So why the A2 and not an iPod, PSP, Zen or Achios?

That’s easy! Check out the feature list:

• 4-inch, 16 million color, 480×272-pixel wide-screen display
• 10 hours of video and 18 hours of audio playback, full recharge in 5 hours
• MP3/WMA/WAV/OGG music player plus FM radio
• DivX/XviD/WMV/MPEG codecs to allow the video player to play all forms for AVI, WMV, ASF and MPEG
• JPG/BMP/PNG picture viewer
• Voice and line-in recorder as well as line out (AV out) playback
• Text file reader and proprietary file format reader
• PVR to record TV programming directly from your foxtel box or TV!!
• Powerful Sound Enhancement including BBE, Mach3Bass MP Enhance, 3d Surround and EQ
• Portable USB disk ability plus a “USB HOST” feature that allows you to transfer pictures from your digital camera (with UMS support) to your A2 without computer.
• Easily upgradeable firmware
• A clock that allows scheduled recordings and alarm clock features

Out of the box, it comes with all of the necessary USB cables, charger, headphones, leather case, manual and CD for additional software such as JetAudio. After the initial charge of 10 hours, I uploaded some music I had ripped from one of my CD’s and a 30 minute AVI file of a recent TV documentary. All I can say is wow! The audio quality is amazing and the picture quality is sharp, clear and bright. My only ‘issues’ are that the unit requires the leather case for it to have a kickstand as one is not built in and you cannot remove the battery easily, but I would still recommend the A2 to anyone wanting a portable multimedia player over the iPod, PSP, Zen or Archios.

The entire first visit took almost two hours and I was tested for a variety of things including zinc definciancy and protein levels. A small blood, saliva and urine sample was also taken and tested.

After the results were determined, there is a possibility that I am wheat intolerant. So, for the next few months I am going to undergo a strict regime to eliminate certain foods from my diet and then I will have some tests to determine the effects of certain foods in my body.

The strict regime includes:

• No grains – this means no wheat, rice, barley, oats, rye etc. at all — so no bread, pasta, flours etc.
• No high sugar fruits – this means no bananas, grapes and melons, and reduce fruit juice intake
• No high carbohydrate vegetables – this means no peas, corn, potatoes and cashew nuts.
• No high sugar foods and drinks – so no honey, sugar, icecream, soda etc.
• A maximum of two serves of dairy a day
• Eat a serve of protein with each meal – it could be eggs, meat, fish, nuts, legumes etc.
• Reduce intake of alcohol – avoid beer, and spirits made from grains and corn
• Each morning, I must drink a glass of water with lemon juice

So that’s it — it might seem extreme at first, but is only cutting out 11 foods. I can have steak and salads, chicken and vegetables, lamb hot pot etc. as normal, but just without the grains or other vegetables that are not permitted.

Wish me luck :) I am determined to make a go of this and I will report my progress later on.

Anyway, see the bid logo and new ‘logo’ for yourself:

Unveiled on June 4th, Lord Coe unveils the logo for the 2012 Olympics in London claiming it is “ambitious, interactive and youth-friendly”. Organising committee chairman Lord Coe said: “It meets the biggest challenge we have over the next five years, which is reaching out to young people.”

For the first time, the logo will be used for the Olympics and Paralympics. Coe added: “It is interactive and absolutely at the heart of what we need to do – engaging the attention of young people through new media and the virtual world they can get transported into. “It will be imperative that it is flexible. I think it is way beyond any simple logo. “It reaches out to young people in new and creative ways and uses the language that they understand and all the technology that is familiar to us.”

Anyone else laughing with me? How can you spend £400,000 on this? Imagine the cost of the website..

With all the artistic talent in the UK, this is an insult to designers. The view of the UK public seems to reflect this as well. The BBC website even asked the public to submit ideas. This is the best idea submitted in my design opinion — very clever and well done.

Here are some public comments taken from the BBC page source:

1. What ever % of my tax went to pay for that design at a mere £400,000, I would like a refund and then further compensation to have to look at this logo for the next 5 years.

