I have a treat for you. [Click to play]
In the final few days of last semester, Misters Dave Brankin, the JSA ((Junior Semester Abroad. Dave was here for only one semester, September till December 2010.)) student of Chicago, and Mike Irving, the loveable postgrad from Vancouver ((From near to Vancouver, anyway.)), hosted an hour-long show on the University of St Andrews’ radio station, STAR ((St Andrews Radio.)).
It was the RockSoc’s slot in the broadcast schedule, so for their show Dave and Mike played some rock music from bands close to their hearts, such as Mother Mother, Pearl Jam and Wilco. The result was a mainly Canadian mix of sounds, but it was surprisingly not bad and even listen-to-able, in my opinion. Of course, YMMV. The best bit for me, however, was listening to my friends having a great time ((I miss Dave, and I’ll miss Mike when he leaves St Andrews later this year. So much.)).
I recorded the show ((Using a trial version of Ambrosia Software’s WireTap Studio. It worked beautifully.)), and here I make it available to download for your enjoyment:
[mp3 link, 1 hour at 60MB] – Right-click the link and choose to save it wherever you want.
I want to add a little bit in my defence before you listen to this. At some point you may or not hear my name mentioned in conjunction with David Gray’s. Please do not regard my request seriously. It was a joke, well, an in-joke/reference, that I hoped would elicit a slight chuckle of remembrance from the hosts, and perhaps a recounting of our epic Freshers’ Week Centurion ((The best way to bond.)). Sadly this didn’t happen.
Let Dave and Mike know what you thought of it, if you know them.
Happy new year everybody. It’s 2011.
Perhaps my favourite improvements ever added to iOS were those made to the music player app in iOS 3.0:
Search was a nice addition, variable-rate scrubbing very useful, and I use the 30-second rewind button all the time. But I find particularly the playback speed button the most indispensable. It has changed the way I listen to podcasts.
Since the release of iOS 3.0 in 2009, I have listened to most of my podcasts on the “2x” speed setting, with only one or two exceptions.
On a walk along West Sands back in December, I brought this up with my good friend Adam Kesby. He was horrified ((Again, I may well be telling lies.)). How could I do such a thing? Podcasts are supposed to be consumed the way that they are published, the way the creators intended. How can you even take it all in that fast? Surely you’re losing something?
I would have called him an arty snob if it hadn’t been for our clearly different perspectives.
Let me make a couple of things clear with this iOS technology:
- Changing the speed does not alter the pitch. When the speed is increased, the pitch is decreased, resulting only in an increase of tempo ((This is something that publishers should do when putting NTSC sound onto PAL media, to deal with the PAL speedup. It drives me mad: the speed of the audio increases, so by definition the frequency (pitch) of the audio increases as well. Why don’t they just compensate for this by then slightly reducing the pitch? Even Audacity can do it! This is something I intend to write about at a later date.)). It’s as if the podcasters had been speaking in a rush – that’s all.
- It doesn’t make everything sound like the Chipmunks!
- As the above screenshot shows, the half speed is not, as you would expect, half the speed of the original recording, and the double speed is not twice the speed. In fact, they are 0.8 and 1.5 times as fast, respectively. Weird.
- I found this out on another walk along West Sands ((Hey, I like the place, alright?)) recently, when I walked the length of the beach, listening to 40 minutes of a MacBreak Weekly episode on 2x – and there’s no way it took me only 20 minutes. After comparing the time reported as played with my watch, I could tell that the figure was closer to 1.5x
Today, on another walk ((Guess where to?)), this issue was again brought to my mind when I was listening to the third episode ((They brought the issue of listening to stuff on 2x on the second episode, but they talked about it at slightly greater length in this one.)) of Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann‘s new podcast, “Back to Work” ((I’ve still not decided if I like the show or not – it’s just that, in general, I like listening to anything with Merlin in it. Give it a try, but it might not be for you. It might not be for me.)). They’re not keen on the 2x practice, though their reasons are not very explicit. Dan is horrified that people might be listening to his podcasts sped up. “Shame on you”, he says to those who do it.
But… why? What’s so wrong about speeding up your podcasts a little?
