Archive for July 2022
Pool Rant and Back to America?
It's a good watch, not too long. And it's from the pool, which always puts me in a good mood. Watch, you'll see.
There is an audio issue, again, but I was able to use iMovie to mostly fix it. I figured out the source, this time. It's the inexpensive Redmi (or Xiaomi) Android phone. Really, at $300, it's perfectly adequate for everything else and it's slick. It's only 2 months new. I tripped and went down on my hip one night and my Samsung in my pocket got crushed. But, it still works. I'll have to do a test and perhaps it becomes my spider-web-screen mobile camera.
There's actually breaking news on my situation since yesterday, and this was recorded the day before.
So this is an essential preliminary watch before the next one.
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Mistaken For Richard Gere
You'll have to watch long enough into the video to get what the title is about. Funny.
Two days ago when I made my last video, partially in that same pool, I met a Thai woman, Nina, and her family.
Not just any Thai woman. What a life. World traveller, including 17 of the 50 in the USA. Much more, but no spoilers.
...It's not so much that my videos are good now, it's just that maybe I'm getting better. Content and such is always going to be the same or similar, but at least I can mix in elements and backgrounds to make them a bit more compelling—such that the watching it is also part of it. I can sit in front of my workstation and riff on "the latest big thing" and smaller things all day long. I have no idea how the folks who do that sort of thing possibly live with all the boredom and banality they ooze.
In this case, we begin with GoPro footage of the cafe racer ride from my place to Nai Harn beach to meet the friend. I cut 11 min of footage down to about 2-3. Then it's onto the phone, and little tour of the beach with insights about swimming if there are rip tides that drown people. Finally, over to Vivi Resort...where in the pool with Nina, her sister, and her niece, we cover some of her remarkable life history.
It's worth the sharing because it's cool.
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Steak Lunch, Pool Time, and a Valid Rebuke From The Girl
I tried something new.
Recording video from the phone and not my camera on the tripod while sitting at my desk, or the GoPro. Recorded on the phone, mashed and edited on the phone, uploaded to YouTube on the phone—all over the space of lunch and time in the pool. Getting it done happened in minutes right after the pool.
It's not only convenient, but affords me the flexibility to make video anywhere, doing anything...such that viewers get a more interesting and engaging background and more variety throughout any particular production.
The gist of this one is that I headed out to a favorite place, Vivi Rawai, Resort and Restaurant. Partially, I wanted to test this out and largely, it worked. I did 6 clips and then tossed them all together and published.
I cover the intro, an interlude of dose makes the poison, the steak, and then the pool where the serious part happens. My Thai Lady—33 years my junior—rebuked me and I couldn't ignore it. I explain. It was from her heart and she was right.
"You say you're a man, but..."
I must apologize that the video goes wonky about 2/3rds of the way through where video and audio get way out of sync. Everything is still there, no idea what happened, but it's the first run at this. It's sad and frustrating that it went awry at the most important part, because that's where my heart was for this one.
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The Banality of Good and Evil
In 1961 Hannah Arendt wrote for The New Yorker. Can one do evil without being evil? This was the puzzling question that the philosopher Hannah Arendt grappled with when she reported for The New Yorker in 1961 on the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi operative responsible for organising the transportation of millions of Jews and others to various……...
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Are You Worse Off With The Internet?
I tried something new today.
For a couple of days I've been thinking about that theme. On the large, of course we're better off with the Internet, but it's not the right tool for the job for everything. Sometimes, you really do need to put down the damn phone, look people in the eye, and talk to them.
I'm often finding myself missing the old days, wondering how I possibly got by without being ONLINE!!!
How about you?
Do you ever lament those days when you'd take out your stationery and carefully craft a handwritten letter to post to a friend or loved one far away? There's a magic that modern Internet messaging largely obliterated, but replaced with crap.
Email was good enough. And I still prefer it to everything else.
So there's two distinct things where the Internet has made us worse off, in my view. Messaging is the first, and lousy customer service, the second. What's the best thing about the Internet? Online banking.
