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! :)
