Pós eísai ?

Allegedly "how are you?" in Greek! It's nearly the end of October and that means (maybe) Melbourne is going to be out of lock down soon. There should be an announcement today about whether some of the restrictions are lifted and that will be awesome for all those in this city who have been under fairly tough conditions. That said, the Covid-19 case numbers are right down and hopefulyl stay that way!

Also, if you think a friend would like to read some of these articles, why not forward it to them and suggest they sign up? You can even use your own referral link:

I'm keeping the tweaked format first introduced last week, so on with the show!

Week in the life

With lock downs and surgical operating restrictions easing, this has been a BUSY week at work. Also means I had a stack of emails and tasks sitting there waiting from me after a week off. I also restarted personal training- so I might be very very sore.

On the PxR front, I'm giving myself the long weekend to finish as much of the puzzle that I can before making the final adjustments to the image before sending to the manufacturer for the print run. It's taken a bit longer than expected but the current version is HARD! I'm hoping to make the starting of the puzzle a tad easier so that you can get going. There is one section that will remain intentionally very challenging but I'm hoping to get the rest of it into something a bit more "challenging" rather than "impossible without pixel peeping the image".

Here's the current progress shot:

PxR & Kickstarter update

PxR puzzle

https://www.photosbyraffy.com/shop

The funds have arrived and the backer surveys are almost ready to be sent out. You might even get yours in the next day or two!

Woo hoo! Could you fill it out carefully since there was a few issues with some of the pledges and I just need to check the orders against the survey.

After I collect the survey results, I'll send the tweaked image and box and the get the final number of puzzles made. Then comes the fun part of distribution! At this point I'm about a week behind schedule but hoping next week will keep things moving.

Gadgets & tech

This week I saw 2 super cool things so I had to include both. First is very much a "me" product - a levitating planter! The second, I have yet to buy, but it's just soooo cool: Teno, a very different speaker...

Floately levitating plants

https://floately.kckb.st/photosbyraffy

If you have visited my place, you know that I have several levitating objects around the place be it lightbulbs or a ball on the face of a clock.

Those products are from Flyte and they are EXPENSIVE, even after backing them on Kickstarter. So imagine my surprise when I saw that they had a competitor that was doing things for far cheaper.

Enter Floately.

For the price of 1 planter on Flyte, I've actually ordered 3 which should be here next week. But judging by the reviews and the number of sales, I think this one is going to be a winner!

The link for this one is an affiliate one, but it also gets you a new discount offer too. Hot tip, scroll around the website and a popup should open to get yet another discount for at least $10 off (any email address entered will work...)

SEE ALSO

Some people keep asking about previous recommendations etc so I'm going to link a few that have come up in conversation in the last week below:

• Oculus Quest 2 - The easiest to set up and best standalone VR experience currently available. Seriously, if you're remotely interested, try this. It's pretty darn awesome!
• Designer USB rechargeable lighter - random, but worth replacing an everyday item with something cool...
• Lumos helmet - They're on Indiegogo for a limited time before they move to normal pricing on their own website.

Read

Human Microevolution

https://www.wionews.com/science/human-microevolution-forming-more-arteries-less-wisdom-teeth-in-babies-334054

Evolution gets taught and I always wondered why we don't see it happen around us? Why is it something that happened long ago and not now?

Turns out, that it IS happening right now. It's just that the rate of change is so slow that we don't really notice since, well, just by common sense, it takes at least a generation for changes to show. This is a short article but just googling the topic of "microevolution" will lead down quite a rabbit hole...

Watch

Real life LIGHTSABER vs many objects

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey_EjSzKFWQ&feature=youtu.be

This is so freaking ridiculous that I'm linking the "How they made it" video as well. That, folks, is the closest thing to a real life light saber that I think exists.

It even does the slow power up! There's also a series of videos of them absolutely destroying random things with that thing. What a world we live in eh?!

Listen

Woodkid - S16

https://open.spotify.com/album/70CSmAPltPQxbGksAEZlgQ?si=xNY3BvMlRPaLiYVo-pcRJw

Taking the title from the chemical notation of sulfur, the album tries to embody some of the properties: essential for life but also highly volatile and prone to violent explosions.

It's an album about the modern times and the title track has the vibe in spades (it requires a whole listen since the start is very different from the end of the track) with industrial beats, soaring cinematic strings and fragile vocals. It almost feels like it represents the current tensions in the world: the pandemic on one hand, the sheer scale of technological wonder (4g on the moon?! Self-driving cars?!) and a pandemic of isolation that has been happening more and more leaving us more fragile.

This is definitely not an album for everyone, but it IS something outside the mainstream that has had a lot of care put in. Stand out tracks for me are Goliath, In your Likeness and Horizons into Battlegrounds. I've listened to this a few times over the last few days and the best has been on the bass heavy speakers of the Tesla Model 3 turned up close to max.

Quote I'm pondering

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

―Bill Gates

I like this quote a lot since it turns some conventional wisdom around. We are always told to "work hard" but "working smart" might be a better solution and that at it's core involves being lazy! You can definitely run and deliver mail, but a bike makes it faster. This is true for almost all repetitive tasks: there's a tool or technique that can help get the job done faster and therefore easier.

If Bill Gates is looking for those shortcuts, maybe we should take a look and see if there's any low hanging fruits we can use?

Truly random

How are you finding the random section? Would love feedback if you liked this.

• Uncle Roger & Gordon Ramsay

I love the "Uncle Roger" line of videos! This is probably the first where he's actually impressed! I won't ruin it for you, but it's 11mins of joy!

• Dude with sign

Not sure how I went this long on the internet without knowing about this Instagram account, but here you are. Does exactly what it says on the box, but it does it well!

Thanks again for joining me on yet another week of randomness. What did you think of the reshuffled format? Any new section you'd like to see in the future? Email me and let me know!

Stay safe and stay random!

- Raffy

PS - I didn't get a single art recommendation at all last week! C'mon I'm sure you have an interesting piece you've seen! Let me know!

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