What I did new was to record two videos, but I live streamed them from my phone so that once finished, they were automatically published. Super easy and saves a lot of steps.
This first one covers the morass of issues with ubiquitous smartphones and messaging apps.
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Medium’s Partner Program and Idiocracy
This is my first post since since April of 2018. Recently, while traipsing around Thailand doing charity stuff, I got wind of Medium’s Partner Program where—unlike a direct subscription—it pays you based on a share of members’ reading time of your posts. Basically.
That sounds cool to me. Somewhat like the YouTube monetization model, it puts the onus upon you to create stuff folks want to consume…early and often.
There are requirements to apply for it. I read them thoroughly, and applied. I’m an active blogger since 2003 (yea, 19 years) with 5,000 posts under my belt and thought I might both cross-post appropriate stuff from my blog and even do some Medium-exclusive posts.
So I applied. To their credit, the determination was within hours, even after the submission reply stipulated that a reply might take 2–3 days.
Hi there,
Thank you for applying for the Partner Program, and for all your writing on Medium. We’ve reviewed your application, and unfortunately you do not meet the criteria for Partner Program at this time.
As a reminder, those are:
Have 100 followers
Have published at least one story on Medium previously (Note: responses don’t count)
Be within the geographical enrollment eligible locations, as described in Getting Started with the Partner Program (See the full Partner Program terms here.)
Be at least 18 years old
Not meeting the criteria at this time is not a reflection on your writing. Once you meet the criteria, you’re welcome to re-apply after 30 days.
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Weird Sick, Withhold Food, Streaming Access Rant, Laughing At Starbucks’ Problems, and Stupid People
It actually starts off pretty gentle. The first bit is how I came down with a fever and huge body-ache at 11am and how I was done with it it under 24 hours—a new man. The rest gets rantier and rantier.
The effort to monetize YouTube is seemingly going well. Thank you for your participation to subscribe to the channel and watch the videos.
Again, the requirements for YouTube to pay you a portion of the ad revenue they generate on your videos is that you have to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours. I have 1,080 subscribers (subscribe please).
Here's where it gets a bit interesting, perhaps. I published my first YouTube in August of 2006, 16 years ago. Hang Gliding Ed Levin Park, 2,333 views to date.
I have 179 videos published in 16 years, but just sporadically until just a few weeks ago. In that total time, total watch hours were about 1,000. That's cumulative. Just in the last 2 weeks with about 13 videos published, I've increased my total watch hours about 25%. Sixteen years, and I bump it 25% in two weeks simply by creating videos almost every day. In fact, the watch-hour tally lags 3 days, so it's going to be more like 30%.
I've come to like making the videos and it's fortunate I have a foundational platform in this blog to promote them. This is my jumpstart and focus right now. I still have drafts of posts in the works.
...And before you forget, go participate.
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A Rant About Whiners, Complainers, the Anonymous, and the “Hacked”
Just a quick Sunday evening post from me. I'm a bit beat and hungry.
It's to put up a video. And it's sort, about 6 minutes. In case you wonder why I do a post for each video I publish, it's because they get about 3 times the views, if not more. The monetization efforts are going well. I'm surprised, actually. At this rate it might happen within a couple of months if I keep at it. Also, consider subscribing to the YouTube Channel.
Also, please consider my Essential GoFundMe for a Thai family. It's a great cause and I'm still looking for a whale or two (or more).
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Villains Are The Kindest People
In the world of reality TV, there's a particular series that's the most successful of all time. Survivor. It premiered in 2000, 22 years ago. Season 43 will premier in September. It has 622 episodes under its belt. They run 2 seasons per year.
I didn't catch on until episode 7 of season 1. I became a fan, as did my wife. We recall watching the finale in the departure lounge in Maui, headed back to USA. The most unlikely guy, and villain, Richard Hatch, won—a gay-guy asshole who trapsed around naked...there's something to this!
Years later, when I caught onto The Paleo Diet, lost a bunch of fat, and became an influencer in the space via this blog, I always thought it strange that there wasn't even scant mention of the show anywhere in the sphere...ever...not even a whisper. After all, here's like 20 people getting dropped off on an island for 39 days; no food, water, or shelter. And there's a social game too.
