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Creative Rhomba 256 review

This is a long text, but since I don't have the time to properly edit it, I figured it would be better to publish it as it is than not at all.

Quick impressions

I've had my Creative Rhomba 256 MP3/WMA player/radio/recorder for about three days now and my experiences are mainly positive. I'm still not sure whether or not to return the player to the shop, though. [UPDATE: In the beginning of 2005 the player finally broke down after months of trying to fix things with Creative's customer service, who did an excellent job. There were issues with the memory not working and the screen, too. As a replacement, I got a Creative MuVo Micro N200, which I'm still using in January 2006.]

The user interface, although seemingly (completely) unlogical at first (see below), works well in general. I felt rather sweet downloading new songs from the web in school during my lunch hour - just because I'd already gotten bored of the ones that were there. This brings me to the first obvious problem: 256 megabytes is just so-and-so enough, unless I choose the songs to upload to the player carefully.

The player has two different visualization modes, which is nice: "Level" and "Wave", which correspond to XMMS' visualization modes "Analyzer" and "Scope", respectively. There's a button of its own for repeatedly playing back a part of a song. Useful for learning a difficult part of a song, for example?

Getting the player ready out-of-the-box was quick: after about an hour and fifteen minutes I had uploaded the memory full of songs and charged the battery, both via the PC's USB bus.

Linux trouble

Now while testing the recording functionality further, it seems that my player's memory is a bit broken (I get I/O errors while trying to move one of the recorded .WAV files to my PC). Also, neither XMMS nor MPlayer seems to be capable of playing the wav files at their full length: XMMS doesn't even open them (UPDATE: see paragraph below!). MPlayer starts playback 5 seconds from the beginning. Also, trying to move within the song with MPlayer's slider, the playback starts to sound really odd, just beeping with high frequencies etc. Moving within the song works with the buttons in MPlayer, though, and the player itself plays its own .WAVs just fine. This might be a problem of the media players or of my Linux box, too, but it seems strange, nevertheless...

[UPDATE on February 2nd: the .WAVs seemed to work fine on the Windows Media Player at my school. Later I found out that the player uses the MS ADPCM format, which xmms doesn't suppoer I guess, for those .WAVs. I managed to convert them to .WAVs XMMS and MPlayer can understand using SoX, a "a command line utility that can convert various formats of computer audio files in to other formats" - the GUI version kept crashing, though. I couldn't at first figure out how to convert from one .WAV format to another, so here's what I did: I converted the Rhomba-produced ADPCM .WAV into an .AIFF and back to .WAV again (SoX converts to another .WAV format by default). I don't know if I lost quality in the process, I guess not, but it works - please tell me if you know a better way of doing this (=.

The one experienced I/O error still troubles me, though...

Getting deeper...

Also, remembered another obvious flaw with the player: once the lithium-ion rechargeable battery that comes with(in) the player dies after hopefully a couple of years of usage, you probably won't be capable of replacing it since it's built in and Creative probably doesn't sell those separately - not that I know of at least.]

Tried to switch the mode from record/listen recordings mode to MP3 playing mode while the player was playing a radio recording, and the player got stuck for a while (repeating half a second of a song again and again), but then recovered. All of the sudden I don't feel all that sure about this purchase. I couldn't reproduce this problem, though.

[Continues...]

{ There's more! See full article }

Sat 2004-01-31 22:33 in tech No comments #link

n-e-c-k-l-e-s-s

Two rather violent movies today: just finished Kill Bill, earlier we saw The City of God, which I actually liked. Jennitys has spent the day with me, it's been nice. Elina was here since yesterday until this morning. I feel like a this place is a bit of a friggin' motel. Not that I mind, though.

Managed to screw up my Windows partition while using it a couple of times after a week's break. The newest version of Mandrake Linux seems grown enough for me to use full time. Anyway, that currently messed up partition contained, for example, the only copies of most of the photos I took during last year, so I have a strong will to get that friggin' NTFS fixed. Most of the other data had just been backed up, though.

Been using my Creative Rhomba 256MB for a couple of days now and it's been a pleasure. Will post a review tomorrow.

