Author Archives: Steve Mays

Personalized Spatial Audio

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I developed an appreciation for good audio headphones during my time at KBOA back in the ’70s. Not so much for the music as much as wanting/needing to hear my voice as the listener was hearing it. Too close to the microphone? Too far away? Popping my “P’s?” I’ve purchased a lot of headphones over the years, always searching for the perfect set.

I used Apple’s wired earbuds during the iPod days and thought the music sounded fine. I never purchased another set of “cans.” I purchased my first set of Apple AirPods in 2016 and have been using them ever since. They fit my ears perfectly. So well, in fact, that I forget I have them in. Unfortunately, that means I don’t notice if one falls out which happened last week. The Find My app on my phone told me where I last had the AirPod but I never found it.

When I got my new AirPods my buddy George asked if i had configured them to take advantage of Personalized Spatial Audio. I vaguely recalled reading about this feature but don’t think I ever used it. As good as I thought the AirPods were before, this bit of tech magic was impressive.

(Perplexity) It uses the TrueDepth camera on newer iPhones to scan your face and ears. This captures data about the geometry and contours of your head and ear position. This personalized profile is then used to optimize how spatial audio is rendered through your AirPods or Beats headphones. It adjusts the sound to account for your ear shape and head size, providing a more immersive 3D audio experience tailored specifically to your anatomy.

Songs I’ve listened to a thousand times sound fresh and new. So, yeah, I’ve become one of those people walking around with tiny white things in my ears. More and more I’m using Siri to schedule reminders, send messages, check the weather, jot down a note… you get the idea. My phone stays in my bag more these days and when at home, I leave it on the table and interact via AirPods (as long as phone and pods are on same wifi network.

This will get even more interesting this fall when I take the Apple Watch (with cellular) plunge.

Religious service attendance dropping

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More than three-quarters of Americans say religion’s role in public life is shrinking, per a recent Pew Research Center survey — the highest level since the group first started tracking such sentiment in 2001.

A separate Gallup survey published this week found that Latter-day Saints are the only religious group wherein a majority say they attend services weekly, at 54%.

30% of Protestants say they attend services weekly, compared to 28% of Muslims, 23% of Catholics and 16% of Jews.

If AI does nothing else for us…

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What are you gonna do?

Trump Stand-up

The genius behind these is someone named Jabari Jones (YouTube). There’s an actor by that name but cannot confirm this is his YT channel. What can I tell you, I’m a sucker for crude humor.

Jerry Seinfeld: “The Scholar of Comedy”

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Excellent interview in The New Yorker by David Remnick. Not sure if the piece is behind a paywall or not but it’s a good read.

“That’s the way you go through life. You only care about laughing and being funny.”

“And I don’t like old people, either. Even though I’m seventy—I don’t like old people. […] They don’t look good. Everything’s going. Everything’s deteriorating. I don’t want to see this. If you want to hang around, fine, but we’re moving on to younger people. I’m with you up to about thirty-eight. If you want to stay, you can stay, but I’m moving on.”

“There were no sitcoms picked up on the fall season of all four networks. Not one. No new sitcoms.”

Bittersweet Garden Party

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Barb is very active in the local garden club and today they held a fund-raising event that seemed like a good place to try out my new DJI Osmo Pocket 3 camera. The camera has more features than I can count and they’re all good ones but I’ve had trouble getting started. Today I just turned the camera on started recording. I’ll talk more about the features as I use and understand them.

Clues that you are rich

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A lot of rich people don’t even realize they’re rich. Here are some clues:

  • You are worried about someone hijacking your car when you drive downtown.
  • You can afford things you actually need, like healthcare.
  • You don’t use a calculator while grocery shopping, and you don’t use the produce scales in grocery stores.
  • You spend money on traveling for leisure.
  • You never worry about hidden, snowballing fees or “poor tax”.
  • You never have to hustle to work out where you will sleep or where your next meal comes from.
  • You can invest in something that pays off later or just simply stock up because buying more is cheaper.
  • You don’t hold up the line with your complicated benefits when checking out in the grocery store line.
  • You don’t have to worry about logistics, like how you will show up to appointments on opposite sides of the city in one day.
  • You shop online.
  • You don’t have to worry about your kid’s tech access for school.
  • Bureaucratic procedures, such as getting a driver’s license, are not prohibitively impossible.

— It’s Training Cats and Dogs

Morgan Motor Company

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Spotted this beauty in the supermarket parking lot. I believe it is a Morgan +4.

Morgan Motor Company Limited is a British motor car manufacturer owned by Italian investment group Investindustrial. It was founded in 1910 by Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan. Morgan is based in Malvern Link, an area of Malvern, and employs approximately 220 people. Morgan produce 850 cars per year, all assembled by hand.[2] The waiting list for a car is approximately six months, but it has sometimes been as long as ten years.

“A yammy full of Georgia joy juice”

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The Shield premiered in 2002 and got glowing reviews but I never got around to watching it. Until now. It holds up well after 20+ years. The show was created and written by Shawn Ryan and while I can’t say for sure he penned this bit of dialog, somebody deserves an award for coming up with the line, “I’ve got a yammy full of Georgia joy juice.” And I thought I had every slang term for female genitalia.

Perplexity says (using British accent) she has no voice

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As good as I’ve found ChatGPT to be, it appears Perplexity (another AI tool) might be even better. One of my favorite features of ChatGPT is ability to “converse” with one of several human-like voices. I posted an example of this a few months back. Others nitpick but I find the voice amazingly human-like. Now that I have a Perplexity account I wondered if it has the same feature.

Does not have a voice feature? Sooo, what are we listening to here. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this and I’ll update this post if and when. Perhaps it’s just a new feature (that it doesn’t know about?!)

What I was curious about –before this distraction– was why the ChatGPT voice is so natural sounding and the Perplexity voice is canned computer-speak.