Reverse-reverse psychology?

Chinese-brand (or brandless/OEM) products have always been thought of as value-for-money because they do not go through the money-leechers at the top of a multinational company. And at least they work for the money you pay for. As an analogy, take a ball for example. The Chinese ball may be harder and last shorter, but it's round and is still a ball.

So, for the same amount of money you spend on a Chinese and a designer brand name product, the Chinese is bound to perform better.

Right? Not always.

To understand why we have to look at the issue of branding. Branding makes a person think that the product under the brand is better regardless of actual performance.

Now we're thinking that the Chinese products perform better for the same price. That is some effect of branding at work.

You may argue that this is at least an educated guess because you can find evidence supporting that.

But what if someone decides to take advantage of this Chinese branding?

We may end up with products that are both suck and overpriced AND do not look good.

I might have seen signs of that happening.

And this may end up being worse in China than in other major countries. As we already know China is famous for the sub-par QC and design. And we can be sure that the huge amount of money we pay isn't going into research.

But the worse thing to happen is still a Western company rebranding a China designed product. That takes price and QC right to the extremes. I HAVE seen that happen. The Beresford DAC, the 698RMB mini tube amp selling for USD$220, products brought in by J****.

Abacus - a digital device

Technically, he's right. But it just seems so lol.

http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/Digital/DIGI_1.html

Video advertisement fail:

Take a look at this video -

http://www.firebox.com/video/944

The sound is fake. And badly done so.

Because the frequency response of such a speaker changes with and without a surface it is in contact with. Yet it sounds the same when the speaker is lifted off, just softer.

Some alteration to the sound clip confirms this -

Original:

The soft part corrected to the same level:

It sounds the same.

And the other fail - the sound change came AFTER the person put down the speaker (instead of at the same time). I wouldn't have enough suspicion to try out this clip if not for this.

Actually, I believe most speaker video advertisements have fake sound, just that this one got caught red-handed.

The Bose™ Invasion... Part 2

In Part 1 of the invasion we saw a Bose™ speaker (suspectedly 301) hanging from the ceiling of a karaoke room in an Anime. However it was unbranded.

This time we see one that is branded Buse in a manga:


The "buse" should stand for abuse. Abuse of what? Abuse of ears, abuse of branding, abuse of the rich fags' wealth by making them spend lots of money on overpriced things... but if they're both rich and stupid they deserve it.

And don't bother searching for Part 1, it doesn't exist.

Herd mentality ftw~~

It is f-king funny when you consider this:

Must... resist... temptation...

Downward-firing speaker

My idea of a joke.

It sounds like... downward-firing speakers.

The thing powering the speakers? It's the NAD 3225PE that I just repaired.

And the fan on the 3225PE? The handy 120mm Sunon running on 5V powered by the handy 230V -> 4-pin molex adaptor, cooling the amp.

I'll talk about the amp. I bought it from another forummer on XtremePlace garage sales forum.

The seller described it as left channel faulty, only right channel working with CD/AUX input. He also mentioned preamp + phono amp most likely not working when asked. Which I found strange, because you'd be testing your gear to see how much of it is working to boost the sale value, instead of saying "most likely not working".

I do not consider "something glowing and producing smoke inside" as "right channel working" condition. But that is what I saw upon powering up. No wonder he did not test the rest of the circuit - who would have the guts and brains to?

Considering the risks involved with glowing things and reduced possible rewards, $30 is too much to ask for something that may have the only working part being the chassis.

While the sense of value varies between people and the value of this thing is uncertain, if he had any integrity he wouldn't delete the thread immediately after.

And he still had the cheek to tell me this thing was in storage for a long time and one day when he decided to use it it just spoilt. A post of the symptoms at diyaudio forums quickly gave me a response that this is a usual case of thermal runaway that occur in this series of amps (with the pros there even pointing out correctly which are the other parts that got fried). Rubber marks on the top cover further supports this suspicion - something was placed on top of the amp, when the manual explicitly stated to have at least 50cm of clearance on top of the amp, and is something you ought to not do with a passive-cooled top-vented device rated at 150W, as common sense says.

Was he a young lad? Nope, he's an uncle. I've met more uncles than young chaps with bad sales behaviour actually. Seems that society screws your character.

Fortunately this catastrophic failure turns to be a plus, as it is a known common failure with solution available, and the seriousness of this means that the rest of the system would be in working condition, since this alone renders the product unusable.

Maybe not for those wanting to use part of its function, attracted by the $30 "partially working condition", and getting pissed when they see smoke. The seller said I was the first to respond and there are two others behind me, which is strange because that would mean that nobody responded for the at least 1-2 days after he posted the thread and 3 responded within the next 12-hour time frame, but I could be wrong.

A few talks with the pros, schematics in hand, more than $40 worth of replacement parts, a few weeks of waiting and decision making, cutting of PCB traces, the most exciting part - first power up,

Viola! I got a vintage SS amplifier for $70.

Quote of the day:

"Usually, if you can definitely hear something, especially if it's bad, you'll be able to see it on a scope. It's more often a flaw than not. Circuit mods without a scope are hit and miss with the emphasis on miss."

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145568

For all the modders out there.

