As a scientist, we had some pretty unusual definitions of the word “noise.”

For most people, they mean auditory issues. Loud sounds, constant background humming, a co-worker that chews too loudly.

I had one of those for a few years. Loud slurper. Drove me nuts. Anyway.

From a science standpoint, though, “noise” is sorta everything that isn’t “signal.” Signal is that which you are trying to detect or do. Noise, therefore, gets in the way of Signal, and Signal-to-Noise ratios are very important for most measurement applications.

Right now, I’m dealing with both auditory noise, and distraction noise. There is heavy construction outside my house (new fiber-optic lines, if the non-stop door-to-door salespeople are to be believed), and it’s very distracting. Especially because I’m trying to work on some audio engineering (editing, really), and that’s proving very difficult under the circumstances.

Ah well. They said they would only be about an hour… although that was about 2 hours ago… so I guess we’ll see!

Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!