The biggest example of Paleo right in your face, nobody seemed to give a fuck.
Weird.
Because of the social game, there are those heroes and those villains. Whatever anyone thinks about who's the most villainous villain, it goes hands down to Russell Hantz, for me. In fact, after his 3rd and last appearance on the show about 10 years ago, I lost interest. There would never be any equalling of his performance.
He broke the system.
...They came up with this thing to hide immunity idols and if you find one and play it, any tribal votes against you don't count. They issue clues as to where it might be found. This is where Russell Hantz villainously fucked with the whole production. He found them before clues were issued. He didn't just do it once, but 3 times in his first season appearance. The production was so gobsmacked that after 39 days and losing 60 pounds, they invited him back to do it again, filming to start in 2 weeks. They inserted him into an already planned production.
And he duplicated his previous performance. He once again found all three hidden immunity idols without clues.
They brought him back a couple of seasons later for a third go-round but had fucked with the rules so much he was easy to dispense with early on. Nobody wanted to compete with Russell, so they got him out. Disgusting and disappointing for me.
I lost interest in the series.
...Advance 10 years or so and a couple of weeks ago, a guy approaches me in a bar here in south Phuket, Rawai, and introduces himself. In under 24 hours, we were on video.
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I Smell Like Pussy
This morning, my favorite sort of serendipity befell me and here I am, creating about it. Is it safe for work or kids? Not my decision.
The video is a whopping 34 minutes but I think it's worth the watch.
The whole point of it is that last evening about 10pm, I got a call out of the blue from a Thai chick I know—just friends...though I did send her a friendly dicpic. She wanted to come over. I'm at my desk, said sure, sent her the location.
And she can't find it. She goes back home. I offer to try to meet somewhere we both know, she says "meet tomorrow."
"OK."
I ended up sitting at my desk doing various things—including lots of video chats USA time—until 5am. Exhausted, beat, and inebriated, I hit the sac.
Decent sleep and I arose at 11am.
I wasn't up 5 minutes and who calls?
She's a minute away on her motorbike. And now I smell like pussy. There's far more to the story, including an interlude from more than 30 years back where I had a Thai chick friend and it was 4 years before I smelled like pussy. In the large, there is a lot to lean and love about this country.
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Pork Schnitzel, Girl Calls, Be A Man, Helping Marc, and Helping You
I began, intending to do a clean short video about Marc, and it turned into quite a bit more.
Personally, I really like this one. I hope you will too.
I feel like I'm getting a bit better at it. But again, this is not to replace writing. It's just another thing I can do and be good at, without a lot of bullshit. I got an email from a well-known and successful creator of body composition stuff for a dozen years, yesterday. It's weird because I often see some of my favorite communications my way in the middle of the night if I happen to pick up my phone. I'm 14 hours ahead of the west coast, USA.
'R' told me that recently, my videos are his favorite. If you knew what that man has accomplished, you'd know what an amazing compliment and encouragement that is.
So, onward it is.
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Closer To The Heart Update
If I take a gander back in my life, there's a recognition that I learned a loving soul from my grandparents far more than from my parents. In that retrospect, it's that my parents were busting ass on all the essentials to raise four boys—and guess what a handful I must have been.
In the US Navy, it's often said that the commanding officer is the nice guy and the XO, executive officer, the asshole. It's strangely parallels this thing we have with parents and grandparents. It's not a perfect analogy but I suspect many of you get it without any effort.
And it goes all the way down to the individual. Many of us have our Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sides. I display mine on this blog regularly because I believe that there's value in that.
Wherein, living in a world where everyone lies, and lies to each other daily, and everywhere...I try to stand out as someone who never lies to you. That's why I publish a rant like this. Its chief value is that I'm never lying and polishing turds.
So what have I for you, today?
A bit of solemn, serious, and from the heart. Because in all my raucousness most of the time, here's a measure of balance.
