Oh No, More Damn Joe Stuff!

Every so often you make the right move. It feels nice. I've known for a long time that the future of the MDJS project would be in video for YouTube and beyond. I know how to use iMovie, but it really isn't the right tool for what I want to do. Simple, but by definition it doesn't live up to the effects of what I see in my mind as the right path to take. I was getting competent with Premiere, but no longer have access to the program. For a while it appeard that Edenlive would be the right program, but I have complications with my Linux access and it doesn't have a Mac port for me to use (I don't know how to complie). I've been looking at variious editors, trying them out, leaving them for one problem or another. A new review of modern video editing programs hit my in box and so I look at it And immediately was drawn to one video editor that has a free entry version that is not a free, limited preview. This is the full program, functional with many featu...

I've been busy, mostly learning new programs. But a friend, and an MDJS supporter, posted something on Facebook that sparked something in me about taking advantage of the COVID-19 confinement for parents to teach their children little lessons that are off the scope from the usual school lesson material. Little real world lessons to be done through example and building from zero. I had finished a PowerPoint sketch exported to a video with some music, and YouTube stomped on it for rights violation with the music. I didn't mind - it was just a sketch for my purposes that I thought some of the Patreon sponsors would like to see. The sketch had no voice - just text. But I really want some clip videos with a narrator. So, with this months payment from Patreon I decided to invest in purchase of a Speechelo license. Speechelo is an A.I. voice generation with some options for voices and tones. I tried an adolescent boy for the narrator and was very pleased with the result. I ran a...

For me, aside from fewer visitors, it is life as normal. I'm home in my command chair, on the computer with PBS or YouTube in the background. Sometimes I'll watch a show on Netflix, but not often. The second season of Altered Carbon has been a slow building fireball. As I type I am watching Blood Sugar Rising on PBS - an excellent documentary on the rise of diabetes in this country (and the results). But I continue working on the juggle. As I've said before, I use the juggle to keep from going into another multi-year "writer's block" and remain productive. It results in a sudden burst of releases as things ripen together. Kind of like an orchard, when the fruit comes ready for picking. Light, Slenderella cover LIGHT This will be the most political novel I've written. More on the lines of my 1984. Like , it demands my time, dictates new scenes. To this point I have not given the lead character a name. It has been told from a personal, third perso...

(I found this under "drafts" from the beginning of the confinement. I decided to post it, despite being over a week late.) I'm trying to get rolling for production. The Confinement has me living in solitarty and getting judgemental a**ho**s judging my reaction to it. The Lockdown is not really any different to me. I have only left my house one time in the past month, for a doctor's appointment. I have a long list of people who say they are "going to," but don't. Going to visit. Going to help me with a problem at the house. And they stopped appearing long before the threat of plague was on the horizon. i have someone who bring by groceries, once a week, spends 10 minutes talking and is sometimes back for a quick visit. it doesn't equal the "hour in the yard" and interaction with food delivery to a cell in real prison solitary. A friend had two of his sons come over to spend the night, twice in two weeks. They help with chores aro...

Years ago, after ignoring the required reading in my High School English class, I read Daniel Dafoe's Journal of the Plague Year. Long before I met up with a small community of musical theater talents at a show called 3,000 Miles Off Broadway at Gio's in Hollywood, I wanted to make a musical of the book. I saw it as the last confrontation between magic and science. Science won, but it was a fight. I see many scenes from that book, which is a non-fiction reporting the tried to convince people there was a plague visitation in action, in the news every night. The denial, the hysteria, the required panic actions that were better than doing nothing... as if it was better to do something wrong than wait to see what would be effective. Sometimes the hardest action is to sit still. It seems to be genetically encoded. DO! instead of just Be! It is harder to be a human being than a human d oing. So I continue to sit and wait for clarification through meditation and listening...

After almost two years of problems with Apple - both Mojave (10.14) and Catalina (10.15) - I have migrated to Linux to get things done. It means I will have to spend time learning how to learn the new software after 35 years using Mac. I'm and old dog and learning new tricks takes some time. But that is primarily with them document layout with Scribus. The shift from Pages to LibreOffice is not all that dynamic. From Photoshop to Kritta may take a bit. But I'm doing all that now. I'm on Ubuntu Studio 19.10, which should last for a minute. And I can get back into Jorune and my other projects. 2020 should be a good year.

The Guardian of Computer Hell I’m going through the change. The last few days made a decision for me. I am doing a full conversion to Windows 10 and Linux (Ubuntu Studio 19.04) as quickly as possible.  I discovered that the problem is not simply the conflict between the Apple and Adobe “phone home” requirements - checking through the internet to see if I am “authorized” to use that specific machine, that specific piece of software. It required delays at the start of every work session. Every time I used Adobe InDesign or Photoshop using the Macintosh with MacOS 10.15.2 there was a delay rom 15- to 45-seconds after my first mouse click or typing a single character before it had a response. The next few strokes or clicks had less delay and after a few minutes I was able to do my work.  The problem was not with “phone home” codes, but a new disk formatting schema that Apple instituted. APFS replaced the old options. You can no longer format using the previous standar...

