10 ms·

Sit.

686 points by rpastuszak 3y ago

Happy New Year everyone. Now, please share with a friend who needs to sit the fuck down or enjoy the experience yourself. Why I built it: https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/ https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/ and https://untested.sonnet.io/Projects+and+apps+I+built+for+my+own+well-being https://untested.sonnet.io/Projects+and+apps+I+built+for+my+...

canpolat 3y ago
Thanks for sharing. It's not immediately obvious from the site: does this offer anything more than a usual timer?
- lambdaba 3y ago
  Yes, but you have to sit a little to find out...
  - canpolat 3y ago
    Cool, thanks. I'll give it another shot, then.
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Nope, it's just a dumb timer telling people to sit down and do nothing. More about that: https://untested.sonnet.io/MISS+–+Make+It+Stupid%2C+Simple https://untested.sonnet.io/MISS+–+Make+It+Stupid%2C+Simple Similarly, Ensō (enso.sonnet.io) is just a dumber <textarea>
bramblerose 3y ago
There's a blog post by the author explaining the context at https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/ https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/ . But really, just sit :-)
- dang 3y ago
  That page is more informative and probably the better link for HN, so I've switched to it above from https://sit.sonnet.io/ https://sit.sonnet.io/. Thanks! (I also bent the rules and let the title have a trailing period.)
ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
Very useful and beautiful, thanks for sharing! This also gave me the idea to use web tech to build the timer I always wanted, which is the reverse of this one: a bong when the timer expires, but also ticks every minute (or 5) while the timer is running. Edit: you also have a very beautiful website... and extremely nice drawings!
- bob88jg 3y ago
  I suffer from extreme time blindness and one apparent solution to this is to have a regular metronome like pulse - I would love an app for say a smart watch or something that did this with vibrations!
  - uhhyeahdude 3y ago
    There is an iOS/watchOS metronome app literally called “Pulse” that provides haptic feedback. That might get you part of the way there
  - ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
    Managing time blindness has been a challenge, too. I've discovered a helpful tool: the BlipBlip app on my Android device. This app allows for customizable settings such as selecting a ticking interval—in my case, a 15-minute reminder—and choosing from various ticking sounds, with my preference set to Casio. Notably, it also enables the configuration of periods without ticking, particularly useful for nights or weekends. The are plenty of other options but these are the ones I care about the most.
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Hehe, I'm also working on a "metronome for my attention": https://untested.sonnet.io/Things+to+support+my+own+well-being+–+a+wishlist https://untested.sonnet.io/Things+to+support+my+own+well-bei... hit me up via hello @ <website> or my newsletter on untested.sonnet.io and I'll message you when I have it.
  - ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
ragtagtag 3y ago
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 outside, a calm bong brought me to my senses. 1/10, this did not make me sit.
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  So sorry to hear that! Perhaps this mrr will soothe your cat instead: https://mrr.sonnet.io https://mrr.sonnet.io
  - ragtagtag 3y ago
    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.)
SeanAnderson 3y ago
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/ 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 digital ant colony. I'm now trying to add intelligent behaviors to the ant colony in an attempt to make them seem alive and compelling enough for users to repeatedly engage with the breathwork exercises. Good luck with your project! :)
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Hey Sean, I'm familiar with it, great work! I think you should share it with https://mastodon.cloud/@futurebird@sauropods.win https://mastodon.cloud/@futurebird@sauropods.win a.k.a. myrmepropagandist
  - SeanAnderson 3y ago
    :) Thanks. And sure, I can share it with them. Thanks for the suggestion!
- jpsouth 3y ago
  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
  - jpsouth 3y ago
    Ah, I'll say no more but they are up to something! Cool.
  - SeanAnderson 3y ago
    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.
scrozier 3y ago
I came, I sat, I conquered. So simple, yet immediately effective. (Full disclosure: I'm a regular meditator, so it's pretty easy for me to slip into mindful awareness.) Thank you for this!
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Thanks, I use it to meditate myself (shi-ne). I often set a minimal timer (e.g. 15 m) and then, either: - use the 1-minute interval to get a rough idea of how much time has passed, or - practice different breathing patterns (e.g. 3 breaths per minute)
inferense 3y ago
this is cool as well as your other side projects :)
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Thanks! there's also a group version of this app / little experiment I've been playing with. Working title "Space Kalimba". https://nothing-together.sonnet.io https://nothing-together.sonnet.io Sometimes * I communicate with random people via that site, without any words, just sending little "plomks" to each other. * literally 30 seconds ago!
