Vatsek

Do We Like Video Blogs?, #75

2011-04-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Old Pacific Bell Phone, Sunnyvale, California, March '11.

So far we added a single instrumental tune written by W Koscielniak in 2011 called Hole At The Sun to our collection. The whole preview of our tunes is available on iTunes and in several other places. Next one is likely to appear there in a short time.

Beyond that, we have started video blogs or vlogs, if you like, on YouTube. As of today, we have produced twelve vlogs and other vlogs our likely. As far as the format goes, this is still an open decision; we are experimenting with different things, different cameras, and different ways of recording. The subject is fairly open and usually decided, at least partially, ahead of time. Al details are worked out during an actual shooting. We always get some exercise as well. In order of release, the videos are, as follows:

1. In the Park

2. The Dirty Car

3. Before Dawn

4. Bark, Bark, Bark

5. Alviso Morning

6. Pineapple Walk

7. Day iPad 2 Was Out

8. New Time

9. Sunny V

10. Rain & Sun

11. Vloggy Day

12. Camera Man

iTunes: http://bit.ly/9uX8yu .

YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/Vatsek .

Flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/ . Check our favorites.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Waclaw-Koscielniak/100001592224566 .

Our Own Music, #74

2010-12-21T19:23:00.000-08:00

ECHO IN BLUE, cover art, Santa Clara, CA, October '10.

This is a list of titles of our instrumental tunes written by W Koscielniak in 2010. If you like any of them, please leave a comment.

1. Double Frolic, Enjoyable, fun music, full of sunshine and delight, along with plenty of warm sand and surf.

2. Times Five, A very warm song with plenty of sunshine in it for easy listening.

3. Pigeon Point, This new instrumental music has been written around a Pigeon Point lighthouse in Northern California. We hope you find it interesting and enjoy it. Listen to it as often as you want to.

4. Hopper’s Hands, An instrumental tune with a serious message behind it.

5. Waiting For, Another warm song for all occasions, for all your iPods, iPads, cell phones, and numerous other portable devices. Enjoy.

6. OK Dream, A very upbeat song with plenty of dreams in it.

7. Calm & Still, Easy to listen, this instrumental piece will put you in a very good mood.

8. Frog’s Day In, A very warm song, cheerful, and optimistic, you may be playing it over and over again. At least that what we hope so.

9. Mt. Hamilton, This song will put you in a good mood no matter where you are. Try it.

10. Echo In Blue, A very warm song, for all evenings and nights and for your iPods, iPads and cell phones. Enjoy.

iTunes: http://bit.ly/9uX8yu .

YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/Vatsek .

Flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/ .

Facebook (new): http://www.facebook.com/people/Waclaw-Koscielniak/100001592224566 .

Oahu To Maui By Hawaii Superferry, #73

2009-01-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

Early Afternoon In Kahului, Maui, Hawaii, October '08, artistic view, click to enlarge.

Aloha.
A Hawaii Superferry has been in operation for a while after many previous delays. Now things are pretty smooth, and you can enjoy trips between Oahu and Maui several times per week. It is always a good idea to reserve seats ahead of time. From Honolulu to Kahului, the departure time was around 6:00am the day we chose to travel to Maui. This means waking up in your hotel around 3:30am in the morning, after going to bed around 1:00am, you see why buying tickets ahead of time is a good idea. Whether to take your car with you is a decision you have to make, we will give you some hints. For about $10/day you can leave your car at the Pier, and not to worry about it. The downside is that now you have no car to drive in Maui and have to rent it, again preferably ahead of time. Inside the Superferry, there was plenty of room to seat the day we traveled; only about half of seats were occupied. Be prepared for a very cold inside, so a thick jacket is mandatory. The low temperature is supposed to keep people away from getting seasick. You are going to read a lot about that with plenty of remedies how to deal with it. I could count no more than four people being affected by it. It is a very unpleasant feeling, especially bad if you happened to have a good breakfast, since now the breakfast tends to come out! Our advice to deal with that problem, is to simply skip the morning breakfast and have only few sips of water. There is plenty of food to buy on the Superferry, this may not be the best of ideas, and it is up to you to decide. The Pacific Ocean between islands can be very rough, so the seasickness is one of the possible outcomes, another one is that the cars on the Superferry can move and get damaged. The are reports of this indeed happening. We told you to leave your car at the Pier, didn’t we? The Superfurry does not travel very fast, we are talking over three hour travel time, something closer to two hours would be more tolerable. The rough Pacific Ocean does not allow for that, at least for now. Apparently, a new model is being built and tested, hopefully a faster one.
If you forgot about something thick to wear, you will be coughing after the trip, but that is the only downside we can think of. During the trip, it is mostly water outside the windows, so watch a movie or two played on many big screens. If you happen to sit closer to windows, need to figure out which one, you can watch both Molokai and Maui provided you travel during the day, at night only some island lights are visible.
When you arrive, you are going to be hit with 80+F temperature, a very nice surprise after sitting inside in cold for over three hours.

In summary: (1) skip morning breakfast, or don’t eat much about four hours before the departure time in the afternoon or evening, (2) leave your car at the Pier, (3) sit in the center of the large room toward its back, (4) skip all food during the travel, (5) definitely have something warm with you.
With those points in mind, you can enjoy two beautiful Hawaiian Islands, and in the near future additional islands as well. Only pleasant things remain in our memories.
Mahalo everyone.

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/Vatsek .
YouTube videos: youtube.com/Vatsek .
Flickr photos: flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/ .

Island Car Tips To Remember, #72

2008-12-18T19:02:00.000-08:00

Always Photogenic, Lanikai Beach, Kailua, Hawaii, October '08, artistic view, click to enlarge.

Aloha.
Driving by car is perhaps the best way to get around Hawaiian Islands. Although there are many bus tours that can take you almost everywhere, we prefer our own way of transportation. No need to wait for the bus, no need to check time the bus leaves, no need to have interest in all places the bus stops at, etc. However, if you like to be always in a group of 30-40 people, feel safer that way, like to perhaps save some money, then the bus tour approach may be right for you. A motorcycle is also good, a bicycle less so because of the heavy traffic, especially in Honolulu. In summer months, everything inside the car is going to get very hot, so make sure you do not leave kids, any animals, or even food inside.
Parking around Honolulu can be a problem, streets are narrow, and some malls only have a very limited number of parking spaces available. However, the biggest problems are with parking in your own hotel, and if you happen to rent a large car, you are going to spend lots of time in the parking garage under the hotel, driving backward and forward, trying to park and avoiding hitting other cars. The worst situation happens when you come back from the beach around 9 or 10pm on weekend, because inevitably near all spaces will already be taken, and the one remaining for you is in the dark corner, at 45 degree angle, between two cement columns, and two big cars, one of them parked half-legally, almost blocking your access. Imagine it is very hot underground, and there is no good ventilation, you are sweating profusely trying to figure out what to do. Several towing and “Don’t Park Here” reminders on walls, for $20/day. Moreover, the squeaky sound of tires is more than you can handle!
Outside of hotels, and away from Honolulu, things are usually problem free. If there are special events, attended by many people, then obviously you need to consider that. Therefore, our advice to you would be to think twice about renting a large car, a rental place agent will always try to upgrade your reservation to a larger car, but this may mean problems down the road. Hope you learned something new from this blog. In a smaller car, you are free as a bird!
Mahalo everyone.

YouTube videos: youtube.com/Vatsek .
Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/Vatsek .
Flickr photos: flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/ .

Good Ukulele Music, #71

2008-12-17T07:17:00.000-08:00

Who’s Gonna Climb This Tree With Me?, East Oahu, Hawaii, October '08, artistic view, click to enlarge.

Aloha.
While spending time in Hawaii, you are inevitably going to be exposed to good music, and most likely, it is going to be ukulele music. A sound of the ukulele just fits very nicely with the islands setting. That is why we started to look around for good ukulele music, ukulele playing training materials, ukulele making tips, and even ukulele shops, everything we can find on the web. Do not expect us to show up in our next video playing ukuleles and singing Hawaiian tunes sitting somewhere in Haleiwa! However, we are going to add, from time to time, good Hawaiian music to our videos. Actually, we already started that in the last three or four videos. Although that music is not Hawaii native, it sounds very good to our ears. Hope you appreciate that, and expect more to come in the near future.
In addition, please check ukulele on Wikipedia.org.
Mahalo everyone.

YouTube videos: youtube.com/Vatsek .
Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/Vatsek .
Flickr photos: flickr.com/photos/25951201@N07/ .

Interesting Places To Visit On Oahu, #70

2008-12-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

Let's Stop For A Moment, East Oahu, Hawaii, October '08, artistic view, click to enlarge.

Aloha.
There are many interesting places to visit on Oahu, which we already visited on several occasions. And as always, we tried to film what was happening when we stayed there. The following YouTube videos, produced in about a month, give you a flavor of what we liked: Sunny Shore Etude, The Coconut Man, Aquarium, Big Fish, Aquarium 2, Walking In Waimea Valley, Evening In Haleiwa, and Ala Moana Dreams. Relax, enjoy watching, and leave comments if you like some of them. And of course, look for some good deals on travel to Hawaii.
Mahalo everyone.

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

Kaena Point Welcomes You, #69

2008-11-10T19:01:00.000-08:00

Enjoy Kaena Point, North-West Oahu, Hawaii, October '08, artistic view, click to enlarge.

Aloha.
For all practical purposes, there are two different spots on Kaena Point worth visiting, both on north-west side of Oahu; however, you need to drive along different routes to get there. The first one is along the east coastline of Oahu on 93. As always, there are plenty of good beaches along that route and good places to stop and find something to eat. The moment a paved road ends, you are going to know you arrived at Kaena Point. If you are travelling from Waikiki or Honolulu, and this assumption is usually true, the second route is to drive up north up to Haleiwa, and then to turn left along the north coastline of Oahu and follow 930. Again, the moment a paved road ends, you know you arrived. Just described how to get to two different spots at Kaena Point. With a four-wheel drive, you can drive between those two spots, but definitely not in a rental front-wheel drive, the road is just too treacherous. Some say, that hiking is the only possibility. Please note that Google Earth map, version 4.3.7284.3916 (beta), is completely distorted near Kaena Point.

Kaena Point is a good place to be away from all traffic, traffic lights, people crowds, and other industrial noises. To relax, dream, swim, and stay on the beach, to the tune of ocean waves, Kaena Point is best. If you want to take a glider ride above Kaena Point, on the north side, a Dillingham Airfield airport is in close proximity, in Mokuleia. Just make sure, do not eat too much shortly before flying, some people have problems with keeping food in their stomachs, remember, warned you! Both sites are good for taking pictures if you enjoy beach and mountain scenes. On the west side, there are more opportunities to shoot videos, I believe I shot three or four already at different times, and the latest one is called Kaena Point. How did we come up with that title? If interested, you can watch it on YouTube. The north side is more barren, no restrooms, and no showers, so keep that in mind ahead of time and avoid being surprised. The sunsets in both places are always spectacular; you can get occasional five minute long rain sprinkles, the wind can be none to quite strong, no sign of surfers anywhere. There are many people with fishing rods trying to catch a fish.

On your way home, when you want to stop somewhere and get something to eat, remember the west side is much cheaper than the north side. Moreover, the food tastes better too. By now, it is probably already night, some time after the gorgeous sunset. Plenty of pictures taken, a long video shot, a beautiful suntan only to look quite red in the morning, and a radio playing good music; we are sipping fairly warm bottled water from Fiji bought at ABC Stores, and driving down south to our hotel in Waikiki.

In the parking garage at the hotel, we notice that a car is covered with a thick layer of dust. Hopefully tomorrow there is going to be some rain, and our car is going to glow again, no need to wash it. We are now in the elevator up to our floor. We all agree it was another gorgeous day at Kaena Point. By the way, in Hawaiian kaʻena means “the heat”.
Now let’s check if there are any cheap flights available next week…
Mahalo everyone.

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

North Shore Always Feels Good, #68

2008-10-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

So Cool, Oahu, Hawaii, October '08, artistic view, click to enlarge.

Aloha.
No matter how many times you stopped there, North Shore of Oahu always feels good, always delivers. This statement is 100% correct, not stretched even a bit. There is some magic about it. We are going to take a slower route, drive there from Waikiki, along the east coast of Oahu, stopping very often, and reaching North Shore in the early afternoon. Good time to leave for this all-day long trip is in the morning, shortly after breakfast. From Waikiki, there are several possible routes to the east side; we are taking today Like-Like highway. Once already on the east side, we turn up north and drive slowly along the coast stopping frequently to take pictures, swim for a while in the ocean, and stop for lunch. There are indeed many quite good places to swim. The water is always warm in early October, and there is plenty of sun as well. No strong winds, means there is little to complain about. Just realized, that we never shoot any video at those intermediate places, but only at our final destination for the day. This makes subsequent editing easier since all clips are on the same subject, and there are no discontinuities in the story line. However, adding clips from different places could make the videos more interesting to watch. Need to sit down next time, write a script, something we never do before shooting, and try that second approach.

