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This weekend trying to get some fiction reading in and wanting a good café, but none reliably close with the vibe I was currently looking for, I resorted to another trick I use. The nice thing about a café is the ambient noise in the background and the “feeling” of people around. I often can get a lot done in a comfortable café or on a train with work, but also reading.
I resorted to popping open YouTube and searching for Amsterdam, Paris, and London city walks in the rain. YouTube has an abundance of 1-hour to 5-hour ambient walks through the cities with a little background noise. Adding rain into the mix also helps keep the streets more quiet from conversations, plus adds the wonderful sound of vehicles sloshing past.
This time around the option that looked best was a rainy walk through Paris in 4k and getting the volume just right. I turned on the reading light and got cozy on the sofa and it worked well. Every now and then I would look up and the location looked rather familiar, but I couldn’t sort out where it was and that was a little more distracting than I expected. I really enjoy this with physical books.
With ebooks or needing to do a little focussed with and wanting a quick step into another environment like a train, I’ve thrown on the Vision Pro and opened the fantastic app from the French high speed rail service, TGV. The “TVG Inoui” app provides an immersive 3D simulation of riding on the TGV and with an Apple Developer account, that immersive environment can be used as a backdrop to your work in Vision Pro or using the Mac Virtual Display. The sounds and peripheral vision in the environment work well enough to get my brain convinced it is working on the train, even if it is virtually.
I seem to have left pieces of myself scattered around the internet. This is my attempt to pull some of those pieces together.