- A series of YouTube videos on how “practical effects” in movies are highlighted by directors, actors, and viewers, but actually are building blocks to extremely realistic computer generated visual effects. I didn’t even realize much of what he showed was technically possible: it makes sense that performing a stunt in real life can give VFX artists valuable information about how it should look when it is computer generated, but the fact that oftentimes the stunt itself is replaced with CGI is astounding; see, for instance, the Top Gun: Maverick replacement jets.
Watch Part 1 here, and the creator, Movie Rabbit Hole.
- Personal projects succeed based on momentum, to some degree. Creating accountability and relying on the adrenaline of the initial passion will get you enough of the way to where you need to release the project. Any longer, you hesitate. What small aspect could be better that is doable is an attractive fruit to pick, but very quickly we realize it is poisonous. Many of my projects fall into this trap, and I’m left with 90% of a project that I can’t release because I didn’t focus on the core added value.
- working as the only full time data person at a nonprofit (with some excellent part-time interns), reading articles like this experience at the MTA about common obstacles encountered with meeting leadership needs for data science projects, and how haphazardly improvements happen, is comforting. Things get better when they need to get better, I’ve found, and that is a viable path as organizations develop. I also tried out Dbeaver from this article.
- A series of comments about how to read scientific papers, which is more interesting as advice on how to write scientific articles, given you now have some anecdotal evidence that people will skip that 20 sentence series of citations masquerading as an introduction you wrote.
- A handy reference to and learning tool to SQL queries that covers a decent amount of my regular queries.
- To what extent do we see colors in the dark? How does our perception of colors change in low light? No link here, just curiosity.