My weird associatives

It's been so long since I last posted. So here's a short come-back post:

I don't know how most people's mind works, so I cannot pretend (but I said it anyway :) ) and say that most of us have trouble with remembering some simple concept but can cope with some relatively complex concept. Try as you might, you may not be able to remember, say, stalagmite and stalagtite. You think you've got it after a few tries but, after a few days, you are scratching your head again.

I heard of one anecdote involving a sea captain who had such an, let's say, "affliction". It goes like this: This venerable old captain who is much feared and respected by his mates had a wierd habit of taking a walk on the, er, poop-deck every morn with a shoebox in his hand. He would not let anyone see what's inside his shoebox and would even deny the existence of it. But every morn he would take a walk and would look inside the shoebox as he walked. It seemed that whatever was in the shoebox was the most priced possession in his life.
But, one day, the cap'n dies and his mateys all storm his cabin to finally solve the mystery of what's in the shoebox. But to their great disappointment, they only find a piece of parchment that said in the captain's own handwriting:
Starboard = Right
Port = Left


I do not know if that little anecdote really happened, but I have my own "shoebox" of trivial things that I keep forgetting. For most of the things, I probably look up in a dictioinary. For a select few, I have a small associative-thing going on in my mind. Here are some of the words and the associated feeling/word I use to remember the word:

Apogee(farthest point in an orbit)----> loneliness->horror (Apogee was the company behind the "Duke Nukem" series - a space horror FPS)
Perigee(nearest point in an orbit)----> none (the opposite of apogee, probably. Which means that I have to remember apogee to know the meaning of Perigee!)

Accent Aigu( the french ´) ----> 'Aigu' sounds like "Eagle", and hence the symbol itself can be looked at as an eagle taking-off toward the sky (land to sky).
Accent grave( the french `)---> Basically, it's the eagle from "aigu" doing a plunge of death, and 'grave' means "deathly"(in english atleast). So you can see where this is going.

Roman numerals "VI, VII,VIII, XI, etc" ----> These are all 5+1, 5+2, 5+3, 10+1, etc. Basically, a large number (V, X) followed by a small number gets added.
Other numerals "IV, IX" -----> none (opposites of the above rule)


Ofcourse, there are quite a few more, I am sure. But I can't seem to remember them....

More stuffing, please.

I've been sitting with my head tilted at a weird angle and holding that pose unnaturally still for quite sometime as I listened to some soothing music from my headphones. Some internal connection in one of the ear pads' probably gone loose, as had the connections in the volume control potentiometer along the headphone wire. Any disturbance in my head's attitude would mean erratic connection and re-"tuning" my head to make the right connection again. I also know that the headphone's circumaural (around-the-ear) "cusion"'s surface has started peeling off and would've left specks of black cushion material in my hair and on my pinnae.

So, here I was with the third clone of Rs.100 Intex headphone that' exhibiting the same symptoms of aging as it's previous selves.

That's when I thought of stepping up my "interest-level" (and budget) in my headphones to the same level as, say, buying a processor.
(That's also when it dawned on me that the philosophy behind those "I got it 4 cheap" t-shirts is not of getting cheap goods for the task but of getting better goods for cheap.)


That meant a lot of pre-purchase research. It's amazing how much one could be expected to spend on a pair of "cans" (which is the "in" parlance for these). I mean, I have a pair of earphones that cost me a whole Rs.15 (~30 cents?) that I bought off of a peddler. It could leave one to wonder what possible improvement could've warranted any headphone to cost a 100 fold, and beyond. It could've left anyone to wonder what possible trait of the earphone was scaled a 100 times over -the quality (metric?) or the frequency range or the amplitude?
But then again, cost need not scale linearly. After my experience with the purchase of my ATP3, it would've been stupid of me to ask those questions. Yet, the doubt remained throughout my purchase as I've never worn any 'can' that's worth more than Rs.200 before. Sure, I've read praises and firtst-hand accounts of the revelation in musical clarity experienced by first-time buyers of quality cans, but it'll help you only so much when you are a skeptic at heart.

Anyways, without further rabble, here's my newest pair of dandruff-catchers(now do u wanna share my earphone?) cum earmuffs(feels good during winter) cum earplugs(as in, cuts off outside noise somewhat) cum head massagers (good bass response). And they double as headphones too, woohoo!


If you are on a budget of around Rs.1000, these are the best of the bunch.

Mod:
Of late, I don't seem to be content enough with stock anymore. I get this uncontrollable urge to apply a mod, however small, to make my possession more mine. Perhaps it's an underlying urge to differentiate myself among the sea of stocks, or perhaps, stocks just don't cut it.
I am not going to elaborate the mod I did here. You can find it here. It's a simple mod involving padding up the inner-back wall of the cans for improved sound-stage (perceived width of the sound source) and stuffing foam in the ear-muff part of the cans. The sound-stage increase may be chalked up to placebo, but the extra stuffings of foam definetly enhanced the comfort-level. Now that is a very simple mod that has a great practical impact. I don't know why the manufacturers skimped on the foam. So this is to Philips: "More stuffing, please".