SML Universe

01/06/2024

Suno, the AI music generation app, is paying $1 million to the top Suno creators in 2024, starting with the Summer of Suno (SoS), on June 1.

The top 500 songs will split a prize pool of $100,000 USD, with the first place payout at $10k. Not bad for “clicking buttons,” right?

Good luck! Details: https://suno.com/blog/sos

10/05/2024

How not to unGoogle: History Removal

Removing history does not work. Public unsearchability creates a false sense of safety. Just because you are not searchable by the public domain does not equate unsearchability.

Put yourself in the shoe of Google: if you had just spent a whole lot of resources to dig up all these information, are you really going to dispose all of them that easily? Most likely not.

If I were Google, I would be happy to remove your result from the public domain to keep peace with you.

Tada! Due to questionable actions committed by you to fulfill your very desire to remove data, I have just identified why I get into the search business at the first place — to mine important intelligence data that no one else has a copy of.
Thanks to your help, I have just identified what you considered to be most damaging to your credibility. I’m sure that businesses will pay me tons of money just to get their hands onto my treasure chest.

2024-05-11

So how do I do it? I keep my privacy by being very public.This is hard to explain, but there’s a reason that I’m everywhere.

How not to unGoogle: History Removal/ Data Security + Privacy / SML

Revisions
- 2007-09-16 R1
- 2024-05-10 R2

03/04/2024

B+S will make something together. Tentatively called the BS Collection. TBA.

18/03/2024

I have been using Ableton Live since version 4 — way back in 2004 when I tried every single DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) including Logic, Cubase, ProTools, and Ableton Live was the only DAW that didn’t crash when I was writing a symphonic piece with 30 tracks.

Granted, it could be the VST plugin I was using was buggy [1] but it didn’t matter — Ableton Live was the only software that let me complete my music, and I stuck with it.

I now write a lot less music, and wasn’t sure if I should upgrade — but Peter Kirn gave such a great review [2] about all the goodies that I just upgraded. Looking to write something new with this new toy.

This year, I’m looking into possibly hacking by combining Ableton Live, MIDI controllers, Python, and Stable Diffusion. I already have some plans on what I want to do — currently brewing in my brain. I just need to my time to write the code.

Notes

[1] My first symphonic VST was the MOTU Symphonic Instrument v1. I’m still amused by the fact that it would crash all the DAWs except Ableton Live. It did have some unusual sounds e.g. historical instruments such as the Lute and Recorder — which I depended on for some music I wrote years ago.

[2] 12 Things About Live 12, cdmtv. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiqq-XJE4yk

Ableton Live 12 Suite Upgrade
/ 2024-03-19 / SML

Ableton Live 12 has arrived. Here are 12 ideas to try out when you first install it, to get you started. For more, as always, check https://cdm.link

17/03/2024

There’s art education — and there’s Yale art education.

The Yale way is not the way how art is taught in most schools. The Yale way, I believe, is largely what shaped me to be the person I am — because the Yale way is unusual — but it works.

Most art schools teach students how to draw — the technique of drawing things. In many ways, this technique driven approach has trained a large number of people to become the perfect reproduction machines. It makes people think about art in their ability to create works of amazement — but to me, largely missing the point.

The Yale way is to let you do anything you want — but always asking an important question: “Why?”

My concentration is in graphic design, so I will use design as an example. Let’s say you’re designing a poster for a movie — why did you use this photo? Why not an illustration? Why is photography better than other types of visual representation? Why this font? Why place this font at this location? Why not 1 mm to the left? Why this color? Why not a shade lighter? Why this size? Why not bigger? Why not smaller?

When eventually you’re able to articulate succinctly why you do everything that you presented, it’s considered finished.

In many ways, the art education at Yale is similar to how one would present at a thesis defense. It’s similar to how a Q+A session at a press conference is carried out. It trains everyone to think for themselves and to have to confidence to be able to defend every decision.

It’s why I can usually talk about what I do and why I do anything in all of the works — because partially, to be able to talk about my works is a core part of my education.