tslocum 3y ago
If you are interested in a FOSS option for android check out Meditation Assistant: https://code.rocket9labs.com/tslocum/meditationassistant https://code.rocket9labs.com/tslocum/meditationassistant
WallyFunk 3y ago
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 advantage over the majority of the world's population who are addicted to phones. [0] https://mrd0x.com/browser-in-the-browser-phishing-attack/ https://mrd0x.com/browser-in-the-browser-phishing-attack/
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  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.
  - odensc 3y ago
    > So, it'd be hard to pull off such an attack. That's what you'd think, but people rarely pay that much attention. The fullscreen prompt only shows up for a few seconds. For example, recently a family member clicked on a fake YouTube link from an ad in Google's search results. Clicked the search bar and it immediately turned their whole screen into a "call apple support" popup. They called me up because they thought it was a virus, but really it was just a fullscreen webpage, and being not very technologically inclined, they didn't even try Esc, Cmd+Tab, Cmd+Q, etc.
    - atahanacar 3y ago
      That's why I've installed adblock on every relative/friend's browser. Also disabled browser's notifications. Then one day one of them blindly followed instructions to remove it so they can access an online newspaper. The only time they could actually follow instructions, it was actually malicious.
badcppdev 3y ago
UI only goes to 100 minutes. What if I want to have a really serious sit and think
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  ugh FINE, just pushed an update with 999 minutes (I'm too lazy to touch CSS during my holiday break). See you in 17 hours!
echelon_musk 3y ago
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 'mindfulness'.
- saulpw 3y ago
  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.
  - CrypticShift 3y ago
    > No technology needed, can be done anywhere, anytime. I call this doing nothing with... nothing. It aligns closer to the spirit of emptiness.
  - kaosnetsov 3y ago
    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.
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    Counting makes it not so effective for me, but so do timers. I tend to just meditate however long feels right from 5-45 minutes.
  - mayukh 3y ago
    This is brilliant. For me it was about 8 counts per minute (and I could adjust on the fly). This is a good one to add to the arsenal of breathing techniques. Re: the app. My personal experience has been after while if you need an app to do nothing …
smugglerFlynn 3y ago
There is also an amazing “together” mode: https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.%2C+(together) https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.%2C+(together)
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  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)
  - smugglerFlynn 3y ago
    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.
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  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!
robertlagrant 3y ago
Like: the design, idea, sound, and the fact you spell colour with a u. 10/10 Don't like: "at the intersection of". 1/10 Overall: 4/10.
drusepth 3y ago
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.
justinl33 3y ago
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
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Thanks for the comment. I've been feeling a bit down recently and I feel like I needed to read this.
geraldog 3y ago
Cool, but there's an error there. "Just sit" is not a Zen koan, although it is a meditative technique used in Zen-Buddhism, particularly the Japanese Soto school of Zen. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Is what?
pedalpete 3y ago
In this, they are still trying to get the person to meditate. To sit with very little and wonder what they are doing wrong. A few months ago I created Harbor (getharbor.app) which played some sounds with some haptics and tried to get people to focus on the sensation of the haptics. I'm a meditator, but I know many people who aren't and trying to get them to just "sit" and do nothing is a challenge. Some people get stressed out about are they doing it "right". These are the challenges to try to overcome with meditation, so I'm not quite sure why Sit is different to other timers.
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  > These are the challenges to try to overcome with meditation, so I'm not quite sure why Sit is different to other timers. You're looking at it as a product, which is understandable, but that's not the point. I communicate with people through my articles, drawings and code, and this is one of the ways of achieving that. It's like telling a friend that it's ok to slow down and do nothing for a moment but then scaling it up to 50-70k people. You can call it meditation or fucking around, I don't really care. Thanks for sharing Harbor. Weirdly enough, I actually worked for a company specialised in using generative audio + biofeedback during therapy sessions (led by some prominent scientists in the field, mainly from Imperial College IIRC).
  - pedalpete 3y ago