I still feel like my life's just floating by me slowly and strangely, my hands have immaterialized so that when I try to grab a hold, I just see a hand going through the solid matter. I'm empty.

In addition, it greatly annoys me to realize time and time again how clumsy my English is, these days.

Fri 2004-01-30 22:50 in diary No comments #link

"montako hölmöä tunnet?"

It's been a while. Life feels like it's passing me by at a speed that's a bit difficult for me to follow. I got a job for the Spring and the Summer (99% sure), now I'll just have to reschedule my studies since I'm currently on more courses than I can handle, provided that I have to work at the same time, too.

I ordered the Creative Rhomba 256 MB MP3 player, not sure if it was a wise choice. Anyway, going to get it today I think.

Last Friday, I was at Kräsä's (Kansan Raamattuseura / "People's Bible society") evening for the first time this year. We read some Bible, drank some tea and sung some songs. I liked it, and I already know quite a few people so I need not just sit in the corner alone (x.

Today, our small Bible reading group is coming to my place. But before that, a long day of school from 10 until 17. It's funny that it feels so terribly long, after all in high school it was entirely possible to have a day that lasted from 8 to 17 or something.

Wed 2004-01-28 09:04 in diary No comments #link

Testing, testing.

Did an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry test...

My results. Yeah, at this very moment I'm rather useless (=.

Fri 2004-01-23 17:57 in diary No comments #link

rikkoisikin

It's a beautiful, frosty morning. There are no new responsibilities to take seriously, just lots of school work. I feel rather good about most things. Getting employed for the summer might be an idea, though. Looking for office chairs on furniture stores on the net.

I gave up the amateur acting thing I mentioned having been in a week ago. I made an enormous stress out of it although it hasn't really even started yet, and in the end I don't think I wanted it after all.

Ought to pay the rent.

Fri 2004-01-23 11:09 in diary No comments #link

Walk on by

Written in the beginning of December 2003, a modification of a glimpse of my reality on some day follows.

He was just walking out of the shopping centre as he noticed some_bikes that were by the wall, casting morning shadows pretty enough for for him to photograph. Just as he was focusing his lense on the bikes some cars, and some people too, went by - also casting shadows and making photo shooting just a bit harder. He got his photo taken anyway, and while further approaching the university he had been heading to, he went through in his mind a hypothetical discussion:
- Well, it isn't the end of the world anyway, if I happen to pass by here while you are photographing?
- Actually it is, for those shadows. You know, every time someone passes by, shadows die and are reborn. But then, I suppose, the end of the world probably isn't such a big deal.
- For shadows, you mean?
- Indeed, for shadows - but then again, who's to tell who of us really is a shadow, and who... isn't?

When he - let's call him Mere for practicality's sake - got to the road, which he was expected to cross, he noticed a_pole, to which some traffic signs were (or had been) attached. He now thought:
-Isn't that a marvellous piece of street furniture, and people probably don't... usually notice it.

So to make it noticed, he took out his camera again and tried to focus it on the pole. But before shooting, he noticed someone who was about to walk past him, just between him and the pole.
Now he was wondering which of the two would this passer-by do: would he just walk by ignorantly of the shooting taking place, or would he stop for a while, allowing the shooting to take place before ignorantly passing by?

To his surprise, this passer-by did neither of the two. In fact, he noticed very well what was happening and just before walking by, he rose his hand up to greet Mere - who, of course, was a stranger to him and vice versa. For the rest of the day, Mere was troubled by the question: why would anyone do such a silly thing?

Still, Mere had enjoyed the smile on this stranger's face.

Also, a_leaf was involved.

Mon 2004-01-19 00:43 in poetry No comments #link

weekend photos

Kindly enough, Dratini on IRCNet offered to use his camera to get the photos uploaded, so I'll show you some of them.

On Friday evening, Emil decided to play with all kinds of old jevelry. I was made into what Leena said looked like John Lennon. Emil got decorated, as well.

That night, I found something peculiar in the toilet: They use design patterns producing cotton_sticks? Or is it just the box? Also starring: a censored tooth floss box and my Estonian ice tea bottle reborn into an tooth brush container, painted with my newly bought pink marker pen.