The whole fish is for lunch, cannot remember the Hawaiian name of it, with vegetables, and fries, and iced tea. Tastes fine, but we had to wait about half hour longer because one of the cooks did not show up for work! Now, try to write that into the script ahead of time. After the lunch, we drive along the coast; passing many food stands along the road. The sun is shinning, the local rock radio station is playing good music, we are singing along, pictures look decent – actually upon a second look, we need to delete many of them because of fuzziness. One more stop, another twenty minutes of drive, and we are at the Sunset Beach of Oahu’s North Shore, our planned destination of the day. The weather could not be better, nice surf, not too crowdy. We are taking some beach pictures, and then start to shoot video. It will be called Shouldn’t Have Fallen Asleep At The Sunset Beach, simply because we fell asleep during filming and probably missed some good action. The YouTube traffic is slower now, and getting people to watch your videos became increasingly difficult to achieve. Aside the video, we also make good quality audio recordings, just in case the video audio cannot be used, and we have to substitute it with something else.

The evening comes, the sun is out, and people are slowly packing and leaving in their cars. This was an excellent day, almost stress free, with some good camera work, and with good-recorded audio. Now we are on our way to Haleiwa, then turning south to Honolulu and Waikiki. Later in the evening, after eating something bought at ABC Stores, we head for Waikiki Beachwalk. As always, plenty of people there, we mingle with them, trying to take good pictures at low light conditions. Some advanced skills are necessary; otherwise, nothing can be useable. At 11pm crowds are beginning to thin, shops are beginning to close, but not restaurants. We are going back to the hotel, a cold Steinlarger beer is waiting, taking a shower, and about midnight call it a day. Tomorrow we are going to go somewhere else, everything will be decided in the morning before the maid knocks on the door asking whether to replace sheets and towels. Of course!
Mahalo everyone.

Photo book: Michael Freeman, Pro Photographer's D-SLR Handbook, Lark Books, ISBN 978-1-60059-422-9. An excellent photo book to read.

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

First New Video From Hawaii, #67

2008-10-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

Local Kids At Windy Nuuanu Pali Lookout, Oahu, Hawaii, October '08, artistic view, click to enlarge, map.

Last time we wrote a blog, it was about the early state of Wall Street troubles. Things did not look all that bad at that time, but started to look truly awful in the coming days and weeks. “Meltdown” were newspaper titles, followed by even deeper downturns in the following days. How much smaller are your 401k, 403b or other retirement accounts, quite a bit? How much longer this slide is going to continue like that? Nobody knows, but one thing is certain, we do not like to see new records being broken on the downside anymore! Warren Buffett is saying, “It’s time to buy”, will you?

Aloha.
So, we arrived in Honolulu on a sunny day. We didn’t know that at the time, but all of our days would be mostly sunny with hardly any rain. After a good night’s sleep, actually it was only a B-grade sleep because of time difference, and temperature plus humidity changes. In addition, setting the right room temperature takes at least two days. And, did you remember to hang that “Do Not Disturb” card outside your door? And, we hope nobody towed our car! Leaving hotel’s parking garage remains a challenge, perhaps a life-long challenge. Taking a Pali Highway will get you from the west side to the east side of Oahu. You are going to drive near the Pali lookout, and it is always a good idea to stop there. Usually it is very windy there, something you notice while looking at your photos and videos shot on top. The east side of Oahu is visible for miles along with the Pacific Coast. Hills and tall trees obscure the west side. There are usually many people there, and easily recognizable big tour busses. Sometimes the strong wind and light rain make that place quite cold, so be prepared.

Several miles down the road, and you are in Kailua. If you follow first the Pali Highway, then 61, then go about a mile forward up to the last light stop, you will find yourself near the Ocean and feel that. Turn right, this road will take you to Kailua Beach Park, which is quite nice in itself. Actually, there is little reason to go anywhere else in our opinion; the water is near still, just enjoy it. The only reason I went forward, was because of the beach name – Lanikai, that ended up in the title of my first video shot in Hawaii in the early October. So, we are going forward, reading signs, and now trying to find a good place to park our rental car. In October, this is no problem; in summer months some parking space hunting techniques learned on the mainland may have to be enforced! We are not about to disclose those, will keep those to ourselves, though!

So, we are at the Lanikai Beach, taking some pictures – one or two may end up on twitter, swimming for two hours, sitting and walking around the beach, and then shooting the video. Slight cloud interruptions need to be taken into consideration. Should have swum for no longer than an hour, and should have started filming an hour earlier – crosses our mind. However, it is too late for that. Will have to work with the available light, too late to change anything. We could come back again on a different day, but this changes the mood of the video, unless today’s session is all thrown out. Let us work with what we got, and turn it into yet another masterpiece; it is the final decision. Tomorrow we are going to be in another spectacular place.

Mahalo everyone.
(As always, I did spell checking on this blog, accidentally the above words “Mahalo everyone” were replaced with “Maalox everyone”. Funny, but no thanks!)

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

#66, When Wall Street Goes South

2008-09-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

Small Boat At North Shore, Waimea Bay, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view, map.

Small Boat And Lava Rocks, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view, map.

So it happened! The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) suddenly stopped working, shortly after it was switched on. Some expected things to quickly become vary dark, as in black holes, but initially nothing happened, than a transformer blew up and helium leaked. Now everything is quiet again, and will stay that way for many months to come. No new particles were found, no black holes created – at least that we know about, just another transformer got fried. So for now, let us move this subject of the front pages.

You have heard of another meltdown, this time on Wall Street. And this one is indeed very serious; the well-known financial institutions are collapsing indicating that the whole financial system is in trouble, perhaps reminiscent of 1930’s. The federal government is offering help, assistance, and bailout – whatever you want to call it. Should not troubled institutions be allowed to fail, especially since the failure happened mainly because of their own mismanagement? Why prop something that is not worth much any longer, and is only draining huge amounts of money? Apparently the federal government thinks different, and talks about pumping more money into the bankrupt institutions. The news now is that even Warren Buffett is trying to save another institution in trouble – Goldman Sachs, in a move very uncharacteristic for that extraordinary investor. And truly, what are we supposed to think about this country if Wall Street is beginning to crumble?

Aloha everybody!
Another subject. The Hawaii Superferry is in full operation, after many long delays. We thought we write a word about it, since in the past only troubled news was available. Not anymore, from Honolulu on Oahu to Kahului on Maui the service is working fine, with $49 to $59 fares, twice daily. If only people were visiting Hawaii as often as they used to! So the Superferry and Wall Street are linked together after all, we are not talking here about isolated events.

You already know that the weather in Hawaii can change dramatically in a very short time. It never changes that fast in California, for example. You need to be prepared, or you can find yourself in a dangerous situation. For example, flash flooding is one of those situations that comes to mind. Same is true when swimming in some places, North Shore east of Haleiwa, and Sandy Beach are two places from our own experience, that can be quite unpredictable, and where one should take appropriate precautions. If you follow several simple safety tips, things can be very enjoyable. Now wash all the sand of your body, actually this seldom works well at the beach, drive back to the hotel, and keep washing away all remaining sand that refuses to go away. The places it tends to stick to, we are not going to write about on those pages.
Mahalo everybody!

Book: Steve Caplin, Art & Design in Photoshop, Focal Press, ISBN 978-0-240-81109-3. My favorite art book at this moment.

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#65, Uncertain Times

2008-09-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

Nothing To Do At Ewa Beach, Ewa, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view, map.

Under An Orange Cloud, Sunset Beach, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view, map.

These are indeed uncertain times. Some of that sentiment has already been reflected in newspapers, on TV, in videos, on the web, and even in this blog. Today we are going to add an additional data point to our discussion on uncertain times. Let us look at the stock market that I mention on these pages from time to time, although recently you have to have plenty of optimism to see anything positive on the horizon. Actually this work started near two years ago, on 11/18/06. Back then I decided to prepare several model stock market portfolio and track those portfolios for almost two years. Today we can show how well you would do if you invested in any of those portfolios. For the simplicity, we decided to invest a million dollars in every one of the mentioned portfolios. It is an easy amount to remember, and not the real amount that somebody may have invested. All stocks bought on 11/18/06 were held, nothing was sold, but some companies stopped trading during that period. We did not reinvest the money. Now about the portfolio choices. Two well-known investors were modeled through those portfolios: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Also, Joel Greenblatt’s well-publicized Magic Formula of investing is looked at for comparison. How reliable is our information? It is based on information published on the web, and in investing books and literature. It is believed to be fairly reliable but certainly is not 100% accurate. All investing details, I am sure you agree with me, are not revealed to the public.

These are companies and shares included in the Buffett’s Portfolio: American Express 3067, Ameriprise Financial 484, Anheuser-Busch 879, ASD* 202, Coca-Cola 4047, ConocoPhillips 362, Costco Wholesale 104, FDC* 202, Gannett Co. 69, General Electric 154, H & R Block 229, Home Depot 82, Iron Mountain 102, Lowe's Companies 14, M & T Bank 134, Moody's 971, Nike 47, OSI* 37, PetroChina 14, Pier 1 Imports 67, Procter & Gamble 2023, Sanofi-Aventis 9, Sealed Air 14, SunTrust Banks 64, SVM* 79, The Western Union 202, Torchmark 67, Tyco International 202, United Parcel Service 27, USG 132, Wal-Mart Stores 402, Washington Post 34, Wells Fargo 3857, Wesco Financial 114.
The five biggest investments in this portfolio are: Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Wells Fargo, American Express, and Anhauser–Bush. Companies marked with * no longer trade.

These are companies and shares included in the Gates’ Cascade Investment Fund Portfolio: Alaska Air Group 261, Canadian National Railway 3470, Crown Castle International 8103, Fisher Communication 149, FS* 144, ICOS* 1772, Otter Tail 497, Pain Therapeutics 613, Pan American Silver 1690, PNM Resources 1223, Republic Services 5985, Schnitzer Steel Industries 161, Seattle Genetics 1165, Six Flags 3383, Sprint Nextel 4225.
The five biggest investments in this portfolio are: Crown Castle International, Republic Services, Canadian National Railway, Pan American Silver, and Sprint Nextel. Companies marked with * no longer trade.

These are companies recommended by the Magic Formula of investing site: Alon USA Energy, Biovail, BSG*, Career Education, CGI Group, Fording Canadian Coal, Freeport-McMoRan, Frontier Oil, H & R Block, Headwaters, Holly, Kinetic Concepts, King Pharmaceuticals, K-Swiss, McClatchy, Net 1 Ueps Technology, NSS*, Pacer International, Palm, Patterson-UTI Energy, Southern Copper, Teck Cominco, Thor Industries, Western Refining.
An equal number of 1422 shares were used for all companies in the portfolio.

All portfolios were set up on the Morningstar.com portfolio.morningstar.com web site and all data comes from that site.

Value Of Three Model Portfolios, Santa Clara, California, September ‘08, real view, click to enlarge. The time scale is from Oct. 1, 2006 to Oct. 1, 2008. The initial investments were equal to $1.0 million. Note that all three model portfolios lost money in the last two years.

This is how those three portfolios performed in the last two years. The magic formula worked wonders for many months, then started to go down very fast, and now is the worst choice of all. The Buffett’s Portfolio did not do much in the first year, but then is started to go down, and still remains off from our initial investment. It is however, the best choice of all three model portfolios. Gates’ Cascade Fund was doing poorly basically all the time, and still remains off. These portfolios might indicate that in uncertain times, perhaps nobody does well. If you know of better examples let me know. But only the hard data, please, and not good stories told by somebody.

Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.: berkshirehathaway.com .

Book: Joel Greenblatt, The Little Book That Beats the Market (Little Books. Big Profits), John Wiley, wiley.com, ISBN-10: 0-47173-306-7.

Magic Formula Investing website: magicformulainvesting.com .

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#64, Most Popular Tags In Blogging

2008-09-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

Rain In 5 Minutes - Sun Back In 10 Minutes, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

I saw a list of most popular tags used in blogging, on Technorati.com. Below is a slightly polished, and reformatted version of that list. All foreign language words, and multiple-listed words have been removed. If you are looking for good tags for your own blog, they are most likely already listed here.

Apple, art, articles,
blog, blogroll, books, business,
celebrities, culture, current affairs,
daily, design, diary, dreams,
education, entertainment, events,
family, fashion, film, food, football, friends, fun,
games, goals, Google,
home, hopes, humor,
Internet, iPhone,
jobs,
life, links, Linux, love,
marketing, media, Microsoft, miscellaneous, mobile, movies, music, MySpace,
news, nightlife,
parties, people, personal, philosophy, photography, pictures, plans, podcast, poetry, politics,
quiz,
random, relationships, religion, reviews, romance,
school, science, shopping, software, sports, survey,
technology, thoughts, topics, travel, TV,
video,
web, weblog, WordPress, work, writing,
YouTube .

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#63, And Black Holes

2008-09-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

Looking Up, East Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

Sometimes Things Tend To Bend, North Oahu Near Kaena Point, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

How many of the Hawaiian Islands can you name? Probably most from the well-known islands, tourist places. However there are many more, from North to South: small islands, atolls, and reefs - Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll, Pearl and Hermes Atoll, Lisianski Island, Laysan, Maro Reef, Gardner Pinnacles, French Frigate Shoals, Necker, Nihoa; main islands - Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and Hawaiʻi. And there are also plenty more small islets. Total of 137, although higher numbers are sometimes quoted as well, low tide, high tide?

