Given that our shire hosted Drachenwald's Coronation in January, none of us felt up to also running our normal annual spring event JMB (short for Jungfru Maria Bebådelsedagsgille, which google translates as "Virgin Mary Annunciation Day party"), which typically has 20 to 40 people spending the full weekend at a site a half hour or so inland. But neither did we want to do nothing at all, so Keldor suggested that we do a JMB lite event here at our house, and created a FB event for, it and we even dropped it on the Kingdom Calendar, on the off chance that anyone who isn't on FB might go looking to see if we are doing something.
Between deciding to do that and now I got that tuition bill from the university, which, even though we worked out that I am correct, I do, in fact, have till the end of spring term before my funding runs out, nonetheless put me into panic thesis mode, trying to finish all of my data processing and write all the words for the thesis as fast as possible, so that I don't have to pay £2,500 a term (which, given I have no income just now, is not something I wish to do). Due to the limited amount of funded time available my thesis advisor and I agreed that, rather than doing the degree as the PhD we had originally planned, I should just down-grade to a Master's, which is a more easily achievable thesis format in a short time.
Then I saw that ad for funding, aimed at supporting two individuals who are in their final, otherwise unfunded, year of writing up their PhD results, and I dared to start dreaming again. An entire year to finish up converting all of data to a thesis would make it possible to get that second PhD after all, and would be fun, and, I think, my contribution to the science is worth the higher degree.
The funding application is straight forward: turn in a 2 page CV, a 500-word Thesis Summary, a 750 word General Interest Pitch, and...
a three-minute video introducing myself and my research.I have never edited a video in my life, and have almost never filmed video, so why not try? (I have filmed some acroyoga training, as it is a good way to look at what we are doing, and figure out what is going wrong and what we need to do different to make the pose work, and, when it does work, it is fun to have a record of it.)
Yannick of Normandy, in Insulae Draconis (he who did the wonderful trailers for Drachenwald's On-line Kingdom University Event), was kind enough to give me a two hour zoom call wherein he taught me the basics in using
Lightworks, by having me edit together a couple of random segments of two of my acroyoga films, so that I could learn how to add film clips to a project, how to move them, how to select a subset of them, and discard the rest, how to overlay one over the other, with a dissolve transition from one to the next, and how to zoom and pan, and how to add a title. The result was a very short film using all of those skills, but, because it was randomly chosen bits, wasn't worth keeping.
Then I went to Luleå for my last week of work, working long days, so I practiced none of those skills directly after learning them. On my bus ride home, after doing filming of me in front of a greenscreen talking of my thesis reading a script, talking of it without a script, and even reading both the Thesis Summary and the General Interest Pitch (which gave me 45 minutes worth of film, in which I hope I have enough for the three minute film), I started thinking of the whole pan and zoom thing Yannick taught me.
I had always assumed that the panning and zooming in the yoga app videos was done by moving the camera, but, now that I have learned the skill, I understand that it is probably just video editing. However, I felt that this tool much be good to call attention to specific details in graphs or maps in my research. Then I suddenly felt inspired: GoogleEarth! That program has wonderful fly-in to your chosen location feature. But how to get that from that program into the video editing program? So I asked google, and sure enough, there are tutorials to do just that, and, it turns out, I didn't even need to use a third-party software for the screen recording, Windows has a built-in low end model, that works well enough, if you are willing to use the editor's zoom into the part of the screen you want, rather than selecting that portion before recording.
What does all this have to do with the mini SCA event at our house, you ask? Well, I got home late Thursday evening (where "home" = Keldor's dad's house in Skelleftehamn, since that is MUCH closer to the bus stop than our place is). Friday Keldor went to work, and I set to work transcribing all of my films I had made the day before, including noting where I stuttered, and if I added hand gestures, so that when I get to the part where I add me to the film, I can quickly grab the correct film to pull the words I need from. (In an ideal world I would have had a complete film plan and script done in advance, so I could have just recorded the words that would be used, in several takes, rather than needing to also record lots of additional stuff, as I just don't know yet exactly where the film is going. Apparently, I grow film projects in the same, barely planned organic way I approach most of my sewing and embroidery projects, with a strong "I will figure it out as I go" component).
I got all but one of them transcribed before he finished work for the day, and we packed up the cats and did the 35 minute drive home and got everything unpacked and put away. Then I settled to the computer with that final transcription, till time for the zoom meeting for the Drachenwald 30 Year songbook project, where I confessed that I had accomplished nothing for the project since our last meeting, due to thesis focus mode, and we delegated parts of the things I had hoped to do to others (thanks others!). As I listened to the meeting, I went to the web page where they are collecting the bits that are done, and tested pulling the list into Scrivener, copying in the plain lyrics, and adding clickable links to the various versions of each song (phf, sheet music, with chords, midi) where they exist. The meeting lasted long enough I got as far as the Ms. Then, as the meeting wrapped up, I exported the result to an epub, and sent it to the others, wondering if they think it is worth also doing an epub version of the song book. Then, at events with poor internet access one could still have the songbook in a format that is easy to read on a phone or a tablet, and, if the access is good, one could click through to the web page.
