“pivot to video”
I don’t (generally speaking) want to watch a video. When it’s a video that would have been better as an article, that ticks me off no end. My SO had me watch a video that was 3 minutes of slides, which could have been replaced by 10 bullet points, readable in 30 seconds. I was peeved, he was insistent, and I gritted my teeth. Guh.
Oh I so agree! I like model railroading and have always loved the magazines on the subject. One of them (Model Railroader) has really gone in for on-line stuff, especially videos. The paper magazine is a pale shadow of its former self – last one only 70 pages. I don’t want to watch a video to learn some new technique or see a review of a new kit – I want to ponder an article with pictures and drawings.
Edit: correct word order.
Seems like a trend. Last weekend one of my nieces asked me to make her a BB8 (Star Wars) hat for her Hallowe’en costume. No problem, I found a free pattern on-line – but it’s in the form of a Youtube video.
So I’m going to have to watch it, make notes on materials and gauge, then watch it again, pausing it as I work each section.
I can think of two drivers for this: a) “multimedia is cooler than nasty old print” is still a thing, despite plenty of evidence that the real axiom should be “use the right medium for the job” and b) it’s a sneaky way to generate ad revenue via YouTube.
Yeah! I find this a stilted way to present such things. Video is so linear. With a printed plan and instructions and drawings you can go back and forth, pause at something complex, stop and think, all with your eyes. With video, like you said, you have to pause, take notes (or remember, something I’m not good at, go back and forth, etc. The only comparable downside with a magazine article is having to turn the page.
I recall hearing about a kid who figured out to fix something by watching a Youtube video six times. That would drive me crazy. Maybe VR is the solution? You try whatever you want to learn in the virtual world, using instructions floating in front of you, or with audio, or by a video, and so on. Then take the headphones off, and do it for real. Of course that would take even more production time than either a printed version or a video!
VR would work for learning a set of steps, like piano scales or maybe driving. But not for making something, like a model railroad landscape or that hat I need to make. I don’t need to know how to make the hat end to end, all at once. I just need to know what to do for the current round and a few rounds ahead so I can plan accordingly.
I also don’t need to remember how to make the hat after I’m done. The core set of skills is needing to know how to crochet, work with multiple colours in crochet, and how to darn in ends. I already have all those in memory.
I have found Youtube videos useful for learning new techniques, especially if I can find more than one worth watching. That way I can see the technique demonstrated by several different people and figure out which version goes best with what I already do.
You may be better off with ar.
That is really cool! How come they don’t use that on the Enterprise? It would be neat for crafts and models, but we’d need really easy (and cheap) ways to create it in the first place. Someday! (or is it out there and I just don’t know about it?)
It was supposed to have come out for windows 10. Seems to have dropped by the wayside.
Apparently it is avaliable if you have the money to burn.
Well, isn’t that always the case. But thanks for the tip. The software looks intriguing.
Depreciated command line options that used to work but now don’t for FSM knows reasons.
Much of the push now has gone to the Peripheral Headsets that attach to a full sized PC.
BUT… With Windows on ARM coming soon, the Real HoloLens may be making a comeback
It just happened again.
Person calls me, and they have the wrong number. That part is cool. We all do it, and there are at least 4 area codes in the local calling area, so it’s bound to happen.
The part that ticks me off is when I politely tell them they have the wrong number and they start arguing with me about it. You want to talk to whoever. That’s great. He’s not here.
Not to mention robocalls in general. 
We even got them where I used to work, calling a red emergency phone that had no keypad.
Especially the weird “you have won a trip” ones.
Maybe that’s why this last wrong number annoyed me so much. A few days ago I had one of those robocalls. I just hung up, didn’t press anything on the phone’s keypad, but a few hours later I had an awkward conversation with a woman who wanted to know why I had called her. I explained I hadn’t. She at least noticed that our phone numbers were sequentially close together; the robocall seemed to be using the last picked up number as the spoof number for the next call or something.
Yeah, we’ve noticed a lot of calls from our own area code and first three digits of our phone number, on the landline and cell phones. NPR had a recent article on it. We use NoMoRoBo.com, which helps on the landline at least.
Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available. (Parkinson was a real person, a civil servant who observed it in action.)
Before computers people dictated a half page memo that was typed by the typing pool and circulated to people who had to read it and pass it on.
Now a half page memo can be written on a computer in ten minutes and circulated to hundreds of people by email. But productivity does not increase in the real world, so it has to be turned into a PowerPoint, which then has to be made into a video “so the sales guy/whoever can’t mess it up” and then you have to schedule a whole lot of people to go to a room to watch it. The total productivity destruction is probably greater than the old type and circulate workflow.
So…a former colleague was at a NATO conference and there for the first time were some officers from Slovenia. That evening in the bar someone asked them “if WW3 had started, who do you think would have won?”
“That’s easy,” they said, “The Red Army would have reached the Rhine before you finished showing one another PowerPoints.”
I had a new one the other night…
12:36 AM…phone rings…
I’m barely awake squinting at the screen…
I look and the number calling is…Mine?
Yep. That’s my picture from my phone on the caller ID.
Sleep addled brain figures if I’m calling myself, I’d better answer.
So I do…
This is AT&T and you phone is suspected of being used for fraudulent purposes.
To deny that you committed these fraudulent acts, enter the last four of your Social Security Number
I’m glad I only put in the first digit before realizing, this made NO sense and hung up.
Eeeesh, that’s nasty. Thanks for spreading this scam around!
Edit: I mean knowledge of this scam around! So we know about it. Or something it’s late.
I got a call like that a couple months ago. A bill collector (or somebody) wanted to know if I had a good phone number for Brian [my last name]. I don’t have any close family within 1000 miles of here, let alone in the same area code, nor am I related to anyone named Brian. Was for real or was it some kind of a scam? If it was for real, can they legally do that?
No idea if it was a scam, but if someone lists you as a credit reference on an application and then dodges their creditors, bill collectors may indeed resort to harassing you in order to get to them…