Happy Wednesday!  This is becoming more of a “whenever I get to it” newsletter so don’t mind me. Just doing what I can over here. In the last week or two I’ve really been doubling down on my data course which isn’t super fun to write about. But I did manage to sneak in a few interesting things that I think are worth watching/listening to so I figured that’s what I would write about today.

In this issue

🎨 Behind the scenes at Disney

🎥 Tiny Desk

🕺 Data.Gov

🕹 pixelUpdate.003

The Imagineering Story

Disney is usually associated with movies, kids stories, or the theme parks, and it’s easy to forget that it’s actually a giant corporation worth a kazillion and three dollars. Okay, actually $321B as of me writing this, but that’s already not a real number so who cares. Jess and I started watching a documentary on Disney+ called The Imagineering Story that shines a light on the business cost of opening theme parks in the 50s and 60s.

It’s a perfect tale of how investing in R&D is a smart business move. By hiring a small group of artists and engineers, Walt Disney ensured that his company would be at the forefront of experimentation and tech in entertainment. He found a way to marry art, technology, and business and it’s still an inspiring story to hear all these years later.

Tiny Desk

I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but you should be watching Tiny Desk. It’s a small concert series that NPR does on its YouTube channel where they bring on huge stars like T-Pain and smaller upcoming artists as well. Due to Covid, they haven’t been able to do the concerts at their offices (hence the name Tiny Desk, because artists usually perform at someone’s desk) but they’ve still kept it going with small, intimate concerts at different locations.

One of my favorites that I’ve seen in a long time is this one from Spillage Village. I’ve been listening to their album for the last few weeks and I had no idea that they even had a Tiny Desk performance. They blew me away. It’s worth a listen.

Data.gov

It hasn’t been all theme parks and concerts the last few weeks, I have been doing actual work too. Like I said, I’ve been chugging along a data analytics course and one thing that I took note of was just how much data there is about everything. Like me, I’m sure you already know that there’s data about basically everything. But seeing the datasets and the pure volume of information about everything from bike rentals in London to NASA test flights openly available for public use is WILD.

If you have a few minutes I highly suggest just scrolling through the datasets to get a feel for it. There are over 300,000 so good luck getting to all of them, but just going through a few pages can really spark a few ideas about how to use data to make a positive change in the world.

pixelUpdate.003

As promised, this section is dedicated to the ongoing process of me trying to become better at pixel art and at playing with the OP-Z synthesizer.

Here’s another quick sketch from the OP-Z and a pixelated Aang.