Friday, October 11, 2024
6:19 a.m. My Room in the House
Port Dickson, Malaysia
(1,355 words)
It’s been four days since I last wrote anything down, and, to be honest, I can’t remember what happened during those four days. Everything in my life feels like it is spinning out of control at the moment. But I suppose that that isn’t unusual. It feels like my life went off the rails and has been spinning out of control since the day I first starting making YouTube videos. But even though I can’t really remember what happened this week, I CAN remember yesterday. So I will start there, and then perhaps the previous three days will snap into focus.
I started yesterday by going to the Paklang Kopitiam. My goal was to upload two videos and to investigate Patreon. Uploading the videos went well. I wrote earlier about how I came up with some techniques to make the video sizes smaller and therefore easier to upload. And that has really worked. These were my last two videos from Vietnam. I almost didn’t even bother editing them. They seemed rather pointless, especially from the title I gave the file folders. One was about the day I went out in Dalat to buy a MicroSD memory card. The other video was about the day I went out to buy a memory card reader. However, once I started looking at the video clips, I realized that a fair number of things did happen on those days. It’s true that I was just running errands, but I combined that with walking around and exploring the city, and that made the video interesting enough for me to finish editing them.
Once I was done the editing, I exported the videos at 1080p using the H.265 codec. And that resulted in extremely long exporting times BUT very small file sizes. One video was shot in 4k 50FPS, and when exported in 1080p, it ended up 8GB in size. That is much smaller than my usual 80GB. It’s one-tenth the size. And the second video, which was actually shot in 1080p at 25FPS was only 4GB. I was able to upload both of them very quickly using the kopitiam’s Wi-Fi. That was a relief.
I also opened up Patreon and started working on that. However, I didn’t really get anything done. I found myself reading some support articles on Patreon and that’s about all I did. The article was mainly about choosing how many tiers to offer. It went through all the various options, and it discussed the benefits and downfalls to each option. And I have to say that I found the very first option to be attractive. This option was to offer only one tier. The advantage to this is that it keeps things simple for everyone. Plus, it allows you to figure out how Patreon works and then you add other tiers later on. It means you can move slowly and probably make far fewer mistakes. I think I’ve already decided that that is what I am going to do. It makes the most sense.
This article also encouraged people to NOT undersell themselves. It said that you should put an appropriate value on your work. Therefore, you should not choose $1/month or something like that. That is too little. As a minumum, they recommended $5/month. And I think they would be happier with $10. Of course, it makes sense for them to recommend a higher amount. The higher the amount, the more that Patreon itself would make as part of their cut. But I do like their recommendation. I’m fully aware of how much time is required to run a YouTube channel. You might as well value your work accordingly.
After I left the kopitiam, I returned to my room and set up my GoPros on my bicycle for a test run. I’ve been working on the broomstick approach to mounting GoPros on my bicycle, and I wanted to test it. I have to say that at the end of the day and now this morning, I’m feeling a bit depressed about all that. I do like my broomstick approach. As I talked about in the video, mounting cameras on a bicycle is difficult to do. And after much trial and error on my previous bike ride to Sumatra, I came up with this idea of attaching a broomstick to the frame of the bicycle, NOT to the handlebars. It worked well because the broomstick allowed me to mount a GoPro far enough ahead and high enough. Plus, by attaching the cameras to the frame of the bicycle, it kept them steady. The cameras did not swing back and forth as they would do if they were mounted on the handlebars.
And I have this memory of this system working fairly well in Sumatra. However, my testing yesterday seemed off somehow. The broomstick feels overwhelming. It’s too much. Having this big stick on the bicycle with two complex camera rigs felt awkward and distracting. And then when I watched the video afterwards, it looked bad to me. The camera was bouncing up and down too much on the broomstick. It looked bad because in the video, the background was stable, but I was jumping around like crazy. It looked weird. I don’t know why that was happening.
I felt quite depressed yesterday because I worked so hard on this mounting system. There were so many problems to overcome and I invested so much time in setting it up and testing different options. And at the end, it all felt like a waste of time.
This morning, I felt like abandoning the whole idea. I came up with another idea of attaching a shorter broomstick directly to the handlebars. It’s true that that this will mean that the camera will be swinging from side to side as the handlebars move. BUT there could be so many advantages that they might make up for that one disadvantage. These are the advantages that I can think of (assuming it works):
- The stick can be much shorter and lighter.
- I can put the short stick fully inside the trailer when not in use.
- Or maybe I can mount the shorter stick permanenty. Never remove it. Simpler.
- Being shorter, the stick might not bounce as much. It will be more rigid and solid.
- I can mount one camera on the stick and the second camera on the handlebars.
- The stick won’t be in the shot of the second camera.
- I can put the quick release mount on both cameras (since one won’t be upside down).
I think there are other advantages, but I can’t think of them right now. I’m definitely going to test this system out. I really want to keep things simpler.
I also spent a good chunk of time recently doing some laundry. I washed all my towels one day. Then I washed the DIY bag that I use to hold my bicycle lock. And yesterday, I washed my pants. I’m doing all this washing by hand in the bathroom, so it’s a bit of an effort. Next will come all my shirts. I also set up my tent and cleaned it. That tent really bugs me. It’s such a great tent in terms of its design, but all the waterproofing has already fallen off. AND the tent floor is sticky to the touch. I hate that. I also took out my sleeping bag and my sleeping pad to air them out and make sure they are in good condition. I have no idea whether I will really use any of this in Sumatra on this new bike trip, but I want to at least get it ready.
The next step will be to buy some gasoline for my stove and see if it still works at all.
I just remembered that I spent one day this week also working on the bicycle. On the same day that I mounted the broomstick, I also mounted the new Cateye bicycle computer. That took a lot longer than you’d think. It was quite difficult to do.