List of White Noise / Ambient Sounds to stay focused and increase your productivity

One thing that has helped me stay focused is light background noise and sounds.  It helps drown out possible interruptions and people tend to not bother me with headphones on :). I keep it mixed up by rotating several difference sources; here is a list.

1. myNoise.net - Large collection of hand recorded sounds which are great quality.  Each sound has a mixer with presets that slightly changes the sound and can be 'animated'. 
2. A Soft Murmur - Easy to adjust volumes of different sounds to create your own mixes, with a master volume.
3. Noisli - Good selection of different sounds that can be individually controlled.  Love the railroad track.
4. Coffitivity - Cafe and other environmental sounds.
5. Rainy Cafe - You have Rain, and you have Cafe, simple interface so adjust the volumes how you see fit.
6. raining.fm - Rain, thunder, and lightening, can be mixed together.  The break and sleep timers are a nice addition.
7. ambient-mixer.com - Community driven noise and sound collections, large library.

March 31: World Backup Day

www.worldbackupday.com

Please make sure all of the digital stuff you can’t live without gets backed up.  Camera, laptop, cell phone, all that stuff can be backed up pretty easily with free online storage.  Chances are you already have one of these accounts anyway, if not, sign-up, get your stuff backed up, it might save you one day.

Google: drive.google.com
Microsoft: onedrive.live.com
Dropbox: dropbox.com
Apple: icloud.com
Amazon: amazon.com/clouddrive

My List of 2048 variants

I have been hooked on 2048, its a great puzzler that's a mix between strategy and completely blind luck.  Here is a list of the original and derivatives that I come across (mostly from Hacker News.)

Single Player:

• The Original
• Evil 2048
• 2048 4D
• 16384 Hex
• 2048 Tetris
• 2048 for Physicists
• 6x6 Grid
• 8x8 Grid
• Circle of Fifths - Musical 2048

Multi-player:

• 1 v 1
• 2x2048
• HN Plays 2048

AI

• 2048 AI

The End of an Era - RIP WinAMP

http://www.winamp.com/media-player/en

Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release.
Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.

I have been a Winamp user since I was 14 or so and it has been installed on every computer I have owned (even ones I didn't own) since.  Winamp is the reason I got into music.  I remember I would use ripping tools to convert CD's to mp3's, using Winamp to organize my library.  This was in the napster era when digital music was taboo and the music industry, instead of embracing the convenience of mp3's shunned them and forced high priced ($26) CD's upon us.  More importantly, the napster/winamp era let me do something the music industry could never help me with, discover new music.  I was able to branch out from what was on the radio with a few clicks.  Winamp also got me into programming/scripting because of the Advanced Visualization Studio, which was a dynamic graphic display powered by beats of the music that was being played.  I made dozens of visualizations using geometry, loops, variables, it made me interested enough to go to school for computer science, of which I work in IT now.

Thank you Winamp.