There’s a reason people still use “CD-quality audio” to describe high fidelity music playback, it’s still the benchmark, and I feel like we are still trying to achieve it again after being lost in the woods of MP3 compression and Bluetooth earphones for the last 20 years.
I have autism, and I always thought this was a symptom of my autism, but after researching it recently it seems that most others with autism are the opposite, they need background noise or music to concentrate.
I have industrial deafness, that is an audio processing disorder that is associated with background noise. This also affects my reading.
If there is any form of background noise, I can’t understand speech. Eg, if I turn the air conditioner on in the living room, then I can’t understand what’s said on the TV, even at reasonable volume levels. Turing the volume up can help, but not a lot.
If I’m standing next to the fridge and you walk up to talk to me, I can see your mouth moving, I can hear your words, but I can’t understand anything, the small noise of the fridge compressor completely wipes out my comprehension.
If we are in a busy cafe with lots of people talking at once, I can’t understand the staff when they ask to take my order, even if they are right in front of me, speaking clearly directly at me. It’s like my brain can only concentrate on the background noise and it has no processing power left to interpret foreground words.
This is the same with reading and writing. I am a software engineer, so I spend all day writing code. Many of my colleagues like to listen to music while they work. I cannot. If I put on music, then I can no longer write. Nothing comes out. My mind is blank, concentrating on listening to the music. Even instrumental background music affects me.
So to answer your question, I can’t read with background noise. Perhaps you could check if you have a form of industrial deafness too.
I carry a jailbroken Kobo with wifi disabled. That solves most of the issues you have described here. I sideload DRM-free ebooks. I can’t stand reading text on my phone’s LCD screen (and OLED is worse), but eink screens are totally different, my eyes like them.
Does not need external light either
Lamps exist
That’s exactly what external light means. If you need to sit near a lamp to read your book, then you are relying on external light.
Btw, I agree with the point in general you’re trying to make. Physical books and physical note taking still have a place and are often gone forgotten and underutilized. They can promote greater information retention, due to the tactile experience being mixed into the reading/writing experience.
I used to love doing this too, until I realised that helping someone build a PC is the same as signing them up for a lifetime of tech support for free.
“I bought a new printer and plugged it in and it’s not working? Why doesn’t it work? You built the PC, it’s your fault.”
“My ISP told me I need a new wifi router, so I plugged in the new one they sent, now my PC doesn’t have any internet. You built the PC, why doesn’t it work?”
“My colleague told me I need to upgrade my antivirus so I got a Norton subscription, I installed it and now I can’t receive any emails. Come and fix it, you built the PC.”
All 3 of these are real experiences I’ve had. There are countless more. These days I say “I’d love to help you build a PC, but it’s been 15 years since I’ve used windows, I don’t really know how to install it or set it up or use it. I’d be happy to build a PC with a Linux based OS for you.” By that time they’re already finding someone else.
Yes, this is what I was thinking of, thanks for filling us in.
I remember reading a couple years ago that’s not actually how plane wings work. The actual way is much more complicated and hard to explain and hard to teach, so they just teach it this way because its an intuitive mental model that is “close enough” and “seems right”, and it really doesn’t matter unless you’re a plane wing designer.
That makes sense, thanks!
I always thought it was “this differs from that” and “it’s different than that”.
You’re wrong. In this expression, the “quiet” part means the “unsaid” part. If someone tells you a secret, and they say “please keep that quiet”, it means “don’t tell anyone”. If you’re driving in the car and the kids are being rowdy in the back seat, you would say “keep quiet back there”, it means “shut your mouth”.
To say the quiet part out loud, means “you said the thing you intended to keep unsaid”.
This is beautiful. Please keep us updated on how this turns out.
How do you hold closed the bag that holds the bag clips?