Living Life in Fast-Forward

ctwxman writes "A year and a half ago my boss approached me, asking me to finish some college courses to get certification in what I've been doing for the past 20+ years. The courses are offered by Mississippi State University. Since I live in Connecticut, I am taking my lessons on DVD and videocassette with tests, quizzes and helpful advice from TA's online. It didn't take me long to realize how s-l-o-w the whole lecture process was. But with WinDVD4, I started ramping up the speed. It didn't take long to get to 2x normal speed. Other than the lectures taking half the time, I didn't miss anything. Yes, the speech is a little clipped, but these are college lectures. There are no speed demons delivering at the MSU lectern. I posted my 'discovery' to our online student bulletin board and found many other students were scared of the idea. But, for me wearing headphones (important I think), these hyper lessons are just as good as watching at normal speed. Now, The New York Times (sacrifice of eldest child required) has legitimized my claim with this article showing how and why others are rapidly jumping on the high speed watching bandwagon."

Comments

flying body jewelry is soo much cooler though :D

[caveat]

once upon a time, i was doing some summer work with a 600-MHz NMR, complete with liquid-helium-cooled superconducting supermagnet - the Red Line (don't cross with anything magnetic unless you don't want to be holding it anymore) was at least 5m away from the instrument. I have several bits of metal in my head, but since I'm smart and buy quality body jewelry, it's all nonmagnetic stainless steel...but this other kid who was working with me, OTOH, went the el-cheapo route and got his at Hot Topic; apparently they don't use non-magnetic ally in their jewelry. So he's walking by the NMR and crosses the line when I hear a loud metallic PING followed immediately by a louder scream...the poor guy had a 16 gauge barbell pulled clean through the hole in his earlobe, fly across the room, and get firmly stuck to the side of the NMR. At least he didn't have a ring in, so it just tore the hole open a little...