 |
 |
 |
 |
those china earbuds i got from dealextreme ($2.85) weren't very good. contrary to some of the positive reviews, the ones i received sounded muffled. maybe that's how the kids like their music these days but it's not for me. they fit nicely and look good, but definitely a bad choice.
my earbud of choice used to be an old pair of koss plugs that i must've purchased almost a decade ago. it started not working a while ago, and i managed to squeeze some more life into it by resoldering a new input plug, but now i think the wires in one of the buds has frayed because i can only get mono audio now. it has a very simple design - the part that goes into the ears is this soft self-expanding foam material - so it has physical built-in noise reduction. koss still makes the plug but i decided against getting it again and opted for something new instead.
 |
 |
 |
 |
the earbuds i've been using for the time being have been a pair of sansa earbuds that came with my sansa rio mp3 player (purchased when the ipod was still in its infancy, or perhaps even before then). they're the hard plastic kind, the type that hurts your ears (the foam fell off a while ago). i thought they were just some cheap earbuds but audio is surprisingly accurate. i would've been happy just using these but the cord is very short and like i said before, they hurt my ears and slip out easily.
i tried out the jbuds for a few hours, wearing them while i worked. they're pretty good, none of the muffled audio of the dealextreme earbuds. i compared them with the koss plugs and discovered that the sound from the koss (from what i gathered with just mono audio) is actually a bit muffled as well, never realized it before (although nowhere as muffled as the china earbuds). the jbuds are also better than the sansa, although i think they're pretty similar, just that the jbuds are more comfortable and fit better inside the ears.
this is actually the second time i've purchased a pair of jbuds. the first time was for my father, and i did try them out, but didn't really remember much except they were okay. a short while later those earbuds were destroyed when my father left them in his shirt pocket and sent them through the washer and dryer.
today i put in a solid day's worth of work for client N. i was actually feeling kind of optimistic and thought that maybe i could get everything done by today, but that's not going to happen. i need all of tomorrow and a bit of thursday to get this interactive to a beta. i still need to do the attract loop and write the code that will parse the external source file (things like what thumbnail images to use and the text descriptions). tomorrow looks to be another rainy day (at least the first half of the day) so it'll be a good day to work.
i stopped working in the early evening to attend a lecture at the harvard museum titled, "the secrets of field notes: capturing science, nature, and exploration" with guest lecturer michael canfield. it wasn't that interesting, and was another one of those lectures that's geared towards selling a recently published book.
it was drizzling slightly when i returned home, fast walking to hasten my time getting rained on. i was surprised victor wasn't home yet (given that he came home around 3:00 yesterday). while i was boiling some dumplings for dinner that's when he came back.
just 2 more weeks before victor goes back to spain and i can't wait. often times i have a love/hate relationship with roommates, further amplified if they stay here for a long time (or, say, invite their girlfriend to live with us for a month). he doesn't seem to have any qualms about being noisy. when he's in the kitchen, he'll blast the noise on his laptop to full volume; so loud in fact that i can hardly hear the television in the living room. true, i never complained about it to him (and too late now, since he's almost gone), but it just seems like common courtesy. when he's in the bathroom he uses the shower radio, and has it on full blast. at first i was impressed because very few roommates ever use the thing (nor do i even), but now it's getting annoying. also when he gets out of the bathroom he snaps open the lock so violently i sometimes think he's going to break the door.
later in the evening i went back to work on the project until 2:00. the more work i do tonight (when i'm on a hot streak) means the less work i have to do tomorrow. i finished the property list, exported all the thumbnails, and built out a rudimentary attract loop. i also put into the arrow animation. all i have left to do tomorrow is work out the external import lingo and fix the glitchy video.