
Listen to the Clouds - craigds
http://listentothe.cloud/
======
dyml
Wow, surprised to see this on HN!

Creator here, if you have any feedback, please just comment here or ping me on
twitter @andersaberg, I'll take airport requests etc there :)

Have a good one, A

~~~
elwesties
Seems to max out my CPU on MBP macOS Sierra Chrome 56.0.2924.87 (64-bit)

~~~
dyml
That's really surprising. I have no problems on my win machine which I guess
is why I missed it.

Is it the same problem even if you run it in backgorund? Have some listeners
that will pause the youtube video when that happens (which should minimize
CPU)

~~~
mike_pol
For me the high CPU usage seems to happen because of the video background. As
soon as I remove the <div class="video-background"></div> the CPU usage drops
to normal on my MacBook Pro (with integrated GPU)

------
matt4077
Do people easily understand these transmissions? I always think there must be
something wrong with either my English, or my ears because I barely understand
a number here and there, even with headphones.

~~~
OmIsMyShield
When I did my PPL one of the instructors gave us a CD full of recordings that
we could listen to to train our ear for it. Matching that to transcripts
helped - and it also helps once you know the lingo, since it's mostly a
limited set of words and the phraseology has a specific structure.

For example: Altitudes and flight levels:

3,500 is spoken as "three thousand five hundred".

13,500 is spoken as "one three thousand five hundred".

But other numbers (like times, directions, etc) have every digit spoken, for
example 10 minutes is "one zero minutes" or wind direction 220 is "wind
direction two two zero". Speed reading would be something like "one niner zero
knots" for 190 kt.

The sentence structure is also relatively strictly defined, for instance at an
unattended airport you would always transmit in this order:

(1) where you are

(2) who you are

(3) what you intend

(4) repeat where you are

So you'd say something like: "Swartkops traffic(1), small Jabiru Kilo India
Tango(2), left downwind for runway one eight, touch and go(3), at
Swartkops(4)"

This kind of strict structure and limited lexicon does make it understandable
after a bit of practice, since you are expecting certain words to show up.

~~~
Fiahil
Interesting, thanks! I bet it's international ? The french transmissions were
also following this patterns.

~~~
OmIsMyShield
Yes - UN member countries generally use ICAO (International Civil Aviation
Organisation) standards. There are some country-specific weird things, though.

You can read the ICAO Radiotelephony Guide[1], should you be interested.

Searching for something like "ICAO Phraseology Reference Guide" might give you
good results too.

[1]
[http://www.icao.int/safety/acp/Inactive%20working%20groups%2...](http://www.icao.int/safety/acp/Inactive%20working%20groups%20library/ACP-
WG-C-3/wgc3_wp7.doc)

------
7373737373
Wow, this is incredibly soothing. I just followed a plane taking off on
[https://www.flightradar24.com](https://www.flightradar24.com)

~~~
andai
Wow.. that's a lot of planes!

------
craigds
This is a great background sound for working. I have the airport chatter at
medium and the ambient music at low, and I listen to a busy airport that I
can't understand at all (Santiago is a good one) so I don't engage my brain
too much.

I'm finding this incredible for helping with focus.

~~~
amelius
The sound of a cafe can also be a nice background sound.

E.g., [https://coffitivity.com/](https://coffitivity.com/)

------
danso
Great idea and lovely implementation. If I could make one nitpick, it would be
to add some tags so that it shows up as a Twitter card for when people tweet
about it:

[https://dev.twitter.com/cards/overview](https://dev.twitter.com/cards/overview)

[https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator](https://cards-
dev.twitter.com/validator)

(FWIW, looks fine on the Facebook linter because of the og:meta tags
[https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=http%...](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=http%3A%2F%2Flistentothe.cloud%2F))

~~~
dyml
@danso Wouldn't it be cool if it would be a player card? So it would actually
broadcast (maybe a recording?) of the music+radio

~~~
danso
That's beyond what I know of Twitter cards, mostly because I've never made
anything as eminently interactive :)

------
mgkimsal
Suggestion - let me link to a specific airport.