Originally, it says "Burana - luotettu" on the back of the University of Tampere calendar. But now that I got so carried away using my new markers... ("Jumala - luotettu?" means "God - trusted?").

Finally, after waking up together with Emil on Sunday morning, I had to take another photo (edited indeed) of him.

Sun 2004-01-18 22:11 in diary No comments #link

bloody stupid

I left my digicam cable at Helsinki AGAIN so I'm not capable of uploading the photos. I should definitely go through my bookmarks section, being VERY selective about what to keep. It's pretty dead there right now.

For some weeks now, I've been a lot into SCREAMING on the net.

Sun 2004-01-18 19:20 in diary No comments #link

quite elementary

A weekend with Emil did good for me. The fear has gone away - the downside is that I'm again a bit arrogant towards certain parts of... everything x). He was in a bad flu and I think I got some of it. Today went to the spy museum and the Moomin museum with the aforementioned Germans. Also Hankku joined us for some Chinese food and the Moomin thingy. Then I got inspired to borrow a Kierkegaard book (I've borrowed several of them several times but haven't finished but one) and a Moomin book and a book the name of which is something like "Jesus and Sokrates".

I should learn to use this language some day.

Sun 2004-01-18 18:33 in diary No comments #link

emollient r

I woke up about an hour ago. Haven't slept that well in quite a while. Now the world seems a lot less frightening than it did when I woke up "in the middle of the night", at nineish in the morning, when I thought I would wake up.

About yesterday's experiences in acting... I think I'll have problems integrating. doing my own thing on the stage is one thing and it's alright if someone reacts to it somehow, but actually interacting is still very hard. Also, especially if I'm out of strength like I was yesterday, improvising can get very hard, since my imagination just locks up and I might end up repeating the same words over and over again.

And now, hours later than I was supposed to, heading to Helsinki.

Fri 2004-01-16 14:08 in diary No comments #link

dimbran

It's been a _very_ exhausting week. School stress, people meanness stress. Fighting at aukea (in Finnish - see the work "loputon välivalo" if interested in knowing what the trouble was about).

Today an "amateur theater club" (or something) started. It was great, only wish I hadn't been in the condition I was - having slept 3 and a half hours the previous night and not having eaten enough. The director seems to know what she's doing well. This time, we did many kinds of improvising and tried to get to know each other. I got disappointed in myself in a couple of ways, but I was good enough for the first time ever.

It's an international thing, there are people from Turkey, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, France, Vietnam and some others too. It's going to last for this Spring and then before summer we'll have a show. I don't yet know what to think about it but... it'll probably be great (=. I was surprised of how good many of the people there were already.

Afterwards I got very tired and everything seemed very sad and scary, got a bit paranoid about people. Hankku came over for a while and gave me a hug and we talked quite a bit. It helped.

Tomorrow: Helsinki. Babysitting Emil until Sunday morning.

Fri 2004-01-16 01:43 in diary No comments #link

Papa

The world is so very
FIN kolkko (a): gloomy, dismal, cheerless, grim, sad, desolate, dreary, gaunt, disconsolate
right now. Listening to Alanis Morissette and it's kind of comforting. My sleeping rhythm is screwed, slept four hours in the night and then took a four-hour nap at about two in the afternoon. A couple of hours ago I met Ada and Alex the first time in about half a year, a very pleasant cup of tea to say the least. (=

Promised to go baby sit Emil for the weekend. My sister Anna is moving to Sweden to study and my dad is going to help her getting all the stuff there. Then, on Sunday, our German friends Jennifer and Lisa are coming to visit Tampere.

Just studying without much motivation. I wonder... where's this life going.

Tue 2004-01-13 23:41 in diary No comments #link

Knoppix

Testing Knoppix Linux, and everything seems just fiiiine. I burnt it on a CD-RW yesterday and now, having forgotten all about it, the machine booted up from the CD. this is very nice, I'll tell you.

Sun 2004-01-11 13:35 in diary No comments #link

trumpet brain squinched

Saw the movie Adaptation. Another "meta" kind of story, a bit like John Malcovich. Done by the same team, too I guess. I like the mood it put me in, although stolen.

