FredMcD.com

Earplug mix arrived today and I’ve already got them curing away in my ears. The process was pretty straight-forward, though there were a few things I had to keep in the fore-front of my mind, coupled with some things I had to work out as I went along.
My main concern was the design of my ER6i earbuds gave the foam very little to hold them in, though ,worst comes to it, I can salvage the plastic tubes from the inside of the foam eartips and superglue them in place.

Method

Mixing the earplugs was simple enough, while the video posted only used 1/2 of the mix, due to the ER6i’s small size and my large ears (I’m big all over.) I ended up using about 3/4 and could have probably gone with the whole mix, providing some extra to cut away.

Before I started, I made sure to wash my hands and used some wet cotton wool buds to wash out my ears, and then some more to dry them. I also made sure to have on hand a mirror (Shaving mirrors are good for this.)

Kneeding was simple, though the mix starts hardening fast. I had to mix twice (Once for the first half and as second time for the extra quarter.) and by the time I’d done my second mix, the first had already begun to noticeably harden.

When it came to pressing, I started with most of the mix into the ear (With the aid of the shaving mirror.), followed by the earbuds and then pressed around with the rest of the mix filling up the top half area of the outer ear and covering some of the headphone. Given their small size, the earbuds are now mostly absorbed into the blue mass.

Once the 15 mins of waiting was over (Instructions say 10 but I suggest you also play it safe.) the mix had hardened nicely and it was just a case of slicing the in-ear section down to the opening, smoothing, re-attaching the filters (More on those later.) and testing.

Results

The biggest improvement over flanged ear-tips is in comfort, the light weight foam and ear-bud, combined with vastly improved weight distribution and no more pressure on the inner ear mean I should be able to wear these for hours on end without any dis-comfort. They do feel a bit strange, but I’m already getting used to that.

They hold in place very nicely, accidentally tugging in the cable no longer results in sharp pain but instead a gentle pressure. The foam, while not heavy in the ear, adds a lot to the size of the earbud, having it dangling from your t-shirt might no longer be a good idea.

The fit is very good, not on the air-tight level of the flanged tips, but that’s what you pay for comfort. The ER6is’ already somewhat weak bass seems to suffer, though this isn’t hard to ignore. The slight loss in attenuation is something I actually welcome, the flanged tips effectively render you deaf to the outside world, whereas these foam pieces block out background noise, while leaving someone talking directly to you at least noticeable.

Oddly, the fit seems to improve after you put them in and leave them for a while, probably due to some combination of heat expansion and them just settling in through small movements.

Filter Problems

One of the biggest reasons I’d recommend against doing this with Etymotic earbuds is the fact that the filters are now exposed completely and have long been one of my least favorite features; One dot of water or earwax and you have to replace them. The earbuds can’t be used without the filters as the earbuds are tuned specifically to compensate for the way the filters effect the sound (It becomes tinny without them.).

In short, use earbuds that don’t use filters.

Conclusions

I’d recommend using bigger, bassier headphones for this modification. As long as you make sure to read the instructions and think through what you’re going to do before you do it, you should be rewarded with the most comfortable earbuds for such a good price, offering good noise reduction and all in, a great project.

Before we start, I’m defining a communication game as a game where, in order to complete a task, players have to communicate information or instructions to each other. In these examples, I’ll be talking specifically about games where one player is presented with information that they need the other player to act upon. A good prior example would be Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals when played with the GBA kit, as each player’s GBA screen would have things like a map or motion sensor that they have to communicate to the other players. Another example would be the ill-fated mod NeoTokyo which gave the flag carrier the perk of being able to see any nearby enemies through walls but at the cost of being able to use their weapon, requiring them to rely on their team for defense while aiding them with information.

Can you see them too?

My first example [Which ran a bit long so it's going to be my only one for today's post.] is a game that focuses strongly on this core mechanic (A mech-demo, if you will.) and ties it into modern action-horror games (Though it could be more old-style suspense-horror depending on how you set pace and atmosphere.). Set in your classic abandoned secluded village, Sarah has come across Morgan, who is unable to leave an area due to the ghosts (Or other apparitions.) in the surrounding area. As you may have guessed, Sarah is unable to see the ghosts, but, should she swing a stick at them, they disintegrate, leaving Morgan alone for a while. Morgan can also hurt the ghosts, but it is much more risky for him to do so, as being able to see him also renders him vulnerable to their attacks, of the disorienting, paralyzing variety. (more…)

I’d put the custom headphone project on hold indefinitely, after trying at two different audiologists and being told there was no way to get a custom mold done to take away but, after a recent discovery, I found this video.

