17DEC2023

The holidays are super duper nigh! For those of you running iPhone 15 Pro, I’d suggest updating to iOS 17 and starting to film as many home videos as you can with the new Spatial Video capabilities. Although the footage will just look like regular videos on your phone right now, I hear they will be really great 3D experiences on the Apple Vision Pro (and on the inevitable more reasonably priced sequels that will follow).

On to the good stuff this week!

• 🎹 Ingrid Linnea - I've been going down a rabbit hole on Modular Synthesis the last week or two-- In short, using discreet modular electronic components strung together to create your own instruments, then using other components to apply various filters and effects, and then having yet more components sequence and/or play the instruments for you. Apart from being just an awesome aesthetic, I really enjoy the music I'm discovering while researching it. Ingrid Linnea is an album by artist, Elin Piel, that I've listened to a lot while working this week.
• 🤖 BambuLab A1 - This week BambuLab announced the release of the A1 3D Printer, the bigger sister to the A1 Mini that I mentioned a few weeks back. Apart from being easily confused with a steak sauce, and also being a great name for a company that is competing for placement in a phonebook, it looks to be another really great entry point for 3D printing. At just $399 and big enough to print helmets and other fun cosplay props, this honestly gives the A1 Mini ($299) some healthy competition... I'd say which one you go with really would boil down to your intended use case. Here’s a fun Godzilla I made for a friend’s son this week on the BambuLab X1C, which has the same size print bed as the new A1.
• 📊 14 Predictions About 2024 - Casey Newton is an excellent tech journalist who has broken a lot of stories about the tech companies dominating the headlines this year. This week he recapped his 2023 predictions (with a pretty good win rate), and provides his prognostication for the year ahead in tech.
• 🥟 Talk Dim Sum - As the app’s creator confesses, Talk Dim Sum is a language app disguised as a food app. In short, the app is chock full of pictures of amazing different dim sum delicacies along with what they’re called in English, and both written and audio guides on how to pronounce their Cantonese or Mandarin names. Everything is sortable by the various regions of China they originate from, and other useful categories. It’s a delightful little app to poke around and explore— I’m already scheming my next dim sum outing so I can put it to good use.
• ☑️ Omnifocus 4 - The Omni Group makes my favorite Task Management software, and finally released this week the long awaited fourth version of Omnifocus. It’s honestly overkill for a lot of folks (myself included) but even just using a small fraction of its features has been a huge help for keeping track of my personal and professional to-dos over the years. Version 4.0 looks to be filled with a lot of great quality of life upgrades for the app on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and  Watch.

That’s it for this week, thanks for reading!