We read books at our own pace. We look at paintings for as long or short as we like. Everyone’s happy with this. I also understand that if an art form allows a property to be controlled, then that property is considered to be part of the work, and that should be respected to appreciate the creator’s intent.
Yet podcasts – at least the ones that I listen to – are not art, and there is no conscious design in the pace of the speaking. The exception is when the audio is a performance, like fiction or comedy, which is why I listen to You Look Nice Today at the speed it is recorded. I always listen to audiobooks at their original speed, too.
Aside from a moral objection to increasing the speed of someone else’s work, what is wrong with listening to podcasts faster than they were recorded? Most interview, round-table and talk-show type podcasts are perfect for speeding up. They are unscripted, meaning that the speakers are thinking up words as they go along. Their speech is therefore quite slow, filled with “umms” and “ahhs”, and the result is that increasing the speed doesn’t decrease comprehension one bit ((If things start to get more technical, all you need to do is press the button twice and you’re back to normal.)).
As an aside: I listen to audiobooks at the unaltered speed, so sometimes the speed is still set to 1x when come to I listen to a podcast. I almost always notice straight away ((I even wonder if the speed has been set to 1/2x, it sounds that slow.)). It’s got to the point that I find it very uncomfortable listening to the natural podcast voices of certain people, like Leo Laporte, Dan Benjamin and Steve Gibson ((I generally won’t listen to a live podcast for this reason too: as well as knowing I can listen to it later in two thirds of the time, I will actually find the experience irritating.)). People can take so long to say almost nothing.
People can consume far more quickly than they can create: we can read faster than we can write, and we can listen much faster than we can speak. Technology allows us to increase the speaking of others towards the capabilities of our hearing, without losing anything.
The great benefit of listening to podcasts sped up, of course, is that it lets you listen to even more stuff! Your time is precious, and I highly recommend saving some by speeding up your chatty podcasts.
P.S. This was going to be a short post.
I’ve set myself half an hour in which to write, so I’m going to write.
WARNING. SHIT POST.
On a topic entirely unrelated to the subject of this post, I was wondering: on which day of the year are the greatest number of blog posts published? Is it even possible to tell? Perhaps the graph of blog postings against time has a positive derivative at all points, with no pattern discernible in the rising tide. Perhaps blogging varies with current affairs far more than any predictable pattern. Perhaps every day is essentially the same. Or, perhaps, as I suspect, blog posting is most common at particular times, such as the beginning of a year:
“My New Year’s resolution is to blog more.”
Yes yes yes. New Year’s resolutions are arbitrary and stupid, and I object to them on principle, too. But I don’t think it’s wrong to have aims. It just so happens that I do want to write more, and that we’ve just started a new year: 2011. So what? I want to keep this blog stocked up with fresh ideas – and just a touch of hubris.
My second aim is to stop blogging about blogging. I think that one will be harder ((If I ever write a novel, I bet the main character will be a young and troubled writer trying to work out how to make it in the world as a novelist. If I ever fall to such depths, you know what to do.)).
Today I decided to give my 1st-generation iPod touch ((From now refered to as my ‘original iPod touch’.)) to my older brother. 3 years ago, when I ordered that iPod, I gave him my 6-month old 5th-generation iPod in exchange for a TV ((His iPod survived for at least a good year after that, dying well outside the 12-month warranty.)). I didn’t need it any more, and he didn’t have an iPod. I took my music off, he put his music on, and we were done.
With an iOS device, you can’t just do that. It’s different. It’s not just a music player, it’s a complete miniature computer. If you were giving away your laptop, you’d take off your data, reformat the hard disk and then reinstall the operating system. It’s extremely easy to restore an iPod to factory settings: the problem is extracting your data beforehand. It’s really hard to do.
I lived on my original iPod touch for 3 years. It’s filled with emails, screenshots, saved images, bookmarks, calendar appointments, booking reading data, alcohol consumption data, high scores tables, eBooks… Basically, lots of shit. But it’s my shit, and my shit don’t stink. Some of that data is synchronised with the web or can be synced to a computer, but most is stuck ((I say stuck, but if I can view the data then it’s not actually stuck: I can then manually transcribe the data to a different location. It just makes it very difficult and laborious. What’s more, I don’t just want the data, I want the data inside my new iPod. I want to be able to manipulate it just the same as I could previously, but on this new iPod instead of the old.)) inside the app that created it, and I don’t want to lose it.
