Yeah, so my excuse for being late with the mood board this week is that I had the board and the writeup all ready to go, and then my internet connection went down. It's always something, isn't it?
Anyway, the job thing is still going on. Still busy. Don't worry, though -- despite what it sounds like, I actually really like what I'm doing. It's just been hectic, is all.
There have been so many details to attend to, that there've been a couple times during the week that I've found myself with a severe case of monkey mind. Just jumping around from one thing to the next to the next. Have to keep reminding myself to calm down and stick to one thing at a time.
On the media side, I finally broke down and bought The Go! Team's album Thunder, Lightning, Strike (in MP3 form, from Bleep). The Go! Team has appeared on the mood board twice before, thanks to the single "Ladyflash". The rest of the album serves up more of the same -- great beats, cheery melodies, and a real 'get up and go' attitude that just brightens your day. The track "The Power is On" has become a 9AM favourite of mine.
My other acquisition of note was a pair of Sony MDRNC6 Noise Cancelling Headphones. I'd been toying with getting a pair for a while, and the fact that the HVAC system at work is so freaking loud is what pushed me over the edge. Here's a blurb from the product detail page:
"Noise Canceling Headphones reduce ambient noise, and provide a quieter environment to enhance audio entertainment. Ambient sound is synthesized with an anti-sound signal produce (sic) by the noise canceling circuit, and reduced (Over 10dB is reduced at 300Hz)"
The 'phones work pretty well in an indoor setting (both underneath the wretched HVAC, and when riding the subway) -- they don't block out all external sound, of course, but the worst of it is gone. The noise-cancelling function even works if you don't have any music playing. However, it takes some getting used to. While I couldn't actually hear the "anti-sound signal", my ears could still somehow tell that there was something being transmitted, which left me for the first day with a sensation akin to the inner-ear pressure you feel when you're in an airplane, or when you go up the elevator in the CN Tower quickly. After a couple days' use, it didn't affect me as much.
BTW, I found that the noise-cancelling feature didn't work outdoors when there was a breeze -- the sound of the wind whistling through the earpieces was actually amplified through the circuit. Not good. You can, however, turning off the noise-cancelling thing and use the headphones just like conventional ones, which is what I ended up doing when outside.
The other thing too, is that, since the noise cancelling feature runs on a battery, I have to remember to turn my headphones off when I stop listening to music.