Midjourney face-matching secrets, why we talk to our pets, rogue 3D printers, a giant Nautilus sub model, and more
It's Advanced Geekery for the week ending August 18, 2023
Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. This is an exciting issue. Let’s dive in.
My articles
Let’s kick it off with a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET:
How to get a perfect face match using Midjourney AI: Looking to create realistic, consistent characters with AI image tools? We can show you how by deconstructing how the image at the top of this issue was created.
You can build your own AI chatbot with this drag-and-drop tool: We try out Botpress, a tool that helps you create powerful AI-based chatbots.
What Verizon's 5G latest upgrade news actually means for users: Verizon just announced an accelerated schedule for their 5G deployment efforts. Here's what's really happening, and why it matters to both Verizon and its customers.
Well, this was unexpected…
Last week I told you about my new EP album. This week, Spotify sent me this:
Apparently, folks like my tunes. If you want to stream them (they’re on all the services), visit my House of the Head site for links to the major streamers.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
Some of you may remember the Nautilus from Disney’s version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The dude in this video spent the past 20 years building a 7 foot model. Because the movie version couldn’t have existed in real space (the interior didn’t fit the exterior), he redesigned it all to work. The video is an hour, but you can dip in and out to see the magic.
I very much enjoyed the movie Mortal Engines, which featured giant moving battle cities. Sadly, it bombed at the box office. While Mortal Engine’s densely packed city buildings had a terrible impact on the environment and the term “arcology” describes structures in tune with the planet, there are some similarities. For fascinating look into the concept of arcologies (and some neat SimCity references), you owe it to yourself to watch this video.
If you’re in America and use a 3D printer or a CNC, you use metric. If you do normal carpentry, you use the Imperial system. But why? Here’s a fascinating video about the metric system and why the US is an outlier in its use.
Star Trek books for a dollar
Here’s another fun discovery. Between now and September 3, Simon & Schuster is selling a bunch of Star Trek books for a buck.
Buy or don’t buy. It’s up to you. I don’t get any sort of affiliate payment. It’s just a good deal, and I wanted to share. I’ve read some Star Trek books which were great and some not so much. I haven’t read any on this buck book list, but they all do look like they could be good fun. Enjoy!
Interesting reads (of the web article variety)
Here’s some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading.
The Atlantic is running an article entitled, “Why Do Humans Talk to Animals If They Can't Understand?” To be clear, I disagree with that premise. True, my pup may not understand everything I tell him (and he fakes a lack of understanding when I ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do). It’s very clear he enjoys being spoken to. Even more to the point, he understands a select set of words that are of salient interest to him. He knows bath, walk, dinner, and mommy, among others.
This is just plain scary. Apparently some Bambu Labs 3D printers decided to just start printing. So far, it doesn’t seem like anyone was hurt, but nobody wants a robot with a hot end firing up in the middle of the night without supervision.
Reader projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.
Advanced Geekery is a YouTube channel, too
You know, I just realized that newsletter readers might not realize that Advanced Geekery is also my very active YouTube channel.
Feel free to stop by for a visit. There’s a lot of cool stuff to watch.
Leave some comments
Substack supports comments, so feel free to leave some. I promise to read them. Did you listen to my tunes? What did you think? What about that coffee warmer? Do you consider it as life-changing as I do? And did you read that piece on generative AI and elections? If you want to share thoughts on that, please comment as well.
Just, please, let’s keep our personal politics out of any discussion.
That should do it for this week. This newsletter is really starting to pick up subscribers. Please help it out by sharing links on all your socials.
Have a great week!