2. £400,000. For that. Utterly ridiculous. Being in a class of 14/15 year olds, we designed 2012 logos based upon the rugged structure, and came up with fantastic ideas, promoting 2012 and also repesenting London and England as hosts for the Olympics. This is trying far too hard to communicate with youngsters. Yes it may communicate with them, but in the totally wrong way.

3. Genius! How about the inclusion of some TXT SPK, Sir Seb? I’ve wiped better looking logos from my backside.

4. Who in their right mind wants to wear a t-shirt with this logo or have it on their phone. It reminds me of the apprentice, the episode with the trainers. The naf trainer design that the women’s team came up with. And if you shrink the logo down slightly, it becomes unreadable and the london text disappears. Plus it says ’20R’ not ’2012′.This is the dome all over again, when they were deluded into thinking that the content inside the dome was what people wanted to see, when in fact it wasn’t.

5. I have just figured it out. The cost breaks down as 25 pence for the design and £399,999.75 to register the trademark.

If you are in the UK and you hate this logo or you are a fan of the Olympics and would never buy any merchandise with this logo, sign up on the online petition here: http://www.gopetition.co.uk/signatures.php?petid=12539

Source of Quotes and Article Excerpts: BBC – http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/06/04/2012_new_logo_feature.shtml

Daniel Agger’s goal in the 23rd minute made the scores 1-1 on aggregate so now it was up to Liverpool to score once more, or to hold out for penalties. Chelsea has at least one chance where I was surprised that Drogba did not score — and he was only 8 yards out.

It was not to be Chelsea’s day, yet the arrogance of Jose Mourinho came shining through in his post match interview where he gloated that his team was the best team. There is only one thing left to say about those comments — if Chelsea lose the League as well, which they will, your job is gone.

Good luck in Greece in the finals. Go Liverpool!

Costing me $292 AUD, the basic specs of this LCD Monitor are as follows:

• Inputs: D-Sub & DVI-D
• Pixel Pitch: 0.285 mm
• Resolution: 1440 x 900
• Brightness: 330 cd/m2
• Contrast Ratio: 600:1
• Viewing Angle: 160º H/140ºV
• Scan Rate: 30~82 KHz/56~76 Hz
• Tilt: 0º~30º
• Response Time: 5 ms (Tr+Tf)
• Power Consumption: 43 W Active/2 W Standby
• Built-in Speakers: 2.5W x 2

My initial thoughts:

• The picture is bright and clear but I needed to adjustt the contrast, brightness and colour Kelvins out of the box to my settings.
• The fonts looked much better when Anti-Aliasing (font smoothing) was turned, as is the case with most LCDs anyway. I found that the best setting on Windows XP was Standard, though the ClearType fans will scream at this.
• It took a little bit of tweaking to get the display to report to Windows XP that it was a 19″ monitor. At first, it was reporting itself as a plug-and-play 20″ monitor! I am assuming this was a Windows Driver issue and not something to do with the settings in the monitor. The CD provided did not have any INF files, just PDFs on how to setup and configure it.
• Was nice to have all cables provided. I was connecting up via D-Sub as my video card does not have DVI-D.
• The console buttons are ‘hidden’ on the right side of the screen and makes the basic appearance of this monitor a little more sleek.
• I noticed there was no ability to shift the monitor up and down to a different height level, only the ability to tilt it.

The Good, Not-So Good and Wishlist:

• Good: Great picture, easy to assemble, changing the setup is simple, DVI-D and D-Sub inputs, doesn’t dispel a lot of heat when operating, all cables provided
• Not-So Good: No ability to adjust monitor’s height, took a bit of tweaking to get correct monitor information in Windows XP
• Wishlist: Add an ability to adjust the monitor’s height, include inf files on the CD provided

Would I Recommend This Monitor?

Those tiny gripes I had are nothing compared to the quality of the picture you receive with this LCD monitor. With a 19″ widescreen display and 5 ms response time, your are hard pushed to find many 17″ LCDs with the same specs in this price range. I would recommended this LCD to anyone who wants to upgrade their CRT to an LCD.