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So…the other day I was leaving work, and just as I stepped foot outside my office I grabbed my phone and checked if anyone had called me. No one had . Then, instead of putting my amazing iPhone away I decided to wonder around my apps and see what I could play with while walking back home. First stop: FACEBOOK APP. I wanted to see if there were new notifications for me, new messages, new ANYTHING! But NO!, once again I was disappointed and still craving for some entertainment. I decided then to plug in my headphones and turn my iPod on so that the quest to find something amusing on my iPhone could continue, but now with a soundtrack. The music started playing (with the setting set on shuffle – as always), but I came to the realization that although I have about 50 different apps on my phone NONE of them were serving a purpose at that time. I decided that my next step was to download something new from the app store. Given that I had just preached to my EDC5370 students about blogging, I decided to install the wordpress app. What could be better than walking around AND blogging at the same time, right? But right at that time I just baaarely looked up (it was God’s grace…I tell you) and I dodged a pretty big pile of dog poop! The thoughts in my head then transitioned from “what should I do on my phone on my way home” to “what the heck am I doing that I am not paying attention to the surface that I am about to step on while I walk home” and at that moment I also wondered how many other people have not have God’s grace showered upon them and did not dodge the poops in front of them in time. I thought about blogging about it but since I was so busy with other stuff I stored in my mind as a low priority thing…UNTIL…well…until last night, right? Something memorable HAD to happen for me to actually retrieve a low priority “future blog idea” from my head and that incident happened right after I got out of karaoke. If you know me, you know that I am a karaoke fan. Last night, such as any other Wednesday night, I met my friends at karaoke. I had a blast! I actually got to physically socialize with people (because I DO spend a lot of time in front of a computer..so sometimes is nice to interact with REAL humans), and when I was leaving the karaoke place the same thing that happened to me when I was leaving work happened. I checked my phone to see if anyone had called (one call this time, but it was too late to call back), then Facebook (nothing new then), and then BAM! I step on a HUUUUUUGE puddle of mud…I mean, full foot, about a foot deep into fresh watery nasty YUCK! mud. I was very upset, as you might imagine, but I wasn’t upset about the place where I was at the amount of craters on the dirty ground which became puddles of mud, and which I stepped on. NO, I was upset at myself! I was upset at my iPhone! I was upset with my addiction to little tiny Apple manufactured gadgets that grab you by your soul and make you attached emotionally to them! I was upset that this tiny little gadget, while providing me with so much connectivity and made me feel loved (when I had calls, text messages, and Facebook notifications) was causing me to detached myself with the world around me and step on muddy puddles, dog poop, and who knows whatever else I have been stepping on…These things are so ubiquitous that I ask myself, and you…my blog post reader: ARE YOU A POOP STEPPER? Have you also been distracted by these gadgets to the point that they caused you to trip on the streets, step on the people walking in front of you, cross the street when there is a car coming your way? Well, I hope you are not, but if you have please COMMENT and tell me your story

In the face of one of my most recent projects I have battled one of my most feared opponents. This opponent was one that I knew I had to face one day, but I wasn’t expecting that it would be so challenging and so stressful. My opponent, Video Editing Software, came right after my super pleasant workshop experience at the New Media Consortium Summer Conference in Anaheim, CA, and after a most deserved break from my uber busy schedule in TX. It all started with a very innocent request from my director at the Baylor University’s Academy of Teaching and Learning where I am a graduate fellow. Dr. Campbell, aka Gardner, asked the group of graduate fellows to record some micro teaching segments from some faculty members involved with the Summer Faculty Institute. Since I was not able to be there during the recording sessions I volunteered myself to retrieve the videos from the FLIP cameras (pictured here) and then add them to a private channel on YouTube.com. I had the pleasure of toying around with one of those tiny HD cameras and they are very easy to handle. With about 5 buttons total, that is my kind of gadget. The output was set to .mp4, and that did not seem to be a problem having in mind that they would be uploaded into YouTube and I was counting with some YouTubical magic to convert them to the YouTube player format. However we were dealing with 30 videos (2 angles for each faculty member) of aprox. 15mins that required about 3 hours of us (myself and one of my fellow grad fellows) trying to transfer the clips to my external hard drive (FAIL) then her (the other graduate fellow) getting another external hard drive to get the clips out of her computer into my server so I could start uploading the videos into YouTube. Well, there was a LITTLE problem: YouTube’s TIME RESTRAINT for uploaded videos. YouTube videos are pretty easy to upload as long as they are smaller that 2GB (which ours were), but they are required to be shorter than 10mins (which ours weren’t). 1st thought that we had was to chop the clips in half! So I get to my amazing Mac at work and get started. First getting the clips into FinalCut, then adding my In and Out points, then inserting into the segment…that was ok…THEEEEN I had to render it (the red line was there…I felt that I HAD to, right?!) It took FOR-EEEEVER! not only that…when exporting with Compressor another HUUUUGE waiting time. I felt defeated. I thought that FinalCut was against me. I jumped to another computer and met my little friend iMovie …Well…that’t what I thought! It took me FOR-EEEEVER just to get the clip there…AWFUL! Video Editing Software 2 x 0 Addy. I had thoughts about quitting, but I AM NOT A QUITTER! So I decided to persist and find another solution. The following ideas were brought up: (1) DVD Burnage (I know….its not a word, but neither is YouTubical…so don’t take anything I write for what it is, but for what it intends to mean), (2) vimeo.com, and…well…those were the options at that time. I then go to vimeo.com and the free version  only allows for crumbles of files to be uploaded per week (I mean…500 mb…really?! 500mb?! one picture is almost that big nowadays – I know…its not…but u know what I mean) and the 59.90 something per year allows for 5gb…but still…too expensive for what we were doing. So we decide to go with the DVD burnage + let’s give FinalCut a shot, but instead of rendering AND export using compressor we decided to cut the rendering altogether and export straight as a quicktime movie and BAM! half the time Video Editing Software 2 x 1 Addy. So now I just have to go through that process for about 20 more videos, upload them into YouTube (about 45 minutes for each upload) and I’m DONE! What a great after vacay week!

Update: the score now is actually Video Editing Software 3 x 0 Addy The “exporting directly through quicktime player was not well received by YouTube, so I will have to go back to the original 3 hours per clip process to get that done. Any other suggestions are welcome…if anyone at all reads this blog post :/