iMovie crashed bad on me and I never got it working again. Almost paid 300 bucks for Final Cut Pro.
Then remembered that Blender had this built in. And its really good. No need to import videos into a bin or nonsense like that. Just drag them into the timeline, add filters, drag to reorder, render to mp4/aac and its done.
I found remarkable [0] recently and ordered one. I love writing with pen and paper. Remarkable looks the closest to that experience and can save digitally. It's like having your cake and eat it too :)
I have found my rocketbook[0] extremely useful for the task. Its almost as good as real paper and you can find the pens anywhere. Only issue is once you scan it you can't edit it.
It's a kind of plasticky paper. It's got QR codes on it and little circles at the bottom so you can save each scan to different places. The paper is a little slick to pass for real pen and paper writing experience, but it's not bad.
The pen used is a Frixion pen. If cleaned in a week or so, the ink can wipe off with a damp cloth (similar to wet erase markers). But it can also be cleared with heat/friction (be aware, sufficiently cooling it can cause it to reappear, at least faintly). This also means you shouldn't leave something written with these pens in the car on a hot summer day unless the intent is to clear the page to write over.
Along with Rocketbook notebooks, you can also look into "stone paper" products which offer similar usability but without the scanning tool/app that Rocketbook provides.
I went with the Fujitsu A4 as i wanted the bigger screen, but everything I read about it said it worked wonders with the writing feel as well. Should arrive next week, and I'm already beyond excited for it.
Is there a web browser mod? This would be the killer device if it could browse the web
EDIT nevermind, I see that they have a Chrome plugin that sends web pages to the device. Would much rather have a built-in browser https://remarkable.com/
boox air has full android. I use google books but you won't be able to use google docs for writing because apps need to be designed to account for eink latency.
- Toto 550 bidet and a poop stool changed my life.
- Sideclick learning remote that snaps on to a Fire TV remote.
- "Neon" addressable LED RGB silicone strips that don't have the fugly individual LEDs exposed. Especially neat when directed by a music & bluetooth controller.
- It's something I assembled: installed a waterfall shower head and wand in an apartment using a very long extension pipe, 6 heavy-duty removable bathroom hooks, and strong fishing line for support like a bridge.
- Toilet bowl motion lights for not just toilet bowls.
- Hand-made plamp hats.
- Vinyl records turned into bowls.
- Sunglasses made from discarded baseball bats.
- Bed made out of enameled rebar with chemical drum nightstands.
Inevitably, such beautiful designs will be applied to "health & wellness personal products."
Also, why are Etsy sellers offering downloads of unartistic nudes for $5 and others selling tons of Chinese generic products claiming they're "handmade"? Has Etsy stopped curating?
Here is the hardware one site uses for locating lightning strikes. It looks like they use VLF (Very Low Frequency) antennas and mostly use time or arrival to locate sources. https://www.blitzortung.org/en/cover_your_area.php
How is it different from a squat? Are people not spreading their cheeks? Your body is still aligned the same way when you rest your elbows on your thighs.
Walden Pond. It's a service that curates unread articles from your Pocket collection, print, binds, and mails them to you. I get the long edition, which works out to about 140 pages for $14 USD/month.
I've used pocket for years, but I collect articles much faster than I read them. I currently have enough saved for 300 editions. You can tag articles as must-print. The print quality and paper are amazing. It's now my preferred way to read good online content, especially things I know I will want to read again in the future.
I make WP* for exactly this reason. I'm about to finish a 12 hour edition that I made to test if the printers could handle it (they could) and there's no way I'd have read that much on my phone.
I haven't found a single conversation on Clubhouse that was
1. interesting
2. i could take a part in
I guess they are still growing, but I feel like the format has severe flaws and I don't know if they can be easily resolved as they scale. The idea is still solid though, but I don't know if they can execute it really well. Currently its a bunch of wantrepeneurs trying to sell themselves and that's really boring.
When clubhouse is good, it's magic. But they have a content quality / signal noise ratio problem currently, making it hard to find good content. Combined with how notifications work, it makes the app very noisy and hard to find the good stuff.
This is how I felt before I found a room I regularly frequent. We meet up once a week for the past 3 weeks, and so far it's 3 consistent participants with 2-3 newcomers each time. I've only met 1 of them in real life. We talk about surfing ;p.
What I've learned is that Clubhouse is only fun if you're participating. Unstructured conversations are hard to follow if you're not actively shaping it.
TikTok is enabling some awesome creativity, which is weird because I can't figure out why it's anything new. Like, why did this one app take off all of a sudden?
the transparent content suggestion algorithm is insanely good. If you spend any amount of time in the actual app, you'll find it immediately starts catering content to you based on your specific interests (without ever obviously indicating them). Pair that with a very simple yet powerful "editing" suite, complete with audio editing and vfx, the app is the perfect storm for micro video content creation/consumption.
The only non-humor creativity I've ever really seen is BoardGamesInAMinute[1], doing minute overviews of board games. But I don't go to TikTok much myself.
One of my favorite pre-pandemic pastimes was to browse stationery shops and office supply stores. There's something exciting about seeing all those materials and supplies waiting to be used.
Bone conducting headphones are nice, especially if you realize you are too tired to read after work, but not too tired to listen. You can still interact with people around you because there's a quick play/pause button.
I've known about these "cloud gaming" utilities for some time, but have always just owned my own hardware. I typically don't bother asking my friends to play games with me, because the only ones with a gaming PC are already the few I play games with. The rest I figure would never spend the time or the money to get one.
