#3 - Everything Random
#3 - Everything Random
Welcome to the third edition of Everything Random. A series of links, articles, notes, idea, and everything random living rent free in my head (and my open browser tabs). Hopefully you find them interesting or helpful. Some of these topics I'll explore further in future posts.
Quick Links
Welcome to the App Attack Edition of Quick Links. Here are a few Apps that may be lesser known or forgotten, but have an impact on my daily work and life.
Genius Scan - (iOS + Android)
We’re starting off with a little boring but necessary app. Genius Scan is pretty self explainatory. It uses your phone camera to scan documents into PDFs. It’s such a simple utility and does the job perfectly. It’s not something I use everyday, but very happy to have it when I do.
Don’t take a picture of a document and send it to someone as a JPEG. Scan it, and send as a PDF. It will make things much easier.
Pandora - iOS + Android
I’m sure you’ve heard of Pandora, but it might be time to try it out again. A quick refresher, Pandora’s claim to fame was The Music Genome Project for music discovery.
The Music Genome Project powers Pandora. It's the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken.
For over a decade, we've been gathering musical knowledge to bring you the best, most personalized listening experience out there.
We believe each individual has a unique relationship with music – no one has tastes that are exactly the same. So delivering a great experience to every listener requires a broad and deep understanding of music.
Our team of trained musicologists has been listening to music across all genres and decades, including emerging artists and new releases, studying and collecting musical details on every track– 450 musical attributes altogether.
The result of all our work is a personalized listening experience filled with both old favorites and new discoveries.
Music on the internet has gone through a lot of iterations, promises, and weird licensing deals. Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Rdio (who remembers Rdio?), and the infamous Napster. I’ve used and paid for all of these services at different points.
I’ve recently found myself back at Pandora. The simplicity of it is perfect. Put in the name of an artist you like, and it plays music. That’s it. I don’t need to search. I don’t need to create playlists. I don’t need to manage anything. It all just works and works well.
Take a trip down to simpler times with internet radio and give Pandora another look in 2023.
Blinkist - iOS + Android
First read The Benefits of Reading for Adults…
Now that you know all the life-changing benefits of reading in adulthood it’s time to start putting it into practice! Blinkist is one of the ways more and more busy adults are accessing and reading fascinating books covering all sorts of themes and topics. By providing well-written and engaging summaries of key nonfiction insights, the Blinkist app ensures your reading time is never wasted: you will always come away with a new nugget of information or key insight.
I’ve used the paid and free versions of Blinkist for a few years now. It takes non-fiction books and condenses them to 15 minute summaries of key concepts. The summaries can be read or listened to on your phone.
It’s amazingly useful for a few things. One, figure out if a book actually has good advice before investing the time of reading the entire book. Two, get a quick refresher for books you’ve already read. Three, find new books to read on specific or related topics.
SimpleMind - iOS + Android
SimpleMind helps you organize your thoughts, remember information and generate new ideas. We've created a beautiful, intuitive app that is easy to use.
I was really slow to start using mind maps to organized thoughts. Now that I’ve started using them, it’s the first place I go to organize my ideas. When you are in the brainstorming/idea phase of your project, a mind map can be widely useful. It’s much more free form than a work document and allows lots of changes. If you haven’t tried using a mind map for a project, try it out.
Do you use any of these Apps on a daily basis? Or have some that we should add to the list? Let the community know in the comments.
Learned Something New
Many Worlds Theory
This is going to be winding summary, but stay with me. I will certainly need to revisit this in more depth in future posts, but take a peek down the rabbit hole for a moment. If you are looking for the hard science around The Many Worlds Theory, there are better resources available. I don’t claim to be a scientist or understand everything going on here.
It started with a book, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. In the opening chapters there is a scene that has many important people looking at a photograph. The photograph is of a person at the North Pole. In the sky you see the Northern Lights. In the shadows of these lights you see a city skyline. A city not of this world.
This scene triggered a connection in my brain with the Baháʼí Faith. A very brief introduction from Wikipedia;
According to Baháʼí teachings, religion is revealed in an orderly and progressive way by a single God through Manifestations of God, who are the founders of major world religions throughout human history; Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad are noted as the most recent of these before the Báb and Baháʼu'lláh. Baháʼís regard the world's major religions as fundamentally unified in purpose, but diverging in terms of social practices and interpretations.
This connection led my thoughts to the idea that different religious beliefs, different cultures, any difference in our world are actually call backs to different worlds we are experiencing outside of our own.
Which led to the actual science part, The Many Worlds Theory (and an abstract pulling of my comic book background around the DC Multiverse). For a really good intro and explanation of the theory, please refer to this MIT Press article. This video from PBS also does a good job of introducing the theory.
Now where am I going with this? I’m still figuring that out. But it’s led me to some really interesting science, philosophical, and religious thoughts about the world around us. There is some connection here that I’m still working out and plan to explore more in the future. Maybe in the form of research or maybe as a short story.
I encourage you to explore the resources above and share you own ideas on the subject in the comments. Am I onto something here or is this complete nonsense?
Living Rent Free
This song is one of my favorites. It may be my all time favorite cover. The song is With God On Our Side performed by K’naan. It is from the 2012 Charity Album for Amnesty International, Chimes of Freedom.
This wraps up Edition #3 of Everything Random. What is your favorite cover song? Please leave a comment for discussion.
*Disclaimer: This post is a stream of consciousness type of writing. If you find spelling, grammar, or other issues, please let me know.