🚞 Night Trains, Webrings, and Cable Returns

kind of but not really

Nov 20, 2023

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you have a wonderful week with your family and friends, reminiscing about old memories, stories, and tales of the long ago.

Do you plan on doing any Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals? There’s nothing really on our radar this year.

Amo released the new ID app - it’s one of the most interesting ui/ux experiences I’ve ever had. It reminds me of Muze Chat - I wonder if it’s what Willem (muze cofounder) was referring to when i mentioned it to him.

I guess I’m FINALLY at the point where I need to buy a backup iPhone. The 2020 iPhone SE runs around $100 used on Backmarket so I might get one for Christmas.

A friend of mine (who moved overseas - sir - if you’re reading this when are you starting the blog so i can read of all your adventures?) sold me his old gaming desktop - which compared to my old desktop - runs like a greased sled - SO FAST.

I’ve been enjoying a bit of Bioshock remastered here and there as i have time.

Have you been keeping up with the coup at OpenAi? Sam’s firing and likely return?

All of the OpenAi employees possibly threatening to leave?

(Do you think AGI has been achieved and the board got scared?)

The memes have been incredible - even the auncient Downfall meme made an appearance (I haven’t seen one of those in years, i’ll be honest with you).

I can’t believe that December is already around the corner. It’s about time to put up some Christmas decorations here . . .

Let’s dive in, shall we?

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🚞 Night Trains Are Back

Trains are awesome.

Maybe it’s because I played with so many trains as a kid - or maybe it’s because train museums were a formative part of my childhood.

Whatever the case - I have a deep love for trains.

i’ve written about them several times in the LOR - such as Midnight Trains the other year.

📻Find Audio Memes, Tiny Android Dreams, and Midnight Trains

David Nichols

May 23, 2022

Read full story

Yes - I love the film Murder on the Orient Express, and I greatly enjoyed the Snowpiercer TV show (even though it got cheesier every season).

I recently read a CNN article that mentioned that night trains have been getting popular again in Europe.

There’s nothing quite like an overnight train. The excitement before an evening departure. The sense of adventure. The cosmopolitan mix of international travelers. And the timeless cultural appeal that inspired “Murder on the Orient Express” and “From Russia With Love” or legendary songs by the likes of James Brown, David Bowie and Ray Charles. And then there’s the journey itself – retiring to bed as you clatter out of a big city and waking up in a new city, or even a new country, can create memories to last a lifetime. (source)

So much fun!

Even better news is that it’s so popular - they’re actually expanding train lines

Where good rail links exist, long-distance travel between major cities is booming again after the Covid-19 pandemic, and for longer journeys overnight trains can offer a compelling alternative to the unpleasant experience of early morning flights.Led by Austrian Federal Railways’ (ÖBB) “Nightjet” network, overnight links between major European cities have been restored and expanded over the last few years, reversing decades of dwindling services. (source)

That’s some good news in my book. It’s so exciting to see that trains are getting popular again! It’s way more comfortable to travel by train than a plane.

It may take much longer - but the views are amazing.

Sleeper trains like the Caledonian Sleeper have really nice accommodations - ranging from private cars with a bathroom/shower to sleeping in your seat.

If you REALLY want to drop your jaw in shock at some sleeper cars - take a look at these trains.

Now, I don’t live in Europe - so what about night trains in the U S of A?

I decided to do a bit of digging - and Amtrak here in the USA actually offers vacations with sleeper cars.

They’re not cheap - but they do exist.

For example - there’s a 10 day trip that you can take from the East Coast to the West Coast - that starts at $1299 a person.

or - this 16 day trip that takes you from the East Coast to the West Coast - and back again - but it starts at an eye-watering 5K a person.

I hope that train lines get expanded in the USA at some point!

Read more at the link or check out Amtrak Vacations!

Night Train Revolution

Amtrak Vacations

💍 Webrings

I’ve been on the internet since around 2007 or 2008, but it’s been a longgggg time since I thought about a Webring.

(probably since the days when I was adventuring through Redwall fan websites)

This article by Arne Bahlo brought alll the memories back.

Basically - the idea is to create a personal website, and link to a bunch of other personal websites in the same vertical.

Yesterday you found this fly website about amateur radio, and you want to explore more—but how can you find related websites? Yahoo is slow and not really showing you what you’re looking for. Then you notice that this website is part of the “Amateur Radio Webring”. You click the arrow to the right and dive into another website about amateur radio. (source)

Yeah. It’s not easy to find cool websites these days.

(Side note - XH over at mmm.page is making websites discoverable again)

One fun thing to do is to wander through old curated geocities pages.

You never know what kind of cool stuff you can find!

Arno’s little essay implores the audience to create their own webrings of interesting sites.

You found this goofy personal website, and you’d like to browse similar ones. What do you do? Find the person on socials, look at who they’re following and check if they have a website? It’s time to bring webrings back. Introducing the Fire Chicken Webring; an invite-only webring for personal websites. You can explore this webring by going to the footer of this website and clicking on either arrow to navigate to another personal website. (source)

Go check it out! There’s some fun little websites to explore on it.

The kind of stuff you’d NEVER find out in the crumbling social media cities.

Well - maybe other than one of those “10 personal websites YOU CANNOT MISS” posts on Twitter and Linkedin but unlikely.

I’ll try and make a webring of my own soon with some of the bizarre websites i’ve found.

Ready to explore?

Fire Chicken Webring

💻Cable Returns (duh duh duhh)

We’ve talked about how much subscriptions cost, and how paying for all the streaming services is basically cable again.

If you’re over the age of 27 - you probably remember your parents discussing cable packages, or looking at the advertisements yourself - trying to figure out if the channel you wanted was included.

So. Many. Bundles. And only the most expensive ever had everything you wanted.

AND NOW WE’RE BACK.

Kinda makes you wish there were . . . streaming bundles. eh?

Well.

Meet Go Bundled.

Go Bundled (currently in beta) bets that it will be your best option for bundling your streaming services.

You can bundle services such as Netflix, Disney, and HBO Max to save around $5 a month.

I’m very curious how they’re getting these savings. Is this some kind of backdoor deal between the streaming services and this startup to test the waters?

I wandered through a lot of their pages - and couldn’t figure out anything one way or the other.

I assume based on their partnership pages, that they’re offering subscriptions on some kind of legitimate “deal” basis with companies like Netflix or Disney.

But where does Go Bundled make its money . . . off our data? maybe off a margin between the partnership price and our price?

Based on their partner page - it looks like it might be some kind of data insight thing, but I’m not sure.

The biggest perk for me of using a service like “go Bundled” is paying one price for a few services - one easy monthly payment!

I’m real curious about the add-ons part - how many of the streaming services that I use - could I bundle?

Could I bundle Netflix, Hulu, Disney, HBO Max, and Peacock all in one?

Could I choose all the plans that have ads for maximum savings?

Who knows! They’re still in beta - so all I can do is enter my email and wait to gain access.

Go check it out at the link!

Go Bundled!

🐙The Land of Random

into the Land of Random we gooo. Into the forest we gooo.

Dive into City Pop

I love a good article about City Pop. Don’t you? This article is perfect even if you don’t know what City Pop is. (Spoiler - It’s an amazing vibey music).

City Pop