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The Unexpected-and-Thrilling Edition Sunday, June 25, 2023

Dolby Atmos Wants You To Listen Up. (And Down. And Sideways.), by Bob Mehr, New York Times

In the past two years, Wood has been busy mixing old and new records in Dolby Atmos, an audio format that lets engineers create a listening experience more immersive than traditional stereo by placing sounds around and above the listener. Working for a variety of labels, Wood has performed Atmos mixes for the Supremes, the Pogues, Jennifer Lopez, Modest Mouse, Gwen Stefani and Soul Asylum — some 300-plus tracks in total, the equivalent of two dozen albums.

“The whole thing has been pretty unexpected and thrilling,” he said.

I Force-closed My Apps For 3 Days. It Made Me Kinda Hate My Phone., by Matt Birchler, Birchtree

I was genuinely expecting to come out of this experiment with something positive to say about force closing your apps when you're done with them. I wanted to have something to latch onto so that when I see someone doing this, I could think to myself, "well, I don't like it myself, but at least I can see why they prefer it."

Sadly, I found this to be a completely negative experience with absolutely zero upsides for me. My phone felt marginally slower, it felt less useful, and it required me to keep track of what things I wanted to have "open" and "closed" in a way that I simply didn't have to think about ever before.

Stuff

Learn How Procreate Can Help You Master Colour And Light, by Jana Schirmer, Creative Bloq

Procreate is my go-to painting app. This Procreate tutorial for iPad is all about mastering colour and light. The Procreate team is constantly improving the app and adding new features and Procreate is extremely fast and so far I haven’t suffered from lags while painting. I love to take the iPad out and about, and work in coffee shops. It’s fun to change your creative environment and leave your desk for a while.

Pixelmator Pro 3.3.7, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

The new Frequency Separation effect can adjust fine details and overall tones in images separately, while the Low Pass effect smooths out fine details or removes noise.

GraphicConverter 12.0.3, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

Lemkesoft has issued GraphicConverter 12.0.3, adding direct access to saved Smart Folders and Smart Searches and improving QR code creation with custom colors and error levels.

Notes

Do Life Hacks Work? The Truth Is, We’ll Never Know, by Ben Ambridge, The Guardian

But assuming Coles’s findings hold water, the implications for psychology research – and the “life hacks” that we’ve all been sold on the back of them – are catastrophic. The beliefs that participants bring to the experiment affect the results, and not just a little bit: Coles found that the average placebo effect (eg feeling amused because that’s what you expect the experiment to do) is just as powerful as the average real effect (eg feeling amused because the experimenter has told you a genuinely funny joke). It’s as if, in medicine, sugar-pill placebos – on average – worked just as well as the real thing.

Bottom of the Page

The only time that I force-quit apps -- besides apps misbehaving, that is -- is when I have this weird notion that I want to restrict the list of apps my phone can open. I will not be distracted by these other apps throughout the day if I limit myself to these few carefully selected apps.

Of course, I always fail. I have no idea why I still do this from time to time.

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Thanks for reading.