#18, Last Night

Sea Birds, Princeton-By-The-Sea, California, November ‘07, artistic view.

Initially my plan was to keep this blog around my YouTube related events and activities. However, now I think that adding other issues may make it a bit more interesting. Has anybody even read it once up to this moment? I have no counter, and thus, no way of knowing if anybody even looks at those blogs. With time this will become more obvious, but now let us just type something and hope that some passers - by are going to stop at least for a second or two. Google search is showing at least some of those blogs, noticed that yesterday for the very first time.
Finished reading Jimmy Webb's Tunesmith - Inside the Art of Songwriting. Sounds like at least some parts of this book were written on the island of Kauai, not far from were I shot my Oahu videos. Do not read much into it. There is one thing that I found interesting in this book related to new songs or even albums that well known groups are about to release. Usually those groups do not say much details about songs and keep their fans guessing. This is clever and applies equally well to videos, even YouTube videos.
Watched Celine Dion DVD A new day ... last night. It's pretty good and comes from Las Vegas, of course. The show making and behind scenes on a second DVD are even better. Will no doubt watch it few more times. Do you listen to CDs on Audacity? Or any other good audio software? It gives you a bit more than just listening to songs on your iPod or just CD player. Try it.
It is time to expand this blog or maybe even create a separate web site with a blog. In order to refresh my somewhat rusty HTML memories, I bought Creating Web Pages for DUMMIES, 8 ed, by B.E. Smith, and A. Bebak. Used to be quite fluent with HTML in the past, but not much involved recently. Time to refresh my memory.
A JOBY flexible tripod arrived from eBay, actually from Hong Kong, but from somebody selling on eBay. In several situations I was not able to move a big tripod into place during video shooting, with that small one I may be able to fill that gap. If only days were longer...

#17, iMac is Dying

Ukulele - Give Me The One Elvis Played - It's Now Or Never..., Honolulu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

Yes, it is true. My 24 inch iMac is really dying. Bought brand new, worked well with no issues for about seven months, then things started to go South. As far as I know, problems are related to overheating, since it is very sensitive to room temperature, the cooler the better. The screen displays short horizontal lines and then the message tells you to reboot. When you reboot, in any of the several ways as suggested in the Apple manual, the screen looks identical, no help. Resetting SMC, again according to the same manual, used to bring it to life for several hours or several days, and then the same lines. Now resetting no longer helps. Need to figure out how to get all data of the hard drive. When those problems started, the internal fan had to be on all the time to keep it alive. Obviously it made using the internal iSight camera and microphone impossible because of the fan noise. Without the fan, the microphone would record the hard drive noises, this was also annoying after a while. I believe many other people on YouTube are quite familiar with that annoying sound destroying videos.
My previous, large desktop Mac, developed identical problems after about a year of use. iPod lasted less than a year, as well.
Paid over $2000 for the iMac, lasted only seven months, it sounds rather expensive. Amazing that PCs I use quite often never have the same problem, and cost less than half! I guess the more expensive, the worse it gets!

#16, How Does This Work

This blog entry had to be removed, since the widget in it, that was found on the web, actually never worked. Will try to place something else in this empty spot. What would you like to see? But please, keep it clean! And do not tell me that the empty space is kind of best you have ever seen on those pages.

Let us call this #16, How Does This Work.
Copyright © 2007 by Vatsek. All Rights Reserved.

#15, Thank You My Subscribers

Can You Guess What This Is?, California, August ‘07, artistic view.

Thanks a lot.
If you are on the list below you are OK, if not, your taxes are going to go up by 50% next year!
So hurry up.

Vatsek

My Subscribers (12/07/07)

crabapplestudio danbergam joey0028 FrustratedSinger aussieguitarprincess
subscribingking jimmyABC TheRonEffect rontv MysteryFatKid
ArdieVerde NewYorkGardener johnnysmooth austinplace EdwensClassics
Jonat1414 MovieMan2011 aussieNickuss pagekv lockergnome

MarkTimothy tripleplay1111 burntonion ikbeninbalans01 MindlessCerebral
valpard yadabub IntrovertGuy la1880 VideoDrives
F1ameAlchemist fortini1977 EmCSpiteri TheMangaFanNews callalily1
maestroya skyzze VideoPostcards SquaddleJack bubblegundotcom

metacognition dmccoig Sqid101 AmericanFabricator CRNFAllyKat
katalina2007 pinklantana Bugees iwashere eligarf
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lietzen thechopinfan wintermood tvtedd tampon
iThinkVideos KnockaroundsTV ChangeDaChannel Bottlesofmary OaklynTV
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BOBIzizou87 OakgroveProductions deaksteronline redubchannel suziblutube
Inyso Yordii FGAlxPx HouseGadgetCreator Pianoloverok
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empiredesign mrbean1970 civileso atefooterz butterdog710

par7133 jakoch stefanomhanna andrewgrummanJC bmastermind23
DCLugi Dannyromanus lauzon1999 llanbradach MCYMUSIC
Implicitart NobelWinner jokipeti

