FANCY DINNERS = TIRED

So I just got back from Oregon last night and found myself prepping for a fancy dinner with family friends all day.  I got some stuff filmed just now, but none of it's really good except for me messing around a bit on camera.  Since I'm not going to upload for the sake of uploading, I'm going to start my video-a-day marathon tomorrow.  And I may take a cue from Dr. Noise and make weekend vlogging optional.  Don't worry, I have a definite video planned for tomorrow along with a stupidly long backlog of ideas, so I really will get on it tomorrow.  I just have to finish my yardwork in the morning, nap, shower, and hit the ground running on my vlog.  And since I'm going to be up tomorrow at 7:00 to do yardwork, sleep time is NOW (another reason why I'm not going to put time into a so-so vlog entry for today).  Goodnight, all!

An Excuse and a Lot of Awesome

So you may have noticed I still haven't posted a video after Life in a Day.  Well, I might not have done my own video recently, but I did shoot and compile footage for another person's compilation video.  That person is known as RoxinPunch on YouTube, and she is awesome.  I'm really sad that I didn't cross paths with her at VidCon, because I really would have liked to talk to her about vlogging and building an audience (she just broke 1000 subscribers).  Anyway, she should have a video coming out soon and it's possible that some of my footage will be in it.  Whether or not it is, you should keep an eye out for the video, and if you are a subscribing type of person, subscribe to her channel.  I think you'll be happy.  She's got quite a persona. http://www.youtube.com/roxinpunch

Now if your name is Lizzle, you've been sitting around for two weeks wondering WHERE ARE THESE VIDEOS JULIA SHOT AND PROMISED.  Well, bad news, I was moving all of last week, got home from summer research yesterday, and am leaving for a short family road trip five minutes ago.  I'll be gone until Friday, but I promise that I'll upload one video per day (no strict midnight deadline) when I get back, at least for the two weeks until I go back to school.  It's a short term way to clear out some idea clutter and get some vlogging practice.  And the reason that I didn't edit and upload a video yesterday was this: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2269863/Less_Wrong  This is the profile page for the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfiction where Harry Potter, due to certain circumstances, grew up to be very much like Artemis Fowl.  It is scientific, rational, silly, and absolutely hilarious.  There's a whole section that reads rather like Ender's Game.  And it is AWESOME.  I linked to you the author's profile instead of directly to the story because I encourage you to click the PDF download link from that page.  If you download the PDF, it looks almost EXACTLY like an actual Harry Potter book.  Be warned, it can be very hard to put down.

Okay, I'll be back on Friday or Saturday to start my video-a-day marathon.  Have a great week, everyone!

Life in a Day

After fighting with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 for a few hours, I finished my project.  More to come soon now that I've re-overcome my mild distaste for editing video (to be fair, I think I shot more than 80 video clips for this project.  I had a right to not want to deal with that).  I still haven't figured out why YouTube is lowering the quality of my video, but I'm going to work that out ASAP and re-upload when the problem is fixed.  Anyway, this is my life in a day.

I'm hoping to get less awkward on camera with time.  I think I'm on my way, though.  Just got to take myself a little less seriously, because it worked when I did.

I'm in love with vlogs and I feel fine

Okay, so you all are probably wondering why I've been radio silent so much recently after PROMISING that I would have videos up ASAP and after I had already filmed four like a week ago.  There are four primary reasons for this:

1) I have been busy.  This ranges from standard work hours through my entire Sunday (and I mean ENTIRE Sunday) being suddenly and completely unexpectedly taken up by the most awesome (well, only) session of D&D I've ever played (more tomorrow, yay!).  I'm so glad I've found an RPG setting that suits me.  Also, I've been plowing through books that were due back at the library today (I think I'm going to do a full video on The 4-Hour Workweek).  However, I was busy when I was doing daily blogs before, right?  What's different now?  Well...

2) Once something becomes a responsibility instead of a diversion, I start avoiding it like the plague, no matter what it is.  This, combined with my fear of success, fear of failure, and general tendencies toward procrastination make it nearly impossible for me to get anything done.  Fortunately, this is slightly countered by the fact that I now feel guilty about wasting time watching online videos because it reminds me that I have videos of my own to make, driving me back towards the work at hand.  

3) I hate my video editing software.  It's Adobe Premiere Elements 4, and it runs about as smoothly on my computer as Velcro on carpet.  

4) Life in a Day.  That is the big project going on right now (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/07/07/youtube-film-life-in-a-day-to-employ-user-generated-content/).  All Saturday I was running around with my camera trying to shoot interesting video of my life.  Unfortunately, my friend's cool event got delayed by a few days and my office was locked so I couldn't film my kissy-face crayfish interactions.  However, I got some footage and answered the Life in a Day questions, so now all I have to do is edit my video together by the end of this Saturday.  This video is really the wrench in the works.  Not only does it preempt my other videos, but it falls into the traps outlined in numbers 2 and 3 above.  

The good news is that Life in a Day has also convinced me that vlogging is the path I want to take.  Just a few minutes ago, I started reviewing the footage.  Even as I watched myself bungling lines, I found myself smiling, and I mean really smiling.  This statement comes from a girl who suffered a great deal of self-hatred during a bout of clinical depression which has left a rather significant scar, so please realize that this is something of a big deal.  I like watching my videos, even unedited.  I think I'm fun to watch, at least for me.  That's all that counts, really.  No matter who ends up watching my videos, whether it's 5 people or 5,000, I will always be able to look back on them, see myself as I am today, and smile.  Vlogging is my path, and I'm getting back on the bandwagon ASAP (well, after a full day of work and D&D tomorrow).  I'll have to have my Life in a Day video up by Saturday, anyway (well, that may go unlisted, but we'll see).  

