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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."
Save more time by using software to strip out the pauses and slightly speed up the audio.. up to about 1.5x... That way you can watch an hour show in 30 minutes.. once you strip out the commercials, pauses and laugh track...
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
So is this like uh... a thinly disguised advert, or what?
(Yes, I checked out the site)
you mention that you listen to books while getting dressed, etc. this is not a good method. remember that speed reading fad a few years back? well it turns out that if you don't concentrate on the book's subject you will miss out details and simply forget everything but the most important facts.
like someone said after "speed reading" War and Peace when asked if he could review it.. "um.. it's about some war, and things."
eden.h4xx.com - whacky free for all image board
Ooold tech: we college students have been taping and timeshifting lectures for years.
iPod missed a great bit, though -- if they'd included the mp3-recording capabilities (something like the iRiver's hd recorder, or the Ripflash) then I bet that would've caught on VERY quickly. (You go to class today, I'll go tomorrow, we'll exchange mp3s tonight.)
I'd love to record my lectures, but I don't have $400 for an iRiver, and I can't find a minitape recorder that will last for 1.5 hours without stopping and flipping...
You're being so 'Type A' about your leisure time. It's leisure time... the whole point is to relax, not to 'squeeze in more'.
Another option would be to read books because you find it enjoyable. You're bound to have an ulcer by 35 if you keep up like this. Sometime I worry that I spend too much of my day ingesting data because I read so many websites, newsgroups, message boards, mailing lists, etc. and I certainly don't need to cram any more in while putting on my socks in the morning.
It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. We're the first generation to have this much data available to us at all times, but I don't think we've really started to see the true effects of it yet. Just think about how much more media (music, movies, books, etc) we're exposed to than previous generations-- I wonder what the implications of that will be.
I can already, as a musician, see a very big change to music and to how people interact with it. People spend so much less time actually appreciating music than they used to. Just think that, not that long ago, people used to sit down together and listen to a record and do nothing else. You rarely see anybody do anything like that anymore. Hell, most people I know barely finish listening to songs anymore now that they have access to MP3 players.
If you examine other areas of media (news, books, movies, etc), all of this is happening in much the same way. I digest easily 100 times the news in a day that somebody would've 50 years ago, I see at least five movies a week (thank you, Netflix and Suprnova!), etc. Not to mention how many ads I see in any given day.
I think that having all of this information at our fingertips is going to be a double-edged sword. Just like having MP3s around commoditized music, the same will go for all media. And just as search engines/data collection sites (say, for example, Slashdot or Metafilter-- sites that find data for you) became the "killer app" for the web, I guess these "timeshifting" devices, like TiVo, which allow you to collect the data you wish to collect from a given source (i.e. record all episodes of "Arrested Development," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "The World Series of Poker"), will become the "killer app" of their respected medium. I just have to wonder how it will affect us as people and our society as a whole.
-- atomly
Personally, I have a TiVo that spends most of its day recording stuff from BBC7, a mixture of radio drama and comedy shows. I then have lots of late night listening for those boughts of insomnia. I would never bother listening to these shows if I had to wait for them to come on, the same way as I don't usallly watch any TV live these days. So it makes perfect sense for some radio, just not for recording the breakfast inane chatter every day... (shudder)
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.) Time saved : 1 hour per day on the average.
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.
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.
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. God I love to sleep in so I hate this one.
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.
Cancel your MMORPG accounts (stop playing Everquest). This will give you back 1000 hours per year. Maybe more.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Total cost: $0.
It's been working now for about a week, and already I love it. I can listen to Car Talk and Marketplace whenever I please. I'm saving up a bunch of Fresh Air interviews to listen to on a car trip.
Since a modern hard drive can store about 5 years of compressed talk radio, I don't think I'll need to "change the tape" any time soon. ;-)
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
If you want to cram EVEN MORE CRAP into your life (as I do) you are probably already timeshifting everything you can. So, what to do now to squeeze more episodes of "My Life as a Teenage Robot" into your busy life of sci-fi novels, gameboy programming and gamecube games?
Timestretching!! By cranking up the speed at which you watch something while keeping the audio pitch sane, you can drop a good 25% (or more, if you feel *X-TREME*) from your viewing time. And if you think I'm joking, check out this winDVD page where they outline their timestretching tech. Pop in a DVD, and use your choice of "finish by a specific time" or "finish within a certain amount of time." And voila, suddenly everything takes 25% less time. Which leaves you able to catch up on all those anime reruns your tivo has been accumulating while you were busy watching the Daily Show.
It's important, or something. Who knows.
Using a PVR for talk radio makes about as much sense as printing hard copies of Slashdot discussions.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
OK, I answered my own question (with a tiny bit of help from Google). Media Forte makes a couple of FM-tuner PCI cards and bundle software that records, too. The description says Linux-compatible (drivers?), though the bundled software looks Windows-only.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.