Oh! nice touch with the ElectroBOOM reference - love that channel.
843 karma · joined October 4, 2010
https://twitter.com/andyidsinga
I think sears was the original amazon :)
Corollary: people aren't always as boring as they may seem - digging in a little, asking questions - I often find what people are doing outside of work (which seems to be the default "interesting or not" metric) can be rather interesting.
I've been working with a buddy on some analytics service products for biotech/life sciences (one is called Yukon Data Solutions). What we've found looking at other products in the space is they often require the customer to focus a lot on processes, tooling, infrastructure - and so some degree algo research - in order to use the product.
What is key, we believe, is a focus on the analytics recipes and available algo ingredients in order to support decisions: how are the analytics recipes and resulting reports going to help decide on the next steps for the customer's business?
Whats seems to be background / secondary? explaining the tools, libraries, languages, cloud infrastructure, automation, data lakes etc that a service may or may not use behind the scenes to achieve the goal. Are these needed - yes at different levels and different times depending on the customer - but focus on the recipe, ingredients and decision support seems key.
edit: I found Eugene Dubossarsky's thoughts on Decision Support interesting in this podcast : https://anchor.fm/datafuturology/episodes/1-Dr-Eugene-Duboss...
I've been doing this for a few months myself : < 1.5 min videos for products I'm working on then I share the video around - and after a few iterations can post it to a website.
I've been doing a "story style" voice narration over my videos "Meet _________ she's a ________ that needs to accomplish _________. Product _______ helps her do that ....."
that said - I like the OP's non narration style too : Headline -> product screen -> headline ..."
Here is a summary of the tools and process I use on windows 10:
1) write down the narrated story in a google doc - with individual, numbered "scenes" ..these will be only 1-3 sentences each.
2) practice narrating into Audacity (an audio tool). A decent mic is a good idea - I use a Samson Q2U.
3) iterate on #1 & #2 over and over until you get the text and time to be < 1.5 mins. This is harder than it seems and listening to one's own voice is grating ;)
4) export to mp3 and share with some friends/family to make sure the audio and intonation sounds good. (hint: before exporting, use Audacity's "Normalize" effect .this will attempt to bring the audio to a 0db level which is helpful in the video editing phase when mixing with background music and the audio ducking features).
4.5) once you have the audio narration wrapped up, export audio into individual audio clips for each scene in the written story. This helps if you want to move things around at video editing time.
5) product mockups are done in draw.io , then I just grab the a screen shot of the product mockup screens to be included in the video.
6) screen recordings with a real product / desktop etc are grabbed using OBS (open broadcaster software). This is a GREAT package and works great with single or multi-monitor setup as well as multiple webcam sources all at once if you need them (ex. to show mobile / hardware / physical product along side the desktop software).
7) I bring in other scene images purchased from Shutterstock. This is KEY if you want to have the same actor in different scenes throughout the video; and its hard to get this from the free image sites like pixabay. If there is one thing to spend money on in this whole process - its shutterstock - I can't emphasize this enough. Seriously - the images are great and seem to almost be ready made for this kind of activity.
8) Background music - just like the OP - youtube audio library is awesome : https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music
9) Video editing (remember we're talking windows 10 here) - I use Pinnacle studio 22 - its decent once you get through all the very frustrating UI bugs and bugs in encoded output. I like it for the pan & zoom effects (think Ken Burns effect) and audio ducking. If you don't buy a package, try starting with the free Davinci Resolve - its pretty good and what I would use if starting over. (in fact the only reason I purchased Pinnacle was becuase I forgot about Davinci Resolve)
9.5) putting it all together in video is a matter of dropping in all the images from shutterstock, screen shots of draw.io mockups, obs video captures, background music and narrated audio clips - and then spending HOURS (I'm still a novice) getting the transitions and audio lined up just right.
9.6) use "audio ducking" to cause the background music to go down in level when the voice narration is present and go up in level during transitions or non-narrated demo sections.
hope this helps...
I found this youtube video to be a great primer (and wished I had it a few years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eWlU2Ddl6I
Funny thing - I've also been using FreeCAD for a while for 3d printing and didn't even know about / understand the BIM features (I just didn't spend much time digging around in all the features).
Thankfully I recently discovered the BIM features on youtube - and find them very cool even if slightly more difficult to use than sketchup.
(edit) FWIW : Yorik van Havre's youtube channel demos the BIM features quite nicely.https://www.youtube.com/user/yorikvanhavre/videos
edit: elaborating a little on why I referenced the Gervais Principle:
It's an interesting guide to understand the relationship between executives, middle-management, and the worker/producers and the relationship each has with "The organization".
Per the gervais principle, a lot of the bullshit job phenomenon is explained through the relationship an employee has with reality and the organization in which they work.
In gervais, the sociopaths at the top (executives) and the losers at the bottom (actual producers of some value) both have some grasp on reality - whereas the clueless middle are full of cognitive dissonance about the reality of their position and loyalty to the idea of the organization. So, IMHO, the clueless category, in moments of honesty are the ones most likely to call out their position as a "bullshit" job.
I found the the decaying effect at around 1:10 is really neat.
> Too often people decide on the structure before they even understand the problem.
>Imagine the concrete goal and the rewards. Let it pull you towards it. Don't think about the long way till the goal, think about the way you've already behind yourself.
This seems pretty important in discussions of resource use : how the waste is handled / recycled etc.
> The British ship Norham Castle was 40 miles from Krakatoa at the time of the explosion. The ship’s captain wrote in his log, “So violent are the explosions that the ear-drums of over half my crew have been shattered. My last thoughts are with my dear wife. I am convinced that the Day of Judgement has come.”
So I take a the ibuprofen, and take a break for an a couple hours - and as I noticed the back pain go away - I also noticed a distinct improvement in my mood! I had the exact reaction described in the article "of course, your back doesn't hurt ..duh".
The article makes me wonder if there is another explanation for the mood improvement ..
Anyone know if anyone is tracking this (similar to github language usage stats)?
goal is to learn metalwork and machining skills to complement programming, electronics, embedded skills for prototyping gadgets.
(ps. it's been a slow process)
a) totally "relevant" after being around 4 years
b) has 1000s of github stars and 100+ of forks :)