The death of JBX

The magic number is 300, and the progress is at 51. At this rate, it will take a year and a half before the upgrade comes along. Pulling the trigger early is tempting. The Fender Standard Jazz Bass is sitting at $474, and can be bought in 5 minutes. Alas, the weight of a beginner is still bestowed upon me. I have been trying to break through that barrier, on a consistent basis.

There are currently 3 techniques that are hindered without the upgrade; tapping, slapping, and popping are not possible with the bass guitar that I practice with. I am forced to just pluck or strum, which is rare. These 3 techniques, in my opinion, the line that separates the novice and the advanced level of playing.  But for now, plucking will be my method of rockin' out.

I might as well give Maurice 40$, because of the numerous tweaks that have been done with his GTX bass guitar. Bridge has been altered in hopes of better intonation, but that continues to be a work in progress. The saddle nut has been replaced because it became defective within a month and a half of playing. 2 new set of strings have been replaced, each with different tones. Repair to the output required the detachment of the pick guard and pickups temporarily. Installation of a strap lock is also about to happen.

Here is  a list of songs learned since the last update. A trip to Seattle has compromised the quantity, but it's nice to know there is some progression.

44	All American Rejects	Swing Swing Swing
45	puddle of mudd	she fucking hates me
46	Rage Against the Machine	Guerilla Radio
47	The Animals	House of Rising Sun
48	Eagles	Hotel California
49	Incubus	Drive
50	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Can't Stop
51	System of a Down	Violent Pornography

livejournal + facebook = win?

this is just a test, and i hope it works

Dattebayo.com upgraded their video format for Bleach. It's up to 856x480 rather than 640x480. It isn't 1080p (1920x1080) or 720p (1280x720) but it's widescreen now. The only downside is the size of the download. It increased from 145 to 170mb, which his a bout a 17% increase. On a 1680x1050 screen, it will be a little grainy if full screen. The videos are supposed to serve the median of the fanbase, so releasing anything with more quality would create too much support problems. After 2 years of use, this site has been pretty solid.

This month's song list is short due to laziness, and a thirst of harder songs. Quantity goes down when difficulty goes up. The goal is to reach 300 songs before buying an upgraded bass. I have my eye on a Fender standard precision bass, which is about $500. Intonation, tone, build, and electronics are wanted now, but it will have to wait for 300.

Police	Roxanne	2
Rammstein	Du Hast	1
The Killers	Somebody Told Me	1
Wolfmother	Woman	5
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Zephyr Song	3
Cansei De Ser Sexy	Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above	4
Nirvana	Smells Like Teen Spirit	1
Doobie Brothers	Long Train Running	3
Muse	Float On	1
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Californication	4
Muse	Can't Take my Eyes Off of you	2
Audioslave	Doesn’t Remind Me	2
Temptations	Build me up Buttercup	2
Green Day	When I Come Around	3
The Offspring	The Kids Aren't Alright	2
Red Hot Chili Peppers	By The Way	4

It's time to test the cooling of my system. I set all fans to 100% and it is loud, but I can only get the system down to 97º F. The CPU and the GPU are at 110 º F, which is high. That's about 15º higher than it would be with San Francisco's average temperature. It's time to get a new fan or a new cooling system, because these fans are blazing and it's not effective enough. Nothing is melting yet.

This is a review of the SENNHEISER HD 280PRO Headphones.

It has a frequency range of 8Hz-25kHz. A human has a range of 20Hz-20kHz, so it goes beyond a human limits of the audio spectrum. Age is a variable that can decrease the range, but that's another subject.

THD is under .1%, which is good. THD means total harmonic distortion, so the lower the numbers the better. It's a shame that the description of the product doesn't show how low it actually is. To a normal owner, it doesn't matter because it's low enough.

The input impedance is 64 ohms. This means it uses a lot of power to produce the quality. A standard car will have a system that uses 4 ohms because it's just energy efficient. This product will not be used for a portable mp3 player- actually it depends on the mood.

Noise cancellation is advertised at 32 dB's, but this number is so small. 32 is a decibel level of a whisper, which isn't that loud so why do they advertise such a low number? These aren't made just to stop certain irritants from entering ear canals. It's primary use is to play music, but it is a nice feature when combined.

The cord is 3 feet coiled, and 5 feet stretched with a golden 3.5(1/8) adapter. It also comes with a 1/4 adapter which is also gold. The design allows it to save storage by collapsing. It also has a neodymium magnet, if you're interested in that.

The average price is $99, which is the price I paid.

Does it live up to its hype? It's the best headphones I've ever had, but that says nothing. My previous headphones included IPod standard earplugs, Sony Standard stereo headphones from 2000, and American Airline's free headphones. But, it's enough to keep me satisfied to say it was well worth it.

