There is another member of the household. She pays the bills and I don't. When she is not working:
- She won't let me use the air conditioner, even in 84degF (29degC) weather. The build-up of sweat on my face distracts me.
- To compensate for the lack of air-conditioning, she runs a loud fan in every room. The noise distracts me.
- To hide the fan noise, she listens to talk radio. The words distract me.
Does anybody else manage to get any coding done despite similar distractions?
Might some carefully chosen music (on headphones) help? It probably has to be something reasonably relaxing.
I'll assume you can't run the air conditioner to save on electricity costs. But by the time you run a fan in every room and a radio to drown it out, you might as well run just the AC!
I live with a few distracting/annoying family members, so I know how it is. In our case, the living room AC doesn't always get run when it needs to be because it's "too noisy".
My biggest distraction though is being talked to, especially about things I really don't care at all about but don't want to be outright rude and actually say I don't care. It's surely a bad habit, but I think I've gotten to the point where I focus so much on what I'm doing (when possible) that I just totally ignore the talking and pretend to acknowledge that I heard'em till they're done. But then I get yelled at for forgetting important things. lol
There's always times when something is frustrating to work on though, and those are the times when distracting people are especially annoying, to the point I'll just give up for the time being.
But 85cocoa is right, sometimes headphones can be useful. I even tried one of them white/pink/environment/etc noise generator programs before. It's probably less distracting than music.
FyberOptic wrote:
I'll assume you can't run the air conditioner to save on electricity costs. But by the time you run a fan in every room and a radio to drown it out, you might as well run just the AC!
She
prefers the warm fresh air from an open window.
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I live with a few distracting/annoying family members, so I know how it is. In our case, the living room AC doesn't always get run when it needs to be because it's "too noisy".
Our central AC is less noisy than a fan in each room.
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My biggest distraction though is being talked to, especially about things I really don't care at all about but don't want to be outright rude and actually say I don't care.
I say "that's nice" or "no thanks" or "can you save it for later?"
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IThere's always times when something is frustrating to work on though, and those are the times when distracting people are especially annoying, to the point I'll just give up for the time being.
Then I get interrupted with "Are you working on your homework?" or "Are you working on your project for [contract employer]?"
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But 85cocoa is right, sometimes headphones can be useful. I even tried one of them white/pink/environment/etc noise generator programs before. It's probably less distracting than music.
Sometimes when I put an NSF on and leave it on for an hour, she gets tired of it.
tepples wrote:
She won't let me use the air conditioner, even in 84degF (29degC) weather. The build-up of sweat on my face distracts me.
You should expose your concerns over this matter
here.
I keep my apartment about 82 degrees, but as they say, that's "dry heat". Any hotter or add humidity and I'll get quite irritable. I can't think about anything technical if I'm dripping with sweat. My mother, on the other hand, opens her freaking windows at night to let that nice hot humid fresh air in. BTW, fans produce almost nothing but heat, so any fans not blowing directly on a person are just adding to the problem (also blowing air over the walls/ceiling, increasing heat transfer from the outside). Man, if I had to listen to TV/talk radio/music lyrics all day, I'd smash the damn things. Despite what parents constantly say, they don't care about their offspring and constantly do things to inhibit development (look up Alice Miller's works).
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Might some carefully chosen music (on headphones) help?
Headphones when one is sweating?!? Only adds to the claustrophobic feeling (for me, anyway).
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I'll assume you can't run the air conditioner to save on electricity costs.
I calculated the A/C in my apartment to use about 1500 watts when running, which is about the same as a portable space heater. I was surprised how little this was, especially in comparison to the central heater, which used about six times as much power when running. I haven't researched window units, but those can be used to limit the area cooled. Perhaps you could find one and work out payment for the electricity it uses (watts * duty cycle).
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You should expose your concerns over this matter here.
Most living in Africa have been living in the climate all their lives so are used to it, and they probably don't experience the stresses that one does in a place where there is air conditioning. BTW, does anyone see why linking to words like "here" fails, because it significantly alters the sentence when it's stripped of links?
One thing I'd recommend is to express your frustration etc. about the situation in however much detail you can (p/e-mail and I'll happily listen).
I'm also easily distracted by these adversities of daytime (hot weather, people talking, noises, etc). That makes it impossible for me to code during that time. What I do is sleep during that time, and then I code all night long, when it's cooler and completely silent.
I can sleep fairly easily, so most things do not bother me at all. I know not everybody is like this. Also, you can't do that all the time, it all depends on your other activities such as work and school, but you usually can fit a few hours of sleep during the day so that you can dedicate those hours to coding later at night.
I normally am up from 1500 to 700 in the summer, plus I live in a basement, so temperatures are cooler. Hard to work in the heat, especially when it's soldering.
I do most of my programming in the middle of the night. That's when I'm normally awake though, so that works for me.
Yeah, I have distractions, a lot of them. I have a very strange living situation... I live in a resort that my dad manages, and my mother, father, and I all work there. I will be coding, and then all of the sudden, my mom tells me that I need to go make beds, and do laundry, and it can be annoying to have to do those things in the middle of coding. I also have an air conditioning unit right behind my chair, and it blows freezing cold air right at me, and it's distracting. I usually think through coding alot before I do it, that way, I won't have to be sitting there thinking things through for a long time, and I won't have as many distractions. Making an RPG engine with many distractions is REALLY irritating sometimes... Especially when there are STUPID unexplainable errors in your code that cause random bad things to happen. It makes me want to melt.
not being able to use the ac would kill me. the high in arizona right now is usually 105-112 degrees and even at night its still pretty damn hot.
my biggest problem is i have a milk crate for a chair and sitting on if for exteded periods is painfull. especially when sitting in front of a computer.
