9 minutes of brilliance

My heartfelt thanks to Esme for introducing me to an artist like no other. You may or may not like the music, but you will be mesmerised by the story. I loved both, and I really didn’t think I would. Just listen :

hugs,
Meeks

Luna the Panthera, or life with a BIG cat

As I’m doing a lot of work on Youtube these days, I can’t avoid some of the fascinating videos presented to me, and the videos about Luna have become a daily addiction.

This one is a Q&A type video about Luna’s life with two humans. The language is Russian, and they all live in Siberia. Enjoy. 🙂

cheers,
Meeks

‘There’s no such thing as them. There’s only us.’

If you watch only one video today, please, make it this one:

love,
Meeks

A bit of YouTube news

Just a few days ago I reached my first major milestone on Youtube – 100 subscribers! Thank you to everyone who visited my channel and subscribed. You made me feel that I wasn’t wasting my time. On such a new venture, that kind of support is gold, pure gold.

In further news, two of my videos have reached milestones of their own: 1000 views, and a couple more are getting there very quickly so I’m thrilled. This is one of the new ones that’s getting a lot of views:

If you click on ‘Watch on YouTube’ you’ll be able to see a larger version of the video.

I would like to say that my how-to and reading videos are doing as well, but they’re not, at least not yet. I hope that in time I’ll be able to use YouTube for other aspects of my work. Till then, I’m still learning, still improving and, most importantly, still enjoying the process. D

cheers,
Meeks

Woman builds her own Hobbit home

I just stumbled across this video on Youtube and started drooling…I want!

cheers,
Meeks

Why? Because it’s Whittier…

I stumbled onto this video about Whittier, Alaska, by accident, but I kept watching because it reminded me of how I imagined life would be in the Undercity, except above ground. 🙂

So what’s so special about Whittier? It’s the fact that all 200-odd residents of the town live in one building, a building that contains a store, police station, church and pretty much everything you’d expect to find in a small town. Oh, and in winter, the kids go to school via a tunnel that connects the two buildings!

But wait, there’s more! You can only reach the building by boat, or via a long, rather scary tunnel. The tunnel is only open at certain times of the day, and at 6:00pm it’s closed to cars so the trains can come through!

If I’ve roused your curiosity, please watch the video:

At about 12:13 minutes, the lovely lady doing the tour of the building points out photos from when the building housed the officers of the US army stationed in the town. A little later on she mentions that the reason everyone withdrew from the shore was because there was an earthquake followed by a tsunami that washed much of the original town away.

At about 15:50 minutes, the tour guide casually mentions that they had to get a self-closing mechanism installed on a ground floor door because…bears would wonder in when residents forgot to close it. <<picture me with my jaw on the ground>>

That bit about the bears actually got me thinking about my Undercity concept. If the doors topside were like those big, self-opening doors installed in shops, what if a kangaroo came in to check things out? Or maybe a wombat looking for a pre-dug hole? lol

Okay, my imagination is getting a little carried away now. I’d better go outside and do some work before it starts to rain, again. Huge swathes of Melbourne and Victoria are flooded at the moment, but as we’re on a ridge, we’ve had no issues.

Have a great weekend everyone,
Meeks

Inching towards an audiobook

There, I’ve said it! At some point in the not-so-distant future, I’m going to try my hand, or voice, on an audiobook, and this 3 minute video is my first attempt at ‘acting out’ a scene:

I’ll probably cringe with embarrassment tomorrow, but for now I’m kind of proud of my first attempt, especially as it was miles harder than I thought it would be. Narrating something à la Sir David Attenborough is one thing, trying to make a story come to life is another thing entirely. It has been an immensely valuable learning experience though.

You know how we’re told to read our writing out loud to help with the editing? Well, acting it out loud exposes the shortcomings of the prose even more! I actually had to change what I’d written to give the scene enough oomph.

See if you can pick the differences. 😀 This is the ‘original’ :

“The Senior had just reached the alcove again when it finally saw the obvious: only the Triad, and the Acolyte, knew who had actually done what. And that meant the truth could be told. Only the roles needed to be re-imagined, leaving itself as the conscientious healer who stayed by the Female’s side until the other returned!
The truth, but not the truth. It was perfect, or almost so. The Second already knew about the threat from the Seven, so it would see why the truth could not be told, plus the lie was close enough to the truth for it to carry off the deception without giving everything away. Which left only the two younger iVokh to worry about.
In its weakened state, the Junior might not even remember the rescue, but if it did, casting it as the hero would mesh with how it saw itself. Plus it already disliked the Acolyte, so that would fit quite nicely, leaving only the Acolyte itself.
The young iVokh would not like being blamed for the Junior’s faults, but it was intelligent and ambitious. If it were told about the Seven’s ultimatum, it would see itself as being both important and trusted. That would appeal to its ambition, and it would feel proud to be trusted with such a vital task…
…ki, not task, mission…
If the Acolyte could be made to believe the fate of the Triad depended on its intelligence and resourcefulness, it would not betray them, at least not to the Voice…
…but afterward?…
Being no stranger to ambition itself, the Senior had no doubt that the young iVokh would try to profit from its knowledge at some point, but as it had no intention of allowing any of them to return to the Settlement, it was not particularily worried. Kohoh was a dangerous time of year, for everyone.”

Book 2, The Suns of Vokhtah series

Messing around with videos is starting to become useful as well as fun. Who knew? lol

cheers,
Meeks

The myth of the self-made billionaire

In a previous post I talked about how rich 38 of Australia’s billionaires really are. Today, I read a brilliant post by Robert Reich about US myths [thanks Jill!]. What really grabbed my attention was this video which debunks the myth of the self-made billionaire:

Isn’t it time we stopped idolizing these poor little rich boys?

Isn’t it time we stopped rewarding them for being more ruthless than just about everybody else on the planet?

Isn’t it time we stopped wanting to be like them… and castigating ourselves when our scruples make us ‘fail’?

I know who I admire, and it ain’t any of these guys.

Meeks

The MONIAC – water driven economic modelling

My thanks to Matthew Wright for the link to this incredible video. Coincidentally, Matthew appears in the video too, helping to explain how something as simple, as real world as water can be used to create a mechanical model of what makes our world go round…money.

cheers,
Meeks

The tiniest Aussie van-house

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of Tiny Houses for years, but this one literally blew my mind:

I’m not sure I’m tidy enough to live in such a…neat…space, but I totally fell in love with the aesthetics of it.

Still smiling,
Meeks