Tongfamily Website

Now that I keep music and new photos on my local machine, I also need to sync these files up to a server. Thats because I’m constantly changing things. So looking for something as good as beyond compare on Windows. Looked before, but never found anything. Google search for mac os x directory compare led me to:

Smart Synchronize

Guiffy

Trying them both now…both are slow

I haven’t posted in a while because somehow the lastest scribefire no longer likes to post to my WordPress. So I’m back to using the web interface.

Anyway, since I lost my Etymotic ER-4Ss, I seem to have ended up with two sets of Shure SE-210 (lost one of these!), bought a $40 pair of Bridgestone’s that I just hate. So what’s the state of the art now, so recommendations from <a href=”http://headphones.com”>headphones.com</a>, <a href=”http://ilounge.com”>iLounge.com</a> and <a href=”http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/”>Head-fi.org</a>.

The highlight, is there are two categories of in-ear designs at $100-150 which are Shure SE210, E2c and E3c, Etymotic ER6i, Ultra-ears Super.fi 5 pro and JVC Marshmallow/JVC aircushion. Then at $180-200 have the Etymotic Er-4P, Klipsch Image X-10, Denon C700, JAYS q-JAYS, Shure SE310 and E4c. Here are the recommendations:

Etymotic ER-4P. These are still viewed as the best single driver headphones. About $180 street these days. I found them super comfortable, but reviews say they are a little lacking. If you want throwaways, or near throwaways, the $80 ER-6i is a good choice.

Ultimate Ears 700. These are what are called dual driver so are smaller and easier to make sound good. They have a $230 street, so if you can find the Jays Q-Jays which are also dual driver, get them.

Jays Q-Jays launched in 2007 were the first really affordable and great sounding headphones. Better than the Etymotic ER-4P. They are just hard to find. They are truly small. Amazon Z-shops has them for $189, but they are hard to find.

Shure SE530. These are triple drivers and probably the best sounding period these days. But cost is $250 street, so don’t lose them! They are $330 street, so expensive.

The forums are buzzing about “<a href=”http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/review-nuforce-ne-7m-iphone-iem-vs-denon-c700-klipsch-image-x10-ne-8-impressions-added-1-15-09-a-383617/”>Nuforce NE 7m</a> which cost $50 and sound great. Amazing! You need different tips to fit it in and the comply 400. The Nuforce Ne-8 is just $60 and also have lousy tips, so need something else. Wow. <a href=”http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/nuforce-ne-8-arrived-short-review-updated-pg1-389811/”>Head-fi.org</a> says the NE-8 seems to be more Etymotic-like with better treble and midrange while maintaining a decent soundstage while on the other hand, the NE-7M is more Shure-like with good bass and a warm sound.

Thank you is so important, you can pretty much say it everywhere, but Jennifers has it in just about every language in the world:

Domo Arigato. Japanese
Xie Xie. 谢谢 Chinese.
Cámơn. Vietnamese
Ar Kun. Khmer (in Cambodia)
Komapsumnida. Korean

So thanks to everyone for making this last trip work

No, I haven’t lost my mind, but had to share since I’ve had about 10 people ask me what’s going on. Sorry about all the random entries in friendfeed, twitter, facebook and tongfamily.com. For the geeks, read on. Here is the chain:

1. nLyrics is this great plug in for getting lyrics to songs kareoke style (don’t ask!)
2. Listen to iTunes while typing away and you get your lyrics embedded
3. Tell iChat to listen to iTunes and post iChat status which is the artist, album and title so your chat buddies can see what you are listening to
4. iChat notifies Gtalk of the status messages and Gtalk treats them like regular IM
5. Play with friendfeed and turn on Gtalk status notifications become friendfeed messages. Oops. So now every song you play every 3 minutes is getting posted to http://friendfeed.com/richt
6. Also tell friendfeed to post everything it sees to http://twitter.com/richtong and now suddenly every song update appears on twitter too
7. Tell twitter to publish everything it does into facebook and now your facebook friends are wondering WTF
8. Tell wordpress’s twitter plugin to look for all twits and put them on your blog
9. Have real humans actually reading twitter, facebook, friendfeed or your blog and send you nasty WTF are you doing anyway, have you lost your mind
10. Rinse and repeat as needed. I’m going to bed!