[http://listentothe.cloud/#hkg](http://listentothe.cloud/#hkg)
[http://listentothe.cloud/#dtw](http://listentothe.cloud/#dtw)

etc...

------
kelvin0
Wow, what is it about atmospheric music combined with radio chatter? On their
own they don't have much of an impact on me , but combined I feel like I am
Major Tom.

Awesome.

I also recommend the ISS feed (with orbital video!)

------
hans0l074
Been listening to this since I discovered it on HN this morning. A lot of it
reminds of the Vangelis/Blade Runner OST. Great work!

------
3legcat
I find the voice of the operator at HK airport incredibly soothing.

~~~
bamboozled
It almost sounds like it's pre-recorded speech actually. But I agree, very
relaxing.

------
malditojavi
This reminds me to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_Broadcasting_(b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_Broadcasting_\(band\))

------
dziungles
You can also listen to the train ride ambient in Norway -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ)

~~~
creativityhurts
On a similar note, I like listening to the videos of this guy
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVp5RGNn_CpRKUyGaQVidHg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVp5RGNn_CpRKUyGaQVidHg)

He has long drives, mostly around NY area.

------
manigandham
Nice UI.
[http://youarelistening.to/jfk_atc](http://youarelistening.to/jfk_atc) is a
similar service.

~~~
puranjay
He mentions that it was inspired by YouAreListening.to

------
askmike
In a way this gives a new meaning to the term "live music". Especially since
this is an existing style of music: anywhere from Bowie[1] to more niche bands
like Public Service Broadcasting[2] and Lemon Jelly[3].

[1] David Bowie - Space Oddity

[2] Public Service Broadcasting - Go!

[3] Lemon Jelly - Space Walk

~~~
soundwave106
First thing I thought of was another more niche musician
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud))
who released a number of tracks in the early 1990s under the name "Scanner".
Which, as the name suggests, was ambient music over recorded snippets of
conversation picked over radio scanners.

------
dajohnson89
Soma.fm has this for San Francisco police scanner radio traffic.

[https://somafm.com/sf1033/](https://somafm.com/sf1033/)

~~~
johnchristopher
I love Soma.fm.

I feel the SF radio was better two or three years ago. The background music
was less in the front, the mix was more seamless.

~~~
dajohnson89
Agreed. Rusty, if you're out there, kick up the police scanner!

------
iamatworknow
Kinda wish I would've come up with this idea, haha. I've been listening to
LiveATC.net on and off while I work for years now.

------
squeaky-clean
Working on code for an airline while listening to this is oddly soothing.
Thank you for sharing this :)

------
felixjendrusch
Also works very well with some electronic music in the background, for
example: [https://soundcloud.com/thuishaven-amsterdam/daniel-bortz-
thu...](https://soundcloud.com/thuishaven-amsterdam/daniel-bortz-thuishaven-
wintercircus-13-maart-2016)

------
sun_of_deep
There's even the International Space Station feed. Awesome!

------
arkitaip
Very beautiful and serene. Thank you.

------
bob1122
Oh my this is majestic!

------
krzrak
The difference between name (...Clouds) and address (...cloud) really triggers
my ocd.

~~~
dyml
I got you covered man!
[http://listentothe.cloud/s](http://listentothe.cloud/s)

------
mattbgates
Wow.

~~~
mattbgates
Why would people downvote this comment? Seriously? I was saying Wow because I
was able to listen to conversations through airlines in Paris and Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, they were speaking English through traffic control. I think this
is quite an amazing tool.

~~~
arkitaip
You have to keep in mind that even the humans on HN are robots or robotic in
nature. Wanton externalizations of emotional states is undefined behavior and
simply treated as noise by the hive mind.

~~~
tomhoward
For all we know it was 1-2 people who downvoted the comment, out of hundreds
of thousands who visited the site today. It's also likely that they were
downvoting because they thought the commenter was being sarcastic.

You've been a member of this community for at least 6 years. Clearly you see
something of value in it. Please don't trash it with comments like this.

