Dear Reader,

Another Friday. Another day. Another weekend. And of course, another newsletter. I hope you are okay.

Here are the highlights for this week's newsletter:

1. How to design Effortlessly Face-Centred Cubic lattices
2. Foray into Animated Videos: An Example case.
3. Behind the Scenes at CM Videos: A survey about story lines.
4. Quote for the Week: Carl Neuport and Shallow Work

How to Design effortlessly an FCC lattice.

I have a lot of experience with designing and RVE modelling of lattice structures. It has not always been but since I started the YouTube channel and got a request to make a video on this, I have taken greatly to Lattices and have a large playlist on my channel (www.youtube.com/@michaelokereke) that has different videos about lattice structures and composites. I published a video this week about Face-centred cubic lattices. Below is the video from this week:

The thrust of the video is on how effortless designing FCC lattices (specifically) and lattices (in general) can be. To create such lattice structures/composites, here are my 'effortless' steps to take:

1. Create trusses: It all begins with creating cylindrical trusses oriented at 45 degrees to one another.
2. Trim to desired dimension: Then next action is to trim off the edges of the truss so that you can get to the dimension of the desired RVE
3. Assemble trusses: Once you have the one arm of the truss, then progressively assemble till you are able to form the six sides of a cubic unit cell of the stent.
4. Use Unit cell to create RVEs: Often, you might be interested in getting a larger RVE and so the unit cell created from step 3 above is progressively assembled end-to-end (in duplicates) to creat 2x2 or 3x3 RVEs.

It can be truly EFFORTLESS and please do let me know if you find the above approach as effortless as I suggested.

Foray into Animated Videos: An Example Case

One of the key goals I have for making videos this year is to incorporate a good story telling to underpin the content of my videos. I have explored some other options but this week, I made a foray into creating animated videos to support this story telling endeavour.

In that regard, using the YouTube video shown above, I decided to include an animated story about Megan and her boss Maxwell who are looking to create 3D printed prototype based on Face-centred cubic lattice arrangement. The aim of the video is to introduce a practical scenerio where effortless design of FCC lattice structures will be invaluable. In future, I might be able to share how I made the animations. Let me know if you want such behind the scenes information.

If you have not seen it, below is my first attempt at animating a sequence of cartoon images to help tell a story that support the education video about FCC structures. I have reposted it here for your attention and if you would want to give me any feedback about it, I will be happy to it.

Behind the scenes at CM Videos: A Survey about Story lines

I know I keep going on about the vision of incorporating stories with my educational videos. As I wondered about this more this week, I had to ask myself if this is really what you my CMVideos audience even want. It is one thing to think it but does the audience really resonate with the idea.

This is particularly important as I do not see a lot of content creators in my niche of FEA with ABAQUS using stories to present their content. I know that story telling is important because truly successful science-based channels like Veritasium (www.youtube.com/@veritasium) do this very well.

Therefore, I did a Community Post survey on my YouTube channel asking my audience precisely what they think about it. Below is the current state of response:.

In summary, out of the 14 persons who voted, 57% (about 8 of them) seem to be saying that: Story telling in my Video tutorials makes the videos interesting. Second in the group say that finding a good balance between having it and not having it should be the goal. In fact, no one (0%) thinks that such stories is a bit of distraction to the content delivery.

The feedback I am taking from this is that I should keep going and get good at incorporating stories with my vides as this will make videos interesting but then ensure I do not overdo it. Thank you to everyone who voted. I appreciate that immensely.

Quote of the Week: Cal Newport and Shallow Work

I have been reading Cal Newport's book titled Deep Work which has a thesis of helping you stay focussed and work deeply in a highly distracted world. In one of the strategies in the book about deep work in face of distractions, Cal spoke of us draining the shallows. This is about you abandoning or reducing those sort of activities that are shallow. The quote above is Cal's definition of what a shallow work is, for example: (a) checking email (b) scheduling conference call (c) watching movies on Netflix (d) attending a meeting to discuss curent status of project and agree on next steps, etc.

For you, draining the shallows is important in order to succeed in whatever deep work you want to do. It is about prioritizing those things that you truly alone can do and are of much value in the world. For example, writing a thesis, or compiling a technical project report or speaking at a conference. These things are special because they draw on your expertise and so need to be prioritized.

I just wanted to share that as it was truly rewarding reading Cal's thought about this issue.

Thank you again for reading so far and if you enjoyed this newsletter, then let others know about it. I wish you a wonderful weekend and we will catch up again next week.

If any of the things shared above struck a cord with you, then let me know and I will be happy for the conversation.

Sampai jumpa (Bye bye in Indonesian).