Bokken telekinesis

Shot the footage back in Oct 2019.  My computer isn't powerful enough for editing video, so I hadn't got around to editing the footage -- but then a few weeks ago I discovered that The Girl likes editing.  Oooh!!!

So:  below. 

Basically, instead of learning how to juggle, I've been trying to teach myself how to channel my "chi" to move objects.  It's coming along.




--GG

P.S.  Within the video, I mis-spell "telekinesis".  Ah well. 

Four more boxes

Four more boxes:

-A box of un-paired socks -- although it turns out that they weren't all un-paired:  I made seven pairs for myself, and five for The Lady; other onesies look familiar, and might have pairs in our current basket of un-paired socks.

-A box apparently from the laundry room:  a plastic yogurt container of about 20 connectors for a "build a cube" set of home storage shelves; a kit for "dry cleaning in your clothes drier"; two plastic bags for "storing clothes compactly by sucking the air out of the bag full of clothes" (they tend to leak, so inflate over time; I cut them open and am using them as dropcloths for messy work); two little kid plastic placemats (put them through they washing machine with the mis-matched socks, then hung up to dry); and a soft-sided insulated shoulder bag, for picnics and such (also put through the washing machine, then hung up to dry). 

-A narrow box with three mostly-empty three-ring binders:  tossed the binders (dirty, rusty, and uses US paper sizes not AU); kept the colored plastic "section dividers" from the larger binder, to use as colored gels (also put through the washing machine, in a separate load, with the un-paired socks). Also had a (stained) dish towel, and an orange unlabelled floppy disk (will destroy and discard).

-The final box was a heartbreaker:  it was mostly drawings I'd done in middle school and high school; unfortunately the bottom of the box had got wet, which attracted termites (wet wood pulp!) -- so most of the drawings were damaged.  Most were largely salvageable, though - or else I didn't care about them.  The box also had a round stained glass of a duck (about the size of a large serving platter; am giving to a friend of The Girl), a plastic thing of my initials that I made years ago; a (damaged) "League of Heroes" pennant I made in middle school or high school (during my "super hero" period); some strands of musical notes that are Christmas tree or party decorations (not worth salvaging); a Ramones postcard that I used to have on the wall (the bottom corner is gone, but will keep the postcard); and three Christian decorative metal etched(?) pictures that were a fad in the early 90s. 

The salvaged drawings are inside, drying on various flat surfaces.  In a few days I'll brush off the dust and grit with a soft brush, and figure out a better way of storing them.


--GG

Completed the one-thirds and shot some footage

A little bit during my lunch break, and the rest after work:  finished the remaining one-thirds of that box of The Lady's project from about 1997.

After work, I shot some footage for Father's Day for my dad, for this coming weekend:  The Girl is using my "good" camera and my "good" tripod (nothing fancy; but it's solid).  But both D4Darious and ponysmasher (YouTube guys that discuss filmmaking) say that you shouldn't let your lack of gear keep you from shooting movies.

So, I used my AU$98 off-brand GoPro, and my AU$15 (not very good) tripod, and shot some slo-mo, backwards footage of the kids. It came out pretty well -- esp. since B1 (Blondie Boy) suggested that it would be more interesting to drop the word cards instead of set them down (like I had envisioned) -- and then The Girl expanded on that by suggesting they throw them up in the air.


The editing was by The Girl, on her computer:  I think I went too cheap with my used PC last time:  it only has 2GB RAM, so even though that's enough for recording and for editing audio, when I try to do video work it seizes up.  I've been meaning to pick up some more (old!) RAM -- but then COVID-19 came around.  Plus, I think the most I could fit in would be 4GB -- and I'd like to shot for at least 8GB.


--GG

Two and a half more boxes

Went through two and a half more boxes from the porch.

-One was a small collection of gardening things:  a hose spray nozzle, a black plastic pot, a larger pot, a box of "plant food" powder inside the larger pot; one pair of gardening gloves (unused; still on the store cardboard hangtag), about four pairs of used gardening gloves, a short rope, a small pair of (slightly rusty) scissors, and a plastic gardening trowel.  All would have been from the house immediately before this one -- about twelve years ago.

-One that had notes from a project I worked on about 2002; and class notes from The Lady's graduate-level classes in 1997 and 1998:  all of which got recycled.

-I'm about two-thirds of the way through a larger box, with a bunch of binders, plus file folders, and some bound government publications -- all from the late '90s.  Everything in the box thus far is either a government publication (twenty years out of date; probably available online as a PDF), or else notes and paperwork from a project that The Lady worked on around 1997 or 1998.


I'm about two (and a third) boxes away from being able to sweep off that section of the porch -- for the first time in years!  Currently it has bits of dried leaves -- plus those boxes; and some chunks of week that have been "seasoning" for five or eight years.


