Town Highlight #1: Low Sound

Our reporter recently visited a quiet town square somewhere on the web. A peaceful park filled with beautiful trees, comfortable benches, and birds drifting overhead.

Nestled among trees and lined with inviting benches, Low Sound feels like the sort of place you stumble upon while wandering and end up staying longer than planned. Visitors can often be found sitting quietly, watching the world go by while birds drift overhead.

Behind this town square is Omar, a web developer from Toronto, Canada. We sat down with him to learn more about Low Sound, the stories behind it, and what visitors might discover during their stay.

The Interview

1. Tell us about yourself. Who are you?

My name is Omar. I'm a web developer from Toronto, Canada and I work for the municipal government here where I build tools for the Transportation division's engineers and urban planners. Besides my job (which I absolutely love), I spend most of my life hanging out with my partner, Geetha and our dog, Gobi. I love to read, listen to records, and explore the small web.

2. What is Low Sound?

lowsound.dev is just my personal blog. It's a place for me to just be me and to write about things that I'm thinking about. Right now I'm a bit sad about certain things about life and so I think my posts really reflect that. They're definitely being infused with that sadness and a bit of the rage that I have at the state of the world, but I don't think that's all of who I am :)

3. Why did you create it?

It's a way for me to stake my claim on a piece of the internet. I'm a millennial who was around when the internet started proliferating in regular people's lives and I remember the joy of exploring the unknown and stumbling upon some random person's website. I just thought it was so cool that you could put something personal up there and that someone could actually find it and read it. It's always been a thing that I've wanted, to put something up there that says "I exist and I'm here. Welcome to this space. Please enjoy the unhinged ranting."

4. What can visitors find here?

For the most part just pieces about my life. I've written about my old cat, Max. There's also a piece about my dog, Gobi. Also, I'm really into the homelab life so I've got one post about one service I run at home but I'll likely do more on that because you know the home-server folks, we love talking about it.

I also do a lot of ranting about the state of the world but I'm not an astute political commentator. I'm just a frustrated person that needs space to scream into the void and so I use this website to do that.

5. What are you currently working on?

For the blog I'm working on a large post about a huge cycling trip that I did ten years ago. I've biked across Canada (coast-to-coast) and I have tons of pictures and stories about it and the post has been a draft that I occasionally look at to add to for some time now. It's overwhelming because it's actually just too big and so I may do it in the style of a diary in multiple parts.

With respect to non-blog stuff, I'm trying (through a variety of sources) to learn about game engine development. I've always been a big fan of the classic point and click adventure games (think Lucasarts or Sierra) and I have ideas for a grand project that starts with a custom engine. I know there are obviously existing game engines that I could use but the point for me is to learn about the whole thing and build something new. The goal isn't to create some blockbuster game but more about just learning how it all works and creating my love letter to the genre. So this is going to take some time but it's super fun and learning new things excites me. And maybe one day the game I'm dreaming of will be real.

6. What is something you're excited about right now?

Definitely learning about game engines and all that is exciting to me. It's also quite daunting but I love digging into new things.

Besides that, I'm very excited about finding places like Townsquare and Bubbles. There's still quite a thriving network of blogs and fun internet spaces that are removed from the extremely corporate internet that are just more interesting to me.

7. If someone only reads one thing on your site, what should it be?

Please read my post about my cat Max. He was such a lovely little man and I love talking about him.

8. What inspired the name "Low Sound"?

When I was in high school, my friends and I had a band in which I played the bass guitar. This was also around the time that MSN Messenger was huge. In honour of being the low-end of the rhythm section of the band my messenger nickname was 'lowsound'. And it's just stuck. I use the moniker for most of my online life.

9. What corner of the internet do you wish more people knew about?

I just discovered Crucial Tracks and I think it's so cool. It's a music focused social media where you post a song a day and a little blurb about that song. You can use prompts that they've got for some inspiration or just post about a song that's on your mind that day. Commenting and discussion happens on Mastodon via an integration if you choose, so the actual crucial tracks feed is quite uncluttered and nice. There's just people posting music that they love or have some memory of, why they posted it, and that's really it.

10. Any message for travelers passing through your town square?

I promise I'm not always as angry as my more recent posts may lead you to believe. I actually think I'm an optimist, but life is a bit tough these days, and coupled with how grim the world seems sometimes, I'm a bit more enraged than usual. This is what I love about having my blog though, I get to scream out into the open and just let it all out.

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The Town Square Gazette provides a place for residents to share their thoughts and stories. Opinions expressed in interviews belong to their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Town Square team.