Found This Week #7
In this week’s post: Is it a bird?, Brexit, Anabolic Steroids, AI, Snapchat Advertising, Sublime Text, Vlogging & Taking the piss out of Armageddon.
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 Bord Gais Energy Theatre in Dublin is a lovely building, particularly if you catch it at the right time of the day with the sun at the right angle. On a trip to Dublin this week I noticed this bird kite above the theatre, looking up from Cardiff Lane.
Countries In The UK & Who Can Vote in Brexit?
This is a great post which details the structure of the UK. You would think it was simple however in my experience of moving to the UK, many people here don’t know the difference between Northern Ireland and The Republic Of Ireland (which isn’t called Southern Ireland btw), not to mention who’s in the Commonwealth. Euler diagrams to the rescue!
In relation to next week’s upcoming Brexit referendum, the article also lists which citizens can vote (TL;DR; everyone :-p).
Anabolic Steroids & Winning
This week I watched the great documentary Bigger Stronger Faster. The film-maker Chris Bell tells the story of himself and his 2 brothers growing up in America in the 80s with role models such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan and Sylvester Stallone. Following in the steps and supposed lessons of their role models, all three brothers started lifting and bodybuilding. Fast forward into adulthood and both of Chris’ brothers are using anabolic steroids to improve their lifting. The documentary chronicles the rise of steroids in the public consciousness in the states, the scandals, the public opinion and outcry which led to the criminalisation of steroid users.
Using his family as a centre point, Chris also explores the emotional element of the topic and how using these performance enhancing drugs can put an emotional strain on family relationships, particularly with the brothers’ parents. Interestingly, the documentary also digs under the surface of the anabolic steroid issue and exposes many misconceptions. Steroids actually aren’t as dangerous as everyone believes, most of the effects are reversible and in other areas of medicine, they are heralded as a wonder drug to cure/assist all sorts of ailments. So why are they so demonised in the court of public opinion? You’ll have to watch the documentary to find out :-)
Chris Bell also made a followup documentary called Prescription Thugs which investigates America’s over-dependence on prescription drugs using a similar story telling method centred around his family. This is also an interesting documentary and worth watching, especially if you’ve watched Bigger Stronger Faster. It is also in effect a sequel to the Bell brothers story.
If you are interested in the topic of anabolic steroids, check out Tim Ferriss’ interview with Patrick Arnold, a synthetic chemist who created many of the growth hormones which resulted in many of the scandals described in Bigger, Stronger, Faster. I had listened to the interview prior to watching the documentary and before I listened to this podcast, I had no knowledge or interest in this topic but I found it more interesting than I would have first thought. Both the documentaries and the podcast open up interesting questions about human improvement through (chemical) technology. It also gets me thinking about the role of sport within our society and the somewhat contradictory balance between wanting to win and keeping an even playing field by playing by the rules. But rules change, conventions are always questioned and sometimes updated (Jan Boklov Vs Surya Bonaly). Is it the desire to win at all costs that keeps the fire of sport alive through the centuries rather than the desire for a fair competition? Or is the self balancing nature of sport to intertwine improvement and fairness that keeps us interested?
AI Primer
Here’s a great primer video by Frank Chen of Andreessen Horowitz on the evolution of AI, the previous AI winters and what makes this time different.
(HT to Benedict Evan’s newsletter for featuring this video)
Snapchat Advertising Network
Snapchat has launched a network of advertising partners with access to their new advertising API in an attempt to level up their advertising platform and eco-system.
By anointing a number of companies as Ad Partners to provide the ad deployment software, Creative Partners to make the ad content and Measure Partners to measure the effectiveness of campaigns, Snapchat has interestingly leveraged an existing but somewhat independent community of agencies and creators into a rubber-stamped official advertising eco-system to compete with the incumbents.
It’s a fascinating approach to engaging and validating your community while also creating the first steps towards a gigantic advertising network.
Don’t forget that Snapchat has more daily users now than Twitter. Think of all those eye-balls on curated/official snapchat stories, almost like mini-shows, segmented periodically with ads. Where has that worked before? :-p
Sublime Text Tips
Sublime Text is a fantastic lightweight but powerful code editor that lives up to its name. A good supplemental resource for Sublime is the SublimeTextTips.com newsletter which highlights handy sublime packages, themes and other tips periodically.
Seen This Week
I’ve started experimenting with vlogging following a purchase of a Veho Muvi K-2 NPNG (which is a great camera btw). I’ve created two episodes so far, check out Seen This Week #1 and Seen This Week #2 on youtube :-)
Cool/Funny Thing Of The Week
Here’s a clip from the Armageddon DVD commentary featured on LovinDublin with Ben Affleck tearing holes in (one of) the Armageddon plot lines.
Everyone knows but it’s still funny to hear him admit it :-)
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.