How can you deal with that? You either: say to hell with it and wipe the iPod, you painstakingly manually extract all of the data and then wipe it, you give it away still containing your data, or you keep it untouched.
- I don’t want to wipe my data. Maybe you would be happy to throw it away, but I wouldn’t.
- I no longer have the patience to go through apps, copying down high scores, copying down booking-reading statistics, emailing individual screenshots to myself ((My original iPod touch is not in a very healthy state: the computer no longer recognises it as a camera which is necessary to extract the photos and screenshots it contains.)). I can’t do it.
- By giving away the iPod, you run the risk of you forgetting to remove some private information ((Emails, for example, or saved passwords in the browser.)) and becoming embarrassed/compromised, you run the risk of the recipient accidentally deleting your data or losing the iPod, the data is not in your possession any more, and the recipient gets a sub-optimal iPodding experience ((See below about iTunes accounts)).
- By keeping it, you get to keep all of your data, but you may happen to be breaking a promise you made to your brother.
- Furthermore, as an aside, my original iPod touch was 16GB whereas my current iPod – bought as part of Apple’s Back to School promotion – has only 8GB of storage. When I travelled France for a month, that extra 8GB was invaluable for audiobooks and podcasts. I don’t want to give up that capability and storage – sorry brother. My decreased storage was something that had totally slipped my mind.
This wouldn’t have been a problem if I could have easily transferred all of my data from my old iPod touch to my new one, such that Peggle would have all the same game progress, my bookmarks would be the same, I would have the same notes on both iPods, ReadMore had the same databases, and stanza was filled with the same books. As far as I know ((There is a huge probability that I am just ignorant in this area and this thing whole is a huge waste of time.)) this is not possible ((That’s either a problem for the individual app developers, or probably for Apple as the developers of iOS. Having all data stored offsite on the internet (‘in the cloud‘ – Fuck I hate that phrase) would solve this problem too.)). I would then have wiped my iPod and given it to my brother.
Another difference between this and a laptop is the limitation of Apple being able to enforce licensing. Apps that I buy in the App store are tied to my iTunes account. This means that if I wanted to give my brother an iPod loaded with apps, I would also have to supply my iTunes password. This is not something I want to do for a number of reasons. Giving my iPod to my brother with the data still on it would have similarly required password sharing to occur, else he would not be able to sync his apps the iPod without losing my data.
I think it would be best if my brother buys his own iPod touch and starts from scratch, with a perfectly functioning device, his own apps, his own data, his own music, and his own iTunes account. Sadly I think he has a few more important things to buy first.
POST SCRIPT
I know this is a boring post. I know. I’m just upset that I had to go back on my word to my brother. I’m having to keep a piece of technology that someone else could be enjoying because I can’t adequately separate it and its data in order to keep what I need, and to give away the device in a suitable condition. Someone else should be able to use it – I don’t need to use it ((Except on long trips or as a backup iPod in case my new one breaks.)).
Fuck, what a shit post.
NB: I actually spent over 90 minutes on this post. Fuck. Now its 2:30am.
I want to express what I’m feeling right now. I want to capture the moment in a way that a camera never could. All I can do is try.
I’m drained. I’m grumpy. I’m thirsty. I have no energy or enthusiasm and I want to sleep for a month. I’m anxious ((Very new feeling, related to accommodation and the prospect of snow ruining my travel plans on Saturday. Can be ignored.)) and irritated and sad. Yet I feel intensely content and proud of myself.
What a bizarre amalgamation. Why would anyone ever feel like that? Why indeed. As odd a combination as it sounds, looking back, I can work out quite precisely how each feeling has arisen. Considering these reasons has lead me to one particular conclusion: 2010 was the best year of my life.
2010 has pretty much finished ((Surely nothing significant is going to change in the next two weeks? I hope not.)). All I have left of it is a bunch memories ((Including several thousands photos, and a much lighter bank balance.)), but soon, my memories are all I’ll ever want and all I’ve ever need from 2010. It turned out to be the most exciting, the most difficult, and the most rewarding 12 months that I’ve yet to obliterate.