DFTBA,

Julia

I'm back (and will be back more shortly)!

I've just gotten over myself and my self-consciousness to film four videos that will be making their way on to YouTube over the next fortnight or so.  My hair doesn't look up to snuff, but that's part of the point.  I can't wait for all of the stars to align to make a video; that kind of attitude is what's been keeping me from working on any so far.  It's time to make the leap into YouTube head on in HD, even if my head is covered with what are now highly-visible acne scars.  For anyone who cares, here are the topics of the videos I shot tonight:

1) General news about vlogging and VidCon
2) Indiana Jones
3) An analysis of the song "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast (this one may or may not make it to YouTube)
4) A personalized video for one of my blog readers (it could be YOU, but statistically probably not).

Anyway, the videos may not be perfect, but I'm going in knowing that the only way to get better is to PRACTICE.  Stay tuned for the actual videos!

DFTBA,

Julia

The End of an Era

Okay, I came to a realization today.  A multi-part, rather verbose revelation.

1) Putting myself on a daily blogging schedule/midnight deadline is really cutting down my quality.
2) I'm involved enough in my blogging/vlogging now that removing the one-a-day limitation is NOT going to cause me to go into a slippery spiral of not posting anymore.
3) When I write blogs, I am now starting to see them as vlogs in my head.   This is because, as I have been told, I write like I talk.  I can't script, but I can blog.  I SEE A SOLUTION.

In combination, this tells me that many of the blog entries I write from now on are going to be turned into vlogs.  I'm not going to stop blogging - not by a long shot - but there's going to be a shift.  This shift includes no more one-a-day blogs, at least not in an enforced manner.  Midnight deadlines will be flouted.  Time will be spent planning and editing blogs and vlogs.  Quality will increase.  And everyone will be happier (honestly, how many of you wanted to read something by me EVERY SINGLE DAY?  It's a little overwhelming).

Thank you all for supporting me thus far.  I hope you'll all stick with me through the transition.  I really look forward to what comes next - I have been planning it since at least April, after all.

DFTBA,
Julia

VidCon Day One, Part One:

I'm not going to record every awesome moment here - that would just be mean.  Instead, I'm going to try to make this concise (the first paragraph after this fails - sorry) and keep the rest of this in a journal somewhere. You don't need all the gory details.  

So after staying up way too late watching Twilight: Eclipse, I woke up around 7:30 to shower, wash my hair, and pack my bag.  For the record, I got about 4.5 hours of sleep that night.  This will become more important as these posts go on, trust me.  Around 9:40 I picked up my carpool buddy and off we went to VidCon.  The drive was about an hour long, so we got to talk a little bit.  Apparently she's kind of a big deal with the higher-ups at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/ and had friends who went to Disneyland with Charlie McDonnell the day before.  Yeah, she's kind of connected.  It was really cool listening to her talk about her experiences with the online community - she really inspired me to follow in her footsteps.

We arrived.  She had places to go - she got recruited to help out by her friends - so after registering, getting my badge, and picking up my VidCon bag with my shirt and various goodies, I was alone at VidCon.  At first, I was a little overwhelmed.  This wasn't helped by the fact that within about two minutes of arriving I saw this guy:

and this guy:

just standing out in the lobby area in real life and 3D.

Now I'll admit, I've never actually watched Chocolate Rain all the way through, but that was one of the early defining videos of YouTube.  That guy is legend.  The second video, though, that's one of my all-time favorites.  I used to have it memorized (probably still do).  I knew that video well enough that I remembered that the guy who made it is named Corey Vidal even though I hadn't seen it in months.  In fact, when my friend heard the video playing out of another friend's room back in winter, she knew instantly that I was responsible.  That's how much I love this video.  So when I saw a familiar-looking tall guy hanging out in the lobby area of the conference and then suddenly realized who he was, I may have goggled slightly.  When he looked over and caught me staring, I got supremely embarrassed and couldn't work up the courage to talk to him for the rest of the day.  

I did, however, see someone who I had not heard was going to be there.  One of the very first people I was ever exposed to on YouTube.  One of my original YouTube idols, you might say.  If you know me, you probably know him from this video:

Hell yeah.  Joe Bereta (the one with the beard in the video.  Sadly, I never found Luke, but apparently he was totally there.  Argh).  I walked up to him and told him how much I loved his videos and how big "Bible in a Minute" was at my high school.  He seemed genuinely happy to talk to me.  I even got his autograph.  And that, my friends, was when VidCon's awesome began to fully manifest.

I'm going to cut the story off here for now because it's already way too long.  To be continued tomorrow.

***

Now onto non-VidCon related items.

Finally, I would like to point out that I can't hold any of you responsible for not subscribing to my YouTube channel, as it was apparently on private.  However, I can hold you accountable for not figuring this out and telling me.  Now a stranger in the Nerdfighters chat room gets the privilege of being my first subscriber.  

My new camera arrived today and I know exactly what I want my first few videos to be.  Well, almost exactly.  It's going to require a bit of scripting, but I think I've laid the groundwork for a YouTube series, at least in the notes I've taken in the spare seconds I find during work.  I love the title I came up with, too.  I just hope it comes out as I envision it and that other people find it worth watching.  I really think it has potential, after I spend a few episodes ironing the wrinkles out.  I'll get to do two things I love - be informative and entertain people.  The only reasons I'm not filming right now is that my cold in combination with my slowly receding acne attack make me look like Rudolph after acupunture gone horribly wrong.  

Also, I haven't ordered the ukulele yet, but it still seems like a likely thing to happen.  Can't remember if I've already written this, but I figure the worst thing that happens is I can't songwrite/sing to save my life and I end up still knowing how to play ukulele.  

SHAMELESS PLUG http://www.youtube.com/tropegirl SHAMELESS PLUG