Thoughts and Non Thoughts

It's in Taguig City, Philippines. It's even called Venice Grand Canal Mall . 😀

Noticeable difference on an iPad Air (1st version 2013). Well worth the upgrade. And the upgrade went smoothly too. I also discovered that the iPhone 5 won't upgrade to 10.3. Oh well...I think that would be asking too much. 😀

When traveling and you want to avoid bill shock from roaming charges, you can use Viber for calls, especially when there's wifi (say, in a hotel). Just don't forget to turn off "Viber-In Calls" on your settings. If you keep this on, your Viber calls could be diverted to regular roaming calls, with roaming charges.

This cart sounded best at a tracking force of 2.1 grams. It's the final touch to the fine tuning of the system. In audio nirvana right now.

Grabbed a few LPs from Burlington Square in Singapore, including the one playing above, along with some vacuum tubes. Now I haven't tube rolled in a long while, but neither have I spent a lot of time with my tube system, favoring instead the plug-and-play LSA integrated. But with a couple of hours on my hands, decided to try the Mullard 12ax7 reissues in the tubed phono stage (Jolida JD9). It was great. But like any system, you change one part you have to adjust the whole thing. So what started as a phono tube tweak turned out to be a changing of the tubes. Jolida JD9: Mullard 12ax7 reissues are in, Tungsol gold pins (New Sensor) are out. Tono Violin pre-amp: RCA black glass 6sn7s are in, Raytheons are out. CJ MV55: Svetlana EL34s are back in, Tungsol reissues are out. The result: bliss. Test records: Style Council's Café Bleu. Simon and Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemarie and Thyme. Oh, and Ed Sheeran sounded great.

Update today to iOS 9.0.2 on the iPad Air went smoothly. Good experience so far. Apps such as Flipboard load faster. Overall much smoother, no jerkiness. Worthwhile upgrade.

http://malacanang.gov.ph/8143-the-philippine-revolution-by-apolinario-mabini/ "When it is considered that Mr Aguinaldo was primarily answerable for insubordination against the head of the Katipunan of which he was a member... the motive for the assassination cannot be ascribed except to feelings and judgments which deeply dishonour the former; in any case, such a crime was the first victory of personal ambition over true patriotism... The death of Andres Bonifacio had plainly shown in Mr Aguinaldo a boundless appetite for power, and Luna’s personal enemies exploited this weakness of Aguinaldo with skillful intrigues in order to encompass Luna’s ruin... With Luna.. fell the Revolution, and, the ignominy of that fall bearing wholly on Aguinaldo, brought about in turn his own moral death, a thousand times more bitter than physical death."