Steve Jobs answered the rumors about his death by quoting Mark Twain during the San Francisco Apple event – “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Unless that was fake_steve_jobs?

And how dangerous are those black holes that are created in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)? Well, there are many rumors, you’ve heard them all by now, I am quite sure. Some people are plain scared; some smart scientists are explaining that those are very tiny, and not dangerous. How do they know, nobody has ever seen anything like that? Last night I am certain, I heard something in the bushes that was making loud chewing noises. No, it was not a dog, or maybe it was a dog being chewed up. I ran away, I am not going back today to check. Could one of those black holes be already in my neighborhood? We will be watching!

Happy birthday to me!

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#62, Another Fairly Hot Night

2008-09-05T01:10:00.000-07:00

Another Lazy Afternoon, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

The Horizon May Be Tilted, But Who Cares!, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

Yet another hot day, and the same is supposed to be true again tomorrow. We will survive for sure, but the evening exercise part has to be moved well deeper into the evening, since it is quite unpleasant at earlier hours. The cooler air breeze turns your mind away from daily routine activities, and into a very relaxing mood. Do not forget to go back to sleep, because walking till very early morning hours suddenly sounds very tempting.

Do you write your blog entries in text, html, or use a special software that generates the html code for you? I noticed myself that in order to prepare a fairly good-looking blog, you need to use a bit of everything. Using a simple text editor is the simplest method, but it has some disadvantages. It probably has no word spelling, for example, and you do not want to publish what you just typed in, so a Microsoft Word comes handy. You can arrange your thoughts now, check spelling, move paragraphs around, etc. The title, picture captions, and tags are also checked at this stage. Also copyright info is enclosed. No need to pay much attention to formatting at this stage, just paragraphs separated by extra empty lines. Next all text is printed and corrected till it looks acceptable. I never generate the html code directly from Word, although it could work fine. Then, I have html templates prepared in plain text in BBEdit, from previous blog entries. The templates are reusable, thus save some time. Now I place all text from Word into BBEdit, without paying much attention to formatting. Inside BBEdit, I usually add all extra html code that is needed, for example from Google Docs, formatting, extra links. This can now be previewed for the very first time, and most obvious mistakes corrected. There are still no pictures in the blog.

Then everything goes to Blogger. Then pictures are added. Adding more than a single picture involves some juggling around, try it. Now the real preview is undergoing its moment of truth. Actually the previewing part is not exactly 100% correct. What you see on screen is not what is going to show up in the final version. This is not good! If you publish your blog at this time, you risk showing your subscribers a half-baked product. You really do not know how the final thing is going to look like. You can check if the extra-added html is actually doing what it is supposed to, whether Google Docs is updating to the latest version of your document. It is also time to make some words and sentences bold or italic so they would stand out. All of this is not perfect, but by trial and error you can get very near your imaginary goal. Is WordPress better? If somebody is thinking about software that would be an interface to Blogger, for example, then remember that every time somebody at Google changes something, you need to change as well, otherwise your product is always going to be handicapped. So we managed to publish yet another blog, ads are flashing in front of our eyes, and advertisers' money keeps rolling in – oh, really?

Are my entries too short, too long, too random, or in “what are you doing” category, get a life? Every time I start to write, those things come to my mind. You need to be in sync with whoever reads your entries, you want to be informative, a little bit entertaining. I make sure that you can actually use something in your own work. That is my silent goal! Hope this works!

Two pictures for this entry are already prepared. Sometime along the way, I am going to discuss how the pictures end up looking the way they look like. It is another useful piece of information.

An iced tea with lemon, always tastes good this late at night. And a glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc. Now the editing and publishing time, following steps I just described.

Google™ is a trademark of Google, Inc.
Microsoft™ is a trademark of Microsoft Corp., Inc.

Microsoft Word from Microsoft Corp., Inc.
BBEdit from Bare Bones Software. It doesn’t suck.^®

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#61, How Not To Get Wet

2008-09-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

Memorable Sunset At Ewa Beach, Ewa, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

After promising last time not to jump head first into ads, you notice something new on top of this page. Yes indeed, those are Ads by Google. Now I am officially selling condos in Hawaii, vacation packages to Hawaii, and if first two are too expensive for you – sheet music. Prices would be approximately $700,000 and up for the condos, $120 and up per night for a stay in a hotel, and $4.95 for the sheet music. I’ve been using the last two options – both are good, with the very last one enhancing your artistic creativity. If you go ahead with the first one and buy an oceanfront property in Hawaii, on any of the several islands of your choice – congratulations, just send me a note and include lots of pictures. I promise to use them in my blog once I up the colors a little bit in Photoshop.

Now seriously, all of this is very experimental and I am learning more and more every day about all aspects of the blog and web sites. Writing blog entries is actually quite fun; it forces you to an extra mental activity almost every day for at least an hour, and sometimes longer. Deciding on a blog appearance, taking care of pictures, etc. is also fun. I like to depart from regular, very technical activities, and spend time on artistic aspects of web sites, music, and photos.

Regular shopping is done for today. Have you noticed how much prices are going up on almost everything grocery related? Week by week the prices are higher, and the recession is supposed to peak around December. That what I heard, or read somewhere. Let us hope things are going to improve at the beginning of 2009!

On the radio, I am hearing even on a classical music channel, how to save gas by driving slower. It is a very unusual subject for such a radio station. You can play any music at any tempo, even prestissimo, but drive slow, you mean like 30 mph all the time? Indeed bizarre!

September is usually quite sunny and hot in California with no signs of rain. If you happen to take your vacations at that time, you are very lucky. However, most people traditionally take time off during June, July, and August. So if you are smart, you can get an excellent weather and slightly lower prices since September is a bit outside of the season’s peak. You can get the whole beach to yourself, and even get naked if you like! No, please do not do that, and don’t tell anybody who sent you! There is no sign of wind around, but something blew me way off course. Hope you put your clothes on by now. A beautiful suntan everywhere, remains.

Time for a walk, it is much cooler now at night. Did you find a clever way to avoid those pesky water sprinklers that turn on at night? Every time I walk, I end up wet because those tend to spray water all over the place. Maybe somebody could invent red/green lights when to stop and when to go! Otherwise it is hit-or-miss.

Now the exciting editing and publishing parts begin.

Google™ is a trademark of Google, Inc. Swarovski™ is a trademark of Swarovski AG.

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#60, Thoughts From The Mall

2008-09-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

Walking On Ewa Beach, Ewa, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

3 For $5, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

It's again another hot day, and a sticky one on top of that. Not the one I like most. 75F is fine with me but 90+F is a bit too much. Need to get something to drink, fast.

Spent this morning preparing a package to be shipped to an eBay customer. It has been a while since I sold anything through eBay. The site has changed, it is actually more difficult to sell, and item prices are higher than they were before. In a nutshell, not as cool as it used to be. More corporate, the entrepreneurial phase is long gone. My deal went smoothly, I already got paid through PayPal, and a digital camera got shipped. Only I could not slide my credit card in and out of the shipping Post Office’s machine in a smooth movement and almost gave up and assumed that I would have to go somewhere else. Luckily, the Postal employee explained to me how to use it, and after several tense moments, everything completed satisfactorily. Till next eBay deal!

Now switching to a different subject. How do you decide if you should make your own web site or if you pay somebody experienced to handle it for you? I am in a situation like that right now. Certainly I can handle simpler designs on my own, but more advanced and better-looking websites require a bit more experience than I got. There is no need to learn everything on your own since this approach takes time and only delays the time when you will be able to see your website up and running. But if a simpler is good enough, then it may also be quite acceptable, and no doubt cheaper. Did not decide yet which way to go.

In my last blog, I used Google Docs for the very first time. Actually to display certain types of data, Google Docs could be fine. The good feature is that it is updated every 5 minutes, so it could be used to capture near real time data. I have to think about that. Some Google API’s will no doubt be needed. There are many new possibilities because of that.

I looked around the web for information about ads in blogs. The most honest bloggers will tell you that you need to have traffic to your site of over a million visitors before anything can be made to work. Below that threshold, essentially nothing is going to happen. This advice appears to make lots of sense. Before you have a pretty good traffic, do not bother with any ads. It is unlikely that the ads alone would attract new people to your site. Basically I got some time before a full-blown ad campaign starts on this blog! Lucky you.

I try to stay, on this blog, away from politics. Not that I have nothing to say or know nothing about it. Quite opposite! But it would be better to have that vast subject omitted here. You may have heard that at work you never discuss politics and religion. I think it works better for people who just do that, from my own experience. Since blogs can be read by anybody, also your employer, it is better here as well to omit those subjects. It is amazing, however, that in the country with so many freedoms, you are better of if you just keep quiet! Enough on that subject, already said too much.

Now watching JillBolteTaylor_2008_480.mp4, who is showing a real human brain. Will not spoil any more. Very interesting, you should watch too, recommended on Twitter by BrookeAlley.

eBay™ is a trademark of eBay, Inc. Google™ is a trademark of Google, Inc.

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#59, YouTube Or Twitter?

2008-08-30T01:59:00.001-07:00

Enough Beach Time For Today, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

This blog has been deleted since it is no longer relevant.

Book: Ted Dillard, Raw Pipeline, Revolutionary Techniques To Streamline Digital Photo Workflow, Lark Books, http://www.larkbooks.com, ISBN-10: 1-60059-279-1. Fairly good digital photo book.

YouTube™ is a trademark of YouTube, Inc. Twitter™ is a trademark of Twitter, Inc. Google™ is a trademark of Google, Inc.

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#58, Do You Remember Where You Were?

2008-08-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

I Must Be Dreaming, or Maybe Not!, East Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view, click to enlarge.

I am looking right now at The Girl From Ipanema music sheet. Written in 1962 by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, still looks very fresh, and the English words are also very familiar. Should I go any deeper into this classic? No doubt, I am going to go through all notes, one by one as I always do, at least twice. Then we can decide if that is enough, or I might play some portions later on the piano. The sheet music is for the vocal, guitar, and piano. You never know if you are looking at the original, or if somebody transcribed that piece just for these instruments. The difference could be quite pronounced and I definitely prefer the original to the transcribed version. But sometimes you have to take what’s available, and the second option may be everything that you can lay your eyes on. “Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking, and when she passes I smile, but she doesn’t see.” the words go. Quite nice, even with a small error, but forget about that for a moment, and enjoy the beach scene.

Now we are changing to a different subject. It is another day, already after a good dinner, unfortunately again with too many calories. Will have to walk a bit more to burn all those unnecessary calories. Actually this has been more and more of a challenge recently. As a young guy, I used to weigh more or less the same amount over many years. But now, things are more difficult to control. The weight keeps piling on with ease, and removing it becomes more and more difficult. Things taste too good, and the physical activity level is no doubt lower than it used to be. The higher crankiness factor settles in. It is good that no lower mental activity is evident, at least can still watch iJustine videos and understand, I think. Well, I have to go back to those several-hour long hiking trips in the mountains, with plenty of swimming hours, followed by many miles of biking. Less seconds and draft beers and more leg miles, and no ice cream either! OK, enough of whining!

If you did not fall asleep while I was mumbling, let us go back to this morning. Did you see software called grader mentioned on http://twitter.grader.com? It lets you evaluate your standings among other twitter users on a scale 0-100. I started not long time ago, and accumulated only a relatively small number of tweets and followers. Therefore my standings cannot be very high as you might expect. But Kevin Rose’s or Leo Laporte’s numbers are probably approaching 100. Try it for yourself if you are on twitter. If not, open an account, and start to tweet today.

An evening is upon us, time to check emails, news, tweets, own websites, and finish this blog entry. An extra long weekend is coming; it is always pleasantly anticipated.

This is also the day when Bloomberg News almost published Steve Jobs’ obituary. Actually it did happen inadvertently or so we are told. I wonder who else’s obituaries are already prepared and only waiting for the XXXX to be replaced with actual dates? Sometimes faster is not necessarily better. Unless the whole point behind this exercise is still unknown to us! “You told us the iPhone worked, we thought you died!”

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#57, An Evening On The Town

2008-08-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't You Like To Join Them?, East Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

This blog entry is going to be somewhat different. I usually write either in front of my computer or not too far from it. It is very convenient, fairly fast, and allows me to access all additional resources needed to publish my blog. Now I have made a small change, and bought a 5x7 inch notebook, and a Techniclick pencil. You already know what is coming, there will be more blogs written away from the desktop and much closer to the real scene. Well, almost. If I were to write what is realy happening in front of me, you would not believe anyway. A very young lady is studying heart and vain cross-sections, apparently something related to medicine. Now she came back after talking to someone outside on her cell phone. Then, what is so unusual? Nothing, except when you look at her, you are going to see her boobies first, then slowly everything else. There you go, it would not happen if I were writing the old fashioned way!

This morning on Twitter, I found a message that summarized how well known authors come up with ideas to write about, and subsequently how to write down what they came up with. Many of them take notes, carry a notebook wherever they go, or dictate to small recorders what is happening in front of them or comes up to their minds at that moment. Just gave you away a small notebook and pencil combination. If I find the link to that Twitter / blog reference that I read this morning, you can check it out for yourself.

