Tag Archives: YouTube (Mine)
The Passing Scene
“Life is like looking out of the window while sitting in a train. You have no control over what appears in view. There’s even the moment after the train has paused, when it imperceptibly begins moving again. The appearance is that the train is motionless, but the scenery outside the window is moving. That, too, is a view that life sometimes gives us, a falsely relative view. We make no attempt to control the scene observed outside the train, knowing that wishing that it was something that it isn’t would be useless. And so it is, for the person who relaxes into Absolute awareness. Whatever passes across the screen of consciousness, whatever the organism experiences, is viewed dispassionately. The viewer acknowledges that all things change, and merely witnesses the changes impartially.”
— Abiding In Nondual Awareness (Robert Wolfe)
Suzuki Roshi on the inner experience of Zen: “The sights we see from the train will change, but we are always running on the same track. And there is no beginning or end to the track.”
Teaching Chinese
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One morning I noticed a gentleman sitting on the other side of the coffee shop flipping through a big stack of 3×5 cards. It was obvious he was using them as flash cards so I took a peek and saw what I assumed were Chinese characters (pictographs?) I introduced myself and asked about the cards.
The man’s name is Landis Duffett and he teaches languages at one of the local high schools. Beginning this fall he will teach a couple of sections of Chinese and he’s using the cards to get ready.
A couple of days ago we chatted for a bit about how he got interested in teaching Chinese; how the language differs from others (Spanish, French, Germans, etc); and the growing influence of China in all areas. The video runs just over six minutes.
Jay Parks – Drummer
Jay Parks drums for the sheer joy of it. Most afternoons he can be found sitting in his truck (waiting to pick up his wife when she gets off work) drumming along with tunes on local radio stations. He was kind enough to let me record a minute or two. I don’t think Under the Boardwalk by the Drifters would have been his first choice but he’s a trooper. As I drove away I could hear him keeping time to Ike and Tina’s Proud Mary.
I recorded this video back in 2012 and would have sworn I posted here but I can’t find it.
ScreenFlow animation tools
ScreenFlow started as a screen capture tool but morphed into a full-featured video editing app. This morning I’ve been fooling around with the animation tools.
Yard & Garden playlist
Google continues to improve the tools on YouTube (although I suppose that’s a subjective assessment). I’ve been on something of an organizing binge of late and updated a playlist of videos showing the hard work Barb has put into the yard and garden. 18 videos so you won’t want to watch them all. Click the three tiny lines/arrow in top-left corner to see all videos in the list.
Rain or Shine
Barb is soaking up the sun in Destin while here at home we’re just soaking. Always happy to have rain.
And she closes out a beautiful day at the beach this a lovely sunset.
Mastodon: Ash Furrow
Mastodon is a microblogging platform, often compared to Twitter. If you’re not familiar with Mastodon, you can probably skip this interview. Ash Furrow is the administrator of one “instance” of Mastodon. In this 25 minute interview he answers the questions below.
- Would you mind telling us a little about yourself? What do you do when you’re not feeding and caring for Mastodon.Technical?
- How did you get involved with the Mastodon movement?
- When did Mastodon.Technical go live? Do you recall who was Tooter #1?
- Are you (now or previously) active on other social media platforms?
- While a lot of people are apparently happy with Facebook and Twitter, many others are fleeing and looking for something else. What’s happening?
- What are the important differences between Mastodon and the more established social platforms?
- There have been no shortage of Twitter “replacements” but few have gotten traction. Is Mastodon different? Why?
- The “federation” concept seems pretty simple to me but I keep reading about users who find it confusing. Is this a problem?
- Are there instances operated by hate groups? Have you had to ban users from your instance?
- What is the biggest misconception about Mastodon?
- How much time do you invest each week working on your Mastodon instance?
- As it grows, do you feel trapped in any sense?
- As the admin for your instance, you are — I assume — all powerful. You’ve published user guidelines, have you had to exercise that power?
- What would you like the Mastodon Federation to look like a year from now?
Renaming files in Apple Photos
Once upon a time file names could only be a certain length. Was 7 characters for he name and 3 or the extension? 8 characters for the name? I can’t recall but somewhere along the way this limitation was lifted and we can name a file something useful. But I never developed the discipline to take advantage of this and have some old files with names like 4777959349_o.jpg . In my OCD moments this bugs me and I might take a few minutes (or a few days) and rename offending files.
I rarely see file names in iPhoto (I refuse to call it Apple Photos), just the Title I enter when adding photo. But my buddy George Kopp pointed out I can change the file name to the Title when exporting images for backup. This short screencast (4 min) shows this feature.