Can you hear me now?

More simple bite size tat for you.

Have you ever been in a situation where, when on the phone, you can't hear the other person because of a room full of cunts who won't shut up or other such annoying background noise? You probably do what everyone else does and put one finger in your free ear to block out the noise. This never really works and the reason for that is that most cell phones and just about all land lines are "full duplex".

This means that the signal you hear in the ear piece is mixed with your own voice from the mouth piece - and by extension all the background noise too.

Phones were designed like this because the engineers of the time believed that if they mixed in the sound of the callers own voice into a conversation said conversation would sound more "realistic".

So, if you want to hear someone better on the phone, cover the mouth piece. This stops the above from happening and creates what is called the "cocktail party effect".
Yes, you'll still hear the cunts speaking inane nonsense in one ear but your brain can now block that out. Like when you're at a party and the room's full of separate conversations but you can focus on the one you're involved in.

A simple sketch of this is...

Voice - left ear - BRAIN - right ear - room noise.

And when on a phone with an uncovered mouth piece it goes like this...

Voice with distored room noise - left ear - BRAIN - right ear - room noise.

That's harder for your brain to unmix.

Planets make awesome ambient music

Well, hello there! It's been a while, for lots of reasons, all of which I shall not go into.

So, as I've said before, Space is fucking awesome, here's another reason why...

Below is a video of the planet Jupiter making some truly awesome ambient music. As they explain in the video, even though space is a vacuum, these sounds are electromagnetic vibrations that Voyager et al are designed to pick up.



What follows is someone explaining it a lot better then I can...

From an original CD: JUPITER NASA-VOYAGER SPACE SOUNDS (1990) BRAIN/MIND Research
Fascinating recording of Jupiter sounds (electromagnetic "voices") by NASA-Voyager. The complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind , planetary magnetosphere etc. create vibration "soundscapes".

Jupiter is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium. The entire planet is made of gas, with no solid surface under the atmosphere. The pressures and temperatures deep in Jupiter are so high that gases form a gradual transition into liquids which are gradually compressed into a metallic "plasma" in which the molecules have been stripped of their outer electrons. The winds of Jupiter are a thousand metres per second relative to the rotating interior. Jupiter's magnetic field is four thousand times stronger than Earth's, and is tipped by 11° degrees of axis spin. This causes the magnetic field to wobble, which has a profound effect on trapped electronically charged particles. This plasma of charged particles is accelerated beyond the magnetosphere of Jupiter to speeds of tens of thousands of kilometres per second. It is these magnetic particle vibrations which generate some of the sound you hear on this recording.
Visit http://www.inner-net.com/bmr/bmrpg2aa... for more sounds.

And here's a sort sonic representation of Huygens descent onto Titan.



Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens' motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe's heat shield hitting Titan's atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the camera cover and touchdown.

Sounds from a right speaker go with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer activity. There's a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens' signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes - one for each of instrument's 13 different science parts - that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters. During its descent, the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer took 3,500 exposures.

Amazing stuff.

There, I hope you liked that. I'll try and go back to this again at some stage. For now I have to read about fucking psycho-analysis. I fucking hate psycho-analysis.