While the start of a new semester is always exciting, it also means that soon we’ll all be buried under another heap of homework and obligations. Here are ten great websites for those times when you need to chill out.
1. Calm
This is a wonderful meditation website with many different calming scenes and background sounds/music. I really like the variety; you can choose from an assortment of nature sounds or ambient noise if you’d like something more abstract. It has the option of guided meditation for beginners or those, like me, who would probably drift right back to stressful thoughts otherwise.
Such a great, unexpected idea. It’s a website that simulates the sounds of a shower from turning on the faucet to the final drips down the drain. It also has a couple settings that subtly change the water sounds (low room size and high water pressure is the way to go, in my opinion). Be sure to adjust the radio slider to all 5 notches for some cute musical surprises.
3. Neon Flames
It’s called Neon Flames, but I’ve seen it described as a nebula maker, and some of the settings make the lines you draw look more like neurons forming. A few click-and-drags of the mouse is all it takes to create some really spectacular designs.
4. Simply Rain
This site has a simple interface that lets you adjust the intensity of rain sounds, frequency of thunder, and sound oscillation. There’s also a sleep timer. (Sister site Simply Noise blasts three types of white noise and is great for studying, btw.)
5. Softslow.com
A site by Rafaël Rosendaal, who’s most famous for the site Jello Time (also worth checking out). This one’s made up of different vivid colors that fade into each other from the middle of the screen, and boy is it mesmerizing. Put on some dream pop and stare at this for a while.
6. This is Sand
Click and drag your mouse for a while (patience!) to create some really neat sand art. Fascinating to play with and the colors change as you go. Bonus points to this site for the falling sand sound effect.
Click the button and everything will be ok. Oddly satisfying.
This is a fireplace noise generator that lets you get really specific with the pitch and amount of crackling via ten different sliding settings, which is something I never knew I needed until now. Just imagine all your homework engulfed in flames. Seriously though, this is really great for relaxing in winter and makes my drafty apartment feel way warmer.
9. Silk
Like Neon Flames, Silk is another website that lets you create patterns of brightly colored lines on a dark background. The lines are more structured than those of Neon Flames and really do look like silk or neon wisps of smoke. The default option lets you create symmetrical designs à la Rorschach.
10. Rustled Jimmies
This website is hilarious. I know nothing about it besides the fact that it was meme-inspired, and I think the less you know going in, the better. But once you get over how random it is, this is actually a pretty relaxing site. Okay, maybe I’m biased (I love singing), but the choral hymn is really beautiful and I’m picturing how nice it would be to float through the clouds like the… well, you’ll see.
(Title Photo Credit: Jason N. Lunas via Wikimedia Commons)