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Timeshifting: Cram More Into Life
jimharris writes "The VCR started it - and then the DVR improved it, so now I want to apply the concept of timeshifting in other ways. I've always wanted an audio cassette player that worked like a VCR so I could listen to more radio talk shows. This morning's NY Times stirred my interest with After TiVo, Radio Rewound about a MP3 device that does just that. Better yet, is Replay Radio - software that is more flexible and you can download the results to a portable player.
I already use Audible.com to squeeze in more books in my life, by listening, rather than reading. I've completed 8 unabridged books in two months just by carrying around my Otis player when I get dressed in the morning, driving to and from work, doing housework, or when I exercise.
Now I'm wondering how I can timeshift even more."
God forbid we sit and do nothing. It may cause us to think about our lives. Best to just keep ourselves busy all the time; flooding our ears with sound and our eyes with images. We must all do our part to keep introspection at bay, lest we realize things are not as perfect as they seem.
Dontcha think it's possible to go a bit too far with the cramming?
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
Someone is going to complain about cramming more stuff into life, so it may as well be me. Dead time is sweet time. There's nothing wrong with lying around, ignoring the phone, staring out the windows and contemplating your navel. Time shifting makes every waking moment seem like work. Chill.
"I've completed 8 unabridged books in two months just by carrying around my Otis player when I get dressed in the morning, driving to and from work, doing housework, or when I exercise. Now I'm wondering how I can timeshift even more."
Do you really absorb as much listening to something while you do other things as sitting down and reading? I have enough trouble getting it all to sink in and not skimming boring parts with a good ol' mass market paperback
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Somewhat related to the topic. Before the internet, I wanted to record long radio programs in the morning/afternoon while I was away at work and was not allowed to listen to the radio. I needed a way to record radio programs that were 4-6 hours long, a cassette deck didn't cut it...
Ghetto engineering! I jacked my stereo through the back of a VCR's audio in, used a VHS tape set on SLP, program the VCR to start and stop recording at a predetermined time, and abracadabra: 6 hours of hassle free recording.
Glad to know that there are less ghetto ways of doing it now, the Griffin Technology RadioSHARK looks promising for OSX. www.griffintechnology.com
Seriously. You need some perspective.
Once a year for a week I just force myself to unplug. I yank the network cards and modems out of my machines, unplug the controllers on my game systems, take my tv remote, monitor power cord, PDA and cel phone - put it all in a box and drop it off at a friend's house.
No radio, no news, no newspapers, no magazines, no tv, no nothing. I allow myself books, but only stuff that I've been planning to read for at least a year and putting off. The first few days are a little stressing, I start to get jittery and keep panicking that I'm missing something important. But by the end of the week I've got more perspective on life, more perspective on all those little electronic leashes that I impose on myself and generally a much much much lower tolerance for most of the info-garbage that I regularly consume.
Someone who's unironically posting a message seeking help on ways to more efficiently consume more media than he already does has to step back and think about that for a second. I don't mean to sound judgemental at all - really - but damn man, if your problem is that you can't figure out how to cram a little more media into your life then you need to step back for a minute and really give your life a good hard ponder.
I don't mean to sound all hippy zen on you, but when was the last time you felt grass on your bare feet? Best of luck, but no one ever said on their death bed, "If only I had listened to more talk radio..."
Published in 1970, yet still insightful today:
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.
-kgj
-kgj
If you just want to know what happened on the show, why not grab the closed caption stream and pipe it to a text file and speed read it?
On some shows eliminating pauses, laugh tracks, and speeding it up would be fine (talk shows, cooking shows, sports, reality shows) but for any work of fiction (movies, dramas, even sitcoms) timing and pacing are a significant part of what makes the show good or bad (sit through a poorly edited movie sometime, or watch any of the last several seasons of Friends and you'll see what I mean). Eliminating these subtle touches greatly affects the perception of the quality of the show.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Sure, I could do all that... but the thing about saving that you have to ask yourself is: what are you saving up for? Isn't the whole point of saving time so that you can sleep late on Saturday, play your onling RPG or whatever else you consider to be good? And why the hell would I want to conserve daylight hours? I'd rather have the night hours. Sleeping in the morning gives you more hours to be awake at night. For that matter, why go to work early when you can go to work late? There's less traffic at 7pm too, ya know and those Simpsons reruns... Tivo catches those for you. I'm all for sticking to black and grey as a means of getting matching clothes but taking a woman shopping is the opposite of saving time. When I go shopping with a woman, I feel like getting out of the car and painting a red X in the road to remind others where I encountered missing time. Women are, in fact, the primary drive for such portable devices that do things like time-shift talk radio. This allows you to actually do something useful or enjoyable while waiting for women to get ready or shop for something.
