Wednesday, October 6, 2021
2:45 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
Do I have any business being awake at 2:45? I’m not sure. I guess I will find out. I slept quite solidly from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m., which is a solid chunk of four hours of quality sleep. That’s nothing to sneeze at for me. In a way, it is a comment on my personality and interests. I’m awake and busy this early mainly because I still plan on taking this scooter trip today. Yet, I still want to do a bunch of things, such as write a bit, before I start the travel day. It’s a bit like the theory I presented of how people subscribe to YouTube channels as more of a show they put on for other people. They subscribe to high quality, thoughtful YouTube channels, but in real life, they watch much more casual pop culture videos. They don’t actually watch the videos from the channels they subscribe to. In my case, I planned ahead to take a scooter trip, but I can’t resist the urge to get out of bed at 2 a.m. so that I can write and do a bunch of other things here in my room. I get more pleasure out of this than out of the trip I have planned for the day. I thought about going straight back to bed and to sleep, but then I might wake up at 6 a.m., and I would have just enough time to simply pack up, get on the scooter, and go. I would have no leisure time before the trip started. And I really value this time.
However, there have been some signs that I’m making a mistake. I am behaving in a clumsy and distracted fashion, which is a sign that I’m not rested. I bumped my head on the top of the door frame when I went into the bathroom. I never do that normally. And I wanted to get something out of the pocket of my pants, and for a second or two, I couldn’t remember where those pants were. I do have an excuse for that second oversight. I did laundry yesterday, and I washed those pants and all my other clothes, and everything was hung up to dry in unusual places. Even so, I normally would not have any trouble remembering where I had put all these items. But this morning, I hesitated for a moment. And my eyes are burning a bit more than I’d like. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll try to go back to sleep soon.
I spent the entire day yesterday here at the guest house. And I enjoyed the day. Some interesting things happened. For one thing, I finally got around to editing video using iMovie on the MacBook. I didn’t actually finish the video, but I used the raw material to study iMovie and learn how to use it. It is profoundly different from editing video on my smartphone. It was also a slow process because I had no idea how to do even the most basic of tasks. I run into that all the time. I would know how to do these things on a PC or on an Android phone without even thinking about it. But on a MacBook, I’m generally lost. For example, there was a time when I just wanted to see how much memory was available on the MacBook’s hard drive. But I ended up just staring at the computer with no idea how to do this. I had to study how to use the MacBook at the same time that I was studying how to use iMovie. And I did run into some situations of such difficulty that I wanted to give up and just go back to editing on my phone.
However, I will persist. I feel that it is a good idea to give up my dependency on my phone as a computing device. It’s best to make the switch to the MacBook, and I am doing that naturally anyway. Since the day I switched to using this MacBook to write in my journal, I have not once gone back to my normal setup of a wireless keyboard and mouse connected to my phone mounted on a tripod. I reach for the MacBook every morning. And I’m not forcing myself to do that; I want to. And on this scooter trip, I pre-packed based on the idea that I would be taking the MacBook, not my wireless keyboard. That is a tremendous change for me. I don’t even know how to safely pack and carry this computer.
I also had an interesting moment yesterday when the man who rents me my scooter sent me a message asking me if I liked cheesecake. Of course, I responded in the enthusiastic affirmative. And he dropped by later on with two pieces of homemade cheesecake. Apparently, he bakes as a hobby. I suspect he might even sell what he bakes, because he had special triangular plastic cases for each piece of cheesecake, the type you would see in display cases at restaurants. I had one piece in the afternoon and the second piece in the evening.
Pretty much the entire morning was given over to shooting a Learning Curve video about the buttons on the Pocket 2 camera. Not surprisingly, it took a lot longer than I had imagined. Also not surprisingly, I overshot my goal of twelve minutes by a wide margin. In fact, in the excitement of the moment, I completely forgot about my goal of making twelve-minute videos. I just talked at length about whatever I wanted to talk about without any regard for the amount of time it required. It was only when I made my final point that I suddenly thought, “Dang! I talked for way too long and about way too much!”