The related guide in pictures.

As it stands, in the next week or so, I’ll be putting in an order for some Radians DIY custom earplug mix (Ebay search: “custom earplugs“.) and giving it a go myself, after which, I’ll post my results.
While I could use the earplugs for casting, I’m going to see how long I can use them in just their foam form. Unlike the video, I’m going to drill out a tunnel from driver to eardrum, reducing the amount of air being moved, just to see what the difference is.

I’ve spent the last two days dealing with a laptop, which, after replacing it’s ailing hard drive, would enter into a reboot loop once I’d reinstalled and updated Vista Basic (Dell OEM). The system would show the loading bar for less than a second, flash blue-screen, and then reset.
Running through startup in safe mode has the system get as far as crcdisk.sys, but, if you got here, you probably already know.

As no-one seemed to have found an answer to this problem, I wanted to post how I got around this.

The short of it is: Don’t install the optional Windows “Recommended” updates.
After reinstalling a first time, I got a chunk of the important updates installed and rebooted several times in a row to check stability. Attempting to install the recommended updates as a lot failed and, once again, I got the loop had to reinstall. On the third install, I didn’t install any of the optional updates and it seemed I got a lot more updates (I don’t remember seeing Service Pack 2 on the first time round.).

Now, I have a sneaking suspicion that what was happening was I was being allowed to install an optional update before it’s pre-requisite main update had installed (Linux people may know this as a dependency problem.) so installing them after all the main updates might not present the main problem but, I’m not risking having to install Windows again to find out.

In conclusion: Recommended Updates are optional and can break your computer. They may also be presented before it’s safe to install them.

Introduction: Where I stand on this.

As someone who speaks about one and a third languages (Good English and barely passable Japanese.), it has often struck me as strange that learning languages is something that is often expensive to learn, and it is difficult to find a learning program worth it’s paper or bandwidth.

After having gone to Japan, I came across Tae Kim’s guide to Japanese, a well written guide that I’d wish I’d had before going, which is the work of a single individual and freely distributed freely to anyone who wants it.

This lead me to wonder why there exists an entire industry devoted to what a small office of linguists could kick out in a few months, post on the internet and then sell paper copies off for people’s convenience.

Further-more, while there may be those who lobby against it, this would be something well worth the government’s time, to create a definitive guide to speaking their country’s language and translating that guide into as many other languages as possible as a way of making it easy for others to integrate into a society.

The situation at hand.

Let me start by saying that this isn’t a case of “What if?” but something that began more than five years ago¹ but may yet need to pick up some serious speed. With things like Tae Kim’s excellent guide and Wikibooks, the idea that something known by the population of an entire country should be kept as something for those who pay for it is going to go out of style faster than the idea of paying in the range of £20 for an album with five good tracks on it if you’re lucky.

The collapse of Nova (Japan’s biggest English school franchise.) in 2007 really brought home how much people pay to learn something that should have a single, concise, and documented guide (Varied  for region, i.e. British and American for English.). A single website that will teach you, through words, sound and video, how to go from knowing literally nothing about how to speak or write a language to having enough competency to then learn from others (A leaving-the-nest scenario.).

The need to communicate with other humans while learning is a problem that would need to be solved in conjunction with this, but combining Skype with a system similar to Rhino Spike (A service where you speak phrases in your language in return for phrases spoken in another.) may be the beginnings of another way to facilitate such things.

The wider implications.

Given what the internet can now deliver in terms of multimedia, we are at the point where, once a system has been established for teaching people how to do things, in the same way that wikis have been recognised at the standard repository for written knowledge and documentation, the wiki learning system (For want of a better piece of jargon.) should hopefully replicate naturally.

In a sense, it is not the knowledge or people what need to be created, merely the standard for freely communicated knowledge. Wikipedia appeared and now there are wikis for everything ranging from traveling the world (WikiTravel.) to the long and varied fiction of Star Wars (Wookiepedia.), once someone properly creates a structure for learning topics to the point it starts replicating, it’s time to think about selling up in the Teach Yourself sector.

In conclusion.

The recent years have seen the event of creating a single repository of knowledge when it comes to encyclopedia style collections of facts. Going forward, organising these facts into an easier to learn format than can be easily replicated for various sorts of skills.

In short: We’ve got reference books down as far as wikis go, but complete how-to courses are going to need someone to arrive at a recognized standard. The sooner the better.

¹Assuming Tae Kim’s guide was around for a few years before I heard of it.
Image is made up of the Wikipedia logo and this mock up by Ryanhagemandesign.