At a restaurant, this evening, the music had some extra spice added to it, probably by a DJ, but I’m not sure about that. Every tune was somehow related to summer and beaches, 60’s and 70’s kind of Beach Boys music. Except that, and I am not making this up, the words were kind of – beach, beach, bitch, bitch. And the second song again went like that – beach, bitch, beach, bitch. A family sitting next to me also noticed something unusual, but did not do anything about it. Can’t believe that it is only the quality of the speakers, there must be some radio DJ behind it.
Also overheard how a mother talked about the length of her daughter’s skirt. “You know, she said, people may confuse you with a female dog?” Let us leave it at that.

It has been more than a week since I wrote any music. I am reading plenty of music related stuff almost every day, now need to go back to writing.

We can close at this, unless something else pops up in my head at the very last moment.

Blog: Alan Rinzler, Writing habits of successful authors I’ve known, http://www.alanrinzler.com/, 8/20/08.

#56, A Very Basic Twitter Style Guide

2008-08-23T03:43:00.001-07:00

Old Coconut Tree, East Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

Gorgeous Sunset on South Oahu, Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

Basic Twitter Style Guide

Think if you can write your message in less than 140 characters, or in about less than 2.5 lines. If not, choose email.

Be brief. You do not have to use full sentences.

There is no need to use all available space.

Make sure that order of events in your message is logical.

Do not try to be too poetic. Your message may be totally lost.

Your message should be understood. Think how others might read it, and not how you understand it.

Remember that the Internet is owned by 12 - 20 year old users. Certain messages will be ignored if you forget about it!

There is little need to use only small letters, only capital letters, or abbreviate every word in your message. Things become difficult to read if you do so!

Are you indeed laughing every single time you type something? lol is already overused. Same with other Internet slang.

Do check your spelling before you press the update button. Proper use of commas and periods is important.

Splitting your message between two tweets should be avoided.

Pictures always help.

How many tweets should you send out? Nobody knows, not even this author!

#55, Cat & Dog Show

2008-08-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Peaceful Time At North Shore, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

More Aloha, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Ziggy Meets Carver by poshy_.
Saw this video, liked it, and decided to share with others. Once I used to have a cat like that. Enjoy.

#54, Concept Browser From Mozilla Labs

2008-08-08T23:14:00.000-07:00

Green Light, Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

More Good Music Tonight, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

The original blog has been deleted. Something new may be placed here, or left as is.

Book: Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's Quick And Dirty Tips For Better Writing, http://www.henryholt.com, ISBN-10: 0-8050-8831-8. Everybody is talking about this book, got to read it then.

#53, Is blogTV Helping YouTube?

2008-08-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

Which One Would You Choose?, San Mateo County, California, July ‘08, artistic view.

Would You Like A Job Like That?, San Mateo County, California, July ‘08, artistic view.

We can only say that we do not know, but promise to pay close attention to find out. Simply it is too soon to notice much difference. It is obvious that very many YouTube people are moving to blogTV in an apparent effort to boost their YouTube views and increase subscriber base. But an impact of that shift is rather subtle; those that were going up are still going up, those that started to decline are going down.
Since preparing blogTV shows takes time away from video making, we should see a negative impact on video quality coming from YouTube members who recently joined blogTV. Watch for that! You already saw videos that only announce somebody’s appearance on blogTV. Are you watching those? Also, live blogTV appearances are turned into YouTube videos. Are you watching those? Can someone reverse his or her slide down on YouTube by promoting himself/herself on blogTV? The participants obviously think so, because otherwise they would not be involved in those extra activities. Can blogTV take some audience away from YouTube? Again it is too soon to know that. Can someone move entirely to blogTV, become popular there, and forget about YouTube altogether? So far this hasn’t happened, nobody officially announced anything like that, but probably will. According to Wikipedia, first two major YouTube defections were Christine Gambito (HappySlip) and Michael Buckley (WhatTheBuckShow).

At this moment, it may be easier and cheaper to be on blogTV. No editing software is required - just a laptop with a web camera and a browser. This is going to change fairly soon since the demand for a better quality is going to grow pretty fast. For the higher quality, the production costs that are tiny right now are going to increase considerably. Producing good HD quality, live shows is going to be expensive. This will eliminate majority of people who are now very happy with blogTV. Actually YouTube suffers from exactly the same problems. No HD videos on the horizon for both, I’m afraid. However, there are already many places where you can watch both HD videos and HD live shows; those remain rather small.

As far as I am concerned, there are no plans for me to appear on blogTV anywhere soon. I decided I will only be watching, and maybe writing about it from time to time.

#52, Evening Exchanges

2008-07-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

Quiet North Shore, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Boat At Sunset, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Evening Exchanges, Santa Clara, California, July ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

It has been about a week since I started working on Evening Exchanges, but it is finished now. Decided to introduce some of my conversations with others during recent weeks into this piano tune. Not literally but the essence of them. You should hear that from music. Written in an F minor key, 78 bars, and 3:50 minutes long. Hope you will listen to it more than once. Please leave comments if you do so.
I do leave snippets of information on twitter during composing, not much but a little bit. You can follow me if you care to know how things are moving along. Since I am fairly new to twitter, it's going to take some time to figure out how, when, about what, tone, etc. to tweet. So far things are progressing quite smooth, and are quite fun. Have a good time listening to Evening Exchanges.

Sheet music: Sara Bareilles - Love Song, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Alicia Keys - No One, EMI Music Publishing, Coldplay - Viva La Vida, Universal Music Publishing Group, from http://www.musicnotes.com.

#51, Nights and Piano Solo Piece

2008-07-20T19:20:00.000-07:00

It’s Quiet Now, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

It Wasn’t Me!, Honolulu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Nights and Piano, Santa Clara, California, July ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

Just finished this piano solo piece and decided to call it Nights and Piano. Spent many nights working on it, and many days thinking what and how to write it. It is not too heavy; I try to keep it a bit on a romantic side. If you enjoy it, please let me know. In a few moments, I will be thinking about another piece. Did try it with other instruments, in unison only, no attempt to arrange it for several instruments. As it was, sounded quite good, which means that I probably should sit down for few more days and write for those other instruments as well. Let me think about it. The score will be available for download as soon as I get my other web site up and running.
What else? Twitter is getting more and more fun, I hope it does not start to control me in any way, although that could happen, I see it, no kidding.

Dinner: Sushi Boat at a Kobe Japanese Restaurant, http://www.kobesushi.com. $25.57 with tip.

Later in the evening: A glass of a cold Umeshu plum wine, http://www.choya.com.

Books: Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, Guide To The Practical Study Of Harmony, Dover Publications, Inc, http://www.doverpublications.com, ISBN 0-486-44272-1. Can you imagine the original was published in 1900!

Norah Jones, Come Away With Me, Piano - Vocal - Guitar, Hal Leonard Corp., http://www.halleonard.com, and EMI Music Publishing, ISBN 0-634-95264-0.

#50, How Many Videos Should You Make?

2008-07-10T08:11:00.001-07:00

Waikiki Past Midnight, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Change In Direction, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

A small anniversary today, I managed to write 50 blogs! I definitely should write more often, but actually there would not be enough to write about, I’m afraid. Always try to have something to write about, and avoid writing just for the purpose of writing. So big congratulations to me. The traffic to this blog is slowly picking up, and does depend on how many new things are published. From time to time, I wonder if the subject matter is correct, please tell me what you think. Checking again my YouTube video subscription update as of Sat, July 5, 2008, here are stats and my comments. It appears that there is already a limit of 20 videos imposed by YouTube, very good. Why not ask for quality and not for quantity?

#	USERNAME	COMMENT
20	expertvillage	Many videos on the same subject.
20	katalina2007	Do they have to be so short?
20	tHEnOOSEsWINGS	Classical music is fine, but at this volume?
19	iThinkVideos	I don't think videos!
18	clockworkmeltdown	No doubt some kind of meltdown!
13	Aceswolf	A video per day for the whole year. No, please, no! Stop!
11	lockergnome	Henry Ford of videos is slowing down! Getting older, wiser?

Are you convinced that making lots of videos on YouTube works? There is no sign of that. If you look at the 100 most subscribed list, there are people who made over 500+ videos in the past two years and are moving toward an exit on that list, or already exited it some time ago. This actually is a good sign. I do not have many of those people on my subscription list, although I used to have. As you well know by now, producing good videos, I mean quality videos, takes plenty of time, and can also be quite expensive. After making those videos for a while, you are going to either exhaust your subjects, get bored, start to think that it is just not worth spending so much effort and money. Theoretically being in a YouTube Partner Program, was supposed to take care of some of those issues. But does it?

Dinner: Near vegetarian with some chicken, iced tea, at Fresh Choice, http://www.freshchoice.com. Two large, ripe, and juicy organic peaches later in the evening.

Blog recommendation: How to Change the World by Guy Kawasaki, http://blog.guykawasaki.com/.

Interesting to check: Fifty Most Influential Female Bloggers, http://northxeast.com/.

#49, Going Back Home Music Composed

2008-07-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'm So Pretty, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Left Turn, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

This piano solo was composed for my next YouTube video called Going Back Home. It actually is about returning back home from a nice trip. Spent on it more than two weeks, tweaking it a bit every single day. Hope you like it. The score in PDF format will be available very soon; you can try to play it on your own. As a matter of fact, I would like to hear your opinion about it, along with your inputs for me for the future. Thanks for stopping by. Perhaps making mp3’s available would be cool, I am thinking about it as well, and soon the mp3 button is likely to appear on these blog pages.

Going Back Home, Santa Clara, California, July ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

Dinner: Udon soup, teriyaki salmon with brown rice, sesame chicken salad, edamame, iced tea, at Happi House, http://www.happihouse.com. With tax $16.52.

Reading a book: David A. Crowder, Building a Web Site For DUMMIES, 3rd ed, http://www.wiley.com, ISBN 978-0-470-14928-7. Bought at Barnes & Noble, http://www.bn.com.

#48, Green Summer Piano Solo

2008-06-28T01:02:00.000-07:00

Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

I May Be A Robot, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

So I am finally done with a piano solo, which I decided to call Green Summer. Actually it was written before a Good Morning piece, but only finished in the last two days. I think it sounds quite good, and I hope to get some positive comments from you. Why is it called like that? Well, when I look through my windows, I see everything mostly green; trees, grass, plants, and kids wearing green clothes. And it is much warmer because the summer arrived. Now you know how I ended up with this title, although I must say that till this morning it actually was called something else! I do have a "bigger" version with the orchestra also finished, but decided to release the solo piece first. The other version may end up on my next video, I suppose. Enjoy it!

Green Summer, Santa Clara, California, May-June ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

Lunch: Almost vegetarian, with small pieces of chicken, iced tea, at Fresh Choice, http://www.freshchoice.com.

Reading a Book: Lonzell Watson, Final Cut Pro 6, For Digital Video Editors Only, http://www.wiley.com, with DVD, ISBN 978-0-470-22450-2, purchased at Barnes & Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com.

Financial Magazine: Barron’s, http://www.barrons.com, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Do we know when things are finally going to turn up?

#47, YouTube Subscription Update

2008-06-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

Mickey Mouse, Honolulu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

It’s Surfing Time Again, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

I just looked at my YouTube video subscription update as of Friday, June 27, 2008 that came in gmail and made a list of people sending me most videos. Below you see a number of videos, usernames, and my short comments:

#	USERNAME	COMMENT
20	expertvillage	Many videos on the same subject.
20	katalina2007	Do they have to be so short?
20	lockergnome	High volume production, but different subjects. Henry Ford of videos!
20	machinima	How many animations can you watch per week? One, two?
20	travelandtransitions	Many identical titles? Why?
17	prettytuesday	All video titles identical!
15	tHEnOOSEsWINGS	Classical music is fine, but at this volume?
14	universalmusicgroup	Music business requirement, I suppose.
13	artmovies1	How fast can you draw? Can you draw even faster?
10	craedaup	All videos different, I think (?), not familiar with.

Where do we draw a line? Is this already a video spamming business in full bloom? Looks like it may be. I need to decide what to do about it since I am getting lots of pain in my hand just from clicking and deleting them.
I think, I may also know why Spricket24 is getting all those explosive diarrheas! Even Imodium A-D is no longer working!

#46, Good Morning Piano Solo

2008-06-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

Green Leaves And Buds, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Evening Flame, Honolulu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

I have been talking about it for a while, and now it is time to show where I am. Decided to keep it as a piano only piece, and not add any more instruments. The basic theme behind it was, and still is: If you woke up in the morning and this piece approached your ears, would you listen to it – first, and would you like it? – second. If I get two yes votes, I would be delighted. No votes means I need to work a bit harder – I actually consider it to be quite fair, not only because I did not spend enough time on this piece. Is it the final version – probably not, every time I look at it, something is about to change. The more I play it, the more I like it, a good sign of things going in the positive direction. Now, let us play it.

Good Morning, Santa Clara, California, May-June ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

Good Morning Music © 2008 by Vatsek Music.

#45, BlogTV Is Coming?

