Twelve Minutes To Midnight
Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: We 3D printed an oddly-satisfying item, and tried to look away from the elephant in the room.
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It’s Thursday, and you know what that means… it’s time for Phil’s Newsletter.
I skipped my Instagram Live appointment this morning for a good reason: I landed a client and they needed me to start immediately. As of yesterday I am officially helping out OpenCV.org with copywriting, media production, marketing and blogging. Phil Stuff. Not a full-time gig, just contracting for now.
It’s a good reminder / reinforcement to myself that sometimes you really do just have to put yourself out there. If I’d not posted a proper “I am actively looking for work” post and individually asked friends to share it this definitely wouldn’t have happened. I still felt weird about doing it even though I knew it was necessary.
My first duty, aside from my triumphant return to the OAK Kickstarter updates, has been getting the ducks in a row for the biggest spatial AI competition in history- The OpenCV AI Competition 2021. The submission period began yesterday and runs through the 27th of January. 210 teams will be competing for over $400,000. Those are big numbers and they are not typos.
After he found out, subscriber Adam sent me perhaps the unkindest own of all (in grey):
Sheeeeeeeiiit.
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The 3D Printer Section
Last time we printed a very oddly satisfying two-way screw, and people liked that a lot. This week’s print is a little less ASMR-triggering and a little more… housewaresy.
It’s a soap/sponge holder designed by piuLAB on Thingiverse. I did a couple of prints in different colors and will be sending ‘em out as gifts.
Maybe 3D printing stuff can become a bit of swag for the newsletter or my Patreon. Subscribe at some level to get a 3D printable shipped to you every month? Hm.
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New Guitar, Who Dis?
I should not be spending money especially because I (still) need more work. But, well, my nephew is a teenager now and super into playing guitar, and there was this clearance Les Paul Special for $110…
I am really happy with this thing. It is fun to play. Thus far this guitar is unnamed, but as you can see the strap I bought is festooned with Cowboy Roses. I was thinking something like Susie, or Rose… but Rose may be a bit too on the nose. Or what about Kane? The Big Red Machine.
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Did you know that Amazon owns Twitch? Because of their connection, if you have Amazon Prime you can give me free money. Here’s how to use your free Prime subscription to subscribe to my channel. You’ll unlock no-ads-mode and get a shout out during our broadcasts, plus some other perks we have not announced yet.
Boundless affection to tetris, mrsugarmuffin, smashjax666, urstarstuff, katanma and d_hock, onbase85, freshpoetic, and seamuscalder for subscribing to the Twitch channel this month. You are shining beacons of decency in a time of asshattery.
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Divergent League 1993 Opening Day Is In The Books
We’re two games into the 1993 Divergent League Baseball season. Congrats to the Mariners and White Sox for winning their games. The schedule for this season will continue to be:
2 games every Tuesday night at 6pm Pacific
2 games every Sunday afternoon at 12 noon Pacific
These are all owned teams .vs. owned teams, with other games being added as time allows, or if we just want to watch more games! You can catch the opening day stream, and the highlights, on our Twitch channel in two parts. The regular season continues for several weeks.
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At Last, The Good Links
Each week the links come unbidden- woe to they who defy the links.
The newly-formed Alphabet Workers Union isn’t wasting time- they demanded YouTube ban Trump- and it worked!
Quibi raised and blew $1.75 billion dollars making content for nobody. Roku just spent less than $100 million to buy the whole thing.
The Two Dukes: David Duke, the Province College basketball player, is having to reckon with the legacy of David Duke, famed white supremecist and human shitstain
The Eddie Bauer Riot last week wasn’t the first time some rich people got together and decided to try a fascist coup in the US- the last time was against FDR in the 1930s
The Hobbyists Making the Hottest New Virtual Boy and Atari Jaguar Games
In what may be a first, the FTC is forcing Paravision AI, who used customer photos without permission to train a machine learning algorithms, to delete those customer photos AND any facial recognition algorithms developed with users’ photos or videos. Consequences are important.
A love letter to the WRT54G- which, thanks to its linux-based firmware, became the first widely-popular router
All The Server’s A Stage: A deep-dive on the months-long stories of shared Minecraft world Dream SMP
Private Click Measurement is coming to Safari, soon. Advertisers are not ready
Gary Numan is releasing a new album. This friend is definitely electric
Some movie keyword datavis. It reminds me of Unknown Pleasures.
That’s it! Go back to work or sleep or whatever. Thank you so much for reading, sharing, and caring. See you next week.
— Phil