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Sit.

sonnet.io

31–40 of 131 posts

Re: Sit.

#31
post #25

Trying to use technology to get people to spend some time meditating is fun :) I especially enjoyed the gong sound, the font selection, and the friendly wording in your app. My WIP attempt at achieving something similar: https://ant.care/ There's a button "breathe for food" that'll trigger a similar effect as your website. The difference is that the user is given a digital reward ("food") which they use to feed their…

I’m curious what the ants are up to, do they do a great deal currently? I’ve been running it for a short while and they’ve dug a little L shape with blue pheromones vertically, and purple horizontally - looks like they are putting food in the horizontal but one ant is stuck behind a food block. Poor Taquan. Edit: the ‘view crater’ button also crashes the simulation, at least on an M2 Air using Chrome 120

So, ant.care is intentionally designed to be a slow moving experience, goal is to have it unfold over real-world months, but until I get sufficient environmental depth it's going to feel weird. I give the user the ability to control time in sandbox mode to provide a practical means of demoing.

The queen will give birth to worker ants every hour or so. Worker ants have a low chance of applying tunnel/nesting pheromones when they are surrounded by other ants. So, when your colony grows to a few worker ants then they'll start digging more tunnels and chambers to give themselves space. Food is taken from the surface and brought into the nest and has a higher probability of being dropped near other food which allows for food piles to form over time.

Ants go to sleep at night (not realistic, but I thought it was cute) and, if they're well fed, can regurgitate food to other hungry ants (like the queen, who can't move once giving birthing). They'll emote when these things occur.

And oops, yeah crater view shouldn't be live. I forgot I shipped an update live to debug iOS performance (works on iphones now without crashing!). The goal is to get a "top-down" view and to let ants leave the nest to forage for food, but have been struggling with architecture issues blocking me from it for a while.

Re: Sit.

#32

Trying to use technology to get people to spend some time meditating is fun :) I especially enjoyed the gong sound, the font selection, and the friendly wording in your app. My WIP attempt at achieving something similar: https://ant.care/ There's a button "breathe for food" that'll trigger a similar effect as your website. The difference is that the user is given a digital reward ("food") which they use to feed their…

Hey Sean, I'm familiar with it, great work! I think you should share it with https://mastodon.cloud/@futurebird@sauropods.win a.k.a. myrmepropagandist

:) Thanks. And sure, I can share it with them. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Sit.

#33
Just sat and stared out the window for five minutes and it was delightful.

Ironically, however, I'll probably use this to _stand_ and stare out the window as a nice break from sitting all day.

Thanks for providing the sound to make this tool eyes-free. Cool little demo.

Re: Sit.

#34

Interesting project. One thing I noticed: when I clicked the button, a fullscreen window got spawned, without any prompt asking me if I should enter fullscreen (Latest Firefox). On a sidenote: this could be used for browser-in-the-browser attacks[0] where someone could present a mock browser UI with a fake URL. Other than that, it's a great project. Anything to just sit without distractions gives us an unfair advanta…

Browsers allow entering fullscreen as long as it's in response to user input, such as clicking a button. When entering fullscreen, browsers emit a prompt about exiting fullscreen, partly to make sure people know how to exit and partly to make sure entering fullscreen doesn't go unnoticed. So, it'd be hard to pull off such an attack.

Re: Sit.

#35

I opened the webpage, settled myself down, and clicked "Start". A lovely bong resonated through my headphones, and I relaxed. Immediately, one of the foster kitten sidled past me with a half-butchered gecko, still weakly struggling. I leapt up, grabbed a nearby broom, and gave chase. What followed was an episode of Tom & Jerry, but with more swearing. As I managed to part the cat from the gecko and punt the gecko out…

So sorry to hear that! Perhaps this mrr will soothe your cat instead: https://mrr.sonnet.io

Ah! Well the kittens didn't get up to any nonsense while I scrolled, they just sat, cleaning the poop that they had kicked up the wall off their legs... so 10/10, great success! Thank you! Now I just need to scroll endlessly...