2008-06-25T14:55:00.001-07:00

The Morning Is Coming, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Let us try to guess if blogtv.com is going to become big in the next year, two, or maybe even sooner. At this time things are rather small and buggy. The stars of today are mainly several YouTube names: HappySlip, LisaNova, thewinekone, CharlesTrippy, DaveDays, SupaDupaFlyGirl, VenetianPrincess, KevJumba, WhatTheBuck, and many other names not yet familiar to my and most likely anybody else’s ears. The live views are about 150-250 for the YouTube crowd and 1-100 for the rest of broadcasters. Yes, they are called the broadcasters on blogtv. Issues are numerous; audio lag, missing audio, co-hosting problems, etc. Things are changing by the minute, and tomorrow some of the issues I am writing about may be solved. The skill level of many broadcasters varies a lot, from pretty good, through a reasonable, to pretty bad. Eventually those things are going to sort out, I hope. How long can you watch someone on blogtv? If the name is totally unknown – maybe five minutes, maybe less. With names more familiar from YouTube, that time may be close to an hour. It is the very first thing that surprised me; I did not believe that I could watch HappySlip for example for almost the full hour. She is perhaps the best of them all at this moment. You go girl!
Why do some YouTubers go to another medium? Some of them already peaked on YouTube and now the only way is down. You may disagree with me but look at the numbers. There are also somewhat smaller names that are most likely trying to expand their audience. This may help, or it may even change their direction altogether. We need to watch to see what happens next.
There is one additional aspect of the blogtv that is worth mentioning. Some people look much better on live TV then in their YouTube videos. This is somewhat surprising, and the video editing part may be responsible for that. Whatever somebody thinks of herself of himself, and edits videos according to that image, is not necessarily what the audience enjoys watching most. Amazing!
OK, so now the big question: Is this going to be big, or is this going to fold? It has potentials, but the live TV is more expensive than the YouTube video production, and ultimately the small guys are not going to last very long, but the big companies, although in smaller numbers, may become the number one user. Will revisit this subject in a year, I promise.

Breakfast: Wakimi salad from Canada, canned makrel fish from Japan, pickled garlic from Poland, multi-grain bread from California with The Laughing Cow cheese spread from Wisconsin. Grapes with seeds, and an organic orange. Lipton tea to drink, from India. No, I would never eat regular garlic in the morning, you are right. But this one is pickled, and smells quite good, unlike the regular one. Let me kiss you now!

Book: Carl Humphries, Piano Workbook, A Complete Course in Technique and Performance, http://www.jawbonepress.com, with CD, ISBN 978-1-906002-03-9. Playing CD with Audacity, http://audacity.sourceforge.net.

#44, 100k Views on YouTube

2008-06-24T21:54:00.001-07:00

Beautiful Plumeria, Oahu, Hawaii, June ‘08, artistic view.

Well, a small anniversary of sort. My YouTube videos accumulated over 100,000 views! How important is that? Of course it would be better if that number was 10X or 100X bigger, but 100k is also nice. There is one thing that is a bit surprising to me, however. Most of those views come from just a single video, Hearing Test, other videos are far behind. That is not so good, since I spent only an evening working on that video, and more than several months working on the remaining 40+ videos. Amazing how those things turn out. While most videos last only 2-3 days, with some lasting perhaps weeks, the winning Hearing Test goes on and on and on. No sign of loosing popularity. I know what you think now? Why don’t you make a similar video to that one? Well, almost everything is already there. That is the difficult part. Maybe somehow I will make something in that category, but so far all ideas are not that good. What about shooting videos that nobody watches? How does that feel? Actually, to tell you the truth, it is secondary. I like to do what I do, I can travel a bit almost every weekend, I like to shoot videos outside in nice places, I like to edit, and all of my videos go through plenty of editing. Like to write all music to my videos, and will do so even more and at a higher level in the near future. Can reply to people’s comments, and watch other’s videos. Not everything looks fine, though. The submission part and the initial shock of watching your videos on YouTube that now look and sound much worse than anything you have ever seen up to this moment, this really gets you after a while. So much work vanishes in just a few minutes. And so far there has been no solution to this problem.

On a positive side, I opened an account on Twitter; you can follow me if you wish to do so:
http://twitter.com/Vatsek.

Watching HappySlip on blog.tv tonight, many YouTube faces are popping up over there, on the other network – you might say. Is this a brand new trend? I was surprised to notice that those people look way better on blog.tv than in YouTube videos! Will write a separate blog on just that subject.

Dinner: Chicken soup with big chunks of white meat, brown rice, canned tomatoes, plenty of green vegetables, and Enoki mushrooms. A glass of Carlo Rossi Sangria red wine, and a hot Lipton tea. An orange, and a large peach. Isn't life good? http://www.carlorossi.com, http://www.lipton.com.

Book: Carl Humphries, Piano Workbook, A Complete Course in Technique and Performance, http://www.jawbonepress.com, with CD, ISBN 978-1-906002-03-9.

#43, Lanikai Beach

2008-06-15T20:38:00.001-07:00

Jogging At Lanikai Beach, Kailua, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Jogging Continues At Lanikai Beach, Kailua, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

This is one of the best beaches on Oahu, if you like to think that way. But you can easily find many as good beaches not far away from this one, if you want to. Whether you want to think of it as the best, or one of the best, is up to you. There are many good features about it; it is somewhat secluded, you always have people from private properties watching you – sometimes you may get a feeling that you are in someone else’s backyard pond (good/bad), white sand, about a mile long, slightly sticky clay bottom, a moderate number of people, plenty of swimming space, and lots of things happening around – outrigger canoe practicing, for example, so you can sit, watch and enjoy. On the downside, however, you may cruise around for a while in your car before you find a spot to park, remember it is all private property with very small and narrow streets, with up and downhills, so on holidays you better be either very early in the morning, or rather late in the afternoon. And finding a way to the Ocean can take a while, only small and narrow passages to the beach, after you found your parking space. Beyond that, everything else is just fine, put plenty of sunscreen and enjoy the sunny weather, and hope the clouds are not coming back today anymore. Two Mokulua Islands are always there, staring at you, and looking good in pictures! Also, the http://www.beachwalks.tv show originates at this beach almost every day.
It is getting late in the evening, it is time to find a car, get a sip of bottled water, boy it is hot, wash the sap and bird droppings from your windshield, wash your hands then, and head back to Ala Moana Shopping Center in Waikiki for a good sushi or sashimi dinner. Then off to your hotel for a cold beer.
Another beach in Kailua, not too far from Lanikai, is far more open and accessible since it is adjacent on one side to a small park. You actually may find this one quite pleasing as well, I know I do.
I need to stop now, because if I do not, I will most likely be booking another trip to Lanikai!

Dinner back in California: A Barilla Penne pasta with Chunky Ragu sauce. A glass of Gallo hearty burgundy, and a hot Lipton tea.
http://www.barillaus.com, http://www.ragu.com, http://www.gallofamily.com, http://www.lipton.com.

#42, Ala Moana

2008-06-15T01:52:00.001-07:00

Looking Good Tonight, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

There are many people in Waikiki every night between 8pm and 11pm. You can walk around just watching tourists from many places around the world, especially Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and of course the US. All shops and restaurants are open well into the night and early morning hours, and people are indeed everywhere. End of May temperatures are already quite high and the humidity is also high. But everything is still quite tolerable, and after spending several days there, and drinking lots of bottled water, quite tolerable. It is only about 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean in some places if you want to go one more time to the beach, most likely after you already spent several hours on the beach throughout the day! You can find there lots of magicians, tarot card readers, gun school promoters, restaurant advertisers, portrait painters, street musicians, God converters, police and occasional hookers. I spend most time around the musicians, doing some window shopping, and taking lots of pictures. I love the last activity a lot. The reason I am not taking my video camera with me is that the light is very often quite poor, and the video looks very grainy. Also the video gear is a bit bigger and easily noticeable by the people I try to film. This is sometimes a very big hindrance, and some form of hostility from the people I try to film results. On the other hand, the still camera is quite small, and not very visible at night. You can take lots of good photographs if you practice for a while under low light conditions. Whereas with the video, the street musicians suddenly start to throw some notes that never belonged to their gigs, or simply out of the blue get tired and quit playing, with the still camera, those problems are usually gone. ABC Stores are everywhere, stores that offer all basic essentials to live on through the night. Question: Why is the Steinlager beer from New Zealand so cheap? In the morning, the streets look very different, and sometimes you wonder if what you remember from the last night even happened at all!

Breakfast back in California: Pumpernickel from Germany, Mild Ajvar vegetable spread from Bulgaria, Passport green Manzanilla olives stuffed with pimentos from Spain, and Lipton tea from India. Amazing, although bought at Longs Drugs, everything from outside of the US!
http://www.mestemacher.de, http://www.intldelicacies.com, http://www.monini.com, http://www.lipton.com, http://www.longs.com.

#41, Hawaii Videos Released

2008-06-14T14:53:00.001-07:00

Let Us Catch Something Big, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Within less than a week, I released four new videos, all of them from Hawaii: Fast Paddles, Sandy Beach, Evening Canoe, and Kite Surfers. The good weather permitted me to film in several places, now quite familiar with, over the period of two weeks. I have chosen for everything to happen on beaches, for a simple reason, no matter where you go - there is another beach there. And some of them are good, famous, and pleasant to spend time at. After some swimming in the Ocean for a while, I would start to film whatever was happening at that time. Hardly ever any script or much planning went into those videos. When I film in California, I usually sit down for a moment and decide where to go and what to shoot, things are a bit more organized. Over there I would grab my equipment bags and go. I wonder if this shows in my videos!
Now I am sitting and composing a new music that is going to end up in one of the next videos. A piano piece is almost done and sounds quite good, must say that is somewhat different from my previous pieces. Not sure what the next video is going to be about yet. I also brought some good quality audio recordings from Oahu, from beaches of course, might use those in some future videos as well.
For a while I was reading about shooting at short shutter speeds, from moving vehicles. That’s why I mention below The Filmmaker’s Handbook. An idea for a new video along those lines is brewing in my head now.

Breakfast: McCann’s Irish Oatmeal with some cinnamon, green tea, http://www.mccanns.ie.

Book: Steven Ascher & Edward Pincus, The Filmmaker’s Handbook, A Plume Book, ISBN 978-0-452-28678-8, http://www.penguin.com.

#40, W Cliff Rd, US Video Is Out

2008-05-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

Phalaenopsis Orchid, Santa Clara, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

I managed to release my latest video filmed mostly in Santa Cruz, California. Everything in that video comes from a West Cliff Rd, hence the title, but I expanded it to something broader. And added a little bit of dream quality through color changes. I was cruising up and down the street, filming everything that looked interesting, and then edited the best pieces I could. The filming part is the least time consuming part and most pleasant at the same time. Editing takes much more time, many, many hours. The longest one is writing the music, however, at least several days. It sounds good in stereo, as it is mixed for stereo, but ended up only in mono – not exactly sure why that happened since I did everything to make it sound stereo. The first part of the composed piece is a piano solo, Steinway D to be exact. The second and the third parts just add more instruments but play the same melody. I limited the number of instruments here to: Steinway D piano, Stradivari violin, cello, vertical bass, double bass, string section, and timpani to close it. Not too many but the sound is already getting quite rich. There is a definite need to post my music separately in its highest quality, but this site does not let you do it easily. This becomes more and more urgent. Writing for the piano is indeed the most challenging part of all.
I think I am going to write something for Spanish guitar, finished Celino Romero’s book and listened to the CD, and liked it a lot. Why not give it a try.
Comments do not seem to be working on YouTube very well; the whole site is full of new problems.
What next? Lots of filming, lots of tape, lots of natural sounds, lots of battery recharging, but a little bit of break from editing, and submitting videos.

Lunch: cooked mixed grains of rice, buckwheat, millet, and sorghum with Marie Callender’s marinara sauce and La Mexicana mild salsa. Mint tea to drink, hot not iced. Almost no fat, just pure goodness!

Book: Celino Romero, The Art of Spanish Guitar, Amsco Publications, http://www.musicsales.com, with CD, ISBN-10: 0-8256-3461-X.