#14, First 100

We Are Sailing, San Francisco Marina, San Francisco, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

Well, only a day after saying that I am short of a 100 subscriber goal, there it is! We have passed that small landmark point. It actually took quite a bit of time to get there, over seven months. And over 5000 channel views, and over 10000 video views. Are things going to move much faster from now on? The mood on YouTube is changing, no doubt about that, is it getting better? Not necessarily, I do not think so. It is more mature, more sophisticated, less risky, basically it is harder to get views and subscribers. If all of those produce better quality videos, so be it.
Wrote a small piece of flute music last night, will write more tonight. Started to make small arrangements for the next video with that music.
Have you already heard about The Reef from Hawaii? Hopefully it becomes more successful than the inter-island ferry!

#13, Nice Round Number, I Suppose

One Day I Am Gonna Bite You, San Francisco, California, August ‘07, artistic view.

Released Beach Birds yesterday. This has been around for a while since was initially planned as a collaboration video. However, two days ago a quick decision was made to go ahead with a standard music, such that I could release it now. Some other video in the future is likely to go back to the collaboration attempt. Spent about two or three afternoons on US1, at the Pacific Coast, getting plenty of footage. After initial edits, there were over seven minutes of rather good video, but it was reduced to three minutes because of available music. Trying to write a seven minute piece of music versus a three minute piece is a rather major time involvement. Used some of the original sounds from the scenes, if they blended well with the composed music. There are only ten instruments used here, a smaller orchestra. Again a smaller, because adding several more instruments would require spending several more days on orchestration. I believe this is the very first time that a flute was used in my video music, and it sounds great! So far I was more inclined toward a clarinet but the flute may have an edge in some cases. Just in case, used both in the video music. No doubt, the next video is going to use even more flute.
Reached a milestone of some sort on YouTube, 10000 views of my videos. It is not a high number, do not get me wrong, after seven months only 10000 views. Still short of that tiny 100 subscriber goal, at least for a while. Never imagined how slow things can be on YouTube! Never before starting to make videos this would cross my mind! It is vlogging or bust, I will take the second.
Have you noticed that the number of people celebrating milestones on YouTube is down quite a bit? People used to celebrate much more, now less, my guess it got old.
Views after Thanksgiving are down, roughly by half. That is a very major slowdown, hopefully the trend reverses in January ’08.
Started to use Photoshop to add some artistry to the videos, you see it in the final shot with the video title, this trend is likely to continue since it brings something new.
Discovered that Canon’s advertised HDV 1920x1080i pixel format is more like 1440x1080!
This causes problems when you try to process frames in Photoshop, for example.
The horizontal pixels are stretched by a factor of 1.333, and a clever advertising gimmick is used to push cameras into videomakers hands! It takes a while to figure this one out, especially that you would not expect this to be happening in the first place. Is Sony doing the same? Anybody knows?
YouTube partner’s program seems to be going down the drain, as it should, since it was the worst thing that ever happened to YouTube!

#12, Account Cleanup

This subject is no longer relevant, therefore, the blog entry is deleted.

YouTube videos: youtube.com/Vatsek .
On twitter: twitter.com/Vatsek .
Flickr photos: flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/ .

#11, Late Night Edits

Street Painter, Pier 39, San Francisco, California, August '07, artistic view.

Sitting late at night editing another video. Actually I am trying to make Beach Birds shorter and more attractive, livelier, and a bit faster. This spells shorter music piece will be needed, always a good sign.
Writing more music for a future video, which has not yet been decided. Usually I do the opposite, shoot the video first and then try to write music to it. Writing to something you have not seen yet, is sometimes challenging, but the video can be released much faster after it is shot. There are pluses and minuses to both approaches.
Things are kind of slow on YouTube after Thanksgiving, people are probably still digesting their turkeys and not watching videos!

#10, Birds is Released

Pacific Coast Sunset, California, November '07, artistic view.

This video is about birds at the Pacific Coast. It was shot several days ago South of San Francisco. I have no music for it and decided to leave all natural sounds in place, no special FX effects either. Looks quite pretty, I must add. Just birds looking for food, and sometimes people, in perfect harmony.