The year started off well. In the last few days of 2009, just after Christmas, it snowed across much of Britain. Perth had a substantial covering of snow that lasted throughout January and much of February. It was the harshest winter that I’ve ever experienced – so harsh that, one day, the River Tay froze over for the first time in 25 years ((At the time I was down visiting my pregnant sister. That’s the thing I’m most disappointed to have missed in 2010. At least I got to step on a frozen canal, somewhat of a consolation.)).
In late January, my sister had her baby and I became an Uncle for the first time. Every time I see my nephew – which is not often enough, sadly, but I see him as often as possible – he’s even more adorable than the last. He’s quickly ((Astonishingly, disconcertingly, distressingly quickly.)) grown into the most fantastic kid who ever lived ((Sorry everyone else, but your baby just isn’t this awesome. And yours is ugly.)). Just a few weeks ago he took his first unaided steps, and I can’t wait until I can teach him some of my favourite kick-boxing tricks. I see him next in 2 weeks, for our New Year celebrations, when he’ll be about 11 months old. I’m really looking forward to it.
I went to stay with my sister again at the end of February. Carrying my 6-week old nephew in the sling across my chest, on long walks to the river, tucked under my coat against the winter chill – that was something so special and something that I’ll never forget ((He outgrew the sling many months ago. What a shame.)).
In the spring I looked after myself. I read books, watched TV series and films, and spent a lot of time in the garden: digging, weeding and planting. I bought a new bike. Mostly I just relaxed, taking it easy and enjoying a slower pace of life. Perhaps my gap year will be the only extended period of free time that I’ll ever have ((Who knows if we’ll ever actually reach retirement? But at least I already have a short, temporary retirement under my belt.)).
When my 19th birthday rolled by, I decided that shit needed to get serious. If I really did want to do something special in my gap year, I didn’t have much time left in which to do it. That evening, I displayed a previously unknown practicality and aptitude for planning, and booked a flight to Paris at the beginning of May along with a Eurostar back at the end. The rest of my plans eventually followed over the course of subsequent weeks. Planning a holiday is ridiculously stressful ((It’s weird that, considering that the aim of holidays, or at least a major one, is to reduce stress.)), particularly for a novice.
My trip was postponed at the last minute due to volcanic ash closing Edinburgh Airport 10 minutes before my departure. I think I’d nominate that as the worst day of my life. It was an utterly horrible experience: such crushing disappointment is almost unbearable after weeks of excitement, anticipation and worry; and my worst fears – that it’ll all go wrong and all your planning and expenditure was for naught – began to materialise.
It worked out well enough. In France, I spent what I now realise were some of the most interesting, fun and exciting days that I’ve had. It was another incredibly rewarding experience, particularly so because I had planned and executed the whole holiday by myself. It left me with a hunger for adventure and exploration.
I returned from France, and after a few days in London with my older brother I spent a few weeks in summertime Perth. It really is a most beautiful area, especially around May and early June. Around June, my work in the garden back in spring started to pay off, with fresh spring onions, lettuce, herbs and beans ready to eat. Just as my bumper strawberry crop began to ripen, I left to spend a month staying with various family members throughout England. The highlight was our annual epic bike trip camping trip to the Waddington airshow, this year including a certain nephew of mine. It was great fun.
For the rest of the summer, in Perth, I enjoyed the weather and the last of my free time. I got ready to come to university, which seemed to mean filling out countless forms and being unsure of what I was actually supposed to do. Finance, accommodation, registration: I did them all. I even bought a MacBook Pro.
By September 18th, 2010, I was ready to leave home.
My first semester at St Andrews has been a blur. Not that I’ve been drunk all the time (I haven’t, not all the time), and not because I’ve forgotten it, but just because it’s gone by so quickly and effortlessly ((That’s not to say that I’ve not put effort in, but that their haven’t been pains and worries.)). I’ve just been… living. Just like I had been doing in the rest of 2010, but even more so. I’ve lived in the moment, and that’s all I’ve been doing.
I think that’s been reflected in my lack of blogging, an activity I usually reserve for ideas and meditations on the past.
