Welcome back, !

Well, well, it's been a little while since we last chatted. What have you been up to? Let me know by replying with a quick email! It's one of my favourite parts of writing a newsletter: hearing back from the great readers such as yourself!

I'll be mixing things up this year and condensing it down to the most interesting bits and pieces as voted by the data and by YOU. So more than ever, do let me know what you like!

As always, a quick favour? 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!

Summary of the past few weeks

There's a LOT to go over from the past few weeks (well, nearly 1.5 months worth really!) so this will be a bit of a long one. I think I'll get some general housekeeping done first about the newsletter then catch you up on all things.

Newsletter updates

More than anything, I'd love it to hear from you! So here's a very short survey that should take about 1.5mins to complete. I'm not sure if the form will embed, but in case it doesn't, here's the link: https://forms.office.com/r/fe8JW52gqZ

Basically, the newsletter has some interesting stats: every week, about 50% of the people receiving the newsletter end up reading it. The most common thing people seem to want to read is the Weekly Summary but this is just from the data from the email sendy software. I thought I'd verify by ACTUALLY checking since I tend to disable as many of the tracking things that I can at my end.

Life update

Since the last newsletter, it has been an avalanche of activity at my end. Literally a few hours after writing that, I was watching the fireworks, then packing, then flying to Norfolk, then starting work, then fielding what I thought was a scam call, then hopping over to Singapore and SO much more...

I'll leave all that for the blog yeah?

Creative update

S23 Ultra Singapore Campaign

If you've been following on the 'gram, you would've have seen TONS from Singapore and the recent Samsung campaign. Here's a short team introduction that was part of the proposed "deliverables" required by Samsung for this campaign. I was hoping to have the video out already about what it was like to go on my first sponsored trip, but alas, unwellness and coughing fits don't lend themselves to voice overs...

Gadgets/Tech

Samsung S23 Ultra

Well if you've read the blog, you should already know that this year has had one of the most interesting starts due to this phone. Genuinely, I was thinking about skipping this years update because I thought it'd be incremental at best. However, the low light photos and the improvement in video capture quality was just so darn good that I ordered one myself even though I had the S22 Ultra from last year!

Read

Man discovers doppelganger with same name living identical life

This was one of the most bizarrely interesting stories I have read during the last few months. The fact that this is real actually boggles my mind.

Enjoy!

Did you know?

The incidence of a true doppelganger is 1 in a trillion, but people who look "just like someone" is 1:135.

Source: ScienceAlert

Another random tid-bit that I just had to look up after being reminded of the article above.

Quote I'm pondering

'For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.'

— Richard Feynman

With the latest in ChatGPT and the wonders of computational photography that's rendering my newest dSLR obsolete, I have been marvelling at the pace at which it's all happening. The reason for the "marvelling" is less so on what actually is getting built but rather that meaningful progress is happening at all in a world where basic facts on reality are up for debate...

Which brings me to the quote above: if we do get to a point where the fundamentals can't be agreed on or are based on opinion, maybe progress DOES indeed come to a grinding halt.

Do you think that day is likely to come? Soon maybe?

That's all for the first edition of the Sunday Surprise. Please do fill out the survey if you haven't already so I can tweak and make things even more interesting for you. That link again: https://forms.office.com/r/fe8JW52gqZ

- 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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