Music for the Mind

When I did my EE on the effect of background music on short-term memory capacity two years ago, I knew that I was bound for stuff like "The Mozart Effect" -- music that claims to boost mental performance as you listen to it.

Now it's like a fresh wave of mind-enhancing music is being unleashed. Enter iMusic, developed by Volition.

I was browsing the Scientific American site when I saw this ad on the sidebar. It had that blue brain image (or some other thing reminding me of the brain) and I just couldn't help but click it to check it out. In fact, I'm listening to a 25-minute sample right now.

I wonder, would it increase my rate of absorbing medical knowledge from my textbooks? Would it improve my academic performance? Help me get the highest H1's that I dream of?

Hopefully. Some people would say: there's no harm trying--nothing to lose. All right. I'm all for it. I'll add this to my arsenal of study techniques as the brain-booster headgear - the helmet of brilliance (+10% intelligence). Hang on, make that +10% intelligence per second. Heheh.

By the way, the types of music in the sample is like classical + ambience music, the kinds you get as the OST for big movies. Reminds me of the background music used by Blizzard in Diablo and WarCraft too. Maybe that's why I can get hyped just by playing those games.

That's all for now. HP tute's starting in less than half an hour.

Picture credit, and more info from: Volition

What credit cards can do

The other day I accessed this blog and just saw pitch black -- no text. Only the side panel remained. I must have left it idle for too long. Anyway...

When I saw "55 days interest-free" on my credit card (got it last year), I knew there was something profitable behind it. Other new terms for me were Cash Advance and Balance Transfer. I never knew you could do that with cards. But then again real life is a lot like board games: you learn the general rules first, play around for a bit, get the feel of it, and then, you go about asking, "Hey, what happens if I do this instead?"

My credit limit is less than $500. So when I first read about cash advances, I thought, what if I withdrew a few hundred dollars and put it in my savings? Then it would generate some extra interest. Which would mean income for me. It seemed like a good idea, but the banks' rules are such that there are no interest-free days on cash advances. Zero. Interest is calculated right from the day the cash is taken out. And then there's the 2% or so fee for getting cash you don't own. Would the savings account interest rate beat the cash advance interest rate? (It's actually an obvious giveaway, because the banks wouldn't want to lose...last time I checked, savings topped at about 5% p.a., while cash advances demand at least 20% p.a.)

So I thought about other ways of playing around with it. One thing I could do was use up all my credit to buy or pay for stuff, wait for a month plus till just before the payment due date, and then settle it in full. That way, I'd maximise the interest earned on my savings because the money still sits there in the bank. Like one website said, credit cards are a way of buying things now, and paying later. And with interest-free days, it's almost like the cards are giving you free money every month. This activity has even got its own name: stoozing. Using up $1,000 credit and stoozing in a 3.00% p.a. account would yield $2.50 per month. Think about it: you get to make money by using your card instead of cash. And I always thought that you'd be charged (vs paid) to borrow money. Of course you'd have to offset it against annual fees and and the like; now I appreciate the concession(s) that we students get.

And of course, this means nothing at all if you've got no savings account to generate interest in the first place. Maybe it's telling you to get one. Because the world as it now is runs on compounding interest--so make it work for you, not against you.


More: stoozing