Mood, Creativity, and Composition
Rabatment, Not Giving Up on Creativity, Dubbing, AI Updates, My Karabiner and Yabai Dotfiles, Keyboard Maestro and OpenIn
Hey guys! Last week was the release of Kiki for Alfred, but now I’m back with some stuff that has stood out the most from my previous week—two weeks, actually:
On Visual Composition
I watched THIS VIDEO that talks about "Rabatment." With over fifteen years of experience in photography and video, I think I’m pretty familiar with the concept of composition, but there's always something new to learn. When I look at my own work, I can see that I've often used this “rabatment” technique without even knowing it. With composition a lot of it is about finding balance with elements and symmetry but I had not thought about looking for an imaginary square within a horizontal or vertical frame. It's quite interesting, and I plan to use this more intentionally now. The video above explains it in a simple and practical way. If you're interested in diving deeper, I found this website and the same guy’s YT channel with more advanced resources on this topic.
On Creativity
I read THIS ARTICLE that talks about some challenges in being creative, or rather on the importance of not giving up when trying to come up with creative ideas.
When coming up with original ideas starts to become more challenging—people take that as a sign that they should stop. Instead, we should be using the uncomfortableness of disfluency as a signal that we’re just now getting to the good stuff.
But there’s actually more. The article also talks about how we can use being in a “negative mood” to actually be more focused creatively:
Positive mood is associated with expansive thinking, of the kind we expect from the insight model of creativity. Negative mood, by contrast, leads our thinking to narrow and contract: a useful development when our goal is to persist in a focused way.
On Dubbing
I read this article in Spanish which talks about dubbing movies. I live in Mexico where many people still like to watch American or international films with Mexican Spanish voices instead of the original ones. Even though I don’t personally prefer this, I think it’s still a very interesting thing, both from the viewers' point of view and also as someone who understands the nuances of the original language. It could be interesting to learn more about how this affects popular culture. Basically, a lot of the words or sayings that we hear in these dubbed movies are so different than the original. The article explains it:
Dubbing seems to have only managed to protect a way of speaking a language that doesn't actually exist.
On Web Search for iOS
In a previous newsletter, I talked about how Arc had launched an iOS app to help with web searches using AI. I gave it a try, but I still find it quite limited and far from useful for me. However, last week I came across Ai Search, an app I found much better for my use case. Ignore the name of the app, it actually has nothing to do with artificial intelligence. This app lets you search multiple websites in parallel (like Amazon, Wikipedia, Google, Medium, etc.). On my Mac, I use Alfred for most of my web searches because it does something similar—searching directly on your favorite sites—so having something like this on iOS is really handy. I hope this is useful for some of you.
On AI
The Internet has been going crazy for a few days since Open AI announced SORA, a model that can make AI videos from text prompts. At first, I didn't think it was such a big deal because there are already several apps/tools for making AI videos. But after seeing some examples, I was blown away. Seriously. I know they are being cautious about safety with AI, but I'm not sure how much they can control if reality and fiction start blending together like it seems to be with all of these advances.
Eleven labs also released a multi language model for their Speech-to-Speech tool. I still believe Eleven Labs is at the top of the game when it comes to AI voice generation and this update is really cool, especially for video producers, animators, filmmakers, etc.
Talking about AI, a few days ago I found this useful technique that is related to prompt engineering. It may be useful if you use Chat GPT for text revision or generation and want results that sound more natural. Here’s another technique that is also useful if you want to train Chat GPT on your own personal writing style.
On Keyboard Maestro and OpenIn
I've been using OpenIn 4 for some time now. It helps me choose where links open on my computer and even transform/rewrite them before they open. When I use it with Arc and Yabai, I can click on links and pick if I want them to open in a floating popup (Little Arc), a separate window, or a tab in my main window. It's really handy. This past week, I found out that I can also rewrite URLs in OpenIn to send them to a Keyboard Maestro macro. This opens up a bunch of new possibilities for automation, but setting it up was a bit tricky. The important thing to know is that the "kmtrigger" URL scheme from Keyboard Maestro doesn't open directly with Keyboard Maestro but with Keyboard Maestro Engine, which is a small utility inside the Keyboard Maestro App package. You just need to add that to OpenIn and then rewrite the URL as you normally would (remember to url encode!).
On Dotfiles
After spending weeks working on and finally releasing Kiki for Alfred, I found time to organize my Dotfiles repository. This is all about Karabiner Elements and Yabai (for now). If you're interested in these AMAZING apps, you might find it helpful. My keyboard modifications have changed a lot since I started exploring this a few months ago (read more here). If you don't know about Karabiner, you can check out this simple list of remappings and layers for ideas on customizing your own keyboard with another tool. I'm still amazed by the possibilities with Karabiner and on the other hand, I also believe there's nothing as powerful for managing windows as Yabai. Now, I just need to focus on memorizing all these new shortcuts and key combinations I've set up.
On Cinema & TV
The Curse (2024). The moment I saw that Bennie Sadie had worked on this TV show I knew I wanted to watch it. WOW. That was totally unexpected and I thought it was brilliant. I also watched this analysis (which has some spoilers) but it just gives you better insight about what this is all about. It’s one of those rare cases where what you see actually has so much more depth the more you think about it. Can’t recommend it enough. Synopsis: An alleged curse disturbs the relationship of a newly married couple as they try to conceive a child while co-starring on their problematic new HGTV show.
Blue Jean (2023). I thought it was a pretty good film that deals not so much with the topic of identity—as one would imagine—, but it is more about guilt, betrayal, and the human condition. Synopsis: Jean, a PE teacher, is forced to live a double life. When a new student arrives and threatens to expose her sexuality, Jean is pushed to extreme lengths to keep her job and her integrity.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). I am amazed at how much of Scorsese’s filmmaking identity and style continues to be reflected in his work, even until now. Synopsis: When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.
The End We Start From (2023). A tale of motherhood in an end-of-the-world kind of scenario. I think the story and characters could have had so much more depth, but I still liked the overall atmosphere and mood. Synopsis: As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place.
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