Fundamentally, art and design are both rooted in concepts — concepts that you can see. A concept is a statement and thesis. It‘s an idea that you can experience visually.

You know what art is not? Art is not the perfect reproduction skills. There are far better ways to do that — machines. Training to become the perfect reproduction machine will never make you a great artist. Learning how to express yourself in the best way possible, on the other hand, most definitely will.

Art Education
/ 2024-03-18 UTC+8
/ SML

15/03/2024

Monetization + pricing for any project / business largely depend on the following factors:

👉 Willingness of people to pay for something
👉 Value you can provide for people who are already getting something you provide for free

To determine this, you need to know the following:

👉 Cost of operation. This includes cost of software, hardware, all the software licenses, as monetary values.
👉 Cost of your time. Time is mostly operational costs — even though technically it costs you $0 to work on anything, if it means potentially missing out on $500/hr projects to work on this other project that costs you $0, then the equivalent cost of your time is $500/hr and not $0.

After having these numbers, determine what your actual break-even is, cost of running this project.

Then you can determine how to price for monetization. An important rule of thumb for pricing is to recognize the following:

$50 x 1 > $2 x 20 [Scenario A]
$50 x 1 < $2 x 100 [Scenario B]

To determine whether something should cost $50 or $2 largely depends on how confident you are to get the volume (20 or 100)

Although I wrote this mostly for a friend who’s evaluating how to price his membership, it’s also relevant for other things e.g. why I believe Clash Royale has extremely aggressive pricing structures lately.

If a game cannot achieve the volume required in Scenario B, then they will usually opt to price things aggressively because of Scenario A.

It’s thus the same for any projects or businesses who need to break-even or with a revenue goal in mind.

If you can’t achieve the volume, then you should instead focus on creating a luxury product that a small minority of existing customers would spend on, instead of a mass market product.

How to price products for market
/ 2024-03-15 / SML

11/03/2024

1/ I am many things.

2/ You may only see some parts of me.

3/ I can be myself only if you accept everything about me.

4/ If I were not allowed to be any part of myself, then I am no longer me.

5/ It’s why the people who are single letters in my universe are special. They allow me to be the full m, the most brilliant version me.

Thank you.

The whole me
2024-03-11 / SML

29/02/2024

TIL that Meta has a Chief Diversity Officer. I hope that something similar exists on Instagram, and ideally if there’s a way to reach that account to discuss some important matters.

I hope for a way to contact either that person or the assistant / member of that team such that I can contact — or an email that will not be sorted by a machine.

For some emails I see the need to be processed by algorithms, but for some issues, it’s clear that the current machine learning technology used in Instagram does not have the capability to parse.

Some of these nuances are hard enough for humans to comprehend, let alone machines who try to find patterns — some concepts won’t be so easily grasped if the primary objective is simply to put things into clusters.

There are no clusters to be formed if the overlap is small enough. When you put all of these concepts into a diagram and you get a tiny slice that’s infinitely small, the machine will conclude that the issue is something it’s not.

24/02/2024

In 2009, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, a symphony orchestra in Germany, published a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge I took in 2006.

Yesterday, a friend posted a photo of a sunset skyline of New York on Instagram, and it reminds me of it.

1. Reprocessed photo for Gewandhaus
2. Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra: 229th Season Catalog (2009-2010)3. Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Founded in 1781
4. HDR from 6 captures

Brooklyn Bridge Sunset HDR
SML.20060617.10D.40087-40092.HDR
Canon EOS 10D
Canon EF 70-200 f/4L

Creative Commons (CCBY)

Copyright 2006, 2008, 2009, 2024
See-ming Lee / SML Photography / SML Universe Limited

https://seeminglee.com/blog/brooklyn-bridge-hdr/

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SML Photography SML Universe

19/02/2024

Social media is freedom to express without reservation. Write for yourself. If you can’t be yourself on a platform that’s literally designed for you to be yourself, then you wouldn’t know how to be yourself in places that are not designed to be yourself.