is instrumental music 'less distracting & disturbing' than music with words? i feel so

the background first...
i have been playing instrumental music on my yamaha psr-330 electronic keyboard cum synthesizer for over 9 years now, and before that i played it on my casio sa-11 electronic keyboard for about 5 years (maybe more).

i like to listen to instrumental music; of course not just any, but i like select ones, just like we all have our individual preferences when it comes to listening music with words.

now.
what i have noticed over years is that instrumental music seems to distract less and disturb less than music containing voices/words/lyrics. one day i started to think about it and first felt that maybe its because the total 'quantity' of sound contained in an instrumental song is probably less than the total quantity of sound in a song with words [i dont know how the 'quantity' of sound, or 'amount' of sound, contained in a sample is measured, but it looks like joule should be the right unit for this, just like joule can be used to express 'amount' of optical energy, or just like momentum can be used to express the total quantity of motion contained in a body].

then later i felt no, there are instrumentals having a lot of sound, and yet they still seem to distract less than music with words.

the only plausible reason i could think of was that brain's speech and language processing section(s) remain unengaged when listening to instrumental music, while they are engaged in both the recognition of, and semantic analysis of lyrics of music with words (even if sub-consciously).

i have noticed that when doing tasks that involve words- studying, reading a webpage or reading a newspaper- instrumental music does not distract or disturb, whereas music with words does (or at least it does more). this looks consistent with the undeniable fact that brain's speech and language processing section(s) are engaged when listening to music with words.

i dont know whether this idea i wrote here is true or not, but i thought about this, and felt like writing it, so did.

ah, yes, as i write this blog post (a task involving words), i am listening to faithless- drifting away (from "buddha bar"), an instrumental, and believe me it doesn't disturb an iota...

update
one new thought that came to my mind was whether listening to music with words, but of a language which we do not understand would cause less distraction or disturbance than music with words of a language that we understand (like english).
this question looks interesting to me, and to find out the answer, i fired O-Zone's Dragostea din tei [a romanian song i like but do not understand the meaning thereof] and indeed felt some difference, thought its nature remained unclear.
i feel that because i do not understand this language, so my brains's semantic analysis sections(s) should remain either free, or overbusy [trying to make out meanings from the jumble of words being thrown at it]. the language recognition sections(s), however, will remain busy even if i do not understand a language.

capturing animations, images, music, poems, stories, textures and videos straight off the brain of an artist

in future, textures [for use in games] and special effects [for use in movies] are going to be increasingly complex. although developer tools too are going to improve, so as to enable development of more complex content faster and more easily, yet it still requires significant effort and time.

today i was thinking that in future, when we have the technology to precisely decipher the brain's thoughts, we should be able to copy it and utilise it as content. for example i know that i can 'think music'. i mean in my thoughts i can listen to music. i mean music/sounds/voices/audio is something that can be imagined. similarly, images and videos and animations too can be thought.

with technology to capture it live and save it as files, tremendous workload can be reduced. an artist can simply think of a video, or a special effect, and have his brain's thoughts captured live and saved as a ready-to-use video file. a musician can think of a sequence of notes in a particular instrument and have that audio captured.

i believe this is possible. our thoughts are a form of information, and it should be possible to capture them, just like we capture a scene using a digital camera. but certainly, this requires deep understanding of brain's working, and its signals, along with the technology to capture it.

with above technology available, it should also be possible to copy/edit existing information in human brain. it should be possible to copy the data already present in brain, and to artificially introduce new, or modify existing data. things similar to what is done on a computer. this can make truckloads of important information quickly available for analysis or use. also, there should be a decrease in need of traditional input devices like pens, mouse, keyboard etc. a poet should be able to think the words of a poem and have them automatically captured and saved in form of a text file. we should be able to think something, and cause it to be treated as a command/task by a computer.

and of course, this system will not develop its own content, and will not assist in its development. it will, however, capture whats going on.

i hope to see spiderman 20 built using this technology.

my maniac mind's maze

if i remember that when i was a child, i was saved from a seemingly fatal accident by an adult, and if i go back in time and save my childhood version from that fatal accident, and if this child who subsequently evolves into an adult does the same (and so on), does this situation qualify as an ontological paradox?

i think this is the smallest blog post i have ever written.

i think the above line is incorrect, because addition of above line probably caused this post to no longer remain smallest.

i think the above line is correct, and its intriguing too.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.
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i think my mind is maniac right now, so i should sleep.