Now I feel like I have to go back and reshoot it. After all, the Pocket 2 has just five physical buttons. Surely, I don’t actually need forty-five minutes to talk about what those buttons do. Or I was thinking that I could make a special subcategory of Learning Curve videos called “Cheat Sheets.” That would be in keeping with the theme of learning and lessons and school. The video I shot yesterday could be the full lesson in which I explain everything. But then I could condense the information down to just the essentials and make a twelve-minute Cheat Sheet video in which I demonstrate just what each button is for. I could think of it as the Coles Notes to go along with the full video. At this point, I’ve talked about the buttons so much that I certainly have a clear idea of what I want to say.
A big issue is that I didn’t really understand the buttons and the camera as well as I thought I did. Plus, while shooting the video, I would demonstrate on the camera the things I was saying. And it turned out that some of the things I had read (and not yet tested) turned out not to be true. In the manual, for example, the DJI company says that the Power Button serves as an Exit button when you are in the settings menu of the camera. I made a big deal out of that, but when I tried to demonstrate that, nothing happened. It turned out that pressing the Power Button while in the settings menu does nothing. The manual is outdated or just plain wrong.
I also found that some of the topics I broached were far more complex than I imagined, and I didn’t fully understand them. Several times, I had to stop filming and invest ten minutes in studying the camera. Then I could go back and finish filming that section with the new information I’d picked up. In the end, I managed to complete the video. Unfortunately, in terms of the raw material I need, that is only the first step. This video consisted of me simply sitting in front of my main camera while holding the Pocket 2 in my hand. The Pocket 2 is too far away and too small in the video for anyone to see what I’m doing clearly. So I also need detailed closeups of the Pocket 2 in action. That is going to require a completely new camera setup and filming technique. And I’ve never done anything like that before, and I don’t really have the right equipment for it. It will take a lot of time and effort to get that done. My plan is to edit the raw video I shot yesterday. And when that is done, I will have a clear idea of the closeups that I need and where I could insert them.
I just remembered that I copied this raw video onto the Mac. My plan is to make this Learning Curve video the first full video I edit and export on this laptop. Since the video files are here, I can check the timestamps and figure out exactly how much time I spent on the actual filming. I spent probably two hours working on the script and the setup beforehand before I started recording the video itself.
I just checked, and the time investment was not as great as I imagined. The first video was shot at 9:50 and the last one at 11:40. Call it two hours of filming. It felt much longer than that. A funny thing is that while I did this, I set up a GoPro in my room to capture it all as a timelapse. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m endlessly fascinated by timelapse videos. I even spent some time editing that timelapse. I cleaned it up, added some music, and then uploaded it to the Learning Curve channel. It has no educational value, so it doesn’t really belong on the channel, but I like to have fun with my cameras and inject a personal flavor to the videos I make. I’m very much the amateur YouTuber.
Just for fun, I loaded the raw video into iMovie just now to check the total length, And, unfortunately, it is over an hour long. But before I knew it, I’d spent thirty minutes editing the video. I can’t help myself. It’s fun. But I’m back. I could sense that if I kept at it, I would get so involved that I would never get on the scooter for the trip.
Speaking of the trip, I haven’t fully thought through how I’m going to document it on video. I may not even end up going to Sukhothai. A friend of mine heard about my plans, and he warned me that Sukhothai is still heavily flooded, and it might not be wise to go there. I think it would be fine, but it did get me thinking that, for my purposes, I don’t really have to go as far as Sukhothai. I could just as easily go to Sam Ngao and then to Tak City. Despite Tak being so close, I’ve never been there. I could happily spend a couple of days there hanging out and exploring. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that might be the wiser choice. I have a lot on my mind, and adding Sukhothai into the mix might be too much. A more casual trip to Tak might suit my mood better.
