A Consuming Experience

Friday, 23 May 2008

Birdsong on your computer while you work

If you like hearing the sounds of nature while you work at your computer, like birdsong tweetings, you could do worse than try the Birdsong Channel (which has temporarily replaced the sorely missed OneWord DAB digital radio and digital TV channel).

It has a Flash player so it should work in modern browsers. And now it's in stereo and broadcast 24 hours a day.

I like Digital One's sense of humour in saying:

"For sponsorship opportunities please contact info@digitalone.co.uk and include the word "Twitcher" in the subject line.

Please note that the line up of birds featured in the cast may change without warning due to illness, weather and migration."

Obviously it uses up bandwidth, but from what I can tell only about 0.01MB a minute, which to me isn't too bad if you're not playing it 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Of course, some employers may block that site, you can only try it and see!

Personally I prefer silence or natural sounds as the predominant ambience in my environment while I work. I generally find background music too distracting even though normally I'm a multi-tasker (when I listen to or make music, I prefer that to be my only or at least primary activity).

Try the Birdsong Channel!

Tuesday, 20 May 2008

Funny misprint: orang utan, Michael Jackson & Prince Philip!

One of my fave indulgences, Fortean Times, had this wonderful typo on p.8 of the June 2008 (FT236) issue, in the Sidelines column:

"...On 10 February, Ah Meng, an orang-utan who starred in 30 travel films, and had been Prince Philip and Michael Jackson, died in Singapore Zoo, aged 48".

You may now applaud my restraint in not remarking "Well, that explains a thing or two...!"

Tuesday, 13 May 2008

TV ads: no more to deafen?

Sick of having to turn the TV volume down when ads come on, and then back up when the programme proper starts again? From a viewer / consumer perspective, being virtually deafened by a sudden blast of too-loud sound when the ad break starts is very annoying, to say the least. Well, if you're in the UK, you're in luck.

Following a consultation by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) last year, from 7 July 2008 UK television advertisements will have their sound levels regulated under a change in the Broadcasting TV Advertising Standards Code rule 6.9 so that effectively they can't be objectively or subjectively louder than the average volume of the programme they're in or indeed neighbouring ads in the same ad break. The new rule:

Advertisements must not be excessively noisy or strident. The maximum subjective loudness of advertisements must be consistent and in line with the maximum loudness of programmes and junction material.

Surely sensible advertisers won't have a problem with that. Irritating your target audience can't be good marketing / advertising practice: blaring ads may well grab the attention, but not exactly in a positive way.

Yay to the change, I say! Now if only they'd also stop compressing the background music during telly programmes too. Such as the bits of CSI when they're microscoping away in the lab and the like - the background music's often too loud there, I have to turn it down and then back up again to hear the dialogue properly. I don't treat CSI as a music video substitute, if I wanted to listen to a music video I wouldn't be watching CSI. /grumble.

Seriously, if there was a gizmo to similarly regulate the sound during TV programmes (especially many American ones, where misguided attempts at supplying realistic background noise often result in the actors' speech being drowned out), I'd gladly buy one. Maybe I'm just getting old...

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