    Thanks, you're right. I do look at these things from a product standpoint most of the time. Harbor was just a weekend of coding for me, as we work in neurotech focused on sleep, and I hadn't published anything that people could use in a long time, and it was getting to me. We decided not to pursue Harbor because the science behind the impact wasn't compelling enough. I'd be keen to find out more about the work you did at the Imperial College. We may pick Harbor up again in the future, if we can be convinced of the efficacy.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
unforgivenpasta 3y ago
The together version found here https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ is neat as well, you can play simple sounds to another person or a bell gong to everyone One thing i found a bit distracting is the very obvious looping point of the background music
TruthWillHurt 3y ago
I guess if you can't make something complicated or push the limits, you just call it "art" or "thought provoker" and spend lots of words talking about an egg timer.
justinl33 3y ago
keep this ad-free and I will love you forever.
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  No worries, not gonna happen. I'm not much into psychological warfare these days.
w10-1 3y ago
I like the simple approach. And as a practical matter, just chillin' is safe. But still: [sitting] can get uncomfortable. But when you finish, for some strange reason you feel better Meditation requires some guidance appropriate to the person. Some people are attracted to meditation for the wrong reasons; encouraging them without proper direction can make things go badly for them. Zen shinkanzen in particular is considered difficult for new students because it is object-less meditation (unlike e.g. Tibetan use of mandala, Christian prayer, or Vispassana body-awareness). Even Zen teachers often start with breath-counting and progress to other heuristics before approaching emptiness. People are generally robust to thoughts and opinions, even somewhat negative ones, so it seems like the marketplace of ideas and apps is a fine place for that. But I would encourage people writing meditation apps at a minimum to take the same care that any health/diagnostic app would, amplified by the likelihood that someone emotionally unstable might embrace your offering a little too closely...
- calderknight 3y ago
  I don't get what you're saying. Anyway, I think meditation is best when used for thinking, not for not-thinking.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    I'm curious, best for what? Personally, I don't need any practice to think - but not thinking, that's very challenging! And practicing has been very rewarding.
    - calderknight 3y ago
      Best use of time ethically speaking. Goal is to develop ideas.
      - saulpw 3y ago
        I don't know about you but I have way too many ideas. Some are good, most of them are terrible, and some of them are downright evil. It often takes a quiet mind to see which is which and not talk myself into indulging bad ideas.
jes5199 3y ago
I’m glad we have the web for this. the app stores would never approve this, even as a free app
riversflow 3y ago
> as long as I can get you to sit down on your ass for a moment and stop trying to be productive, I’m a happy man I love this. You are my kind of a person. I'm also a big fan of meditation, mindfulness, and taking care. I hope you find success in this goal. "Sit." as a name for the app just doesn't work for me. I laughed out loud when I found out it was an app for meditation, as I think of "Sit." as a put down. For people who don't know, It's a commonly used aggro comment put in match chat when you kill someone, typically in a high stakes duel. However, that association puts me in the exact wrong headspace for meditation. Probably just me though.
retrochameleon 3y ago
I like it a lot. I was hoping it would be installable as a PWA.
- solatic 3y ago
  ^ this. This is pretty much the only thing I would add; when doing an "add to home screen" and going to full screen, it still shows the phone and browser borders, which aren't black. Adding a manifest.json, setting theme_color and background_color: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/How_to/Customize_your_app_colors https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... would help a lot on mobile with the immersion effect Sit is aiming for.
  - iamchp 3y ago
    > immersion effect Totally agree. At the moment, add to home screen creates a shortcut that opens up Safari (along with its other distracting tabs ;) would be great if Sit could be set up as a web app too!
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Author here -- working on it atm. Will post an update soon.
  - rpastuszak 3y ago
    OK, done on Android https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.+Offline+Mode https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.+Offline+Mode In a marvellously diabolical turn of events iOS nosleep support works as long as the app is not in standalone mode. aargh! Will post an update with that later.
    - retrochameleon 3y ago
