Oahu To Maui By Hawaii Superferry, #73

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/ .

Interesting Places To Visit On Oahu, #70

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

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

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/ .

#64, Most Popular Tags In Blogging

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/ .

#62, Another Fairly Hot Night

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

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

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/ .

#57, An Evening On The Town

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.

#55, Cat & Dog Show

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

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.

#51, Nights and Piano Solo Piece

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?

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

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

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

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!

#45, BlogTV Is Coming?

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.

#42, Ala Moana

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.

#27, Power Chords

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.

#21, Raining Again

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.