iPod mini Short Review

I'm pretty sure all of us has heard about the iPod mini. It's small, it's nice, and comes in four horrible looking colours (and still sells like hotcakes). My friend, drinkingcocoa recently purchased one of these highly desirable items. When we went out to 1 Utama recently, I got to try out this valuable little nugget of his. He, of course, loaded it with few songs, if I remember correctly, it barely topped 100 songs. Since I believed this item was a highly desirable item, I should take a go and give it a good review for the benefit of all the readers of this blog. Review: iPod mini 4GB (2nd generation)

First off, let's talk about the pros of the iPod mini. It's small. It can hold 4GB. It looks nice with the click wheel words being the small colour as the actual body. The click wheel is responsive enough for normal use, and of course, the earphones had pretty good bass. I'm pretty sure syncing is easy, if not, I might have gotten a few calls. *sweats* I won't comment on the intuitiveness of the menu system, because, frankly, I already know it head to tail, but when I didn't, it took a while to get used to.

This is a simple review, I'm not going to go so deep into why you should buy this. I'm going to go deep into why you shouldn't. All of us already know the pros. We want to know what's wrong with this thing that everyone is not telling us.

Apple skimped on having an AC adapter as well as on the FireWire cable - which is a big drawback to me, considering I have a FireWire 400 port, and an AC adapter would be good for on the go charging. I'm am also very picky when it comes to sound. I'm the kind of person that actually compares stuff like Ogg Vorbis at maximum bitrate to MP3 at maximum bitrate. Many people claim they cannot hear the difference between the two, or that the difference is negligible. When I decided to test these two at 'equal' bitrates, MP3 sounded better, and was only something like a megabyte or two larger. I could hear what Ogg Vorbis cut off and lost from the audio file - and the difference was not negligible - it could change certain pieces of music and make them hit with less impact (but yes, negligible for most, but not for me). Here, with the iPod mini, I was thoroughly disappointed. The sound it gave me - was worse than my simplistic 256MB audio player from Transcend. I knew it wasn't the stock earphones - I have neodymium backphones - and they should sound the same. I've compared simple 128kbps samples - and I know they sound worse on the iPod mini. The problem is old, and is well known. The power drain of the earphones causes the sound quality to fall. I've heard the iPod mini on AC-powered speakers before. They sounded like they should. Does it performing better on speakers matter? No. The iPod mini was built for mobility, not a mobile sound system (iPod + portable speaker + AC adapter). Now, I was looking forward to seeing if the equalizer would help. The iPod mini has a set of presets you can use, and after some vain attempts to find the best, I settled for one setting. The one setting to rule all other settings on the iPod. The one setting that would leave your sound at its best quality on the iPod mini. The one setting that sat at the very top. That setting is 'Off'. How is that possible? I honestly don't know. I had Green Day's American Idiot (128 kbps) blazing on my drinkingcocoa's iPod, and the best setting I found was to actually not use the equalizer to begin with. I don't use the equalizer at home, my Transcend revision B JetFlash MP3 player has no equalizer - I'm playing an American Idiot sample at 128 kbps also. My home computer has a DSP plugin, so it'll always sound good. I generally pamper my music, going for the highest possible bitrate with the best space savings. To me, this generally means VBR maxing out at 320 kbps. But for the sake of testing, I will take things a notch down.

The verdict on the iPod mini? Rethink your purchase. Are you certain that no other player fits your needs? Are you sure you want to buy something that doesn't sound quite as good as even the iPod shuffle? Tip of the week: Don't buy something out of cool or fad. Make sure it sounds right first. As for my recommendations on a substitute? I don't have one. I haven't heard every single player, and I do not intend to recommend one until I'm absolutely certain which one is the one to buy.

Artifacts Still Haunt Standard...