      You are a legend! I came back to your website for a little over 10 minutes with Sit because I saved the bookmark to my home, and then I ended up getting pulled into your website to explore it a bit. I was really loving the minimalist aesthetic, and it made me wonder why I usually complicate my own web designs by adding boxes around things instead of letting the content flow. Also, your writing style in your technical posts is very refined, clear, and succinct, which I appreciate. Eventually, I found your post mentioning that Sit was a PWA now, and it made me remember I had commented back on here. I came back wondering if you had replied, and sure enough, you had! Thanks for making the improvement! I'm very glad I can install it as a PWA now, and I know I'll be using it more! (also a fan of Obsidian and SvelteKit, for the record)
thunkle 3y ago
I can't explain it but my brain can't handle that this is a website and not a mobile app.
- kelnos 3y ago
  That's a shame; quite a few apps should just be websites.
fyhn 3y ago
I love the font. Maybe particularly because it's kind of big, so you can see the details. It seems to be EB Garamond: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB_Garamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB_Garamond
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Oh yeah, EB Garamond is doing the heavy lifting for me, design-wise, no doubt about that:) I use it on sonnet.io, consulting.sonnet.io and sit.sonnet.io I didn't use it on days.sonnet.io only because I felt weirdly obsessed with performance when I was coding it.
matthematica 3y ago
if you have a problem with the phrase "brutally simple", why did you use it?
wscourge 3y ago
Do the same to make people work-out and we're golden.
dheerajvs 3y ago
> Every step you take is watched and assessed in terms of its monetisation potential, every interaction is meant to extract value from you. Looks at uBlock Origin. Yep, requests to convertkit.com and sonnet-events.vercel.app are blocked.
0xcoffee 3y ago
I love the art style, is it self made?
torginus 3y ago
Is this some sort of challenge on how far you can make it into the article before throwing up? I have not read something this pretentious and self absorbed, yet painfully lacking in self-awareness in a long long time. It is beyond me how this fart huffing pseudo spiritualism becomes intertwined with engineering culture. I mean, I respect the hustle, turning lifestyle advice and a general sense of being better than you into expensive billable consulting hours.
- mrmanner 3y ago
  This type of comment is why we can’t have nice things. Don’t like a link? That’s fine, but no need to be mean about it.
  - torginus 3y ago
    First, I disagree with the premise that you cannot criticize articles in the comments. That's what they are for, after all! My delivery could've been more refined, and maybe my comment was as unnecessarily angry, I still fully stand by its contents. The whole article is a giant ad for the guy's management consulting gig. It contains a mishmash of far eastern mysticism, self-help nonsense, political signaling, all of which have nothing to do with developing software, even though the article suggests otherwise. Mental health is important, and each of us lets off steam in their own ways, but to claim that the aforementioned things give you product development superpowers is the exact same mental jump as claiming a particularly fancy (and maybe religiously/spiritually meaningful) piece of jewellery has healing powers. It is quackery, the enemy of every skilled professional.
    - mrmanner 3y ago
      My delivery could have been refined as well - I don’t mind criticism per se, only when it’s angry and comes off as mean. To some extent I do believe in public praise and private criticism, but less so when an author links their own work like they did here.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mkl 3y ago
> why do we say “brutally” simple and not, say, “elegantly” simple? We do say "elegantly simple". According to Google search result counts, "elegantly simple" is used about 15 times more often than "brutally simple".
- paxys 3y ago
  You are right, but Google search is a terrible way to make the comparison. They are returning all websites that are vaguely related to the phase, not doing a word search. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=elegantly+simple%2Cbrutally+simple&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=true https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=elegantly+simp... is much more accurate.
  - mkl 3y ago
    No, I'm doing a quoted phrase search, not a vague vector similarity search. Turning on verbatim mode doesn't change the results much (13 times more instead of 15).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Cerium 3y ago
  My feeling has been that "brutally simple" evokes the meaning of Brutalist architecture, it is a phrase applied to something that is simple, honest, and functional.
tock 3y ago
I really really love your sense of design. Feels very calming!
zb3 3y ago
I was already sitting on my chair therefore I do not need this article and these crapy post titles which do not explain anything.
ph0rque 3y ago
Looking for something else, but you got this haiku. Now, was it brutal?
cupcakecommons 3y ago
"Rant: It just feels perplexing how preoccupied we are with sending people to a dead rock 138600000 km away by treating some random tech bro like your favourite football team, where at the same time we have 1000s of Curies, Teslas, Newtons worth of human potential, brain power which could be unlocked with sometimes relatively little work. Those people are not 1 au away. Yet, we fetishise those who make us miserable instead." Yawn

