one of the sales guys fired up a Bose system in the same room... it was so loud that (without the 380's on my head) I couldn't hear people talking but with the 380's on I barely heard the music coming from the Bose system.

These are totally worth $200!!!! And I'm not even a hardcore audio guy. If you don't believe me just demo these things are your nearest Guitar Center! Take your current headphones with you so you can compare them.