Social Experiments http://socialexperiments.posterous.com Most recent posts at Social Experiments posterous.com Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:39:00 -0800 iPhone playing two tracks at once - Trance Mandarin http://socialexperiments.posterous.com/iphone-playing-two-tracks-at-once-trance-mand http://socialexperiments.posterous.com/iphone-playing-two-tracks-at-once-trance-mand

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In my preparations for my upcoming China trip, I've been listening to some audiobooks to give me a headstart with Mandarin. I don't expect it to teach me huge amounts in the time that I have, but anything I expose myself to can't hurt.

While listening to audiobooks is OK, they can get bland. It's just voice. Literally, voice. At least there are a few different voices, but I am always aware that the rest of the spectrum can be filled up with something. Hence I was determined to find a way to play music at the same time as listening to these podcasts. On a computer, it's easy - open up two media players and run them at the same time. But on iPhone it's a little more difficult.

I imagined that there must be an app out there that allowed you to have separate audio streams with their own levels, mixed into a final channel. I began by searching in the App Store for 'simultaneous songs/audio', and found no results. I tried forums as well - there were a couple of posts on the Apple Community Forums from 2010 that had no useful responses. One suggestion mentioned reversing those y-audio cables you can get to split an audio signal into to headphones.... bit of a shame. As it wasn't a huge problem to me to have music with my audiobooks, I decided to let it be for the time being, and just put up without the music.

Then on the bus on the way back from the east, I had a stupidly brilliant thought. That app I was imagining with separate audio streams already exists and I've been using similar apps for the last eight years... it's a digital DJ deck! I felt so stupid. I immediately downloaded Djay as it's constantly refered to as a brilliant app and is now on sale for $1.99 over Thanksgiving.

And quite rightly, it's a wicked piece of programming. I run ASOT on one deck, and then load my audiobooks into the other deck. There are a number of shortcomings - the first is that a 200MB, 2hr ASOT podcast takes about three minutes to load into the deck. This is fine as you can listen to the audiobook first, and then the ASOT kicks in when it's ready. The second is that although there is an automix function, you can't have one deck continually push track after track from a playlist once the previous track finishes. The automix is for mixing between decks. But that's fine - loading tracks is a breeze and manageable.

The app as well is buttery smooth. No doubt it is killing my battery - I had it crash my phone already today, but then I don't think having a full 2hr podcast on the decks is the way it was meant to be used.

At the end of the day, it works and I'm happy. Now I've just gotta learn to speak. Zai jian!

 

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Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:08:00 -0800 The simple hack to sleeping with aircon WITHOUT getting a sore throat http://socialexperiments.posterous.com/the-simple-hack-to-sleeping-with-aircon-witho http://socialexperiments.posterous.com/the-simple-hack-to-sleeping-with-aircon-witho

As an foreigner living in a new country, there are certain things that you have to adjust in your lifestyle to make your living as comfortable as possible. These adjustments change all sorts of different things about me. For instance, when I spell my name, Singaporeans get confused when I say 'E' with an Australian accent. I pronounce it like the 'ea' in sea, kind of long and drawn out. For some reason, it gets heard as an A, or they just get confused completely. Hence, now I say my 'E' as in the 'ee' in 'bees' - it's shorter and sharper. For some reason, it just makes more sense to them.

Other things get are expected to change. For instance, your clothing adapts to a new climate too. That's a pretty normal expectation. However, something that I did not ever think I would change because of moving to a new country would be the way I sleep. 

You see, coming from Perth, I am used having my best sleeps in a relatively cool room. And that's normal, because during summer, the evening breeze cleans out the hot air, and in winter my bed has so many different rugs and covers over the sheets that it's the equivalent of sleeping under a good serving of lasagne - layered and hot.

Being in Singapore, the air is humid. It's muggy, and at night, this is no exception. Hence, I sleep with the air conditioner on. That's pretty normal. But what I also learned was normal was to wake up with a dry throat. I talked to some people about it, and they all complained, so I realised that it was probably something that couldn't be avoided. 

It took me five months do try to do something different, as having a dry throat did not make me happy. So one day, I did something that I thought was so ridiculously simple that I was already convinced that it would not work. And I was 100% wrong.

I slept with my mouth closed.

I woke up the next day with my mouth closed. But my throat was fine. Granted, I had to train myself over the next few days to keep my mouth shut when sleeping, but now sleeping with my mouth open feels very awkward.

I was convinced that maybe this wasn't as obvious as I thought it should be when my boss in July complained about dry throats too. I told him about my sleeping hack, and he laughed. But then he said he hadn't thought of that and would give it a go. And it works. 

So there - we change all sorts of things to adapt to lifestyles. And sometimes the simplest changes can be the most effective. I presume when I am living in China, there will be many changes to aspects of my life. And the best part is, I'm so excited to make those discoveries that I can't wait.

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