Work sounds...

History is an interesting thing. Reaching back in time from current shop radios and MP3 players, back to the Ancient Romans with the drum beat cadence of their rowing ships, and most likely far before the Romans, human kind has long make work more pleasant, and efficient by mixing in music, or other background sounds into their wok environment to set a tone, a pace.

I realized this recently as I was working on some shop clean up after rearranging things for the recycling man, and I had left my phone in the house and simply didn't have anything but the sound of my own thoughts to set a tone for the work day. Things went very poorly productivity wise, and it just wasn't all that enjoyable...

This got me thinking about how I enjoy music, talk, and even movies when I am in the shop... And how much I manage to get done to the cadence of even the flow of good story telling.

For example, I have it well documented the progress I made once I got the help I desperately needed shoving the big drywall panels in place, how fast the rest of the work setting my shop back up went. This was all courtesy of my DNLA server and my Galaxy S4 phone. You see I own several Steven King novel based movies / TV miniseries on DVD that I have converted to mp4 on my DNLA server, and have been playing them in the shop.

Most notably the 2 series / movies I have been enjoying while I work have been the 1994 adaptation of Steven King's "The Stand". I guess it comes from being in that same age group as Molly Ringwald and Gary Sinise. The other one I have been enjoying is Langoliers.

My setup is pretty simple, and effective enough for what I am doing. Just my Samsung Galaxy S4 phone, using Bubble upnp as the DNLA client, and a "Music Bullet" external speaker. It gets plenty loud for listening while I work when hearing protection isn't needed. (Not listening when hearing protection is needed anyway, so no biggie...)

I do tend to listen to music the shop as well. For that I use my Pandora Radio app and tune in the Prog Rock station... Been known to listen to country in there as well...

So what keeps you moving in the shop, or out under the car, in the yard, or wherever you are doing your work?