Sit.

686 points by rpastuszak 3y ago

canpolat 3y ago

Thanks for sharing. It's not immediately obvious from the site: does this offer anything more than a usual timer?

lambdaba 3y ago
Yes, but you have to sit a little to find out...
- canpolat 3y ago
  Cool, thanks. I'll give it another shot, then.
rpastuszak 3y ago
Nope, it's just a dumb timer telling people to sit down and do nothing. More about that: https://untested.sonnet.io/MISS+–+Make+It+Stupid%2C+Simple https://untested.sonnet.io/MISS+–+Make+It+Stupid%2C+Simple Similarly, Ensō (enso.sonnet.io) is just a dumber <textarea>

bramblerose 3y ago

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

dang 3y ago
That page is more informative and probably the better link for HN, so I've switched to it above from https://sit.sonnet.io/ https://sit.sonnet.io/. Thanks! (I also bent the rules and let the title have a trailing period.)

ahmedfromtunis 3y ago

Very useful and beautiful, thanks for sharing! This also gave me the idea to use web tech to build the timer I always wanted, which is the reverse of this one: a bong when the timer expires, but also ticks every minute (or 5) while the timer is running. Edit: you also have a very beautiful website... and extremely nice drawings!

bob88jg 3y ago
I suffer from extreme time blindness and one apparent solution to this is to have a regular metronome like pulse - I would love an app for say a smart watch or something that did this with vibrations!
- uhhyeahdude 3y ago
  There is an iOS/watchOS metronome app literally called “Pulse” that provides haptic feedback. That might get you part of the way there
- ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
  Managing time blindness has been a challenge, too. I've discovered a helpful tool: the BlipBlip app on my Android device. This app allows for customizable settings such as selecting a ticking interval—in my case, a 15-minute reminder—and choosing from various ticking sounds, with my preference set to Casio. Notably, it also enables the configuration of periods without ticking, particularly useful for nights or weekends. The are plenty of other options but these are the ones I care about the most.
rpastuszak 3y ago
Hehe, I'm also working on a "metronome for my attention": https://untested.sonnet.io/Things+to+support+my+own+well-being+–+a+wishlist https://untested.sonnet.io/Things+to+support+my+own+well-bei... hit me up via hello @ <website> or my newsletter on untested.sonnet.io and I'll message you when I have it.
- ahmedfromtunis 3y ago

ragtagtag 3y ago

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 outside, a calm bong brought me to my senses. 1/10, this did not make me sit.

rpastuszak 3y ago
So sorry to hear that! Perhaps this mrr will soothe your cat instead: https://mrr.sonnet.io https://mrr.sonnet.io
- ragtagtag 3y ago
  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.)

SeanAnderson 3y ago

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/ 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 digital ant colony. I'm now trying to add intelligent behaviors to the ant colony in an attempt to make them seem alive and compelling enough for users to repeatedly engage with the breathwork exercises. Good luck with your project! :)

rpastuszak 3y ago
Hey Sean, I'm familiar with it, great work! I think you should share it with https://mastodon.cloud/@futurebird@sauropods.win https://mastodon.cloud/@futurebird@sauropods.win a.k.a. myrmepropagandist
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  :) Thanks. And sure, I can share it with them. Thanks for the suggestion!
jpsouth 3y ago
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
- jpsouth 3y ago
  Ah, I'll say no more but they are up to something! Cool.
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  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.

scrozier 3y ago

I came, I sat, I conquered. So simple, yet immediately effective. (Full disclosure: I'm a regular meditator, so it's pretty easy for me to slip into mindful awareness.) Thank you for this!

rpastuszak 3y ago
Thanks, I use it to meditate myself (shi-ne). I often set a minimal timer (e.g. 15 m) and then, either: - use the 1-minute interval to get a rough idea of how much time has passed, or - practice different breathing patterns (e.g. 3 breaths per minute)

inferense 3y ago

this is cool as well as your other side projects :)

rpastuszak 3y ago
Thanks! there's also a group version of this app / little experiment I've been playing with. Working title "Space Kalimba". https://nothing-together.sonnet.io https://nothing-together.sonnet.io Sometimes * I communicate with random people via that site, without any words, just sending little "plomks" to each other. * literally 30 seconds ago!

