Dragaera

A different Track

Tue Nov 26 18:44:18 PST 2002

On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 12:56:39PM -0800, Nytemuse wrote:
> And
> likewise, I can't explain to some non-musical people what kinds of
> qualities I look for in some white noise music.  

Yeah... I have yet to find any way to predict what kinds of white noise /
background / working music that a person of a given musical background will
like. 

> > Are you actually processing the TV/music at the same time you're doing work?
> > or is it white noise in this case?
> 
> Depends on the TV show, music, and work being done.  When I'm just doing
> some search & replace work or fixing bad code where I already know what
> the problem is, then I generally process both.  Meaning, I can remember
> the story and dialogue or tune and also remember what I changed and what I
> did.  If I'm writing original content or creating new pages with new
> codes/scripts, it's more white noise.

*nods* That seems to be pretty consistent with my general set of
observations.


> > Do you listen to music with clear and obvious lyrics, or no? If you don't,
> > that would seem to imply that verbalized language interferes somewhat with
> > the part of your brain that's processing the book. That is certainly the
> > case with me; I can follow a conversation or process lyrics and read at the
> > same time, but my reading speed drops by about 75% when I do.
> 
> Sometimes.  If it's a CD I'm REALLY familiar with or if the words are in
> another language, I can read to it.  But I generally prefer ones w/o
> clear lyrics or w/o lyrics at all.  :)  So I guess I do have a little
> trouble with language interfering, but under conditions.

I'm sort of the same way, though I have this weird thing were I can filter
music such that I'm not linguistically processing the lyrics, only musically
processing the voice, and thus I can successfully use it as background.

TV, otoh, because it is spoken instead of sung, will give me fits. I can
barely read in a room with a TV on if it's at normal listening volumes. I
don't know why this is different for me than a group of people conversing in
my presence. I just can't block the damned thing out unless it's turned
down.

 
> > Query, does chatting include in-person,
> > online, phone, or some combination thereof?
> 
> Um, all of the above?  eMail, AIM (and like systems), phone, in-person,
> eavesdropping...

One of the effects of modern technology that I appreciate the most are the
multiple avenues of communication that can be used at the same time.
I especially like IM, in which the speed (of typing) is just right so that
one can carry on two simultaneous threads of conversation with the same
person.

Anon,
Kat