When your mousing wrist hurts, who owns color, wacky NJ traffic rules, that famous scream, and more
When your mousing wrist hurts, who owns color, wacky NJ traffic rules, that famous scream, and more
It's Advanced Geekery for the week ending August 26, 2023
I’m David Gewirtz, your host here for all things geeky fun. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter.
My articles
Let’s kick it off with a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET:
What to do when your mousing wrist hurts: One day, I woke up with a really painful wrist. Here's what I did to make it better. And these are techniques you can also employ to prevent serious wrist damage.
Google introduces 11 new security features for Workspace (some AI-powered): Google announces a large set of cybersecurity improvements to its Workspace offerings. Some may even be for you and your company.
Reader poll: generative AI
What’s your experience with this new generative AI hotness?
Subscribe to my Advanced Geekery YouTube channel
Here’s a helpful reminder: If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to my YouTube channel. I have a new 3D printer product review coming out later in the week. If you’re subscribed, you’ll be notified as soon as it’s posted.
Feel free to stop by for a visit. There’s a lot of cool stuff to see.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
Did you know there’s a standard movie scream, called the Wilhem Scream? It’s a thing. Turns out there’s an interesting story here.
Speaking of standards, let’s talk standard colors. Back in the day, the way I knew I had finally reached art director status for my company was when I bought my very first Pantone color book. So how did Pantone come to “own” color? It’s another interesting story.
Many of you know I’m from New Jersey. As such, I’m comfortable with roundabouts, traffic circles, and — especially — jug handles. Did you know that the NJ driver’s handbook doesn’t even have rules for traffic circles? This is the official word: “There are no set rules for driving into, around and out of a traffic circle in New Jersey. Common sense and caution must prevail at all times.” And, yeah, there’s a video about all this. Because, of course there is.
Merch of the week
Every so often, I’ll be spotlighting some fun merch from my MorleySpace Etsy store. This week, we’ve got a T-shirt with a fun little guy named Yap Yardarm:
It comes in a wide variety of sizes and in every color that is black. If you’re interested, click here to find out the deets and get one for yourself.
Also: How I used ChatGPT and AI art tools to launch my Etsy business fast
Interesting reads
Here’s some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading.
Jason Perlow has a cautionary tale on ZDNET about a new scam. Read This AI-generated crypto invoice scam almost got me, and I'm a security pro. Worth a read so you know what to look out for.
While many of us have started getting to know generative AI, it’s a very questionable technology. The Atlantic is running a piece about how copyrighted works are finding their way into training data for large language models.
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.
Pic of the week
The lesson here is that not everything works out the first time its tried, even for me. This filament spaghetti was generated on a normally reliable printer. But working it, releveling the bed, and running some tests solved the problem. The moral of the story is that sometimes you just have to work with something until it works.
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!