Found This Week #10
In this week’s post: A world record, helium, Juno, highlander, quantum computing, machine learning, hyperloop, your inner narrative and a shape shifting car.
Each Friday I share some of the best things I encounter, from the internet mostly but also from real life! Hopefully what I find interesting will also be interesting to you :-)
Photo Of The Week
The Wales National Air Show this year again featured the RAF Red Arrows flying in unison over Swansea Bay for two days.
World Record Beating Dog
Here’s a video of a dog beating the Guinness World Record of the fastest time to pop 100 times by a dog!
Twinkie the dog has pedigree, his mother held the record from 2005 to 2008!
Helium Is Running Out
Thanks Twinkie! :-p
This is an interesting Quartz article about how we are running out of Helium. Helium is formed by the radioactive decay of elements such as uranium over millions of years. We use approximately 8 billion qubic feet per year, primarily as a coolant in machines like MRI scanners and the LHC. Interestingly, in 1925, the US setup a National Helium Reserve to stockpile helium but in the 90s, it started selling it off as a loss leading exercise. The discovery of a helium mine in Africa may extend our consumption until 2030/2040.
Ready To Monday Pt 2
Part two of this hilarious music video concept from Ready To Monday.
(HT to Jenn for showing me this)
Juno
This week NASA’s Juno probe successfully completed the first 5 year leg of its mission by successfully arriving at Jupiter. The probe aims to study and analyse the atmosphere and magnetosphere of the planet.
The precision involved in getting the probe there in the first place is mind-blowing. According to Quartz, its the equivalent of throwing a basketball from London to New York and managing to hit the backboard in the right area to get the ball in the net.
The GIF on the left shows the 5 year long trajectory which used the earth’s gravity to slingshot the probe towards Jupiter.
Upon entering Jupiter’s magnetopause, the probe recorded the sound of solar wind hitting the magnetosphere, which sounds like something from classic Dr. Who!
As if all that wasn’t cool enough, the Juno probe includes a payload of 3 Lego figures representing Galileo and the Roman Gods Jupiter and Juno.
Highlander 30th Anniversary
A 4K restoration of Highlander is being released to mark the 30th anniversary of the film. To mark the occasion, the Guardian published this great article including interviews with director Russell Mulcahy and Christopher Lambert. Both tell behind the scenes tales from the production of the film, including some old-school visual trickery like how they strapped car batteries to the legs of the actors and wired them up so that the swords would spark!
Quantum Computing Primer
Another great primer video from Andreessen Horowitz, this time on Quantum Computing. Where boolean algebra is used in traditional computing utilising bits that are physically determined by electrical currents, linear algebra is used in quantum computing utilising qubits that are physically determined by the quantum nature of atoms. As I understand it, a qubit represents the probability of the atom being in an on and/or off state, i.e., the superposition, which in turn can be represented as a vector with magnitude, which in turn can be input into linear operations that form quantum gates.
The video also describes some of the current technological constraints that are present in current quantum computers, like the operations needing to take place in an environment at 0.1 degrees kelvin, which is colder than space.
Code Snippets in Bing
Thanks to integration with HackerRank.com, code snippets now return as search results in Bing, which can be executed inline in a sandbox.
Classic Programmer Paintings
Classic paintings reimagined using captions related to modern day computing. Hilarity ensues.
(HT to my friend Damien Conroy for making me aware of this.)
Zika Fighting Billboard in Brazil
This innovative advertising board in Brazil carbon dioxide and lactic acid to simulate sweat in order to attract mosquitos, as well as florescent light. The goal is for the insects to crawl into the trap and die, in an effort to help stem the spread of Zika, the mosquito born virus causing an epidemic of birth defects.
Machine Learning Recipes
Want to learn how to code using Machine Learning? Then this series of videos from Google is for you!
Finland to Sweden via Hyperloop
At last year’s Web Summit in Dublin, the CEO of Hyperloop spoke about the company and the futuristic technology (you can read my blog post about it here). Since then, I’ve been awed when thinking about the possibilities of how the hyperloop can redraw our perception of cities and urban planning.
This week, Hyperloop-one released a feasibility study conducted by FS Links and KPMG on a 500km hyperloop between Finland and Sweden. The project boasts travel times between Helsinki and Stockhom of 30 mins compared to a 3.5 hour trip by air now.
The project is budgeted at 19 billion euro and as stated, would create a metro system serving 5 million people.
