All posts by nouyang

telephone hold music: analog generator

April 22, 2015 nouyang

Recently a friend recounted to me a visit to a cool museum which had, in one exhibit, a “hold music” generator (you know, elevator muzak… here have some Cisco sound samples).

That is, before there was digital recording and playback, telephone switchboard operators wanted to play soothing music to callers while connecting their calls. To do so, they used little analog electromechanical playback devices — what we now think of as those cute music box toys

but which included very serious and complex devices once-upon-a-time.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box#/media/File:Baud_museum_mg_8548.jpg

Anyway, so it turns out it was the Museum Speelklok (“Musical Museum”) in Utrecht, the Netherlands:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Speelklok
https://www.museumspeelklok.nl/lang/en/

From Zoz comes this photo of the infamous Japanese telephone exchange hold music generator: (original content ahead! whoo)

Electromechanical telephone hold music generator. Photo credit: Zoz at MIT.

[the end.]

Footnotes

Some wikipedia articles of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_on_hold
Which contains this “lolwut” anecdote:

> For those still uncertain of the difference between “song title” and “mechanical” copyrights, consider the Capitol Records lawsuit for copyright infringement against Nike some 20 years ago. Nike legally obtained permission to use the Beatles song title “Revolution” from the title’s owner, Michael Jackson. They used the Capitol Records owned recording of the Beatles’ performance, but failed to obtain and pay for permission and use. Capitol Records sued and prevailed because Nike ONLY had a license to use the title and did not have a license to use the mechanical recording
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_recording_and_reproduction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sound_recording
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Speelklok
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange#Sounds

Other interesting links I dug up while hunting for this museum before giving up and emailing Zoz:

http://www.telephonetribute.com/pdf/telephone_history_series_rev1.pdf
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/09/history_of_hold_music_how_did_we_end_up_with_handel_tinkling_through_the.html

EastWest, International [Development], Short Posts

short post about toilets

April 17, 2015 nouyang 3 Comments

First let’s start with
1) i’m chinese-american
2) I’ve travelled around the world a lot. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America.

Anyway, just commenting on how being a little more open-minded and having a different cultural background / immigrant background than a lot of English-speaking people makes it easy to poke fun at English websites.

I mean, you’d think the writer on a website dedicated to toilets would be a little self-aware and think about how different people can be within a single “culture”. But take a gander at this quote:

toilets in guangzhou, source: http://toilet-guru.com/overview-intl.php

Chinese toilets, at least those in the People’s Republic of China, can be highly communal. There is no place for privacy in a totalitarian state striving for the completely collectivist society. These are in Guangzhou, the large city formerly known in the West as Canton.

–toilet-guru.com

That’s uh, good to know. I guess Amsterdam, the large city formerly known in the West as the “Venice of the North“, is just s*** out of luck (pardon the pun) :'(

Judging their entire culture and society by their toilets and how they void bodily fluids, the Netherlands must be a zero-privacy hellhole, ruled by a dictator, I guess….

Photo via: Jane Dutton Utrecht (http://janeduttonutrecht.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/a-dangerous-method/). source: http://whenonearth.net/different-types-toilets-youll-see-around-world/

So, long story short, this is why I’m announcing my new startup idea, “It’s like Yelp but for Toilets.” Not only will we help millions of people with the toilet experience, but we will also promote open-minded and inter-cultural exchange. It is truly an idea for saving the world, being a social enterprise, and making bank.

Thank you. Please stop throwing money at me. I’m so goody-two-shoes, I can only tell you to throw money at watsan (water and sanitation) charities instead.

here just click here: https://www.wateraid.org/us/get-involved/donate

or if you want to just share links and do slacktivism / clicktivism instead go here: http://www.charitywater.org/

p.s. I bought this book and really enjoyed it; let me know if you want to borrow a copy: http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Necessity-Unmentionable-Matters/dp/0805090835. You can read a summary of some key points on core 77.

http://www.core77.com/posts/12286/book-review-the-big-necessity-adventures-in-the-world-of-human-waste-by-rose-george-12286

Gender, Thoughtful

Addressing the “skeptics” on reddit: Woman up and talk to people in real life.

April 8, 2015 nouyang 2 Comments

as before, posting my response here because I’ve handed off my reddit account to a friend so I can’t keep trying to fix the internet. I’ll re-post to reddit when I get access again in a week.

In response to “he said she said” comment, as replicated below:

guh-internet-suchfail — 4:29 AM: the point distro is now 3 for miotoss, 1 for me, instead of 2:2 as shown here. love you too reddit

I’m sure an arrest would satisfy your desire for truth [/sarcasm].

The fact that there are laws against something is evidence that it happens (so we make a law against it, e.g. no one is seriously making laws against murdering unicorns), not that it doesn’t happen. For instance, there’s laws against speeding and jaywalking, and they definitely still happen. Another example, rape is illegal and people do get arrested for rape, yet people still doubt it happens. Therefore, nothing you read on the internet will convince you, especially if you start from “everyone is lying to me / people are all liars” and the thought is on the tip of your tongue ready to leap out the second you read something contrary to your beliefs.

So seriously, just go talk to people in real life—everyone will be much happier, you and I included. In real life, you will have to look people in face and stare them in the eye and deal with the fact that you could end up feeling sh***y about yourself when you call your friends a liar to their face.

I tell my friends in real life when they are being wittingly or unwittingly sexist, and I feel sh***y as f**k all when I do so. But I deal with it, I deal with their anger and resentment and backlash, I deal with them saying “bulls**t” to my face, I deal with them saying “I’m too busy dealing with my own life and issues to listen to you”, I deal with them saying “I only care about hardcore technical issues and I’m proud of that”, I accept they will tell me “I don’t care about your pet cause, stop talking about it”, I listen to why they are feeling the way they do—I do all this so that we can grow together, and because I’m a grown-up woman and I’m their friend. Because I accept that, if I want them to listen to me, I need to listen to them too.

I listen to them, because I know what it feels like to not be listened to.

I’m far from perfect at listening instead of reacting in anger, because I’m human. But at least I try.

I’m challenging you to do the same. Get off the internet and go talk to people in person. Woman up, like I did, and confront them in real life. Engage with people in order to grow your empathy and understanding of why other people believe what they do, instead of trying to prove to yourself what you already believe. And don’t sleep easy until you do.

It will take effort and time away from honing your technical skills. You will have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and distressed. You will have to accept people’s anger and distrust and hurt and discomfort and apathy and backlash at you. You will have to work to seek out opposing opinions instead of shutting them down. You will have to work to gracefully accept criticism when you inevitably get angry, fail at listening, and fail to hold yourself up to your own standards.You will have to acknowledge the limitations of statistics and the limitations of your knowledge—you will have to put all your opinions aside so that you can fully be there when your friend is asking you to listen to her. You will have to work to broaden your circle of real friends, not just token friends, so that you can talk to people with diverse life experiences with whom you have a history of doing things for in return, instead of just demanding their knowledge and opinion and attention in a one-way relationship—you will have to ask for their trust in you, instead of asking them to lay their painful life stories before your skeptical eyes for you to tear apart while you call them liars “who have zero issue lying” and give them no trust nor respect in return.

And this is the effort you have to put in to be a grown-up woman.

tl;dr Woman up and talk to people in real life. Don’t sleep easy until you are better at listening than at arguing, until you are comfortable doing to your friends in person the things you do to strangers on the internet.

orange narwhals