Linguanaut is an easy site for learning simple phrases so you aren’t a complete alien when traveling. Here are some for Japanese:

Or in Vietnamese, here are some phrases, but you have to understand pronunciation first, these are reasonable close to chinese (e.g., neutral tone 5, rising 2, falling 4, questioning is 3, but no long tone 1)

No tone	ma		ghost
Raising	má	‘	mother
Falling	mÃ	`	that
Questioning		?	tomb
Falling-raising	mã	~	horse (literally)
Weighing		.	bine, burgeon

And they have lots more vowel sounds

a	as in ‘father’
ã	as a with longer pronounciation
â	as a in ‘black’
ai	as in ‘buy‘
ao	as in ‘now‘
au	as in ‘Australia’
âu	as in ‘go‘
ay	as in ‘day‘
ây	as in  ‘David’
e	as in ‘Claire’
ê	as in ‘Café‘
i	as in ’see‘
ia	as in ‘Asia‘
ie	as in ‘yes’
o	as in ‘door’
oa	as in French ‘moi‘
oã	as in ‘lack’
oai	as in ‘why‘
oay	as in ‘Uruguay‘
oe	as in  ‘where‘
oi	as in ‘choice’
ô	as in  ‘Bordeaux’
ôi	as in ‘toy‘
	as in ‘teacher‘
	like “er-ee“
u	as in ‘zoo‘
	slightly like  “Mercury”
ua	as in  ‘Ecuador’
	between “oo” and “ah“
uê	as in ‘question’
ui	like “oo-ee“
uôi	as in “way-ee“
	as in ‘queue‘
	as in ‘queue‘
	as in ‘queue-ee‘
	as in ‘new‘
uy	as u in French or ü in German
uya	as French ‘culture‘
uyen	as in ‘when’
uyu	as in ‘new‘
y	as in ’see‘
ye	as in ‘yen’
yeu	as in ‘yeoman’

And consonants are like english except for

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Tapulous’s Tap Tap Revenge Has Been Downloaded by 1 out of 3 iTunes Application Users – MarketWatch

Here’s a list by Game, penetration of installed base and the developer

Tap Tap Revenge 32% Games Tapulous, Inc.
Backgrounds 27% Entertainment Stylem Media
Touch Hockey: FS5 26% Games FlipSide5, Inc.
Facebook 26% Social Networking Facebook, Inc.
Pac-Man 24% Games Namco
iBowl 24% Games SGN
MySpace Mobile 23% Social Networking MySpace.com
Google Earth 22% Travel Google Inc.
Labyrinth 22% Games Codify AB
Pandora 21% Music Pandora Media, Inc.
AIM 19% Social Networking AOL
Flashlight 19% Utilities John Haney Virtual
Zippo Lighter 18% Lifestyle Moderati Inc. and Zippo Manufacturing Co.
Movies 18% News Flixster
Hangman 18% Games Jamsoft
Bubblewrap 18% Entertainment Orsome Software Ltd.
Lightsaber Unleashed 17% Entertainment Lucasfilm Ltd
Shazam 17% Music Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
Mazefinger 16% Games ngmoco
Cube Runner 16% Games Andy Qua Sol
Solitaire 15% Games Smallware LLC Crazy
Penguin Catapult 15% Games Digital Chocolate Inc.

Hey as a closet hip hop fan, check out Lady GaGa (which is a way better name than Stefani Joanne Angelin Germonotta. She was discover by one of my favorite singers Akon. Wrote songs for Pussycat Dolls. Apparently the genre is glam-rock whatever that is but reminds folks of Bowie and Queen. Mainly reminds me of europop to me anyway.

Other groups, showing how eclectic life can be is The Fray. I loved Over My Head from their debut album. Alternative rock, but a great sound. How to Save a Life was brilliant. You Found Me is a real favorite.