I spent about an hour or so on some desoldering the other day, standing the whole time, and when I was finished and tried to move away, my legs were suddenly stiff and felt strange, reminding me of when I used to stand in Service Merchandise for hours playing the NES and SNES on display. lol
I'm surprised most guys have AC at home. This is an quite important waste of electricity, and it contribute to heat the planet more, even if it looks like it cools. I think using AC should be reserved for really important uses. Use it at home is a real waste.
I live more on less in the mountains, so it may be cooler here than anywhere else in the world. When it is about 34°C outside, I close all windows and shutters to keep the room at 26°C and I can live with it. If it goes really too hot during vacation or I go in the underground room where there is also a PC and the temperature here never surpasses 20°C, even if it is 34°C outiside.
I'm really not bothered by heat when I'm at home, I'm rather bothered by heat outside of my home.
My worst distraction ? Usually I just code in weekend or vacation days, during the afternoon or so. My worst distraction is my own wish to play various games and not-wish to work, I think.
About noise, I have no problems, exept maybe a jerk negitboor dog barking all the day.
Also there is always my mom and my dad telling me I'm too much on my PC, and always chosing the worst time to annoy me with that. After that, of course, the worst "distraction" is scool, that I'm fortunatly in vacation now, but it will start agin soon. I really DO hate scool.
Clarification: By "carefully chosen" music, I was implying New Age music, specifically stuff by Enya (although IMO, Norah Jones and some of the more popular classical music would work too). I did *not* mean NSFs or any other kind of video game music.
I do only listen vido game music, even trough most people (especially my parents) found that totally ridiculous.
However, I don't usually listen NSFs, but rather SPCs, PSFs and PSF2s.
Yeah, I listen to the FFVII original soundtrack when working on the remake of it. It hypnotizes me, and I'm just like a zombie, coding away. And the funny thing is, I'm paying attention to the music, not my code. It's bizzare...
Celius wrote:
And the funny thing is, I'm paying attention to the music, not my code.
That doesn't sound productive at all. I can't code while listening to music because of this very reason. I only listen to music that I REALLY like, so there isn't any kind of music I can put just to set the mood or something, because I end up paying to much attention to it, and none to coding.
Maybe I just listen to songs so many times that they become background music to me eventually. Songs with less-prominent melodies could also be useful, like house music. Sometimes I listen to music while coding and I think it helps by influencing my mood, giving me enthusiasm and making me less prone to distraction. I hardly ever listen to music with vocals, since I usually find it really distracting unless the vocals are mindless.
blargg wrote:
Maybe I just listen to songs so many times that they become background music to me eventually.
So true.
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I hardly ever listen to music with vocals, since I usually find it really distracting unless the vocals are mindless.
Me too, I NEVER listen any music with vocals.
If I need quite music, I like listen Nakano's song in Final Fantasy X. They are without melody, and just reflect some think of ambiance. It works pretty well to listen while coding. Uematsu's music is more suited to listen just while playing or doing nothing special. But my favourite sound tracks remains Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger.
Bregalad wrote:
blargg wrote:
Maybe I just listen to songs so many times that they become background music to me eventually.
So true.
I know, most people are like this. I, however, am VERY connected to the music I like. Even instrumental (non-vocal) music can never pass for simple background music to me. If they are game, anime or movie OST's, I often start to think about the scenes/parts that used that music, and then I start remembering and imagining things instead of thinking about the logic in my programs. It's a deficiency, I know.
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I often start to think about the scenes/parts that used that music, and then I start remembering and imagining things instead of thinking about the logic in my programs
I'll be like that with or without music, so I just chose with so that when I'm not thinking about what I'm doing I think about the music, instead of thinking about anything else.
And for Video Game music, if you listen some quiet town music or such, this is really good to listen, relax and it doesn't perturb. Listen some other kind of music such as more dynamic ones could change the thing, though.
tokumaru wrote:
Celius wrote:
And the funny thing is, I'm paying attention to the music, not my code.
That doesn't sound productive at all.
It doesn't sound productive, but I am just like a zombie coding away. I get alot done, but I don't really know how. I feel like I'd be distracted, but I actually feel very motivated when listening to the music. I especially can't listen to music with vocals, though. I start singing along, and then I see myself closing my asm file, and I just quit working on my game. It's bad if I do that.
blargg wrote:
I hardly ever listen to music with vocals, since I usually find it really distracting unless the vocals are mindless.
I understand that. The band Napalm Death is a good example, I know the lyrics to some of their songs (often very thoughtful and well written, believe it or not) I find it distracting. But the ones I can't hear or understand become more like background music. Heavy and fast background music, heheh.
I used to try listening to some talk radio (Art Bell) when coding, but that was distracting as hell. I noticed that I would turn the radio off during commericals and actually code productively then. So I pretty much quit listening to radio entirely.
I normally can't listen to game music while coding. Not NSFs anyways, it's too interactive, I'm always wanting to change tracks and stuff. I'm not gonna bother with making my own playlists.
tepples wrote:
She prefers the warm fresh air from an open window.
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Then I get interrupted with "Are you working on your homework?" or "Are you working on your project for [contract employer]?"
Those are my two biggest distractions. I get irritated quickly when I get hot ... which makes it hard for me to concentrate on any form of coding and usually when someone talks to me while I'm trying to code I end up typing parts of the conversation into the code