Llanoland

Watching this speedrun while working this morning really brought back some great memories. I think this is my favorite Super Mario Brothers game if not the best one. 

I think a lot of people might say Super Mario World is the best Mario game. Not really familiar with the debate around the best Mario games but I think my ranking here is a mix of nostalgia and just the relaxing, no-timer play that feels very Metroid Vania, even though technically this isn't a Metroid Vania. 

Maybe "feels like" is my standard for what video games I really love? 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/month/2

Big difference here between January and February but March should be larger than January. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out to listen to but Spotify isn't very good anymore about notifying me. I have to rely on producer websites, emails, and label-spam, all of which is so easy to just ignore or delete out of your email. 

The super low week was because I wasn't alone at all - hanging out with the best person ever! But chatting and doing stuff cuts into music time, and I always forget to run shazam on my phone when driving around listening to XM radio. 

Posthaven is great and simple but even greater and less simple (but still simple) is News of the Day (NOTD) who really has the best model for this online posting, newsletter, writing thing. 

https://notd.io/s/NYsophist

Here's my site there, go check it out. Yes it costs some money but this keeps the servers running. Also they don't collect data or sell ads or anything like that. 

I kinda gave up on NOTD and I can't remember why but go check it out. Gonna start posting there again.

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/week/8

Music data coming along for the year. It still has me at a 36 song a day average to eclipse last year, which I think is deceptively easy to do. It's easy to lose track of such a small number, but I've been playing music quite a bit here. My preferred way of listening these days is with some AudioTechnica headphones I bought cheap that are wired into my mixer. It sounds pretty good and has the added benefit of freezing out noise around the house when working. 

I've become soft. I remember being able to work through so much traffic noise and otherwise when I was living in Queens. Being out east has come with an appreciation of the quiet to be sure, but more insidious is the reliance on the quiet. I feel like I need to find a cafe and bring the laptop from time to time in order to keep silence's value. But the only cafe around here that I think I could go work at for a sustained period is a Starbucks. Not really the best place to be hanging out. 

Oklou is an amazing artist I wish I had found sooner. This album though - it has no flaws whatsoever. Every track is really perfectly placed and just wonderful. I wish I had better linguistic equipment to talk about how much I like this album, but that's about all I have. I can listen to it all day. It's just right for reading or writing, and just active enough to pull you in and away from your focus only to allow you to refocus in better and sustainable ways. I love it. It should eclipse my most listened to for February in March, but we'll see what else comes out. 

There are so many good ambient video channels on YouTube you could probably make a whole blog dedicated to them, reviewing them, saying which ones are best for what kind of tasks, etc. 

There are so many good artists and thinkers and creators - it's really a boggling time to try to figure out what is best. But I think it's great to have a rubric of what you like.

This one is my favorite. I even considered giving them some money through a subscription which I never thought I would do on YouTube. I think that being a premium YouTuber is really enough to be honest. However, this is so great, and so handy when reading or writing that I am still considering it. 

Spotify is great, but more often than not these days when I am working I click on something like this.