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Tue, 18 Jan 2005
So I woke up today feeling a bit under the weather. (Snow, with added sleet and gusts of wind outside the windows.) Nasty taste in mouth, fuzziness around the edges, lack of motivation. I put the page proofs in the post (hurrah!) and decided I'd resume my interrupted week of doing nothing in particular.
There's a fine art to doing nothing in particular. There's only so much reading of books that I can do, and I'd already exceeded this week's quota of staring at a non-interactive screen by Sunday night (thanks to a video evening -- theme: 007, content: "Diamonds are Forever" and "Licence To Kill"), which leaves magazines, computer games, and poking around the web. The latter rapidly turns onerous as I can't stumble across a fire hydrant spraying opinions without feeling the need to adorn it with my own scented -- ahem, so in an attempt not to do that I decided to go back to Neverwinter Nights.
It is at this point that the annoyance made itself known.
Headphones. They breed in dark corners, don't they? For my iPod, I use a pair of rather nice Sony MDR-NC11 noise-cancelling earbuds. But it's a pain to disentangle them from the 'pod and add them to the Mac, so I went in search of another pair I could leave permanently on my desktop.
Now, I know for a fact that there are three pairs of decent enclosed headphones in this flat. One of them is a pair of Sony professional ones and they're plugged into Feorag's G4, the better to save me from aggravation if, in a fit of insomnia, she should decide to get up and play Sim City at four in the morning. So they're off-limits.
The other pairs are a set of perfectly decent Koss folding headphones and some budget Sennheisers. Lo, as soon as I want them both pairs vanish into the headphone equivalent of a Japanese love hotel. Even worse, all the in-ear phones also go to the mattresses. It is beyond a joke. Normally I can't turn round in this place without tripping over a stray headphone lead, but as soon as I actually want a pair they all vanish!
I go online to see if the nice cheap Koss headphones are as cheap as I remember. Turns out they're priceless -- Koss don't make them any more, dammit. (To add insult to injury, I missed the chance to snap up a pair when Richer Sounds were remaindering them six months ago.)
I normally view headphones as a sort of consumable item, a bit like toner catridges, with the exception of the MDR-NC11s. (They definitely don't fall in the category of "consumable" unless you're Bill Gates, and indeed I whimper faintly as I recall what I paid for them: I'm not about to start yanking them back and forth between machines. They can stay with the iPod and their padded bag.) But as soon as I start poking around online in a desultory manner, wondering if I should replace the Koss headphones with something new, all the cheap headphones scamper away and hide, leaving me to be drawn unerringly to web pages describing the Etymotic ER6i. This is a Bad Thing. Headphones that come with a toolkit and a range of replacement parts are officially Scary, even before you get to the frequency response graphs. All I want to do is play a computer game in peace: I'm not looking for an audiophile grade shopping accident!
The worst of it is, I know that I won't find my headphones until I buy a new pair. Then they'll surface ... two minutes too late to cancel the online order.
posted at: 16:31 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entryspecials:
Is SF About to Go Blind? -- Popular Science article by Greg Mone
Unwirer -- an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction
Inside the MIT Media Lab -- what it's like to spend a a day wandering around the Media Lab
"Nothing like this will be built again" -- inside a nuclear reactor complex
Quick links:
RSS Feed (Moved!)
Buy my books: (FAQ)
- Missile Gap
- Via Subterranean Press (US HC -- due Jan, 2007)
- The Jennifer Morgue
- Via Golden Gryphon (US HC -- due Nov, 2006)
- Glasshouse
- Via Amazon.com (US HC -- due June 30, 2006)
- The Clan Corporate
- Via Amazon.com (US HC -- out now)
- Accelerando
- Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB -- due June 27, 2006)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)
Free download
- The Hidden Family
- Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB)
- The Family Trade
- Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB)
- Iron Sunrise
- Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)
- The Atrocity Archives
- Via Amazon.com (Trade PB)
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Singularity Sky- Via Amazon.com (US HC)
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Via Amazon.com (US ebook)
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Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)
Toast- Via Amazon.com
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Some webby stuff I'm reading:
[ Engadget ]
[ Gizmodo ]
[ The Memory Hole ]
[ Boing!Boing! ]
[ Futurismic ]
[ Walter Jon Williams ]
[ Making Light (TNH) ]
[ Crooked Timber ]
[ Junius (Chris Bertram) ]
[ Baghdad Burning (Riverbend) ]
[ Bruce Sterling ]
[ Ian McDonald ]
[ Amygdala (Gary Farber) ]
[ Cyborg Democracy ]
[ Body and Soul (Jeanne d'Arc) ]
[ Atrios ]
[ The Sideshow (Avedon Carol) ]
[ This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow) ]
[ Jesus's General ]
[ Mick Farren ]
[ Early days of a Better Nation (Ken MacLeod) ]
[ Respectful of Otters (Rivka) ]
[ Tangent Online ]
[ Grouse Today ]
[ Hacktivismo ]
[ Terra Nova ]
[ Whatever (John Scalzi) ]
[ GNXP ]
[ Justine Larbalestier ]
[ Yankee Fog ]
[ The Law west of Ealing Broadway ]
[ Cough the Lot ]
[ The Yorkshire Ranter ]
[ Newshog ]
[ Kung Fu Monkey ]
[ S1ngularity ]
[ Pagan Prattle ]
[ Gwyneth Jones ]
[ Calpundit ]
[ Lenin's Tomb ]
[ Progressive Gold ]
[ Kathryn Cramer ]
[ Halfway down the Danube ]
[ Fistful of Euros ]
[ Orcinus ]
[ Shrillblog ]
[ Steve Gilliard ]
[ Frankenstein Journal (Chris Lawson) ]
[ The Panda's Thumb ]
[ Martin Wisse ]
[ Kuro5hin ]
[ Advogato ]
[ Talking Points Memo ]
[ The Register ]
[ Cryptome ]
[ Juan Cole: Informed comment ]
[ Global Guerillas (John Robb) ]
[ Shadow of the Hegemon (Demosthenes) ]
[ Simon Bisson's Journal ]
[ Max Sawicky's weblog ]
[ Guy Kewney's mobile campaign ]
[ Hitherby Dragons ]
[ Counterspin Central ]
[ MetaFilter ]
[ NTKnow ]
[ Encyclopaedia Astronautica ]
[ Fafblog ]
[ BBC News (Scotland) ]
[ Pravda ]
[ Meerkat open wire service ]
[ Warren Ellis ]
[ Brad DeLong ]
[ Hullabaloo (Digby) ]
[ Jeff Vail ]
[ The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) ]
[ Groupthink Central (Yuval Rubinstein) ]
[ Unmedia (Aziz Poonawalla) ]
[ Rebecca's Pocket (Rebecca Blood) ]
Older stuff:
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
(I screwed the pooch in respect of the blosxom entry datestamps on March 28th, 2002, so everything before then shows up as being from the same time)
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