How open source works

I have been finding surprising how the tiny little, most niche probable things that I have opted to publish, just for the sake of doing it, end up picking up usage by others. In the case of nodejs/npm within a month or two, in the case of python/pypi slower.

Not only that but I experienced for the first time the pull that you get when a bigger crowd starts using your utility. How could it ever happen?

Here is the senario that happened to me:

1. There is some popular service https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres (thousands of github stars)
2. some guy wants some tiny mini feature from that service - to improve the readability of the saved screensnaps
3. the powers to be tell him "you do it". The guy looks around find my little utility (slugifyurl) that does exactly that uses it and submit the patch
4. patch gets rejected. The service being popular - stretches my utility (e.g. windows valid names)  and it fails the tests..
5. the guy comes to me for a fix. I fix it - he submits it and it gets accepted
6. Suddenly my tiny utility is now being used by 1000s. Within an hour I get more more comments. Not only that but I get the less polite, "what the heck are you doing here " attitude of more experienced folks. My first reaction was to tell "ask more politely if you want me to raise my finger..." but I decided to let it go and I just went and fixed whatever they asked.

Of course now all I can do is wait for npm to bring back the download counts.. to see my little app having downloads in the 100s and 1000s!!! Cant wait.

I have no need for music any more

Before starting any argument let me first explain that because of several personal reasons even though I like/appreciate music and songs - I very rarely find myself needing to hear to music. I actually find myself in the opposite position. There are too often the cases where I don't want to be hearing music and need to defend the right to keep the car or home of iphone speakers on mute.

My typical explanation is that I cannot think with music.  Even though I can rarely follow the words of english music songs - music has this ability to grab by brain and take over its foreground process - leaving only background tasks. But when I drive - I want to think. These are precious interrupt free moments that I can really focus on understand what to do next , find a solution, or better understand a problem/ situation. In the rare occasions that I am just tired for that - my alternative is some reading - but almost always reading will result in rekindling of idea generation - problem solving etc etc.

So my kids thing of my as a weirdo - as an "An Enemy of the Music". 

 Its a different topic but seeing young or not so young people with headsets and eyes closed, dozing off to a tune - is in my view similar to people falling victims to a mind-less brain-consuming addictive habit that eats their opportunity to do something real - with the sole exception that it is a society approved and positively perceived drug. Anyone that makes an argument that listening to a song for the 20-th time - spending one hour or more on a daily basis in listening to music _as a foreground task_ has a rather weak standing.

Ok but back to our topic. In spite of all that I do have itunes on my laptop and headsets on my backpack and I use them rather regularly: the reason? I need a background hum that will cover occassionally distracting audio signals to get me into the zone of whatever I am doing.

Given that 99% of the music I hear has the "attention grabbing" effects I mentioned earlier I have trained my brain : I have about 20-40 songs mostly without words that I have by now heard 100s of times that I put in a loop. I do it mostly when there are annoyong people in a coffeeshop - and occassionally when there are people at the office where I just find too hard to ignore listening what they are saying. I would have done it now - given that the sounds of the starbucks I am now at are not what I like... Too much of a mall starbucks.

Until two days ago a friend pointed out to me an app/site called coffitivity!. A site the gives the audio experience of a coffee shop of your choice (standard, lunch time, campus coffee shop).

And it is perfect!.

My brain does not detect any repeating pattern. The audio signal is/can be loud enough to cover anything from annoying people to airplane hum. My brain needs it to focus and still its noise/murmur style leaves it as a 0% CPU requiring background task.

I use it @ home where the deafening silence bothers me. It automatically transports me to a coffee shop state

I use it at work, when working parked in the car etc. (do lots of driving carrying around kids...)

I submitted a feature request - for them to provide a selection of coffeshop webcam/video feed.  The need for that is different... I need the occasional break. When I am at home the breaks, TV, Fridge, family can be black holes. Same when I am at the office. Still in the coffee shop - I am stuck in a chair - forced to be in working mode - but I do have the option whenever I want to raise my head and look around an active different than the last time visual environment - interesting but not too interesting that I cannot pull back my attention into my work 2 minutes later. So I want that same video feed as part of the my coffitivity experience. I can leave it running on an iPad on the side for my focus space for the occasional glimpse.

I am realizing as I am writing this that my need/inability to keep me focused - (all the talk about not being able to focus with music  - or the unmanageable distractions of an home or office may imply that I am a bit more of attention deficit than the inverse... This may very well mean that coffitivity is an ideal thing for ADHD kinds of people... interesting..

It also may mean that people that are on the other side of the spectrum the asperger stereotype don't need such devices. My asperger son - can probably really study well with music while for other "adhd" son of mine, music is just a mind consuming drug... because of the different ways their two brains are wired (I actually do have two sons one - that can easily sit for 20 hrs straight reading a book and fits the adhd us-society stereotype...)