The More Damn Joe Stuff has been a great exercise. The Robot of Gmail is trying to change the tone and when I post "Damn" as the name it sends me warnings - "Are you sure you want to use this name?" But this development has helped me come up with something that gets through their blue nose filters. The Patreon work is teaching me that I need to adjust my tone, and being as my whole life is about self-education, I will educate myself. And change. moredamnjoestuff@gmail.com will become mdjoestuff@gmail.com. The blog will become the mdjoestuff blog. The video channels will be on YouTube as the mdjoestuff video channel. And the more damn joe stuff will become the mdjoestuff@gmail.com Patreon project. My own process of growing the fuck up has to be modeled in my own behavior. What good does it do to teach something they do not see me doing. Radio theater. Role-Playing Games. Recovery. Self Education. Education by topics. Real Beginner education to defy the tren...

Old Saying -- "90% of the work takes  10% of the time.  The last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time." True. But Frustrating. And Apple makes it more difficult. The new Upgrade to Apple macOS Catalina has been a disaster. Apple has changed code to prevent Open Source programs from running, which is a marketing decision. That means I cannot use Audacity to record the voice track for my Patreon promotional video. I would have to use GarageBand or Adobe Auditio n. Except it is not my first rodeo with Apple. I kept an old boot disk with OS 13.6, which ai refuse to update. I can use Audacity on that disk. But it means rebooting and losing my use of Audcity , Photoshop , and other system-dependent and registered programs. Or I can boot to Linux Ubuntu Studio and lose access to my documents on the Mac disk. But then I can use Audacity and one of the many, many open source video editors. But I need my documents. And I really need Photoshop to do the wor...

Details? ORFA is missing, but that's easy to correct. I'm coming up with a visual appearance for branding the MDJS project - Patreon, website, card... it will have to be a two-sided card. But smaller and larger versions of a banner. I'm debating how to set up the web page - as part of the oakandlotus.com publication site, or the more spiritual and non-profit concept of thewayofservice.org. And I am clearly undecided if I list it as Patreon or MRDS... but that will be easy to clarify. Less details, with some eyes. If you look at the page, I would really appreciate some feedback. It is my hope that I announce the video(s), website, and Patreon campaign are all live next Wednesday - the next Day Promo. As was yesterday. Today, for day non-fiction, I spent time working on this and with a local vets group doing some organizational work for a local support meeting - expansion, public contact, and how they operate. It was a very productive session at Denny's. I...

Going to the new week feels right. on the new Planet Joe I'm focused on a specific area - one of the five I was already juggling. But the focus is different. Monday was Day Joe and I focused on things around the house. My phone (Galaxy S8) is no longer charging - direct wire or wireless charger - so I may suddenly lose that connection. I have the old iPhone SE which I think will work - I'd have to take out the sim card yadda yadda yadda. I don't know if the SE is modern enough to work on the system. If the S8 craps out. And I still have about 9 payments to make on it. (I'm adjusting to the phone but really do not like the side touch - if you breathe on it wrong (like if your mouth was near the phone in a phone call) it opens an app. Sometimes it sends a message in fluent Gobbledegook, which gets embarrassing. But that took a lot of my focus on Monday. Tuesday was Non-Fiction so I did some work on the Patreon Video, which they seem to require to open the full P...

"The Way of Services" is another MDJS Project. More later. A big part of the Patreon project is for me to finish production, or reproduce, on a number of videos. They will include 12-Step Recovery, PTSD, Role Playing Games, and other topics within my MDJS umbrella. This is the kind of thing I have done without backing, and I think with backing I could make it even more meaningful tot he potential audience. And I do have six tracks oån the MDJS calendar, so spirit and Recovery are already in my sites. From my Facebook post earlier today. ----------------- Part of the process of More Damn Joe Stuff is video. I have a sense of design and illustration to make almost-animated instruction or tutorial films. This is a sample. I'm pleased with the design and would like to produce a voice track and find appropriate music. The soundtrack you here was from one of many Creative Commons repositories and was chosen - strictly - to suit the time int he animated film. It could ...

Many years ago, when my life began the process of rebuilding my sense of identity. I did something I have since called "The Embracement." About a week or so at a time I looked at what I could remember of my life. I have one memory before there were words, so I'm thinking less than a year old. Just sensation and images, all comfort and beauty of the world of night and snow, light and moving into a warm room. And I remembered the ceramic heater, couch-on-legs, and crawling across a specific linoleum tile. Years later my dad confirmed it was the living room of a house we moved out of when I was 18 months old. So - two memories from the first two years. Retrieved by ending the self-medication that allowed me to survive, and the beginning of the process.  I journaled and specifically mediated to see what ages brought to me. I was only 35 so it wasn't that huge. It was sometimes traumatic, sometimes magic, and year and year built up to get me to where I lived at the mome...