A few reviews say the bass response isn't "that" good. Ignorant reviews are one of my pet peeves, because they don't really review the product; people usually compare it to higher quality/higher priced products, and problems are primarily user based. "It won't fit my head" or "it came defective from overseas shipment" are a few. The bass response is what you expect from 64 ohms. For 400 dollars more, you can get 300 ohms, and a few extra ounces on that headset. Seriously.

I use these for late night audio, mostly. They are sturdy, yet ugly. I wouldn't use them outside, unless I joined a band. The 1/4 jack allows me to practice my bass at night, and allows the sounds of lower notes and tones. Standard iPod earplugs will just drop right out of someone's ears when strumming the e string on flat wound chromes. I don't know where the manufacturer is based, but they've made a good first impression.

This log is being written on a RAID 0 hard drive which includes 2 Western Digital Caviars (7200 8mb cache  80g SATA) hard disk drives. It was recommended that the same brand and style were used when setting up any multiple disk arrays.

Hardware and Prices

·         2xWestern Digital Caviars 7200 8mb cache 80g SATA HDD ($45 each)

·         1x Maxtor 6y250p0 7200 8mb cache 250g IDE HDD ($79 today, $175 4 years ago)

·         1 Floppy Disk Drive ($5)

·         1 Floppy Disk ($1)

SATA hard drives are very easy to install on newer motherboards like the XFX 680i, because the ports are smaller and more exposed. Thus, there was no problem installing the 2 Western Digital Caviars. The IDE and FDD ports were less exposed and were blocked by numerous wires. Because of that, a removal of the motherboard and adjustment to numerous components were made. This process took an hour. Ensure a solid power supply to run a multiple HDD array. A 350 watt PSU is recommended. For this setup, a 600 watt PSU was used.

To set up a any RAID, reformatting is unavoidable. Backing up data is for convenience purposes, but it can also exercise organization skills. All backup data was written to the Maxtor 250g HDD. Games like Counter-Strike Source, Unreal Tournament 3, and Hellgate London, and applications like Photoshop CS3, Office 2007, and Vegas were able to be backed up. Personal projects, movies, and text files were also data that was transferred.

Vista and new OS's will not need to use a floppy disk to retrieve RAID drives, but this process was done with Windows XP Professional (64-bit.) The CD that came with the motherboard will usually have an audio driver, chipset driver, and RAID driver. XFX 680i's CD gives us option to write the RAID 0 drivers onto a 3.5 1.4mb floppy. Make sure that the files that were transferred onto the floppy are not corrupt. Create a second or third disk of RAID drivers if you have no way to counter corrupt files.

After the hardware and  software have been prepared, it was time to go into BIOS and set up the HDD Array. Access  the BIOS by pressing DEL before the operating system boots. I tend to spam DEL for 10 seconds until the BIOS pops up. On any BIOS, enable RAID on the 2 ports that are connected to the 2 HDD's. RAID 0/Striped was preferred in this situation. After doing that, change boot priority to CD to install your OS. When installing the XP pro, press F6 for the first seconds of the installation. This will allow drivers that were transferred to the floppy to be detected.

If no blue screen of death was visible during or after installation, congratulations. The RAID array is now operational. Though it will take about a day or two to get the computer back to its former software state, know that it will be somewhat quicker than it would be on 1 HDD. Depending on how much data was backed up, it can take a long or short time, but let's talk about results.

The aftermath is overrated for a gamer. Even though every second counts, the only thing noticed is a 2% speed increase in load time. For a media designer, transfer rates are noticeable with a speed increase of at around 10% for higher volumes. Writing files has been atrocious. There is a 5% chance that a sector could not be found when installing files. This means that the RAID confused itself when trying to write onto 2 HDDs at once. The RAID 0 experiment was a success, but the performance increase is uninspiring.

Right now, there are 7200 and 10000 SATA hard disk drives. The higher the RPM goes, the faster access time will be. 10k RPM are usually more expensive than the 7.2k, but the results are worth it for a gamer. There is a 15000 RPM hard drive, but it requires an SCSI card, which is usually not found in the common motherboard. Yes, the price is also higher- about 2 times more than as 10k. The higher the RPM, the louder it will be as well. Most reviews show a 150% decibel increase with 10k, and a 300% decibel increase with a 15k, compared to a 7.2k. This allowed me to find out something about new HD tech, because eventually HDD's will be so loud that people will want to convert to slower speeds. Solid state drives don't make any sound and are 4 times faster than a hard disk drive. Right now, the tech and speed premium will cost 30 times more than your average 7.2k. Yes time will tell if SSD will be the future of hard drives, but for now save your money.