• nyc is bright, conference calls at borders on 57th and park #
• Nutty rich. NYC at 8am. Pickup in Seattle and now 130am in Nashville. Welcome to country music #
• @debbiechong it is like being in a scifi novel where the world is under a gigantic dome in space. Thank god for Hertz rent-a-escape in reply to debbiechong #
• Feeling sad and nostaligic. Found out Mike Negrin has passed away. Taught me so much about the channel but more importantly to be direct. #
• Redmond 1988. Just 20 years and three lifetimes ago but what an education on how to have fun working with great people to change the world. #
• Sometimes learning is easy and other times it happens the hard way. #
• Watching Taken. Liem Niesen is amazing. A good way to feel better after a hard day of competition #

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The Kindle is pretty cool in terms of screen, but the rest of it is pretty well, not elegant. Here are some tips that are pretty much mandatory for PDF conversion (why isn’t this in the box???). The keyboard is really terrible and the way the menus work is confusing, and why is there no email or web browser. So that is sad. I think folks would pay $20/month to make this a true wireless device. But worth it for the long, long battery life and the nice screen.

Kindle PDF conversion – View PDF on Kindle « Kindle 2, Kindle Books Reader 2.0 – Amazon Kindle 2 Review

PDF support on the Kindle is experimental – there are a few ways to convert PDF files for the Kindle. One is by using the MobiPocket Creator – MobiPocket Creator – a free software from MobiPocket. In addition to PDF you can easily convert Word, HTML, and .txt for the Kindle. If you do not use the link above and go to the MobiPocket Software page, then you will get a choice between Home edition and Publisher edition, choose MobiPocket Creator Publisher edition. The Home edition does not have the PDF option.

Another option is to use Stanza, which lets you ‘read eBooks on your Mac or PC and share with your iPhone, iPod Touch, & Kindle.

Opinion: Amazon Kindle does e-mail and more

The Kindle comes with a low-key, “experimental,” largely nonconfigurable Web browser. Called Basic Web, the Kindle browser supports cookies, JavaScript and SSL, but doesn’t support plug-ins like Flash or Shockwave, or even Java applets. It can’t read XML pages, either.

Opinion: Amazon Kindle does e-mail and more

From the Home screen, use the Select wheel [on Kindle 1, on Kindle 2, just press Menu] to choose Menu at the bottom, then select Experimental. Choose Basic Web, then press the Select wheel to bring up the Enter URL box. The box should already have “http://” after which you can type m.gmail.com (or go there from my Kindle page), then press the Select wheel on the Submit option to enter.

Now you’re on the mobile version of Gmail. Selecting, opening and reading e-mail is self-explanatory. However, sending e-mail requires some explanation. Here are some tips on how to do it.

* Press one of the Next Page bars until you see the Compose Mail option. Use the Select wheel to choose that grouping of links, then choose Compose Mail from the menu.
* Select the To: box with the Select wheel, then choose INPUT FIELD. Enter your recipient’s e-mail address and choose Done. Add a subject, then the body of your message in the same way.

* Click on the row of buttons under the main message box, then choose Send.
* You’ll get an error message that says, “Your Kindle is unable to access this Web site at this time. Please try again later.” Choose Close. Despite the error message, your e-mail was sent.

Press the Kindle’s Back button (under the right-side Next Page bar) to go back to the main Gmail page.

To reply to e-mail, select the message with the Select wheel, and choose the Subject line from the menu. Select Reply with the Select wheel, then, either Reply or Reply to All. After that, it’s just like sending a new message.

Opinion: Amazon Kindle does e-mail and more

Google offers a free online RSS feed reader called Google Reader. Although the “mobile” version of Google Reader is best for reading feeds on the Kindle, I recommend that you use the “normal” version of Google Reader to add and manage feeds. The address is www.google.com/reader/. You can add feeds you run into or if you have feeds in a PC-based RSS reader application, you can likely export your OMPL file, then import it into Google Reader.

Once you’ve got your feeds set up, here’s how to read them with the Kindle. The address for the mobile version is www.google.com/reader/m. Navigate there with the Kindle browser (or go there from my Kindle page).

Opinion: Amazon Kindle does e-mail and more

Using Google Calendar is super easy. Simply point your Kindle’s Basic Web browser at www.google.com/calendar/m (or go there from my Kindle page).

The mobile version of Google Calendar shows you appointments for today and tomorrow by default. Choose an item with the Select wheel to see details.