Our Lego Creation "The Solar Scorpion" has been accepted onto the Lego Ideas Competition!
I'm an older father who didn’t start a family until my mid-forties, so I have a lot of aches and pains!
~~~ CONTACT ~~~
~ Email: "[email protected]"
~ My favorite products I’ve bought on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/calebachy...
~ Amazon Profile: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amz...
I love to review and test experiences, products, and services. I can't guarantee an excellent review, but I will be thankful, positive, and fair.
Stuff I like to review:
~ Safe and non-toxic for families. The less plastic the better.
~ Gear for families with young kids that have an older achy father
~ Electric-assist family cargo bikes and bike gear
~ Home improvement and lawn care products.
~ Exercise equipment...I need this!
~ Energy efficient, especially solar
~ Eco-friendly
~ Educational Technology products and services
~ Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, VR, MR, AR,
~ Video, audio and photo equipment for vlogging on a budget
~ Camping equipment, small pop-up RVs
~ Canoes, kayaks, paddleboards, small sailboats
~ Children's books and books on our lifestyle choices
~ ABOUT ~
My wife and I are both educators. I focus on Educational Technology in K12 and Higher Education. We try and live a simple, sustainable, tech-savvy, and eco-friendly lifestyle in a medium town in Vermont, USA.
We focus our middle-class income on education, nature, healthy food, and community. We try and create a family environment with very little commercial-laden media, while also using high tech and high-quality media to teach our kids and be entertained. We use a lot of streaming services and don’t have Cable TV. Striving for these goals involves a lot of “debate” between my wife and I. She’s in charge of keeping me from exposing the family to too much technology/media exploration and study. I’m in charge of pushing to understand and learn about how to use technology’s immense power for good and beat our kid’s friends to exposer and education about media, games, YouTube, etc.
We live in a medium-sized town, in an old medium-sized house, on a medium-income. For those from afar, Vermont is located in the northeast part of the United States above New York City. Every year we have Summer’s heat and humidity, Fall’s colorful leaves, Winter’s snow, ice, freezing rain, hail, sleet, flurries, nor’easters, and freezing drizzle, followed by Spring’s melt mud madness. We are surrounded by trees, rivers, lakes, fields, and mountains. Vermont is known for its high-quality cheeses and Maple syrup, a tasty sugar liquid made from boiling down the sap that runs inside Maple trees when they are getting ready to make new leaves in the Spring.
~~~ VIDEO BLOGGING GEAR ~~~
~ I love TubeBuddy. Here's my affiliate link: https://www.tubebuddy.com/AchyDad
~ Cameras: iPhone 11. Logitech 920 Webcam. Backup is a slightly broken Canon EOS Canon EOS M3 Mirrorless Camera
~ Edit: Final Cut Pro. Or one take in-camera with trimming or KineMaster.
~ Computer: MacBook Pro 2017.
~ Backup. 2 external USB drives. I do a manual raid copy to each to offload finished videos from my MBP. I also use Time Machine, iCloud, and Google Drive.
~ Tripods: A small Joby or DigiPower. Two old metals chapos.
~ Microphones: Tonor TC-777. PowerDeWise lav. Old AKG C 1000 S.
~~~ MY ADVICE I SHOULD FOLLOW ABOUT MY VLOGGING LESSONS LEARNING ~~~
Put up videos consistently. Life is full of opportunities to share and perfect is the enemy of done.
Just do it and move on. Few artists succeed with little created work. Success is a lot of luck, and luck favors the prolific and prepared. I need to follow my own advice here!
This is my hobby. I like to do it. It’s easy for me to get sucked into just going for views, but it’s toxic if I only make videos for that reason. If I do go big, then I will still like making the videos I make. If not, it’s a hobby that pays for a new phone every year, hopefully.
Find some mentors on YouTube that you follow and comment on their videos.
The biggest struggle I have is staying on a theme that viewers can count on.
I spend time on keywords, the right naming of content, and research on what is hot on YT
There are a plot and a subplot. The subplot is KEY. You may be reviewing a coffee cup, but you also need something else going on, like a cat being cute.
Create a pattern for every video. Start with great clip, establishing shot, etc.
Use upload defaults. Fill the description with information.
Thumbnail content needs to be a frame or two from the actual video. No cheating, so you’re not selling an empty promise. Graphics may be ok.
Thumbnail editing: I use the Preview app on a Mac or TubeBuddy. I crop to 16x9, then over-saturate the colors, sharpen and brighten, and over contrast.
Keep and backup masters of all uploads.
Thanks for watching and reading!
Achy Dad