It's August and it's another Sunday Surprise! (2nd August 2020)

Aug 02, 2020 12:01 pm

Hello there !

Hope you've had a great week/weekend so far. To keep it on the entertaining side a bit longer, here's your weekly dose, courtesy of the Sunday Surprise!

As always, this is a new newsletter and if you've enjoyed it or found any of it useful, please let your friends know so they can subscribe to it! And also, thank YOU for reading along too!

Anyway, on to this weeks surprises...

Think

100 Blocks a Day

https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/10/100-blocks-day.html

Wait But Why has to be one of my favourite websites when I look into a topic that it's covered. Written by Tim Urban, each post is insightful, comprehensive and filled with goofy illustrations that drive home the point.

Want to understand why your procrastinate while thinking about monkeys? How about understanding relationships in an article with regret monsters? Or what is the deal with AI? There's articles on all that and more (and a reason why the procastination one is linked first).

The 100 blocks a day is tiny and easily digestable little nugget to get you started.

Listen (and feat. reader!)

NoSmallJobs: Jean the Dentist & Pilates Instructor

https://open.spotify.com/episode/790keocPsc3xSwyCoDF3Iu?si=jK2nn0D4T0inV3QgEDy7xA

This week, I decided to turn your attention to podcasts instead of music. No Small Jobs is a podcast started by my dear friend Paul. He started the podcast as a side-gig to explore the many jobs that people do and what they find interesting in them.

The episode linked features one of the subscribers of the newletter! Jean also referred someone along to the newsletter, so I suppose we can check this section off as featured reader too!

Gadget

Ember Smart Coffee Mug 2

https://amzn.to/2Ph0dih

This feels like it was MADE for me. The number of coffees I make/buy that get cold is more than 50%! I start working on something and next thing I know, it's cold. While I appreciate the app and all that, I think just knowing I can make a coffee and it stays warm is a genious idea!

It's a bit expensive for essentially a heated coffee mug, but I havent seen any "good" alternatives that are cheap yet. Given that it combines liquids and electricity, I'd suggest getting this one or waiting til the price drops for the sake of safety (there is a version 1 but the price doesn't seem much cheaper!).

PxR Photo tips & update

Photos x Raffy

https://www.photosbyraffy.com

More images from Antarctica getting edited for a series on "isolation" on Instagram. Below are the before and after of the same image after a bit of tweaking in Luminar 4.3 and Lens Distortions.

BEFORE

AFTER

As you can see, the black and white treatment, the slight doding around the middle to give a "glow" or "ray of light in the fog" effect and the addition of visible snow (it WAS snowing at the time, but given everything is white, you'd need a flash to light it up properly) changes the image in a substantial way.

So here's a tip borrowing from a cooking analogy (well, more of a reminder):

If the photos don't look like what you had imagined when you're looking through your SD card/ phone gallery, remember that you've only collected the raw ingredients. You might have the chicken stock and veggies, but unless you follow your recipe, you're never going to get to chicken soup.

The same with a photo. Getting a technically correct photo is half the battle. It makes the next part easier by allowing you MUCH more flexibility in terms of how you want to take you image. It's not the finish line. Some regard editing (or Photoshoping) as cheating, but if you look through the reels of the greats of film photography of years gone by, you'll see they made copious use of the tools that they had.

So don't stop with just taking the photo, but edit it to show what caught your eye in the first place!

Quote I'm pondering

“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.”

― Tim Ferriss

I was looking through some quotes and this one struck close to home for now. I have a big case of imposter syndrome at the best of times and starting a newsletter like this is adding to it. I don't know the first things about a newsletter and I don't know if it's remotely as interesting to anyone else but me!

After reading the quote, I looked through my own inbox and noticed the other newsletters out there. Apart from the one from Mr Ferriss himself, most of the others were just from companies that wanted to share the latest features or essentially email catalogues. There were only a handful that I read to find something interesting.

So while I don't think this is quite finished yet, I can allow it to be a work in progress and given the competition is a JB catalogue email, I hope there's something a bit more interesting in here! Drop me a line if you agree/disagree and help me get over my imposter syndrome!