The following is the only thing, other than this post ((I’m doing for the first time what I thought I would be doing all the time when I bought this laptop: blogging in bed.)), that I’ve written for my blog in the last 3 months. It has been gathering dust on my hard disk, sitting unfinished ever since I started it on 27th October. You can see there reflection just wasn’t happening:
A month can hang around for an age, or it can zip by before you realise it has begun. This last month, like most great months, managed to do a bit of both.
It’s Wednesday evening, and I’m sitting on a grassy verge just above East Sands. It took me less than a minute to get here from my front door. The tide is in about as far as it usually comes – some of the waves are breaking against the sea wall – but I’ve seen it still higher ((The full Moon has only just passed, and that’s about the time that tides are least pronounced, I believe.)). The waves are less impressive and far smaller than they were at the weekend. Where those were awe-inspiring, these are calm and relaxing.
I reckon I’ll eventually get tired of living by the sea – the breezes, the smells, the gulls, the mists – and succumb to the boredom which eventually seems to arise after living in any place for too long. But, “eventually” can be a long time. Until then, and whilst I still can, I’ll enjoy this beautiful corner of Fife.
Winter’s coming.
Yes, I wrote that. But I feel that I owe it to myself to get it out there, because there’s a part of me in there, somewhere. Part of the October 2010 me, at least.
That’s been my 2010. So why am I feeling like I do?
I’m proud because I did so much of it by myself, something that I didn’t know I could do: I planned my travelling, I went travelling, I applied to university and successfully got everything else sorted out. I managed to change from a gap-year-with-no-work-to-do mentality back into hardcore maths ((And other subjects.)) far more easily that I would have anticipated.
I’m happy because I’ve had such a great time. Almost everything was fun. I have lived the last 3 months with – literally – as few and insignificant concerns as I think I ever have. I’ve not had much of a worry in the world, and that’s greatly improved my ability to live in the moment and so I’ve been far happier ((There’s no guarantee that the coming years will be better, indeed I expect that they probably won’t quite match 2010. I only know for sure that this year was better than all those that came before it.)). And I’ve met here some of the most kind, fun and interesting people ever – particularly Dave, Mike and Adam. I only wish I could have been as good a person in return.
I’m drained because I’ve been partying so god-damn hard and working even harder. It’s a nice feeling to have occasionally, but only if you know you’re going to have a chance to recharge – as I currently do.
I’m grumpy for precisely the same reasons – I’ve been on the go far too long – basically, for the last 3 months – whilst having almost no time alone. I find that, for me, it’s important to be alone for a while every now and then, to take things easy and just have time to think and reflect on your own. That’s something I definitely need to catch up on.
I’m sad because Mr. Dave Brankin, comedy hero and saviour of the children, is going back home to the States, after spending a semester at St Andrews and Albany Park. Tomorrow we have one last St Andrews hurrah, in the form of a late ((Or 11 months early.)) Thanksgiving meal. Thanks Dave, you’re the best. I’m going to miss you.
Finally, I’m irritated because my draining and grumpiness has coincided with Dave’s last few days in St Andrews. I can’t control when I’m going to have a huge workload ((Causing me to miss most of the infamous Day Party.)) and feel overwhelmed, but now that I have finished for the year, I have no excuse not to be on top form. I’ll be sure to get a good sleep tonight, so that I’m ready to face the world tomorrow. I’ll be with Dave in London this weekend, along with Mike, before they fly home from Heathrow. That’ll be a nice ending.
One thing which I think is conspicuous in its absence from my feelings is relief. When I left my final Great Ideas tutorial this afternoon, my final class of 2010, I didn’t feel suddenly liberated. I think that’s good – I’m not relieved that 2010 is over, I’m not relived that classes are over. What better confirmation do I need to know that I’m enjoying my course and enjoying life in general?
Laying here, eating Half Baked ice cream and typing ((This has been a real battle, to keep typing this. It’s taken me a good 5 hours to write this, it’s almost like an essay. I just want to fall asleep, and sleep wants to grab me by the face and pull me under. I had little left with which to resist. But now, several million words later, I’m just about done.)), I’m reminded that, in all, life is good. It’s just that, with good, will always come some amount of bad.
And so, sometimes, you’ll just feel shitty.