tslocum 3y ago

If you are interested in a FOSS option for android check out Meditation Assistant: https://code.rocket9labs.com/tslocum/meditationassistant https://code.rocket9labs.com/tslocum/meditationassistant

WallyFunk 3y ago

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 advantage over the majority of the world's population who are addicted to phones. [0] https://mrd0x.com/browser-in-the-browser-phishing-attack/ https://mrd0x.com/browser-in-the-browser-phishing-attack/

JoshTriplett 3y ago
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.
- odensc 3y ago
  > So, it'd be hard to pull off such an attack. That's what you'd think, but people rarely pay that much attention. The fullscreen prompt only shows up for a few seconds. For example, recently a family member clicked on a fake YouTube link from an ad in Google's search results. Clicked the search bar and it immediately turned their whole screen into a "call apple support" popup. They called me up because they thought it was a virus, but really it was just a fullscreen webpage, and being not very technologically inclined, they didn't even try Esc, Cmd+Tab, Cmd+Q, etc.
  - atahanacar 3y ago
    That's why I've installed adblock on every relative/friend's browser. Also disabled browser's notifications. Then one day one of them blindly followed instructions to remove it so they can access an online newspaper. The only time they could actually follow instructions, it was actually malicious.

badcppdev 3y ago

UI only goes to 100 minutes. What if I want to have a really serious sit and think

rpastuszak 3y ago
ugh FINE, just pushed an update with 999 minutes (I'm too lazy to touch CSS during my holiday break). See you in 17 hours!

echelon_musk 3y ago

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 'mindfulness'.

saulpw 3y ago
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.
- CrypticShift 3y ago
  > No technology needed, can be done anywhere, anytime. I call this doing nothing with... nothing. It aligns closer to the spirit of emptiness.
- kaosnetsov 3y ago
  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.
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  Counting makes it not so effective for me, but so do timers. I tend to just meditate however long feels right from 5-45 minutes.
- mayukh 3y ago
  This is brilliant. For me it was about 8 counts per minute (and I could adjust on the fly). This is a good one to add to the arsenal of breathing techniques. Re: the app. My personal experience has been after while if you need an app to do nothing …

smugglerFlynn 3y ago

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

rpastuszak 3y ago
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)
- smugglerFlynn 3y ago
  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.
SeanAnderson 3y ago
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!

robertlagrant 3y ago

Like: the design, idea, sound, and the fact you spell colour with a u. 10/10 Don't like: "at the intersection of". 1/10 Overall: 4/10.

drusepth 3y ago

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.

justinl33 3y ago

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

rpastuszak 3y ago
Thanks for the comment. I've been feeling a bit down recently and I feel like I needed to read this.

geraldog 3y ago

Cool, but there's an error there. "Just sit" is not a Zen koan, although it is a meditative technique used in Zen-Buddhism, particularly the Japanese Soto school of Zen. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

Is what?

pedalpete 3y ago

In this, they are still trying to get the person to meditate. To sit with very little and wonder what they are doing wrong. A few months ago I created Harbor (getharbor.app) which played some sounds with some haptics and tried to get people to focus on the sensation of the haptics. I'm a meditator, but I know many people who aren't and trying to get them to just "sit" and do nothing is a challenge. Some people get stressed out about are they doing it "right". These are the challenges to try to overcome with meditation, so I'm not quite sure why Sit is different to other timers.

rpastuszak 3y ago
> These are the challenges to try to overcome with meditation, so I'm not quite sure why Sit is different to other timers. You're looking at it as a product, which is understandable, but that's not the point. I communicate with people through my articles, drawings and code, and this is one of the ways of achieving that. It's like telling a friend that it's ok to slow down and do nothing for a moment but then scaling it up to 50-70k people. You can call it meditation or fucking around, I don't really care. Thanks for sharing Harbor. Weirdly enough, I actually worked for a company specialised in using generative audio + biofeedback during therapy sessions (led by some prominent scientists in the field, mainly from Imperial College IIRC).
- pedalpete 3y ago
  Thanks, you're right. I do look at these things from a product standpoint most of the time. Harbor was just a weekend of coding for me, as we work in neurotech focused on sleep, and I hadn't published anything that people could use in a long time, and it was getting to me. We decided not to pursue Harbor because the science behind the impact wasn't compelling enough. I'd be keen to find out more about the work you did at the Imperial College. We may pick Harbor up again in the future, if we can be convinced of the efficacy.

