Extended silence spurts and a musical return
Didn't intend to stay away from the e-pages, but got my first taste of the half-marathon that seems to be the Foundation Lab assignments. Though, as I mentioned in that post, I appreciate the idea of the shell as a toolbox, but I somehow don't see why it has to be so intense [I spent almost all my spare time alst week on it], so I fear I'm in a "do-phase" rather than a "think-phase". I was hoping for more time to do the latter in this MTech programme, and have still to completely figure out how to do this. I'm not disillusioned (yet?) but slightly disappointed.
An analogy I have is: imagine a class of budding writers, different students having ambitions of being fiction writers, biographers, tech writers, essayists etc. They all have a basic level of writing ability. They want to explore various aspects of different writing styles and also want to learn the techniques of the craft. They also don't mind learning how to type, to do shorthand, to be calligraphists, to typeset, about fonts etc. But what if it totally overwhelms the learning/thinking aspect?
I rushed off home this weekend, so I spent a lot of time thinking about these things [no power at home for some local reasons of cable faults, so not much else to do while you're keeping anopheles carriers at bay]. I figured out that I was spending a disproportionately high amount of time on the lab, so I did a small timetable schedule exercise (the ones that look spectacular on paper but never seem to get implemented in real life). Let's see how well that goes.
Coming back to the title of this post, a small tidbit I learnt in my Mobile Computing class - that the mobile handset actually introduces a "comfort noise" when users are silent. This to reassure the listener at the other end that the line is alive. A good example of the small engineering details that add up to the success of many things around us.
And the musical return is because I finally have headphones and music/audio (imported from home) and hence can sink into it when the head heats up.
An analogy I have is: imagine a class of budding writers, different students having ambitions of being fiction writers, biographers, tech writers, essayists etc. They all have a basic level of writing ability. They want to explore various aspects of different writing styles and also want to learn the techniques of the craft. They also don't mind learning how to type, to do shorthand, to be calligraphists, to typeset, about fonts etc. But what if it totally overwhelms the learning/thinking aspect?
I rushed off home this weekend, so I spent a lot of time thinking about these things [no power at home for some local reasons of cable faults, so not much else to do while you're keeping anopheles carriers at bay]. I figured out that I was spending a disproportionately high amount of time on the lab, so I did a small timetable schedule exercise (the ones that look spectacular on paper but never seem to get implemented in real life). Let's see how well that goes.
Coming back to the title of this post, a small tidbit I learnt in my Mobile Computing class - that the mobile handset actually introduces a "comfort noise" when users are silent. This to reassure the listener at the other end that the line is alive. A good example of the small engineering details that add up to the success of many things around us.
And the musical return is because I finally have headphones and music/audio (imported from home) and hence can sink into it when the head heats up.
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