Recently, I wanted my girlfriend to play a game with me, but it didn't run on Mac. I was about to set up dual boot for her, but then remembered that this existed, so I figured I'd give it a try. Extremely easy to get up and running, and you can even run it from a browser. Given that your internet connection is good enough, latency is low and quality is high.
I considered GeForce Now, but went with Shadow.tech instead. Shadow gives you a gaming PC in the cloud, where you can bring your own Steam, Epic, etc. You can even use SteamVR with it.
LookingGlass displays. Their small version is available for pre-order for $250 and ships in June. I've got a leap motion laying around and some experience with Unity, so it sounds like something that would be fun to mess around with.
Is there anywhere that list the technical specifications of the display? Seems like an creative concept they're selling I'm just not sure what I'd actually be buying.
What's the effective resolution of a view? What's the refresh rate? What's the color depth? What's the max viewing angle? What's the max perceived depth? How bright is it?
Somewhere in the 11 minute Linus video it might touch on these for the version of the product their reviewing but certainly not in one place and not for the final specs of the version listed above.
E.g. if this were a cell phone I don't want to hear about how they reached a stretch goal for a video camera which enables you to capture life's experiences in motion... I want to know the specifications of the video camera, and all of the other components.
Lytro made a depth field camera and people made the exact same complaints. Lytro cameras and a 35mm are apples and oranges. Same goes for a phone screen and this display.
It is 45 sandwiched light field displays. It projects 8.3 million rays of light over a 50 degree arc. 16m RGB color @ 60hz. It's viewing area is measured in liters.
I hesitate because the product isn't that new and I have praised it quite a bit already at HN ...
... but nextdns is Such. A. Great. Idea.
I really wish I had thought of it - not only is it a great idea but it would have been so fun to spin up a global dns network (I wouldn't have done it with cloud instances - I would have owned the servers ...).
Also, I hear some rumblings about some less-than-perfect behavior from nextdns - specifically how their own homepage has trackers on it ... although, as of this writing, ublock origin had zero hits, so perhaps they have cleaned that up ...
Notion.so
I have been an Evernote user for years. But Notion allows me to easily create connections between notes and to creatively synthesize new ideas in ways that Evernote never could. I am very happy with Notion.
This looks like an online-only version of Joplin, interesting. Personally I ended up with Joplin to achieve and exceed feature parity with Evernote for my own use case...
I tried Notion but got turned off by their security policies. I use a lot of encrypted notes in Evernote and haven’t found a SAAS replacement with that feature plus the other Evernote features I use.
Every time I have an idea, I send a message to myself using telegram: there is actually a widget just for that in android.
It's awesome cause you can type, take a a picture or a video, dictate... And it syncs across devices, giving you access anywhere to a timeline of your thoughts.
Then when I got time I pop the stack and sort in as projects into the wonderful dynamist. It works offline, on Linux and mobile, syncs, allows notes and nested todo.
I do the same with Whatsapp using a neat trick someone told me about.
Create a group(call it "Share with self" or similar) with you and another person. Then, remove that person from the group.. that's it! Functionally it's the same as sending yourself Slack messages, but on WA, which is good
A small USB-C rechargeable LED lantern. It has 3 modes: warm light, cool light and RGB. It has only one capacitive button to turn it off (double tap) or adjust intensity (tap and hold).
I bought it for my small balcony, but end up using it all the time. It's a great night light, reading light, ambiance light etc. It's also mobile.
I honestly haven't fell in love like this with a product in years.
Craft (https://craft.do) has become my goto note taking / productivity / knowledge management app. I've tried Workflowy, Roam, Obsidian, and Notion before landing here. It has a great compromise of features I liked from all the different apps, native mac + iOS applications (huge if you're coming from Notion electron land), and a great dev team that's delivering new features at a rapid clip.
Edit: Matter (https://getmatter.app) has replaced Pocket / Instapaper / Email as my article reader & queue. Still early but looks quite promising.
I don't if its creative but boox air has been life changing for me. I've doubled my reading easily because my eyes aren't hurting. I am actually reading full length articles now. So boox air + pocket app = increased reading.
What does your workflow look like? I have a page for each entity in my stories and use tags in metadata to group them, but for actual plotting it doesn't work quite as well.
WorkFlowy is pretty good for brainstorming an idea without worrying too much about structuration. I've discovered it recently and can only recommend it.
I just checked out their website, it's really annoying. Zero information on pricing, you need to create an account to "try for free" to access that information.
For anyone who lives by bullet-point lists and goes way too many layers indented, Workflowy is the solution. You can click in and out of any layer of your lists and go as deep as fits your needs. 10/10, one of my favorite tools for brainstorming, organization, amorphous note storage.
I think this key cluster module [0] for the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard is pretty creative. I don't own a UHK or this module, but I think this is a better answer to your question than Workflowy, Notion, Roam Research, and pen and paper.
I just ordered a Moonlander, but the UHK was one of the boards I considered. Those interchangeable thumb modules are such a brilliant idea. If the UHK were ortho it would have been a much harder choice for me.
iMovie crashed bad on me and I never got it working again. Almost paid 300 bucks for Final Cut Pro.
Then remembered that Blender had this built in. And its really good. No need to import videos into a bin or nonsense like that. Just drag them into the timeline, add filters, drag to reorder, render to mp4/aac and its done.
Best discovery of the year sofar