Sybreon Ones Nought

As I mentioned earlier, I have been keeping tabs on the fuel consumption of my not so new car and I am happy to announce that there are some preliminary results. The chart on the right shows the average fuel consumption of my car under different conditions (the higher the bar, the better). Basically, the figure is about 10-ish km/L for normal city driving and about 14-ish km/L for long distance travel.

Although the fuel consumption figures are nothing to shout about, it is good enough for me. The figure only becomes quite bad in a traffic jam (the first bar). However, since I rarely go into the city anyway, this is quite unlikely to happen. So, normal driving would be about 10km/L. Please remember that these are empirical results of my personal driving style. So, your mileage may vary tremendously.

Overall, I am quite happy with things.

My measurement methodology is simple. Each time I pumped petrol, I filled up my tank. So, I can easily find out how much fuel has been used by converting the amount I paid for the fuel with the fuel price. Then, I note down the odometer readings and use that to calculate the km/L values. I tried to isolate the type of usage by filling up my tank before I go on long distance travels and immediately after I return.

I passed by Harvey Norman today and decided to drop in to look at the new Compaq Nettop. Let me just say that I am quite taken in by the price of the thing. It is much cheaper than I had expected. Internet reports claim that the price of the high end model (2030) is about US$386 (RM1355) but they are only selling it for RM998 (US$285) here.

The high end model that they are selling here is dubbed the Compaq Presario 2035Q, which seems to be the branding that HP is trying to achieve with it’s compaq line of products. As the detailed specs seem rather hard to come by on the Internet, I decided to check out the specs using the software on the display unit. Here they are:

• CPU: Intel Atom 330
  This is the most powerful Atom processor to date. It is a dual-core HyperThreaded processor. What this means is that the software sees an effective 4-cores. This is sweet as the extra processing power can definitely be put to good use for high quality video playback.
• VGA: Intel GMA950
  Unfortunately, it comes with the same terrible 945GC chipset that every other Atom platform comes with. Although NVidia has released the 9400M for Atom processors, no vendors seem to be pushing out products with them yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed though.
• AUD: Realtek ALC662 HD Audio
  This information had to be gleaned from the vendor and device ID numbers. This bodes well though, since this device is capable of 5.1 surround sound. However, it seems to lack the actual ports that do the output.

Besides these important things, it also has 1Gb of DDR2 memory and a 160GB harddisk. It also comes with a LightScribe capable DVD burner. There is also a card reader on the front that can come in useful for displaying photos from digital cameras directly on screen. Also on the front are 2 USB ports and the earphone and mic ports. On the back are another 2 USB ports, ethernet port and modem port. It does not come with wifi but I am sure that there is a free internal USB port that I can jack one into.

While it is not a perfect HTPC, it does come awfully close to being one. The only thing it lacks are the higher end audio and video outputs. If this is the best thing available when the time comes to actually make the purchase, I might just get it. However, I will still continue to look for a nettop with a DVI or HDMI video output and a 5.1 surround sound output.

PS: Then again, it might be possible that the 5.1 surround sound output is multiplexed on the rear ports. Some devices do it this way. I’ll need to look up more info about this.

Seems like it does not have to cost a bomb to build a decent home theatre system these days. I just returned from the local Carrefour after shopping for sundries and noticed that they were selling a 32″ LCD screen at only RM1299 (£256), which is a fairly decent price.

It is not a ‘branded’ product but that is really a non-issue for me. The LCD display market is a ODM market. This means that there are only a few display manufacturers that manufacture all the displays for everyone to use. The other ‘brands’ merely put them in a custom enclosure and stick on their labels on it. So, while this is not a ‘branded’ product, it is likely that it shares the same LCD panel as certain other ‘branded’ products while selling for about 65% of their price.

