Dumela, !

That's how you'd say "hello" to most of the population in Botswana, in the language of the Tswana people over there. I'm back in the country and boy do I have some nerdy fun for you this week! But first, how are you going? What's news? Drop me a line!

As always, a shameless request! Could you forward this newsletter to just 3 people that you think would like one of the articles? It helps A LOT! If you're the friend reading this, click the link below to join! Glad to have you here!

Week in the life

This week can simply be summarised by the word "jetlag". If it wasn't clear to me that I'm no longer a spring chicken then the sheer amount of time it's taking to recover from flights is a good reminder for the self! There's been some unexpected work hiccups but overall, back to being in the usual grind with a hint more sleepiness.

On the note of the 2023 calendars, I was hoping to be back from Texas and ready to ship, but I noticed something odd on the final print proof document. See if you can spot it...

Initially I thought it was a software issue at my end but testing on various devices and getting the same thing meant I had to contact the graphic designer to point out a fault (which it was- it's not your eyes!) which delayed sending the final design approval to print. I can say that the final proofing is done and confirmation that I want to get started printing has been sent a while ago! If you've not yet ordered one, I only print a limited batch. You can get one over on the Photos x Raffy store.

More on the non-calendar elements of life over on the blog...

Creative update

S02E17 - Renovation slow, island time flows

The dribs and drabs of the podcast continue with a new episode. This one has some segments long requested by listeners: true growing up brown tales and just how a childhood in the third world was for the both of us.

As per usual, there is a good dose of random in there too! Hope you like it and if so, please leave us a review and just generally let us know. It really makes our day when we hear of people listening to the show!

Gadgets/Tech

Levitating light bulb lamp

By popular demand, here is the levitating light bulb that sits besides my bed as a lamp. Well, it's not exactly this one: my one is by the original company, Flyte and costs about 3x as much given I bought mine when they first came out.

This looks just as cool and is much cheaper!

Other gadgets/tech

• Credit card sized travel cutlery - I recommended and bought a set in the past, but these are even smaller and lighter! I'm getting myself a set - just remember this one is a Kickstarter, not a store...
• Instax mini camera & printer - Like a polaroid that can also print photos from your smartphone. How clever!

Read

Die with Zero

Ok this book is pretty darn awesome. It takes an engineering view of the finance vs time aspect of living your life if you happen to be in a first world country with relatively decent income. It has some great salient points that make this a worthwhile read.

In fact, this is the first book where I stopped and wrote down some brief notes and places where I agreed/disagreed with the author. Are you interested in seeing that? Let me know!

Currently reading also reading...

• The Myth of Normal - Intermittently going through some chapters of this in the mean time. Very much focused on early trauma as a source of many personality quirks. Interesting, but not yet very actionable.

Check out

Palm pilot online emulator

If you grew up in the 90's and 2000's, you'd know that the Palm Pilot was the epitome of business chic. Before there were smartphones, there was Palm (they did actually make smartphones too before being swallowed up by HP, then selling off bits for parts).

If you'd like to relive those glory days, check out the link above on your phone browser. Basically, they've managed to emulate the entire device right from a browser window!

Pure nerd nostalgia!

Quote I'm pondering

'If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it.'

— Naval

I often circle back to Naval and his wisdom. This comes back to the general future horizon of technology and automation. His point here is that with the improvements in AI and machine learning, eventually most things should be teachable to a computer. The harder the skill is to teach, the better your "moat" against the changing tides...

As an anaesthetist, I pretty much learnt via an apprenticeship model and it's not hard to see that a disruption might be on it's way. On the other hand, I'm not yet convinced that AI's working in the physical realm are quote as advanced as the ones purely working inside a computer.

Overall though, it made me think of my job and realise there are a whole bunch of unique and hard to treat conditions that both make my job interesting but also (I might be self-delusional here) make it harder to automate.

With that. see you next week!

- Raffy

PS - You've read til down here?! Thank you! As a superfan, I'd love to know your opinion. Let me know with 1 click!

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