update- 18-4-07

just now i realised that sentences of the type "i think..." cannot possibly be correct or incorrect. they are all a description of what one anticipates/hopes/thinks. and hopes are not correct or incorrect. they can be stated honestly or dishonestly. but they being correct or incorrect is absurd. so i believe that if i write 3 sentences

i think that i am a good human.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

then the first line may be an honest description of a thought in mind, while the second line is invalid. so is third.

i think the above is correct. honest.

finally, i think i am being a real maniac right now. honest. again.

update 2- 18-4-07

i read detailed meaning of the word 'correct' and one of the meanings is 'something which confirms to truth or fact'. this reads same as one meaning of honest, the meaning i used above. it means use of the word 'correct' is okay.

once again.

i think i am a good human.

i think the above line is correct.

i think the above line is correct.

the first line is honest. if i want to say that it (i.e. the first line) is 'correct', then in my opinion the necessary condition for this is that i be actually thinking that i am a good human, and not (necessarily) my being a good human in reality. the thought that i am a good human must have taken place, although i may not actually be a good human. now is this analysis correct? i think yes it is correct. the immediately previous line is correct (i do think that the previous line is correct- but it does not necessarily mean that it is really correct- only i actually think it is correct).




i am a maniac.

the previous line is correct.

version 3
18-4-07

witty analogy to abstractly explain difference between various linux distros

today my friend came to me asking which linux distro i have with me. i replied. then he asked me whether there shall be any differences between shell operations of various distros. i told him that for learning purposes, all major/current linux distros behave almost identically. then he asked me what exactly is the difference between various distros like ubuntu, red hat, fedora etc. i wondered for a while thinking how to explain this to him, and then spontaneously this analogy came to my mind.

i told him that just like a 'small car' is a thing and like there are various embodiments of it from different vendors- hyundai atos/santro or daewoo matiz or chevrolet spark or hyundai getz or maruti suzuki alto, a linux distribution is an abstract concept, and the various distros by different vendors all are embodiments of it. thus no matter whether it is a hyundai car or a suzuki one, they all will behave identically for learning purposes, and each one of them is both different in numerous little things [depending upon what a particular company's engineers and designers deem appropriate], and yet identical broadly.

my friend both perfectly understood the difference, and appreciated this analogy. i dont know from where this nice analogy came to my mind, and am writing this here because i think this can nicely solve the same query of any other fellow too.

a botch that i could have caused because of T9 predictive text messaging

i am an avid user of T9 predictive text messaging. i find the concept simply fabulous. some days back i was thinking about it, when i concluded some things about it. essentially, T9 is a function with one to many mapping, with an added condition such that for every element in the domain, the corresponding element or elements in the range are arranged in a fixed order. and this order is preset worldwide, based on analysis of frequency of usage of words in messages.

one thing that we can control while designing a system like T9 is the order in which different words with same combination appear for that key combination presses, but something we cannot change (fundamentally) is the unique key combination for a word (the key combinations are elements of domain set, while words are elements of range set). and it is because of this limitation (and by sheer coincidence too) that there are certain key combinations which result in mutually-conflicting words, and here lies the potential for problem.

what happened with me was that i got a message "what did you do about sony ericsson k750i?". what my friend was asking was whether i selected the phone or i rejected it (i was in the process of finding a suitable new phone for purchase). since i was in a hurry that time, i quickly hit the reply button and pressed keys in this order 7--> 3 --> 5 --> 3 --> 2 --> 8--> 3 --> 3. the word by default that comes for this combination is 'selected'. in reality i intended to write 'rejected', which, incidentally (and unfortunately) has same key combination as 'selected'. i had almost hit the send button when my finger spontaneously went numb (maybe my reaction time has lowered down) and the message did not get sent. i pressed the 'next word' key and then sent it. considering the situation, its certainly not a big deal even if i had sent 'selected' instead of 'rejected', since neither it mattered, nor it was non-amendable. yet it surprised me so much that here i am writing a blog about it. and i almost murmured to myself "oh my! what a coincidence!".

i believe such 'delicate' key combinations need to be found out by brute force coupled with dictionary lookup of valid words (so as to reject invalid words coming out of brute force) (with included logic to group words with similar key combination) and coupled with manual inspection to detect potential conflicts. conversly, a dictionary with all valid words coupled with a valid-word-to-T9-key-combination mapping program (again, with included logic to group words with similar key combination) and coupled with manual inspection too can serve this purpose. and for whichever key combinations there is potential of troublesome meaning, when a user forgets to change word for a key combination, there the phone should highlight the potentially-troublesome word(s) on the display as a reminder to user to have a re-look and make sure he has chosen the right word(s).

i really believe this should be done. not a necessity, but certainly a nice addition, and sometimes helpful too. especially when my beloved T9 can covert a casual sounding "hey i heard you have got many movies" to an inflammatory "hey i heard you have got many mother". creativity with such combinations has no end ;-)

a puzzle about minimum number of weights required, and how i by chance found its solution

it was a very boring class going on, and so my friend sitting next to me on the desk gave me a puzzle. what minimum number of weights does one need to be able to make measurements upto 100 kg [assuming a least count of 1 kg], and tell those weights too. i have heard/read this problem before, but i had not read or thought about its solution.

my strategy, which i by chance got somehow, was this.