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unforgivenpasta 3y ago

The together version found here https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ https://nothing-together.sonnet.io/ is neat as well, you can play simple sounds to another person or a bell gong to everyone One thing i found a bit distracting is the very obvious looping point of the background music

TruthWillHurt 3y ago

I guess if you can't make something complicated or push the limits, you just call it "art" or "thought provoker" and spend lots of words talking about an egg timer.

justinl33 3y ago

keep this ad-free and I will love you forever.

rpastuszak 3y ago
No worries, not gonna happen. I'm not much into psychological warfare these days.

w10-1 3y ago

I like the simple approach. And as a practical matter, just chillin' is safe. But still: [sitting] can get uncomfortable. But when you finish, for some strange reason you feel better Meditation requires some guidance appropriate to the person. Some people are attracted to meditation for the wrong reasons; encouraging them without proper direction can make things go badly for them. Zen shinkanzen in particular is considered difficult for new students because it is object-less meditation (unlike e.g. Tibetan use of mandala, Christian prayer, or Vispassana body-awareness). Even Zen teachers often start with breath-counting and progress to other heuristics before approaching emptiness. People are generally robust to thoughts and opinions, even somewhat negative ones, so it seems like the marketplace of ideas and apps is a fine place for that. But I would encourage people writing meditation apps at a minimum to take the same care that any health/diagnostic app would, amplified by the likelihood that someone emotionally unstable might embrace your offering a little too closely...

calderknight 3y ago
I don't get what you're saying. Anyway, I think meditation is best when used for thinking, not for not-thinking.
- maxbond 3y ago
  I'm curious, best for what? Personally, I don't need any practice to think - but not thinking, that's very challenging! And practicing has been very rewarding.
  - calderknight 3y ago
    Best use of time ethically speaking. Goal is to develop ideas.
    - saulpw 3y ago
      I don't know about you but I have way too many ideas. Some are good, most of them are terrible, and some of them are downright evil. It often takes a quiet mind to see which is which and not talk myself into indulging bad ideas.

jes5199 3y ago

I’m glad we have the web for this. the app stores would never approve this, even as a free app

riversflow 3y ago

> as long as I can get you to sit down on your ass for a moment and stop trying to be productive, I’m a happy man I love this. You are my kind of a person. I'm also a big fan of meditation, mindfulness, and taking care. I hope you find success in this goal. "Sit." as a name for the app just doesn't work for me. I laughed out loud when I found out it was an app for meditation, as I think of "Sit." as a put down. For people who don't know, It's a commonly used aggro comment put in match chat when you kill someone, typically in a high stakes duel. However, that association puts me in the exact wrong headspace for meditation. Probably just me though.

retrochameleon 3y ago

I like it a lot. I was hoping it would be installable as a PWA.

solatic 3y ago
^ this. This is pretty much the only thing I would add; when doing an "add to home screen" and going to full screen, it still shows the phone and browser borders, which aren't black. Adding a manifest.json, setting theme_color and background_color: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/How_to/Customize_your_app_colors https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... would help a lot on mobile with the immersion effect Sit is aiming for.
- iamchp 3y ago
  > immersion effect Totally agree. At the moment, add to home screen creates a shortcut that opens up Safari (along with its other distracting tabs ;) would be great if Sit could be set up as a web app too!
rpastuszak 3y ago
Author here -- working on it atm. Will post an update soon.
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  OK, done on Android https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.+Offline+Mode https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.+Offline+Mode In a marvellously diabolical turn of events iOS nosleep support works as long as the app is not in standalone mode. aargh! Will post an update with that later.
  - retrochameleon 3y ago
    You are a legend! I came back to your website for a little over 10 minutes with Sit because I saved the bookmark to my home, and then I ended up getting pulled into your website to explore it a bit. I was really loving the minimalist aesthetic, and it made me wonder why I usually complicate my own web designs by adding boxes around things instead of letting the content flow. Also, your writing style in your technical posts is very refined, clear, and succinct, which I appreciate. Eventually, I found your post mentioning that Sit was a PWA now, and it made me remember I had commented back on here. I came back wondering if you had replied, and sure enough, you had! Thanks for making the improvement! I'm very glad I can install it as a PWA now, and I know I'll be using it more! (also a fan of Obsidian and SvelteKit, for the record)

thunkle 3y ago

I can't explain it but my brain can't handle that this is a website and not a mobile app.