#39, Santa Cruz Video

2008-05-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

Old Ship, San Francisco, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Getting new subscribers on YouTube becomes more and more difficult. Seems that times when everybody was subscribing to everybody else are pretty much gone, and now people have plenty of conditions attached to their subscription decisions, and either delay subscribing altogether, or just plain ignore you. The views are also down, probably because the summer is coming, and there are simply more interesting things to do than staring at the monitor. Not long time ago when YouTube was still hot, this would not happen. Oh, well.
In a short period of time I edited four videos filmed in San Francisco around Piers 41, and 42, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. All of them already went through a 2-3 day peak followed by near death, and received only moderate number of views. I am not sure why, maybe the subject is already exhausted, although I doubt, because I can go and visit those places every single day and there is always something new and exciting to see. But then again, do my videos capture any of that? Maybe, maybe not.
There is no truly good category for my videos, and that has been an issue for a very long time. I do not have much interest in vlogging, and prefer to be on the other side of the lens, and taking care of getting good quality audio as well. I don’t pretend to make travel or documentary videos, but always try to add a bit of artistry to them. Also I almost always write my own music, this actually takes usually several days just for a piece 1-2 minute long. Quite a bit of work. Those are not quite musical videos, either. Simply there is not good category for what I do, could this be partially responsible for lower than expected views? Maybe, maybe not.
Right now I am sitting and writing a piano piece for a Santa Cruz video. It was filmed obviously in Santa Cruz, CA, on a very good and sunny day, under a little bit of clouds. Already decided to change its look quite a bit, why not try something new? As far as music goes, I may add more instruments, violins, cellos, basses, depending on how much more time I am willing to spend on it and when I decide that things already sound good. The piano part alone in its unfinished shape is already good. The Steinway D grand sounds terrific! Aside from filming, I made some really high quality audio recordings at the beach late at night north of Santa Cruz. Those are 24bit / 96kHz recordings on a linear PCM recorder. The weather has changed into something windy, and misty, so I got lots of high wind noise, and trying to prevent various pieces of equipment and my clothing from flying away from me! Good exercise, will do much more of that in the coming days and weeks.
A well known YouTube member announced his departure, renetto, one of the very first members who got things moving around. In my impression he did almost everything he could, got rewarded to some small degree, became popular for better or worse, and the only thing left was to go down. That process already started, and rather than being a witness to his slow demise, exited gracefully near the top. Good job, great job, I would say. Good luck, my friend. Are we going to see much more of that in the near future? Maybe, maybe not.

#38, A Small Celebration

2008-05-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

Let’s Climb This Mountain Together, Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

It is still less than a year since I got my first YouTube subscriber. Now there are over 200 subscribers, and that number is slowly increasing. Let us hope we are going to celebrate our next step of 500+ subscribers very soon. Thank you for subscribing and watching my videos on YouTube. The future looks bright with you. This is a list of my subscribers.

crabapplestudio danbergam joey0028 FrustratedSinger aussieguitarprincess
subscribingking jimmyAbC TheRonEffect rontv MysteryFatKid
ArdieVerde NewYorkGardener johnnysmooth austinsplace EdwensClassics
Jonat1414 MovieMan2011 aussieNickuss pagekv MarkTimothy
tripleplay1111 burntonion ikbeninbalans01 MindlessCerebral valpard

rontv MysteryFatKid ArdieVerde NewYorkGardener johnnysmooth
austinsplace EdwensClassics Jonat1414 MovieMan2011 aussieNickuss
pagekv MarkTimothy tripleplay1111 burntonion ikbeninbalans01
MindlessCerebral valpard yadabub IntrovertGuy la1880
VideoDrives F1ameAlchemist fortini1977 EmCSpiteri TheMangaFanNews

callalily1 maestroya VideoPostcardsSquaddieJack metacognition dmccoig
Sqid101 AmericanFabricator CRNFAllyKat katalina2007 pinklantana
Bugees iwashere eligarf foureyespro raigpond
DamianDarkone memorylane1980 MoldytoasterVideo DanTraveling UtubiaPresident
InfinityMine bunnyrocky lietzen lietzen thechopinfan

wintermood tvtedd tammpon iThinkVideos KnockaroundsTV
ChangeDaChannel Bottlesofmary OaklynTV 4DRY4N Urgo6667
De1in Camo4x4s jadeevalley FunnySexyVideos StanleyJenkins
jeffball1 Incrediblevideos OakgroveProductions redubchannel Inyso
Yordii FGAlxPx HouseGadgetCreator Pianoloverok PaulTelner

Vreci manyonerise jcmegabyte KidMusician empiredesign
mrbean1970 civileso atefooterz butterdog710 par7133
jakoch stefanomhanna andrewgrummanJC bmastermind23 DCLugi
dannyromanus lauzon1999 llanbradach MCYMUSIC implicitart
jokipeti Ollie7876 KreeXhon johnecab garconchaud

HappyMondayGirl stephenjamescrowther johnkline76 AVDJ OaklynRecs
Chenboaopera AnnieCanada IAm2Superbad4U YTSantaClaus fnbfwo39
IvanKupala20 groplc volshebnikidvora benpoos johnneesmooth
philipigno TheTrampledRose SarEliz0131 winnerjake7 LonelyMoonRise
tHEnOOSEsWINGS utubia1party YTolympics Dworkingham 2Xintheface

keiko37 gonewalking UtubiaEarthOutreach billybigun64 ShakerUSA
LuffiFilmsCrew kromerridge Reverseflush 0thershop liliantai
PeterAppleseed 4u2know1 manolet7 Spyrka123 lydiahere
jessica424889 unptitbeurre Celebbb hiddentracktv2 DeadyMcGayMan
Anticlerical2008 mizmuzition brittani482489 filmmakersRus cocodapitbull

hannahmontanarox3409 londonpenda messabout1 ForshaBasan BipolarProject
LaiYouttitham Ninja187Rules arusebud Kratz01 seniorsite
pennilesscripple modernoracle Ottawarocket PlasmaDude47 DrakeDog4
KabalVSAlienGuy fiwaszewski WinstonSith monkeytag5 stuntguy3
featherandink conmech taylorbeckett101 caa1000 AHN5D

JuhaVideos bjorn1974 debhoppus delijadaco88 TommyTheHorse
NuttersClub PantyMython BRACK3N e4699 iphoto2333
jerryb721 GREYBLUE bstep13 GoddessCherryBomb wyllieohagan
FurociousN itsblockdog tammponrox stealth5976 clayLavl
muzical15 pduperron

#37, Four New Videos

2008-04-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

View from Hyde St. Pier, San Francisco, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

In the last several days, I managed to release four new videos; Line Secure, Up & Down, Black Birds, and At The Bay. A good weather was a definite factor in filming and getting good results. The subjects are different, the mood is positive, and all of them are easy to watch. Will see how well they do.
YouTube started experiments with playing higher quality videos along with the stereo sound. This definitely works in the right direction, and helps showcase videos a bit closer to their uncompressed originals that I watch so many times.

Dinner: Assorted fish cakes, from Kobe, Japan.

Reading: Pat Pattison, Writing Better Lyrics, The essential guide to powerful songwriting – from generating ideas to developing verse and beyond, Writer’s Digest Books, ISBN-10: 1-58297-066-5.

#36, Weather Forecast

2008-04-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

The original blog entry has been deleted.

#35, In Memoriam: Roland Lietzenmayer

2008-04-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

Above: Family Released Announcement.

We’ve never met. He was one of my subscribers on YouTube; this is how we interacted. He watched my videos; I enjoyed his videos where he usually played a flute either solo or with his daughter Milena. They seemed to work together well, or almost well, and produced good shows. He tried to experiment a lot with all that was new.
We were supposed to work together on a music piece for one of my videos, I recorded a separate video for that purpose and later named it Birds. His task was to supply a good flute music part of his own choice. However, since this happened to be close to Christmas season, business and family arrangements kept him very busy. I had to release Birds with my own composed music.
After that we agreed to work together on something different once he had more time. Later his YouTube account got into slight issues; we exchanged messages from time to time.
Then this week, a sad message came about his death back in March ’08. There is not going to be any new flute music by him in my videos. A distant friend, never met, somehow close because of YouTube videos.
Rest in Peace, Roland.

YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/Vatsek .
Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/Vatsek .
Let’s call this #35, In Memoriam: Roland Lietzenmayer.
Copyright © 2008 by Vatsek. All Rights Reserved.

#34, Moooo, Where Is The Music?

2008-04-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

Mooo, North of San Jose, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Yes it is true, I have no music yet for my next video. Only loose ideas flying over my head and some tiny snippets that I may turn into something musical in the next two to three days. As far as video shooting goes, I probably have enough from similar scenes as in the last video. This one is more or less a test of a new camera, and therefore did not want to go very far just in case I forgot to press one of the switches, or something like that. The weather was not as nice as last time, quite cold, and the sun had lots of blue in it, and much less pleasant yellow and orange. Also there were almost no people around and only cars passing by from time to time. Of course, there were cows as always grazing grass; one of the bulls, #167, came close to me. You see it in the picture above, and after I made a Moooo sound, it came to within several feet of me, apparently to check if I am shooting in 24p or 30p mode! It was 30p; all bulls like quality, then it rejoined the herd. The moving objects are smoother in 30p then they were in 24p, and the movement of leaves in the wind, for example, is now looking very pleasant. Did not have a chance to shoot something moving fast in front of me yet, do not know how it would look like. Whether any of this still remains in the final YouTube version, nobody really knows. Let us post this one and really start to work on music.

Canon web site: http://www.canon.com

#33, Early Evening - Mini Music Video Released

2008-04-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

Hills From Early Evening, San Jose, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Just checked YouTube* Top 100 ranks to figure out who is going up and who is going down. There are changes happening, and some stars of yesterday are slowly disappearing. New people are showing up, some at almost alarming pace. Who is …, you may ask? The staying power of early vloggers is beginning to be tested, and some quite common names up till now are shifting toward an exit. Has YouTube incubated a real star so far? I mean, somebody who really can be called a star? Or, do we have to wait for that moment a bit longer? Is this new medium at all able to pick a star? This, in my humble opinion, has not been answered so far positively.

I tried to avoid using names of YouTube people directly in my blogs, with the exception of my dear subscribers. But starting from now, I am going to spice my blogs a bit and start mentioning them directly. Remember, if I offend somebody, I planned to do just that!
Val from Valsartdiary, the guy from Fox News said you are 30, I always though you were about 17! Isn’t it amazing how you could fool people for such a long time! Your paintings are getting better, truly.
I did release my first mini music video with my own music called Early Evening. For a while I was thinking about it, and even received few suggestions from other YouTube people that it could be a good idea to try just that. So I am trying. It takes a bit to write even a minute of music, so getting a decent length music video is not that straightforward. I may look into using some props for future videos; so far I have not done that. Enjoy writing music a lot, who knows where this can go. It is getting late, and it’s time for a good night of sleep.
Things to read, came in mail yesterday Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 2007 Annual Report. I tend to spend some time on this particular report. Too bad there is no envelope with a big check attached, maybe next year!

Top 100 stars web site: http://www.bkserv.net/YTS/YTTop100.aspx
Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com

#32, Editing Music Video

2008-04-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

Downtown San Jose From A Distance, San Jose, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

I hope by now I have enough tape for a short music video. The weather was very nice to shoot in the early evening outside of northern part of San Jose. Last year, in about the same place, I shot one of my first videos in HDV format (1920x1080). Liked it a lot and decided to continue from then on with that format. It is less obvious if it was the best decision as far as YouTube goes, since those two black bars that show up on the top and bottom of a YouTube video window do take some important space away from the video. People who shoot for YouTube in a lower resolution, and worse quality, may actually have an advantage over those who shoot in HDV! But when you watch at home the HDV video that you made, plus the higher quality sound, you think of those other YouTube videos – "Forget It".
I wrote perhaps half of the music for the video, and have some ideas what to do with the other half. Tomorrow I will start working on the remaining part, one note at a time, my favorite way so far, although as I already mentioned previously, not the fastest one.

Breakfast: green vegetable salad with Italian dressing, ham and egg sandwiches, hash browns with Heinz ketchup, and iced tea with lemon.

#31, More Music, Not Enough Video, And Fried Fish

2008-04-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

Hercules - An Old Ship, San Francisco, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

I am writing more music for my videos, as is always the case. Will try to write shorter pieces and match them better with the video scenes, essentially try to score the video. So far I was not paying much attention to what the video was actually showing, but from now on will try to enhance the video with music. It is a bit harder to write that way, but it is also a better way without any doubt.
A trip to San Francisco produced little good video, not enough tourists, a bit cold, and a very strong wind. Need to add more clips from another place to come up with a decent video.
On my way home back from San Francisco, I stopped to get something to eat at a place that you may have already seen in my previous videos on US1 at the Pacific Coast. A small, red color wooden building, fish restaurant. Used to go to that place quite often in the past, now a bit less. A bowl of clam chowder, fried fish and French fries, with a tip was $25. A sourdough bread and butter plus a glass of water with ice came with it. Used to be much cheaper several years ago!
I got a good video related book that comes with CD, from Barnes & Noble. A Down & Dirty DV podcast from that author is available on iTunes.

Book: Anthony Q. Artis, The Shut Up And Shoot Documentary Guide, Focal Press, http://www.focalpress.com, with CD, ISBN: 978-0-240-80935-9.

Now drinking: jasmine tea with fresh key limes from Mexico.
Later: a glass of Fox Brook’ 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon wine, from Sonoma, California.

#30, Sunny Day Released

2008-04-06T01:20:00.000-07:00

Joy At Sunny Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, September ‘07, artistic view.