There is also a 5.1 home theatre surround sound system being sold by the same brand at only RM299 (£59). Most ‘branded’ sound systems come with a built in DVD player. However, since I will be playing all my media through a PC, the DVD player would be redundant. Therefore, I only need to have the speakers and amplifier systems. Once again, while the specs are nothing to shout about, it is more than sufficient for watching films.

While most people will look at the power output of a sound system, the most important measure is actually the signal to noise ratio, SNR. As a rule of thumb, most 2.1 computer sound systems will come with at least a SNR of 72dB. This includes many entry level products from the likes of Altec Lansing and all. However, CD-quality sound is rated with a 92dB SNR. So, a SNR of 80dB or so for this sound system is actually decent and probably not noticeable to most ears.

I may actually get these things purchased first, before buying a nettop machine for my HTPC use. HP has recently launched their first nettop. So, I expect this market to grow just as fast as the netbook market did, which will only drive prices down further. The HP mini-Q is a decent machine that is more than capable of functioning as a HTPC. I saw one for about RM1000 at Harvey Norman.

It is an Atom 230/330 based machine with 1Gb RAM and a 160Gb HDD. This is more than sufficient for running a home theatre system. While it comes with a DVD-burner, it does not seem to have built in wifi. This means that I’ll need to run an additional cable through to the unit. However, this is a non-issue if I plug in a usb wifi dongle. However, I will probably wait for other vendors to release their nettops before deciding on one to buy.

So, in total, a new TV and sound system and HTPC will only cost me around RM2600, which is a steal. Granted, it is not ‘branded’ but as long as it works, I’m happy.

PS: Maybe it’s time to pay a visit to TESCO.

I had the chance to use the Maxis wireless broadband service recently. My sister has subscribed to it and since I was the IT support at home, I took the liberty of setting it up for them and testing it out. I had also been planning on signing up and dumping my Streamyx service if it worked out.

I had to test a couple of things: whether the modem works with Linux and if the service quality was any good.

Firstly, the modem definitely works with Linux. It has been plug-and-play in Linux for a long time. However, I didn’t know this until I tried it out. Setting it up was a breeze as I did not even have to do much except click ‘next’. So, that is a non-issue. The Huawei E220 modem is a standard modem used worldwide by a number of service providers, including the ones in Malaysia.

However, the second issue of service quality is seriously questionable. When I first tried to download a 7Mb file, it started with speeds of about 700kbps for a couple of minutes, before immediately throttling down to about 50kbps and staying there. Furthermore, it seems that packets go missing quite often as I have to periodically refresh web pages as they fail to load completely.

Personally, while I will appreciate the freedom that the Maxis wireless broadband brings (it covers much of KL city and the outlying areas), the quality of the connection is still no match for the terrible Streamyx broadband service. However, depending on my professional needs, I may still subscribe to the Maxis broadband for use while on the road.

Yes, that is the title of the next Neal Stephenson novel that I consumed. This is also part of the Baroque Cycle of which Quicksilver is the overture. There is nothing confusing about the book as the title is drawn from the metallurgical meaning of the word, con-fused – for the process of mingling two metals into an alloy.

Like the previous novel, this one is made up of two books: Bonanza and Juncto. One tells the story of our band of pirates sailing around the world while the other traces the events happening on continental europe. However, the two books are interleaved with each other as they proceed through the same time line. So, readers would not be forced to constantly flip back and forth between the two. Thus it is con-fused.

While Quicksilver was slow to begin and takes a while to build up the action, this one starts off exactly where the previous book ended and does not let up, even right up to the end. The ending is like a mid-season cliffhanger of Battlestar Galactica. It makes me wonder what is going to come next.

Unlike some other authors, Stephenson has elected not to repeat much of what had already been said in Quicksilver. Some authors I know Terry Goodkind spend half the book merely repeating the things that they have already mentioned in previous books. Therefore, one should definitely read Quicksilver before reading this book unless one is blessed with a wanton sense of imagination.