kelnos 3y ago
That's a shame; quite a few apps should just be websites.

fyhn 3y ago

I love the font. Maybe particularly because it's kind of big, so you can see the details. It seems to be EB Garamond: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB_Garamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB_Garamond

rpastuszak 3y ago
Oh yeah, EB Garamond is doing the heavy lifting for me, design-wise, no doubt about that:) I use it on sonnet.io, consulting.sonnet.io and sit.sonnet.io I didn't use it on days.sonnet.io only because I felt weirdly obsessed with performance when I was coding it.

matthematica 3y ago

if you have a problem with the phrase "brutally simple", why did you use it?

wscourge 3y ago

Do the same to make people work-out and we're golden.

dheerajvs 3y ago

> Every step you take is watched and assessed in terms of its monetisation potential, every interaction is meant to extract value from you. Looks at uBlock Origin. Yep, requests to convertkit.com and sonnet-events.vercel.app are blocked.

0xcoffee 3y ago

I love the art style, is it self made?

torginus 3y ago

Is this some sort of challenge on how far you can make it into the article before throwing up? I have not read something this pretentious and self absorbed, yet painfully lacking in self-awareness in a long long time. It is beyond me how this fart huffing pseudo spiritualism becomes intertwined with engineering culture. I mean, I respect the hustle, turning lifestyle advice and a general sense of being better than you into expensive billable consulting hours.

mrmanner 3y ago
This type of comment is why we can’t have nice things. Don’t like a link? That’s fine, but no need to be mean about it.
- torginus 3y ago
  First, I disagree with the premise that you cannot criticize articles in the comments. That's what they are for, after all! My delivery could've been more refined, and maybe my comment was as unnecessarily angry, I still fully stand by its contents. The whole article is a giant ad for the guy's management consulting gig. It contains a mishmash of far eastern mysticism, self-help nonsense, political signaling, all of which have nothing to do with developing software, even though the article suggests otherwise. Mental health is important, and each of us lets off steam in their own ways, but to claim that the aforementioned things give you product development superpowers is the exact same mental jump as claiming a particularly fancy (and maybe religiously/spiritually meaningful) piece of jewellery has healing powers. It is quackery, the enemy of every skilled professional.
  - mrmanner 3y ago
    My delivery could have been refined as well - I don’t mind criticism per se, only when it’s angry and comes off as mean. To some extent I do believe in public praise and private criticism, but less so when an author links their own work like they did here.
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mkl 3y ago

> why do we say “brutally” simple and not, say, “elegantly” simple? We do say "elegantly simple". According to Google search result counts, "elegantly simple" is used about 15 times more often than "brutally simple".

paxys 3y ago
You are right, but Google search is a terrible way to make the comparison. They are returning all websites that are vaguely related to the phase, not doing a word search. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=elegantly+simple%2Cbrutally+simple&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=true https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=elegantly+simp... is much more accurate.
- mkl 3y ago
  No, I'm doing a quoted phrase search, not a vague vector similarity search. Turning on verbatim mode doesn't change the results much (13 times more instead of 15).
deleted 3y ago
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Cerium 3y ago
My feeling has been that "brutally simple" evokes the meaning of Brutalist architecture, it is a phrase applied to something that is simple, honest, and functional.

tock 3y ago

I really really love your sense of design. Feels very calming!

zb3 3y ago

I was already sitting on my chair therefore I do not need this article and these crapy post titles which do not explain anything.

ph0rque 3y ago

Looking for something else, but you got this haiku. Now, was it brutal?

cupcakecommons 3y ago

"Rant: It just feels perplexing how preoccupied we are with sending people to a dead rock 138600000 km away by treating some random tech bro like your favourite football team, where at the same time we have 1000s of Curies, Teslas, Newtons worth of human potential, brain power which could be unlocked with sometimes relatively little work. Those people are not 1 au away. Yet, we fetishise those who make us miserable instead." Yawn