Monday, December 13, 2021
7:26 a.m. Room 21
Tha Song Yang Hill Resort Hotel
Tha Song Yang, Thailand
I don’t know how much energy I have for recording my random thoughts this morning. I thought I was fully rested and awake and ready to go today, but I’m clearly not. My brain isn’t working at all. I don’t know what is wrong with me these days. I think I’ve just made my life far too complicated. It’s so complicated that I can’t keep track of the details anymore. Once more yesterday, I hopped on the scooter and rode all the way into town without a helmet. I completely forgot to put it on. Not only that, I didn’t even realize I hadn’t worn it until much later. Such forgetfulness is unheard of in my life. But in recent days, weeks, and months, it has become commonplace. Of course, I blame YouTube. It’s always YouTube.
Yesterday was supposed to be a big day in terms of getting YouTube-related things done. I had realized the night before that I had completely forgotten about the Relive video for my trip from Mae Sot to Tha Song Yang. Therefore, my first task for the day was to edit the final Relive video. And then I was going to move on to other things. In fact, I woke up in the morning expecting to have the final export of the Planet Doug video for that trip done. But there had been an error, and the file export hadn’t finished. I think the problem was that there wasn’t enough available memory. The lack of memory on this MacBook is a real problem. I still can’t figure out what is taking up all the memory. I delete all the files I can find, but the drive remains largely full. And I don’t know what is taking up all that space.
DaVinci Resolve is also frying a large part of my brain. I’m having endless trouble with it. It’s my own fault, of course. I’ve just been trying to use DaVinci Resolve casually and intuitively without doing the work of reading the manuals. I just haven’t had time to do any studying or reading. But DaVinci is not that kind of program. You just can’t just click on buttons and expect things to happen. It’s a massive program and it isn’t always intuitive. In fact, I’m finding many parts of it strange and difficult to understand. In order to keep using it, I have to set aside some time to start reading the manual and going through it methodically. That’s the only way to maintain my sanity. Either that or switch to another editing program. And that’s probably what I should do. Why invest days of study in DaVinci Resolve when it probably isn’t an appropriate program for me? I should hold off on that effort until I make a decision. I will probably end up using Filmora. I’d like to at least give it a try.
My trouble with DaVinci Resolve is compounded by my troubles understanding this MacBook. It continues to baffle me in many ways. The lack of memory is probably the biggest problem. But I also struggle with understanding how to do the most basic things. I don’t understand how or why the most basic things seem so complicated to do or even missing entirely. I keep wanting to move files from one folder to another as I organize my YouTube life. Yet, there is no “move” option in the menus. If I right click on a file, I get all the normal options like copy and move to trash and rename. But there is no option to simply move the file to a new folder. That is a common command on Windows machines. I use it all the time. It’s convenient. But there doesn’t appear to be such a command anywhere in the world of Apple. It’s so weird. And when you work your down into a heiriarchail structure of embedded folders, the back button doesn’t take you back up one level at a time. Instead, it takes you back to the last folder you opened. And I get confused by that all the time. And I come across so many things like that.
These problems combined in such a way that just editing the simple Relive video took all morning. It took hours, when it should have taken less than half an hour. I really want to stop using the MacBook and just edit video on my phone again. And I would, except that it takes such a long time to copy files. That’s the big stumbling block there.
Once I’d sort of finished the Relive video, which I did rather badly, I took a break from video. I wanted to come to grips with a new way of mounting the GoPro on the scooter. I’ve become tired of constantly wiring the GoPro to the mirror stalk with the Jaws Flex Clamp. It’s become a major pain. I really should have taken the time in Mae Sot to order some kind of new clamp to figure out a permanent attachment system. But I didn’t. And over the last couple of days, I’ve tried to figure out a hack using the gear I have with me. I started first with the curved bracket that I have. This is the one that is designed to attach to a helmet. But right from the start, it was clear it would never work. It is simply too flexible and twisty. And then I had the idea to dismantle my 3-Way grip and use one of its sections or two of its sections as a permanent mount. It actually seemed like a good idea, and I thought it would work. It is extremely stiff and strong, and I found a good place to put it. Everything seemed possible, so I spent about an hour putting it in place with a complex system of heavy-duty tape and zip ties. But it didn’t work either. The mount itself was fine. It was solid and rigid and unmoving. But in order to use the RAM Mount tripod head, which uses the GoPro buckle mount, I had to use the usual series of adapters. And there was just enough flex in each adapter attachment point that the final result was a huge amount of flex. The GoPro bounced around like it was attached to a rubber band. It swung around so violently that it was clear that it was going to snap one of the mounting points. That was so sad. I had invested a lot of time and effort into attaching the mount. And then I had to take it all apart.
And then I had one more idea. I realized that I had one grip that had a GoPro buckle mount as its primary mount. It was firmly embedded in the grip itself, which is quite unusual. Using that, I wouldn’t have to use any adapters. And that might make it solid enough. And this grip was the GoPro floaty hand grip. Obviously, it is not designed to do this, but I thought I’d give it a try. I carry the darn thing around and never use it. I might as well try to put it to good use. And so I recreated my entire mounting system from the 3-Way extension arm to the floaty hand grip. I guess my brain had run out of steam by this point because I wasn’t nearly as methodical or careful in my approach. But I got it done, and the end result seems workable. I simply used a bunch of tape and zip ties to strap the hand grip to the mirror stalk. I kept adding more and more and more tape until it felt secure. And since this grip has a buckle mount at the top. I didn’t have to deal with adapters. I did a quick test with it, and it seemed to work just fine. The RAM Mount itself clips into the buckle mount on the Floaty grip, and the GoPro attaches to the finger mount at the top. I’m pretty happy with the result. I’m hoping that this will work for the rest of this scooter trip.