--GG

One more porch box

Finished going through one more box from the porch.  Been picking away at this for the last few days.  This one was full of photocopied academic journal articles -- mostly for my dissertation, but with a few "miscellaneous".

Kept about ten; recycled the rest.


--GG

Clearing off the porch

Ten to twelve years ago, we moved to this house.  Because our old house was nearby, instead of hiring a moving company or even a moving truck, we hauled things over in a zillion trips, using a small trailer and the back seat.

Near the end of the task, there were about twelve boxes still to go.  Two family members, in an effort to be helpful, brought them across and put them on my (large, covered) porch.  Although that did complete the job, it also fell into the "inertia trap":  once things are set down, it takes a lot of effort to get them moving again.

Because we had moved 99.9% of our belongings in a short period, the inside of the house was a jumble -- so, there wasn't a good place to move the additional boxes to:  I'd been waiting to carve out a spot, and then bring the new boxes over.  But, now that they were over, and "placed" -- well, other tasks were of higher priority.

And now it's twelve years later.  And, starting a few weekends ago, I've finally got around to chipping away at the (now covered with dried leaves) boxes.

Two weekends ago I went through two boxes, and recycled a bunch of lecture notes from classes I taught, and classes I took.  Also a bunch of photocopied journal articles that contributed to my long-forgotten dissertation.

Midway through this last week I opened up a small box:  two small piggybanks filled with pennies (actually, one was a metal pop can), and a bunch of odds and ends -- including a molded plastic hand that I used to use as a letter holder (e.g. for bills) (I think I got it at a garage sale).

Today I went through three more boxes:  one had a bunch of photocopied journal articles for my dissertation: I saved three or four of them, and recycled the rest.  It also had my "human subjects" paperwork, and permission forms for accessing the restricted survey data that I used for my dissertation:  long since unnecessary.

The second box had the vinyl "bag from the trunk" from the car we drove in Seattle:  it was more like a tray with compartments than a "bag".  It had a few wrenches, some rope, a partial roll of TP (just in case you got stuck somewhere), some matches, a tire gauge, a compass...  a whole lot of car-related miscellaneous.  It also had the cloth bag of marbles that my mom had sewn for me when I was a kid (so that's where it went...!!!), plus other minor miscellaneous (e.g. a bunch of those plastic "report covers" we used in high school and college, when turning in papers; the edges were water-damaged, so the recycled or threw them away -- depending on the material). 

The box also had a white, opaque shower curtain with a few paint splatters:  I think had originally been a drop-cloth for painting, and then  I'd included it with the "car kit", in case I ever had to crawl under the car in wet weather, while wearing decent clothes).  But I'll run it through the laundry, then put it with my "filming gear", to hang in front of lights to soften them.

And the third box had a bunch of hangers of various sorts -- some of them really good quality (e.g. wooden pants hangers).  Kind of weird to have on your porch for twelve years.  Included was three cloth-covered kid-sized hangers with faces on them, which I remembered from my childhood.    


So, some interesting finds.  A few more boxes to go.  Just trying to get over the inertia, and pick away at the jumbled contents of our house, in the areas where I can make a difference.

But, it's going to be a long slog:  twelve years of accumulation and entropy can't be addressed in a week.

But, I'm making progress.


--GG

Journals journals journals

In addition to going through my CDs, and going through my books -- I'd already culled a bunch of DVDs a year or two ago -- I'm also getting rid of nearly all of my academic journals.

When I thought I'd be a professor, I was emulating what professors did:  subscribing to scholarly journals, and letting them accumulate on the shelves.  But now that I've accepted that I'm not going to be a professor, I don't need them -- and they're taking up valuable space.

I haven't kept track of how many I've gone through -- and I'm not sure how many I have total (stashes of them keep popping up!) -- but I estimate I had around 100 issues of various journals.  So far I've gone through about 30 -- and kept one... plus another where I tore out a specific article, then recycled the rest.

I can't bear to just recycle the whole lot without looking -- while waiting for webpages to load (and etc.), I've glanced through each one before recycling it:  using the "Pete Guest" approach (one of my professors in graduate school), I read the titles (usually 8-12 articles per issue).  Among the ones that sound interesting -- and often, none of them sound interesting!!! -- I'll read the abstract (the summary at the start of the article), which usually includes the "punchline" (the main finding).  For the very, very few that are particularly interesting, I'll actually glance through the article itself.

I usually go through 1-3 journals a night.


Between the book purging and the journal-clearing, there's now a few sections of carpet in front of the "main bookcase" that haven't been exposed in years:  a good feeling.

My aim is that I'll clear enough room that I can actually set up my recording gear properly -- such that I can record when the mood strikes me -- rather than having to spend 10-15 minutes setting everything up. 

Chipping away...


--GG