Week Note Fifty - Crunch time.
No Pressure
It is always around this time of the year where everything gets manic. From dealing with the pandemic, making sure the cupboards are stacked, Christmas presents hunting, drinking umpteen amounts of coffees in order to stay awake. Throw in the extra mix of home life and work taking over every amount of your time and space.
And before we know it, Christmas day will be here in a flash and it's the only time where we can curl up on the sofa thinking "What is 2021 is going to be like?"
Sheesh.
Hearing aids technology
After installing RetroPie (mentioned in Week Note Forty Nine), delving into the games library and playing the classic made me think a lot about my hearing memory. The hearing aids back were then analog technology meant that listening to gaming music and sound effects did sound a lot different.
Analog was the best technology then and think of every sound you have heard, it is always going to be 45% average. Imagine a stone dropping into a bucket of water, it's everything right there, the depth, pitch, etc.
Now take the pitch away and reduce some sound quality? That was my life for around 18 years before transition to digital hearing aids. Let's listen to the sound again, 'plop!', it's better yet not quite yet it's like a 10% improvement. Sounds are around 55% average, and it takes the brain to rewrite / gaps filling to get the correction.
Digital hearing aids will never reach the quality that cochlear implant has on offer. What is it like for CI users? Let's go back to the bucket and try the sound. 'PLOP!' What's happening now? The pitches are back, the roundest of the sound is gentle, everything around is in true stereo.
In some way what I have written above is what I would love to tell my young self back in the 80s with skinny boy wearing huge glasses and beige hearing aids, playing on the Space Harrier arcade game (reaching Stage 12!) with a crowd gathering around him. I would say "Embrace every sounds you are hearing because this is an unique point in your life. Things are going to get amazing in the future."
Cory Doctorow
After that dreadful Ready Player Two (ran out of credits because it is a terrible read), I decided to jump into Doctorow's books. They are all available for free via his Craphound and if you like, buy the books!
I have read two books so far, Little Brother and Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom, they are utterly brilliant to read. 2021 is look set to be a series of Doctorow's books!
Do give his book a go if you are into sci-fi and post cyberpunk , I think you will like his writing!
And finally...
Talking about books, I have read a total of 20 books this year without realising! I will no doubt keep this up for the rest of my life because reading dead tree books / digital format is fun, and I tell my family what I have been reading and reciting them like a play to my sons.
Stay safe, stay sane, stay sauce?