Queen B
Here is Beatrix, the newest member of our household:
She likes charging around the U shaped corridor of our apartment carrying her new squishy blue ball. And hiding behind the radiator.
Downturned
The BBC reports that “they” (in this case, the boys at the underground EU fortress HQ) are keen to implement default maximum volume limiters on MP3 players, because apparently 10% of listeners are blowing out their eardrums. They even quote some acceptable noise exposures, such as 40 hours a week of 80 decibel levels. These values mean squat to me, as well as I suspect the 99.999% of listeners who are neither audio engineers, nor have a decibel meter hooked up to their headphones. But wouldn’t it be awesome if the player just told you that? If it could calculate your weekly exposure levels and warn you if you were exceeding the suggested limits? That seems better than setting a certain cutoff, which everyone is going to bypass with a hack straightaway anyway.
And in unrelated (but not unimportant) news: we got a cat! Pictures, perhaps, shortly.