So, you've got a problem? That's good!

So, you’ve got a problem? That’s good! Why? Because repeated victories over your problems are the rungs on your ladder of success. With each victory, you grow in wisdom, stature and experience. You become a better, bigger, more successful person each time you meet a problem and tackle and conquer it with a positive mental attitude.

– W. Clement Stone

Screencasting Practice & Feedback: 00003

Plan

  • Demonstrate lessons-learned about alternate input methods and redefinition of the Emacs interpretation of modifier keys
  • Utilize a lower-third instead of text-boxes
  • Talk louder

Execution

Preparation

  • Pretend you are going to a job-interview, or on a date, that is recorded for everyone to see, forever
    • Perform all personal preparations that you normally would for example
      • Brush your teeth
  • Applied Revlon PhotoReady Prime + Anti Shine Balm Clear
  • Lights and camera and microphone
    • Set them up
    • Tested them
    • Hooked up camera and turned it on
    • Adjusted white balance
    • Set left light pointed at me; right light pointed at ceiling
    • Adjust left light to give face warmth (versus ghost appearance)
    • Microphone is on and input volume maxed out
  • Turn off HVAC
  • Mute Phone and Pushbullet
  • Close other applications
  • Verify microphone woks
  • Verify recording on correct monitor
  • Write rough script
  • Pour glass of water

Execution

  • Showed off Emacs mug and encouraged FSF support

Screencasting Practice & Feedback: 00002

Plan

  • Demonstrate how I like to quote content in Org-Mode
  • Learn how to use call-outs and text-boxes
  • Learn how to ad-lib content
  • Scripted out location of content and video-recording of presenter to make sense of what is appearing on the screen and where
  • Learn how to use content-music

Execution

  • Made video top right 100% of the top right corner
    • This means scaling it by 50%
  • Remove the dropshadow from the video
    • The video stood out enough already
  • Amplified volume by 200%
  • Added callouts interesting content
  • Added watermwark, 25% scale, 25% opacity, 10 key-presses from bottom and right edge
  • Include the word Screencast in announcement to distinguish between screencast and blog post
  • 6h of effort for 7m of content
  • Posted manually on Reddit
  • Blog published to social sites

Outcome & Feedback

  • Wrote a script; didn’t pay attention to it enough
  • After re-recording it six times, said I would never re-record it again. Instead made corrections using text-boxes positioned over my face.
  • Light was OK
  • Speaking volume was too quiet; content volume was too loud
  • Skin was shiny
  • Looping the banner and jingle at the end was a mistake
  • The 3m monologue about Braille displays was interesting to me and perhaps no one else so don’t include that. 3m is a long time.
  • Use a lower-third intead of text boxes
  • Redditers commented that a blog post would have been more concise and faster. What is the best of both worlds?

Screencasting Practice & Feedback: 00001

Plan

  • Develop a jingle and banner to introduce the videos
  • Learn how to use ScreenFlow on smallest project possible
  • Learn how to publish and monetize on YouTube
  • Learn how to define closed-caption content

Outcome & Feedback

  • YouTube
    • Easy and pleasant process
    • Signing up takes 30m or so
    • Publishing the video offers 20-30 configuration options
  • Forgot to develop a watermark for the videos
  • Closed-captioning is tedious and time-consuming
  • Screenflow project is large; be sure to keep it on a large disk
  • Glad to have worked in a simple project like this to get some practice with Screenflow. It took some trial and error to grok the power of layers in practice.
  • Volume wasn’t loud enough
  • Transitions were OK; can see some blockiness because of how I layered the background

(Screencast) The Best Emacs Modifier Key Setup for OS X

Here is an easy way to use both Emacs and OS X modifier keys when you are inside Emacs:

Toggle the right-option and function key to switch between using them inside Emacs and using them for OS X.

Addendum: <2016-06-08 Wed 08:22>

I used Karabiner to make ENTER send LEFT CONTROL when chorded. I used OS X to make CAPS LOCK be CONTROL. I didn’t change OPTION and COMMAND. I made this change because Emacs couldn’t ignore the key-event when it was coming from Karabiner.

Here is the code: 

(help/on-osx
 (setq mac-control-modifier 'control)
 (setq mac-right-control-modifier 'left)
 (setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)
 (setq mac-right-command-modifier 'left)
 (setq mac-option-modifier 'super)
 (setq mac-right-option-modifier 'left)
 (setq mac-function-modifier 'hyper)
 (defun help/toggle-mac-right-option-modifier ()
   "Toggle between passing option modifier either to Emacs or OS X."
   (interactive)
   (let ((old-ropt mac-right-option-modifier))
     (setq mac-right-option-modifier
           (if (eq mac-right-option-modifier 'left)
               'none
             'left))
     (message "Toggled `mac-right-option-modifier' from %s to %s."
              old-ropt
              mac-right-option-modifier)))
 (defun help/toggle-mac-function-modifier ()
   "Toggle between passing function modifier either to Emacs or OS X."
   (interactive)
   (let ((old-func mac-function-modifier))
     (setq mac-function-modifier
           (if (eq mac-function-modifier 'hyper)
               'none
             'hyper))
     (message "Toggled `mac-function-modifier' from %s to %s."
              old-func
              mac-function-modifier))))

Brené Brown: Listening to shame

  • URL
  • “Vulnerability is not weakness”
  • “[It] is our most accurate measurement of courage; it fuels our daily life”
  • “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change”
  • “You gotta dance with the one who brung ya”
  • “TED is the failure conference; very few people here are afraid to fail and have failed miserably many times”
  • “The credit goes to the man in the arena”
  • “Shames drives “Never good enough” and “Who do you think you are?””
  • Regarding men and shame, a male attendee shared that “You say to reach out, tell our story, be vulnerable… but [the most important women in my life] would rather me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall down. When [men] reach out and be vulnerable we get the shit beat out of us and don’t tell me it is [from other guys] it is the women in my life who are harder on me than anyone else”.
  • “Shame is an epidemic in our culture”
  • “Empathy is the antidote to shame”
  • “Me too; the two most powerful words when we are in struggle”
  • “Vulnerability is the path back to finding each other”