I very much like the background sounds built into IOS and now also Macos. Being able to fill my headphones with the gentle sound of rain at any time is great for my mind in so many ways.

(It is sometimes a little jarring as well, trying to chill with rain while on the train through a beautiful winter landscape just did not work.)

But this is not the first time I have enjoyed background noise. Someone, for some reason, probably on Mastodon, linked to and reminded me of the fantastic site Mynoise. They have a ton of noise generators, of types I would never have thought of. Forests and rain and oceans, of course. But also offices, restaurants, and gardens. Speaking of oceans, we have a generator of a pebble beach if you want it. How about a B-17 flying fortress?

Even the full list page does not actually list all the options at once.

But the generator which caught me, and now brought me back, was the classic fireplace. It is so good it not only relaxes me, it makes my cheeks feel warm too. Leaning back, eyes half closed, I suddenly recalled: Did they not have a IOS app? And did I not buy a set of generators in it? Is that app still alive? Are my purchases still valid?

The answers to all those questions turned out to be yes. And as a cherry on top, the IOS app works perfectly on M1 Macs as well. I have the fireplace in my ears, leaning back on the couch, feet up, dog curled up beside me.

I will try the other generators - definitely including that B-17 - at some point.

But right now I simply can not find any motivation to do anything but enjoy the fireplace.

It happened.

Again.

At last.

Of all the things Covid put on hold, Øredev is for me the last major one to come back. But on Tuesday morning, I could once again walk in through the smoke screen, grab a excellent cappuccino from Sandby kafferosteri, and feel that yes, despite everything, some things are right in the world again.

Once again, I had the previlege of getting to hang out with and record podcast episodes with speakers. Once again, I got to get into my Øredev routine of hotel gym before breakfast, insufficent cooldown time before showering and eating, and spending the day following my own sort of special conference track of conversations with attending sessions wherever a suitable gap occured.

The technology - limited and battle-tested as it is - seems to have held up perfectly, and the speakers I talked to were as gracious, interesting, and entertaining as always. As usual, I have no idea when each recording will be released in episode form, but I look forward to all eight of them.

I do not play the Switch enough.

I am not even sure when exactly we bought it.

It spends way too much time patiently just sitting around, waiting to entertain someone.

Even though I play too little, it is still a definitive sparker of joy.

I love to look of the console. Just lying there on the table, our black and white unit looks almost Apple-like. That impression lessens when I pick up, and materials, fit, and finish become tactile. The impession also lessens because the design makes so many good concessions to being played with. Kickstand, easily detachable and retachable controllers, and that warm, happy screen you can carry around anywhere.

It feels, somehow, luxurious to have and play on a device like this. The Nintendo DS or, the brief times I used it, the Wii U, never gave me that feeling of luxury. Neither did any Ipad or Iphone when it came to games, come to think of it. Perhaps a PSP or Vita would have - a dedicated gaming device with proper gaming controls and enough power to look good to modern eyes.

It is a Mario delivery device. A Mario kart delivery device. Also a Quake delivery device whenever I take the time to set up the proper controls, and a delivery device for more exciting indie games than I will ever have time for.

It may be a bit childish to go on like this.

That is entirely the point. This is a device for play. Sweet, sweet play.

Autumn energy is a strange thing. Tired, weighed down by decreasing light, yet somehow a lot gets done a lot of the time. How does that work?

All I know is that, at least for me, it does work. And quite reliably too, this autumn as many others before it. The end of September and beginning of October has been a blur of activity of all sorts, almost all of it good to great. There is more to come too, after the Season of the Pandemic I am going back to Øredev again in November. That looks like the final push for the moment, but knowing myself I will probably make some kind of todo out of Christmas and new year's as well.

January, though, might be a bit more relaxed. Perhaps?

If I was not quite so tired, I would probably feel delighted at all that gets checked off lists.

Instead, I think about the tired side catching up, and get stuck in bad moods mainly caused by lack of energy which quickly passes when I do rest.

Getting some exercise in is a great help as well. And something mind-altering, like music. It is almost silly how effective some suitable music can be in changing my mood. When I exercise at home, I often listen to podcasts. Tonight, I went for old rock music instead, and I am very sure I would not have felt as uplifted, nor as sweaty, after 25 minutes with Accidental tech podcast in my ears.

Nothing wrong with those lovely voices, but We're not gonna take it or Run to the hills they ain't.

I even wrote a little bit of code last night! Leisure time-coding has not been a thing for a long time, but last night was apparently magical, somehow. After having thought about it on and off for months, I started on a very small command-line utility to help me do various little production details around Kodsnack more easily.

True to form, I write it as plain old Javascript for Node. 60 glorious lines of code, some of which already perform useful work.

I should not say so, but if this pace continues the whole utility will not only be finished, but also earn back the time spent on it quite quickly.

(Yes, it will appear on Github as well. Perhaps it can inspire someone to write their own personal utilities.)

Yesterday I started wondering where I had put that export of the bjoreman.com incarnation of 2002 to 2012. I knew I managed to export it, but not what, if anything, I did with my exported files.

I then spent some time looking through files and folders on my NAS, eventually finding it in that most unexpected of places:

A reasonably named folder in my documents folder, right here on this machine.

It is simply one HTML page for each entry in the main content database table, plus a single index page linking to all of them. All without a single line of styling.

It works well enough for my reference purposes. 1814 pages, not all of which have content.

Of course it needs to be online, if for no other reason than to make it easier for me to rediscover it the next time I start wondering.

Here it is, in all its unstyled glory.

(Also, I should look into getting a different web host some day, uploading 1814 small files is not fast …)