100 Interesting Things 81-85: Photos, Charts, Crows, And Technology
The Robin’s Egg Nebula, a stunning cosmic cloud that spans nearly 3 light-years across, is located approximately 1,500 light-years away from our planet. This remarkable nebula captivates astronomers and stargazers alike with its intricate structure and vibrant colors (Also I got AI to write this caption and I hate it.)
This post is part of a series I started after reading “Notice, Collect, Share” by Russell Davies. I’m more inspired than ever to get back into the habit of…noticing, collecting and sharing. As part of that return to habit, I’m going to try and find five things that interest me every week, and share them here on my blog. 5 things per week, for 20 weeks, equals 100 Interesting things. Maybe one of these things will inspire you. Maybe one of them will inspire me. We’ll all learn something along the way.
I’ve also been tracking all of the stuff I find in my “Deck Of Interesting” - it’s screenshots, links, and assorted notes of things that might make into one of these posts.
UPDATE: I’m a bit off my usual cadence of posting here. Vacation, changing jobs, and a 13-month old son will always get in the way of posting.
#81 The Year’s Best Sci-Fi Short Just Dropped And It’s An Ad For Generative AI We all know Artificial Intelligence is the future. We know it will transform every single industry. We know it’s bigger than computers
The singularity is here. And I don’t think that any of us predicted that it would be so grimly self-aware.
The fact that this is actually an ad for a Generative AI video start-up feels like a little extra nudge in the ribs from the universe. In a way, it’s perfect in the same way that Ryan Gosling’s Beavis appearance was on a faux-AI event.
Related to this, I think everyone should read Raindbow’s End by Vernor Vinge and House of Suns By Alastair Reynolds. Both deal with the real implications that full generative AI will have on our society. Actually, I don’t think either is as out there as this ad.
Just go and watch the full ad on YouTube. I can guarantee you didn’t predict where it’s going.
#82 How To Sniff Out Chart Crime We’ve all seen chart crime before: Where the axes are unlabeled, where the data has been stretched, or the numbers made intentionally confusing. We might have even committed a little bit of light chart crime ourselves: A skew of the axis here, a compressed timeline here, a baseline set at something other than zero. We’ve been able to rationalise it because it supported the strategic story we’re telling. It backed us up. It was still accurate. It got work done, dammit!
Thanks to Flowing Data, you’ll be able to more easily identify chart crime when you see it happening. And more than that, you’ll be able to make sure you knowingly don’t commit it. Your insights and reporting slides might not be AS punchy. But their honesty will give them weight, and will hopefully lead to better insights or outputs.
Have a look at the site, and take pure delight in manipulating the variables to see just how much dishonesty can take place in a single, simple chart.
One of many beautiful and clean interactive charts on Flowing Data.
#83 Doing Presentations If you only read one simple, san-seriffed, cleanly-designed, no-nonsense site about how to do better presentations then make it this one.
It’s every great piece of presentation advice you’ve heard packaged into only the essentials.
#84 Polaroids Last year I bought a Polaroid camera to take fun snapshots of my son and dog.
It turns out that taking fun snapshots with a real camera is a lot more work (and a lot more expensive…) than doing it on your iPhone. But it’s also been a lot more fun: I’ve enjoyed the more hands-on experience of it. The tactical, shuck-click-whirrrrr of loading up a cartridge of film. The chicka-chazoooom of the photo being taken.
Polaroid knows just how tricky their cameras and film can be to work, and they have created an absolutely delightful series of help videos starring a hungover French muppet. They’re entertaining on their own.
It reminds me vaguely of the old YouTube series “You Suck At Photoshop", from which I learned almost everything I know about Photoshop.
Why does everyone have to treat their help, instructional, or tutorial videos so seriously? Let’s change that.
In the meantime here is a photo of a crow I took using the remote-trigger function on the Polaroid app and my camera on a tripod. I lured the crow there using dog treats.
A crow.
#85 How Apple’s ‘Find My’ Feature Works A few months ago my family moved into a new apartment. With that move came new routines, new furniture, and new places for leaving stuff.
It meant that the question most asked in a home that still has stuff in boxes and new items arriving weekly is “Have you seen my AirPods?” followed closely by “Do you know where my phone is?”
The result is that the “Find My” feature has gotten a lot of use in our new place, and every time I use it and find what I’m looking for it feels like magic.
Occasionally though, it hasn’t worked. I’ve gotten an error message that says it needs more light. On the surface this makes sense: you’re looking for something, turn on the lights. But surely the phone isn’t simply looking around the room like you would with your eyes. So why does it need more light?
The magic of Apple’s “Find My” feature.
The reason is that the iPhone is capable of knowing how far away your device is from you, but it uses information from the cameras (front and rear) to provide data about how fast you’re moving and in which direction. All of it works together to do that super-precise finding, even if both you and the item are moving.
More here on Reddit and more on the Apple website.
Related is a bit of a rabbit hole to go down about potential (nefarious) uses for this type of technology.
Crows, Photos, Charts, Technology