Like L2 cache on processors, regular cache on an HD is accessed faster. Because of this, having a 16mb cache is better than having an 8mb cache. Think of cache as a waiting room. I'd rather have 16 people waiting than 8 people waiting for the next ride. Looking at charts there is a speed increase, but not significant enough be desirable. There are 32 mb cache HD's, but still too superior for economy pricing.

Right now, I am somewhat satisfied of my HD position. The only thing I would change would be upgrading to 16mb cache, but it won't improve much. I care too much about acoustics to get anything louder, so I plan to wait on SSD tech to come to the economy. So, this ends the RAID 0 experiment; bittersweet.

Writing Utensil Count
	red	brown	orange	yellow	green	blue	pink	purple	gray	black	multi	Total
color pencil	4	7	1	2	6	10		3	1	2		36
markers			2	1	2		1	3				9
sharpie		1										1
highlights			1	4								5
pencil with eraser									16			16
pencil without eraser									12			12
crayon											1	1
ballpoint pens	4					5				19		28
inktip pen	2					2				1		5

Today, I decided to record my writing utensils. In the process, I ended up disposing of 10 defective ones. After analyzing this table, there is a surplus of pencils and black ballpoint pens. There are also a lot of blue color pencils. I would desire a black sharpie, and more variety in markers. I'd also like to find better way to store these materials than a woven basket/bucket. Boredom gets the best of you when your room is too clean.

I've enjoyed playing the bass Guitar. Here are the songs I have learned in the first 30 days of playing:

Band	Song	String Setup	Level (1-10)
Linkin Park	Bleed It Out	Drop D	2
Link Park	Shadow of the Day	Standard	1
Linkin Park	Faint	Standard	1
Linkin Park	Numb	Standard	2
Linkin Park	In The End	Standard	1
Dio	Holy Diver	Standard	3
Portal	Still Alive	Standard	2
Rage Against the Machine	Bulls On Parade	Standard	2
Rage Against the Machine	Killing in the Name Of	Drop D	3
Audioslave	Like A Stone	Standard	2
The Who	Teenage Wasteland	Standard	1
System of a Down	Chop Suey	Drop D	2
System of a Down	Aerials	Drop D	2
Sugar Ray	Some Day	Standard	1
Van Morrison	Brown Eyed Girl	Standard	2
Red Hot Chilipeppers	Otherside	Standard	3
Weezer	My Name is Jonas	Standard	1
Weezer	Island in the Sun	Standard	1
Matchbook Romance	Monsters	Standard	4
Hoobastank	The Reason	Standard	1
Ben E. King	Stand By Me	Standard	1
Aerosmith	I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing	Standard	1
Aerosmith	Dream On	Standard	2
Sugar Hill Gang	Rapper's Delight	Standard	1
Chicago	25 or 6 to 4	Standard	1
The White Stripes	Seven Nation Army	Standard	1
Metallica	Enter Sandman	Standard	4

I plan to post a list of songs each month. Any song requests would help the process, because I have a limited amount of songs that I prefer to listen to.

The truth behind the name JBX is here. It not that complicated, but I’ve almost fabricated it enough that it has lost its meaning.

The first nick name that was given to me was Big Ben. I was fat and relatively big compared to the kids at my elementary school. I knew where Big Ben was located, but I found it odd that it became a reference to me. My friends and I watched a lot of wrestling entertainment and that was my nickname when we emulated what we saw on television.  It was also used on the basketball court. I don’t want to get too nostalgic, but it was a good time and a good name.

My first online alias was stuff101. It was established in the year 1996. It wasn't bad for a self-made nickname. Stuff could be related to anything and 101 refers to a basic course. For my age, 101 could have related to the movie 101 Dalmatians. I have never seen the movie.

5 years later, I discontinued the name and was playing counter-strike. A name that popped out to me was Jigglypuff. He was one of the best CS players I have ever known, of that time. It was also a Pokémon. In that day, servers weren’t abundant as they are now so I became clingy to the server he played on. For some reason, I executed an act of humor and typed this command in console: /nick Jigglyboo. It was meant to be temporary, but it stuck.

The first 2 letters of the acronym JBX are Jiggly and Boo. X arrived after I gave up on trying to cover the name by using the first 2 letters and creating a word. Here are some variations: Jboogie, Jboo, Jbah, Jbum, Jbourne (just kidding.) You get the idea. In the year 2002, JBX became my truncated online alias.

6 years later, I just got tired of it. My new online alias is very logical. X is the last letter of my first name, and AS are the first letters of my last name. You get aleX ASuncion. My blog is diXASter because it was a disaster that xas.livejournal.com was already taken. By the way, that blog hasn’t updated in 4 years.

So there is the evolution of my aliases. Big Ben>Stuff101>Jigglyboo>JBX>Xas. It was fun Jigglyboo. You will be missed.