The wait is almost over!

Okay, chances are that if you’ve found this blog you’re either wondering what a PVC instrument is, how to build one, or you just came from this video. Chances are that if you have been waiting for me to make new videos, you haven’t been waiting very long.

… Which, I suppose, works out in my favour since you probably don’t know when I last uploaded a main channel video. By the way, I also vlogged every day in January, which you can check out by scrolling through this very blog! Or you can head over to my channel and check out the weekly playlists I have set up there. I can’t guarantee they’ll be particularly interesting, but, um, yeah.

It has taken surprisingly long to get around to my main point.

main point: Soon I will be getting back into a more or less regular schedule of video production! (#yayfinally)

This year I will be producing videos faster and with greater production value than ever before! Late last year I updated my camera and video editing software, and since I posted my last video, I have upgraded my:

• microphones (I have two much better ones now)
• Surface pickup microphone (for some really neat stuff)
• sound card (I love it)
• Recording/mixing/production software (I can now make some serious acoustic AND digital music! Sweet!)
•  laptop (so I don’t need to carry my 60lb computer + peripherals around)
• Instrumental upgrades (which you will see in future videos)

All of this combined means that I can now just make the videos I want to make, which I have wanted to make for what seems like an eternity now, that they will be better than ever, and more frequent than ever before! So stay tuned!

I actually got to test out most of this new gear today on a rare field recording excursion, and it worked beautifully. One thing I need to remember to make, though, is something to hold it all. My microphones in particular come in a case that is rather large and mostly air. So you can expect to see me making some kind of field case-type apparatus to hold my laptop, sound card, microphones and cables more efficiently. If I can accomplish that, there is no stopping me!

In the meantime though, I am still very much a full-time student, and it is still very much prior to final exams. After that, expect awesomeness. Hang in there! No wait, I’m the one doing that. You DFTBA. Yeah.

Stay tuned!

Daily vlog – Week 5

January 29-31

Well, kind of.

Here is the final batch of daily vlogs. It was an interesting experiment, and I learned a fair bit about lazy and not-so-lazy vlogging. Basically that I am no good at either, and I should probably stick to music-centric videos.

If I wasn’t busy being a student, and if I had a more portable camera, and if I was generally better at talking at cameras, and if I was doing more that surrounds my goals relating to YouTube and my planned future productions, I think I could pull off a fairly decent daily vlog.

Since I am/have none of those things I just said, the vlog suffered, and it got to the point at which I could not go on vlogging.

So! Main point, I will continue to work on being a student for now, and I’ll probably post some updates as to the whole hardware/software production schedule situation, and at the first opportunity, I will align all necessary planets and start working on new (and awesome) productions and projects. Sound like a plan? I think so.

You will see me… Whenever you see me!

Daily vlog – Week 4

January 22-28, 2012

Alright, instead of trying to write a post about every video I made for the remainder of January, here is a link to the playlist for week 4.

It starts with the longest vlog of the month, and ends with the sharp decline in vlog quality as a result of lacking time and energy to keep up the pace of daily vlogging.

Only one more post, and January will be over. For the record though, I am not giving up on vlogging entirely (although by some measures I probably should). I will vlog more as soon as I start getting more time and more interesting and exciting things start happening. Which should be soon. Hopefully.

Exciting things essentially equate to me getting new equipment and being able to actually record and mix things in a way in which I actually have more creative control and will likely cause things to sound generally more awesome, yadda yadda…

You will see me next week!

Sick, tired, frustrated (Day 21)

January 21, 2012
You may notice I’m a little behind on these… I’ll be posting all day though, and hopefully the January daily vlog experiment will be over soon. When it is, you can expect a full playlist to see the rapid rise and fall of my vlogging capabilities…

Not much happened; something you may find to be a recurring theme, here… Stay tuned!

You will see me tomorrow! By which I mean January 22.

Very late, very short vlog, lost property [part 2] (Day 20)

January 20, 2012

I find that similar to being exhausted from trekking through freezing temperatures having an affect on how effectively I communicate, so too does not sleeping the day after doing so. So again, I apologize to any and all people I spoke with today; it is rather unfortunate that I always seem to make a first and second impression under these circumstances. So, when I say I’m an awkward person, it really means that I understand that a combination of my brain chemistry and the environment cause me to be an awkward person sometimes.