Just like everyone other Stephenson book, there is a lot of knowledge to be gleaned from within its pages. While Quicksilver was steeped in computer science, this book is knee deep in finance and commerce. Sometimes, it makes me wonder how many people he hires as staff researchers. He cannot possibly have done all the research himself as they are all tremendously detailed. The contents of the two books focus on the events happening between 1689-1702, which were exciting times in Europe.

I particularly liked the way that he progressed the story through letter writing. While in Quicksilver he experimented with short plays and flirted with letter writing, he used it a lot in The Confusion. Large swaths of the book were dedicated to letters being exchanged between several key characters. This plays well with the book because these characters were prolific letter writers and cryptographers.

Anyway, it makes a good read for anyone who likes Quicksilver and desires to see the adventures of Daniel Waterhouse, Jack Shaftoe and Eliza through to the end. An additional reason that it makes good reading for me is because many of these characters are ancestors of the characters in Cryptonomicon.

I found our New Year’s celebration and fireworks display at Merdeka Square a little sad. Thankfully I was not there in person as I could watch the other celebrations on TV. When the stroke of midnight struck in Malaysia and the fireworks went off, I was taken aback by the odd camera angle of the live broadcast of Ambang 2009.

The cameraman was actually standing in Merdeka Square and viewing the fireworks from there. At the very least, he should have gone up to the roof top of Dayabumi or even up Bukit Aman for a better shot. That angle is just horrible when trying to show viewers the fireworks display. Therefore, I switched away after a while.

I switched over to TVB8 to watch the Hong Kong fireworks display instead. Now, that is a much better fireworks display and the cameraman had the brains to actually stick the camera a distance away in order to capture the fireworks coming off the rooftops of all the sky scrapers. I had also seen the Sydney one an hour earlier on the OZ news channel. This is when I realised that there is about a 5 minute broadcast delay for some of these stations.

Anyway, from the press reports today, it seems that there was quite a carnival celebration at 1U last night. There were lots of local stars performing at 1U last night including Suki. The younger stars seem to have been invited to all the hip and happening parties, leaving the old ones to perform at Merdeka Square. I had originally thought of going to 1U with my camera but decided against it as I did not want to spend several hours looking for a vacant car park.

This reminds me that I need to go out one of these evenings, to get a few good photos of KL City at night.

According to a recent article from TheStar, we Malaysians suffer from a ‘mega sale’ culture. There is plenty of evidence to support this, especially in KL. As evidenced by this photo that I took on Christmas eve at MidValley, the shopping malls are thronging with shoppers and practically every car park bay is full. When I got to Zone A, the counter outside was only showing 10 lots left.

This is a very promising sign, particularly in the face of the looming economic crisis and recession. However, my understanding of the label goes a little deeper than that. We are most definitely a nation of bargain hunters. We are willing to put in extra effort to find a good bargain for almost anything and everything. The article also states that the only difference between shoppers today and shoppers yesterday, is that we no longer purchase ‘luxury’ items.

In fact, after visiting IOI Mall in Puchong, I noticed that a new wing had just been erected and that some of the tenants seem to have just moved in or are in the process of moving in. I figure, this means that they are expecting to expand next year with more shops and more shoppers. So, it seems that the Malaysian economy is not that bad after all.

As someone mentioned to me the other day, Malaysians are generally a fairly rich lot. It is our government that is having trouble filling its coffers. About 46% of our national income comes from oil money and the last budget was done with the assumption that the price of oil would stay at US$125 per barrel. Since it is now just under US$40 per barrel, our country is set to lose billions of dollars in revenue in 2009 alone.

That is why, the government is thinking up schemes to funnel some of the peoples’ hard currency into its own coffers. These include things like issuing more government bonds and fixing a floor price for petrol. So, I am personally not too worried about things in the country. The people will make sure the the economy turns, even if the government is unable to do so itself.

However, I will also be on the lookout for bargains, once the full brunt of the recession hits and prices are slashed on a number of ‘luxury’ items.