I thought I was just going to post a simple rant here to warn people to bring lots of artifact hate to constructed tournaments. What would that artifact be? Just a simple artifact - called Umezawa's Jitte. While I have completely hammered its potential power, apparently, it's an extremely powerful rare. I have one or two in my collection, but I haven't sold them yet. :D It was weak before thanks to the gruelling artifact hate in Standard as well as the existence of Affinity decks. Artifacts have come back to haunt - and they aren't going to back down until it's over. I've dismissed Umezawa's Jitte as a threat for many reasons - first of all, I've never seen one in action and still haven't. To me, it's too expensive to lose to a Naturalize. To me, that's four mana down the drain. Why? I carry artifact hate as much as I can because as long as Mirrodin is around no one is safe. Casual players are actually more immune to simple Jittes simply because they always have something to deal with it. It hits the table - time to bring in more stuff to kill it off. It's madness because it will most definitely kill something if it manages to deal combat damage the first round it's in.

The absolute madness can only be stopped by total annilation of the equipment - so go figure. I've just realised its power. The other reason I didn't see it was because it cost four mana to play and equip - and was most definitely beyond a logical threat - no one would be crazy enough to be able to use it on turn three. I was probably wrong on that point. I've been rethinking the card and realised its pretty abusive - thus the legendary tag. How do we solve this problem? Destroy it. How? Dismantle. Naturalize. Anything - including your own Umezawa's Jitte.

And by the way, white equipment decks are likely to rule with this card here. Would you play more than two Jitte in one deck? I don't think so though - unless Jitte warps the metagame that badly.

May the Jitte's madness rule all.

A Look at a DVD Burner

Recently, I decided to take a good look at the DVD burner I just purchased. It's a Pioneer DVR-109B. The bulk version of Pioneer's A09XLB. Why in the world did I buy this burner? My friend (uranium238) seemed to recommend it a lot. How is it doing? It's doing absolutely fine. I've used it to burn about 9 4x DVD-Rs. I'm pretty confident that my media is good, since it's OEM manufacturer's code shows it's from Taiyo Yuden. Not bad. I'm saving a little more money so I can get a few more DVD+RWs to burn with, but I've realised that burning DVDs it time consuming. To burn and verify a 4x disc takes roughly half an hour. The upside? I don't have to burn as often. I'm finding myself burning about 2 discs every two weeks, and to me, that's a huge time savings. What will become of my leftover CD-Rs? My CD-Rs will likely become places for small stuff like family photos, my family computer backups. (But my user is about 3GBs big, so you know what to think. ;)

Boycott U•Bowl!

Recently, my friends and I decided to make a visit to U•Bowl, which is the new bowling alley in 1 Utama. The result of my visit is my decision to boycott U•Bowl. Why do I say we should boycott this place? OK, now, people who know me, know that I have huge feet (US size 12). The biggest shoe size they have there is 12. The problem? The shoes are actually about a half size smaller than the numbers on the shoes. Therefore, I couldn't wear their shoes. They were gracious enough to refund the money for both the shoe rental and socks. The other thing was that the bowling lanes were slightly more narrow, and slightly shorter than what I thought was normal. The balls of the preferred weight of 8-10 were few are far in between. I had to search for five minutes to find a good 10 ball, and another 5 minutes to find an 8 ball. My friend appeared to like the 8 ball a lot, but then realised that he actually bowled a lot better with a 10. Despite my lack of house shoes, I decided to try bowling in my sandals anyway. I was, of course, impeded greatly by the fact that I had to evade their wardens. It was a game of hiding my sandals. My bowling was as terrible as usual, but it was still fun. I'm still working on how to get the ball to spin fast enough while sliding. Been studying the physics of the game for the two sessions that I've had lately.

The cost of games have been exorbitant - RM6 on weekends per person - per game. It's actually quite bad, but I don't care - doesn't really matter to me - I'm not going there anymore - not with my money, at least. Life is good. Boycott U•Bowl. Have a nice day.

Gotta Love the Bans

On the 1st of March, the DCI announced what would be remembered as one of the most welcomed, yet the most drastic banning ever. The bannings left 7 commons and 1 rare out of the running. They banned the six artifact lands: Vault of Whispers, Seat of the Synod, Tree of Tales, Ancient Den, Grea Furnace and Darksteel Citadel. They also banned the famed Arcbound Ravager as well as its partner in crime: Disciple of the Vault.