Add: I have a strange feeling that the local online audio community does not have any system that shows up correctly on the scope, except for the rare few pros on VRForums and XtremePlace.

Dance×Mixer

Yet another of those inspired by IdolM@ster? But this time it's not a game.



It is a dance editor program.

Looks like a video editor, guess it will be easy for those who have used one before. Wonder if it stuff like effects, dance moves, stage, camera are editable.

Soon people will be hacking this thing to produce lots of original dancers. Although I have a feeling Miku will be the first (and the last) that everybody will use. Great timing, since I'm irritated by all those cut-and-paste content on YouTube (they call it MAD?). Oh, and hack some IdolM@ster models too.

We have music synthesizer, we have Vocaloid, now we have this. One man MTV!!! If we can use this to make movies we can have one man show too, literally.

http://dancemixer.jp/

Oh, and we luv collaborations like this; Tamura Yukari gets her single promoted (I wouldn't have known if not for this video), the maker of Dance×Mixer gets a good cute song by a popular artist to work with instead of spending money to come out with their own.

Hitohira: Afterthoughts

In Categories it is listed under Clubs, Comedy, High School, Performance, Seinen (on AniDB)

And given that picture you would've thought that it is Comedy main.

But noooooooooo, it is more on acting (club) and school life, maybe some bits of slice-of-life in it.

I really think people who anyhow categorize things should be shot. And maybe these databases should have a short description of the series instead of just character background and setting.

And really, there is not much of comedy, unless you consider the occasional punchline that serve to lighten the mood and get the story going. In which case this explains the current state of mainstream comedy.

I would have avoided this if I thought it was comedy, given the apparent amount of budget it has (from the artwork), given the over-simplistic and overused setting (of school), the plainess of characters, given the comedy boom which happened around that time, and the number of CMI shows which spawned thinking they can take advantage of it.

Which I did. It was pure chance that brought me to take a look at this show again.

Would you call this fate?

And I'm glad I did.

Because it is not a half-assed comedy. It is something serious. And for something serious, the setting and character design are good. It's been a long time since I watched something serious and it's not romance.

And most importantly, the story is good. Good enough.

So the moral of the story is, who cares if the artwork is good, if the character design is expensive, because the story is the most important.

I may be wrong though, seeing how many girls go to the movies just to see their favourite actor.

How exactly did this show fare? To put as objectively as possible, I started Toradora!, then Clannad ~After Story~, paused Clannad because of some problems muxing the DVD releases, started Hitohira, resumed Clannad because I couldn't wait any longer.

I use how much I desire to watch the next episode as a gauge of how good the show is, if you hadn't known me yet.

Toradora! got paused at episode 11 and has been paused ever since I started both Clannad and Hitohira, I actually covered more episodes of Hitohira than Clannad in the same time frame, but need to take the "denial to watch a good show because it'd be a waste" factor into consideration.

It is not conclusive enough to be saying that Hitohira won Clannad (after all, Clannad is one of the legendary series out there), but it is putting up a good fight. It still loses though.

This is not a show that will go down in history, but is in my recommendation list. I do not anyhow recommend shows even I like them.

So, those who fancy some light-hearted but serious story, go for it.

Oh well, enough of this, it has served me well. NOW PREPARE FOR SOME CLANNAD MARATHON!!! Get tissues ready. I won't be after-thinking about Clannad though, there's at least 20 blogs saying it's good already.

Engineering cheats money...

Engineering cheats money by selling you a 0.2 cents component for 20 dollars

Medical cheats money by charging you a lot for telling you something you already know, and the medication which you know comes naturally but you can't get your hands on, and everybody believes only them because they have a license

Law cheats money by making you pay loads of money for justice (Crime doesn't pay, justice does)

Consulting cheats money by getting an amateur to tell a pro how to do the job better

Business cheats money by simply taking away your profit as you sell your product to the buyer; they call that "service"

Management cheats money by discussing what should happen while those below make things happen just as they should (And it's alarming when you know how much of a company is dedicated to management)

Finance cheats money by loaning the money you saved to others at, say, 3%, while they give 0.1% back to you. Then charge you service charge

Economics cheats money by analysing and playing with the economy and watching it fail due to reasons out of their control

Education cheats money by... bet you've seen a lot of teachers that are fail

Arts cheats money by producing objects with high intangible value and zero tangible value

Resource cheats money by forcing you to pay $100 for a barrel of oil just because they feel like it

Politics cheats money by just owning you, 'nuff said

Since everybody's cheating money, it all cancels out! So nobody is cheating anybody money, the only ones getting cheated are the ones at the bottom of the society.

And actually, engineering seems like the least of all cheaters, because there are many times when you just can't produce something due to lack of knowledge, skills, tools, and resources, and this is proven when a DIY effort turns out more expensive yet inferior.

No wonder it is strongly advised to avoid taking up engineering as any form of professional career, and most successful engineers convert to businessmen instead.

People who "wow" saying it is as different as night and day...

...cannot differentiate between day and night

What's worse, they cannot differentiate between equinox and solstice either

Pretty ironic isn't it?

There are people with enough knowledge to differentiate between day and night. But usually they do not wow, since day and night is so common to them.

This is a conclusion I drew after looking at forums. Take it or leave it.