7 Things This Week [#20]

A weekly list of things I found interesting, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

  1. Fjorden: Faster camera controls, now on your iPhone — Kickstarter

Never miss the perfect shot again with Fjorden, the world’s first pocketable, professional iPhone camera grip. Whether you’re shooting street, portrait, or travel: Fjorden lets you achieve your creative vision.

It’s not for me, but the Fjorden, an accessory that gives your iPhone DSLR-like controls, looks pretty neat. It’d be even cooler if it just attached with MagSafe, rather than a specific phone case. The Kickstarter has 12 days left if you’re interested.

  1. A Sick Ride in 1871 [via Marina Amaral on Twitter]:

In 1871, a woman from Quebec hired a hearse with the sole intention of riding around town smoking in the coffin-bed while enjoying the view. pic.twitter.com/HBp9E9kqQF

Very chill. Very cool.

  1. Shot on iPhone | Film Techniques: Behind the Scenes | Apple - YouTube

Learn a few simple iPhone filmmaking techniques to turn your movies into The Movies.

Lesson 01, Fun with the Ultra Wide Camera: A simple perspective trick can make a monster movie.

Lesson 02, DIY Crane Shot: All you need to replicate this big budget camera shot is an iPhone, a soft surface, a dark space, and some glitter.

Lesson 03, Lighting Effects: Only a camera as small and light as the iPhone can be mounted onto a bike wheel to capture this exact technique.

This is super fun! I want to try out some of these techniques.

  1. 7777 Days, Noah Kalina - Instagram

In a second step, once the faces were upscaled and aligned, Michael looped through all of the images and averaged them with a sliding window approach: Each frame in the video shows the average face of the last 60 faces. Or in other words, each frame shows the average Noah’ over the last 2 months. With a video frame rate at 60Hz, this means Noah ages in this video 2 month every second, or 10 years every minute.

If you remember, Noah Kalina (whom I’ve linked to a few different times) did a project taking a picture of his face everyday for over 20 years. This is a new composite of those photos and it’s mesmerizing.

  1. Pricing Experiments You Might Not Know, But Can Learn From - CXL

People are weird and irrational, and there’s much we don’t understand. For example, why do shoppers moving in a counterclockwise direction spend on average $2.00 more at the supermarket?

Why does removing dollar signs from prices (24 instead of $24) increase sales?

What will work for you depends on your industry, product, and customer. When you try to replicate what Valve did to increase their revenue 40x, it might not work for you, but then again, why not give it a try?

Here’s a list of pricing experiments and studies you can get ideas from and test on your own business.

Pricing strategies and human behavioral economics are fascinating subjects. This article breaks down different strategies to explain how and why they work. I’m keeping this bookmarked for the next time I price a product.

  1. How a Dead Girl in Paris Ended Up With The Most-Kissed Lips in History — Science Alert

For a toymaker accustomed to manufacturing miniature cars and play-dolls, it was a challenge to make a realistic, functional mannequin; one that could reliably demonstrate the physical complexities of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Aside from the technical issues, what kind of face would he give to this giant doll?

That’s when Laerdal recalled a strange, enigmatic half-smile. A serene mask he’d seen hanging on the wall at his in-laws’ house.

An unidentified drowning victim, a model mask, a life-saving training doll. I’d never have guessed at the strange and mysterious origins of the CPR Annie doll that I’ve used countless times in first-aid trainings.

  1. Mad Men. Furious Women. — Musings Of A Wandering Mind

The numbers we’re used to examining, such as the number of women in agency leadership, the number of female creative directors, the number of female graduates entering the workforce - are all great when it comes to monitoring representation, which is critical, but they do not and cannot track the abuse which takes place behind the scenes.

Why? Because no one asks and no one tells.

Not a fun read by Zoe Scaman, but an important one. You and I each have a responsibility to keep our eyes open for misogyny, to shut it down, and to support those who experience it.

Thanks for reading! If you found these things interesting too, or have something exciting to share, please drop me a line on Twitter!

7 Things


❮ Previous post

Feature Request: Unleash Memoji July 30, 2021

Next post ❯

7 Things This Week [#21] August 8, 2021