What happened? Too many cards turned broken. It was like the Urza block had come back to life. It was obvious that Disciple had to go. It was probably printed as an innocent opposite to the Leonin Elder, but became too broken in a world of engines, where artifacts became mana or +1/+1 counters. Imagine sacrificing a simple 10 artifacts to win the game (you must have another win condition, of course). With affinity in the game, it was obvious how the game would be won. It would not be by attacking or a Fireball, but it would probably be by a simple one black mana costing creature. To ban this card was a no-brainer. There is no need to explain anything. The card is extremely abusive - two in play would be murderous. You could just swing small 1/1 artifact creatures at your opponent - it'll be take it or take more - and it'll be endgame next turn. This banning was a no brainer.

What about the six artifact lands? They could do little harm with Ravager and Disciple out of the running. This would what you would be thinking if you were one of those players who just download decks from the net and build them. Experienced players would catch why instantly. The first thing is that artifact lands allow the other engine card to go off early. Krark-Clan Ironworks would have easily taken the cake that was left by Ravager and destroy all point of banning Disciple and Ravager. Affinity would rule. What's the next problem? 24 artifact lands in your decks would be a good combination with Myr Incubator and Krark-Clan Ironworks. Without artifacts lands, Myr Incubator would likely to produce around 20 tokens. With them, probably around 36 tokens when it goes off. We all know that seems like a small problem, but it's actually huge. On turn three, if you had 3 artifact lands and 3 affinity creatures in play and possibly a talisman and a Pentad Prism, you would be looking at a win already. All you would need is Myr Incubator and Mass Hysteria or Fireball (both red) in your hand. While the banning of artifacts lands destroyed affinity and the identity of the Mirrodin block, it was necessary to bring affinity to its knees rather than see another affinity deck like KCI take the cake with Cranial Plating.

Now, we're on to Arcbound Ravager. This seemingly innocent card got banned too. Heck, they banned the six problem commons, why ban this? The problem with Arcbound Ravager was probably that it was supremely flexible. Sacrifice it, and suddenly there is another bigger creature on the table. It also hits the table way too early than it should. Arcbound Crusher is at 4, and while Arcbound Crusher could get pretty big, it's only a turn 4 drop. Arcbound Ravager is a turn 1 or 2 drop. It's uncanny chemistry with anything in play that you could sacrifice would actually make affinity a big bomb. It could probably still go off on turn 4. It's extreme flexibility also means it's extremely difficult to terminate. Two Arcbound Ravagers could pile on an opposing player very badly. Which one to block? Doesn't matter - which ever is the bigger blocker is bound to die anyway. It's not a huge leap to see what happens after your opponent runs out of stuff to block with. Not a no brainer - but it was probably possible to keep in the game for a while longer to see if it would change then environment. I don't think it would have made a difference - banning Ravager might have been just to send a message that Affinity decks were going off too early.

Where does that leave Affinity now? Playable. Why do I say that? It's not unplayable - affinity is playable. It's not as consistent - probably only as consistent as my Mycosynth Golem deck, but it's playable. We still have Pentad Prism + 2 mana cost artifact (add anything you like here: Talismans, Frogmites, go figure) and more things to help Affinity get off its feet. I've been looking at the metagame - I don't how the new decks work because I haven't played them - but IMHO, most of them are being too complacent. All it might take if one good KCI-Affinity deck to wipe them all out as from what I've seen from the top 8 lists - the lack of artifact removal is astounding - as low as 25%. I'd say it's likely there is a KCI-Affinity build that is extremely playable in the new Standard environment - and Magic Research and Development knows what it is.

By the way, am I playing Affinity? Nope. :D I do intend to try when I do have the time to build a viable Affinity deck though. Time to get to work on my next article on some really red decks. I honestly hate the way the game is now. There are so many players who merely download decklists of the Internet and go off the tournaments without actually rebuilding it. You want to know what's funny about red? Yam actually built a deck that was more consistent and far more capable of winning Extended than the current Red Deck Wins Extended archetype, if it came to a one-on-one, it would be obvious that Yam's deck would win - and guess what, it's a pretty light deck compared to what people and maindecking. Of course, I won't be talking about his deck - that's for him to talk about and surprise people with at tournaments. I will be talking about how to build a red blaster deck. :D Come on, I know everyone wants one. :D