Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 203 // Week 28 // 2021

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By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello!

Hope your week was wonderful.

For me, it was a bit slow week than my usual fast-paced workweek. I enjoyed my work when I was able to delegate some of the work and was able to pick and choose what I actually wanted to work on. That was a first in a very long weeks span time.

I was also able to curate this week’s pentacle items almost every day. I have gotta admit, I have to sift through a lot of content to find some good things to share, but I like the process, as it makes me go through some really good stuff eventually and the process of curating and sharing with you all, make it worth it!

Anyway, time for you to read on the good stuff I found the past week. Enjoy!


Issue 203 // Week 28 // 2021


An Article or a quarantine memoir I found interesting –

Quarantined to Room 903 — Found this quarantine memoir when the author travelled from the US to Singapore at the end of 2020 and was quarantined for 14 days in a hotel room. How she put herself in a bubble and still kept the social interaction and walked 100 miles in 14 days in the same room.

Really interesting stock on her time in that room.


Technology I finding fascinating

AI-Powered Hyper-Realistic Artificial Voice – I found this company from an article last week and it was mind-boggling when I looked deep into it.

Sonantic, a firm that specializes in emotive voices that can laugh and cry or whisper and shout, works with video-game makers and animation studios to supply the voice-overs for their characters. Many of its clients use the synthesized voices only in pre-production and switch to real voice actors for the final production. But Sonantic says a few have started using them throughout the process, perhaps for characters with fewer lines.

This is really exciting to see! Because I can even think of the use of these AI voices in e-learning videos very easily. I think the future is already here!

Check out the below video to see it in action!


A Song I loved —

Song – Somebody Else – Found this song from an Insta Story shared by one of my friends and instantly loved the song.


A Podcast episode I loved —

Malcolm Gladwell and Ryan Holiday – I love when two of my favourite interests collide. That’s what happened in this podcast. Malcolm Gladwell one of my favourite writers of all time sat and chat with Ryan Holiday (another favourite author and podcast host) about running, writing and storytelling.

This was an amazing and interesting conversation I listened to in a long-form podcast after a long time (personally).

If you wanna check it out here it is –


Quote which I found meaningful –

A Candle never Loses any of its Light while Lighting up another candle.

— Rumi

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for supporting and reading.

Himanshu


About Author

I’m Himanshu Sachdeva, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories.

Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.


Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 203 // Week 28 // 2021


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How this amazing medium helped me read more than 9 hours a week?

Recently I’ve found interest in an old school medium of book and article reading, even though its old but still got its charm. It literally helped me gain more knowledge than ever before in past sometime.

This medium is Audio! by the mean of Audio books & Podcast.

How it can benefit?

While commuting or going for a run, earlier I used to listen to all types of music. But recently after reading an article from a guy who works at buffer. He shared amazing routine of his where he listens to audio books and podcasts while running or commuting. Here is a brief of the reasoning he gave.

“Often we use to put aside less time for reading articles or books than we would want due to busy life. But guess what! its not that we have less time, its how we make best of our time.”

His words gave me a reason to stop and reflect on my daily routine. Lately I’ve started 3 new books and have put many articles in my read it later app. But yet I’ve not made any significant progress in that front. Not because I’m too lazy, but because my day job and workout routine  leave me rarely any time for reading books and articles. So I tried to think, where can I cut some slack and add myself some reading time? That’s where the power of this audio medium crossed my mind.

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