I love and am proud of what I have accomplished here and I still need your help. It's all divulged in the video. The campaign has raised $4K of a $10K goal, 40%. But I have not yet attained crowdfunding, where it's a little bit each from hundreds or thousands of people which could put this to bed. That $4,000 is only from about 70 of the best people on the planet.
Be one of the best people on the planet.
This is really real. It's not lying to you.
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My Embarrassing Rant Caught On Video
For better or worse. That's often how I think of this "creative" process in which I'm inexorably entwined. Over the years, it's really rare that I write (or video) something I don't publish. Even when it's awful. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Warts and all.
In this short, rather ridiculous video, I sit down for a meal of ground beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy. And for some reason I flip on the camera and I rant at some folks in regard to my doing more and more videos and some of the input I've received.
Then I apologize. Then I describe my meal.
I suppose the best that can be said is that it shows I really care. I left it there and was thinking that I might not publish it. It wasn't until a day later that I even looked at it. By the end of the 7 minutes I was shaking my head and laughing at myself, actually.
I don't know what any of you'll make of it, but I suspect it will be laughable for some.
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The Pool Brings Out The Worst. It’s My Review Of [almost] Everything Thai Girl
I used that canned image because I like it in spite of the watermarks. In a past life, Getty Images came after me for $16K and I told them to fuck off. Didn't pay the fucks a penny.
"Don't put your images on the open Internet then."
I have come to the notion that all photographers are basic pond scum. Amongst the most loathsome of planetary creatures.
Let me break this down. Some days ago I created the prior video and the one you'll watch below.
Then I spent some days wondering if I really ought to put out content like that. I'd never do it in text but if you can see my face and expressions, perhaps it's not so bad.
In this video I kinda cover the whole gamut of what an old dude finds so enamoring of all of the offerings, contexts, and experiences here in this wondrous land.
This is tantamount to a definitive guide for old man, young Thai chicks. The chick stuff starts at 3 minutes, if you want to skip ahead. Don't miss the sauna part, though.
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How To Do An Old-Man DicPic To a Young Thai Woman
Males have a pretty decent advantage over females in how our genitals age. It’s the brunt of jokes but, I always take pause because they are the bearers of children. Bearing children wreaks havoc on a pussy’s loveliness. A dude like me can fuck a thousand women over decades and his erect dick looks the……...
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Eating Papaya From My Backyard While Talking About the State of the World
This one has a lot in it, but I'm going to leave it as it is without a lot of commentary. I'm satisfied with my bit on the state of the world and how ridiculous it has become, but I'll save it for the papaya fruit.
Or, the durian fruit.
That's Yui, my girl, and we went to an orchard a couple of years ago. Her love of durian knows no bounds. She calls these two, "cute children."
So let's just get to the video.
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Nice 4-Egg Runny Yolk Plate With Dry Whole Wheat Toast
Realizing that I did not snap a pic of the actual dish, I recalled that I did snap one of a cheddar cheese omelet and dry whole wheat toast from the same batch of eggs. They come in packages of 10 here, not a dozen. I hate it—though the eggs are uniformly fantastic. Free range are easy to get, and cheap.
Since this will be short, it gives me a chance to briefly explain the method to my madness about videos. I already wrote about some issues in the previous post. Mostly, the videos have to sort of work within the realm of creation I do, which is principally about writing eclectic. It's too cumbersome to write in short form something that's just a hair up my ass. Video is perfect for that. It's a means of putting out more content I would not not otherwise do. The videos are easy compared to putting out a 2-10K-word post.
Mostly, I wish for a sort of companion to the blog in terms of the videos. I've basically done it that way for a long time. The problem is, YouTube stopped monetization years ago for pond-scum puny "creators" like me. Can't recall how long it was, but I used to get like $100 per month from a share in ad revenue. Beer money. Now, you have to have over 1,000 YT subscribers, which I do barely. The bigger hurdle is 4,000 total watch hours. I've got about 1,100 and of my catalog of all videos, it does 50-60 hours per month. I need 3,000 more watch hours.