I have been wanting an epub songbook for ages, and haven't taken the time to sit down and do it. It really isn't hard to do, and would be fairly fast to just drop the old word doc for the Oerthan songbook into scrivener and convert it. It is just finding the time. The only reason doing the Drachwneald 30 Year songbook takes longer is the part about coping in the links to the other version. No one has replied to that shared file yet, so I have no idea if it is only me who likes the idea of epub, or if the idea is worth pursuing.
After the meeting I finished my transcription and got ready for bed, glad that we didn't have a normal JMB, as I would have missed all of the Friday night part of the event for work. The event announcement Keldor had done said that the event would start at 10:00 on Saturday, by which time I was sitting at the computer, happily experimenting with recording GoogleEarth fly-in to a quarry location, and fading from there to a photo of the rock from the quarry, fading to a photo of the crystal from the rock that I analysed, fading to the maps for each of the interesting elements for that crystal, one at a time (gee, it is GREAT to see the maps replacing one another like that--one very clearly sees the difference in distribution of each element!!!!).
As a result, when the first guests arrived, I don't know how much time later, I waved hello from the computer, and kept woking. A while later I was hungry, so I went out, chatted briefly with the first two visitors, accompanied them and Keldor on a tour of the house, ate some lunch, and went straight back to the computer to work.
At 15:00, I finished my first short sample film clip, which you can see on
google drive here, or
on FB here. So I put on some SCA garb, my hearing aids, and went out to the kitchen to discover that a number of others had arrived, so I shared with them my short film, had some dinner, during which I took of the dress I had put on, because it was too warm, and just the linen undertunic, to which I added my cotton flannel Thorsberg trousers, was more comfortable.
But as soon as I had finished eating, I returned to the computer to see how much time film # 2 would take, now that I know how to do it. That first film took five hours, the second, which you can see
on google drive here (or on the same fb link, since I just edited the first post to add the next), took only 3, so clearly I am getting faster. Now I wonder how I can automate this? It must be possible to set up a template, and just drop in the sample photos and stuff from a folder, so that every sample has the exact same approach, making it easier to play the films side by side and see the differences.
When I came back out to the kitchen it was full! Well, ok, there were only 9 people, including me, and two dogs (our cats declined to join the party, but stayed hidden in the bedroom), but the kitchen is small, making it seem like a larger event than it really was. I hung out with them, and then gave Helena a tour of the house, then Lena and I did some yoga in the living room, and there was more hanging out and swapping stories.
Then I felt inspired to finally cut the fabric for a much lighter weight pair of Thorsberg trousers. I have a really light weight white cotton fabric, with a blue print that looks rather 12th Century in motief, that we found at a second hand store ages ago, and I thought at the time it would make some lovely Thorsberg trousers for wearing under a split-skirt bliaut, but I hadn't gotten around to doing anything with it. Because the fabric is so thin I wanted to line at least the square but panel and crotch rectangle with another fabric, but I didn't have anything in my stash that was an appropriate weight. So I looked in the mending pile, and saw an old light weight black cotton skirt that has been languishing waiting for someone to sew shut the rip in the fabric for ages, and saw that it was exactly the same weight as the blue printed white cotton fabric. Having survived for months without the skirt, I decided that it would make a great lining, so, since the party was just in the kitchen at that time, I claimed the living room floor for fabric cutting (and was able to cut out all the pieces without help from the cats, who were still keeping to the bedroom for reasons of people, and probably especially, dogs, in the house).
I got the pieces cut, and, since the fabric piece wasn't, quite, long enough to go from waist to ankle, but was wide enough to have extra fabric over in the middle after removing the butt and crotch pieces, I added an extra wide waist band. That chunk of extra fabric was wide enough to line up the pattern exactly, so at any distance at all, one won't see that there is even a seam there. So I started sewing the first waist band to the first leg, and left the other pieces spread out over the floor, so I wouldn't loose track of which side was up for the other leg and waist extension, and took my sewing to the next room to be sociable again.
Of course, this was around the time that some people were deciding to head home, so instead of joining folk in the kitchen, I stood, stitching in hand, talking in the entry area, as they got ready to go (and shouted twice "don't step on the sewing project on the floor!" to Keldor and the guy he was showing off all of the swords, spears, and axes that line the living room wall with. (Really, with no one, not even cats, in the room at all, it had felt safe to leave it spread out during the short time I sewed those two pieces together. Nope.)
I got the first two bits sewed together during the time we were doing goodbyes with the first group departing, and started the next set as we hung out with the last couple of folk. After they, too, left, I put down my sewing, and did a bit more tidying up after company (the guests had helped with dishwashing before departing, which was truly appreciated), crawling into bed just after 01:00. As I was setting the dawn light to get up at 06:00 for my fortnightly call with my sisters, Keldor reminded me that it was the night for the change to daylight savings, so we would soon "spring forward" an hour. So I reset the clock on the dawn light to show that it was already 02:00, and went to sleep.
When dawn went off I might have considered sleeping, but Skaði wanted breakfast, so I got up, fed her, and sat down at the computer, where I had a great time catching up with my sisters, sharing my videos with them, and getting some edits for the funding application text, as well as working on my new sewing project and hearing what they are up to.
Then I went back to bed, and slept for three more hours, which was seriously needed, during which time Keldor took this cute photo of Skaði and I:
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