Let me start by saying that I don't know much about audio, but I do know what I like. Audio and what constitutes "good sound" is so subjective that it makes me nervous to write about it. But my recent experience with a class of headphones, that I wouldn't have even considered before, was so surprisingly good that it has motivated me to write about it and share it with the world.

I was late to the whole iPod thing, clinging on to my Discman for what was probably far too long. Initially I was excited to get my 5G iPod—but then I listened to it. The sound was awful! Especially compared to that of my Discman.

To be clear, I'm not talking about compression here. Yes I hate that too! For me 256 Kb/s just crosses the threshold into "acceptable". This story is the same even with lossless encoding.

The first thing I tried was to swap the headphones to those that I used with my Discman. No joy. They gave great sound on my Discman, but crap sound on my iPod. At this point I thought I may have bought a faulty iPod. Luckily my work situation at the time gave me access to a great number of music players, so I was able to try my Sony headphones on many other iPods. But, no, the sound was still not comparable to what I was used to.

At this point I had begun to understand that there was a growing acceptance of the lowering of the standards that constitute quality sound, especially amongst younger people. Many journalists claim that the initial success of the iPod was due to its integration with the iTunes Music Store—but this Americocentric view is bollocks since the iTunes Music Store took many years to reach the rest of the world, during which time the iPod had already risen to success. My guess is that the success of the iPod and the general lowering of the level of what constitutes acceptable sound, is due to the popularity of Kazaa (still one of the most downloaded programs of all time) and programs like it, and the ease with which low quality MP3s could be copied. This was a disappointing realisation.

I then followed a common train of thought: to increase the sound quality I had to increase the cost and size of the headphones. I knew I wasn't alone in this thinking since I have seen many people walking around with a massive set of headphones with a lead that ends in an iPod. At this stage I had two pairs of headphones: one pair that sat in the funnel (auricle) of the ear that I had used with my Discman, and a second large pair of "cans" that I connect to my home stereo. Neither were particularly cheap headphones, each costing around $200 AUD. Hooking up my large pair did improve the sound, but still not as good as my previous Discman setup. Luckily my flatmate is an audiophile (the crazy guy recently purchased two lengths of speaker wire at a cost of £150 GBP a metre) who owns several pairs of ludicrously priced headphones that he allowed me to try. Again there were improvements, but there were facets of the bass in particular that annoyed me, so no joy there either.

I tried an experiment where I plugged my iPod into my home stereo (by the way Yamaha make incredible amplifiers for the cost) and listened using the various headphones at my disposal. It was an incredible improvement! So much so, that listening in such a situation becomes quite acceptable.

At this point I gave up, concluding that the iPod loving world had gone mad. I now only ever used my iPod for spoken word podcasts. I could not listen to music on it without the use of an amplifier, the sound was just too woeful.

Last month I travelled to the United Kingdom. On the bus from Heathrow I listened to a couple of podcasts, and when I was finished I packed away my Sony headphones. As I did so I thought about how they had lasted through the last eight years, and how they must have suffered abuse at the hands of friends who had borrowed them over that time. The next day I wanted to finish listening to a podcast, I pulled out my iPod and headphones to find that one of the earpieces was no longer working. The irony...

I needed new headphones. Ultimately two facts guided my purchase. Firstly having traced the fault to the plug in my Sony headphones I was sure that once I returned home I would be able to repair them—so I didn't want to spend a lot of money. And secondly the increased popularity of headphones that sit right in the ear canal. I wasn't very keen on trying these "noise insulating" headphones (as they are marketed) but then I remembered my initial skepticism to the headphones that first stepped into the human ear and rested in the auricle. (When was that? Late Eighties?) I took this as an opportunity to experiment with headphones of this type, and if I didn't like it I'd simply repair my old pair.

I really didn't want to spend too much on these headphones as I was sure that I wouldn't like the type. I thought they would probably be uncomfortable and I was still thinking that "bigger is better" when it came to sound.

I settled on a pair of JVC headphones. I had seen them at many record stores for around £16 GBP ($33 AUD), and I was willing to pay double this, but I later saw the same headphones for £10 GBP and couldn't resist the bargain. I took them home, plugged them into my iPod, and dialled up one of the three "dance" tracks I have. I could not believe the sound for what I had just paid!