-to measure any weight, we need to build it up
-to build up a weight, there are 3 methods

1. a direct weight of its measurement. example to measure 2 kg, we have a weight that weighs 2 kg
2. additive weight- i.e. a weight produced by adding 2 or more available direct weights. example to measure 2 kg, i add 2 available 1 kg weights
3. subtractive weight- i.e. a weight produced by subtracting 2 [or more- in some combinations] available direct weights. example to produce 2 kg, subtract 3 from 5.

having formed this strategy, the simple task was now to implement it on the whole length of integers from 1 to 100.

here's the digest

-for 1 kg- 1st option is mandatory, unless we want to deliberately use a less efficient combination. hence 1 kg weight is mandatory

-for 2 kg, although all 3 methods can be used, subtractive approach looks like the most efficient, since for subtraction we would necessarily have to have a highest possible weight [from which an already present direct weight- 1 kg in this case- would be subtracted]. not only would this highest weight itself serve us till its own magnitude, but by adding it to already available weight rather than subtracting that from it, we would be able to achieve higher weights. a simple way to calculate the magnitude of this subtractive weight is to add the sum total of already available weights to the value we want to form. example 1 kg is available as direct weight. we want to form 2 kg value. so add 1 [already available] to 2 [value we want to form] and thus we need 3 kg weight. with 1 and 3, not only can we form 2 by subtraction, but we can also form 4 by addition. had we chosen to have 2 kg direct weight so as to be able to form 3 kg by addition, we would not have been able to form 4 kg, and also there would have been a redundant combination- subtracting 1 from 2 to achieve 1- which we already have in form of 1 kg direct weight. with 1 and 3 there is no redundant combination. and hence it is most efficient. so far till 4 kg.

-for 5, again we need to add 1+3+5= 9. we can achieve 5,6,7,8,9,10,11.....13 with this

-14- add 1+3+9+14= 27. values up to 40 possible.

-41- we need 81 as per above algorithm.

-with 81 available, we can calculate any value till 121. so there are 21 redundant values here.

i will someday try to find out a way to calculate precisely till 100, and not till 121, since any unnecessarily heavy weight will cause unnecessary cost increase- since metal is obviously used in creating these weights. anyways, i am happy that a nice strategy by chance came to my mind the moment he put his puzzle.

how i think one can cool a room in a college's hostel with no cooler or air conditioner

its getting hotter in india, and especially here in delhi. i am on the 3rd floor of my hostel, and naturally its hotter here than it would be at the ground floor.

my room is approximately 6 meter x 6 meter x 8 meter [l x b/w x h]. only a ceiling fan on top and a fluorescent tube light. the ambient temperature here should be about 34 degree celsius [i have no thermometer with me here, but to find out the ambient temperature, i put my laptop to standby mode, and then after 2 hours- to give it time to cool to ambient temperature- i resumed it from standby mode. immediately i checked the hard disk temperature in hddlife program, which showed me 35 degree celsius. i compensated for slight increase in temperature during resuming by 1 degree, and so 34 should be a very accurate calculation. here in india we call such a method an intelligent jugaad :-)].

anyways, this is uncomfortable. my friend too cribbed about it, and i suggested him something that came to my mind all of a sudden. why not fill a bucket with cold water [from the water cooler in my hostel]. the water's temperature should be at most 13-14 degrees celsius, and thus there is a good difference of about 20 degrees between water and room air.

put this big bucket in room, and let its water absorb heat. water has high specific heat, and according to newton's law of cooling, the temperature difference will ensure rapid heat absorption. i dont know whether this method will indeed be effective in making the room temperature just comfortable, or less uncomfortable at least. i think it should work, after all whatever heat is absorbed by water, its obviously reducing temperature of room. but any reduction in room temperature will also cause heat from outside room to flow in. nevertheless, there should be some benefit of this no-cost method.

if it doesnt work satisfactorily, i simply gonna take that bucket, turn it around over my head and drench myself with cold water to mar the heat.