What I’m thinking is that Sukhothai is a big tourist attraction and a historical park. It is Thailand’s version of Angkor Wat. Therefore, any trip there would require a lot of exploring of ruins and the study of the history of Thailand. And my brain is currently so consumed with thoughts of cameras and video and computers that I’m not sure I have the brain cells available right now to fully immerse myself in Thai history. Staying in Sam Ngao and Tak would probably be better, and I can simply immerse myself in the casual pleasures of a new town. I can go back to my video roots of simply walking around and filming. That would be easier and perhaps more pleasurable than trying to do justice to a major scooter trip plus exploring extensive ruins.
Yes, I think I’ve already made up my mind. I’m going to call an audible and make this a trip to Tak City.
Oddly enough, I’m still thinking about starting an English-teaching YouTube channel, and I thought one of the things I could do is teach English phrases and idioms, particularly the ones that I use in my own Planet Doug videos. I recently used that expression call an audible in one of my videos, and I thought that would be an interesting phrase to teach.
I doubt very much that I can come up with enough time to run an English-teaching channel on top of a technology channel on top of a vlog channel. But my idea is that I can least dabble in each one, and if one particular type of video becomes popular or feels right to me, then I can shift my efforts to focus on that channel and let the other ones fade away. To be honest, focused technology and language videos suit me better than the typical YouTube vlog videos. I like the practical. And I get consistent comments from viewers saying that they use my vlog videos to learn English. They appreciate the clear and deliberate manner in which I speak. And I like the idea of helping people learn English. It is a project I could sink my teeth into, and I could draw on my decades of experience as a teacher and editor and voice recorder.
However, I would have to be very clear on a number of things beforehand. I would have to be very clear about the audience for the videos. Do I want to make videos for beginners? For intermediate learners? For advanced students? Do I want to focus on grammar? On vocabulary? On practical dialogues and phrases for certain situations? Would they be casual talking-about-English videos? Or would they be intended as follow-along, practical, practice lessons?
But a lot of these thoughts would be explored as I made my first videos. The best way to learn is to just get started.
I’ve reached a crossroads this morning. It is 4 a.m. now. And I do feel tired. I can try to go back to sleep for an hour or two. But that could mean a late start to the day. As much work as I put into packing yesterday, I’m still so overwhelmed with new technology that it will take time to finalize my packing this morning. Getting packed to the point of actually having my backpack strapped to the scooter will likely take two hours in total. So if I wake up at seven, I probably won’t make it onto the road until nine-thirty. And that’s too late for me. I want to be on the road much earlier than that.
I think I will just shoulder the burden of being fatigued throughout today and just officially start the day now. I think the excitement of being on the road will carry me through my fatigue once I get started. I can always sleep early in Sam Ngao.
I mentioned I’m not sure what to do about video and documenting this trip. One thing I want to do is use the Relive app to keep a complete record of the trip so that I can produce a nice map at the end of it. So, I’m going to do that today. But what about my cameras? I want to use my new Pocket 2 as my main vlogging camera. So I will have a GoPro mounted on the scooter. But when I stop at various places, I won’t use the GoPro. I’ll use the Pocket 2 instead. I’ll leave the GoPro on the scooter or I’ll just pop it off and toss it into my knapsack. I’ve never switched between cameras like that before. I’m not sure how that will work out.
And there is the question of whether I want to record myself talking as I ride the scooter or only record the times when I stop. As I said, I’m not quite sure how to handle this.
There is also this idea of whether to attempt to be cinematic and creative or not. There is this standard YouTube vlog thing, for example, where a physical situation gets documented in rapid jump cuts. So, rather than filming a long sequence of me packing up and loading up the scooter while talking, I’d treat it like a little movie. I’d film a closeup of zippers being closed, straps being tightened, keys being put in ignition, the engine roaring, etc. And then you slap it all together in quick cuts to illustrate getting the scooter ready in five or ten seconds. The idea is to make a fun and entertaining movie instead of a video where I’m just talking about whatever I’m thinking about or doing.
Anyway, it is time to switch gears and start getting ready for the day.