(Sardine is the kitten who led the Great Gecko Chase; Anchovy is the kitten who meditatively masterminded the Amazing Poop Fling. Really need to get these guys adopted out.)

Re: Sit.

#36

There is also an amazing “together” mode: https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.%2C+(together)

This together mode is amazing. I want this combined with the sitting so I feel like I'm sitting with other people.

I also kind of want to personalize the sound my gong makes and to be able to share that with others who are sitting. If we could create a sound bath with all our little gongs it would be sooooo cooool!

Re: Sit.

#37
Okay so

> I was in a (unnamed cafe) browsing HN. I clicked on 'sit'. didn't expect the gong noise & my headphones weren't connected - got strange looks from a couple people.

> I'm usually super hyperfixated with things but I immediately just snapped into a zone. the 'you can stop looking at the screen for now' prompt was super helpful.

> so just I let my eyes just wander, it felt weird to do so, but slowly felt those knots in my brain fizzle out

> I started with the window, watched some people past - the usual mindfulness - nothing too interesting. started listening to the traffic on a car-by-car level which seemed to bring everything into scope. I saw a baby pigeon pick at something across the street, a mother lean down to kiss their baby in a pram.

> then my gaze sort of drifted back into the cafe, both visually and audibly

> I heard the coffee machine whir, listened to the waiters giving each other ordered - which felt sort of intrusive but also kind of like a superpower.

> THEN I caught this waitress' gaze, and I shit you not, she smiled at me.

> maybe it's because I looked like a creep sitting in a cafe watching people with an open laptop in front of me but...

> I learnt things from that 2 minutes of mental silence. thank you

edit: as I was writing this comment, the same waitress brought over my food and we had a chat!

side note: on my Mac there seemed to be some kind of UI glitch with the minutes dropdown menu - it was gigantic

Re: Sit.

#38

There is also an amazing “together” mode: https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.%2C+(together)

Thanks, I was wondering who _plomked_ with me just now. Then a bunch of people showed up. (plomking still feels more personal to me than communicating via text for some reason)

I was also wondering why it feels more personal.

Plomking feels more like making a gesture, and I think we still lack that in the online world. Any reactions on social media usually have deeper and more loaded meaning than, say, a nod of acknowledgement, or even a wink.

I was wondering, could it be due to the value we mentally assign to our reactions when interacting online? “Liking” a post or message is never just about the “like”, it is also:

- forcing you to make a decison to “like” or not react (is this really worthy of my “like”?)

- broadcasting to everyone that you’ve liked something

- signaling the algorithms that there is some weight to the message

- keeping permanent record of your “like”

“Likes” and other reactions have so much weight and complexity behind them.. it kinda takes any intimacy and any human touch out of the equation.

Re: Sit.

#39

There's a blog post by the author explaining the context at https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/ . But really, just sit :-)

That page is more informative and probably the better link for HN, so I've switched to it above from https://sit.sonnet.io/. Thanks!

(I also bent the rules and let the title have a trailing period.)

Re: Sit.

#40
post #26

Not that anyone asked: I've long given up on meditation timers. I go to a room without any digital technology except for a Casio F91W. I have gotten good at gauging how long I've been concentrating for and if I have aversion to continued sitting I just peek at the watch to know how long it's been. This is a solved problem that costs $0 and I don't have to worry about receiving personalised ads because I'm into 'mindf…

Yup. I count my breaths in batches of 12 (batch count on the in breath, breath count on the out breath). So like "1-1, 1-2, ..., 1-12, 2-1, 2-2" and it works out that the batch count is the number of minutes I've been meditating. So if I want to meditate for 10 minutes I do 10x 12-counts. No technology needed, can be done anywhere, anytime.

I haven't heard about this before, did you learn it from someone? I usually just count breaths up to 10 and then restart and have a timer for 10 minutes - the timer usually ruins the mood. This is genius and I'm going to start doing this instead.
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