Here there be dragons...

"I'm telling you stories. Trust me." - Winterson

YouTube Adventures

If it's not your first time clicking through this blog (if it IS - how did you find me?!?!) you might be aware that I've started learning piano and am quite enjoying the adventure.   To try to improve my chances, I've been applying techniques that I've learned in other hobbies, such as - from Spanish - 10 mins a day is better than 70 minutes once a week (for the curious - this has to do with how the brain learns and sleep is a key component!); or - and I swear there's a point to this - from exercising: progress photos (videos) are important.  When you're starting from nothing and have a long way to go, progress can be so slow as to feel non-existent; but if you can compare "then to now" you can, hopefully, see that what you're doing is impacting change.   This is the theory anyways - with working out I tend to get a lot of "before" photos and not too many after ;-P.  

So for piano, I decided I would track the journey and record progress videos.   Mostly just for me, *maybe* for friends and family who either feel obligated to or genuinely want to be supportive ;).  And because if I ever *actually* get good, it'll make for a good laugh and a memory.   I flipped a couple to my dad, but other than that, they were safely in my iCloud.

But THEN, I tried to change my cloud, and throughly f'd something up and thought I'd lost them all.  Now conceptually we can look at this two ways:  I've been playing less than three months, how much could I have lost?   In the grand scheme of things, videos filmed now still count as 'just starting' for sure.   Or alternately, they're all gone so now I'll never be able to compare and it's all just horrible.   lol okay definitely exaggerating that one - I don't tend toward that dramatic naturally - but was mildly disappointed.

However, being the tech goddess that I am (please read that with the appropriate amount of sarcasm), I managed to relocate and rescue my files.  Win!  Okay, so maybe instead I should put them on YouTube.   Then said curious / supportive friends/family can actually see what I'm up to if they're so inclined.   But, well, it's not something I want poor unsuspecting people to stumble on.

So I do some research -- YouTube will let you set things as Private (only those on the "list" can view), Unlisted (anybody with the link can view), or Public (the whole world is watching).   Okay well private seems a bit high maintenance - I don't want to have to babysit a link or force people to have YouTube accounts to assuage mild curiosity.  Public is just a horrible idea.  So that leaves Unlisted which actually seems somewhat ideal.  

Away I go happily building my YouTube site.  I had a GRS site once upon a time, but didn't want to touch that (just as well as I can't imagine I remember the login credentials and likely no longer have the email); however, when I searched I realised somewhere along the way I had a personal site too.  It has exactly four videos on it -- three of which are of Sasha ;) -- and all from 2015.   Alright, that one can definitely be repurposed, although for my own amusement, I'd leave the vids up.   But things have changed since 2015, so I merrily went about building a watermark and a banner and checking all the security settings, and pretty soon I had an account.

Pretty happy with this for a "I need one now" level banner

But somewhere in my uploading, I discovered you can't set the site to Unlisted; you have to set each individual video.  Which means I would have to share links to every video.   Which, quite frankly, I just don't want to do ;).  I'm not trying to build a social media following here -- I just want a place where if someone cares enough to go look they can.  Not somewhere they have to bookmark links to individual songs in my learning journey.   Sheesh.   So yeah - super disappointed.

Which meant...  I took a deep breath and set to public.   And honestly, was thinking my Sasha vids from 2015 had had like 40 hits and likely 15 of them were me ;).  So not as though anybody's going to see them.  I sent the link to my parents (and only my parents), because, well, no matter how hard your kids get you have to pretend to be excited about their new hobbies 😂.  It's a rule.  I'm sure of it.  It's part of why I don't have kids ;-P.  

Well it seems like things have changed a little in the last 7 years?!?!  Who knew?  ðŸ¤·‍♀️  My Day 1 C Scale (translate as horribly played and excruciatingly boring all in one) had more than 500 views?!?!   Like wtf?

I'm not even exaggerating (and no, it's not linked, you don't want to see it)

And then on top of that, I have comments from random strangers?!?!  Now on my blog, I generally love any comments of the non-spam variety (although I usually see them in FB).  They're generally the highlight of my day (I know, it's sad - in the 2020s, I'll take what I can get).  But I'm not emotionally ready for comments on my piano playing, esp knowing that the only people I sent the link to probably hadn't seen it yet...   But I was betting on spam, so I cautiously clicked through and:

That top one, I can't even...

So yeah - deleted the first one, deemed the second harmless.   Am definitely going to have to look into comment filtering options if it stays public, but we'll see.   

I also know from running the blog, that tagging / finding things after the fact is a royal pita, so am setting that up from the beginning with playlists for anything that I have more than one recording of so that I can do easy comparisons as I go ;).  If you curious enough to click through, Cannon is the only one with more than one level's worth.  Cause, well, I'm still a beginner ;).  Not quite month 3 remember.

I know that in the world of YouTubers those numbers are minuscule, but when I was expecting to be able to count views on one hand with fingers left over, it definitely amused (bemused?) me ;).  Anyways - so that's my random unexpected Saturday night.   I hope yours was at least that entertaining.

And, of course, the obligatory link: https://www.youtube.com/c/LaurenCudeHorsfall/videos 

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