April 17, 2016

 I stayed in bed until almost ten o'clock this morning. It may have been nine o'clock but I'm pretty sure it was ten o'clock. Part of me was enjoying being comfortable in bed instead of sitting at a computer and editing a video. And part of me was thinking about how I wanted to edit my video. Always thinking.

When I finally got out of bed, I spent more time tinkering with my title screen. Despite all the variations I tried I ended up going with the plain Canva logo with the logo I made the other night in Hexels, on top of a background that I got from the Canva homepage. Would have saved myself a lot of time had I not tried to complicate things in the beginning. I went with the same screen for the end of the video when I wrap things up.

I also added in the tiny transparent version of the logo I made in Hexels to the lower right corner of the video as a type of watermark. I had to move it for the time-lapse portion because it was on top of the Help button in Canva. After trying a lot of different stuff and moving it around a pixel at a time, I finally got it positioned under the tabs in the menu on the left side of the screen in Canva.

The last thing I had to do was come up with the list of objectives to put on the on-screen notepad. That took longer than it probably should have because the objectives I listed in my opening were pretty broad. And I wasn't going to think up more specific ones and re-record the audio. I ended up trying to be a little more specific based on what I actually talked about throughout the video and threw in some broad things, too.

Then I watched the video a couple times before rendering a final copy of it, double-checking that it wasn't muted this time. About twenty minutes later it was finished and I uploaded it to YouTube. I watched it once through once it was up just to make sure nothing weird happened in the upload. After determining it looked as I intended it to, I submitted the link. Fingers crossed I didn't miss something horribly obvious. I think I covered everything but part of me always worries. In my other class this semester I kind of missed part of the point of the license review assignment and got a point off, so there's a precedent. Based purely on the amount of time and effort I put into recording and editing the video I should get full points. And probably extra points because it is up there with building websites in my web design class in terms of time spent. I much prefer this type of work over writing a paper because I'm actually creating something, but it is way more time intensive.

I will say, one of the things I am proudest of in this assignment is getting my video to be exactly seven minutes long. It was supposed to be between five and seven minutes long. I had a fairly decent amount of control over the length due to the time-lapse portion, which I was able to adjust to fit my time constraints. I would have liked to add in more of an intro and outro but making the time-lapse any faster would have made it kind of pointless. When I rendered the video out it was six minutes and fifty-nine seconds long. Several years ago I learned from watching VlogBrothers videos on YouTube, where John and Hank Green make videos to each other with a four-minute time limit, that YouTube adds one second to videos. In the case of the Green brothers, if they went over four minutes they had to go through a punishment, and I think at some point there was a debate whether going one second over counted because the original video was four minutes. Anyway, the point it I knew a second would be added by YouTube, so I made my video one second short, and when it was uploaded to YouTube it came out at exactly seven minutes. I like it.

I honestly cannot remember what sparked the idea last night but during a break from video editing I started looking up fountain pens and fell down the rabbit hole. Over the years I will occasionally become intrigued by the idea but that intrigue has hit new heights. Between last night and today I have watched hours of videos about fountain pens. Reviews, how to clean, how to turn cartridge and converter pens into eye dropper pens, unboxings, and I even dipped into ink, paper, and journal reviews. I discovered The Goulet Pen Company and the owner makes YouTube videos. I've watched so many of them at this point. And gotten lost on the website.

I like the idea of writing in a subtle green ink and it seems like fountain pens, with the ridiculous amount of ink options, is the way to achieve that. It also seems very classic and also very adult to write with a fountain pen. In the last few days I have become more interested in being an adult. I went and bought jeans for the first time ever by myself of Friday. That is not really a big deal but it is for me. I got out of my comfort zone by volunteering at the public library and I got way out of my comfort zone on Friday with the whole adventure of meeting the librarian to talk about a practicum. It kind of feels like I'm on the verge of finally being an adult. A lot of that probably has to do with my impending graduation. Although not until August, walking in May will make it feel pretty real. And this one feels a lot more real than the two times I walked for my undergrad degrees. I just need to turn this degree into a real job.

But going back to the pen thing, a fountain pen is just one more thing that feels adult. I want to get an inexpensive cartridge pen just to feel things out and see how I like it. I have learned that there are quite a few inexpensive pens out there that are actually pretty decent. I was always concerned about leaking but that really doesn't seem to be a very big issue. They can be a bit messy when refilling from a bottle but that isn't an problem with cartridges, although the ink selection isn't as great with cartridges. I also think part of my worry comes from thinking of quills, not fountain pens, and working with an open bottle of ink, constantly having to dip it in. Along those lines, I learned tonight that glass pens are a thing, which is kind of quill-like I guess because you have to dip the pen in constantly to get ink to go up the little groves on the end of the glass pen, but it is cool as hell. They are apparently good for testing ink samples because you only need a little bit of ink for that and the glass pen is much easier to clean.

It feels like I've rambled all over the place with this pen thing. The bottom line is I want to get an inexpensive fountain pen to try it out and see if it is for me. I also want to get a collection of practice books for the Spencerian method of writing so I can improve my penmanship. It seems like working on that with a fountain pen would allow me to practice with the pen while improving my handwriting. Two birds with one stone. Very adult.

Have I rambled enough for one entry? I think so. It's creeping up on midnight and I have to wake up for work. MAP testing starts tomorrow. Hooray. I logged into the MAP site tonight just to make sure I remembered how to. I was glad to see the test sessions I created last time were still there, because that is something I didn't think about until tonight. I'll just have to add in the new kids, which shouldn't be too hard. Now I'll get to keep track of both MAP and state assessments. Oh joy.