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Miami Florida Gets Blade Runner Style LED Towers
Generating Noise In Audacity For Help With Sleeping
Increase Firefox Performance By Up To 25% On Windows

Miami Florida Gets Blade Runner Style LED Towers

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 03:30 AM PST

For those of you who have ever seen the movie Blade Runner, there are scenes whether the flying police vehicles known as "spinners" fly past Los Angeles skyscrapers that show absolutely humongous advertisements directly on the buildings themselves:

(Note the image of the face on the building behind the spinner; that’s part of an advertisement.)

Miami Florida is going to have something that actually looks like this, as they have been approved to build 500-foot-tall LED billboard towers; the largest in the world.

This is a mockup of what they will look like:

My reaction to this? I hate it.

Almost all sci-fi movies like Blade Runner (such as The Running Man) that have shown super-large electronic boards like this have always depicted the future as a dystopia. I don’t see 500-ft. electronic billboards as a marvel of technology; I see them as Miami spamming the entire A&E district.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Miami Florida Gets Blade Runner Style LED Towers

Generating Noise In Audacity For Help With Sleeping

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 03:00 AM PST

You may have heard about the web site SimplyNoise; a site that literally plays noise albeit the kind you want to hear. In the audio world, there’s white, pink and brown noise. White sounds like TV static, pink sounds somewhat similar to a waterfall and brown sounds hollow-like, such as a heating vent or your car’s vents. (In the video I said I couldn’t describe it, but upon reflection, brown does sound like a hollow-ish pink noise.)

What are the benefits of white, pink or brown noise?

The SimplyNoise web site describes uses of these noises best (see "Uses of SimplyNoise" section on their home page), but in my opinion the best uses are for help with sleeping and masking tinnitus.

Concerning sleeping, if you’re the type that would say "I need a fan running in the bedroom because I cannot sleep in dead quiet", using noise will help – especially when you want to hear the sound but not feel the air.

Concerning the masking of tinnitus, ambient noise can make your brain work just enough to ease the constant ringing in the ear. It probably won’t eliminate the ring, but at least it will make it somewhat less noticeable; something any tinnitus sufferer will appreciate.

Creating your own noise using Audacity

SimplyNoise does get the job done if you want to generate these noises easily and even has a sleep timer built right into the site. However you may want to customize your noise or simply use a media player instead of a web browser for playback. If that’s the case, you’ll need to create your own sounds.

Fortunately, creating noise is super-easy using the free Audacity audio software. You can literally have your noise sounds completed in just minutes. See video below for details on how it’s done.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Generating Noise In Audacity For Help With Sleeping

Increase Firefox Performance By Up To 25% On Windows

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 10:00 AM PST

Firefox users on Windows who want to get a boost of speed in their browser should check out Palemoon which can increase performance by up to 25%.

Mozilla does not provide optimized browser packages for Windows, while many Linux ("from scratch") users get the advantage of a browser built specifically for their system. That needs to change! So, here is the Pale Moon project: Custom-built and optimized Firefox browsers for Windows Operating Systems.

This is primarily accomplished by compiling the Firefox code with Windows optimizations enabled as well have having certain performance decreasing features disabled.

The great thing about Palemoon is since the source is essentially Firefox’s base code, all add-on and themes will work with no issue. The bottom line is if speed is an important factor in the browser you choose, Windows users should definitely give the Palemoon build of Firefox a try.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Increase Firefox Performance By Up To 25% On Windows