After almost two days of editing, a Sunny Day video is released on YouTube. This is my very first iMovie ’08 video. Actually after an initial bad publicity, I delayed using iMovie ’08 for quite a while; now consider it to be entirely unwise. Lesson learned from "experienced" YouTube members who are quick to review and judge: forget about their opinions related to everything. The new version of iMovie is indeed easier to use than the old one.
Now back to the video. Spent about a week composing music for it, only two longer pieces and a short one for the closing scene. You may wonder why it takes so long, if you write music a note at a time, this is how long it takes. I did not use loops so far, not sure if I like the idea enough to try. Need to look around, read on the subject of composing, how others approach this subject. I do know that some people essentially hear the music, then sit down and "simply type it". I am far from that stage.
Shooting at the location is quite short, a matter of hours. Then editing, adding audio, and rearranging things around, takes quite a bit of time. I noticed that there is no easy way to find where the middle of the video is for the purpose of the middle image that YouTube uses. Is this true, or I have missed something so far?
Like more and more natural sounds that are recorded at locations. There is so much more going on around the scenes that are shot. Careful editing adds a new dimension to the final edited outcome. Next time I may try to shoot some scenes with a shotgun mike, and some with a broader pattern mike, and then compare those two methods together. Will I like the narrow pattern of the shotgun?
Lots of organic Oolong tea, and jasmine tea during editing, with some ascorbic acid added (that is vitamin C, if you wonder), not much more. A large green Granny Smith apple, sorry, almost forgot about it.

#29, Sunny Day Is Coming

2008-04-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

Sumi-e Footprints, Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

It took me only a few minutes to decide where to go and what to shoot. A very sunny weather was a decisive factor. Why don’t I look at all places from Rainy Day – my last video, during a sunny day? So the Sunny Day video idea was born. Sunny but not hot and sticky, gorgeous you might say. Now I need to edit everything, add more music and we are going to be ready very soon.

Dinner: Way too much to eat, I am not going to go through a long list, way too many calories to burn.

#28, Rainy Day Released

2008-04-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

Louis Italian Restaurant, San Francisco Municipal Wharf, San Francisco, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

Rainy Day has been released and received some audience. Coming from a break in making videos sets you inevitably back and your initial audience after the return is smaller than it used to be. This is understandable, a bit of cooling down occurred. Some people left YouTube, as well. However, the numbers of subscribers and friends have increased steadily even though I did not submit anything for a while. Now things are going to pick up again after this fourth release in a short time. The weather is sometimes rainy, sometimes shinny, I got some drizzle during the recording of the last video in San Francisco. Was not quite sure if I end up with something that may be difficult to watch, but that did not happen. Out of a 60 min tape, I managed to get over 6 min of good quality video and most important with a quality sound. Although there were scenes taken with raindrops on the camera lens, I could easily edit those out. And if a sound did not cooperate, a heavy and noisy truck drove by, for example, I substituted this with a good music composed by myself. Actually I spent over a week composing music for this video, and was able to use about ¾ of what was written. The remaining pieces somehow either require some more work or be placed in trash – simply not good enough.
Most of the viewing occurs in the first three days after your release according to YouTube Insight. Majority of viewers come from California, surprise, surprise, some from New York, and a smaller number from other states. Very little from Europe, Australia, or Asia.
Now going back several months ago, as you may recall, I was blocked by somebody from abroad, never learned about the real reason. Now I have been apparently unblocked, so I decided to subscribe again to that YouTube member. The very first thing that is evident is that the videos are now much better there. Will post more details on that subject as soon as something new develops. Yes, a mystery cloud still envelops that story!
Right now I am sitting and composing music for the next video, probably will not make for this weekend, because there is still lots of work to do. No subject for the video has been chosen yet.
Reading more about film scoring, actually I like the subject more and more. You should hear signs of that in my upcoming videos.

Dinner: Turnip strip buns with Spanish extra virgin olive oil (San Gallio), turmeric, curry powder, and cumin. Jasmine tea. Berkeley Farms Bulgarian cultured buttermilk. Roasted peanuts (unsalted). Raw baby carrots. A glass of Carlo Rossi’ white Rhine wine.

Books: Dave Hunter, Play Acoustic, The Complete Guide To Mastering Acoustic Guitar Styles, http://www.backbeatbooks.com, with 2 CDs, ISBN 0-87930-853-2.
Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, On The Track, A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring, 2nd Ed., Routlege, Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.routlege.ny.com, ISBN 0-415-94136-9.
Enya, Amarantine, Piano, Vocal, Guitar, EMI Music Publishing, http://www.halleonard.com, ISBN 1-4234-1431-4.

#27, Power Chords

2008-03-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

Swarovski Window, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

I am trying to use several guitar power chords in my music composition I am trying to write for the next video. Things sound quite good, there is something in those power chords, so few notes, but they can really get you! An acoustic guitar handles those chords, but later many other instruments repeat versions of those chords.
I am probably going to shoot some scenes with moving subjects for the next video. As you know, getting good quality video with moving scenes is not the simplest thing to do. You always end up with some residual "jerkiness" that can be difficult to watch. So you either use a 60p professional video gear ($), or try to figure out how to minimize this unwanted effect. Need to refresh my memory on that subject. A good book, with all basic video related subjects, is the Digital Video Handbook. I keep it in my car all the time, and if I need to find something, this is where I can go. There are much heavier, thicker and more advanced video books around. I am going to talk about those at some other time.
Three new subscription magazines arrived: Outdoor Photography, Popular Photography, and Keeplinger’s Personal Finance. Now I need to sit down and spend some time reading them. In the photo magazines, I usually go the last pages where ads with new equipment are, to check if prices are any lower than say several months ago. On video cameras, that usually is true, buying always the latest model as soon as it is released is not always the best thing to do. There are always some bugs in both hardware and software, as well, and it is better to leave those to others to debug. As an example, on my last Canon camera I purchased from a large electronics store, a display problem appeared only after few hours of use, the day after I started to use it. The display would go blank, and nothing could be done about it. Had to exchange quickly, since then there were no issues.

Books: Arlen Roth, Complete Acoustic Guitar, Schirmer Trade Books, ISBN 0-8256-7271-6.
Rikky Rooksby, Chord Master, How to choose and play the right guitar chords, http://www.backbeatbooks.com, ISBN 0-87930-766-8.
Tom Ang, Digital Video Handbook, Equipment, techniques, projects, editing, http://www.dk.com, ISBN 0-7566-0942-9.

#26, Music for Untitled

2008-03-25T07:57:00.001-07:00

Need More Light, Santa Clara, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

Not long time ago I bought my first music mp3 files from Amazon.com, and downloaded them. Those were Justin Timberlake’s What Goes Around…/…Comes Around and My Love. The Amazon.com transaction was smooth, no issues, song descriptions are clear, reviews usually useful, and the search is also working fine. And most important, no DRM. In the past I bought something from Apple but the DRM pretty much prevented it from listening to it in any reasonable way. Things have changed since then, I know, but I did not go back yet.
Spent some time going over Sarah McLachlan’s I Will Remember You sheet music, pp. 149-53, while drinking coffee and eating fried chicken strips and rice pilaf dinner at a restaurant one late evening. Have to conclude that the piano part is relatively simple. If I could only sing like her! Regular, not decaf, in case you wonder.
Replied to email from Jewel, not private though. I am officially entered into a T-shirt drawing contest now promoting her new single. Hope I get the right size!
The next video for YouTube has no title yet, and only some vague ideas about the subject. The music is being written, three pieces finished, one more today, then intro and coda in the next two days or so. Now I am breaking my own rule about not talking about something not yet released!

For breakfast: cooked edamame, Japanese wakame seaweed salad with sesame seeds, roasted eel, multi-grain bread, hot jasmine tea. Yummy!
And a quick look at Barron’s financial pages and Yahoo finance. Gold went down so much in the last few days.

Sheet music: Pop/Rock Piano Hits for Dummies by Robbie Gennet, a Hal Leonard book, ISBN: 1-4234-0775-X, http://www.halleonard.com.

CD listening to: Amarantine by Enya, http://www.repriserecords.com, using Audacity.

Jewel’s web site: http://www.jeweljk.com
Barron’s web site: http://www.barrons.com

#25, So Maxwellian (You Don't Have To Be)

2008-03-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Street Rose, San Francisco, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

Wrote a song, this is where we are with it. Wrote it early in the morning, about 3:00 am, I hope you find it interesting. If you are confused about a title, that's good, because it tells me that it is working. Would like to get some comments, ranging from - this is definitely going to be #1 hit, through - go to bed, get some sleep, to - what the hell is this? Some ideas about music are floating over my head, but not much written so far. Once I start writing, most likely some words would have to be changed or moved around. So, I'm waiting for your opinions.

So Maxwellian (You Don't Have To Be)

Lyric and music © 2008 by Vatsek Music.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The weekend is coming, TGIF,
Gonna have some good time, close in the bay.
The boat leaving in four,
You're not here, I'm going alone.

You don't have to be so maxwellian,
Just try to carry on.
'Cause tomorrow is coming again,
Still in love, hope still in love.

The weather's stormy, the Ocean's rough,
Seagulls are singing, my boat rocking.
(music riff) stopping by,
Having some fun.

You don't have to be so maxwellian,
Just try to carry on.
'Cause tomorrow is coming again,
Still in love, hope still in love.

Back at the shore,
Looking around, till you're found.
Everything will be all right,
In the nick of time.

You don't have to be so maxwellian,
Just try to carry on.
'Cause tomorrow is coming again,
I'm still in love, hope still in love.

Still in love, hope still in love.
Yes, still in love...

#24, One Year on YouTube

2008-03-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

Do Not Lose Your Head Over It, Could Be Anywhere, US, ‘07, artistic view.

An official date on my YouTube page clearly states that a year passed since I joined a YouTube site. Actually, although technically true, I did not submit anything for the first 2-3 months and recently I did take over a 2 month break from video making, but not from commenting and rating. So, it is a little bit less than a year. Is there a single word that would characterize this first year? I believe it would be – SLOW. Yes, I expected things to move much faster judging by the initial meteoric rise of some YouTube "stars", since then shinning a bit dimmer. Things are changing, for the better or for the worse? Not sure. Time will tell.
Things that used to bother me and still bother, that have not been resolved on YouTube: quality of video and audio on YouTube compared to my originals. HD format is still not supported, and audio is pretty bad. They both get you when you are shooting in HD and composing music for the videos, as I do. I must say that I am not convinced things are radically going to improve. Other video sharing sites offer those features, but with a very tiny crowd to watch. Basically there is no solution at this moment!
I managed to get over 150 subscribers, several I kind of know well. Over 400 subscriptions, some of them quite good. I dropped some of the subscriptions, those that became boring, and making essentially the same kind of videos over and over again. Some things are changing independent of my work, probably due to the very random nature of submitting videos by users, and rather difficult way to find good and interesting videos from a huge number of submissions. How many good videos can you find using "Search" button? And those recommended by others may not be of interest to me!
Still plan to make videos, perhaps one every two weeks. I do plan to improve my music composing skills. The first song is hovering over my head, with some theme ideas, can I maybe find somebody to sing it? Perhaps a YouTube member?

Reading now: 101 Songwriting Wrongs And How To Right Them by Pat and Pete Luboff, ISBN-10: 1-58297-480-2.

Listening to: CD that came with Melody, How To Write Great Tunes by Rikky Rooksby, ISBN: 0-879308-19-2.

Just clicked on my name on YouTube page. The error message says: User Vatsek Not Found! Great, you must have seen several similar messages on your pages as well. Happy 1st to me!

#23, Three New Videos

2008-03-19T01:27:00.000-07:00

Time To Get Up, Santa Clara, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Yes, I know. I did not write anything for a while, and my goal of writing at least twice a week goes up in smoke. And the goal of submitting a video per week is also unrealistic. I spend quite a bit of time shooting, about a day with preparations, travel, finding something interesting and shooting on location. It is good that in the Bay Area everything is not too far away, usually within 1-2 hours of driving. Editing, as you well know, can be pretty slow depending on your approach. I have, depending on the video length, 30-50 clips to edit. Every single one is tweaked till it looks good and makes sense, and is not out of line with the major theme for that part of video. Still using iMovie, but it is obvious and almost mandatory to switch to something better, simply because many other people on YouTube already switched to much more advanced, and expensive, video editing software. Those with iMovies are simply going to fall behind. Actually I was thinking a bit about the future on YouTube, and since good videos are expensive to make, and require fairly expensive equipment, there is probably not much room for people with small budgets, and cameras built into their laptops. Sad but true. The higher video quality, HD especially, is going to be expensive and not viable to many people making videos today. Do you agree with me?
My last three videos come from Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Mt. Hamilton near San Jose, CA. They look quite good, I believe. I seem to like recording natural sounds more and more, even very basic sounds, ocean, passing cars, and splashed water. The stereo mike I am using is picking up lots of sounds from different direction, even me breathing - not necessarily what I want. A good stereo shotgun will be tried very soon, maybe even on the next video.
Composing music is something I am enjoying more and more and plenty of music books are scattered around my place for easy reference. Today I was listening to the score from Serenity by David Newman. Also today started to read Gabriel Yared's The English Patient by Heather Laing, ISBN-10: 0-8108-5910-6, which is a film score guide. Let me say the Hollywod Studio Symphony sounds good!

PS. First year on YouTube summary as promised - tomorrow.