Thought Of The Week: Recognising Your Inner Narrative
Seth Godin published a great post this week about how a seemingly unreasonable person doesn’t see themselves as unreasonable due to their inner narrative. This inner narrative shapes how we engage with the world and those around us.
Naval gazing aside, the exercise of recognising your inner-narrative, not to mention analysing and improving it, is an exercise I have found to be both continuously challenging and rewarding.
Our current society doesn’t prime you much for this challenge I have found. The focus and encouragement is aimed towards following the rules and fitting into the many pre-defined paths through life that people are familiar with and oftentimes “successful” in. The more creative, motivational and inspiring content I consume and analyse (Creative Live, The Tim Ferriss Show, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk etc), the more I see that the people behind this content have figured out who they are, what they are passionate about and how to combine the two, to do meaningful work. It is challenging to begin to question the rules that the system has indoctrinated you with from your early school years onwards. The successful path according to the system for many is some version of; conform in school, enter the workforce at the bottom and enable productivity for your company through years of service. If at any point along the way you fall out of line, you are treated with negativity because you didn’t wear the proper school uniform trousers or you were out of work for 6 months on your CV. The good news is, society is slowing coming to recognise that non-conformity is acceptable. Some believe that for the next generation, it will be considered normal for someone to have multiple careers and even multiple jobs at the same time. Right now, that space is occupied by the innovators and those high in EQ (emotional intelligence), also known as self awareness.
Achieving self awareness is the product of addressing your inner narrative in my opinion and the first step in that journey is recognising that you have an inner narrative. We all have things in our lives that we do, or situations that we react to in a certain way, just because. We wash the dishes a particular way just because, we make comments about a particular situation just because, we have a preconceived opinion about a place just because, we don’t like a certain food just because. In actual fact, none of these things are just because. They are rules within our inner narrative that have been created from our childhood, our parents, our environment, our friends, what media we consume and numerous other inputs throughout our lives. The challenge is recognising these muscle-memory type responses as things we can analyse and change. The reward, for me, is when you actually catch yourself saying/doing/thinking something, ask yourself why and end up changing your response. It’s like breaking a bad habit, difficult but with repetition it is not unsurmountable.
Start with some simple thought experiments in everyday situations. The next time you make a sandwich, take a step back and think about why you spread dairy fat on a piece of bread by default? Do you need the butter? Do you need the bread? In actual fact, is there something better to eat than a sandwich? A silly example, but it gets you thinking.
The more advanced exercise is to adopt this thinking in situations where you react emotionally. You’re in the supermarket about to pay for your purchases. Just as you get to the till, another shopper gets there at the same time and pushes their way ahead of you. For many, a number of emotions are triggered in this situation, most notably anger. Do you call them on it and explain the concept of conformity to a queue based system? Do you burn a hole in the back of their head with your dagger eyes? Do you replay that situation in your head for the rest of the day, wishing you had confronted them in order to relieve the sense of lost pride and defeat? I’ve done all of the above but unfortunately, none are very constructive. What you could do is think about the situation from their point of view for a minute. Maybe they are late for work and decide to forego politeness just this once. Maybe their children are in the car tearing limbs off each other and they need to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. Maybe they grew up somewhere that doesn’t have as much emphasis on conforming with queues. Or maybe they’re just an asshole. Whatever the reason, does it warrant the mental anguish that your normal default response would create? Or is it better to, as Elsa says, let is go? In my experience, it is almost always better to let it go. (It might even always be better, but I haven’t reached that level of uber-zen just yet :-p). Sing the song in your head, it actually helps!
As Seth’s blog describes, no one is unreasonable, but our inner narrative sometimes guides us to do unreasonable things. Taking a step away from those default responses and analysing them allows our reasonable selves to step back in and analyse the situation in the context of what we think now, rather than potentially acting on what we thought as a teenager.
Cool Thing Of The Week: The Blackbird
The Blackbird is a shape-shifting car rig which can adapt to mimc the driving characteristics of any car. It can mimc the length, width, wheels, acceleration, gear shifts, rigidity dampening and suspension of any car. Using CG, the body of any car can then be placed on top to create realistic car commercials.
See you next week :-)
About Me
I’m a web consultant, contract web developer and technical project manager originally from Cork and now based in Swansea, South Wales. A lot of my work is done with clients in Ireland & the UK, where I offer strategy, planning and technical delivery services. I also offer freelance CTO services to companies in need of technical bootstrapping or reinvention. If you think I can help you in your business, check out my details on http://darylfeehely.com.