I don't understand you people, who feel guilty for doing what they like to do. What the hell?
Why are we trying to cram all this stuff into our lives? When you multitask your entertainment, all it does is take some of the pleasure out of it. I'd rather *read* a single book in two months and really take it in than squeeze 8 of them into the little gaps of time during the day.
I subscribe to the field of thought that it's better to make priorities of what makes you happiest and go after a few of them full bore in the spare time you have, rather than spend a little time with each of them and get nowhere. Accept the fact that you can't possibly do everything you want, and take seriously the things you *can* do.
These suggestions are totally half baked. Viz:
" Rearrange your work schedule so you start at 7am and get off at 3pm or 4pm. By hitting the streets at semi- off hours you will cut your commute time by possibly half (less traffic.)"
Better solution: find a place to live within 5 minute's walk of work or subway ride. Then you will save on your commute time and not have to get up early. If there is no subway and no residential neighborhoods near work, dump suburbia and move to a proper city. What's the point of freeing up all that time if you're stuck in Boonsville?
"By hitting your seat at 7am when the office is empty and quiet you can get more productive sooner, and get more done between 7am and 9am than most people have done by noon."
This only makes sense if you don't work closely with other people. If you do, you'll spend 2 hours from 7 to 9 waiting for the others to get in. If you can work for hours without needing to ask anyone else for anything, then ask your boss if you can work from home part-time.
"Let a woman take you clothes shopping, throw out everything in your closet and replace it with whatever she suggests. Make sure everything matches everything else. Time saved : none, but nobody will know you got dressed in the dark before you had caffeine in your system."
Wear a suit to work. You can wear the same suit everyday, with the same tie and a range of identical shirts, and no-one will think it odd.
"Don't sleep in on weekends. Get up at your regular time instead of 11am and you have effectively doubled the number of hours of daylight you get on each weekend day."
That may be true, but what's the point? Surely a big reason for saving time where it's not needed is to give you more relaxation time, not less.
"Get your news from FARK (www.fark.com) In the hour it takes to watch the news on TV you could have a synopsis of the important events around the globe from a hundred different news sources. If it is newsworthy, it's on FARK."
Listen to the radio news while doing other things. Try NPR and you might even learn something. Alternatively, admit that for 99.99% of what's reported, there's no reason why you need to know it straight away. So just catch up with the news weekly instead of daily.
"Cancel your MMORPG accounts (stop playing Everquest). This will give you back 1000 hours per year. Maybe more."
And stop reading slashdot. That will save even more.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
"He who thinks time is money understands neither time nor money"
How do you save time? How do you set aside 10 minutes a day to save for a summer holiday? Where do you deposit it? How can you make a redrawal?
"Saving time" means usually just how to make more things in same amount of time ie. to be more efficient. But do you have more time? I don't think so. With all the timesaving gadgets and tips people just feel busier than ever and that they don't have enough time. We westerners often consider time to be something that is useful only if it is spent some how productively. In some other culture time is something we create by doing nothing.
I recommend reading Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
"The turn of the millennium is characterized by exponential growth in everything related to communication - from the Internet and email to air travel. "The Tyranny of the Moment" deals with some of the most perplexing paradoxes of this new information age. Who would have expected that apparently timesaving technology results in time being scarcer than ever? And has this seemingly limitless access to information led to confusion rather than enlightenment?
Thomas Eriksen argues that slow time - private periods where we are able to think and correspond coherently without interruption - is now one of the most precious resources we have, and it is becoming a major political issue. Since we are now theoretically "online" 24 hours a day, we must fight for the right to be unavailable - the right to live and think more slowly. It is not only that working hours have become longer - Eriksen also shows how the logic of this new information technology has, in the space of just a few years, permeated every area of our lives. This is equally true for those living in poorer parts of the globe usually depicted as outside the reaches of the information age, as well as those in the West.
Exploring phenomena such as the world wide web, WAP telephones, multi-channel television and email, "Tyranny of the Moment" examines this new, nonlinear and fragmented way of communicating to reveal the effect it has on working conditions in the new economy, changes in family life and, ultimately, personal identity. Eriksen argues that a culture lacking a sense of its past, and therefore of its future, is effectively static. Although solutions are suggested, he demonstrates that there is no easy way out. " - Book description from Amazon