Happy New Year. Merry Christmas. No fancy table of content like usual, I’m not in the mood for that. I’m going to work on writing these newsletters in a way that is more natural to me. Shall we proceed?

This year I worked very hard at building the groundwork for what I want my long-term future to be. In a way, it was the first time that I ever worked on so many different parts of my future. Of my ultimate vision, for my company Hypothius Picturehouse - a space to help advocate for people who need their voices amplified, a tool that will lift people out of poverty. That’s why I’m going all crazy building all kinds of things, because I’m creating a weird company that will stop so much poverty from happening in America, and around the world.

I took home a lot of lessons from this year. I skipped around in my earth jacket. I took black and white shots with my camera. I ran an Eventbrite webinar to teach people how to create positive change in the world. Mind you, I lost a lot of things this past year. There were friends who left and came. A lot of life happened. And yet, in some ways, I feel like not enough has changed. And that’s okay. I am ending the year feeling I know much more than I knew beginning it, and I feel like I am heading out on my journey with a much stronger and more solid foundation. It really is possible to know a lot about a lot of things in just a little time.

There are some things that still torment me on the inside. The feeling that I know I can offer people things of value, things that they need, and yet I often feel like I don’t make myself approachable enough for people to be willing to accept my help. I feel unsure of why that is, but it is something that bothers me. And that is also okay.

Losing so much this year, I now have so much more time for certain things right now. Now it’s time for me to start a new life again, for the third time in the space of two months. Sheesh!

This is really a process of self-discovery. I need to delve deeper into who I really am right now if I want to be able to connect with anybody else.

I need to become more me, and I need to figure out exactly what that is.

I think there is such a thing as becoming more "me".

Here is some cool stuff that I would like to share with you all:

Funny Quotes

• “Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.” — Johnny Carson

• “We got so caught up in the little things of Christmas, like love and family, that we almost forgot that it's buying things that makes our economy thrive.” — Diana Choksondik, “South Park: A Very Crappy Christmas”

• “Santa Claus has the right idea — visit people only once a year.” — Victor Borge

Pinterest Board of Photoshop Tutorials

I made a Pinterest board for short, fun Photoshop tutorials. I’m gonna be practicing off of them. Here is the link.

This Week’s Activity

My New Website

I have analyzed screenplays so many times for folks, I’m finally making a website for it. Coded it, very happy with how it turned out. Everyone always hides the prices on these websites, but I don’t like that practice for myself, and I find that kind of advertising to be very misleading.

AI Updates

Some things I am looking forward to for the coming year include solidifying my coding skills some more, and working more with the software Google ImageFX, which is currently one of my favorite image generators. I have been noticing that trends have been picking up on TikTok regarding ai video-making, including the beagle-with-the-apple meme.

A few updates in the space of AI:

• Ideogram (an image creator that does an exceptional job at generating text in images) now has a “batch” button in the paid version; meaning, you can upload a spreadsheet with a batch of prompts, and it will generate a whole bunch of. images in bulk based on that spreadsheet. I think that’s pretty neat.

• Photoshop has a new feature where you can press a button to auto-select only the eyes or the mouth/a specific facial feature of a subject. There is also a fairly new feature called “remove distractions” where with one click, you can remove things like powerlines or photobombs. Pretty neat!

• Not sure if this counts as AI, but Voxon created an awesome volumetric display - technically speaking, an encapsulated hologram that you can view from any angle.

• Google Veo 2, a highly-detailed text-to-video generator is available for some users already, and the long-awaited Sora by OpenAI was just released - one of my favorite aspects of Sora so far is the color, and also the level of detail and movement. But Veo 2 seems to do a really good job on the physics, better than most AI video generators. And Sora’s software seems to easily add extra legs and somewhat unnatural movement to things.

• If you want nearly all AI video generators under one platform, check out the recently-released Rubbrband Movies, an online AI video editor and generator.

• Here is a tip to get great and accurate text generations in Adobe Firefly - draw out your text with a pen and paper, take a photo, upload the photo, and then prompt it, and it will turn your writing into exactly that.

Epic 2024 Pop Music Compilation

Cinematically and music-wise, I thought this edit was so amazing, and that this year was so amazing for music. This edit really showcases the creativity that was shown this year. Be warned, though, from what I remember (I watched it several weeks ago), some of the music videos and songs in this edit might have some explicit content - not that explicit, but some of it was intense. Again, may I say that the music and visual editing was masterful?

I’ve been feeling like I miss some of the quiet of certain parts of the pandemic, where I felt like I had me, and my future, and that’s it. It was an intimate moment with nature, without distractions, in the quiet of winter, with the snow being one of the only things keeping me company. There was a simplicity to it, and a freedom. As I have been increasing my meditation practice again, I am delighted to say that I am starting to feel this returning to me again.

Lately I have also been utilizing Flickr, because I’m finding it an excellent way to look at old photos of the world from 2007 and beyond, without visual filters or anything else.

The world is full of all kinds of people, things, and reactions. Sometimes we ourselves aren’t yet mature enough, and that’s okay. Some people aren’t mature enough to recognize when somebody cares about them, and that’s okay.

Let’s end this newsletter with a few quotes. (I found these edits on the internet, but I don’t think I could find the credits for who made them)

And then this one, which I found hilarious.

-M