There are too many things I can't write about here. Got to think about what they think of me, got to refrain from writing about anything deeply personal from which someone might recognize himherself.

Thinking about writing. I wrote it in Finnish but I guess I'll translate it although I wouldn't really want to

____

The society adores the individuals who are genious
who suffer, but who are genious
who hate, really loathe themselves and cannot live in their little worlds
the society sucks everything out of them, for they know how to say what other's cannot (and just because other people get inspirations out of their work is said to prove that their suffering has been worth it)
it is said that creative agony is something to strive for
that a diamond gets worn smooth to its true form
surely one can see any road as the path that God gave you
afterwards
but what if the authors should just keep the works inside their heads
or at least not write just because their job is to
write
is writing a specific works good to the world?
opening people's understanding to some spacific subject?
you just can't know
"If just one person has experienced or understood something studying my works, it's been worth it"
that's just crap it seems, no way that works is the only one with the help of s/he could have had that experience
alright, but if writers didn't write of purely selfish motives
would any of the genious works of lifetimes ever get written?

Sun 2004-01-11 04:18 in diary No comments #link

painted water and nails

So, referring to the previous entry, for the first time of my life I spent as long as 36-38 hours awake and went to sleep at about 20:00 Tuesday evening. Of course ithought this would normalize my sleeping rhythm, which it did, until I and Hankku stayed up until two or three in the morning last night. Also Eepa visited me yesterday (=.

School started and my motivation isn't as high as it was in the Autumn... lots of courses which I don't know whether I'm really going to finish.

Thu 2004-01-08 20:05 in diary No comments #link

morning sunshine

The sun is about to rise (I see it... I think). I haven't gone to sleep yet so I decided to try to not sleep before the following night. Perhaps, just perhaps I'll fall asleep at the rather optimal time of nine in the evening and wake up early in the morning, then.

Going to take a walk now.

Tue 2004-01-06 08:30 in diary No comments #link

Lost in no space at all

The weekend passed me by. Took some nice photos and watched Toy Story 2 with Iikku and Elina at their place. It was wonderfull.

I finished my tree drawing application, and you can actually download and test it. You should at least download ReDash.jar from that directory. If you're on Windows, you can get run.bat too, put it in the same directory as ReDash.jar and double click it once they've both finished downloading. This should run the app. On other operating systems, you will need to open a console and type something like "java -jar ReDash.jar" in the directory you happened to download ReDash.jar.

Of course, all of this requires you to have the Java runtime, and a pretty new one, too - specifically, 1.4-something. There's a version of it for Windows in that aforementioned address, and that's where it'll stay until I get Sun lawyers in my back telling me I can't redistribute their software.

I'm probably going to publish the app in open source later this spring, but I'll have to check and recheck everything before that (also, the code isn't quite commented enough yet).

Mon 2004-01-05 16:42 in diary 1 comment #link

got smileys? well yes, ma'am I got'em loads

irc-galleria.net/MikuzA&image_id=346618
irc-galleria.net/Hazler&image_id=1134841
irc-galleria.net/TSTM&image_id=4293
irc-galleria.net/coal^9&image_id=355979
www.emotioneric.com/

Sat 2004-01-03 17:36 in links No comments #link

Battle Cry test

And from the dooms of IRC come all these frightening URL's: behold, the Battle Cry test:

Who is that, rampaging on the tundra! It is Idlid, hands clutching a piece of chainlink fence! And with a low bellow, his voice cometh:

"I'm going to contort you backwards in time, and throw you out the airplane door!!"

Astonishingly enough, about one minute after I took the test, it seems to no longer work (Error 404). I must have broken it! BUAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!

For comfort, I'll throw you with another IRC link.

Fri 2004-01-02 04:20 in diary No comments #link

älä syö johtoja

The year began coding Java and watching the movie Punch Drunk Love. According to some review the movie is a romantic comedy, but in my opinion, as Elina ever-so-well described it, it's more like a neurotic love drama.

Nothing much, really.

Thu 2004-01-01 18:07 in diary No comments #link