One Year with A GoPro

Lights. Camera. Action!

I finally got another video uploaded. Since you’re here to read instead of watch a YouTube I’ll tell you about it.

Last August I received a GoPro for my birthday from my brother and his family and our parents. They went splitsies on it and surprised me. Over the past year I have, of course, been using it. I wasn’t content to simply use it to video action shots and underwater, though. I know that’s GoPro’s main attraction and it does it well.

I wanted more.

I learned that birds aren’t camera shy. I set the camera on the bird feeder stand and got great shots of the finches feeding. I set the camera on a tripod just a few feet from the bird bath that we converted to a bird feeder. Though it was for bigger birds – blue jays, crows, stupid pigeons, and the occasional grackle. We put peanuts in it.  They loved the peanuts and we loved watching them pick the nuts from the shell. The camera got them loud and clear while we were inside not scaring the birds.

I learned that I can use it to spy on my kids. I set the camera up, slightly hidden, in the bathroom. I would then wi-fi connect to it on my phone and DW and I could easily watch the boys “get ready for bed”. Here “get ready for bed” means wrestle, play in the water in the sink, scare the shit out of each other, and generally not “get ready for bed”. They never did figure out how we knew what they were doing without being up there.

I learned that it’s good for all 4 seasons. In the summer we take it pools and the beach and bike riding and roller blading and kayaking. In the fall it’s good for all that except the pool and beach, but it’s good for hiking then. Come winter it’s good for sledding and ice skating. In the spring we’re back to biking and blading and trampolining.

It’s also good if you just want to talk to your camera viewers. I still find it a bit weird to do, but if you see the video you’ll see that I do talk to it sometimes.

Anyway, the show goes from 40th birthday party to my 41st birthday party. I had to take a break after the clip of my birthday last year. DW’s dad is there and his arms are just a waving, conducting our severely out of tune, yet strongly heartfelt tune of Happy Birthday. I had to leave the video editing until the next day.

I’m still toying with the idea of a “sister sight” on YouTube to accompany my blog. Essentially, I would just be covering the same material only I would do it for others to watch instead of read. But really… where would I find the time to both blog and YouTube? Not like I have anything else to do…

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Trolls

In case you missed yesterday’s post about the war between the Bees and the Grass Goblins, check it out here. It’s a fun little story I made up for Bang while we were out playing in the backyard. It’s so fun playing with their imagination. And if any of you are artists and would like create the Grass Goblin from the story, that would be totally awesome and I would be totally grateful!

While yesterday’s story was purely fiction, today’s is true. As most of you know by now, Crash has a YouTube channel. He uses it share his Lego creations. I use it to show short clips of fun things we do. Anyway, he got his first troll last week. Whether it was an actual internet troll (not an under-the-bridge troll) or just a rude viewer, he got his first negative comment for this video – Building Lego Minifigures.

Crash doesn’t know about these comments. While he does have an email address his comments get shipped to, he rarely checks it. I saw the email and deleted it. I will show him the comments. It’s definitely a learning experience. He hasn’t been swayed. He still wants to make more LEGO creations to make videos about. He currently has two waiting for me upload, as a matter of fact.

Part of me wants to delete the comments.

Part of me wants to respond them. I’m sorry their life has led them to be so low as to have to respond negatively to an eight year’s YouTube video about LEGO. They must be proud of themselves (note sarcasm).

Part of me want show them to Crash and allow him to decide what would be the right thing to do. Leave them as is, delete them, or allow him to respond as he sees fit. I don’t want him to get discouraged, but at the same time he needs to learn how to accept things like this.

It wasn’t until just now, during the writing of this post last night, while capturing the screen shot of the comments that I noticed how many views that video has. He’ll be stoked when I show him that stat!

If you were his parent, how would you handle these comments? Would you respond to them yourself? Would you delete them? Would you show them? Would you allow them to respond? Let me know in the comments below.

photo credit: allposters.com

 

Science on youtube

There are a couple Youtube channels I keep an eye on. They’re both science related.

One is Michael here Stevens of Vsauce. While not strictly science, his videos are highly educational and entertaining. He answers everything from why “bad words” are bad to “Is the Earth really flat?” With 9 and half million subscribers, He must be doing something right.

The other is Derek Muller’s Veritasium. Born in Australia, moved to Canada as a kid, then moved back to Australia to do his PhD at Sydney University. His videos are all based on science and engineering and are also very educational. He understands how we learn and his videos are conducive to the methods he studied in his PhD.  He has a following of nearly 3 million. He covers everything from the truth of the swirl in the southern hemisphere to explaining the magnus effect.

Crash and Bang are currently obsessed with Minecraft parodies. These silly songs are all about minecraft, however, they’re sung to the tune to currently popular songs. Like Maroon 5’s Animal becomes “Craftable”. Or Eminem’s Friends with a Monster becomes “Friends with a Creeper”. We (meaning I) put a few of them on the cell phone so the boys could listen to them in the truck. The tough part is checking them to make sure they’re okay. None of these songs have swear words. There was one song (The Creeper Rap) that sings of blowing up blocks like Al Qaeda and being a suicide bomber. That’s what a “Creeper” is in minecraft, but the boys don’t need to be hearing about such bombers. There’s a ban on that song in our house, now.

What do you watch on YouTube? Is there a particular channel you follow? Are you on YouTube? Feel free to leave a link to your channel in the comments for us to check out.