Anyway…

I found my pen! On the sidewalk! It was a completely freak chance, considering that I probably walked right over it at least six times between when I lost it and when it was found. I was just fortunate to happen to be leaving the house when the sun was actually up, and that it hadn’t snowed! So that was fortunate! I’m really not sure whether I would have been any less satisfied had I just bought another one. I don’t really get the way people imbue things with meaning and significance. I mean, I wouldn’t really be distraught if my phone died, even though I have had it for years. That’s mainly because I’m looking at a new phone, whenever I have some time to get one, but the fact that my old one had been with me for years didn’t allow it to imprint any attachment. And yet a novel pen designed like a balisong kind of did. Strange.

You will see me tomorrow!

Long day, adventure! Allergies, being awkward (Day 19)

January 19, 2012

Today was a very, very, very long day. I had an appointment with a naturopath, which I had scheduled long before I knew how cold it was going to be this week, and which required me to walk for an hour each way to get to.

The trip out was fairly interesting, since it involved getting lost, passing two hospitals and a medical centre and hoping that I wouldn’t have to get treated for frostbite in one of them on my way back. Google maps kind of failed me a bit on this one, but in the end I got there. Although sidewalks are not universal, tracks in the snow and paths through tall grass pretty much are.

The appointment itself wasn’t what I expected. First, getting there panting and freezing, thinking I was going to be late, I soon discovered that this wasn’t the kind of place that kept a strict schedule, and I found myself waiting for half an hour, and starting to worry that I wouldn’t make the hour-long trek back to my first class.

Now, something you should know about naturopathic medicine is that it isn’t considered medicine in my province, but practitioners continue to practice it nonetheless. As far as the effectiveness and accuracy of it, I can’t really make a judgement. It is considered by some, however, to be less in the field of medicine and more in that of fortune telling and witchcraft. But I won’t make a judgement.

The appointment, which had been scheduled for half an hour but only lasted fifteen minutes (I’m guessing they felt they were being sensitive to my schedule) possibly due to the fact that it was half an hour late, didn’t really go as I had expected. I was there for allergy testing, hoping to get a broad-spectrum analysis of immune reactivity, you know, or something along those lines. Instead, he whips out the naturopath’s favourite toy, the galvanometer (or vega testing apparatus if you want to be specific). This device is basically used to test for allergies individually on the principle that they disrupt your electric field or something…

I won’t pass judgment on the technique or its accuracy, but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I let them take my money… But then I realized that it had identified coffee as one of my allergies. And that skewed my judgement just a little. I survive on coffee. Also the fact that it had identified wheat, rice, and corn as allergies, leaving me with a great hole in that grains portion of my diet…

So, not good news. With that, I began the trudge back to class.

The way back went significantly smoother… I took a shortcut through a park and enjoyed the view.

After that was the remaining eight hours of classes, which had me in a decreasingly conscious and personable state. It was a long day.

In case you’re interested in a better definition of what an introvert is than the one I gave you in the video, here’s the condensed version:

Humans have two primary pathways through which most sensory information and thought is processed. Extroverts, which comprise 75% of the human population, use the short pathway, which quickly processes stimuli and allows a slightly “digested” thought to shoot back out very quickly, and along with it a shot of dopamine, which makes them want to do things like that (conversing, performing, arguing) more. This pathway is connected to the sympathetic nervous system, which means extroverts prefer to be in a “revved up” state.

Introverts, on the other hand, comprising the remaining 25% use the longer, slower neural pathway primarily, which takes stimuli and processes it complexly, allowing it to be stored in long-term memory, for later use. So as opposed to an extrovert who gets a kick out of having a conversation about something of interest to them, an introvert would prefer listening to that conversation, and coming up with a great idea at some later point that synthesizes that information. As you can probably guess, introverts rely on the parasympathetic “cool down” nervous system, meaning that they prefer to be in a calm, relaxed state, and feel uncomfortable in stressful, overstimulating environments.

The main difference between introverts and extroverts is how they think. Extroverts can’t think as easily if they don’t “bounce things off” of other people, and initiate an exchange of information. Introverts, on the other hand, spend a long time gathering information, process it internally, and primarily communicate the finished product of this process. This is where a lot of miscommunications arise, and I could get into how society looks at introverts, but I won’t.

Long video, long post. I am still behind on these.

You will see me tomorrow!

Missed bus, Lost property [part 1] more everything (Day 18)

January 18, 2012

I’m already starting to get behind on these vlogs! Argh! That, in case you were wondering, was not the intention when I decided to start in on this whole vlog thing. So, the quality may suffer, I may suffer, but I will vlog every day this year, rain or shine, time or not, whatever!