#22, Sleepy Evening Again

2008-01-28T06:40:00.000-08:00

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

More rain, more sleepy weather again. It is raining on and off again, and the weather makes you very lethargic. Spent some time in front of a computer during the day watching YouTube videos, commenting on some, rating, and deleting everything else that I do not want to watch. I have been getting many videos like that recently. Some people send two, three, four, and even in one case, five identical emails with attached videos. Why do they do that? It only makes me mad, and I will not watch for sure if somebody is trying to force me!
Have you noticed that the number of mean and arrogant comments is way down on YouTube? Not sure if it is just me, since I did clean my account and many people got dropped, but things are overall much cleaner. Probably the initial, tumultuous stage belongs to the past and things are going to be more pleasant from now on. Let's hope so. Or, maybe I am just dreaming, the weather is indeed good for that.
Just a single case opposite to what I just told you. Someone called me a ****head after I pointed out to a girl singing Wuthering Heights that the song was originally sung by Kate Bush! I can handle that, I guess.
Nikkei is down 4% in Tokyo, let's see what NYSE does in NY in a few hours. Apple is down to 130 from 200 high not long time ago, a very major correction. Lots of house foreclosures in the San Francisco Bay Area, house prices are going down as well.
A quick trip to a bookstore to check if there are any new titles, also checking latest travel and photo magazines, kind of ritual.
Later in the evening, chicken and spinach crepes and coffee at IHOP http://www.ihop.com. Gas for my car, violin favorites CD playing inside. We can call it a day once I submit this blog, and finish a cup of green tea.

#21, Raining Again

2008-01-23T02:06:00.000-08:00

So Pretty!, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

It is raining again. Yes, it is. There were several nice and sunny days, but now the rain is back. And it is quite cold as well. At night, after drinking a good cup of chamomile tea, you sleep very well. So there is something positive about it, after all. Too bad I cannot read more than two pages of anything before falling quickly asleep.
And did you check the financial pages lately? Things are going down so fast, it is incredible. DJIA is back to where it was in March of '07. Several good months of last year somehow vanished. And now, Hong Kong and Tokyo are joining the downward trend. Emerging markets, especially India, do not even look.
AC temperature is set to 70F in my place. At exactly 71.2F, the fan in my PC is turning on, making noise, and waking me up at night. So it is absolutely necessary to keep the temperature below 71F at any time. Can I turn the PC off at night, you might ask? Not really since it is running long simulations that usually take about 2.5 months to finish. It is basically on all the time. Buying a new one with a quieter fan, and a faster one as well, that's something I need to consider soon.
Did not shoot any video for YouTube in a long time, my dead iMac is preventing me from editing anything. I did not decide whether to buy a new iMac or switch with editing to Windows Vista and perhaps Sony Vegas. Any suggestions?
I am sure you were dying to know all of that.

#20, Five Facts About Me

2008-01-06T14:46:00.000-08:00

Green Hills Near San Jose, San Jose, California, Spring ‘08, artistic view.

I have been tagged by newishness. Too bad it is during the time when my iMac and network are not working. I can barely make a video at this moment, will have to answer in a different way. Sorry for that. Here we go:

I used to travel a lot in the past. Usually on weekends, I would drive to different places and take pictures there. My photo collection is actually quite large. If you name a city in California, I either was there, or at least drove through it. The longest one weekend distance – I believe it was about 2200 miles, just to take several pictures somewhere there. Crazy, insane?
This one is related to number 1. What stopped me - speeding tickets. Since distances in California, Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona where I was going, are quite large, you need to drive very fast. And there is always somebody waiting for you. After several tickets I had to stop altogether.
I believe on three occasions ladies spilled something on me: a hot soup in California, a cold beer in Sierra Nevada, and an iced tea recently in Honolulu. And nothing happened. So it's not true what people are saying about that.
Every wall in my place has at least one oil painting on it. Some two or three. There are also many other paintings standing around. There is even one in my bathroom, a Greek scene. Still not sure whether I should keep or delete this point!
I used to fly gliders several years ago, but stopped almost completely. I do not have a fear of flying. However, every time I am inside a commercial jet, I realize how little time it takes to hit the ground. I am sure that most people who fly, would not, if they knew that.

If I may, I would like to tag these people, all are my subscribers, of course:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=danbergam
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=joey0028
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ArdieVerde
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=johnkline76
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=EmCSpiteri

#19, Time for Another Blog

2008-01-06T01:06:00.000-08:00

Three Coconut Palm Trees, Oahu, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

It has been a while since my last blog #18. Essentially it is my iMac problems plus network connection problems, I had a very limited access to Internet. Was able to do a bit from a pay/hour commercial place, about $30/hour to be exact, way too much to use on a regular basis.
It is raining now in Northern California and has been raining for a few days now, a good time to sleep, and indeed that is exactly what I have been doing. The downside of sleeping during the day is that you are going to have some time at night when you cannot sleep, so adding a new blog is a way to kill that time.
You may be thinking if going away from YouTube for a while changes anything. No it does not. I honestly can say that I did not miss much, maybe two or three people, I certainly did not miss watching videos! And YouTube was supposed to be about videos.
I used to follow YouTube * Top 100 ratings very closely for some time to see who is going up and who is going down. Those stats are based on the number of subscribers and are updated every Sunday night California time. Now I can honestly say that those stats have very little to do with who is actually good on YouTube. I can watch maybe four people from the list of 100, and believe subscribe to only two.
You must have heard that Celine Dion finished her show in Las Vegas. But her DVD that is now available is really good. It's been playing here over and over again ever since it came from Amazon.com.

Reading now: This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin, ISBN 978-0-452-28852-2.
Also a bit more reading of financial pages, and it's time to go to bed, again.

#18, Last Night

2007-12-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-11T22:31:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

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
foureyespro raigpond DamianDarkone memorylane1980 MoldytoasterVideo
DanTraveling UtubiaPresident InfinityMine bunnyrocky lietzen

lietzen thechopinfan wintermood tvtedd tampon
iThinkVideos KnockaroundsTV ChangeDaChannel Bottlesofmary OaklynTV
4DRY4N Urgo6667 De1in Camo4x4s AquafreshContest
jadeevalley FunnySexyVideos StanleyJenkins jeffball1 Incrediblevideos

BOBIzizou87 OakgroveProductions deaksteronline redubchannel suziblutube
Inyso Yordii FGAlxPx HouseGadgetCreator Pianoloverok
PaulTelner Vreci manyonerise jcmegabyte KidMusician
empiredesign mrbean1970 civileso atefooterz butterdog710

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

#14, First 100

2007-12-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-04T00:22:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-02T03:20:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-01T03:08:00.000-08:00

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.

#9, Slow Time, More Music and Edits

2007-11-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

Beach Lights, Pacific Coast, California, November '07, artistic view.

After Thanksgiving things became somewhat slower, not much is happening. Days are much shorter, at 5:00 pm the Sun is gone. There is little time to shoot videos outside, and I basically shoot all of my videos outside, at the beach or very close to the Pacific Ocean. This is were I live and this is where most of my videos usually come from, except when I go on a short vacation somewhere else and manage to take my most essential video equipment with me. Should I start to vlog? This crosses my mind from time to time, and usually I put it to rest for some time. I can write a blog in 5-10 minutes, but need 2-3 days to edit a video with more or less same information. So the blog wins for now as far as time saving goes.
I am editing two videos, and writing a music piece for the second one. Since I can seldom write something in less than a week, you see why I cannot release videos faster than one per week.
Hope you stick with this blog, and I promise to get better once I figure out how it really works. Do you like my pictures? Do you see the Moon in the picture above?

#8, Beach Time is Released

2007-11-26T04:54:00.000-08:00

Sunset at Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, October '07, artistic view.

Just released my latest YouTube video Beach Time, a 2:56 HDV masterpiece shot on Oahu, Hawaii. When you drive around the Oahu island, either clockwise or counterclockwise, you will undoubtedly stop at several beaches, and other interesting places as well. When I stop, I go for a swim first, then spend some time doing nothing, and then pull my camera and start shooting whatever seems interesting at that time, no script, no preparation. Actually that is not exactly true, since before I leave the hotel, I usually look at the Oahu maps for good 20 minutes during breakfast trying to figure out which way to go for that day. Once I decide, and check if batteries are charged, and if there is at least one extra miniDV tape in my camera bag, then I go. A short drive and you are at the first beach. What do you do, do you shoot, do you swim, do you work on your suntan? Very tough choices, you must agree. After the first stop, you go to another place, and everything is more or less repeated. Pretty slowly, in no hurry whatsoever. There are plenty places to stop and look around, or grab a bite. Then the evening comes and the camera gives only grainy, noisy images, time to go back to your hotel. Tomorrow, another day very similar to today.
Have to say a word about the music. I wrote it, it took me almost a week. This time I decided to go for a simpler version with just a few instruments. Tried to keep it warm, just as I remember being there and shooting all those warm scenes. Hope you like it.

Listening to: Celine Dion's Taking Chances CD and watching her DVD in the evening.

#7, 1920x1080i HDV Pain

2007-11-22T03:17:00.000-08:00

Bling, bling..., Waikiki, Hawaii, October '07, artistic view.

Tonight I spent several hours trying to transfer HDV files from a miniDV tape to Premiere Pro CS3, without much success. It looks like Adobe did not implement yet full support for the 1920 x 1080 interlaced HDV format. Amazing, iMovie could read those files without any problems for quite some time. An intermediate way which I tried, was to read first with iMovie, and then read files from iMovie into Premiere Pro. This works but the image quality is beginning to degrade. Can be used in an emergency only. We need to wait till Adobe addresses that issue in Premiere.

#6, More Music

2007-11-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

Sunset on Oahu, Hawaii, October '07, artistic view.

More music writing last night and tonight. A piece that I got so far is quite good, but it tends to put me to sleep. Listened to it several times, and it happened, if I recall correctly, more than half of time! Not sure how well that is going to work with a mostly beach scene video. Or, maybe thinking about and spending too much time on music alone brings me to that sleepy mood.
Cut the video some more, will need a shorter music piece, which is good since I can release it a day or two sooner.

#5, Music for Beach Time

2007-11-19T22:11:00.000-08:00

Two Coconut Trees, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii, October '07, artistic view.

I already mentioned that Beach Time will be my next video from Oahu, Hawaii. I still got some tape left with pretty good pieces, will look at those as soon as I am done with Beach Time. Edited some scenes a little bit tighter to match the video length with the music piece. Writing music, even if it is less than four minutes long, takes about a week. For comparison, I can shoot several hours of video during the same time frame. I always wondered how much time others spend on writing a piece that long. It is only instrumental, although there will be more than twenty instruments, and there is some orchestration work done to it, it is not just unison for all instruments. And a choir, of course. I am experimenting in that area quite a bit, since adding some human voice to an instrumental piece, improves it dramatically.
Added new subscriptions to my YouTube list today.
OK, time to close this one and go back to work.

#4, You Cannot Subscribe to Someone Who Blocked You

2007-11-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

Two Torches, Waikiki, Hawaii, October '07, artistic view.

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/ .

#3, Unsubscription Time

2007-11-18T18:24:00.000-08:00

This blog entry has been removed as it became no longer relevant.

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

#2, Collaboration Video

2007-11-17T22:51:00.000-08:00

5:00 PM Pacific Ocean Sunset, California, November '07, artistic view.

Just finished my first collaboration video with a YouTube member from abroad. I shot the video, and he is going to play a flute to come up with a nice background for it. Not sure how long it is going to take, we have to wait now. Actually, it was his idea, let us see how this works out. The video will be called Beach Birds. It comes from a small place near the Pacific Ocean; beach scenes, small and large birds, boats, green plants, dry tall grasses, and sunsets. In HDV 1920 x 1080 it looks pretty impressive, loses slightly when it is shrunk to fit the YouTube window. I am trying to figure out if there is any other encoding scheme that would produce much smaller number of artifacts when converted to YouTube flash format. Is spending another several hundred dollars on Adobe Flash software the only solution? Also we ran into issues with sending video files over 100MB in size, simple thing would appear, but gmail is choking on them, and so is Yahoo email. When going through YouTube, a conversion occurs, so you end up with a lower quality video at the start of collaboration. Very nasty!
But let us finish this blog on a more positive note. I am working on a music piece for my other Oahu video which I decided to call Beach Time. Just realized that both videos use a word beach in them, hope it is not too many times.
In the last two days, I listened to Alicia Keys' latest CD As I Am and watched Shakira's DVD Oral Fixation Tour. Both were bought on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com. A new book being read is Hearing and Writing Music, 2nd ed., by Ron Gorow. That one also came through Amazon.com.

#1, Well, It's Time to Start Blogging

2007-11-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

California Seagull, Half Moon Bay, California, November '07, artistic view.

Well, it is indeed a good time to start blogging. I will be posting here updates on my YouTube video related activity. Since there is no good room to handle that on YouTube, other than making videos about it, which is quite time consuming, I believe this might be a better place to add comments about things that are happening around me in relation to video making. There will not be here much of my private life, this may not interest many of you. If you find my videos interesting, maybe you can stop by and read this blog, and respond or comment. How often do you expect to see new blogs? Let us see. I try to make my YouTube videos at a pace of roughly one per week, but sometimes this slips to one per two weeks, if I am busy and working on something else or traveling, for example. Since posting blogs is way faster than dealing with the videos, I hope to be at least twice as active with blogs than with my videos. Essentially twice a week, sounds about right. Or, maybe even more often! Will see how this works.