🎶Make Lofi Beats, Get a Free TV, and Bougie Chickens
Is that a chicken with a monocle?
Hey friends!
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Land of Random.
It’s been a rainy week here in Columbia, Tennessee - great news for our little garden.
Funny tale - My three-year-old daughter was tasked with picking up the leaves that had blown into our little garden. By accident, she pulled up the little Watermelon plant we planted about a week prior. Upon learning what she’d unearthed - she burst into tears. My wife replanted the little Watermelon plant - and it continues to grow against all odds.
Kids are hilarious - I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of personality our son due in August will have.
Did y’all happen to see that Five Nights at Freddy’s trailer?
Since it’s Blumhouse - I have high hopes. They’ve produced a lot of fun movies - from The Purge to Sinister.
Speaking of horror movies . . . I still need to watch that Winnie the Pooh movie, and Slenderman.
Did you hear all the craziness about Google deleting old unused Google Accounts?
I’m sure we’ll lose another good chunk of Internet wonder (old public google sheets / docs / drive files) sooooooo if you happen to visit cool stuff you’ve found in Google products - it might be time to make some copies.
Anyway, before we hop on into the newsletter - I just wanted to see if anyone got to listen to my interview with Kevin Lynch last week.
Did you enjoy it? Do you want to be on the podcast?
Feel free to leave a comment below, or send me an email at landofrandommedia@gmail.com! I’d love to hear from you.
Let’s hop on in, shall we?
🎶Make Lofi Beats
or any kind of beat for that matter.
I got access to Google’s AI music demo the other week - and have been playing around with some beats.
Here’s Google’s description of the technology
MusicLM is an experimental technology that allows you to generate your own synthetic music for inspiration. Certain queries that mention specific artists or include vocals will not be generated. (source)
So - no copying Drake with this without some “hackery.”
Here’s what it looks like.
It feels a lot like chatgpt in look and style. Type in some keywords - and it will generate two short 25ish-second clips.
For example, here’s a sample I generated with the following prompt.
Lofi style beats, with cassette tape sounds in the background, static, and a melody that sounds like 80's city pop
Not bad! There’s certainly elements of the keywords in that clip.
The fun part about the AI model is that you never know what it’s going to spit out based on the keywords you feed it.
For example - I fed it “Slenderman Horror Lofi” and got this.
It’s neither Slenderman nor horror - but there’s a ghost of an interesting lofi song in the clip.
Same for this clip - I typed in “Sirenhead horror” and got this. It ain’t horror - but IT’S SO GROOVY.
There’s a groovy song ABSOLUTELY hiding in this clip. I wish I had the skill level to do something with it hahaha.
I hope Google keeps working with this AI model, and adding options to make clips longer / turn them into songs. I’d love to keep playing around with different musical ideas . . . like this last clip.
Go check out Google’s music AI demo at the link and sign up for the beta! If you want me to generate any samples, feel free to let me know!
📺Get a Free TV
The only catch is - you need to be ok with nonstop ads.
At first glance, it sounds like some sort of black mirror dystopian “oh boy here we go” nightmare - but one could argue that this is a more honest version of all the “wheelings and dealings” that go on behind the scenes of our own Smart TV’s.
For example - this Mashable article, or this Atlantic article - tell a story about all the reasons why smart TVs are so cheap.
They’re collecting your data, showing you ads, and selling your data.
Free Telly is upfront about it - and they give you the TV for free. Telly is founded by Ilya Pozin, the cofounder of Pluto TV.
Now, all smart TVs come with ads. But you still pay for the TV. All of that changes today. During the signup process we ask questions about you and your household to optimize your ad experience. Brands in turn, pay for the non-intrusive ad on the Smart Screen. That’s how you get Telly free. Plain and simple. It's time you got cut in on the deal. (source)
Here’s what it looks like.
It’s a 55 inch TV, soundbar, and second screen - all in one. The second screen is where the ads show up (the Kia Logo).
The TV also includes a camera, microphone, and Xbox Kinect-style interactive elements.
You can use it for video calling, interactive games, fitness, and more!
Go check it out at the link, and sign up if you’re interested. They’re giving away 500,000 of them - which may increase your chances. The survey is veryyyy longggg - and you have to download an app too!
Go check it out.
🐔Bougie Chickens
Once in a while, I’m simply amazed to see what sort of “time-saving” products hit the market.
Some of ‘em make it (like Keurig) - a lot of ‘em (like Juicero) don’t.
There’s a new startup called Coop that purports to be the first “smart Chicken Coop” for any backyard.
What sort of amazing features does this chicken coop offer?
cameras on the inside + out so you can monitor your chickens
AI that will open/close the coop door + send alerts at night (oh look there’s a possum!)
SOS mode to flash lights + alarms when predators are spotted. (no need to grab the strap)
sturdy metal bars, easy-to-reach cleaning tray . . . other convenient features.
It looks pretty cool - but here’s where I get Juicero vibes.
THE PRICE.
It costs 2,000 ($1995 if you’re early, apparently $2495 in the future) dollars for this chicken coop, plus $19 a month (this includes the AI app, trays, and customer support).
How many consumers are willing to spend 2K on a chicken coop like this? Who is their target market?
I really want to like this product - but I need some sort of Depositioning Clickfunnels “value-stack” style landing page to convince me why it’s worth $2,000.
I could buy a Coop off Amazon for around $600, a programmable door for $180, and two Wyze smart cameras ($80 plus the cost of two solar panels) and kinda do the same thing for around half the price - or less.
For the Coop owner who wants maximum convenience, there are services available for someone to come out and clean your coop / take care of the chickens.
I’m curious to see how Coop does - and if it will spawn more affordable competitors.
Go check out Coop at the link!
🐙The Land of Random
Random sights and sounds from the internet for your enjoyment.
Friyay Fuel
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Check out Your Keyboard Heatmap
Some of our keys are shiny - because we use them so much. Check out this fun heatmap tool - just type, and watch your heatmap show up.
The MSI Egg Hunt
Actually a really fun little browser game. Definitely worth a play or two . . . more brands should do fun stuff like this.
Play some Voxel Games
Ooooh - Another Voxel engine. Minetest is a open source voxel engine - you can play games, mod games, make games, and more!
Fairbuds XL
Yooooo the company that made the repairable Fairphone has made repairable headphones. That’s pretty cool! They look pretty sick.
What is a shoe?
An interesting dive into some of the cool stuff Nike is doing with shoes.
PixPaint
Draw anything, and watch it turn into a really cool looping pattern.
Cache Monet
A really wild Gif Juxtaposition site. Really cool site - very trippy. The more you click, the crazier it gets.
🎶TikToks You Can’t Miss
Nice Silo guerilla marketing . . . for now
I really need to try something like this in Stable Diffusion
The question is - When will TF 2 cease to exist?
🤖AI AHHHHHHHHHHH
Photoshop Product Admins are taking furious notes
Observation suggests that people are switching to using ChatGPT to write things for them with almost indecent haste. Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. Way more than admit it. Within a year the median piece of writing could be by AI. - Paul Grahm (source)
Hahahaha ChatGPT literally rickrolled this reddit user
Ooooh a reference website of different art styles to use with AI tools
That’s all for this week. See you next time!
I am constantly learning something New from you! Thanks:)
LThompson