Today I lost my favourite pen on the bus. This represents a disturbing trend of things falling out of my pocket. It’s probably me and not my pockets that contribute to this trend, but either way I would rather not lose things, valuable or not.

Hopefully I will have the luxury of leaving “survival mode” and the vlog will start being more interesting soon!

You will see me tomorrow!

HD, still cold out, drums, sh*t people say (Day 17)

January 17, 2012

First off, I really didn’t intend to shoehorn myself into that “Sh*t  ___  say” meme, but it just kind of fit for this one.

I think there may have been just a little compensation going on for the recently short videos… I think I’m slowly, marginally getting better at this whole vlogging thing. Not by much. And apparently not on the brevity side of things.

It is true that my vlog camera is on vacation in Jamaica right now. I really do wish that I could have joined it, but it has the luxury of not being a university student, and I–having the parallel processing capacity to read and comprehend language–need to stay here, read, and be studious.

I might announce this whole weird little venture on my main channel soon. This is the part where I intimate my insecurities to make it seem as though I am building a relationship with my audience. Which I am. Right? Since the recent influx of 500+ subscribers, I’ve been really torn as to what I can and can’t upload publicly. On the one hand, I really want to thank all of you for subscribing, implore you to remain subscribed and assure you that new videos are on the way. On the other hand, speaking to a broader audience, I am particularly concerned about the entertainment value and general production quality of anything I now publish, meaning that a video in which I just talk (which historically has represented neither entertainment value nor production quality) is one that may endanger segments of my new subscriber base.

Did that make sense? Basically, I want to communicate with everyone without running the risk of them fleeing as a response.

From a broader perspective, I am the sole director of my content, and I shouldn’t let my fears, perceptions of pressures or even pressures themselves stop me from producing. However, I am understandably paranoid about losing people as a result of a stupid action. How like life, no?

Wow, that took an interesting turn…

As for the rest, it is basically all said in the vlog. I am astounded that something that is mass-produced can take six whole months to get to a consumer after they have paid for it, and I take issue when people speak (unknowingly) with bad grammar while trying to pontificate.

You will see me tomorrow! In HD!

IT’S COLD (Day 16)

January 16, 2012

Winter was holding off in Calgary, but when it hit, it hit hard. -30 degrees is cold regardless of where you are! Waiting for a bus becomes a dangerous endeavour. Being late for a bus is practically a guarantee of frostbite on any exposed skin. And yet, being late for a class is inexcusable; we are supposedly tough, weather-hardened Canadians for whom weather is no excuse! Personally, when it is this cold, I consider it hazardous weather. Nonetheless, you do feel some sort of obligation to maintain the status quo, regardless of whether it is based in myth.

… I wish I had the foresight of taking coffee with me…

I just realized I can totally do that demonstration in which boiling water evaporates immediately upon contact with -30 degree air… Well at least there’s that!

You will see me tomorrow!

Geology, Reading, Getting a cold (Day 15)

January 15, 2012

…You know you’re a geologist. I think there are 13 one-liners in this one.

I find it amazingly difficult to get back into the swing of reading for over four hours a day. It’s  a little frustrating that regardless of how interesting a book is, and how immediately I need to have it read, I can’t seem to manage to remain either focused on it or conscious for any great amount of time.

Stranger than the fact that a geology textbook would talk about the composition and formation of solar systems is the really interesting way in which it was put forth; it was almost as though in describing the way in which solar systems and stars are basically continually in a state of renewal–us being the freak outcome of that process–that there was almost some kind of determinist undertone, suggesting that life was not only an inevitability, but the goal of the whole thing. Very weird stuff. And very interesting!

I mean, I’m pretty sure I knew this already, but it is nonetheless interesting that the X-rays that emanate from the core of the sun take about a million years to reach the surface because they are being bounced off the mass of particles that compose the outer layers of the sun, at which point they have become visible light which takes only eight minutes to reach us, but it is still crazy. That, and the fact that seven million (that’s 7,000,000) tonnes of hydrogen is being converted into helium in the sun EVERY SECOND, and this is the process on which the development and continuation of life on Earth has relied as long as it has existed!!!!1one!

…So I wish I could consume that kind of information at a higher rate without being distracted by the pre-digested simple sugars that make up the i

n.322222222222222222222222222222 .0000000 <— Kipper (the cat) says “hi.”

Anyway, the simple sugars that make up the content on the internet. I’ve been thinking about the brainfood guide analogy quite a bit recently…

You will see me tomorrow!