61–70 of 438 posts
Reminds of a neighbor I had back when I was renting in a big city. He didn’t seem to understand what’s wrong with keeping his TV on for very long periods broadcasting the sleaziest (at least at the time) reality show on full volume. I tried talking to him multiple times to no avail. He’d basically say “yeah I’ll pay attention no problem” but nothing changed for weeks. Coincidentally at that time I was working morning…
I have a TV-Be-Gone device, which is designed to disable TV’s in a certain radius. It has been an absolutely wonderful little accessory during business trips .. someone watching something obnoxious at the hotel bar? TV-Be-Gone! A Flipper Zero would be the modern equivalent, I suppose. I like the idea of being able to turn off devices in a certain radius - but I don’t like the idea of everyone having one. Having ultim…
He also did a considerably more expensive one that worked on Furbies, which "chatted" in sync using infrared, and told every Furby in the room to stop talking and go to sleep immediately.
If you had child back then, or you babysat one, you'll know why this one was his biggest seller.
Reminds of a neighbor I had back when I was renting in a big city. He didn’t seem to understand what’s wrong with keeping his TV on for very long periods broadcasting the sleaziest (at least at the time) reality show on full volume. I tried talking to him multiple times to no avail. He’d basically say “yeah I’ll pay attention no problem” but nothing changed for weeks. Coincidentally at that time I was working morning…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why we don't build with concrete like the rest of the world ... that should give us a higher noise isolation than wood
Majority construction anywhere is whatever can be built with the least cost. In the US and Canada timber framing for buildings under about 6 feet is least cost. Other places without a lot of timber availability tend to build with other things.
There was a Windows 2000 bug that would allow the computer to be crashed via a malformed IrDA packet. Of course someone crafted a Palm Pilot app to zonk all the vulnerable PCs in the vicinity. It worked on servers as well. Endless fun for a little while.
My, that sums up apartment living quite well. I'm all for densifying popular urban areas, but man, add some fucking sound isolation cheap landlords.
Where I am in British Columbia, there are sound isolation requirements in the building code so the landlords can't be cheap...but it doesn't help with older or non-permitted work.
STC 50 is a common requirement in the US too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish there was an easy solution like this for smoking "neighbours". Some sort of detection device that instantly closes my windows automatically and then "explodes" a nasty "stinking bomb" outside (e.g. automatic opening of a container with butyric acid or similar), so it smells worse than their smoke. Eventually their brains would connect smoking with nasty stinking and stop doing it. But I wouldn't know where to…
People who smoke on the balconies of multi-unit buildings are awful people. It’d be a beautiful day but I can’t keep my windows open because there’s always somebody smoking to make my unit smell disgusting if I just want to enjoy a cool breeze going through. Thank goodness smoking is becoming rarer here and is no banned pretty much everywhere indoors and near entrances. I don’t mind if people have a vice (I’ve got mi…
One evening my girlfriend was using a hair straightener in my bedroom, it tripped the central fuse and turned off the electricity. I told my GF that I would buy her a new hair straightener because this one isn't safe.
Now every time my housemate started blaring music at 3AM then I just needed to plug in the hair straightener. It only took 3 or 4 attempts for me to Pavlov my housemate into not playing loud music at 3am. :-)
My, that sums up apartment living quite well. I'm all for densifying popular urban areas, but man, add some fucking sound isolation cheap landlords.
The landlord is often not the same as the developer or construction company, and sound isolation works best when built in while the building is being constructed. Attempting to retrofit later is often less than satisfactory. So it is often not the landlord's fault, it was the developer or construction company that cut corners and used the thinnest, least sound isolating materials they could to keep their costs down.
Well meaning PMs read up on products and throw them at the problem and it's treated as a great success because there are no hard targets, just a general desire to reduce noise, and that happened.
I have a TV-Be-Gone device, which is designed to disable TV’s in a certain radius. It has been an absolutely wonderful little accessory during business trips .. someone watching something obnoxious at the hotel bar? TV-Be-Gone! A Flipper Zero would be the modern equivalent, I suppose. I like the idea of being able to turn off devices in a certain radius - but I don’t like the idea of everyone having one. Having ultim…
TV-Be-Gone can work in public places, but it's is not going to work through walls for neighbors.
Pick up a cheap CCTV infrared floodlight, gut it, and gate it with Ye Olde Bloody Great MOSFET driven by your TV-Be-Gone microcontroller.