Having used these headphones for a few days I have discovered a few caveats. Firstly it's important that a seal can be maintained with your ears, else the bass falls away (there is a tiny bass port on the outside of each headphone to equalise the pressure). I find sometimes when I smile or adjust my sunglasses that the seal breaks, and I have to apply some pressure and a twist in order to reseal them. More expensive sets come with several different sizes of plugs in an effort to make them compatible with a wider range of people, I was just lucky that the pair I bought were the right size for me. Secondly, because of the seal, sound inside your head or the wires leading to the headphones is amplified. If you're eating something crunchy, walking too heavily, or if something brushes the wires, then a dull interfering sound is produced. And in the quiet of night I can sometimes hear my heartbeat and breathing during the silence between songs, which is a little weird. And thirdly, you'll be more aware of your level of aural hygiene—enough said. Conversely if you have particularly "dry" ears then you may have trouble forming a seal.

The problem with the iPod must be one of power. I guess that they simply don't have the power needed to deliver bass to a driver that is more than a few millimetres in diameter. This is disappointing and wasn't a problem with my Sony Discman. I guess this may be to increase battery life, something which was heavily marketed in the past, and because good audio was something not needed by the legions of MP3 listening kids who drove the iPod to success.

If you listen to music on an iPod, then ear canal or "sound insulating" headphones are definitely worth a try. They have allowed me to enjoy music on my iPod for the very first time.

When I last installed Ubuntu to a USB flash drive I don't recall being offered the "Clock uses UTC" option (aka GMT). Perhaps this was a side-effect of the "use entire disk" option, whereby the installer assumed that Linux would be the only operating system to be used on the computer. In any case each time I alternated between Windows and Linux the time would be wrong. This didn't happen when I installed Ubuntu next to Windows on my own laptop, the clock was correct within each operating system. So perhaps if you are dual-booting, the Ubuntu installer correctly sets the clock to use local time.

I was unable to find the "Clock uses UTC option" within the Gnome control panels. I know that I have seen it before, but I've tried so many different flavours of Linux that I can't recall when I last saw the option.

Here are the steps I followed to set the clock to use local time instead of UTC. I've copied these instructions from a source I failed to note down, but kudos to whoever it was.

Currently myself and my laptop are on opposite sides of the planet—not a desirable situation for any geek. I do however have access to an early Centrino laptop, an Ubuntu 8.04 DVD, and a 4GB flash drive. Needing some nix time, and not wanting to alter the state of a hard drive that wasn't mine, I completed a full install of Ubuntu to the flash drive.

This was a full install following a tutorial found here on pendrivelinux.com. The only step in the installation that varies from the expected is that you need to check that the bootloader is indeed installed to the flash drive by clicking "advanced" on the penultimate screen.

Manufacturers of modern flash drives assure us that due to "wear levelling" that such a drive should last many years in this situation—your mileage may vary. The performance of my generic flash drive is not as good as that of a hard drive, but is acceptable once the computer has booted. From memory, there was about 1.2 GB of space left after install. The Ubuntu installer chooses an appropriate amount of swap memory based on the available drive space. Even though this computer has 1 GB of memory installed, cat /proc/meminfo shows that the swap space is 224868 kB, much smaller than the usual "dumb" setting of "double the RAM".

There was one bug however. After installation the login screen would appear, but after logging in, I would be greeted by a blank screen. I followed a workaround posted here on bugs.launchpad.net. Firstly you have to login on an alternate terminal (Ctrl+Atl+F1) and remove the X11 lock by sudo rm /tmp/.X0-lock. And then issue the command startx and configure GDM for autologin by opening "Login Window" within "Administration". I did so and now all is well.

Ubuntu is beginning to impress me. I'm really liking it!

Just a week or so after I installed 7.10, 8.04 was released. Just the one wee problem when upgrading...

After upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04 3D performance plummeted to 5% of the previous glxgears score, falling from about 2000 fps to about 100 fps. Previously in 7.10 I had installed xserver-xgl to get the 3D to work. Now removing that...

...the glxgears score gains back ground to 1200 fps. Still not as much as before but much better than 100 fps (and ppracer now runs again).