PyRoom — distraction free writing • Hacker News Board

Re: PyRoom — distraction free writing

#31

Post by starbuck_ » Mon, Mar 01, 2010, 4:04 AM UTC

Keyframe wrote: post #29

starbuck_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind posting your config? I'm a bit of an emacs noob but I would love to be able to do this.

well my .emacs is a lot of collected/revised cruft over the years. It's a mess really, and I'm always putting away refactoring for some other time - since it works for me. You'd also need all of the included dependencies and stuff (it's windows specific, but could be made to work on other OS' also). So I might zip up my .emacs with all of the dependencies files if you want me to.

I'd appreciate it if you did. I primarily use emacs on Windows, so that aspect is not a problem, and I weeding through all of your cruft might be fun :)

Re: PyRoom — distraction free writing

#32

Post by Keyframe » Mon, Mar 01, 2010, 2:15 PM UTC

starbuck_ wrote: post #31

Keyframe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well my .emacs is a lot of collected/revised cruft over the years. It's a mess really, and I'm always putting away refactoring for some other time - since it works for me. You'd also need all of the included dependencies and stuff (it's windows specific, but could be made to work on other OS' also). So I might zip up my .emacs with all of the dependencies files if you want me to.

I'd appreciate it if you did. I primarily use emacs on Windows, so that aspect is not a problem, and I weeding through all of your cruft might be fun :)

http://www.vga.hr/temp/home.zip - here is my home folder, just be sure to set HOME var as an environment variable to that folder. There are also minor install files in darkroom folder inside (you'll see). F12 toggles title bar, F11 toggles fullscreen (a bit buggy, so sometimes you need to press it a few times due to external program that sets it), F7 and F8 cycle back and forward between emacs buffer and F6 toggles line numbers.

Re: PyRoom — distraction free writing

#33

Post by pasbesoin » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 7:29 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #23

pasbesoin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know of noise canceling headphones that are effective against the irregular waveforms of human speech, I'd be most interested.

In that case, you want something that actually blocks the sound, like these: http://www.amazon.com/Etymotic-Research-Portable-Earphones-B... 35db of isolation. You basically can't hear anything, which is nice when you need to work somewhere noisy, or want to listen to music on an airplane. It's infinitely better than noise cancellation.

Thank you. I recently spent $80 on another brand that uses foam tips. It had the highest rating I could find amongst the choices at a specialty shop, at IIRC 31 dB attenuation. I haven't been in a suitable work environment since then, to try them out.

I'll probably give those a go, first, but if they do not suffice, these look worth trying, and at about $120 are within my price range (as opposed th the $300 plus that I've seen for some other items).

As you say, though, these work via passive blocking and not active cancellation. Some time ago, I came across an explanation by an audio engineer claiming that cancellation will never work fully with headphones. Even if the processing is fast enough, he argued, the distances involved between the speaker and eardrum just won't permit it. Perhaps this was in combination with the inertia and therefore delay in the speaker elements; I no longer recall fully.

When people state "wear canceling headphones", I've never yet seen the statement backed up with a real / real world use case.

EDIT: I guess/imagine it might be more a matter of the location of the microphone that drives the noise cancellation, than that of the speakers. Although I do seem to recall also something about the limitations imposed by pressure waves operating in such a small, confined space.

Re: PyRoom — distraction free writing

#34

Post by pasbesoin » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 7:51 PM UTC

rms wrote: post #25

pasbesoin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know of noise canceling headphones that are effective against the irregular waveforms of human speech, I'd be most interested.

Being ineffective for speech is actually a "feature" of Bose headphones. I second the recommendation for Etymotic earphones.

Thanks, I appreciate the second. With so many products and opinions out there, it nice to have some concurrence in an endorsement.

I know I'm not the only one facing this problem of environmental noise as distraction, although I may be towards the extreme end. If and when I find a solution like this that really works for me, it will be for me one of if not the most effective workspace "hacks" in my toolkit.