Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!
Your courage, determination and joy in the task, shine through and are an inspiration!
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I’m afraid I’m never learned Saarländisch, but when you first mentioned the language I googled it to learn more and found a page of Saarländisch phrases.
Having said that, some of the phrases did have an air of familiarity to them, for when I was a teenage exchange student in Germany my host family were Kölsch-speakers, which I believe is on the same linguistic continuum.
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In a way, yes, there are some similarities. But a real old Kölsch speaker still isn’t easy to understand for us. Even in certain regions in Saarland there are substantial differences. There is a linguistic boundary running through the country, the so-called “dat-das-Grenze”. East of that boundary where I grew up we say “das”, and West of it, in the region of Saarlouis for example, they say “dat”, and other strange things… So Saarländisch itself isn’t a uniform language.
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SuttaCentral Voice is currently down.
Server rebooted. Not sure what happened.
Thanks to @ERose for reporting.
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Thank you, Ven. @Yodha. 
Here’s a wild idea. Let’s call it…
…
“Ven. Yodha Easter Eggs for Voice Search.” 
Basically, certain key search phrases in Inspire Me would trigger display of associated images:
Anagarika Sabbamitta is away for the holidays and retreat currently, but let’s mull on it for a while and talk in January! 
@Aminah, any quick thoughts about the proposal?
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Much thanks! Nothing immediately springs to mind.
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Hmm… I don’t know. And as @karl_lew said, not much time to think about it right now. I have to say I really love the Dhamma doodles, I love them a lot! But are they the right thing to attract the visually disabled in the first place? Would it not be rather something for the SC main site?
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I have a feature request!! But out of compassion for all the work the SCV devas are already doing, it’s (hopefully) only a small one! 
Suppose that I want to listen to the first five Linked Discourses. I type in SN 1.1-5, click on play, and off I go! But after listening to Crossing the Flood, I’d actually like to meditate for a bit on the sutta instead of immediately continuing to Liberation. Of course, I could simply pause SCV. But I wonder, would it be doable to make a setting so that there is a configurable interval of silence between the suttas? For example, if I choose 2 minutes, then after every sutta there will be two minutes of silence before the next one begins. This way it is possible to do some “sutta meditation”! 
Perhaps as an initial feature (which doesn’t require changing the settings menu!), users can simply type SN 1.1-5, s=2:00 in the search field. SuttaCentral Voice will recognize s= as setting the “silence paramter” to some value in hh:mm:ss (hours : minutes : seconds).
I think the “silence feature” would work especially well if and when SCV allows users to make personal sutta playlists. 
With much mettā
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Thanks for the feature request, Robbie, and also very much for your compassion with the Voice team! 
How big or small it would be to implement such a feature I cannot judge, would rather ask @karl_lew for this. What do you think?
BTW: So nice to have a face in my mind now when seeing your posts here on D&D, Robbie! 
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Sure.
I’d rather limit the introduction of extra syntax however–it gets arcane quite rapidly. Would it suffice to simply specify the pause between any two suttas? I’ve noticed the “suttas smashed together” oddity in my own listening and very much agree that even a 2 second pause would be fruitful. We could make that a Setting for “Pause between suttas” with a default of 2 seconds configurable up to any number of seconds you wish (but would any choose 3600 
?).
Would this simple, universal pause setting suffice?
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Absolutely! 
And you’re right—best to avoid arcane syntax. 
Thank you!
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Anagarika @Sabbamitta, shall we put this into 2.1? It is a Settings change. I’d say 5 for Estimate.
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Okay!
I think it could go into the “General” section of the settings.
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Robbie, how do you find this?
We didn’t add a customization for the following reason:
Regarding customization, we felt that is best achieved by simply hitting the Pause button on one’s audio player. The newly introduced one-second pause provides ample opportunity to “take a meditation break” between suttas. Automating such a feature as a user preference creates storage challenges on the web server given the large size of the downloaded audio files.
Try it out on the staging server! 
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Thanks for the new feature! The one-second pause is an improvement. For me, pausing doesn’t meet my needs, so I’ll keep looking for another way.
Update: succeeded! I just learned some Python commands and can now make my own playlists with customized silence in-between! 
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Robbie, the way I solve the need for silence is to meditate longer than the playlist. In this manner the focus of meditation shifts subtly and quietly to the deeper surrounding silence. It’s almost as if the audio playlist places the mind firmly, keeping it connected so that when the silence happens, the immersion proceeds naturally to a diffuse focus absent the need to keep it connected. So I will listen for an hour then continue meditating as needed. I never meditate on what was heard since it is no longer present and no longer relevant. Fascinatingly, with repeated listening to the same playlist, I discovered that insight emerges without need to ruminate on what was immediately heard (! 
!) . In fact, I found that I actually have to restrain myself from ruminating on what was immediately heard in order to stay presently aware of what is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, and thought. Verbal processes cease first and those are associated with listening to the suttas.
If the above doesn’t work for you, please do help us understand more about the “two minute” need that you have asked for–others may wish it as well. In particular, the choice of time interval is what would kill our server caches, since some may wish three minutes, others one minute, etc.
(And congrats on the Python!)
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Great! I only realized this update on your post due to Karl’s comment. I’m glad you found a way that works for you.
Seconded! 
(I know nothing about it… 
)
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Robbie is using Python to glue individual download files together
For those not wanting to learn Python, it is also possible to use audio-visual editing software such as Shotcut to edit audiotracks as needed. I am fascinated by Robbie’s use of Voice recordings. The use of these meditative silences intrigues me.
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I’m currently in the numbered discourses (with a lot of short discourses). Usually, I aim to listen to one chapter a day (~10 suttas). But I have noticed that I need some between two suttas: to feel the joy, to listen to the silence, or to the rain and wind outside, to allow understanding to come up by itself. The reason pausing doesn’t work for me is that it’s still doing something (with intention, choices, …), and the way the experience works best for me is if I can let go of all of that and just be in the moment with the suttas and silence.
Would this problem also arise when adding silence do downloaded playlists?
Thanks 
The number of Python commands I know can be counted on one hand!! 
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