The Casual Dork Weekly #20

TECH

Meta Gets Into Movies

who isn’t at this point?

It seems like every company and their aunty is getting into AI and this has now progressed into a big consumer focus around AI-generated video.

The latest company to throw their hat in the ring is ol’ Zuck and the people of Meta. They just announced the launch of Movie Gen - Meta’s own text-to-video AI video generator and while it’s not on the same level as Midjourney or Runway ML’s offering, knowing the amount of sheer data and manpower Meta has it won’t be long before they are on par or even surpass other platforms.

Along with a text-to-video generator, there is also the ability to create custom videos of yourself. All you need to do is upload an image and you can create a prompt to put yourself in a wide variety of scenarios.

Let’s take a look at the tool in action:

MUSIC

A Good Place For Good Music

you’re bound to find a hidden gem here…

The first time I came across this channel on YouTube it was about 2016. Let me paint a picture for you:

I was looking for something new, something different. I have always leaned towards RnB and at the time the genre was just coming out of an EDM-induced coma and it wasn’t, in my opinion in a good place. My search led me to a channel called COLORS and before I even listened to a single song, I was drawn to the visual styling of the channel.

The ‘colours’ of the thumbnails were really pleasing to the eye so I decided to jump in. The first song I listened to had me hooked from the first second.

This was the first one I listened to:

From there it felt like I had discovered a goldmine and over the years the channel has just kept unearthing some amazing talent from across the world. There have even been some local artists featured.

Here are a few of my faves:

H.E.R - Carried Away

James Vickery - Until Morning

Sho Madjozi - John Cena

Earthgang - UP

Matt McGhee - Sweat

Angèle - Ta Reine

BEAM - 2X2

There are so many others I wanted to include, but then this newsletter would go on forever!

You can see all the COLORS channel has to offer here.

CROSSWORD #10

Name The Colours

STORY OF THE WEEK

Must Be Two Full Moons?

2 months of seeing double…

You heard that right! We will technically have 2 moons for the next 2 months. An asteroid that measures 10m across will enter our orbit and do a full circle around Earth before it continues out of our orbit.

This asteroid is being referred to as a ‘Mini Moon’ and it’s not the first time this has happened. We saw the phenomenon in 2022 and back in the 80’s.

It’s so small in fact that it can’t be seen with the naked eye.