hold on, I have to turn up the volume on my pillow...

Sometimes I get something new and I have a huge urge to blog about it, but then I think "nobody wants to hear about *insert weird gadget*" and resist said urge. But this, I had to blog about.

First, a little back-story: My brother and I share a thin wall between our bedrooms. His bed is right up against the wall where my television is, so if I have the volume on loud at night, he can't sleep. This has been an issue for years and years. For a while I had headphones with a super long cord so I could listen in bed, but they aren't comfortable, and when it would come time to go to sleep I'd have to take them off so I didn't strangle myself while I slept. Having a long cord laying in the middle of my room all the time wasn't too awesome either.

Enter: the pillow speaker. I traced a super long headphone extension cord around the perimeter of my room, and plugged it into my new pillow speaker. It is literally a pillow with a speaker tucked deep inside of it. You can sleep on it at night, put a pillowcase on it and everything. You'd never know it was a speaker if you didn't hear sound coming out of it. It's a miracle! I don't have to wear bulky headphones, and I can still listen to the television even when I'm drifting off into dreamland.

The only problem I ran into was that the sound was very, very soft if my head wasn't nestled directly on the center of the pillow. It could be that my cheap-o television's volume doesn't go very loud, but for whatever reason, it posed a problem.

Enter: the headphone amplifier. I didn't think this would work as well as it did, but by golly does it work well! You just plug the amp into the headphone cord, and it increases the volume tenfold! Now I can sit in bed with my pillow on, listen to some tv shows, then turn the volume down a bit when it's time to hit the hay. This little amp would probably also work wonders on those iphone/ipod speakers that don't seem to get very loud at all!

In conclusion, I know this was a super weird thing to blog about, but on the off chance that anyone else has a need for re-routing the sound that comes out of their television at night, I thought it might be useful! :)

newfangled contraption

I really didn't expect to stop blogging once Christmas rolled around, but it just happened! I've been terribly sleepy, napping like mad, and doing my fair share of eating as well (one new years resolution will definitely be to shed extra holiday pounds!)

I hope everyone had a marvelous holiday, though! Mine was pretty spectacular, actually. We got up a little late for once (when my brother was little we'd have to wake up at 6am to open presents, but now that we're both tired lazy bums we waited until 9am) and despite the fact that we were all warning each other that the presents wouldn't be good, money was tight and this would be a pretty disappointing Christmas, we actually had a lot of fun & I got some really neat stuff! One of my favorite gifts was this retro tv case for your ipod from Urban Outfitters.

The review on UO complains "it's a box. a cardboard box." well, um, yes, that's why it's only $4. But it's incredibly awesome, and way more fun than any fancy plastic/leather/wooden thing you could use instead. You slide a little compartment out, place your ipod or iphone inside, and slide it back in place. And if you have earbuds (the large jack for my good headphones wouldn't fit) you can even fit your cord in through the side and listen on your headphones. It REALLY is like watching a little retro tv!

I made a little video of it in action if you want to look -- in retrospect I should have copied something like The Donna Reed Show or Leave it to Beaver onto my ipod in advance (which would have looked really neat in my example, right?!) but the only video I had on there was my Dirk Bogarde tribute, so you make do ;-)