April 9, 2016

I should have gone to bed awhile ago. I'm tired.

I woke up earlier than I thought I would today but I got to sleep in so that was nice. Most of my day was spent figuring things out for my video tutorial. I worked on the script, the video layout, and my microphone. For the script I haven't even made it up to making the flyer, which is annoying. I think tomorrow I'm going to record a dry run just to see what more I need to add into the script and to get a sense for how long the presentation will be.

For the video layout I think I'm going to have the browser on most of the screen, have a smaller picture of the flyer on the upper right, and have a list of things that will be covered on the lower right. At least that's the plan now.

I tried both of my microphones and I'm going to go with my first one because it doesn't really pick up my mouse or keyboard. I also noticed when recording with OBS my audio would drop out randomly for a fraction of a second. I had already planned on recording audio in Audacity as well, just in case, but now Audacity will be the source for audio and I'll just mute my microphone in OBS.

My main concern is still the captions. That is going to be a pain in the ass. Not only having to focus more on what I'm saying because it is also going to show up in text, but also have to put all that text in the video. And worrying about what is on screen and if it is going to be blocked by the text. I will feel better about things if I can get the video recorded tomorrow and then have a week to worry about the captions. That would be ideal.

Tonight I “helped” with the teen night at the public library. The quotes are because I kind of felt unnecessary most of the night. The librarian in charge said she usually has twenty or twenty-five kids but tonight there were six. The first activity involved a scavenger hunt of sorts around the library and I was in charge of one of the stations. The kids had to do an activity, get a clue, and find the next station. It was all based on the 5^th Wave trilogy and my station involved the kids identifying three symptoms of five different illnesses and diseases. It was really a crap shoot and I ended up helping out quite a bit because we would have been there all night if I hadn't.

After the scavenger hunt the kids made crossbows with pencils, pens and rubber bands that shot Q-Tips. Then there was a brief attempt at makerspace stuff but that didn't really work out. Next there was a failed attempt at a capture the flag type game. Originally it was going to be in the dark but it was too hard to tell when the Nerf darts were going through the hula hoops (which was a part of the game). It was also kind of hard to do the capture the flag part because there were only two small lanes to get to the other team's side so no one could actually get across. The final nail in the coffin was being unable to find the light switches to turn on the lights so we could see. I think the game has potential in a different space.

The next game was Monkey Sand, which had a seeker with their eyes closed and the people who were not it trying to stay off the ground. If the seeker said “monkey sand” when someone was on the ground than that person became the seeker. This was kind of a fail because there were too many places for the kids to stand off the floor so the “monkey sand” didn't work and there was too much space to move around to stay away from the seeker. Also, one of the girls fell while jumping to a different spot and got a giant knot on her knee.

The final game was freeze tag, which was also kind of a fail. It included almost the entire bottom floor of the library and that was probably too much space for such a small group. The first kid who was it lost interest so one of the other kids took over. The rest of the game involved him running around freezing people and then the remaining people unfreezing them. It only ended when the kids started losing interest and stopped unfreezing each other. It was also a little terrifying watching the kids, and one of the adults, running at full speed around the library, which is all hard surfaces.

I had been told I would only be there from 5:30PM to 7:30PM but I ended up being there until after 9:00PM. It was helpful having me there for the scavenger hunt but after that I was kind of just there. I'm decent at talking to young kids thanks to working at an elementary school but don't have much experience with teens. The other adults and the teens also had previous relationships from the library and other teen events so that kind of made me feel like an outsider. I'm not great at inserting myself into social situations. I need to be invited in and given time to warm up to people. We never really reached that tonight.

I was going to do things when I got home tonight but that was when I thought I'd be home two hours earlier. Instead I ate a late dinner, replied to a discussion post, watched some livestreams, and played a couple video games to get my daily rewards. And now I'm going to bed because good grief.

Tomorrow I want to record my tutorial video. That's the main goal. If I could come up with a new tech and maybe even write that post, that would be great. I also need to respond to another discussion post or two. And probably do some other things. The tutorial is the priority though.