Big Blue Blog

As I said in my previous post about my new surround system, the Pioneer RCS-606H, I would come back with a review after testing it out.
After trying it out for almost two weeks I’ve ended up loving it - and disliking it a bit.
First of all the positive sides:

• Good sound!
• It looks good!
• Automatic setup of the system with a microphone.

And lots of negative stuff:

• The remote feels quite cheap - the bottom sliding cover is quite loose and seems like it will fall off any day.
• Lots of buttons on the remote I wish wasn’t hidden under the cover and some that could have been hidden.
• Do not store radio channels automatically.
• Only plays region 2 DVDs.
• “one touch copy” do not work - supposedly because my television do not support it, but there is no documentation of what kind of functionality the television must have to support it.
• Ugly menus. Seems like they were designed back in 1996.
• The Jukebox-functionality is crap! Terrible overview of the music you got on the hard drive and what a mess it is to actually copy music over from a external hard drive or DVD. First of all it only supports FAT drives, so no chance for me to connect any of my external drives, and secondary it only allows a maximum of 999 files -or- 99 folders with music. What the heck is going on - don’t Pioneer think I’ll fit more than 999 MP3s on the 150GB internal hard drive?
• No mute-button - would it cost Pioneer that much to implement something that simple?
• The TV-guide system “Guide Plus” is of course not supported with the channels I have (normal antenna)

Seems perhaps like the negative side is a lot bigger than the positive, but it’s not. All-in-all I’m quite pleased with it. All the negative stuff is just details - it’s good sound I want after all. It would however be smart of Pioneer to look at the design of the menus - the system is so much better than it looks like when you’re browsing through the horrible menus.

Yeah, I got a new job! Finally…

Have been on the look-out for a new job the last half year, but only been active the last month or so.
So a couple of weeks ago i read an advertising for a job in a the mobile community company Zedge which was looking for a few new people in PHP web development and MySQL database management. Stuff that I’ve good knowledge about since I’ve both been studying and working exactly with it the last couple of years.
Intrigued me to work for this company for many reasons; a relatively new company - only 3-4 years old, few people working there so that you feel that what you do doesn’t ‘drown in the crowd’. Although it was recently acquired by IDT Corporation, so now I’m part of a large American company - which can have certain advantages in the future!
Was first of all invited to a preliminary interview with ElanIT which handled the application process - scored really good on a couple of MySQL and PHP test (better than 97% of everybody who had taken the MySQL-test - just to brag :p) and thereafter invited to the second interview with the guys from Zedge.
That interview also went quite good since they called me back last Thursday and offered me the job

Gonna work at my current job at NTNU out January and start up at Zedge one of the few first days in February… looking forward to that!

Bought myself a home cinema system today to increase my listening & viewing pleasure of music and TV-shows/movies.

My lucky choice was Pioneer RCS-606H which has everything. Just let me list some of the features;

• 160GB harddrive recorder
• USB input to connect cameras, external harddrives, memory sticks and so on
• DV-input to record and show movies directly from a camcorder (which I don’t have though)
• Lots of input and output connectors
• Automatic setup of the speakers with a microphone
• A killer design - just look at the images!
• Cheap - got it with a friend-discount

Just need a huge (50″ +++) LCD screen to match it now

Won’t get it before Monday, so will get back next week with a small review of my first experience with it.

New year (soon) - so a new theme up. Enjoy!

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and the best for the holidays.