That's 4 years at my current rate. I need exponentiation, which means more subscribers and more views. That means, I have a lot of creating to do. And I hope to get enhanced engagement from the various folks who visit: public, free member, and paid member.
A couple of points:
- Some have come to me asking for audio-only and also transcripts. I'd love to, but doing so undercuts my need of watch hours, as already explained. Sorry. For now. You help me now, I help you later
- Many of my videos will not be just me sitting at my desk. The backdrop of the Russell Hantz lunch gig on Nai Harn beach in south Phuket would suck as audio
- How many of my cooking videos could be audio-only with a transcript?
What this all means for me is that it makes me think of getting off my ass when I do a video and make the backdrop or any action worth watching the damn video.
OK, so let's just cook some eggs and toast some bread.
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Mask Compliance And Dismissal And More
This is a video post. I'm still struggling with how to promote and publish them and my findings are that there's no substitute for writing a blog post about each one. Not even close. It seems that my blog members are primarily about the written word and some will take in a video too. But if I just publish it to YouTube and don't write about it, it's dismal.
It's really weird. You have these creators with millions of subscribers, yet some videos only get a few thousand views. So, it explains why I'll do a video and without writing a post, I have like 30 views with over 1,000 subscribers. If I write a post, then views are usually over 100, sometimes over 200 and more.
So that's what it is.
- Intro about randomly talking to young women fearlessly
- How my girl says 'OK' if I ask nicely with good reasons
- An awful rant about a virus...and no, I don't wish death on anyone...just tired of all the cowering bullshit...stop stuffing your face with shit, get healthy, stop worrying about it
- Russians and Ukrainians at the community pool
- Sheeple and masks, even if not required anymore
There's a lot more than that, just the high points. I have four more completed videos, so this thing will be experimental for a while. The best thing you can do to help is simply engage. Click those buttons and such, like everyone always instructs you on how-to a million times.
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How About Daily Short Videos?
I both love and hate them. But I'm liking them more. For one, I see many YouTube creators with a shit ton of followers who do zero editing. No flashy stuff. It's just get on and do the thing, publish easy. Usually, you don't even need to thread two files together in an editor or cut a thing, so it's just published direct from a single whole file.
So I did one yesterday sitting in front of my workstation.
It's weird for me because I can have only one idea or theme with no idea of how I can talk about it for 10-15 minutes but once I press record, I lose all sense of everything, I ramble on, and I end up having to cut so it's not too long.
I'm wondering about location. Sitting in front of my workstation all the time might get boring—though some creators have the same setup every time. I have the option of doing them from anywhere in my house or the back patio sitting on the stairs. I could do location at the pool.
So this is what I did in about 16 minutes yesterday. I cover:
- My vision
- My mom's vision
- My mom's unique non-judgmental character
- Covid a bit
- Locks on stuff
- What if you were God for an hour
- And more
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My Chance Meeting in Thailand With Russell Hantz Of Survivor Fame
Pretty much everything is covered in the roughly 50-minute uncensored, unedited, and uncut video Russell and I did over lunch today on Nai Harn beach on the very southern tip of Phuket island in Thailand, only 7 degrees north latitude.
Texan Russell is no stranger to heat and humidity and this particular hot and humid place doesn't faze him anymore than did his four tropical experiences on Survivor, the crazy popular TV show.
...What happened is that last night I was in a girl-bar I frequent and this guy comes up to me and frankly introduces himself.
"Hi, I'm Russell Hantz."
That would typically get an equally frank rejoinder "nice to meet you, I'm Richard Nikoley." But once I'd sized him up a bit and integrated the out-of-context aspect of this being south Phuket and not Texas...
"NO WAY!!!???"
Yep, it was THE Russell Hantz, for those of you who are the early fans of Survivor. He's the guy who could find hidden immunity idols before clues were even issued—six of them in back-to-back seasons where he had only a 2-week respite after already losing 60 pounds in 39 days and immediately reenlisted for another and put in an identical performance. In our discussion, he reveals what his chief tell was, which I'd not considered.
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