Yours portly is a little wacky. I like to play with my food—or, at least, my food containers.
That’s the setup for today’s videos, both of which feature the fearsome Eggcraticus, the villainous, ravenous egg crate who is out for eggs:
Tag: video
Phone it in Friday CXVI: YouTube Roundup CLXXVI: Cute Animals
Regular readers will know how much I love animals. One of the more surprising changes as I approached middle-age is that I went from being aloof towards the animal kingdom to adoring animals. I’m not sure what changed or what clicked, but getting my dog Murphy was definitely a big step in that process.
Regardless, this Friday I have a couple of cute animal videos from below and above the waves:
Phone it in Friday CXV: YouTube Roundup CLXXV: Star Wars Figurines
I’ve been going through a bunch of my old stuff in preparation for moving items to the new house. In doing so, I’ve come across quite a few Star Wars action figures and collectibles.
I was a huge Star Wars kid. I loved the original trilogy and tolerated the prequel trilogy (indeed, I was super excited for the latter). I particularly loved the miniatures. I’ve sold most of the action figures in the following videos to a colleague of mine—he will take excellent care of them—but I am keeping the miniatures. They are so cool!
So, here are some recent videos featuring these fun figurines:
Phone it in Friday CXIV: YouTube Roundup CLXXIV: Cruise Art
Dr. Wife and I took a cruise for our honeymoon aboard Royal Caribbean‘s Explorer of the Seas. The artwork impressed, delighted, and even confounded me.
As such, I put together a brief video showcasing some of the art onboard the ship. This video only captures a small fraction of the collages, paintings, photographs, mosaics, etc., aboard Explorer of the Seas. The selections were often odd, but they really fit the atmosphere of the ship, and added a touch of elegance and class to the cruise.
Phone it in Friday CXIII: YouTube Roundup CLXXIII: Triple Soundboards
Last Saturday I wrote in detail about the three-soundboard setup I used for a school play. It’s a rather technical topic (although I don’t get overly technical with it), but I made a little video that will either a.) clarify how the setup worked or b.) deepen readers’ confusion.
Let’s find out which!
Phone it in Friday CXII: YouTube Roundup CLXXII: Cruise Shorts
The cruise bug has latched onto me with its luxurious pincers and won’t let go. Dr. Wife and I enjoyed an amazing honeymoon on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, the Explorer of the Seas, which visited the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. It was my first cruise, and I loved it.
Naturally, I took the opportunity to film some silly YouTube Shorts, three of which I’m sharing up today:
Phone it in Friday CXI: YouTube Roundup CLXXI: Blackbeard Sails into Civilization VII
In my never-ending quest for lo-fi, low-effort YouTube (and blog) content, I make the most of whatever limited assets and time I have to churn out highly-compressed but—I hope—charming content for the masses.
Such is the case with today’s post. I made this video with just one picture I took with my iPhone SE’s camera (mainly to show Dr. Fiancée that I was playing as Blackbeard the Pirate in Civilization VII). I recorded the voiceover with the Voice Memo app on my phone, and used iMovie (again, on my phone) to put in the picture (three times) against the voice message.
Apparently, when I send the finished video file to Telegram, it deeply compresses the video quality (although I think it does the same if I save the video to my phone and upload it to YouTube from there). The most it can muster is 360p, which might as well be a VHS recording that I’ve sloppily converted to a digital format.
Whatever the case, the video was a fun experiment. I hope you agree!
Phone it in Friday CV: YouTube Roundup CLXV: Hymns
For the first time in awhile, I have a proper, full-sized Phone it in Friday with three videos. It helps that I’ve been recording myself playing hymns a lot more.
Here are three recent videos of yours portly playing hymns; each is played on my maternal grandmother’s Kimball piano, which I had moved to the house this summer:
Phone it in Friday CIV: YouTube Roundup CLXIV: Road Work
Yours portly, much like Michael Douglas, struggles with impatience when sitting in traffic, especially construction traffic when there appears to be no construction work taking place.
The South Carolina Department of Transportation has been resurfacing a portion of the highway that I take to get to work every day for over a month. That is fine—I like the smooth roadway. What is not fine is that they have been starting work during morning rush hour.
Indeed, they started the road work the first week that public schools returned to classes—right in front of the elementary school in Lamar! They continued making similarly boneheaded decisions like that throughout August. The first day I reported for teacher workdays, they were doing heavy construction at a busy four-way intersection that is the main thoroughfare for people coming and leaving town.
Last week, I sat for thirty minutes waiting for a worker to turn the sign around to “Slow” so we could get through. I should have been to work five minutes early; instead I was twenty-five minutes late. I was so frustrated, I began shouting at workers—dozens of whom were sitting on equipment gawking at their phones—to “get off your phones and get to work!”
That wasn’t very Christ-like of me, and I have repented for that, but it put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Fortunately, I did not have class first period that day, so I was okay; it just irked me to no end.
I was so livid, in fact, that I called my State Senator and left a message. I never have received a call back, but in my message, I begged him to talk to SCDOT to consider starting their work after morning rush hour—at 8:30 AM instead of 7:30 AM.
I also took a short video of the lazy sign worker ogling his cellphone:
Phone it in Friday CIII: YouTube Roundup CLXIII: Robot Fanboy
In a sweet attempt to help me cope with the lack of air-conditioning in my car, Dr. Fiancée bought me a little fan in the shape of a robot-boy (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through the link at no additional cost to you). While the little guy can’t put out enough air to be a reasonable replacement for A/C, he’s a fun and whimsical little addition to my car.
He’s a very Dr. Fiancée-style gift. She is very good at finding thoughtful and unique gifts that are both practical and mildly absurd—one of many reasons I love her! She gets it from her mom, who is also a great (and prolific) gift-giver.
But I digress. I made a little video of my robot fanboy, and it’s quite ridiculous:
The Portly Politico 