windows xp's management of thumbs.db has a potential privacy threat

i found this out of curiosity. actually a thought came to my mind minutes back that does windows explorer delete thumbnails of those images which have been deleted from a folder, from thumbs.db too? it turns out that it doesn't.

i put 10 images in a folder

then i switched the folder to thumbnails view and this generated thumbs.db

its sha-1 hash is- E7CB4A8AA45C9CF0E64720AC670EEBFBE34FA6E4

then i removed 3 images from the folder and refreshed and re-entered the folder but thumbs.db's sha-1 hash continued to be- E7CB4A8AA45C9CF0E64720AC670EEBFBE34FA6E4

this confirms that windows xp does not delete redundant data in thumbs.db

i think this is not good engineering. a company which so vehemently emphasizes on its product being secure and responsible when it comes to privacy shouldn't take this issue lightly. its easy for image viewers like irfanview, xnview, or farstone viewer to implement reading thumbs.db and/or extracting thumbnails from it. remnants of deleted images can cause situations akin to those caused by browser's history, or by files that have been deleted, but shortcuts to whom remain in the 'recent' folder [in this case, the filename and file type is the only available data, along with date and time of the shortcut of course].

one good thing windows explorer does is to update thumbnails of those images which have same name as some previously present image in the folder, which had same filename as a newly added image. but in this case too, as i found out, if i modify the image's size and modification date time etc to match that of old image [assuming dimensions etc are all identical], windows explorer does not update the thumbnail. it is not programmed to check if a newly added image with filename and date/time same as a previously added image is different from it. this is not needed too since the probability of a newly added image being of same size and with same specifications and same size/date etc is zero for all practical purposes.

The magnitude of a Gigabyte (Gibibyte actually)

Today a friend of mine told me that good quality blank DVDs are now available for 11 Rupees (approximately 0.25 US $- down from about 15 rupees). I just smiled in surprise. Approximately 4.4 GiB of digital information can be stored for just 11 rupees now. That is about 4 Paisa per MiB. An intriguing fact is that standard floppy disks with 1.44 MB capacity are still available for 10 rupees.

As a reminder to myself of the huge amount of information that 1 GiB represents, I thought this. Consider a man with life span of 80 years. The number of seconds in his life are

80*365*24*3600 + 20*24*3600= 2522880000 + 1728000= 2524608000

1 GiB has 1073741824 bytes.

So if this man were to dictate the decoded (assume binary to decimal) form of each byte at the rate of 1 byte per second, he would manage to dictate only about 2.35 GiB in his entire lifetime, assuming he never sleeps, never eats and just keeps dictating 1 byte per second. And that is just about half of a DVD. An 11 rupee DVD.

percentage is not always the right indicator of magnitude of change of something

when i read this news, the one thing going on in my mind since many days finally got confirmed- that percentage is not always the right way of expressing change of a quantity. example this news makes one feel that reliance has reduced the rates to a lesser extent than others, whereas the reality is that they their old rates were already lower than others, and their new rates are same as rivals. mathematically, the change expressed may be correct. but from a marketing perspective, its incorrect to say that reliance reduced their rates to a lesser extent than rivals [thus implying that their final rates are higher than rivals- because initial rates of all companies were not told in the first place]. this makes me feel that if changes are to be told in percentage form, then initial values of the quantities involved must be mentioned. otherwise the inference one can draw from those percentages [or in simpler words the mental impact on reader] may not be correct, and can convey a wrong message. if i sell just 1 copy of my software today and sell 2 tomorrow, is it right for a news story to say that i achieved 100% growth? it must mention absolute numbers too. the funny thing is that this news story does mention actual numbers [although it may be seeming that i am writing something 'against' this story]. what i am writing is about many stories -some of them in respected publications like the new york times or cnet news.com- which talk only in percentages.

that said, percentage is a good indicator in many situations. example is a company sells 1 million copies of a software per month, and sells 1.1 million in a particular month, then its good to say that there was 10% growth in sales [although merely telling 10% growth still leaves something to be desired- and again this is the intial numbers]. in this case, user's inference [or impact] will not be different from what it should be. there wont be any incorrect inferences drawn unintentionally by anyone.

basically, when reporting some change, our ultimate aim shouldn't be to just mathematically

in general, i have found percentage to be good indicator when numbers involved are large compared to magnitude of change. this looks like manifestation of real world- where 'sudden huge growth or sudden huge declines' either do not happen, or happen rarely. and generally only slow growth or decline happens, which is nicely indicated by percentages.

i think one can decide on a case-by-case basis as to what to use